re: Trump has brought us the lightest federal workforce in American history

And meanwhile it does appear that some functions of government seem to be performing poorly.

You know that all the people who were fired did no actual work without knowing who they are or what agencies they worked for?

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I mean I don't have a spreadsheet in front of me but I'm pretty sure the President and his cabinet has a good idea of who it was.

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You think the President of the United States has personal knowledge of the job descriptions and job performances of each individual who was terminated? That just doesn't seem plausible to me.

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This is old news, you and I know there were far too many people who weren't even reporting to their agencies in person.

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Far too many people working remotely? I don't know that. I don't care if someone works remotely, though. I don't see that a moral failure.

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and there were countless people who were still supposed to work on zoom and they weren't even doing that. Still were cashing (decent) paychecks though.

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Yeah, and they're all still employed through Congress.

The president campaigned on "shrinking government" because that's a Republican talking point. The talking point is rooted in shrinking governance, though. Limiting the scope of government, not the number of postal workers or paper pushers.

People who choose not or can not think critically heard the president say "I will shrink government!" and voted for him because that's what they are supposed to want. They didn't actually think about what less government would look like or what it would mean for individual liberties. Trump didn't fire law enforcement or the Patriot Act. In fact, he brought in military to occupy DC and other American cities which is the opposite of less government.

you are certainly more terrified of making an on-topic post than i am of anything in this world.

Says the dipshit blithering about occupying cities.

I quoted you dumbass.

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Yes. He also specifically said he is opposed to never ending ME wars and would not start one. Are voters responsible for the war in Iran?

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I think so because only a moron could have believed Trump at that point in his political career given his prior history. And I'm on record on this forum telling everybody that I could that at the time, not after the fact.

But even if you disagree with that assessment, there's a very obvious difference here that I'm really amazed I have to point out. In that case, Trump said one thing but did the opposite. In the case we're discussing, he did exactly what he said he was going to do. AND it was consistent with past actions, AND no one really had any reason to doubt he meant it.

So you tell me how a candidate can say, "If elected, I am absolutely going to kiss a toad" when he's got a long history of kissing reptiles and the culture of kissing reptiles dovetails with pretty much every other plank in his platform, the voters elect him to office, he kisses the toad just like he said he would, and the voters "had nothing to do with it."

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How many voters voted for ending conflict in the ME but not for a smaller federal workforce?

How many voters voted for closing the border and nothing else?

How many voters voted for Trump because he’s Trump and not because of anything he said?

How do you determine which voters are responsible for each presidential action?

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Yeah, we addressed all of that nonsense earlier.

All this is is the pro-abortion "argument" of, "Well this guy wants to make a woman give birth to a baby that she had because someone raped her."

"That accounts for less than 1% of all abortions. If I concede abortion in the case of rape, then will you condemn the practice for the other 99.5% of abortions?"

(Screams and yells)

"That's what I thought. It was never about rape, was it?"

I suppose there might be 5 people in the whole United States who are huge Trump fans, but just really disagreed with trimming down the federal bloat and held their noses and voted for him anyway.

Can we stop pretending that is anything but statistical noise?

It's really much simpler than that, like I've said from the beginning.

Representative voting either matters or it doesn't. If it does, then there has to be some representation of the will of the people involved, to some significant degree.

Otherwise...WHAT. IS. THE. POINT?

If representative voting reflects no representation, or only a minimal degree of representation of the will of the voters, then to that exact degree, it is worthless.

Obfuscate, come up with all the silly hypotheticals you want, that's the bottom line. The whole point of voting is to have the person you vote for represent your viewpoint and the policies you support. If there is no connection or very little connection between those two things, it's an exercise in nothing. We might as well just have a dictator or an oligarchy.

I wish instead of all of this energy you're expending to try to have it both ways you would just answer the question I asked way back, which is, "Does (representative) voting matter? If so, does it matter a lot, or a little?"

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You think voters should have known Trump was lying about one campaign promise, but also should have known he was telling the truth about a different campaign promise?

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YES.

Because they didn't just have Trump's word to go on, they had his record. During his first term he bombed Syria (twice), assassinated an Iranian general (probably in violation of international law), and had Iran's military declared a terrorist organization so that he could mobilize against them at will without needing Congressional approval.

So after all of that, YES. Anybody who believed what he was saying in the campaign about making love, not war, was/is a moron.

Let's try this...did YOU believe him? I really want an answer to that. When he was promising to not start any new wars, did you believe him?

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Voters cannot predict how people will act once elected.

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Of course they fricking can, and you know it. They can't predict every decision, but they can predict probably 80% of them and if they can't, they have no business voting.

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again...if you're going to act like there's just no way for anyone to predict anything about what any given candidate will do in office, then there is no point in voting. You. Can't. Have. This. Both. Ways.

This isn't difficult stuff. In fact, I'm becoming convinced you're just trolling.

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Having the opportunity to vote matters a lot. It matters because voters decide who receives political authority, and therefore influence what policies become possible.

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How can they do that when they are just voting blind, with no way to predict what any candidate will do once they get into office?

You can't make the statement you just made without acknowledging the connection between the two. You can't have people literally just voting blindly for what's behind Door #1 or Door #2 with no way of knowing what is behind those doors and also claim that they are influencing anything.

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Let's try this...did YOU believe him? I really want an answer to that. When he was promising to not start any new wars, did you believe him?

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I don't believe anything anyone running for office says.

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if you're going to act like there's just no way for anyone to predict anything about what any given candidate will do in office, then there is no point in voting. You. Can't. Have. This. Both. Ways.

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That's YOUR claim, not mine.

You're just frustrated that I'm not agreeing to your terms.

BTW, I have a feminist event coming up in a couple of weeks that I'm so excited about. I can't wait to tell you all about it. I intend to win the best-dressed award. LINK