Contraryan

One of the biggest things I can't stand about Trump is how he's done nothing to curb online gambling, whether it's sports gambling or prediction markets, and how he's indifferent to how wide swathes of Americans are gambling addicts who are losing everything they own to the digital one-armed bandit. This is a Talarico bot, but I keep getting the same message from left and right-wing people: "If you're so confident, bet your money bro. Don't be a pussy bro." They literally sound like the pushers in a DARE ad circa 1999. "C'mon, shoot the heroin. Don't be a pussy. Don't you want to be cool? Put that needle in your arm, you fucking queerboy." I've been around alcohol and drug addicts long enough to know what addiction looks like, and a LOT of you need an intervention. Tons of you are complicit in this and you should be ashamed. I'm talking about the influencers who are getting paid by Polymarket or Kalshi to promote what are nothing more than glorified online casinos. You are pushing digital fentanyl and you should be embarrassed at how you're profiting off the misery of your fellow Americans. I moved back to the U.S. a year ago and one thing I am still consistently disgusted by is the casinofication of everything. Entire radio stations dedicated to sports betting. Every other football podcast sponsored by Draft Kings. Video poker machines in gas stations. A decade ago, the only state where I ever saw GAS STATION SLOT MACHINES was South Dakota. Now they're everywhere. (Don't look to the Democrats to save you, either. They're all over Pennsylvania, legalized by that state's Democratic governor.) My entire country now looks like Skopje, with tacky architecture and crummy gambling parlors everywhere. All that's missing is the hookers. But I'm sure they're coming, too. They're already all over Queens. Nobody enforces the law anywhere. Lot lizards coming to your neighborhood 7Eleven as soon as they can figure out the bus schedule (and as soon as states propose decriminalizing hooking so they can get another cash injection by degenerating their citizens). For the record, I've never placed a bet on a prediction market and I've never taken ad money from a gambling firm. I WAS tempted to drop a wad on Thomas Massie losing a year ago, but I'm not snorting the digital fentanyl. This crap needs to be banned. If you want to gamble on anything, you should be forced to drive to Vegas, Atlantic City, or a rez where the dealers are all sad middle-aged Injun women with mustaches. You should be inconvenienced and feel deep shame when you drive 100 miles out of the way to place a bet on whether X candidate will win by Y margin (God how degenerate do you have to be to bet on THAT?). Just like you felt deep shame when pot was still illegal and you had to buy it off a grimy black guy outside of Union Station. The Chinese ban gambling outside of Macau. Cambodia bans its own citizens from patronizing casinos. Hate to say it, but this is one area where the turd world has a leg up on us.