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[return to ""The Stanford scam proves America is becoming a nation of grifters""]
1. mindsl+O6[view] [source] 2026-02-07 07:23:51
>>cwwc+(OP)
Yes, this behavior of college students is exactly what proves that America has become a nation of grifters. This is certainly the most prominent, the leading indicator, the most serious corruption that we should be focusing on. </s>

The fish rots from the head.

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2. pfannk+qa[view] [source] 2026-02-07 08:14:40
>>mindsl+O6
I don’t like Trump, but he’s the first guy in a long long time to actually do things and not just talk about doing things. I don’t think that’s what institutional rot usually looks like? Now mind you I don’t think he’s going to fix anything and I’m also not sure he isn’t controlled opposition, but that would be some adversary and not institutional rot.
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3. ZeroGr+Ia[view] [source] 2026-02-07 08:18:28
>>pfannk+qa
You like Trump a lot more than anyone who is informed about the things he is actually doing should like him.

But regardless, the same point could have been made about the Republican party in general for decades.

See The Baffler's article titled "The Long Con" for a history. It opens with a now shockingly unshocking list of all the lies Romney told and the prescient claim that this was necessary for Republican voters to like him.

> Mitt Romney is a liar. Of course, in some sense, all politicians, even all human beings, are liars. Romney’s lying went so over-the-top extravagant by this summer, though, that the New York Times editorial board did something probably unprecedented in their polite gray precincts: they used the L-word itself. “Mr. Romney’s entire campaign rests on a foundation of short, utterly false sound bites,” they editorialized. He repeats them “so often that millions of Americans believe them to be the truth.” “It is hard to challenge these lies with a well-reasoned-but- overlong speech,” they concluded; and how. Romney’s lying, in fact, was so richly variegated that it can serve as a sort of grammar of mendacity.

[...]

> All righty, then: both the rank-and-file voters and the governing elites of a major American political party chose as their standardbearer a pathological liar. What does that reveal about them?

-- 2012

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con

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4. pfannk+Ra[view] [source] 2026-02-07 08:22:21
>>ZeroGr+Ia
Should according to whom? According to you? The more straightforward way of phrasing this is “I don’t think you should like this person at all”. Okay, and?
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5. ZeroGr+zb[view] [source] 2026-02-07 08:32:53
>>pfannk+Ra
I think you should hate him.

He is after all a rapist, thief, liar, conman, bully, grifter, authoritarian, gangster, racist, sexist narcissist who may very well end the American empire and democracy, and with your help it seems.

Which seems on topic for an article about America becoming a nation of grifters.

But at least he's doing things!

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