Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Burningvigor]

The one question I need the answer to the most is how did everything come to this?

I feel like Obama created this huge divide in the party. It was pretty bad before, but with him in office it became terrible. So the public were already getting tired of this shit. Now with all the leaks coming out, the public is now more informed with how terrible most politicians are, which is why I think Trump is winning. He's an outsider to the whole thing while Hillary is viewed as part of the problem.

I just saw a recent poll where only 11% of American trust in what Hillary says. I mean wtf? How can a candidate get elected with 9/10 americans think she's a compulsive liar.

[Lord Satori]

Where on earth did you get those numbers?

[BryanM]

From false framing from breitbart.

The question asked that they got that claim from was this:



Which isn't the same question as "is she a trustworthy person???"* She scores around 30% on questions like that.

As does the God Emperor. And that's why this race is so tight, kids.


* It's debatable, I suppose, which of the two is the more biased question.

I feel like Obama created this huge divide in the party.

No, the black Ronald Reagan didn't do anything. It's always been like this.

When you poll people on the issues question by question, they agree with Bernie Sanders. We're not a conservative or a "center" country, just a liberal one. Everyone claims to hate corruption, only 23% of the electorate bothered voting to reduce it this year.

There are shitloads of republicans voting democrat and shitloads of democrats voting republican purely on the basis of tribal identity.

4 groups of people split into 2 parties. It's a divide and conquer strategy.

[Lord Satori]

Makes me wish we listened to George Washington and never formed parties in the first place.

[BulletMagnet]

You're not talking about an obligation to keep society functioning, though. You're talking about a moral obligation to "play fair", or give money to poor people, or whatever-the-fuck, which is essentially just whining.

No, I'm talking about the same state of affairs I've mentioned quite a few times elsewhere in this thread, which can be more or less boiled down to "if things keep going the way they are, pretty soon nobody else is going to have enough money to buy most of the stuff we're selling them". Or enough education to do all the "highly technical" jobs we're supposedly having such trouble filling (let alone all the lower-end positions we could easily train them to do in two weeks, but simply refuse to), or enough health care to keep working steadily, or enough housing that they can give a bank an address to open an account with to cash their paychecks. We used to look at the mass of countries with ludicrously top-heavy wealth distribution and, rightly, consider them failed states; nowadays we're all but told to idolize them. But hey, what could go wrong?

First, LOL, they fucking created the current situation, nevermind 'tolerating' it.
Second, LOL, we also live a LOT cushier lives than our parents' generation ever would have. Take the good with the bad.

If businesses tried to pull half the garbage they routinely vomit onto us these days (get all the benefits of operating in America while exploiting overseas slave labor and tax shelters to avoid contributing anything to it? Minimum wage [less, if we can get away with it], no benefits, no overtime, AND on call at all hours? Why the hell not?) back during, say, the Nixon years (to say nothing of Eisenhower's), folks would have been out in the streets, or at least would have had enough balls to tell them to take the job and shove it; these days even a rinky-tink "movement" like Occupy Wall Street is mostly just told to shut up and get back to work. Yeah, I suppose in at least some cases we've got an Animal Farm situation going on between the generations, but if that's the case, all the more reason to raise hell rather than swallow the "you kids don't know how good you've got it" dismissal of any and all such concerns - no way anyone receiving a pension (remember those?) from their former employer gets to brag about how it's all about their superior "work ethic".

He hasn't done anything worse than the sort of things a typical politician does. If you are arguing from a moral "save-the-poor-people" position, he's OBJECTIVELY a better choice than Hillary.

I'd love to hear you expand on this one.

[BryanM]

it is beneath a human to do the work a machine can do.

I don't have time to go into detail atm, but I have to disagree with this.

Bulletmagnet, I've been waiting for you to elaborate on this for a day or two.

police response

Makes me wish we listened to George Washington and never formed parties in the first place.

It wouldn't be so bad if all the capitalists would go into one party and all of labour into the other and they fought each other directly.

[BulletMagnet]

Bulletmagnet, I've been waiting for you to elaborate on this for a day or two.

I'm surprised you remember that...and wonder why the heck it's suddenly popped back onto your radar now. In any event, just as a (possibly apocryphal) anecdote, supposedly there was some rich guy back during the Depression who was building something, around the time excavating machines started to appear. While planning construction he was told that one of the machines could do the work of 50 men; in reply he said "not necessary, I have 50 men", and gave 50 guys sorely-needed work they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Ignoring the "this is what I mean when I say businesses need to be willing to give something back for society to survive" angle, you've (IIRC) said in the past that the end goal of civilized society should be the elimination of "traditional" jobs, replaced by a state of affairs where the government basically pays you to exist; putting aside the question of whether this is truly possible, I would argue that such a system would come with very high costs. Even if you don't put much stock in the Puritanical "work always good, not working always bad" nonsense (which by itself is a major hurdle in the way of your preferred state of affairs; if you want to convince the public that's where we should be headed, you'd better polish your argument to a mirror sheen first), there's probably some truth to be found in the "idle hands are the devil's work" adage; while some people would use their newfound time to benignly benefit themselves or others, some would simply take the opportunity to mess things up at their leisure - even now, how many internet trolls/hackers/etc. say they act that way "because I've got nothing better to do"? Then there's the purely physical perspective; do you think the diminishing demand for (living-wage) manual labor is unrelated to the obesity epidemic?

I'm no Luddite, mind you, and certainly wouldn't state that the various time-saving and labor-saving devices (including the laptop I'm typing this on) we've come up with haven't been massively beneficial in a lot of ways, but much as I said about the reptilian "minimize costs, maximize profits" mindset driving business, at some point "minimize effort, maximize leisure" will itself start to do more harm than good, and simply clinging tighter and tighter to a simplistic axiom isn't the way to see where the line ought to be drawn. I'm not enough of a sociologist to make a case that would stand up to review as to precisely where such a line ought to be, but I would definitely argue that it does exist, and that we ignore it at our peril.

[BryanM]

For the true believers of the Assange, they claim that they would time the infodump at a time very close to the debates. This is supposed to be a publicity tactic - if they dumped them earlier, they'd have less exposure and the spin machine would have time to figure out how to wear it down into nothing.

If it is indeed anything. Selling arms to Saudi Arabia? This kind of shit didn't even pester Reagan. It won't make a difference to the mud lady.

I, personally, think it's very fucking unfair that Nixon was the last president to have to face any consequences for breaking the law. Tricky dick deserved better.

you've (IIRC) said in the past that the end goal of civilized society should be the elimination of "traditional" jobs, replaced by a state of affairs where the government basically pays you to exist.... which by itself is a major hurdle in the way of your preferred state of affairs.... if you want to convince the public that's where we should be headed.... your argument

It is the only possible outcome if things go well. If things go not-so well, the only other alternatives are dystopias. We can no more stay as we are, than tribes could after the invention of agriculture.

There isn't an "argument" or "convincing" to be made, it's just a non-falsifiable observation on where we're going. People don't change society. Kings and technology do. Things will be worse than they were in the great depression before normal people are exposed to these (absolutely extreme compared to the world we're living in now) concepts.

Until Jeremy Drivesalot is replaced by an autotruck, he's not gonna give a shit about the religious scifi ravings of smelly pointdexters. He's got NASCAR, getting laid, and keeping up with Call of Duty to worry about.

While planning construction he was told that one of the machines could do the work of 50 men; in reply he said "not necessary, I have 50 men", and gave 50 guys sorely-needed work they otherwise wouldn't have had.

Just as a related aside, in one of Frederick Douglass's books (they're public domain, people. Man's been dead for over a hundred years now) he gave an example of how the north and south differed in port practices. In the south, they'd unload a ship using dozens of slaves. In the north, they'd do the same job with three or four men and an ox.

Just like then, slavery and low pay do a lot to stagnate progress. A ton of conservatives laugh at the possibility of fast food workers being put out of a job by being less efficient than electricity and I'm still baffled at how that's supposed to be a "bad" thing.

Are we supposed to have Pyongyang Traffic Girls? Is that seriously what we should be aiming for?

Just make a hobbyist works program if you want people to do something that involves interacting with other humans, if increasing the birth rate is really a goal. Geez.

slavery and low pay

Just a reminder that no one cares about, prison strike is still going on. As per the 13th amendment, we procure slaves through the state now.

I'm surprised you remember that...and wonder why the heck it's suddenly popped back onto your radar now.

As I've stated before, my perception of time and scope is very different from you humans. It's really only been two and a half days for me.

[BryanM]

Debate day bingo cards just in case you're an alcoholic that's willing to watch this farce.

I'ma gonna call it preemptively for the Trumpster and do something else with my life instead.

[Bitter Almonds]

$hillary breaks even if she just manages to still be standing at the end of the debate.

[Domino]

This debate sucks, turn it off after 25 minutes. #garyjohnson

[trap15]

lmfao that was a thing

Need to vote, I guess.

[Ed Oscuro]

This debate sucks, turn it off after 25 minutes. #garyjohnson

But then you miss all of Trump's epic meltdowns.

Then again, they'll replay the best bits in attack ads later.

$hillary breaks even if she just manages to still be standing at the end of the debate.

this is actually the complete opposite of what happened - Trump started out with sniffles and very thirsty, and then just got loopy.

As a Michigander I found Trump's repeated invocations of the job situation in the Midwest obnoxious. We're gaining jobs, stop peddling this old rust belt storyline.

[Bitter Almonds]

That vitamin B shot really helped, although juuust for a bit she started to sweat on the inside when talk of her shady private server was brought up. The audience doesn't give a damn about the tax returns. They're more interested as to why she handled govt. business in the most un-transparent way possible heh hahah.

[trap15]

And yet Trump didn't destroy her for it. Hillary played everything right, I'm pretty sure a lot of undecided voters now have an opinion.

[EmperorIng]

% of time where it looked like Trump knew what he was talking about: 25%

26 minutes on was the start of a long slide down.

We're gaining jobs

Not in Illinois

Our bicentennial is 2018 and we haven't even started planning for it.

[Ed Oscuro]

The audience doesn't give a damn about the tax returns. They're more interested as to why she handled govt. business in the most un-transparent way possible heh hahah.

Speak for yourself, there. I want to know if the man's in the pocket of the Mafia or the Russians, and I want to know if he's not actually a failure.

His claims of wanting to "see" the emails is, as I've said many times, a cute trick ignoring that he keeps going on about how he can't give up his personal thoughts on strategy because we don't want the enemy to know. I'll go out on a limb and say that whatever's in her emails is going to be more interesting to the Russians than whatever is in Trump's mind - which, after tonight, appears to be "only places where Trump has recently flown or where he currently has a business venture."

Then again, we're talking about the guy who says one thing to Congress, another thing to his supporters; who says he doesn't pay taxes on stage and then sort-of denies it backstage.

The guy even managed to plug two different establishments in responses that were supposed to be about race issues - North Carolina and Palm Beach. I'm not sure he even realized he was doing it.

[quash]

This debate definitely failed to live up to expectations. We wanted WrestleMania, we got Monday Night Raw.

But even people here noticed that Trump pulled quite a few punches, opting instead to let Hillary play her cards. Looks like we're going to get a Royal Rumble before the final event.

The real spectacle here is the media's response to it. Take for example CNN's "fact check".

When Hillary grossly inflates figures, it's "true, but misleading". When Hillary's confronted with positions she's supported as recently as this year, it's claimed that she wouldn't pass them if elected into office. You cannot make this shit up.

[BryanM]

I accidentally clicked on an article in the feed and got this gem that's related to the technology vomit previously mentioned in this thread:

It’s true that over the same period, manufacturing employment declined by about 14 percent, from 22.7 million workers to 19.6 million.

But that’s not a sign that America’s manufacturing sector is in decline — it’s a sign that American manufacturers are becoming more and more productive. And ultimately, this growing productivity is what raises American living standards.

"Losing manufacturing jobs while our population increases in size helps the people laid off!"

Fuck you, Vox. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuu.

[Mischief Maker]

I can't find the exact interview I'm thinking of, but Tony Schwartz, the author of "The Art of the Deal," was correct when he said Clinton just needed to outlast Trump's ADHD.

Emperor spray tan followed Roger Ailes' advice at the beginning and landed some major body blows against Clinton where she was weakest -trade deals.

But like Schwartz said, Trump can't focus for more than a few minutes at a time before he gets tired and irritable. Once she lasted through the initial 20 minutes Trump started melting down and becoming a sputtering mess talking about "the cyber" like the old man that he pretends not to be.

Edit: Found it.

[BryanM]

Aaaaand now we have the expected avalanche of pro-Clinton propaganda.

Whatta shock.

But like Schwartz said, Trump can't focus for more than a few minutes at a time before he gets tired and irritable.. initial 20 minutes..

That's ok.

No one watching that thing lasted more than 20 minutes anyway.

[EmperorIng]

Fuck you, Vox.

The sandy vaginas at Vox secretly stealth Republicans? It's more likely than you think.

[Mischief Maker]

By the way, quash, how do you square your characterization of Trump as a stabilizing influence with his offhand comment that China should invade North Korea? (And he's made similar comments in the past).

[Giest118]

By the way, quash, how do you square your characterization of Trump as a stabilizing influence with his offhand comment that China should invade North Korea? (And he's made similar comments in the past).

Haven't you been paying attention to quash's other posts? Nothing Trump says matters. What matters is what he DOES, and quash for some reason knows EXACTLY what Trump is going to do at all times forever.

[BryanM]

Vice Presidents Don't Matter.

[Xyga]

Spoiler

[BryanM]

How all this makes me feel

Spoiler

[Cee]

By the way, quash, how do you square your characterization of Trump as a stabilizing influence with his offhand comment that China should invade North Korea?

Can you show me when he said this? All i ever heard him say regarding DPRK was that he believes China has a great deal more influence than they say they have.

[Bitter Almonds]

The audience doesn't give a damn about the tax returns. They're more interested as to why she handled govt. business in the most un-transparent way possible heh hahah.

Speak for yourself, there. I want to know if the man's in the pocket of the Mafia or the Russians, and I want to know if he's not actually a failure.

His claims of wanting to "see" the emails is, as I've said many times, a cute trick ignoring that he keeps going on about how he can't give up his personal thoughts on strategy because we don't want the enemy to know. I'll go out on a limb and say that whatever's in her emails is going to be more interesting to the Russians than whatever is in Trump's mind - which, after tonight, appears to be "only places where Trump has recently flown or where he currently has a business venture."

Then again, we're talking about the guy who says one thing to Congress, another thing to his supporters; who says he doesn't pay taxes on stage and then sort-of denies it backstage.

The guy even managed to plug two different establishments in responses that were supposed to be about race issues - North Carolina and Palm Beach. I'm not sure he even realized he was doing it.

Copies of tax returns didn't prevent the quagmire of Vietnam, the Middle East, "regime change" foreign policy, and the "too big to fail" domestic policy bullshit that chickenhawk neocons, like $hillary, promote. However, being as secretive as possible has. I vacillate between calling her "$hillary," "dickless cheney," and "grandma nixon."

[Durandal]

You see, this is all part of Trump's (or at least of his consultants') plan to show the world he is capable of reining himself in and separate his usual persona with a (slightly) more professional one, even if he won over China, Russia, and around half of the American voting base with his regular persona. While in terms of reasoning ability and being reasonable Hillary was clearly superior, she could've derailed the Trump train once Trump was forced on the defensive with or without the help of the 'Bias of the Judge' trap card and ended the election prematurely by publicly humiliating Trump for having no idea what he's talking about on national television, yet she was too afraid to take the initiative and strike while the iron was hot, and that will cost her dearly in the future.

Notice how Trump didn't attack Hillary with the Clinton Foundation? He was clearly holding back. This is only the second phase of a grand strategy guaranteed to carry Trump over to victory. Despite Clinton being the superior debater and Trump being at his weakest, the media and public can't quite decide on a clear winner. Trump has shown the ability to control himself, and next time he won't be so forgiving. Imagine how Trump would operate at full strength


How will Trump and Hillary deal with the uncovering of their e-mails and tax returns? Does Trump have another trump card up his sleeve? Can Hillary manage to survive long enough on her willpower alone before her pact with Satan runs out? Is Assange once again full of shit? Does anyone even care about the fights of the non-main characters? The Hell's Election arc is nearing its staggering climax! Find out what happens next week, at CNN!