Smugglers are not long-forgotten; they are active today all over the world just as they always have been. Drugs that are illegal or have high duties, migrants - those are big business today.

Just the nature of the contraband changes.

 

"the orange man"

Could we not go there?
Yes, I know that it's a funny trope - but it's also the Overton window shifting that the "civilised" left then likes to complain about.
Imagine different election results and people reporting it as "brown woman won".

Yesterday Channel 4 ran a special on the tariffs in their usual evening news slot.
The anchor used the term "billionaire bros" as if they are some college fraternity doing fraternity stuff. Imagine talking about the "news bros" or the "politics bros" as if they are some wet-behind-the-ears kids playing beer pong or smoking behind the dumpster.

Sure, maybe it was Trump that started the fire but we certainly did not try to fight it.
 

Trump looking Orange is a choice he makes daily. Someone being black or brown is not. Those two things aren't comparable.
 

Another wrinkle to this is that Nintendo historically does not sell their consoles at a loss like Sony and Microsoft do. It'll be interesting to see how they respond.
 

So ad hominems are fine if they are based on daily choice?
I guess then we can start calling people who don't choose to exercise and instead overeat fatties!
 

@Camo Aren’t your standards for communication on the internet unreasonably high? Trump is a public person who through his acts justifiably provokes a rather large amount of hatred and disdain. Calling him “orange” is rather mild, many other people regularly use much harsher terms. And to the best of my knowledge, those verbal attacks are covered by the right to free speech, and aren’t illegal.
More power to you if you want to call him “Mr. President” as protocoll demands, but I think a crusade to get everybody on social media to stop calling him names would be doomed to failure. Not least because Trump himself regularly uses social media for name-calling against people he dislikes.
 

No, that's not my point.
It has obviously nothing to do with being legal and I'm fully aware that people use harsher terms as does Trump. (Not that other people doing worse is a good argument but people can do whatever they like.)

What I wanted to convey is that people who complain about Trump et al. using name calling and how it dangerously shifts the Overton window will happily join in when it's about "the other side".

I try to adhere to the hacker's manifesto in that regard:
My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
I love the anonymity of the Internet (of old) for precisely stripping away the meaningless optics.
Whether someone’s daily choice is to be spray tanned or obese doesn't change his words or actions. And those matter.
 

@Camo So for you calling Trump a fascist is okay, but calling him orange is not? I would be completely on the opposite side: Calling him a fascist is hyperbole, calling him orange is factual.
 

For me neither is needed: Calling him a fascist is hyperbole and incorrect. Calling him orange is an ad hominem that while true doesn't add anything.

Trump's actions and words don't change (or rather unlikely) whether he has a spray tan or not. Therefore it distracts from the point one is trying to make.
 

I dont know what their response will be but i learned last night that Canada will be under the same delay as the USA for the preorder. So thank you USA for that too!
 

Today, the tarrifs changed, causing stocks to rebound. So Nintendo setting a price point is aiming at a moving target. Who knows when US preorders will open or what the price will be? Add to that scalpers, smugglers, low supply... I plan to wait until 2026 to buy a Switch 2 (various reasons). Maybe by then, things will have settled. Meanwhile, I plan to enjoy my Switch 1 backlog.
 

I just preordered a Switch 2 here in Belgium for €470, expected delivery June 5th. We’ll see what the console costs in the USA then.
 

Trump is a facist.

He wants to control speech. He wants to remain in power past his set term. He routinely calls for the incarceration of his political opponents. He has ordered government agencies under his control to target political opponents. He refers to American Citizens who disagree with him as his enemy. He violated the constitutional rights of over 200 immigrants by shipping them off for incarceration in a foreign nation without due process and even after admitting mistakes in who they sent they argue they can essentially just disappear someone with 0 recourse. He personally is voicing support for doing the same thing to American Citizens, which is unconstitutional.

Yes many of his actions are being blocked and fought in court but I believe the measure of someone is taken by their intentions and actions and not just by how successful they are.

Trump wants to rule like a facist and just because he hasn't been 100% successful doesn't mean it's hyperbole to refer to him as a facist.
 

Trump is as authoritarian as the US constitution allows. But the day he’ll show up in hell and wants to go to the “fascists only” reserved area, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco are just going to laugh him right back out. Even Stalin and Mao are going to consider him as a joke as far as dictators go. Calling Trump a fascist just reveals a deep lack of knowledge of how Europe in the 1930s actually was.
 

This legitimately made me laugh out loud so thanks for that.

And yeah I get where you guys are coming from and understand why you make that distinction.

Like I said though I am judging him by what he wants to do not what he has been allowed to do so far. I think our constitution and checks against an authoritarian grabbing absolute power are much more fragile than most people believe.

Maybe I'm just being a doomer but it's what I believe. It's not even Trump I really fear because thankfully he and his people seem to be woefully incompetent. But he has laid out a template that a competent person could take advantage of in the future if our government doesn't make some changes within the coming years.
 

I think our constitution and checks against an authoritarian grabbing absolute power are much more fragile than most people believe.

Let's take off our partisan filter glasses and look at recent events: On January 6, 2021, a bit over 2,000 people stormed the Capitol because *they believed* an election had been stolen. Don't you think people will turn up for similar protests if somebody *actually* makes an undemocratic power grab? Even in Turkey, which has a much less democratic history than the USA, thousands of people have been protesting for the last 3 weeks because Erdogan jailed an opposition candidate.

Trump saying that he wants to run for a third term is a plan with a major flaw: It still involves either him getting elected, or a stooge getting elected with Trump as vice-president and then stepping down on day one. This is why I always warn against believing that everybody who voted for Trump in 2024 is a fascist: In reality the majority of those voters were average Americans who didn't feel their interests represented by the Democrats. That doesn't mean that they would happily grant Trump a third term and autocratic powers.

I think you underestimate the powers of democracy in the United States. Probably because you believe that only a left-wing version of democracy is real democracy. In reality the window of democracy is a lot wider, and in over 200 years of US history a lot of administrations held values that are well beyond modern progressive standards. You'd need to call half of the American presidents "fascist", if you judge them by today's progressive standards.
 

Yeah I can't really argue against your points here. I do acknowledge I'm being a bit doomer in my beliefs.

Just to be clear though I don't think the danger of authoritarianism comes just from the Right. I could see a scenario where someone shrewd from either the Right or Left wing takes advantage of a strong executive branch to consolidate even more power. We've seen left wing governments rise to power on populism as well that devolve into authoritarianism.
 

About half of Switch 2 production is in Vietnam and Cambodia (subject to 10% tariff), and Nintendo will probably avoid shipping any from China to the US.