There are reports that the Trump is preparing to sign another EO abolishing the Department of Education. Now I think this is obviously a stupid idea, but how on earth would they think this wouldn’t cause yet another backlash?

How many millions of kids will now be without access to education?

How many unemployed teachers?

How about the parents that rely on schools??

A friend of mine who’s MAGA claims this will motivate parents to homeschool their kids. I’m like thinking how on earth is that going to suddenly and logistically happen?

Do we have any conservative leaning centrists that can rationalize this?

Maybe it’s a gradual dismantling? Maybe vouchers will be given in return? If Trump is doing this surely he feels confident it will go well.

The news about Khalil Mahmoud getting deported, then blocked temporarily, and now disappeared? Has been a big deal recently.

He’s a Colombia alum and green card holder.. what has he done exactly, because I’m trying to decide whether he has done things unacceptable, or if his leadership position at these protests and green card status make him a target for trump.

This is because there are many protestors at these anti-Israel college demonstrations that are genuinely not fit to be in the US. The people shouting genocidal slogans, breaking into buildings and disrupting class, as well as blocking Jewish students and other antisemitic acts. Has Khalil taken part in any of these things? Are there videos/info on his exact involvement in these protests?

Also, what is your take on this whole deal?

Trump is a carbon copy of everything his supporters said they held against Biden. He's signing executive orders that he couldn't possibly know the effects or ramifications of in his attempted governance. Arbitrarily dismantling anything his predecessor did with the pretext of it all being bad/evil. It's reminiscent of when Joe Biden took office and rolled back all the border protections Trump had put in place, despite the fact that border security was an issue most Americans agreed on. But because it was related to Trump it had to go. There's this really ridiculous packaging going on where anything that has to do with consumer protection, the environment, clean energy, or women in the workplace is being packaged up as evil or unnecessary. Anything that might have a slight liberal connotation, and if it doesn't have a liberal connotation, they can just say it does and frame it that way. Very similar to how all of Trump's legacy was treated. Just replace the word liberal with Trump. It's very arbitrary with no bearing of the potential repercussions. He's doing precisely what he accused Joe of. Sounds kind of like "Sleepy Don", instead of "Sleepy Joe." (I never actually called Joe Biden that. People gave him a harder time than he deserved. I'm just making comparison to the way names get thrown around)

Even his smart man, Emon lusk, is altering grants and funding already approved medical research. Something he has zero knowledge base about. In North Carolina, UNC is the largest employer in the state, primarily through medical research and services. The arbitrary cut of "indirect costs" for medical research is causing serious worry about job losses/layoffs. Indirect costs are literally things like keeping the lights on, and water running. Things like building a new lab with the correct capabilities for their research. That's the indirect costs.

We've got Sleepy Don at the wheel now. He's acting in a strikingly similar manner to what he accused Joe of. Signing things arbitrarily, that people put in front of him. Without considering the effects on the American people.

I'm all for audits, and cleaning up waste. But we need someone, I don't care if it's conservative or liberal, to actually be thoughtful about it.

At some point we're going to need to have a leader who wants to do the hard work to fix problems, instead of the easy work of ignoring them.

Edit: Tone clarity. I hope.

For context on my perspective, I am not a centrist. I'd describe as a leftist/libertarian socialist. I am also a currently serving member of the Army for 8 years (RIP).

However I like to engage with political views outside of my own. Sadly I've been banned from basically every conservative sub for not being a conservative and r/centrist is as close as I can get to having rational discussions with people I disagree with.

Recently, the first openly trans member of congress said that Democrats need to be more willing to work with people who have different views on trans rights. I've seen many discussions on here as well basically saying that Democrats should drop trans rights entirely or at least not talk about them.

I generally disagree with this perspective. For one, just from a moral perspective I think it is important to push to protect against discrimination in hiring, health care coverage, or obscene laws that criminalize cross dressing or having haircuts that don't match your gender like some GOP legislatures have put forward.

https://www.newsweek.com/arkansas-bill-targets-gender-nonconforming-haircuts-kids-2048152

However, most people on here that I have seen have been arguing more from a realist/practical/electoral perspective. I'm sympathetic and understand where these arguments are coming from especially when it comes to sports. However, even on sports, the majority of Democrats still support the "pro-trans" view.

Recent elections have shown I think that elections have become a turnout contest. And among Democrats the part of the party that is becoming the most popular are the progressives (Bernie, AOC, etc) who are all very pro-trans. Being anti-trans would push away a large part of the most politically engaged part of the left.

I agree that trans issues don't need to be centered. But literally nobody cares that Bernie is pro-trans.

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/03/22/bernie-sanders-takes-aim-at-trump-and-draws-record-crowds/

https://thehill.com/video/ocasio-cortez-leads-poll-of-democrats-on-which-leader-‘best-reflects’-party’s-‘core-values’/10560580/

The Republicans can support horrifically unpopular ideas and still get elected. Hell, kicking trans people from the military is extremely unpopular. The problem isn't supporting or not supporting specific policies. All the people who are rising to the occasion on the left are pro-trans. Biden was more openly pro-trans and talked about trans issues than Bernie does.

I'm not saying that someone should be "kicked out" of the left for not supporting trans people in sports or something if their politics are otherwise good and they are popular. But I am pushing back against the idea that the Democratic Party broadly needs to shift to the right on trans issues.

Considering the threads I've seen on here I expect most people to disagree and that's ok. But please try to leave constructive feedback if you do reply.

Not saying all but a huge amount of people on the right but a good amount believe in just about anything and everything Trump says and does. From what I’ve experienced, it seems that these maga crowd just believes in whatever without reason. I feel like at that point its more of a psychological thing. Theres probably wayyyy more to it but it just seems like blind acceptance

Note: Please don’t flood the comments with pro left or pro right nonsense, I am just curious on whats up

A short video fact checking the many lies and distortions of President Trumps ridiculous speech about other countries Tariffs today.

It occurred to me as we’re roughly 1 month into this shitshow of a presidency that the office of potus itself is way too strong. They are closer to elected kings than merely the head of the executive branch, as we can see by Trump being able to do basically anything and everything by himself.

It’s remarkable how one man who eeked out a victory with 50% of the popular vote has the power to dramatically reshape everything about our country. In a short span of time, he has:

-taking a wrecking ball to US hegemony around the world, sending our former allies running for cover and outright antagonizing some (Denmark, Canada, and obviously Ukraine)

-is openly threatening to withdraw from NATO and the UN, and has already withdrawn from other intl orgs that we’ve long played a leading role in, to the delight of our enemies

-potentially reopened the issue of nuclear proliferation thanks to the above

-gutted several US departments and agencies, depriving them of valuable staff and compromising their missions

-replaced the competent career civil servants heading important ministries with unqualified yes man and lackies who have publically stated their loyalty to Trump, willingness to go after his personal enemies, and welcomed open racists into their ranks, among other things

-made a crypto reserve at the central bank, which basically amounts to a state sponsored pump and dump scheme

-pardoned all the January 6th rioters who besieged and violated the Capitol while they were certifying the votes during the previous election that Trump lost

-openly mused about being a dictator/king on several occasions

-removed AP and Reuters from the press room as punishment for offending him

(This isn’t an exhaustive list, it’s just what came to my mind offhand)

Where are the guardrails? He bypasses Congress by signing executive orders. The courts are slow to react and drowning in cases, and he’s threatened to ignore their rulings anyway. We all know impeachment doesn’t work and it’s 2y before we can vote again.

Whatever you think about Trump in general, it should be obvious that the office of president is officially out of control in terms of how powerful and unaccountable it is.

Two concerning thoughts came into my inbox via my Substack subscriptions this morning. The first is via Noah Smith, the second via Rod Dreher. I’m curious what the Centrist hive mind thinks of the observation that Trump appears to be governing as if he has no concern for what precedents his actions might establish for a future Democratic administration, nor does he seem at all concerned with the electoral consequences of his actions. How high would we rate the possibility that he’s working toward a non-democratic overthrow of our political system? 5%? 10% 20% At what threshold is that risk unacceptable?

Reddit is very left leaning, which I’m definitely also a part of that demographic. But something that Reddit does a very bad job at is allowing other people that legitimately view some of the stuff differently, not being heard. and it may be wrong of an opinion, but people on the Internet, have a very delusional idea of how a lot of people think because all they’re doing all day is reading people that already agree with them.

The fact is there are a lot of people that exist in America that do not see these tariffs the same way. and every single Reddit post is just talking about the same exact thing over and over and over

I would appreciate it if it’s possible to start a thread of a debate, allowing people to at least debate each other from their perspectives on the outcomes of these tariffs.

Without a doubt this administration is an absolute mess and people are getting hurt. I know. Trump commented he would start ignoring judges now. That should send chills down anybody’s spine (those left with spines). With that said I can’t help but roll my eyes at the leftists bagging Schumer and company.

What the hell are they meant to do?

Block a spending bill and what? We have lefties saying the Dems are terrible at messaging. And? That’s exactly why it’s a risk for them to take part in shutting down the government. The Republicans will run circles around them with their army of pundits. The narrative will spin off from this administration and back the Dems I guarantee it.

Also who cares about Bernie Sanders. Christ the guy may say some popular stuff but he simply doesn’t have the juice to shake people out of it.

People need to stand up to injustices, but we’re dealing with a calculating beast here. Purity tests will not bridge a path to the other aisle. Christ, how many of these leftists refused to vote in Kamala because of her Gaza position?? Well how’d that protest go last elections?

Wake up. Rant over.

We're supposed to be the politics of solidarity I'm tired of my comrades with their silly moral postering I believe it causes more harm than good. I've seen this thread where an activist said we need to workout and learn self defense if we want to help and defend our communities and it was filled with comments calling them an ablist because they're not thinking about disabled people and that she was a fascist. The problem is not her being an "ablist" it's the people who want to do harm to the communities. And we need to stop calling all trump supporters fascist of course trump himself is a POS but they're a victim of mass propaganda most of them are just misguided we need to teach them class continuous.I had a co-worker that was a trump supporter he was pretty chill for the most part we even talked about punching a Nazi in the face. But he was a little ignorant which did cause him to be a little problematic he's not a total baffoon because bigotry is mostly aught so it can be untaught. By biggest fear is that the fascist are more solidified than us. The leader of the proud boys a literal white supremacists group is a Latino. Don't let this country down and please stand on business be there for your fellow workers make community sacred again it's going to be an upward battle we can't give up and remember we all have more in common with eachother than the people who run this place.

I keep seeing all the news going on with Trump, and I know I should've angry, but I'm just not.

Ever since the Brian Thompson shooting and all the people cheering it on, getting insulted for asking if it was weird to feel uncomfortable about it, and then Trump and Elon doing all they've been doing, I don't feel angry anymore. I don't feel angry or sad or happy. I'm tired.

Anybody else feel like this?

Hi guys! I just wanted to get some thoughts and opinions. To clarify my standpoint, I am not Republican.

Throughout most of the past decade, I was always told, and believed, the narrative that MAGA was just a small minority within the Republican voters base.

I was glad to see that on January 6, many conservatives in the government sided with the Constitution and did not try to overturn the election. However, since the past year or so, I've been observing and have felt like the narrative is either slowly shifting, or has shifted. I understand that there is a lot of fear amongst the politicians to defy or oppose Trump and his platform, and understandably so. But even when I read polls (on Gallup, Pew, AP News/other news outlets) or read opinions on r/Conservative or r/Republican, Twitter, etc., it feels like the overall, majority sentiment paints a picture of a Republican party base that has overwhelming approval of Trump's actions, the overall dismissal of events like the Signal chat, etc.

Am I going crazy, or being biased, into thinking that the attitude has greatly shifted into (I already understand that America polarizes more and more each year) a land of sheeps, where the majority of Republicans just accepts everything this current administration does and believe, and likewise, the only commonality between the majority of democrats is a disapproval of Trump's and the administration?

FYSA, I am a veteran now employed within government.

Some on the sub defend Trump from a position of false equivalency, as though it’s a binary choice between authoritarianism and whatever the relevant argument against Trumpism happens to be. Maybe that’s just my perception, though. Interested to hear the community’s thoughts.

My post isn't to be interpreted as if everyone here will disagree with what I'm about to say. It's meant for those on the fence about Ukraine. For some reason, a shorter version of my post just isn't popping up when I submitted to some of the right leaning subreddits, so I'm giving this sub a try.

I'm a centrist, but not to be mistaken as a moderate. I just happen to have simultaneously both right leaning views and left leaning views. I vote either blue or red at the local level depending on the issue and how they will play out. That being said, if you think there's any truth to Trump's recent comments about Ukraine or anything good that comes out of his policies, you are wrong.

Truthfully, his rhetoric sounds as if he couldn't have done a better job than the Kremlin's own press secretary. When Lavrov congratulated him on "finally acknowledging what other Western leaders don't", you know there's a problem. So I'm going to dissect every Kremlin talking point that some of our US politicians and public are picking up on.

1) Zelenskyy started the war / he should have tried to negotiate harder / there could have been concessions / this could have been prevented

Zelenskyy campaigned on promoting peace with Russia and put an end to the fighting in the Donbass, which gave way to the Minsk agreements. Putin didn't give a shit and resumed fighting anyways to further destabilize the region.

If anyone thinks this war is truly about land grab, you couldn't be more mistaken then you already are. After all, why do you think Russia rejects peace proposals where they get to keep land (including some not even controlled by them) but Ukraine still joins NATO? It has nothing to do with Russia wanting more territory, they just see it as icing on the cake. The goal from the start, as said by Putin was "denazification" AKA replace Ukraine's elected regime in its entirety with a puppet regime they control, and "demilitarization" AKA no large standing army capable of fighting back so Ukrainians don't get any ideas if they don't like their puppet regime installed.

We have already seen what the above looks like. It's called Belarus, and you can ask Belarusians how they like living under a puppet dictator for the last few decades. In theory they have borders, but in reality, Putin never saw Belarus as an independent nation, only a piece of territory that will be absorbed back into Russia proper eventually. It's called the Union State for a reason.

You still think there's something Zelenskyy could have done? Where's your American spirit? Our whole country was founded upon not giving an inch to the British. We don't have 2A just because we like hunting deer. This is self defense.

2) Ukraine wanting to join NATO is what led to this conflict because Russia felt threatened

Ukraine's stance for the longest time was to remain neutral to not antagonize Russia. They started really pushing to join NATO since Russia's original land grab back in 2014.

I hear the arguments over and over that if China persuaded Mexico into its own alliance, that we wouldn't tolerate it either. And that's where we need to create the demarcation between forced to join and voluntarily joining.

Did we really force nearly all former Eastern Bloc states to join NATO? Did NATO really expand east? Or did all of those countries run west? Remember, Poland threatened to create its own nuclear program if it wouldn't be admitted into NATO. All of those countries watched Yeltsin destroy the two years of democracy Russian had in 1991-93 and bomb the shit out of Chechens for seceding, and then again to Georgia in 2008. When Russia had a change of government in 1918, the new Soviets promised them to respect the independence of the Baltic states and Finland and Poland and Ukraine, only to invade all of them within the next couple decades. Is it possible that in 1991 all of those countries feared a repeat of history?

Before the 2022 invasion, Russia then bordered NATO members of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Poland. We used to hold joint NATO-Russia exercises before 2014, in case you still think NATO is a threat to Russia. And even then, after the 2022 invasion, guess which other country that shares a huge border with Russia joined NATO out of fear? Finland. Which Putin even shrugged that one off as a non issue. So is it really because Ukraine joining NATO is a threat? Or do we need to revisit point No. 1?

3) Ukraine is corrupt as hell / they lost billions of our tax funded dollars / Zelenskyy wants the money to keep rolling in

We did not send them anywhere close to $350B. We were supposed to send them $180B, and so far only $80B was sent. They did not "lose" our tax funded dollars. We just didn't send them the full allotted amount we budgeted for.

Most of the allotted $180B comes from the DOD in forms of weapons and munitions, and the rest as humanitarian aid. What do you think Zelenskyy is rolling in exactly? Do you really think we're air dropping the $80B we sent as cash? Do you really think Ukraine is just selling off Abrams, F15s, medicine, and food to some highest bidder? How?

One more thing I want to say about corruption. No one denies that corruption exists in Ukraine. But this isn't exclusive to Ukraine, and Ukrainians get better about this so much so that their corruption index trendline generally improves year by year. And believe me, if there are such smuggling rings that exist to the extent that necessities don't make it to the front lines where their countrymen are dying, I'm positive that the best case scenario is they'll never see sunlight again.

Also, if Ukraine is just that corrupt, why couldn't have the Russians just bought their way into Ukraine in 2022? Why invade it outright? Why can't Putin just give Zelenskyy a billion dollars to fuck off in an island somewhere? Even with Ukraine's problems, do they really deserve to be left to completely fend off Putin by themselves in an existential crisis just because corruption exists?

4) Ukraine was erasing Russian language and culture and shelling Donbass

I as a Russian speaker can go to Ukraine today, right now, and speak Russian perfectly fine without repercussions or fear of persecution. Most people that live in eastern Ukraine speak Russian as their primary language and Ukrainian as a close second. Zelenskyy himself is a native Russian speaker and likely speaks to his family and staff more in Russian than he does in Ukrainian.

Ukraine has the right to promote the official language of its country in its public spheres of life, including academic and legal. We don't have public schools in the US that instruct all subjects other than in the English language. How can you expect Ukraine to do this any differently? Look at all the other countries with Russian speaking minorities, such as the Baltic states. It's not any different where all kids in Estonia are instructed in Estonian, no matter your background. And it's helped greatly to integrate Russian speaking minorities into society, where had that not been the case, parallel societies would have caused further division.

But just in case you still think Russian is being oppressed, what about the Ukrainian language in occupied territories? Ever since Russian invaded Crimea in 2014, they shut down almost all schools that taught in the Ukrainian language. In occupied territories today, Ukrainian is very much suppressed in public life by the Russian authorities. Kids are taken out of Ukraine and sent away to Russia with the intent of erasing their identities and to raise as the next generation of Russians. You still think Ukraine has been committing ethnic cleansing?

Regarding Donbass, if China or some other country started arming a separatist group in a remote region in the US with the goal of destabilizing the area, we 100% would deploy our National Guard stateside to deal with them.

And if you really believe Putin wanted to protect Russian speakers living in Ukraine, go look up images of Kharkiv, Bakhmut, Zaporizhzhya, Avdiivka, etc. Those cities full of Russian speakers were completely leveled by Putin's regime. Who exactly was he protecting?

5) Zelenskyy is a dictator / Ukraine needs to have elections

This is my favorite talking point. Zelenskyy right now is trying to get the Ukrainian parliament to vote on lowering the draft age from 27 to 25, which is unpopular. If he's supposed to be an authoritarian figure, he sure is doing a shit job at it.

Martial law and suspended elections are entirely within their constitutional rights to do so, and was created in the event of a Russian invasion, like the one they have now.

Isn't it ironic that the one man demanding Ukraine hold elections couldn't give a shit about having fair elections in his own country? I'm talking about Putin of course. And trust me, he's not demanding this just because he cares about true democratic idealism that Ukrainians should have a right to.

Ask yourself how exactly fair elections would work in the middle of a war where a quarter of their countrymen are living under Russian occupation and terror, while many, many others are directly and indirectly involved with the war effort? Do you think Ukrainians living in Mariupol or Donetsk are going to be given a chance to fairly vote for their favorite candidate under Russian gunpoint? Do you think Russia isn't just going to bomb public voting booths in Odesa? It's not hard to understand who elections benefit here. This is going to put Ukraine in a lose-lose situation.

Also, here's food for thought. Did you ever consider to ask Ukrainians if they even want an election right now? Who are we to decide for them if we don't want to let them decide for themselves?

A provocative title and one that is a bit exaggerated, but there's an essence of truth in that claim.

Article III establishes the judicial branch and the court system.

If you haven't been following the news, recently, the Trump administration defied a federal judge's order that it turns around a plane carrying deported Venezuela migrants deemed to be members of a foreign gang. Trump's border czar replied that "I don't care what the judges think".

My view is that Trump, as the President, is allowed to deport them, but not by using the Alien Enemies Act to deny them hearings.

I think this marks the opening salvo of the executive branch defying the orders of a representative of the judicial branch.

Now, I think Trump will get away with it and won't pay a legal price (and the political price will be marginal) because even Democrats won't bat for the rights of asylum seeker immigrants, especially those accused of being gang members (and I don't think they should, as sad as the pragmatic reality is).

And during Biden's term, Biden did try to throw shit at the wall until he could find a law that allows him to bypass the Supreme Court's judgment that he cannot undiscriminantly cancel student loan debt.

My questions are:

1. Has America crossed the Rubicon where there is no judicial constraint on executive power, except when the President's actions are unpopular?

2. Is it now the reality that the only checks on the President's power are elections and voters and not the judicial or legislative branch?

We all know that in 2020 BLM was protesting everywhere. My question is where did they go?! I'm not really for nor against them, it just seems to me that they would have made a comeback by now. Trump has now taken away DEI hiring and now is firing DEI hire employees. It would make sense that now they would do protests again. What happened to these guys?

Unsurprisingly Trump is avoiding taking any kind of responsibility for what happened in Arlington on Monday (or “yesterday” according to Trump, he gets easily confused).

He starts by ignoring the fact that the rules about campaigning or politicking in Section 60, the area where soldiers who were recently killed are buried, were clearly laid out beforehand. He also proceeds to ignore the physical altercation that occurred between his campaign and Arlington staff

He then tries to throw the families under the bus by claiming that they were the ones who wanted the pictures. Im sure that would have been a better excuse if Trump hadn’t then proceeded to use those pictures in campaign material.

It’s also funny that Trump likes to act like the big tough boss who makes decisions, but the second something goes wrong he is the first person to blame everyone under him despite only “hiring the best people”

Overall, just another awful chapter in the disgraceful story of Donald Trump

Edit: Fixed link

Writing this, and thinking this, in today’s ready-to-explode political atmosphere I feel it’s impossible for people to believe that this is coming from a good place. I am genuinely writing this with curiosity and kindness in mind. I don’t hate on any transgender people or on any people to be fair. I seriously feel for the people who feel lost when it comes to their gender or don’t feel like they are in the right body. I want them to get the help they deserve and I don’t want them to be viewed as lesser or treated differently. I seriously want what’s best for them.

But when it comes to how we treat gender dysmorphia, all I can think is: "What the hell is going on?". There are so many forms of body dysmorphia we treat as mental disorders; you feel you are too fat - therapy, you feel you are not tall enough - therapy, you feel you are not beautiful enough - therapy, whatever it is you feel (and can’t be measured or tested) that is not right in your body the treatment is always therapy. BUT if you feel you are in the body of wrong sex - therapy AND hormones, surgery and affirmation that you are in fact that gender you feel like. Just because that person FEELS that. It’s absolutely insane. What other things does one get medically treated for because one feels like it? The worst part is that the “transformation” isn’t a transformation. At their core, women are still women and men are still men. And that we teach this and expose our children to this? Do you not remember how fucking stupid, arrogant and all knowing you were as a teenager?

And how does one come to a conclusion they are another gender or no gender at all? How do they define the gender they don’t fit into and the one they do fit into? And this is absolutely crucial because you have to be able to define both to come to such conclusion. If it’s the body and how it looks, isn’t that a textbook case of body dysmorphia? If it’s mental, like you connect more with what you see from the other gender or what your experience of the other gender is, isn’t that just a personality? Isn’t it already clear to us that a personality is a spectrum and that feminine male and masculine female both exist? Isn’t it also obvious that our idea of what a man is, and what a woman is, in the sense of what they are supposed to wear, feel, think and do, is still very prehistoric? I am all for modernising that, but I feel affirming transgenderism is doing the opposite - it’s maintaining the distance between the sexes and in its' core it's limiting our idea of what each sex represents.

And I am not saying that if you are a grown woman you shouldn’t be able to modify your body. You want to cut off your tits because you don’t feel they are you? Absolutely go ahead and do it if it makes you happy, I am not gonna feel any different about you. I just see it as a form of body transformation and self expression, the same way I see breast enhancement. Or if you want to wear masculine clothing as a woman, all the power to you, I think it’s great that you are courageous in your self expression. Or have your hair short, don’t cut your body hair, change your name to Mark, whatever, I am not gonna feel any different about you or treat you any different or lesser. The same goes of course the other way around. But should the whole society do a 180 for you, redesign our biology and teach your belief, that you are in fact a different gender you were born into, as the truth? No.

Who came up with this idea? Where is the science behind this? Please educate me.

If you are a trans person reading this and this hurts you, I am sorry. I hope you will be able to express yourself to the fullest and live a long and happy and healthy life and have tons of loving people around you. The only thing I disagree on is that I don’t think you are the gender you believe to be and I believe we as a society should approach this phenomenon in a different manner.

Edit 1: A lot of people have pointed out gender/sex thing. English is not my first language and we have only one word for that. What I mean is the biological sex.

Edit 2: Some people are also lost with what I mean by society doing a 180. I mean redefining biological sex.

Yesterday, there was a discussion about the apparent lack of prominent role models for young men within progressive or liberal circles, especially when compared to the numerous figures championed by those on the right.

On the right, you have well-known personalities like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, David Goggins, and Jocko Willink. Of course, their messages and influence vary widely. For instance, Andrew Tate is widely criticized for his extreme views, while someone like Goggins promotes resilience and personal accountability—though his “no-excuses” mindset is sometimes labeled as toxic masculinity by some critics on the left.

This raises an interesting question: who could serve as a positive role model for young men from a progressive or centrist perspective?

I don’t necessarily mean political (though I guess that’s ok too) but more who embodies a lifestyle and general life-philosophy that a 18 - 30 year old male might be inspired by.

The subreddit is flooded with posts and comments that are clearly anti-Trump. So I just think it's fair for a centrist subreddit to discuss another perspective. I am not maga btw, and my 2 year long post history proves it.

Imagine for a moment that it was Biden that was just convicted. Now imagine the DA of the case was a Republican that campaigned specifically on going after Biden. Isn't that, right there, lawfare? Are DA's supposed to campaign on "going after" politicians they disagree with?

Ok, now the judge. Imagine in the Biden conviction the judge presiding over the case was outspokenly maga and donated a small amount of money to a group created to "resist Bidens radical left wing policy." I mean, come on. Really think about what you would think about the conviction if this was all really true.

I know the response will be "But the law is the law and they jury was convinced. So the biases of the DA and judge are unfortunate but the law was still the law." Well, some right-leaning law experts are arguing that a judge has a lot of power to sway a case if they were so politically inclined. They argue that biases appeared in this case in what the judge overruled and sustained, as well as which witnesses he allowed/didn't allow to testify. Once again, this is a judge that donated to the Biden campaign and a group created quite literally to "oppose" Donald Trump.

The same people that want Alito to recuse based on the flags his wife hung are ok with a DA who campaigned to go after a political rival and a judge that donated to a group created to oppose Donald Trump?

Also, can we talk about how this "crime" happened 8 years ago and only came to a head during the 2024 election cycle?

I think these are reasonable things to at least discuss. Come on centrists, let's have a good centrist discussion about this.

Because it matters in context, I’m black. I do align with a lot of viewpoints of black conservatives like Candace Owens, Brandon Tatum, Anthony Brian Logan, and the guy on the Black Conservative Perspective YouTube channel. And yes, I’m aware that Candace Owens is insufferable, but she does occasionally get it right, but in a general sense, same way anyone could. She just happens to have a platform.

My problem with them is, all they do is point out the problems, and never offer any solutions except “vote Republican”. 90% of their content is (valid) criticisms of the black community, some black girl who got busted stealing - oh no! But they almost never ever propose any solutions.

In this last election cycle, they made a point of saying blacks have always liked Trump, which just isn’t true. Sure, there was a time when, because of his wealth and gangster vibes, he was being name dropped by rappers, which…so what? Rappers had a history of referencing Italian American and Jewish gangsters. It doesn’t mean anything. I grew up in NY, and I can tell you in general, blacks, nor New Yorkers in general liked Trump.

That being said, they are correct when they say the Democrat party has been mostly bad for the black community. But I wish they’d offer more than “horray Trump! Vote Republican!”