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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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

I can speak for the others and we are all hardcore antifa communists who live to punch neo-nazis and overthrow capitalism.

Also we're totally smug about it.
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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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:Even if it can be argued that this wasn't the original intention of the people who have been fanning the flames, I really do think that a huge portion of rank-and-file conservatives, quite possibly a majority, are more comfortable with going full authoritarian than viewing Those People as rivals to be debated, as opposed to threats to be eliminated, and that nearly all of the right's leadership would rather go right along with them than speak out, no matter how incoherent or outright violent it gets. It's a trend that goes all the way back to Southern Democrats during Reconstruction, if not further. I suppose time will tell either way.
Time didn't take much time telling on that one:

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Hoagtech wrote:You guys are being a touch unrealistic
That quote of mine you've got there wasn't directed at you (unless you're also in the skeletons-stick-together-by-magic club).

I've outlined above why I am being entirely grounded here though. This is data from The Economist in January of this year:

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Nearly half of those identifying as Republicans hold at least a somewhat favourable view of this stuff. That unavoidably drives policy and messaging.

This individual is a sitting Republican member of congress:

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This individual is also a sitting Republican member of congress:

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This individual won the Oregon Republican nomination for senate handily, though wasn't elected in the general:

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Whether or not one wants to acknowledge it as 'mainstream' Republicanism, unfortunately this stuff is in no way fringe.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

I wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the Nightmare Fuel thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aULN4dCkGQ0
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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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

GaijinPunch wrote:What do they do when nothing happens? I guess we should ask the end of the world cult as well.
They just keep on believing. Next time for sure!
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Time didn't take much time telling on that one:
No, I suppose it didn't.

In brighter news, it's about fucking time, and one can only hope a lot more like it follow. Want to keep on wasting everyone's time? Pay the hell up.
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vol.2
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by vol.2 »

More please.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Nina Turner loses by six points. The neoliberal ideology of Donald Trump remains as unopposed in the hallways of power as it's always been.

They really can't let Nina in particular level up. It'd set the dangerous precedent that if you don't lick boot, you won't necessarily be destroyed. Can't have that.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:Time didn't take much time telling on that one:
No, I suppose it didn't.
I saw that story and started having a lot of thoughts.

During the last year of Trump's administration, he was literally calling Tucker for advice. I posted a link above about how he's seen as the most influential voice in conservative America outside the Cheeseburger Führer himself - whom the powers that be are likely aware only has 5-10 years of coherent sentience left in him.

People were even pushing Tucker to run for president. I kinda thought "yeah, whatever" at the time. But he's spent the past year working the populist crowd, earning conspiracist street cred. His secret Hunter Biden UPS package was stolen from the airport by Democrat ninjas (then, presumably, heroically recovered by airport Lost & Found ninjas). The NSA hacked his show by hearing his staff contacting the Russian embassy, whose communications they routinely monitor.

On Qultist social media, they've largely turned on Fox News, except for him. He's retained good guy status in their world. His powers of ruggedly individualistic journalism have got the Deep State spooked.

Then, this morning I saw this:
...27 Republican members of the Georgia state Senate sent an ominous letter to the state elections board, touting a misleading claim about the 2020 election popularized by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The letters from Republican lawmakers are the first step in the legal process Republicans may use to take over elections in Fulton County, the most populous county in the state, which encompasses most of Atlanta. In 2020, nearly 73 percent of Fulton County voters cast a ballot for President Joe Biden.
https://www.vox.com/22607616/georgia-re ... 2-jim-crow

This is of course based on allegations of fraud that both machine & hand recounts showed to have been a clerical error, but that's just a minor detail. When you've got presidents calling you for advice and 27 state senators following your lead, you've got pull.

So now here he is symbolically situating himself in happy Faschistland Evropa, where they still know how to do things Right. I can kinda believe he's setting himself up as the rightful Trumpian heir now.
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vol.2
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by vol.2 »

Does he have the whole spoiled brat daddies-money vibe that trump has?

That kind of unapologetic, irresponsible, self-congratulatory thing seems pretty pivotal in the trump brand.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

vol.2 wrote:Does he have the whole spoiled brat daddies-money vibe that trump has?

That kind of unapologetic, irresponsible, self-congratulatory thing seems pretty pivotal in the trump brand.
Image

Well, he owns a plaid shirt, sat in a wood-working shed for one of his shows, and spends every night on his broadcasts railing against elites and out of touch billionaires. So it's a tough call. Let's send this back to the replay center in New York for review:
In a 2009 radio segment, Carlson joked about growing up in a castle, saying that one thing you learn when you “look out across the moat every day at the hungry peasants in the village” is that “you don’t wanna stoke envy among the proletariat.”

The host then asked if having an African-American “shining the rims on your Bentley” doesn’t invoke envy, to which Carlson replied, “I only have, you know, American, white servants.” He explained, “It’s not because I’m racist, it’s because I’m not. It’s because I feel better beating them, you know what I mean?”
When asked on “Bubba the Love Sponge” in 2008 how he pays his bills, Carlson replied that he’s “extraordinarily loaded” just from “inheritance from my number of trust funds."

"I’ll go out and beat some servants, I’ll wrap my Lamborghini around a tree, go pick up a kilo or two, you know, just like normal stuff,” he added.
In a 2006 appearance, Carlson said he has “zero sympathy” for Iraqis because they “don’t use toilet paper or forks,” adding that they should “just shut the fuck up and obey” us. He also called Iraqis “semiliterate primitive monkeys.”
“You’re a trust fund baby, are you not?” the host asked. “Oh completely, I’ve never needed to work, yeah,” Carlson said. “I mean it’s all just — the whole cable news thing … it was just like a phase I was going through.”
conversation on the show centered on Fox chair Rupert Murdoch’s decision to pull ultraconservative host Sean Hannity from broadcasting at a Cincinnati tea party rally in 2010. “I’m 100 percent [Murdoch’s] bitch,” Carlson said. “Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do. … I would be honored if he would cane me the way I cane my workers, my servants.”
In December, after Carlson said that immigrants make the country “poorer and dirtier,” his show was subjected to a boycott campaign that resulted in at least 25 advertisers dropping his show.
“But see, I’m an out-of-the-closet elitist,” Carlson said in a 2008 segment. “I don’t run around pretending to be a man of the people; I’m absolutely not a man of the people, at all.”
The real question might be whether Trump has anything on Tucky in the 'spoiled brat daddy's-money vibe' department. (Though in this case it's actually his mom who makes him the heir to the Swanson's Foods fortune).
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vol.2
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by vol.2 »

Yeah, okay. Sounds like he's the next-gen trump kind of person then. Seems weird that he's also into being caned. I think trump would never admit to that even if he does want it. Trump has to be the top dog in his own private fantasy.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:I kinda thought "yeah, whatever" at the time.
I'm honestly surprised that any honest observer still has an ounce of "nah, they couldn't possibly go that low, not that, not him" left in them at this point.
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vol.2
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by vol.2 »

i'm not surprised at all.

all of this "new radicalized right" has always felt to me like what these people wanted to say all along, but didn't because A) internet changed the nature of political discourse and B) the world has collectively become a more stressful and crappy place over the past 20 years or so and the added stress is pushing it out of people.

yes, i get there is simplification in that, but i generally stand by it and am willing to extrapolate
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BulletMagnet wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:I kinda thought "yeah, whatever" at the time.
I'm honestly surprised that any honest observer still has an ounce of "nah, they couldn't possibly go that low, not that, not him" left in them at this point.
That wasn't it. Carlson has been a political commentator for 20 years and worked in political journalism before that. He makes much more sense than Trump ever did, who was basically just an angry Twitter grandpa whose entire body of political experience was pushing the Obama birther conspiracy on the internet.

It was more like, 1) I didn't think he'd want to bother, 2) he had too much nerdboy in him. I will always remember during the 2004 election people defending Dubya saying "I'd rather have the captain of the football team leading than the captain of the chess team!" (If only I'd known he was never a football player but was in fact a cheerleader at Yale).

It's kinda odd because Chess is modelled on actual military generalship and tactical thinking, while the captain of the football team might well be a lineman & just does what the coaches tell him to. But the gist is thinky thinky = hesitant and wussy and probably talks themselves into sissy stuff like climate accords just to impress French people with frilly sleeves.

There are many, many incriminating photos of Tucker in a bow tie.
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:There are many, many incriminating photos of Tucker in a bow tie.
As long as he or whoever else in the running can keep the yeeeeaahhhh fuck yooouuuu yeeeahhh rolling literally nothing else matters; so long as that happens they'll find a way to lionize him as the world's manliest hunk, just as they did with fellow silver-spoon princesses Trump and Dubya.
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Interesting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... sly-flawed

Here's the problem with Republicans talking about budgets; when Trump signed his completely unfunded military spending bill, did they ask for spending accountability and value for taxpayer money? No. Sure didn't. They'll funnel the money to cronies and tell us the spending is top secret becuz nationalz securitiez.

Let's talk about Republican presidents and balanced budgets. I love this one! The last GOP. prez to do that was Nixon. So, righties are liars and frauds. They had complete control of the government multiple times and never paid they bills. Only the thickest of rubes would buy any of this posturing. Actions are all that matters.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

They don't want the jab until they hear an African might get one. Business as usual. Also, please don't waste my time telling me how much you cherish life. This was always about saving your (probably very white) grans.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/t ... k-who/amp/
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Those minimum wages are never going to budge until people get serious about unionizing. That's the entirety of it. There isn't enough collective will at the government level, and business owners (at least those with any foresight) understand that this 'labour shortage' is a result of artificial wage competition from very temporary unemployment benefits.

I'd intended to post these earlier when the 'this generation is entitled and just need to work harder' conversation came up.

Everyone should burn these two charts into their brains, they explain starkly why things are where they are. All you have to do is look at what happens to the lines in the 1960s:

Image

Image

People are working harder than they ever have. The current generation grew up with the message to hustle or die because the 9 to 5 and employment security were long dead. Which of course they are, the labour organizations which fought for them were stamped out. The corporate class is just doing logical corporate class things in their absence, while also somehow conning people into believing that standing up for themselves is a violation of the Protestant work ethic.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

They're very similar to the old productivity vs compensation chart. The gaps always widen around or just after 1980 - coincidentally the time when the first home PC's were available.

Our old friend quash liked to call Social Security a ponzi scheme or something to that effect, and I'd naively go "it's decades out until we have to trim benefits like 7%, and if we don't want to do that all we have to do is raise the cap on taxable payroll income to compensate for the growing inequality!" Something I think all of us can agree is a pipe dream by this point.

It just came to mind when China was trying to encourage its people to have more babies, just, you know, with the thing of not providing material incentives to do so. Having a kid when you're working 12 hours a day 6 days a week sure sounds like a great and fun idea.

It very much shares similar shades of the attitude of standing on the backs of the young, and then calling them "lazy" anytime they complain about the arrangement.
very temporary
I don't know if this adjective is very optimistic or very pessimistic, anymore.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Mischief Maker »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Everyone should burn these two charts into their brains,
...and this one:

Image
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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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Everyone should burn these two charts into their brains
If only we lived in a time when pretty much everyone who desperately needs to start factoring this information into how they think and vote won't dismiss it out of hand as deep state propaganda and immediately return to, as MM's signature puts it, squabbling over cookie crumbs with nonwhite people.
BryanM wrote:I'd naively go "it's decades out until we have to trim benefits like 7%, and if we don't want to do that all we have to do is raise the cap on taxable payroll income to compensate for the growing inequality!
The cap on Social Security taxes has always been near the top of my personal "wait, why does this exist?" list, so I did a bit of Googling, and, as it happens:
When President Roosevelt presented his plan for Social Security, it did not include an income cap. The original plan exempted high earners from Social Security altogether—including both taxes and benefits—and anyone who made more than $3,000 per year was supposed to be left out of the system completely.

As FDR's plan worked its way through Congress, the exemption for high earners was eliminated, and the House Ways and Means Committee replaced it with a $3,000 cap. Historians on the subject have found no evidence supporting why the committee chose an earnings cap over an exemption, but it has been in place ever since.
Oh, and I also found that only about 6 percent of the US population earns more than the taxable maximum (currently just shy of $143,000), so almost nobody benefits from the cap while everyone else has to put up with conservatives constantly demanding that the retirement age be raised yet again and/or the system be scrapped altogether. I think I might have a guess as to why the committee chose the cap over an exemption, and why it's been kept in place all these years with zero explanation!
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

As Piketty points out, the postwar boom (and the post Black Plague boom) were unsustainable and they happened in the wake of terrible shocks. I won't go into all the ways the eventual wealth redistribution happened, because most people can't handle the truth. Most people can't talk about the truth. The truth triggers people. Anyhow, can't repeat that without a lot of suffering. We aren't doing that.

We've returned to a "normal" slower economy--and that won't produce enough growth to maintain what we saw in the post-war boom. Efficiency gains don't deliver. Population growth won't deliver. If efficiency gains lag, we're just barely racing inflation. So, the economy must to be planned to match our reality. Can't have a boom without a shock and I don't want to die.

What are we doing about it? It's the opposite of smart.

We are transforming all the productivity gains (and a little extra) into crystallised capital--held by a select few Everyone else is stuck trying to pay the capital gains (to supermanagers and rentiers that live like kings without working) with eroding wages. It's unsustainable.

Meanwhile, the professional class neolibs continue to side with the super rich. They are either telling themselves they will also be super rich (dream on) or fighting to keep what they have. Either way, it doesn't matter. Hams voting for Christmas.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by To Far Away Times »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Those minimum wages are never going to budge until people get serious about unionizing. That's the entirety of it. There isn't enough collective will at the government level, and business owners (at least those with any foresight) understand that this 'labour shortage' is a result of artificial wage competition from very temporary unemployment benefits.

I'd intended to post these earlier when the 'this generation is entitled and just need to work harder' conversation came up.

Everyone should burn these two charts into their brains, they explain starkly why things are where they are. All you have to do is look at what happens to the lines in the 1960s:

Image

Image

People are working harder than they ever have. The current generation grew up with the message to hustle or die because the 9 to 5 and employment security were long dead. Which of course they are, the labour organizations which fought for them were stamped out. The corporate class is just doing logical corporate class things in their absence, while also somehow conning people into believing that standing up for themselves is a violation of the Protestant work ethic.
We've been trying for 40 years now zero success so far but I got a feeling that the wealth will trickle down any day now.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

HEADLINE: BIBLE CODE PREDICTS MY PILLOW SYMPOSIUM

Image

This is gonna be a fun week.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

Isn't 88 "Heil Hitler" in Gematria, though?
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off

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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Obiwanshinobi wrote:Isn't 88 "Heil Hitler" in Gematria, though?
Hey, you catch on quick!

Click here to open the door to a world of wonder and imagination...:
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

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I absolutely adore the succinctly named "SmartGuy". Listen up, plebs!
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