Tracking toy tariffs

AceofKnaves said:
I can’t even begin to say how much the tone of this thread makes me feel amazing to be here.
I dunno: I always assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that there was a certain moral camaraderie around folks who loved heroic fiction and its expressions in action figures and such, and that we all absorbed those PSA’s from He-Man and the Joes about integrity and looking out for other people and valuing fairness and respect and dignity, even if we rolled our eyes while doing it. Like I really thought that was a baseline when I was a kid, cute little sheltered neurospicy child that I was.

It’s nice to feel like maybe that *is* true here.
We don’t all need to agree, but I do value a baseline of, for want of a better expression: “Captain America values”.
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This is such an incredible, and at times frustrating point. Star wars fans, and especially X-Men fans, being bigoted always shocked me. But yeah, it's crazy how some things can be perverted. Wasn't the swastika a symbol of peace hundreds of years ago?
 
Justice said:
I hesitated for so long before posting this thread because I was sure it would devolve into a pit of animosity but I'm so happy it has turned out to be a bit cathartic and I'm sure there are some who don't like it but it is 100% on the topic of action figures and it will affect us all, whether you are against him or for him.
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I totally get that, and even when it came up I still tip toed into the topic initially.
Justice said:
Also if there is anyone here who is a fan of him it's okay to not be okay with all of his policies. If your toys are going up dramatically because of him, it is okay to be upset but maybe it is time to pull back the curtain and investigate who your wizard really is.
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This is such an important point. I've never 100% been behind ANY politician and the concept of blindly supporting every action one does is completely alien to me. It's okay to acknowledge your guy isn't perfect.
 
Justice said:
My hope (and yes I realize what a tenuous little string of hope it is) is that eventually some of the Republican senators will find their backbones and balls as the economy crashes and burns all around us.

If things get bad, and I mean truly bad, some people will wake up and his popularity will continue to slide.
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This is the part (THE part? one of many) driving me crazy about this. He doesn't even have the power to be doing this! Why is Congress so damned blase about just letting him swipe their powers? Why is no one challenging all these BS "emergencies" he's using to justify this biggest of all self-owns?
 
cmoney said:
This is the part (THE part? one of many) driving me crazy about this. He doesn't even have the power to be doing this! Why is Congress so damned blase about just letting him swipe their powers? Why is no one challenging all these BS "emergencies" he's using to justify this biggest of all self-owns?
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They are terrified of Elon funding a primary opponent but I think the Wisconsin state supreme court election may have neutered him a bit.
 
Putting on my behavioral scientist hat for a moment:
That level of intense, parasocial worship, even to the point of eroticizing the subject (see those weird “his head on a swole body” memes and such), is inherently unhealthy, no matter who the subject of said parasocial worship is and what their intentions are.
Now, when the subject intentionally courts that behavior, and then punishes any deviance from that behavior, and sets themself up as an unquestionable object of adoration and obedience and *power* over others, there is a very specific, very clinical word for that. It’s been overused (and misused) in popular discourse, and lost much of its intrinsic “punch”, but it’s no less true for all that.
The word is CULT.
It’s an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth and it makes for incredibly awkward conversations, but it is what it is.
And when a sizable chunk of the vox populi needs not just to be convinced and educated, but actually *deprogrammed*, well, that’s a very tall order. Especially because it only works if the person to be deprogrammed *consents* to the deprogramming.
It’s also incredibly difficult to have rational discourse when a basic, shared reality of facts and truths can’t be agreed upon.
 
I actually got into the only knock-down, drag-out, I-can't-look-at-you-the-same-way argument with one of my brothers back in January about all this, because I was being, well, me (actually I was reading a physical copy of that "if you quit now you'll get paid til September" letter they sent all those federal workers). He asked, don't those other politicians make me mad? Don't I want something different?

And I said yeah, even the politicians I LIKE make me mad. All the time. But this guy and what he wants to do SCARES me. There's a difference between disagreement and terror. Four months later I don't know where he stands, or if he's changed his mind, or if he's just so far down the rabbit hole he can't tell truth from fiction anymore. I feel like I lost him. (Meanwhile my never-ever political sister is actively terrified for the first time in her life, and the most ethically questionable of my cousins whom I absolutely thought was a supporter only refers to the guy in office with a growing list of astonishingly creative swear words. He's DONE.)
 
Ru1977 said:
Wasn't the swastika a symbol of peace hundreds of years ago?
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And remains so in South Asia. To the extent that I've known fellow university workers who had to do some light coaching of our foreign student workers who were unaware that some of their car's decoration could be... problematic. The baddies love to co-opt symbols, but every part of the world is its own little universe.
docsilence said:
(One more huge cheer to TSI for setting up this space and making it so great.)
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Hear! Hear!
 
Posted over in the Longbox Heroes thead, but Fresh Monkey Fiction canceled the Kickstarter for wave 2 of the retro figures over the price increases the tariffs will cause. This industry is in trouble, I think.
 
When scanning the thread titles I read "Trafficking toy Tariffs." Maybe AT has a future in the dark web. We can run bootleg toys like moonshine.
 
If Brutal Realms drops their line, or the females in particular, over these tariffs, I'm going to be beyond pissed and getting into actual fights with anyone I know who helped this situation come to fruition. Family, friends, nothing's off limits when you mess with my muscle girl toys.
 
I wonder how much tariff buffer Four Horsemen built into their big dragon crowdfund? That would be something, to see that get cancelled because they had to jack up the price.
 
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