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Brisketexan

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Brisketexan last won the day on September 9

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  1. This. The decline in American religious life and the negatives it brings aren't so much about a "loss of faith" as they are a "loss of community." People's "church group" and "church friends" are important in keeping people grounded, and believe it or not, even offer some diversity (more than you have in much more insular community). I grew up in a Catholic parish, and am involved in a Presbyterian church today. In both groups were people of different experiences, different socioeconomic groups (grew up with some pretty rich kids, and some whose families were just scraping by, but we were all at the church picnic and our first communion together). But the point is, they were a community. Our "Bowling Alone" problems have only become more acute, impacted by both the COVID experience and the increasing ability (and incentive) to engage online only. Having a church community is a counter to that phenomenon, and by losing that community (along with all the other communities we've been losing), we've become even further adrift. The truth is that "we are all in this together." But the "truth" we are trying to live (and failing at, by the way) is "fuck you, I'm all that matters, and I can't be sure I'm winning if I don't see you losing." Zero-sum thinking is almost always destructive, and we've elevated it to a near-holy rite.
  2. au contraire. Ingratiating yourself with the subject so you can observe them more closely is top-notch fed work....
  3. Seems they usually are. And remember, for every one of these types who actually pulls something off....there are a shitload more that get caught beforehand, chicken out at the last minute, or just try and fail. Because the Occam's Razor of this timeline is that when shit like this happens, it's never a complex, well-planned conspiracy ("it's a professional hit, by a well-trained team"). No. It is pretty much always exactly what we have here, and have had going back to (and past) Oswald: a single fucking nutbar doing nutbar shit.
  4. Yeah, there's surely some smoke there. But nothing released that's even close to definitive enough to reach any firm conclusion. Let's see what the actual facts are, not what they are rumored to be or even preliminarily reported to be by local authorities. It certainly seems odd that a black man would choose to commit suicide by hanging, outside, from a tree. But, it's not impossible, it's a fucked up world and people do fucked up things.
  5. Yeah....that's a brain in self-defense mode. You don't process -- you refuse to process -- the larger horror, because it's more than you can handle (even though you are the one who did it). So, you fill the space with the mundane. See the videos you can find online of cops interrogating a drunk driver who just killed someone/a family, even after the driver knows that is what happened. They'll talk about stuff like "but I need to pick up my dog," or "okay, but my phone was in the car, I need to get my phone." We're watching thinking "WTF? You just killed someone, and you're worried about picking up your dog from the groomer?" But that's what the human brain does. The more we see and learn, the fucking sadder it is. And the more it fits into an odd grouping that is all-too common: fucking lost souls. Ending up in a way that they didn't need to end up.
  6. They don't mistrust it, they demonize it. Believe that maybe, just possibly, we should look out for each other? You are an evil communist socialist and, per the rhetoric of the regime this past week in particular, you should be "exiled" from this country. Seriously. That's literally what Stephen Miller said. We don't come back from this. We were never coming back from this. The United States as even a potential force for good and a world leader is not just a dead idea -- we are destined to be the opposite. We are going to be Russia, with more tech oligarchs and less vodka.
  7. Which is probably for the best. But no worries, the MAGA Utah authorities seem to be doing their best to present a pre-cooked narrative of the shooter being a leftist, omitting and ignoring any mention of the groyper/fucked up complex and unbalanced worldview that looks to be the actual case. We are going to get a curated narrative that matches up with the desired story by the MAGA team running things, and nothing that muddies it even in the slightest. Which is what they want, and need. They have desperately wanted this event to provide them what they've been longing for: the opportunity to pursue both legal and physical extermination of anyone and everyone who does not swear 100% featly to the regime. Don't listen to me. Listen to what they've all been saying for the past week.
  8. I think the point is....they might have. Without anywhere else to hide/seek refuge, a lot more of them realized "welp, I guess I better go buy and put on some big-boy pants and go out and learn how to live in the real world." Alternative universes were a lot harder to find and immerse yourself in (not that they were impossible, just harder to cobble together consistently). And again, the rabbit-hole these guys are going down doesn't fit neatly into "alt-right," "right," or "left." It's a fucking chimera of random, often outrageous and/or frustrated, worldviews and positions. You can pluck one thing they say and it's pure leftism out of Das Capital, then the very next term they use is pure modern Christofascism.
  9. TLDR: we would all be better off if folks lived in a simpler, more innocent internet ecosystem like Surly, where people just need tree fiddy to PM Derka about muledick.
  10. Libertarians standing up for liberty and freedom when all they are arguing/fighting against is imaginary left-wing authoritarianism: Libertarians when presented with actual right-wing authoritarianism:
  11. The thing is, a lot of those maga frat kids DO have something to offer. They dress well (at least for their chosen audience). They have some social skills, can make chicks laugh, all that. They have money, and can and will take a gal out to a nice seafood dinner. Sure, in their heart, they're douchey assholes who have a higher chance of date-raping a gal, but they've got some game and some qualities that make them attractive to at least some women. And let's not forget, there are plenty of maga women out there. Those guys and the women who want to get with them have always existed. Shit, 35+ years ago, I worked in a bar where a dude came in most every night with two different babes on his arm. He was, at that exact time, on trial for being a slimeball who recorded himself having sex with a gal and then showing the video around town. It was undisputed that he'd done it. But, he was good looking, had money, and could be charming. And that was enough, even though he was literally a judicially admitted giant piece of shit, for him to get girls (and attractive ones). But even those women, who seemingly have little self-respect, aren't going to be interested in basement-dwelling dorks who don't know how to have a conversation and dress like shit and don't have the first clue about what women are actually interested in.
  12. I also know this is true. I recall talking to one of our younger female employees, and she told tale of guys hitting on her in the gym that literally made my jaw drop. Dudes had ZERO game, came across as creepy and entitled, then when she quite gently and politely shut them down, they'd fire back with "whatever, you're fat anyway" or some shit like that. No concept of "huh, I guess that she's just not interested," or "okay, lemme think about where I went wrong and what I can do to refine myself/my approach." Just starting from a position of entitlement, rolling straight into abuse. Well, no, buddy, you're NEVER gonna get laid with that shitty attitude and approach. And why would you? What sane woman is interested in THAT guy? If presented with the problem of "women aren't interested in the kind of guy I am," it seems that the easiest solution is "work on being the kind of guy women WOULD be interested in." I'll freely confess that as a slightly chubby, glasses-wearing nerdy kid entering adolescence, I realized I had some choices to make. Dressed better, got in better shape, worked on my social skills so I could talk and listen to a variety of people and viewpoints (no, man, she does NOT want to listen to you talk about Star Wars for an hour - no matter how much the internet now sells the bullshit of "hot chicks totally dig Star Wars and nerds!"), went out there and tried and failed, refined my shit and tried again. Turns out that with just a modicum of work, you could turn that awkward middle schooler into a guy who did plenty well with girls over the years. This crowd? It's "be my porn star sex toy who does what I say, or else I call you a cunt and say all women are bitches." When what you have to offer is....shit.
  13. But understand that THAT probably had a lot to do with the fact that your boss was banging her. And she had big tits. And you had neither quality.
  14. Yep. In my younger skirt-chasing days....nothing outside of the baseline legal standards would have stopped me. Certainly no notions of self-respect got in the way. If I'd ended up with the impression that what it took to get a gal was wearing a sweet watermelon helmet, you'd have seen me like this on campus every f'ing day: Functionally every choice I made - what I wore, where I'd hang out, the music I'd listen to, etc. - was driven by a desire to make myself a better candidate for sweet loving with a lady. The amount of "quit" some of these guys have blows me away.
  15. That's because the regime has made it very clear that there is only one criterion that matters in bidding, contracting, etc.: loyalty and fealty to the regime. Not only does the quality or price of the product or service not matter, "high quality at a good price" is a net-negative, because such an approach presents limited opportunity for grift and enrichment of members of the regime.
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