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ndawg

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by ndawg

  1. He is a cowardly fighter, aka a bully. He’ll fight nonstop against anyone he has an unfair advantage over. So long as he has a rabid, civil warrey base, he has leverage to bully us, and as long as the GOP has a reputation to uphold, he has leverage over them, too.
  2. This is the thing I don’t get. If one just pretends to inhabit the same sense of normalcy that we had just five years ago, and then imagines our discourse today as if it were our future from that point, this all looks completely nuts. It is now *normal* for the GOP to contest every election from this day on out. Even landslide electoral college victories. I get there’s a sense that once Trump is gone, things will go back to normal, but there isn’t *checks notes* one single force in the universe right now that will exert any actual pressure back to normalcy.
  3. I wouldn't worry about his future. I'm sure he's already going back-and-forth furiously with his agent figuring out his next gig.
  4. No, it's seen as improvident. Trump is a complete buffoon with absolutely zero ability and even less self awareness. At best, he can order handouts to people who vote for him, i.e. quid-pro-quo. When you look at the entire executive branch underneath him, however, it's a who's-who of worlds-biggest-idiots and "yes men." A government run by a cult cannot keep America headed in a positive direction. Voting for Trump is in nobody's long term interests. I'm not really trying to say anything about what our interests should be. Just that we have plenty of representation happening in government, it's just the wrong kind of representation.
  5. Our democracy is doing a great job of putting people into government that represent "us." However, they are representing our identity, not our interests. The vast majority of Americans have got no idea how to craft policy that balances individual liberty with improving the common good. Nor do they have the capability of seeing value through the lens of other people, so they can't negotiate. By electing those who represent their identity, they put people into power who are as clueless and stubborn as them.
  6. You're not even looking at the problem. Where do "people's desires/will" come from?
  7. Somewhat this, but also a general ongoing strategy of constantly feeding the news cycle with chaos'n'bullshit because that tends to work out well for him. He doesn't think two moves ahead, he just shakes the tree and picks up anything that lands.
  8. Oh and everyone who buys in to Qanon believes these swift, decisive actions are the result of an elaborate plan to rescue Democracy from the Illuminati.
  9. What I have in mind is the "Bullshit Asymmetry Principle" -- it takes an order of magnitude more effort to refute bullshit than to spout it. What I had in mind was lowering the cost of refuting bullshit.
  10. I see a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have the truly batshit. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who are misinformed, stubborn, and in denial. We're in a tug-of-war with them. I agree that it's a waste of time to argue with the people at the end of the rope, but we have to bring the ones near the middle over to our side. At some point, after enough tugging, we might get the fat part of their bell curve back into reality. Like I said, though, it's a boil-the-ocean problem.
  11. Whatever the solution is, it'll be like trying to boil an ocean, and the trouble will be picking the right ocean to boil, because there are a lot to choose from. I suspect it will involve turning a weapon used against us into a defense. For instance, the viral nature of the internet and social media could become a vector for informing people en masse. I've often wondered why we don't have something like Wikipedia, but for aggregating all legitimate journalism for current events, so that we could refute bullshit faster than trolls produce it. Make it easy for people to win arguments with trolls online, and an army of counter-trolls will practically raise itself. (Of course, overpowering disinformation on social media may not even fix the problem... this is a fucked up system we're dealing with)
  12. Let's look it this way. Their support is strong enough that the GOP is not only failing to summarily dismissing Trump's attempts, but is actively aiding and abetting. Ten years ago, nobody would be comfortable with the thought of either political party going this far to delegitimize our election process and institutions. So, sure, you're right, not all 71 million are rabid, mouth frothing primates in discount camo gear, and few are galvanized enough to take the streets. But that's not the only measure of power. When you have tens of millions of people cheering on a coup attempt that is in progress, there is indeed a legitimate threat. And, as I said, even if not now, there is no active force pulling these people back to reality. They're only getting increasingly untethered. I certainly hope that Trump's failure will 1. be accomplished and 2. take the wind out of their sails. But egads we are not in a good way right now.
  13. I'm convinced that people who think we're fine are paying attention to the well educated, polished talking heads on TV and social media, as well as their cool headed friends and family. And, to be fair, they make rational points. When you've got world leaders spanning the spectrum from Merkel down to Ergodan all congratulating Biden, it's pretty clear who has the momentum here. On the other hand, the people who think we're on the ledge are looking at 71 million Americans who willingly voted for a dictator, and a good percentage of whom are -- at the present moment -- galvanized in their support of a dictator achieving a coup. Pick which group of people you pay attention to, and it'll decide whether you're on the ledge. If we don't address the estrangement between a significant number of those 71 million Americans and reality, we'll end up in the same bad place either way.
  14. Do you think that you are more informed about this issue than the rest of the political spectrum? Like, everybody to the left of Fox News simply hasn't considered this point you're raising? You'll never, ever be informed until you start answering these kinds of questions on your own. This one is easily googlable.
  15. It's become very clear at this point that the only people who have any idea what's happening next are the ones who are really "in the know," so to speak. To that end, I think it's high time that Jesus Shuttlesworth once more braved the choking, smog-drenched mist of the humidor, uncorked an ancient single malt, lit up a cubano, and sat down and had a nice long chat with El Cohiba Grande to get us the inside scoop.
  16. Why? I already know that the idea of a rigged election is preposterous. Sure. But I think the point I'm arriving at is that as Trump loses power, they're going to have a hard time sustaining their enthusiasm. Since they won't believe that Trump lost to the American people, they'll arrive at the conclusion that he lost to the deep state. They're not going away as a problem, and they'll be susceptible to the next fascist, but there's opportunity to market to some of them that might want to join a mainstream political coalition that has actual power.
  17. The deplorables have no problem internally reconciling themselves with the flawed logic that you're exposing. Their brains are ignorant mush at this point. They are masters of denial. Almost every stupid article they link or moronic argument they put forward is done in bad faith, they don't believe most of this crap on any deep level. They just like flinging shit at the wall. They're pretty much nihilists, but they do have beliefs that are core to their identity, and because of that I think there's something here I think they can't ignore -- they actually believe in their heart of hearts that Trump went to Washington to drain the swamp and defeat the deep state. That's one of those beliefs that is core to their identity as Trumpists, and it's impossible to believe he's succeeded against the swamp if you also believe the election was successfully rigged against him. To the extent that they realize Trump can't have defeated the deep state and also fallen victim to an election rigging against them, their enthusiasm may wane.
  18. Even if we entertained the notion that Biden managed to steal the election as a pure hypothetical, wouldn't that stick a fork in the narrative that Trump managed to drain the swamp? Some of these Biden states were under Republican management. It's obvious to anyone whose head isn't buried in the sand that Biden straight up beat Trump. But to those whose head is buried in the sand, even in their delusional version of reality, they have to accept that Trump still lost to the "deep state" in the end. Either way, Trump is a loser.
  19. These people aren’t faced with a choice between mere truth and reality, they are faced with a choice of feeling a sense of belonging and purpose, or else facing the reality that they aren’t all that special in the way they’d like to be. They will absolutely continue clubbing truth and reality to death until they finally win, and consequently earn the right to rebuild truth and reality in their own image. Shaping reality is the most important spoil of war that they’re after.
  20. The stupidest pack of nonsense I ever bought in to put me within a molecule or two of ending my life. The only people whose idiocy has cost them more than me aren’t alive to tell us about it. Let me be blunt. You aren’t an idiot, you just missed something about yourself that led you to ignore the broader reality around you. Everybody does that from time to time. Learn to love being shown that you’re wrong. The more we get used to that, the stronger we *actually* become.
  21. Fair, but I don’t think what you quoted was problematic. It seems like you might as well have left the quote out and said something like “Frum said something. Let’s all remember that he is the Axis of Evil asshat.”
  22. I interpreted his tweet to mean that, now that Georgia voted blue, they will join the ranks of the "coastal elites" according to the right wing propaganda machine.
  23. Biden should tell Graham, "OK, you go find a way to take care of Trump's debt, and I'll go find a way to take care of Obama's. Deal?"
  24. Have you ever thought about mixing in some contrasting with your comparisons? Like, human minds can compare and contrast. We all learn that in school. You must have some rudimentary ability to consider all the ways in which those two images are different, despite some similarities on the surface. Oh, who am I kidding. You compare when suits you, and you contrast when it suits you, and you never do either when it doesn't.
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