They’re talking about the “Peace Prize” that FIFA gave him this week.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-world-cup-fifa-peace-prize-e14f95b8adaa197c869cad407b6ef604

But this is the whole strategy - make noise, flood the zone with nonsense, and distract from the misery engine that’s churning through our society.

You have to seek help. It sounds like you’re dealing with serious mental health issues, and finding support from a competent professional would be the first step in feeling better. I don’t know how much it helps to hear this from a stranger on the internet, but these challenges in no way reflect on your worth as a person. It seems like you’ve been struggling with this for a long time, and you definitely deserve love and support to help you navigate these feelings. You’re not a bad person because you can’t navigate this stuff alone, you’ve been denied the support and care that would allow you to heal. Please don’t give up! Seek help, however you can.

I’m not going to tell you any of that. All I’ll say to you is that I’m incredibly sorry for the trauma you’ve endured; you didn’t deserve to be treated like that, it’s not your fault, and you deserve to be loved and cared for. My heart breaks for you, and I hope so much that you can find the love and support you need. I believe that you can and you will. This world is a hard, cold place sometimes, but there is light and love in it, and I wish so much for you to find your share of it. I guarantee you that there are people in your community who will want to connect with you, if you can find the strength to keep reaching out.

I know it can be frustrating to receive all this advice from strangers online, who don’t know the specific challenges you’re facing, but I just want to point out that this little community sees you and cares about you.

You deserve community; you deserve to be seen and loved for who you are. I’m sorry that your birth family was too stupid and cruel to see you for who you really are, but that doesn’t mean that that love and support is denied to you forever. I’m just some random dude on the internet, but I see you and I want good things for you. I guarantee there are people around you that want that connection with you. When you’re fighting just to survive it’s incredibly difficult to find the energy to search out those connections but I promise it’s worth it. Please don’t despair.

Stupid shot is pretty much their only area of expertise!

There are plenty of Americans who suffer from the exact same kind of social anxiety and lack of social confidence that you’re describing. If you’re only meeting or observing Americans who are traveling or living in Germany then your sample is skewed towards the kind of people who have the confidence and experience to travel internationally.

It sounds to me like you would benefit from talking to a therapist who could help you manage your social anxiety, but if you didn’t want to do that for whatever reason, I would try treating small talk as a skill that you’re trying to get better at. Set yourself a small daily goal - like having one chat about the weather with a cashier while you’re shopping. You can’t skip right to being an expert at small talk; you need to gain confidence and experience. I would like to say to you, in my experience, it’s easiest to talk about things you’re interested in or passionate about. Are there any groups or clubs that meet to engage in hobbies you like? A group like that can help you break through the awkwardness of not knowing what to talk about.

Personally, I think you sound like a thoughtful, interesting person, and I bet you’d be fun to talk to. Don’t be so hard on yourself, and remember that everyone has these feelings; it’s perfectly natural and not something to get down on yourself about. Sorry for writing a whole novel, but I hope this was helpful in some small way!

I think the fundamental truth here is that any relationship requires conscious effort from both parties. One person alone can’t carry that weight. If your friend wants to salvage this relationship then I think they need to convince their partner to pursue individual therapy, and also they need to talk to a couples counselor together. Without professional help I think it’s going to be very difficult to shift the dynamic here. That being said, life is short, and you can waste years hoping that someone will change. Sometimes you have to make the hard choice to move on.

Are you like, on the Halliburton payroll or something?

He’s also trying to draw attention away from the illegal deportations they did over the weekend.

They want to privatize everything and drive us into technocratic feudalism with folks like Musk and Thiel at the top

“But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with."

I mean, it was more than a couple hundred thousand dollars here in the States, but that’s exactly what has us on the ropes. Propaganda and misinformation delivered via social media is destroying democracy all across the western world.

Susan Collins is a Republican Senator from Maine. No Democrats have voted for any of these psychopaths.

It’s hard not to be angry at the legion of angry, scared, dimwits that voted for this. It’s also just not productive. In the end, what’s the point of that anger? We have to figure out how to reach those people, and how to cut through the fog of misinformation and propaganda that they are lost in. Things are just going to get worse and worse unless we do.

Can we stop using this Stephen Crowder meme? That guy is the worst

You’re cherry-picking one issue, and ignoring the absolute FLOOD of misinformation and propaganda that is filling those social platforms. Not to mention that those honest critiques of the US’s complicity in genocide are picked up and weaponized by bad actors across the spectrum. Most people have not been taught to critically consume news, they just go on vibes. Corporate news, social media, it’s all broken, and none of it is serving people’s best interests. I would argue that informed voters were stuck between a rock and a hard place; we knew that the Harris campaign was just more neoliberal bullshit, but the Trump vision of the world is so much worse. Social media is causing so much more harm than good, and the people in charge of those platforms absolutely do not have your best interests in mind. All they care about is engagement metrics, and nothing drives that more then anger and fear

The problem here is too much information, or misinformation. In social spaces, if you post something about vaccines, or join a group that is focused on children’s health, for example, you’ll start being inundated with anti-vax misinformation. People get lost in these walled gardens of bad info, and stop being able to distinguish between truth and fiction. All these systems are designed to drive engagement, and nothing drives that better than fear and anger.

Optics discussion aside, I think it cost like $800k to transport them via C130. There’s no reason to use this method other than to grandstand. They’ve sent thousands of folks back to Colombia via commercial and chartered flights.

This is the most frustrating and stupid news cycle - the US government has been sending folks back to Colombia via commercial flights since like 2020. The Biden administration sent 124 flights last year. The only difference is that the Trump team wanted to make a big show of sending people in chains on a military flight, and the Colombian government wanted their citizens to be treated like human beings. Our media is shamefully inadequate to this moment.

He’s right about one thing, he doesn’t deserve to be called “dad”. I think I speak for all us decent dads here when I say any one of us would be proud to have a kid who’s as smart, capable, and levelheaded as you sound. Keep your head down and get out as soon as you can.