Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Xyga]

quash has demonstrated that Trump's campaign strategy was internet trolling.

Well, Trump won the election, so I can't deny the effectiveness of it.

Putin set up a quashes-network of sociopaths and other kinds of failures at humanity all over the internet to get his puppet Trump elected and it worked indeed, and it's not over until the EU is gone, and with time our entire species so retarded it'll go extinct, welcoming death with a smile.

[Bananamatic]

[quash]

quash has demonstrated that Trump's campaign strategy was internet trolling.

Well, Trump won the election, so I can't deny the effectiveness of it.

Putin set up a quashes-network of sociopaths and other kinds of failures at humanity all over the internet to get his puppet Trump elected and it worked indeed, and it's not over until the EU is gone, and with time our entire species so retarded it'll go extinct, welcoming death with a smile.

Compared to the alternative of an AI politburo ruling over an underclass with no identity, I'll take my chances.

[Xyga]

Extremists like you who want to watch the world burn are mentally crippled by an incapacity to understand what they're calling to destroy nor the magnitude of harm it'll cause when it happens. There is just no sense of reality, no measure, no empathy in your fantasy world. Immature, delusional, fucking sociopaths, no wonder you have scumbags like Putin and Trump for leaders.

The thing that reveals how fucking sick humanity is though, is that there are so many who'd be otherwise qualified as reasonably intelligent, cultivated, and healthy people who are missing the irrational/madness flags and consider listening to proselyte assholes like you.
Putin and his troll armies, the alt-right and whatever similarly disabled yet opportunist fuckers with ill intentions towards humanity based their strategy on this: channel the widespread angst of the people at a fin-de-siecle moment when they're questioning the state of their societies, give the push to make them forget/divorce in panic from the values that tie their societies together, using every rhetorical devices like they're drugs to confuse them so they don't realize the gravity of what they're doing.

There's always been opportunist fuckers like you at every 'turn of the century'/end of era, when things aren't actually so bad that humanity could work out solution if it stayed smart and sticking together, but you get out of the shadows with your plans of destruction, set on making every aspect and people of this world you can't understand and hate go miserable and die, so you can have your fake happy society that's pharaonic magnitudes worse in every aspect than the one you pushed people to destroy.
The fact that so many fail to see what's happening and what people like you and your masters are, welcoming the artisans of their downfall, the executioners of their world, is proof it's already too late.

[quash]

Oh boy, I'm the extremist, am I?

The complete lack of self awareness here is staggering. It'd be comical if it weren't a sombering peek at the cross section of our society.



Go burn some buildings with your Antifa buddies or something.

[BryanM]

Good times when Pelosi said "we're capitalists and that's just the way it is." Makes their actions make perfect sense - no capitalist sees the human beings who are capital as human. You don't consider an 18 wheeler to be a person, so why would you think the cog piloting it was one? A non-starter. Sad.

These are wild meme times we live in. My favorite sign at Protest Week #1:



Now in t-shirt format.

[brokenhalo]

Well, looks like our corporate overlords were able to kill the foreign payments rule in the Dodd-Frank act. This article does a pretty good job of explaining what the rules intended purpose was. Exxon letting Rex Tillerson come work for the government is already paying dividends.

And in wacko-la-la land, thankfully we have Kellyann to remind us about the Bowling Green Massacre. Ohhhhhh, so that's why we need the muslim ban. Silly me. It all makes sense now.

[CIT]

C+, you're starting to get it. You need to go deeper, though.

Everything I say is A+++

Everything you say is F--- and completely wrong. A complete disaster. So sad!

And I know you like it hard and deep, but that's not the way I fly.

[HenAi]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

How lovely.

[antron]

Well Nikki Haley wasn't fired this morning. I guess Trump got it into his thick skull that Russia has stolen land from Ukraine and is in the process of stealing more. Some here should take note.

[BulletMagnet]

Looks like World War III is back on, then. Well, he managed to delay it a couple of weeks, totally worth committing societal hara-kiri over.

And in wacko-la-la land, thankfully we have Kellyann to remind us about the Bowling Green Massacre.

But remember, if something remotely similar has ever happened, even under wildly different circumstances and on a much smaller scale, it still counts as "truth" (see, proof that he was totally right on voter fraud, too)! Moreover, if anyone dares to cherry-pick the 99 percent of what you say that's proven bullshit instead of only ever mentioning the 1% (if that) which might contain merit if you squint really hard, it's automatically worse than anything you've ever said or done, and eternal proof of how biased everyone and everything is against you!

But in the end even that doesn't matter, because just the fact that people actually react to the ludicrous, inexcusable garbage you unleash upon them, that they talk about any of it, means you're automatically right, you're automatically winning, which is precisely why you should never acknowledge, let alone participate in, any and all issues that don't come with a long-ago-debunked WorldNetDaily article spot-welded onto them, because then you might not be winning anymore. And we can't risk that, now, can we?

[quash]

I have to say, your particular brand of political fan fiction has a distinct way of chasing its own tail.

[BulletMagnet]

But remember, if something remotely similar has ever happened, even under wildly different circumstances and on a much smaller scale, it still counts as "truth"

Perfect example: when Trump claimed there were thousands of Muslims cheering on 9/11 and the media insisted there were none, only to later come clean that there were indeed some reported incidents of that happening.

By the by, the closest things I've found to what you claim is this (they weren't even Muslim, or actually celebrating), and a group of less than 10 people in Palestine, who Arafat himself condemned. Both bear next to zero resemblance to what Trump insisted (and still insists, along with all that unbelievable birth certificate stuff from Hawaii!) he saw with his own two eyes, but somehow the media proved its bias by not acceding that Trump was somehow "right" on this all along when he refused to change his story. By that metric, Hillary was also completely "right" when she said she'd ducked sniper fire because someone half a world away pulled a trigger that same day, should have stuck to her totally accurate account, and the media should have issued across-the-board retractions of their biased criticism (and apologize for their sorely lacking coverage of snipers up to that point). Simply put, that's a bar so self-servingly low it's impossible not to clear it...and, incidentally, the only bar Trump or any of his sycophants are capable of passing.

Moreover, if anyone dares to cherry-pick the 99 percent of what you say that's proven bullshit instead of only ever mentioning the 1% (if that) which might contain merit if you squint really hard, it's automatically worse than anything you've ever said or done, and eternal proof of how biased everyone and everything is against you!

Trump lied, but the response was undeniably worse than the accusation. What did they have to gain from censoring that which they themselves reported on years prior?

Nobody "censored" anything: they said, accurately, that the "thousands cheering on the rooftops" claim was bullshit, any way you slice it, and that whatever meager "celebrations" did occur (and the only confirmed one I'm aware of, as mentioned above, was both minuscule and overseas) bore no real resemblance whatsoever to what Trump insists happened. Sorry, but the only way the Trumpskis are the wronged party here is if you're of the "if it's 1% true, it's 100% true" mindset, which puts you in roughly the same category of rational discussion as a particularly bratty four-year-old with his hand still lodged in the cookie jar.

But in the end even that doesn't matter, because just the fact that people actually react to the ludicrous, inexcusable garbage you unleash upon them, that they talk about any of it, means you're automatically right, you're automatically winning

The small factual errors and hyperbole are designed to provoke a specific response; one that harps on less significant details while ignoring the larger picture. [...] Think of this as a contest: for every second you spend thinking about any one of my posts, you owe me a dollar and viceversa. So far, I'm winning by a mile.

Of course, you can't be held responsible for any of this, because I shamelessly provoked you into it.

which is precisely why you should never acknowledge, let alone participate in, any and all issues that don't come with a long-ago-debunked WorldNetDaily article spot-welded onto them, because then you might not be winning anymore.

Still waiting with bated breath, Kellyanne.

[Giest118]

I assume quash's apparent inability to recognize the very concepts he literally just espoused is all a part of his game.

Of course, making those things the norm for public discourse is going to fuck up the basic ability of communication as a concept to remain useful to humanity, the consequences of which will be far-reaching and catastrophic. But as long as it gets the LEBERELS crying, it's all good. Forever.

[BryanM]

In a very simple fundamental sense, it's a battle of wits against someone who thinks having Montgomery Burns in charge of the world is a good thing.* A doomed and wasteful endeavor from the start.


* This also applies to the democratic primary voters who thought their own version of Montgomery Burns was perfectly fine.

____


More confusingly: Depeche Mode still exists?!?! I... am really shocked by this revelation. Also: why does this thing have over a million views? Is the VEVO stream just that popular or something??

[Xyga]

That thing is more a Montgomery Burns X Eric Cartman chimaera (bio-engineered in Russia), with the dreadful mix of bad education, psychotic condition(s), drugs and nasty side-effects that implies.
+ millions of similarly broken followers and gurus around the world supporting it.

[BryanM]

A reminder that the Clinton campaign was literally run by a computer: they had a piece of custom software called Ada (named after Ada of Lovelace - this fact is triggering to some programmers for a number of reasons) which determined where to spend their money and where to hold events. Ada made the decision not to step foot in Wisconsin and Michigan, and to not buy many ads there.

Recently one of the women who agreed with Ada's wicked plan, said the party shouldn't move to the left, that not everyone wants a $15 min wage, that it's all about identity from here out. (Let's ignore the fact that when it comes to the minimum wage, it's disproportionally held by women and people of color.)

^ People like this were in charge of the >$1 billion dollar warchest. They were in charge of the talking points that hundreds of millions of people heard and still hear. And, of course, they're the ones who hold the majority of the votes on who will chair the DNC.

I don't honestly believe Ellison has a chance, I think he's lost before it even started. But we'll see for sure two weeks from now when it's held. (Maybe I'll be shocked again - freeing Manning was something that cost them nothing. Ellison, would cost them something. My tone on the party would change vastly if he were appointed instead of Perez.)

It's not the spectator's responsibility to win a contest - it's the job of the teams directly competing. The democratic party is supposed to be a knife, but right now it's a spoon. You can't stab zombies with a spoon.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, taking the $15 minimum wage thing - even assuming Clinton didn't want $15 minimum wage, how did issues like this hurt her against Trump of all people?

Clinton vs. Bern is another story.

I have to say, your particular brand of political fan fiction has a distinct way of chasing its own tail.

Like a golden ferret, perchance?

[BryanM]

Well, taking the $15 minimum wage thing - even assuming Clinton didn't want $15 minimum wage, how did issues like this hurt her against Trump of all people?

Her reluctance to stay in front and champion even her support of $12 could have been enough to throw the election*, considering how close it was. They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads telling people that Trump is an asshole, instead of "hey, if you're working a shit job for minimum wage, get your ass to the polls and I'll make your life less terrible. My opponent isn't going to do shit for you: I will."

* Just based on the political competence such a campaign would by definition exert.

The biggest issue like this that hurt her was trade. Trump killed her in the rustbelt on trade. Hammering her in the face over and over again about NAFTA and the TPP. This was the final ad he ran. This is the final ad she ran. If you were Joe Nobody working your ass off with not enough free time to fist yourself and this was the only thing you ever saw about the election, how would you know Trump was completely full of shit?

And what were all her choices to respond to it:

- Defend free trade. (An unpopular stance.)
- Renounce free trade. (No one will believe her. But honestly, probably the best by far.)
- Try to dodge the issue as much as possible and hope it'd go away. (The one they went with.)

It didn't go away.

Hillary Clinton, the candidate and person, had all the raw materials necessary to win this thing and win it big. Hillary Clinton, the political machine, didn't. With their tactics, Ted Cruz 2020 was very likely, had they eeked out a win. In my mind, it was a near certainty.

this was the only thing you ever saw about the election

The republicans are really good at this philosophy. They get on national TV, they act like they're handling a million dollars. Which they are. Steer the conversation, lie, spit out an anecdote, then lie some more. Non-materialists love the shit out of anecdotes.

One of the most shocking revelations to me was sometime in the 2010's when someone (it might have been M^2, or from somewhere else) informed me that John Kerry had a healthcare plan. That's... not very helpful if no one knows what it is.

[gameoverDude]

While Trump was right to unplug the TPP, that's about all he's been good for. He's wrong on nearly everything else.

I think the Electoral College needs to be repurposed. Instead of using the delegates by state system, it should be a counting house for a unified national popular vote (in which case Hilary Clinton would've nailed it). When you vote for POTUS, wouldn't you prefer to vote as an American rather than a Minnesotan/New Yorker/Georgian etc? This would make all national votes equally important for each candidate- Republicans would lose that "Let's not worry about the South, we'll have them" smugness, and would no longer say "Fuck California, we got a snowball's chance there". The two parties would have to campaign nationally, which I think is fair.

As for Trump winning it, I'm still left with one big question: HOW? Whatever possessed people to vote for a washed out reality star with nought for political experience? Are we going to end up with Kim Kardashian for Prez someday, with Kanye West in a dual role of First Man/Vice President? I'm trying to stay hopeful but sometimes it's so tough.

As for Muslims, I believe "Thou shalt not kill" and the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" are universal. Jesus, Buddha, Bahá'u'lláh, and Mohammed all have said something to that extent. True Muslims don't commit mass murder in God's name. Trump would throw the baby out with the bath water.

[trap15]

While Trump was right to unplug the TPP, that's about all he's been good for. He's wrong on nearly everything else.

Pretty much.

As for Trump winning it, I'm still left with one big question: HOW?

Because a lot of people assumed he would change after the election. Also Hillary was entirely unlikable and a poor candidate.

[Bananamatic]

As for Muslims, I believe "Thou shalt not kill" and the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" are universal.

are you saying it's time for another crusade

[BulletMagnet]

As for Trump winning it, I'm still left with one big question: HOW? Whatever possessed people to vote for a washed out reality star with nought for political experience?

Because conservatives have, for decades on end, with little real pushback from either the left or the center, turned outright falsehoods about the way the country works into "conventional wisdom" (tax cuts for rich people increase revenue! for-profit healthcare is the best in the world!), and moreover have insisted, again and again, that running a government is easy, it's all a sham, any idiot can do it, all you need is to unfailingly kowtow to the interests of the very wealthy while still somehow being an asshole to "the establishment", which generally includes anyone with relevant expertise pointing out that their numbers never add up; the latter, of course, serve as "proof" that everyone else is always biased and out to get them, which in turn justifies their most bizarre and extreme actions as "balance" to the overwhelming opposition they face.

To a large portion of the country, Trump is basically the culmination of nearly everything they've been hearing in terms of political talk for the better part of forty years running; "finally, a guy who gets it!"

[BryanM]

As for Trump winning it, I'm still left with one big question: HOW? Whatever possessed people to vote for a washed out reality star with nought for political experience?

Political experience in the abstract is a negative, not a positive. "Here's a person who became a millionaire by selling people out in exchange for bribes." Pretty much any other career is more respectable.

How he won is simple. Most Democrats are paid to depress their turnout (which is a greater number of people) as much as possible to make the republican party politically viable. (DLC was backed by guys like Koch Industries, this is all well-known ancient history. The Kochs certainly didn't back candidates like the Clintons in order to beat republicans.)

Elon Musk isn't terribly worried about the outcome of the election. He's fixated on creating a private underground tunnel that leads from the back of his house to his job so he can commute in zoomy peace and quiet, with no sun glaring in his eyes. That's his only concern in the world, and the type of guy our politicians work for.

[Rob]

[BryanM]

That guy's chart...

Spoiler

(This fucker made a chart trying to make a straight line look like an exponential.)

(THAT FUCK)

Sid the Science Kid would not approve. When undead claymation muppets disapprove of your weasally slimey way of life, it's time to re-evaluate things on a fundamental level.

(God, it doesn't even note the affluence level of the immigrants. Like it's cheap to buy a plane ticket. Like you don't have easier access to higher education in almost any other country. Like our immigration policies don't prefer people who'll pay taxes over those who won't.)

I'm honestly much less bothered by the guys who just say they don't like certain kinds of people. They're honest and don't try to waste my time with hours of bullshit trying to justify themselves. They don't go around wearing the skin of dead rationality over their face.

[ED-057]

Whatever possessed people to vote for a washed out reality star

The same thing that possessed people to vote for a scandal-plagued, soulless pantsuit. These were presented as the only two legitimate choices.

There was plenty of reporting on how unpopular the candidates were. But everybody ignored (and still ignores) the black hole in the room. The two party system has completely rotted the notion of democracy from the inside out. Democracy is deader than Elvis. Even the chocolate coating has worn off of this turd.

[ED-057]

I have a hard time understanding how the labels in this graphic are supposed to match up with each axis. But I like how the pattern repeats itself as if it were a fractal. After all, everybody is somebody's Hitler.

[CIT]

Each quadrant shows what the quadrant looks like to the people in that quadrant. It's the kind of thing college juniors think is super clever, except for the fact that it isn't.

[Rob]