Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Iran War. When.

2021
3
6%
2022-2025
15
28%
2026-2030
7
13%
2031-2040
3
6%
2041-2050
0
No votes
Never
25
47%
 
Total votes: 53

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Durandal
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Durandal »

Xyga wrote:
chum wrote:the thing is that we actually go way back and have known each other on multiple websites, first clashing in a Naruto forum.
Liar. I've known you only from latexmachomen.com and pantysniffers.org forums.
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EmperorIng
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by EmperorIng »

Terminally ill children? This reminds me of a funny story...
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Durandal wrote:
Children with leukemia?
Grandmas and babies. David Bowie. Alan Moore's Watchmen. Special Olympians. Amazing Grace. These are the secret powers behind our world.

I'll admit though, I first encountered that quote with the Voltaire attribution, and it sounded profound at first glance. Then I started imagining using it in an actual debate and the holes started showing through. I didn't know it was a recent nazi thing, though that makes sense since it mostly seems to show up online in situations where you're supposed to leap to Jewish space lasers as the unspoken answer.

Another one I've seen going around is a false attribution to Karl Marx along the lines of "Accuse your enemy of what you yourself are doing" (there are multiple versions of it). Apparently this one has been picked up uncritically by a number of right wing sources online, and has been making the rounds for a while. Except Marx never said anything like that, it makes no sense in the context of either his thought or life.

And of course, it's a bastardization of a Joseph Goebbels quote from the 1934 Nuremberg rally.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Looks like Musk tried and failed to escalate things from mere ASMR, to be more like the massage videos BIL watches.

Watching this particular overlord is kinda sad these days...

...

.. remember the dancing man in spandex in his robot announcement press conference? Is this what getting old is like? Doing 'memba berries for things that happened three months ago?
"Accuse your enemy of what you yourself are doing"
Future president Marjorie Greene has this trick down pat. "These liberals are starving babies!" /votes to starve babies

Ah. I remember the first time I heard about a new show called Survivor coming up. I nodded my head sagely and said "oh, so they're finally doing the Running Man thing, but for real?" It was only a matter of time after all, and that was some time, so why not then? My imagination ran a bit.

Learning what it actually was... well... at least I was already thoroughly disappointed with this particular world already.

Hopefully they'll rectify that situation, and we can have proper death games on TV when the apocalypse progresses more forcefully.
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BIL
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BIL »

Dubya. He's hilarious!

Ah, the nostalgic days of Operation: Decapitate Sectarian Powederkeg's Government Then Drive Around Getting Blown Up By IEDs For A Decade To Save Gawd n Jesus n Mawm's Apple Pie. If I were a vindictive sort I'd be going all Death 2 America like a Guardian subscriber, and them there A-rabs. Persians, whoever. Don't mention the Saudis!
BryanM wrote:Looks like Musk tried and failed to escalate things from mere ASMR, to be more like the massage videos BIL watches.

Watching this particular overlord is kinda sad these days...
I'm telling you, there's no point trying to be a Massage Shagger with that JERK George running about stealing all the pretty girls. Image Musk? With his gurning mongoloid grill and gelatinous shoulder/waist ratio, he has no chance in hell. Even if he put the work in and got his massage therapist cert - with that spasticated atrocity exhibition of a mug, the moment he so much as gurned sideways at a beautiful girl, they'd put him where Chris Chan is!

I finally gave in and signed up for George's Zoom yoga class, we'll see if I have what it takes to master The Genocide Bust and its even more elusive counterpart, The Doublejump Bust. Overrated if you ask me, puerile even - but consider Mallory's famous answer re: Everest. I'm guessing there's a lot of quinoa and kegels in my immediate future. 3;
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BryanM wrote:Future president Marjorie Greene has this trick down pat. "These liberals are starving babies!" /votes to starve babies
I would just like to take this moment to bring up the important fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene was in a Zangief cosplayer's sex cult.

The Dubya thing, and seeing the word 'gaffe' in headlines again made me nostalgic for a simpler time when that sort of thing mattered. This time around the reaction was like Paul McCartney doing a Beatles song live, when nobody was paying any attention because they just thought it'd be solo material. "He did the thing! He did a gaffe! Good times getting worked up about that for nearly half a news cycle, they just don't make 'em like that anymore."
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

That the future first lady is going to be Zangief is one of those things I always keep forgetting. I already feel a deep anemoia for former first lady Zangief.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Just in case anyone was still deluding themselves into thinking the American right's hard-on for autocracy was just a passing fancy or limited to the fringe, the CPAC conference is now happening in Orban's Hungary.

EDIT: Oh, and Pennsylvania's Republicans just nominated a guy for governor who, should he deeply and legitimately believe that any election he oversees is somehow "compromised", has openly stated that his state's legislature will simply substitute their own Electoral College delegates instead.

EDIT 2: "They're not gonna tell us 'separation of church and state'. We are the church! We run this state!"

I'll say it again: the fact that we still have undecided voters at this point is a sure indication of just how royally fucked we are.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

That separation was made by Christians for reasons that weren't anti-Christian, but if they stay the THEOCRACY NOW! course long enough they'll figure it out. They think they want the return of the Aryan Solar God-King, but at some point the wires will cross and they'll figure out that's not terribly compatible with a "Cayn't trust the guvmint, masks is tyranee!" worldview. Especially if said God-King is just an 85 year-old malignant narcissist fat guy with ADHD who spends all day on Discount Twitter.™ How badly do they want trans people to go away and to slow/reverse the demographic tide of the impending non-white majority?

But the real sign of impending trouble is that even the Plutocrat Times is jumping on the environmental doomscroll bandwagon:

Bloomberg: A Hot, Deadly Summer Is Coming With Frequent Blackouts
There won’t be enough energy supplies to go around as sweltering heat boosts power demand in the months ahead, putting lives at risk


"Why would Biden do this?"
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:They think they want the return of the Aryan Solar God-King, but at some point the wires will cross and they'll figure out that's not terribly compatible with a "Cayn't trust the guvmint, masks is tyranee!" worldview.
Unfortunately as long as they get their next yeeeahhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhh fix the philosophy, and they, don't even have to pretend to make sense, let alone benefit, or even simply fail to harm, them in any way whatsoever. I truly don't understand how someone could still assume that there exists any sort of "uncrossable red line", apart from the bottomless syringe of yeeeahhh fuck yoooouuu yeeeahhh, that still has the slightest pulse on the modern right. Anyone who ever voted for Trump (to just name the most prominent example) has already abandoned both Christian and small-government values in the name of assuming that doing so would piss off someone in a coastal city somewhere, and they're absolutely itching to stick the needle in again.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:I truly don't understand how someone could still assume that there exists any sort of "uncrossable red line"
Because there always is, it just needs to intersect with a factional divide with the power to do something about it. Far more driven and coherent movements than MAGA have schismed. The Cult of Trump is keeping everyone onside for now, but that's not an indefinite situation.

And I really wonder just how much gas that one has in the tank, to be honest. The truth is that the man lost the popular vote twice, had abysmal approval ratings throughout his entire presidency, and after being banished from normal person social media hasn't gotten any more popular since.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:The Cult of Trump is keeping everyone onside for now, but that's not an indefinite situation.
As I've stated on here more than once before, this goes way, way beyond Trump, and has been building - and has been actively built - for decades. Once he's gone, the next one will not moderate from him, it will top him; the rank and file will absolutely not accept anything else, and the leadership will absolutely not push back.

Speaking only for myself, I'm frankly embarrassed that it took a Supreme Court seat stolen in broad daylight with zero complaints from anywhere on the right-wing spectrum or any consequences whatsoever at the hands of "swing" voters - down to this very day - to finally wake me the hell up to what we're actually dealing with here, considering how much had already led up to that.

So let's not forget that despite the stats you noted for Trump the party with its tongue permanently wedged up his ass is slated to dominate in the midterms, and if nothing in voters' mindsets changes very quickly and very dramatically either he or whoever imitates him best will soon be preening his feathers in the Oval Office. Just remember, the one time he dared to say getting vaccinated might not be a terrible idea, he got booed, and from that day to this neither he nor anyone else on the right has so much as thought of doing it twice.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

You say "stolen", I say "given".

About 30% of democrat voters don't think things are going in a great direction. Any liberal fantasy that Voldemort is going to kill himself on some rule technicality is risible at this state. Racking up all these wins only feeds into their morale. Only a liberal can act like winning is losing, and that losing is winning. It is a strange alien coping ideology indeed.

The absolute worst case scenario for capitalists is they break even, but I'm pretty sure they'll keep prices jacked up just fine no matter what the election outcomes are.
And I really wonder just how much gas that one has in the tank, to be honest.
MAGA is beautifully engineered to resist fracturing; how can you possibly disagree on anything when your grievances aren't real? Guns, god, women in the kitchen, gays, borders, "crime", a powerful king that appeals to their sensibilities; these are the only things they care about. Everything else is just a red herring that only adds to their lore and engagement numbers. Entertainment to recruit and retain minds on their team.

It's not Donald Trump's movement. It's Ronald Reagan's. And it's always had built-in mechanisms to resist demographic changes (none more helpful than Democrats never making anyone's life visibly better. Least of all their own by actually resisting on how elections are administered grounds.). Their presidential primaries will get to the point where Greene is a "moderate". This is the level of devotion to capitalism you need to willingly burn the flesh of the New Deal to ashes.

Capitalists didn't dare do it before, afraid of the backlash, old fossils that they were. New vampire kings that never knew that era are more than willing to just use the power. They have to: where else are they going to extract new treasure? The greater fool gambling schemes are burning as hot as they can already.

It's hard to imagine we'd riot when they abolish the minimum wage and five day work week and such, I expect everyone to lay down and take it like always. Though it is fun to fantasize that it'd be a "you fucked around and you found out" moment. Which is leftist copium, I suppose.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I you guys will recall, I've been banging the "conservatives hit the ejector seat on reality" drum for some time in this thread. I've posted depressingly thorough summaries of the descent into outright fascism. I've watched as the 10% of them who are willing to speak against it are made to go sit in the corner.

Let's check in with Truth Social, who were no doubt shocked and dismayed that Trump intimated civil war in the country they love so much.
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Oh wait no, they started pumping Kool & The Gang. My bad.

But here's the thing -
BryanM wrote:Guns, god, women in the kitchen, gays, borders, "crime", a powerful king that appeals to their sensibilities; these are the only things they care about. Everything else is just a red herring that only adds to their lore and engagement numbers.
Not that those things aren't true, but it leaves out the demographic and economic anxieties which are driving them to be this extreme about things.

More importantly, I think it's also incorrect to handwave all the individual liberty stuff away as fluff. That's a core message which has been a part of their lives from primary socialization onward. Covid & Jan 6th have shown a depressing number of Americans to be adult children...
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...who live in a simulated reality built on reality TV & Hollywood movie tropes. The good guy might take a punch, but he never faces consequences. The Punisher might blow up 82 cop cars, but top government good guy will descend from a helicopter after the climax to make the annoying FBI and Justice Dept. stomp off in frustration.

If faced with the spectre of an actual fascist state, I think you'll see things rubberband back the other way hard. Social change accelerated to a rate that has left people feeling like things are out of control. The US went from zero gay characters on TV to "Caitlin Jenner is a stunning hero and only nazis disagree" in the span of 15 years. When smart phones & social media hit c. 2008-09, critical theory turned out to be effective as both outrage clickbait and a political tool in polarizing the vote, so it got cranked up to 11 in the cultural discourse to the point where half the US population have been painted as supervillains in the country they were born in. MAGA is the reactionary knee jerk against all that. Right now it's just about the fantasy of making all the obnoxious liberals & screechy feminists & undesirable people go away in the name of their own personal comfort.

But seeing a state which significantly threatens that comfort, I don't think most of those people are built to handle that. They've been raised in a 'your way right away' world where not leaving the pickles out means it's time to go to war with the manager and this Susie person needs to be fired if she thinks that's acceptable.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Thoughts and fuckin' prayers. :mrgreen:

Maybe the shooter was preemptively using self defense to stop other people from attacking in the future???

Could have been for Jesus???

Or, maybe gunning people down is free speech??

Who knows what the next goddamn batshit crazy excuse will be.

We all know one thing: the flow of guns will not stop. Guns per capita will rise. Every market theory I know says that guns will become easier (and easier) to get as the nation becomes even more saturated with them. Not that any right wing dumb fucker will acknowledge their precious market when its inconvenient. ~30,000 guns are manufactured every day in the United States.

Not that Americans are genetically any different than any human beings anywhere else. It's not "them". It's "us". We're fucking stupid.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Doesn't look like we will know. The shooter was 18 and is dead. Killed 14 kids and 1 teacher.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Doesn't look like we will know. The shooter was 18 and is dead. Killed 14 kids and 1 teacher.
The gun was easy to get and it will only get easier.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Not that those things aren't true, but it leaves out the demographic and economic anxieties which are driving them to be this extreme about things.
Considering how many of those "anxieties" can be blamed very directly on conservative policies - I'd love to hear any Trump supporter both tell me just how much they've benefited from all those upper-end tax cuts, or how effective their "deport some illegal immigrants but never, ever punish the people hiring them" stance has been in keeping their wages from racing to the bottom - color me skeptical that said anxieties are the real catalyst, as opposed to a fig leaf to justify the unjustifiable.
More importantly, I think it's also incorrect to handwave all the individual liberty stuff away as fluff. That's a core message which has been a part of their lives from primary socialization onward. [...] If faced with the spectre of an actual fascist state, I think you'll see things rubberband back the other way hard.
I'd like to know where you were post-9/11, when anyone voicing concerns about the surge in mass surveillance and centralization of executive power, just for starters, was told in no uncertain terms by the "anxious" folks - the Real Americans - to get the hell out of their country...a sentiment which somehow only decreased in popularity when a black guy took office. And, once again, not one of them has ever so much as stated out loud "yeah, we kinda messed up back then", they just bring it back when convenient like nothing ever happened, and scream "persecution" if anyone dares call them on it.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:Considering how many of those "anxieties" can be blamed very directly on conservative policies - I'd love to hear any Trump supporter both tell me just how much they've benefited from all those upper-end tax cuts, or how effective their "deport some illegal immigrants but never, ever punish the people hiring them" stance has been in keeping their wages from racing to the bottom - color me skeptical that said anxieties are the real catalyst, as opposed to a fig leaf to justify the unjustifiable.
Well, the demographic anxieties I cited are the ever looming spectre of a white minority, currently projected to occur somewhere between 2041-2046. That's the underlying fear driving The Great Replacement™ theory. They know the democrats aren't going to do anything to stop that shift, and that conspiracy is the euphemistic way they've found to voice those fears.

The economic anxieties - the points you listed are exactly why they turned to Trump in the first place. The Tea Party movement was an open acknowledgement of the fact that the Republican establishment had sold them out; that was the harvest Trump reaped. They still live in an in-between fantasy world where they're content to paint big pharma and big tech as villains, where they know corporate America is soulless and evil, but somehow there are still Daddy Warbucks good guys like Trump & Mike Pillow who are going to set capitalism to rights.

As for fig leaf - nah, it's always the other way around. Racism, sexism, homophobia, it's all status anxiety at the end of the day. And status anxiety ultimately isn't about a whole lot more than access to resource, shelter, mates and a secure place in a social network which provides those things. The economic question is always at the centre of it.

That's why tribalism dies so hard, the tribe is that network.
I'd like to know where you were post-9/11, when anyone voicing concerns about the surge in mass surveillance and centralization of executive power, just for starters, was told in no uncertain terms by the "anxious" folks - the Real Americans - to get the hell out of their country...a sentiment which somehow only decreased in popularity when a black guy took office. And, once again, not one of them has ever so much as stated out loud "yeah, we kinda messed up back then", they just bring it back when convenient like nothing ever happened, and scream "persecution" if anyone dares call them on it.
That's not true. There's definitely an open faction against it, led by Rand Paul. But there's also a bipartisan recognition that Patriot Act surveillance has stopped a whole lot of people from doing a whole lot of things, specifically against the political class. Ironically, it's the right wing militia movement who provide the biggest current justification for it.

I think it's safe to say the popular attitudes in Republican-world have shifted a lot since 9/11. At the time there was a circle-the-wagons mentality that kicked in, and nobody was really questioning anything for a while. The right wing was certainly willing to back the Iraq War to the hilt. By 2016, they had turned thoroughly against it to the point that Trump could run on a promise to end it while painting Hillary as a warmonger. It was one of the many things Trump understood that the establishment didn't; along with economic and state overreach issues it was an element of why W. Bush was not fondly remembered among the AM radio call-in crowd. Being in touch with that stuff is part of why the rank & file love him, because whatever other contradictions Trump presents, there's a level of trust there because they know underneath it all he's an angry Fox News dad just like them. Which is also part of what's led W to be comfortable as an open never-Trumper. He knows he's on the outs with a lot of them anyway.

I would also add one major point to this conversation though - things like PRISM & Patriot Act surveillance are out of sight, out of mind type issues. On the average human brains are terrible with attending to abstract problems, which is also why massive crises like climate change can slide by for so long, while largely irrelevant issues like a Will Smith slap - not abstract in the least - can make the world stop. And why average people have resorted to conspiratorial thinking, because it removes the abstractions and concretizes problems by making them about Hillary and her victim babies, Bill Gates and his tracking mind-control chips. Things that better fit into to their intuitive problem solution sets. They do care about government surveillance, they're just collectively processing it in a really dumb way.

But being pushed around by fascist cops or having government policies come down hard on you whether you like it or not presents a very different type of issue to things like the Patriot Act. It's immediate. It's why masks & vaccines became such lightning rods, it's right there, concrete, and enforced by real people in recognizable personal interactions. Right wingers may idealize Putin's Russia, but they weren't culturally conditioned from youth to accept an actual authoritarian government like the Russian people were.

Like really, if the God King Trump ish got real and they had to deal with the consequences of living under the an actual Marcos/Duvalier style dictatorship, the mental short circuiting and the collective temper tantrum which followed would go solar.

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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

I was hoping the number would stop going up, but it went up a few more times overnight... Hearing about how they needed blood samples to identify some of the bodies...

Our fascist state isn't going to look exactly like other fascist states, and I think "you need to be a military dictatorship with an eternal god-king to be fash" is a distinction that doesn't matter overly much. As long as corporate control is near absolute and inflicting suffering to inflict suffering is an end to itself. Though I also think the fascists would not suddenly stop wanting that if they were living it - as long as the "right" people get the treasure and the "right" people get stomped by the boot, they'll love it.

As I always say, terminal values differ, and they can differ greatly. Projecting silly notions like "I am a human and I like clean drinking water that doesn't kill me so therefore other humans also would prefer the water to be clean" onto other humans is a common fallacious mistake in reasoning.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

BryanM wrote:I was hoping the number would stop going up, but it went up a few more times overnight... Hearing about how they needed blood samples to identify some of the bodies...
No surprises whatsoever when an assault rifle's involved. Compared to handgun bullets, rifle rounds straight up disintegrate flesh and bone. There's really no reason a civilized society would allow these (or any other guns) in the hands of the unwashed masses without considerable licensing, and training/safety requirements.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

I don't know what he means by "massacre" in scare quotes here, unless he just has no idea how scare quotes work.

I do like the classy salesman's touch with 'incredible souls' though. The best cadavers.

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EDIT:

It might genuinely be because his fanclub thinks it's a false flag, like every other news event their brains spin as somehow unfavourable to their cause. Nothing in the universe isn't about them, they're the main characters.

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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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The hilarious thing is Clinton is actually a Reagan Republican. She's 90% on your side, mate!

Despite her disingenuous and cynical need to parade minorites and gun victims in front the press, Hillz never ever actually planned to do much of anything to stop the flow of guns. Don't kid yourself. Look back at the Clinton administration and you'll see how she planned to govern. She was a minor inconvenience to the right at best--and a willing "compromise" party the rest of the time. She was a ticket to moving further right--just slower than Trump.

Slightly less right wing, but still definitely and clearly a full-blooded Republican isn't enough? Like BryanM keeps saying, how much winning is enough? They're winning everything and have been for decades. There isn't even a threat to Reagan's America on the ballot. Never will be, either.

Anyhow, thoughts and prayers. We've done all we can. :-) Maybe the Republicans can pull a Hillary and march some victims across the state once in a while. You don't have to actually do anything. :-)
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

The first place I read about this one was at normie news blogs. The comment section was packed to the gills calling the shooter an "illegal" and I sighed. "Can you just fucking not, just once?" It's like walking down the street, right? If you're walking on the internet, you're going to get shit on your shoes.

Well, way worse than that: it gets on your brain.

Ah, let's do some more Musk-posting to cheer everyone up:

I watched Skeptic's doc on his early life, it's all very expected capitalist stuff. Acquire CEO position, acquire $, do nothing. X.com wasn't that much worse than The Boring Company... though it is still amusing the Vegas Loop is vastly worse than just installing a conveyance belt on the ground. He solved traffic~

It also pointed out something petty I didn't notice him doing: when he muscled one of the original founders of Tesla out, Musk took that guy's car for himself. And where is that car now? The one place safe from Communism: SPACE.

Georg-Rockall also made a video on the guy by coincidence. I liked it since it shows his actual kitchen and the soul-crushing poverty the man lives in. Not even I have to use a plastic dining table! But on the flipside, I also don't have a lava lamp. Win some, lose some.
Like BryanM keeps saying, how much winning is enough?
They'll always be "losing" and anything about capitalism they don't like will be liberals' fault. If it's good, it's god. If it's bad, it's the devil.

I've talked about the problems this statistic brings before: about 30% of society are death cultists. Doesn't matter if a cop throws their son into a woodchipper: "gotta support our troops." If we were under 'real fascism' they'd be like "I support the things that are currently happening... but I wish they'd be a little LESS gentle with those ______." As Kyle calls them, they're too far gone and therefore not worth thinking about. Talking to them is like whacking a beehive, you're just giving them a tangible foe to hate and fight against. Rebutting their lies with logic only gives them a bigger reach and audience; they're memes that aren't relying on facts and logic to attach to minds in the first place, after all. (I will always recommend that it's better to bible thump for your beliefs, not someone else's. These are such beautifully engineered cognitohazards.)

So you're left with a margin of 70% of the population to try to improve anything. Which means you've actually got to convince the people who can in theory be convinced. By a margin of ~72%, that's more than 2 to 1. Frankly I'm amazed we're doing as well as we are, whenever I think of it like that.

...

... hah. For the people who think it's great that we have to pay thousands of dollars just to keep our teeth, that's very cool and good. It adds up to the cost of a small house, over a lifetime..
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

BryanM wrote: So you're left with a margin of 70% of the population to try to improve anything.
I truly did share your optimism once, but it's gone.

The truth is, you can't get 70% agreement on much of anything. Also, I think 70% or more of the population has their mind made up and no amount of data will change their minds. They can't be convinced. I admit, I could be wrong. I'm assume the number of dug in people will always be very high, though--much more than 30%.

Paradoxically, the ability to be convinced and change course is seen as weakness by most people. It's built in to human nature. People are also inherently anti intellectual and selfish. Human nature forbids anything more than we have.

You couldn't find enough trustworthy and responsible people to staff your government, but even an impossible properly egalitarian technocracy (that truly served people's needs) would meet significant resistance--and "infringe" on the "rights" of selfish people. And, we're back to human nature again. :-)

It can't be done; there are no honest people to lead, so the predictable reaction from the public is probably moot. On the other hand, it's worth noting that there's no path to establish a better society, people would hate it, and we couldn't maintain it. We're doomed.

Anyhow, there's a very very small minority of people that are actually going to reconsider anything--and everyone will put their immediate wants first (with no thought about anything but immediate satisfaction at absolutely all costs--including killing others, but people usually prefer to do that indirectly.) People don't give a shit about anything but themselves. Even affection for friends and family is rooted in a personal selfish need. You don't cry because a lost family member is lost to the world, you cry because you miss them. (Yep. I said more true things. Uncomfortable, isn't it?)
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by To Far Away Times »

So sick of all this gun violence.

As usual, our politicans will offer thoughts and prayers and nothing else.
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BIL
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BIL »

Oh hello! Token diasporic mutt here again, what's good Burgerfriends. I just want to get in ahead of this, and assure you all that he doesn't speak for the rest of us! Please don't burn down our businesses and/or send mean tweets.

Regs, Dr. Richard "Dick" "Penis" Biruford PhD (Plenty Hard Dick)
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

BIL wrote:Oh hello! Token diasporic mutt here again, what's good Burgerfriends. I just want to get in ahead of this, and assure you all that he doesn't speak for the rest of us! Please don't burn down our businesses and/or send mean tweets.

Regs, Dr. Richard "Dick" "Penis" Biruford PhD (Plenty Hard Dick)
The hell kind of news sources are you reading that you would think Barack "lets have a beer summit for the racist cop who arrested my college mentor on the front lawn of his own house" Obama would be calling for a violent uprising?

God I wish the Murdoch fantasy version of Democrats were the reality.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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BIL
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BIL »

*splutter* *fume* U WOT M8 (■`w´■) No it's not Barry "The Libya Liberator" Obama I'm worried about (Black Lives Matter, mirite!). Far from!

It's all the very angry people in his replies! >83 Like Barry, I observed the Summer Of Love from comfy distance (I'm white LMAOImage), and the thought of Muttfordshire facing similar Mostly Peaceful wrath on account of its favourite son's craven, shoulder-obliterating overreach - from your latest mass-murdering horror, to home-invading St. Fenty "Water Surprise!" of Floyd he very self - has me shaking in my boots. 3;
Mischief Maker wrote:God I wish the Murdoch fantasy version of Democrats were the reality.
The Independent? Image What did your old friend BIRUFORD ever do, MM-san, to make you fling a bag of burning dogshit at his door so? 3;

I can't even remember the last time I put a figurative shoe into that quisling shitrag's metaphorical temple. It was a good shot! Who cares though. Like pissing into an ocean of shite. Imagine being a mass media tribalist. :shock: Image
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