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-37

In defense of the White House ballroom (www.washingtonpost.com)

submitted 3 days ago by MHLoppy@fedia.io to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs

The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. Many see the rubble as a metaphor for President Donald Trump’s reckless disregard of norms and the rule of law, a reflection of his willingness to bulldoze history and a temple to a second Gilded Age, paid for by corporate donors. Others see what they love about Trump: A lifelong builder boldly pursuing a grand vision, a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo and a developer slashing through red tape that would stymie any normal politician.

In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible. Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.

The State Dining Room seats 140. The East Room seats about 200. Trump says the ballroom at the center of his 90,000-square-foot addition will accommodate 999 guests. The next Democratic president will be happy to have this.

Preservationists express horror that Trump did not submit his plans to their scrutiny, but the truth is that this project would not have gotten done, certainly not during his term, if the president had gone through the traditional review process. The blueprints would have faced death by a thousand papercuts. [...]

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[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is a charged issue, people aren’t downvoting you so much as expressing anger at what’s happening. Good use of nottheonion.

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 0 points 3 days ago

so much as expressing anger at what’s happening

Downvoting submissions that are appropriate, on-topic, and rules-following to the communities they're in is not using the platform sensibly.

Votes determine people's feeds, and people without the emotional self control to not manipulate other people's feeds for their own emotional regulation make the feeds of everyone else worse and I'm so fucking tired of seeing it. This lack of respect for how voting interacts with what other people see just creates an echo-chamber because the visibility of anything appropriate-but-disliked gets suppressed. Childish tribalist stupidity to sabotage not just one platform, but EVERYTHING connected to it because we're using interoperable federated platforms. To the best of my knowledge, having looked at how both lemmy and mbin process votes, none of the software involved here has sophisticated enough vote processing to enable people to use it in this way.