True, but have you looked at the “intelligentsia” of the Republican party? They’ve got nobody. Just grifters and sycophants. It’s one more small mercy. Obviously, this situation can’t be counted on to continue indefinitely, but once Trump is gone, the only thing ready to take his place is Trump-based nostalgia, and people looking to profit off same.
I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we’ve been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.
We don’t have that now. It’s like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn’t real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn’t real, and also it’s a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhan at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don’t work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.
We don’t share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they’re waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they’re also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it’s far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.
And it’s not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you’d ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That’s to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:
The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined
So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it’s lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don’t think he’d be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat’s office… but he ain’t built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along… hoo boy.
Or maybe it’s the education system
Considering the guy you responded to doesn’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your”, I’m guessing that’s a bingo.
I’m sure that might be the case in a lot of situations, but the guys in this video absolutely knew. There was no hustle, no scramble like you’d see in people who were looking to avoid premature death by drone. They got horribly injured, and their squadmate just calmly walked among them, shooting each of them to death.
Honestly? Ditto. I think this is the first thing that I’ve seen that’s made me experience a little bit of that cosmic horror @[email protected] was talking about.
Watching this made me realize that I simply lack the capacity to imagine how fucking horrible it must be for these men. Like, they’re all seemingly healthy men in the prime of their lives, and they’re just… trudging towards certain death. How do you get so resigned? I just simply can’t fathom why anybody would willingly accept the order to walk slowly to certain death by drone, a mission that has zero strategic importance, and not just frag their commanding officers instead. I didn’t think my imagination was so limited, but it really is. I just simply cannot wrap my head around this.
I mean, that’s basically saying that someone who uses slang isn’t speaking their native language. Poopensharten and cuckstoel might not be explicitly Dutch, but they’re Dutch-ish in an otherwise Dutch sentence.
It’s not? Could’ve fooled Google Translate.
Nobody will ever be able to convince me that Dutch is a serious language developed by people who weren’t just trying to troll both English and German speakers.
Huh - if she’s the mo-cap actor for the main character, I’m really hoping the game gives you the option to perch somewhere, like a bisexual little gargoyle. It’d be a real shame if you couldn’t.
I mean, anything can look like a conspiracy to a layperson who pays zero attention to 60 years of incremental progress and focuses solely on the end result. It’s the same reason why people think vaccines are evil, or that 5G towers cause COVID.
Well that’s not true. You’re very pro-genocide, as long as it’s against Palestinians. That’s pretty political.
The kids ARE alright!
It could also be interpreted as a criticism of Libertarianism. The first two pigs didn’t go by any building codes, and instead decided that they wanted to build their shelters out of inferior materials with substandard protections against high winds. The third pig made sure that his dwelling met hurricane standards, and was saved. The story doesn’t go into the reasons why pigs #1 and #2 chose inferior building materials, so it could be interpreted in a number of different ways. It doesn’t HAVE to be about economics. It could just be that pigs #1 and #2 were big fans of Ayn Rand and reaped the whirlwind as a result.
I prefer using higher precision when responding like this. I will often say something like: “137.825%”. Mostly, I do this because it makes the other person feel awkward, and I do it because I constantly feel awkward, and so I just want other people to feel a tiny portion of what it’s like being me.
I mean, everything does happen for a reason. It’s just that most of the time, the reason is “because so-and-so is an asshole”. It makes it essentially a useless platitude, but not an untrue one. I definitely take issue with the implication of it, that there’s some supreme, all-knowing authority in the universe who has this complicated, labyrinthine plan for everyone that involves massive amounts of suffering. That whole “mysterious plan of God” thing is a way for Christians to take credit for all of the good stuff that happens, while downplaying all of the bad stuff that happens as just “part of God’s plan!” It’s insidious.
Huh. Guess I’ve got some vision loss.
Vance hates cat ladies because cats are the natural enemies of couches.
God, imagine living in a retirement community that has a Hot Topic.
I’m less worried about that, not because there aren’t evil people among the Democrats, but because the Democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-fascist party at the moment. Starting up a fascist movement of their own at the moment would be bad business.
Long term, though? 100% agree. Can’t trust none of these fucks. Hopefully, the Interstate Popular Vote Compact kicks off before that happens, and we can do away with the EC. Won’t completely solve the problem, but it will help.