Prelude to the Apocalypse

[GaijinPunch]

Okay... so it's come to this. We have audio proof that Trump was full of shit and completely misrepresented the seriousness of the Coranavirus. And of course his press secretary lies through her teeth about him lying through his teeth. META!!! To anyone that thought Covid was bullshit, I said all along he has more information than any of us, was totally against any kind of shut down, and eventually did an about face. Didn't take a rocket scientist to realize it was serious.

Anywho, I doubt it matters much. This is the "grab 'em by the pussy" moment of 2020. If Trump was your guy, he's still your guy - at any cost. Sadly, I do think this equated to far more death and destruction... probably more among his supporters than naysayers.

[Mischief Maker]

Clearly you're not familiar with the "cheerleader doctrine" of presidential leadership.

Alpha Males wave pom-poms!

[BulletMagnet]

Anywho, I doubt it matters much. This is the "grab 'em by the pussy" moment of 2020. If Trump was your guy, he's still your guy - at any cost.

If anyone still thinks the modern right actually cares about anything at the end of the day except how much they can stick it to the libtards, I can only wonder which country they've been living in not just these past few years but these past few decades.

I can all but guarantee that at least one or two """undecided""" voters who see this post will use it as an """excuse""" to vote Trump just to get back at me and the Establishment I so clearly represent.

[GaijinPunch]

Undecided voters are just people that will vote for Trump but are too pussy to admit it on TV.

[chempop]

But... but.. didn't you hear that Biden and the radical baby killing anti-American socialists are trying to ruin the American dream. The people on the TV box says Trump can save the economy, the thingy with the zig-zag arrow was pointing up, so must be good.

[orange808]

Frankly, neither Trump or neolib "Democrats" give a sh*t.

Congratulations. Donald Trump is your enforcer and now I have to pay you this "protection" vote to prevent having everything smashes to pieces. There's a word for this: racketeering. Congratulations to the gangsters running America.

Yeah. I'll do what needs to be done and vote Biden. Just don't think for one moment that we're friends, allies, or that my vote gives Joe Biden a "mandate". It doesn't.

You forced me. I won't forget this. I didn't really ever bave a choice. He won't be "my president". Another rigged primary and another election that I can't possibly vote for the GOP's insane candidate.

You're all Republican to me. And, I don't like Republicans.

[chempop]

I've been trying to explain the corrupt and rigged system to people for well over 20 years... I'm thankful in a way for Trump, because it has become so blatantly obvious how flawed the political system is and how little fucks are given to the vast majority of people.

I'm annoyed however with the finger pointing from those who blame Trump for all these problems we're now facing. Those who just want him out so things can go back to normal. That 'back to normal' is the perpetual destruction in the Middle East, 'back to normal' is the rich profiteering of a war on drugs and opioid epidemic, 'back to normal' is a failed eductional system that is so batshit crazy and run by people who will never need a colonoscopy because their heads are jammed so deeply up their own asshole.

Sure, this guy had no place being in charge of the country, but he's the result of a much deeper widespread problem. Will the USA bounce back and remain a global superpower? No, I seriously doubt it and I'm fine with that. I don't think at this point that proof of his knowing about how the virus was going to fuck up the country will sway things in the election. People don't support him based on any logic anyway.

As far as the whole George Floyd killing which rekindled the BLM movement with protests, rioting, and some very questionable militarized govt shenanigens... what a perfect way to take the focus off of Trump royally mishandling the pandemic -- errr I mean thank God we have a 'Law and Order' President that lets me keep muh guns and racism as a badge of freedumb.

Okay, ramble over. I've had a very long week raising other people's children so they can sit in front of zoom all day.

[Steamflogger Boss]

IT'S REVISIONIST HISTORY DAY

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/ ... 0063805440

[Mischief Maker]

What the fuck?!

Is he just trolling for hate-clicks?

[Steamflogger Boss]

What the fuck?!

Is he just trolling for hate-clicks?

Honestly not sure..

I've seen a lot of dumb shit on twitter today specifically about 9/11 bad takes.

[Mischief Maker]

If there's one clip that should be played on a loop at every 9/11 memorial for the rest of time, it's this one.

[orange808]

Krugman has gone senile.

[Mischief Maker]

New cutscene preview of the upcoming Call of Duty game set in the Reagan 80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8

[BryanM]

I've been thinking about the anthropic principle a lot lately, as I imagine everyone else here has as well.

For the one or two of you out of the loop, that's basically the idea for human life to observe the universe, the universe had to be one that produced human life. The probability of you and I existing now is very close to zero - hydrogen had to exist first, it had to form stars, stars had to die and scatter heavier elements, planets had to form, a body of water had to be relatively stable in the narrow temperature band that it can exist in for the length of time about half the lifespan of a star for multi-cellular life to form... the long lineage of animals needing to mate at the precise microsecond alone is staggeringly improbable. If a jellyfish didn't get horny at the exact right moment many hundreds of millions of years ago, we specifically wouldn't exist, though humans would. You don't even need the Harry Potter nonsense nightmare abomination stuff like "hydrogen" to get to "for all intents and purposes the probability of this should be 0".

That it strongly implies the existence of infinite universes is fun for speculation - a universe where Michael Jackson is president right now for Some Reason, an earth ruled by giant sentient rat people that by ludicrous coincidence speak perfect modern english (by definition there would be an infinite number of Earths like this.) It's fun, but not something of material concern for an incredibly long time, if ever. (It is useful for the grillpilled to kill some time with however.)

What *is* of material concern is this:

In a very annoying way, in a very real sense: getting to the point of the Observer existing is all this universe was for. All of the impossible divine providence that brought us here on this world only works retroactively, there's no miracles guaranteed in the future. Not even if quantum immortality or something similar is real - the Observer could be disintegrated completely and wake up as a boltzmann brain floating in a jar or something.

In other words, calamities that have outlandish odds as far as 1 in 10 billion will happen all the time.

And it certainly feels like the collapse of civilization seems somewhat feasible if not a foregone conclusion these days.

tldr: We're not just doomed, we have always been doomed.

Krugman has gone senile.

He's not senile nor stupid. In 2015 he raged against and lied about every single Keynesian policy he pretended to support in the past, in the hopes of getting a slot in the Clinton administration.

The democrats are openly trying to make it into the party of George W Bush - the slew of republicans endorsing Biden, etc. I've mentioned before how 20% of a population is enough to control a major political party, and it doesn't matter which particular 20% of it it is. They have their preferences, W Bush on one side, Q Anon on the other. The most ideal of all possible overton windows.

The propaganda works.

Here's a flashback comic to simpler times.

Undecided voters are just people that will vote for Trump but are too pussy to admit it on TV.

This phenomenon is a reason why the error margin on the polls will swing in Trump's favor on election day. It's socially unpopular and nobody wants to be uncool to a stranger on a phone.

[MJR]

an earth ruled by giant sentient rat people that by ludicrous coincidence speak perfect modern english

Hey, there was an animated movie about this!

[BryanM]

Eh, that Retro Re-run channel has actual legitimate licenses so the whole thing's available with some ads. That show where Mr.T is a lawyer somehow certainly fits right in with the parallel universes trope.

Troma had their main content channel removed from youtube earlier this year (2020 is great, guys), which I guess is typical capitalist behavior - no competitor can be tolerated even if they're a tiny insignificant gnat. Their goofy endorsement video of Sanders in the Iowa caucus was my favorite thing from 2016.

I regret not watching Poultrygeist when I had the chance, a bit.

[BulletMagnet]

Transplanting the RBG post-mortem discussion from the "dead pool" thread to here:

Pointing out hypocrisy in politicians is a waste of time.

Check my post again - this isn't about the politicians, it's about a significant portion of the electorate. Before anyone says anything, yes, everybody "holds their nose" and "averts their eyes" on some fronts no matter who they support and/or cast a ballot for, but modern conservatism, at least in the USA, strikes me as something significantly beyond that, especially for a group so supposedly proud of the "unshakeable bedrock principles" that supposedly motivate it. I mean, Christ, Al Gore lost votes for Bubba's blowjobs even after repeatedly condemning them, and that whole mess was laughably inconsequential compared to any of the inexcusable shit Trump (or Bush, for that matter) decided to pull; as I've said before, unless I'm missing something big, there is literally nothing motivating modern conservatism, top to bottom, beyond the desire for ever more yeeaahhh fuck yooouuu yeeahhhh.

And when a major chunk of the electorate is all too happy to abandon not only its "principles" but its own material interests (to say nothing of the country's viability as a democracy) in favor of purely willful antagonism, you've got a problem, since the only viable responses for anybody not motivated solely by spite are 1) Attempt to convince the opposition to move in a different direction in good faith, which leaves you vulnerable to being a doormat if/when they continue to refuse to act in good faith, or 2) Adopt your own scorched-earth brand of politics to force something to get done, which risks you becoming the thing you're supposed to be fighting against. Or just chirp "lol none of this actually matters" and turn up your nose, though if there's a more ideal endgame for those most responsible for the mess we're in I don't know what it is.

I don't think there is such thing as precedence when it comes to congress.

I'm not enough of a student of government to know off the top of my head, though you do only usually hear precedent cited when it comes to the courts; in the end I doubt there was even much of an opening for legal intervention back then, as McConnell pulled the entire thing out of his ass exactly the same way he's doing now, and not a single person in his party pushed back. I suppose my even bothering to post about this is really just me trying really hard to stick to "door number one" as described above, to straight up ask people who would like another conservative on the Supreme Court "is this seriously what you're willing to do to get it? Multiple times, at that? You seriously have no second thoughts about any of this?" As I said, though, if anyone's even listening, they're all keeping their mouths shut as damn tight as they ever did.

[BryanM]

It's a bit weird to talk about politics in the apocalypse thread. We're all but officially post-politics now, are we not?

Whatevs, I have no life. You better toss something in when I make a blog post on how cars are the dominant species on the planet.

Conservatism is not even a little bit different from how its always been. There've always been guys happy to join in killing coal miners during the coal wars for example. Or Southerners willing to "protect their way of life" - when their way of life involved sharecropping for those not in the 0.1%. That's when the owner class got to set the terms on what, if anything, you were allowed to make off of your farm. It was better than slavery... until you couldn't pay your debts.... happened to be black.... and got tossed into slavery.

"Owning the libs" feels good to anyone with blood in their veins, yes, but why does it feel good? Obviously it's because the libs are opposed to their goals. Their goals are basically the opposite of my goals but are easily understood.

They do actually want things. What you're confusing is a means to an end - a terminal strategy to win. They want things. Their strategy to get those things? Defeat the people standing in their way. I'd say they're doing a really fucking good job of it, would you not? If you think "healthcare, pls" is too radical, you've already yielded yourself to their vision of the future. If you want nothing, and they want something, they will always make gains.

[BulletMagnet]

Conservatism is not even a little bit different from how its always been.

I think it's safe to say that you and I are applying two different definitions of "conservatism" - or are at least referring to two different facets of it - but hopefully in a "general" sense it might be worth focusing closer in on what modern conservatives are willing to tolerate in the name of getting the Things They Want (I'd still argue that even those change at the drop of a hat as soon as a juicy enough opportunity for yeeaahhh fuck yooouu yeeeahh presents itself, but let's set that aside for the moment).

Just off the top of my head, as Nixon attempted to stonewall Congress when it requested evidence during his impeachment trial, a handful of Republicans - should have been more, yes, but even this is beyond unthinkable today - publicly objected to the stance and forced him to relent; the Democrats did the same thing when Clinton tried the same trick two decades later. When Trump completely refused to cooperate - crickets, top to bottom, down to this day.

When the Saturday Night Massacre was ordered, Nixon's Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General both resigned instead of executing it, before he found a sufficiently pliable cocksucker in Robert Bork. If you can so much as imagine the supine husk of Bill Barr (a lifelong opponent of Post-Watergate reforms, it should be noted) refusing - hell, so much as hesitating to carry out - even the very vilest of requests from Trump, you have a far more vivid imagination than I do.

Those are just one pair of particularly vivid examples; were I commenting on current affairs back in the 70's I'm sure I would have had plenty of differences with conservatism then just as I do now, but beyond that point I find the notion that "nothing's really changed since then" highly unpersuasive.

[BryanM]

As a materialist, I care more about the imperialist atrocities+domestic welfare, and less about the sock puppet show. So no, we won't agree on that.

Decorum, much like the super-majority requirement in the senate, has always been a fraud. You're saying they're able to be more brazen and less cautious because they've been winning so hard so often in the last 40 years? Of course. If I had the kind of lead they had I'd be teabagging the Washington Generals left and right, too. It's awesome at demoralizing the enemy.

The degradation of politics through decades of television should be respected.

A lot of people on the utoob have been talking about alienation and the particular idiosyncrasies in our various flavors of fash. While supremacist incels saving their vital fluids (which Mischief brings up on occasion) is a comical scene of self imposed misery... you have to wonder how fulfilled they must feel with their sense of community, and how good they must feel from winning all the time.

They won't accept they've been playing on easy mode against an opponent literally paid to lose, but, that's ego for you.


And I mean... holy shit man. The democrats coronated Harris as the next king of the party, who'll be the next president if she wins the election. Even Tulsi freaking nobody Gabbard won infinitely more delegates than she did in the primary (this is not me joking or being hyperbolic, 2 is literally infinitely times more than 0). Couldn't even entertain the idea of putting Warren in that position, even with her years of absolute loyalty. It's all a farce.

So the liberals haven't changed any, either.

[orange808]

The Audacity of Hype

[BulletMagnet]

Decorum, much like the super-majority requirement in the senate, has always been a fraud.

Seems I might need to take back what I said two posts ago about the mindset most desirable to the nihilists, methinks you've possibly topped yourself.

[BryanM]

The Audacity of Hype

: (

And there's no way to primary a sitting president.

We're so fucking dead. Getting to zero emissions by 2050 would still be disasterous, and we're currently on route to zero emissions somewhere between "when oil has a rate of return of 1:1" and "when the oil literally runs out". I'm not sure how they'll extract oil without using oil, but I have faith in their ability to create financial incentives and subsidies to make the impossible possible.

nihilists

Yeah things were so much more civil in the past. No one ever got beaten to death in congress by a cane before or anything.

Jesus christ. The electoral maps back then flipped red and blue like a Porygon-induced seizure. Of course they had to care about appearances because they had to in order to win fucking elections. If they had a static locked map with all of ~six swing states like we have today, they'd have been completely loyal to their figurehead back then as well. The decorum had tangible strategic purpose, it was not out of our kind capitalist overlords being nice.

Different battlefield conditions, you use a different strategy. Never misconstrue a symptom for the root underlying cause.

You should know this. It belittles everyone here that I had to say something so boneheadedly obvious out loud.

The term for thinking that people care about themselves more than anonymous strangers they never see or hear from is called "cynicism", not "nihilism", btw. A core strategy of capitalism is to isolate people from one another as much as possible, to jack up that "anonymous stranger" ratio. You don't know the people growing+harvesting your food, the foreigners that make your clothes, the dudes maintaining your road, etc. Every person feels like an island. They love it when you call people names.

(That time Nixon and Reagan called black people monkeys is a good example of how little the cogs in congress, as people, have changed.)

[BulletMagnet]

The term for thinking that people care about themselves more than anonymous strangers they never see or hear from is called "cynicism", not "nihilism", btw.

Seeing as you seem to believe that this self-destructive self-interest can never be overcome on any significant scale and that anything aside from mocking those who believe otherwise is a waste of time, in your case I frankly don't see much difference.

[Mischief Maker]

Have to confess I've taken lately to laughing hysterically at the whole situation:

Spoiler

It's Donald Trump, you dorks!

[GaijinPunch]

I have no words.

[BryanM]

That we have to go to war with Iran just because they sell ~22% of their oil to China shows how desperate we really are, materially. The invasion is going to cost far, far more than Iraq did, and we're doing it to essentially lick the bottom of the cereal bowl just a little deeper. All mainly for the sake of sustaining car culture - spending shitloads of energy to move tons of metal to move a couple hundred pounds of meat around every day. Humans >_>

They have precious zinc too, but I think that's tertiary loot compared to things like copper and lithium. If the war is even break-even it'll be a miracle.

The lies that are being told to murder the shit out of these people, and squander our scarce remaining resources, somehow manages to upset me a little more than the spin republicans use to remain loyal to that dang cheeto in the white house.

It's Donald Trump, you dorks!

I legitimately can't be 70% sure whether that painting is pro Trump or anti Trump

... I know many christians are weird creepy death cultists, but as an atheist it's hard for me to reconcile putting up an effigy of a dead person as saying anything other then "yay he's dead"

... I mean come on, you have that hanging on the wall. You walk by that sipping your WalMart™ knockoff V8 juice, see the picture of the dead guy, go "yep he's still dead" nod your head and carry on with your day

(I've put up photos of family and old pets before. In none of them were they nailed to anything or bleeding out. Perfectly healthy, sometimes happy even. Am I the only one who thinks putting up images of dying people nailed to things is the kind of thing a serial killer would do?)

[orange808]

Am I the only one who thinks putting up images of dying people nailed to things is the kind of thing a serial killer would do?)

https://youtu.be/MoAhR37zXb8

[BryanM]

I honestly try to only look at donor lists since that's all that matters, who holds power, but sometimes personal bits do manage to distract me. Someone mentioned that Harris had sex with a 60+ year old married man to advance her career, and while I'd be surprised if she hadn't, I had to google it to make sure it wasn't false.

And found a really sad Hill article by the guy she boinked for money and fame.

In it, he implores her not to accept the VP position if it is offered to her. The words he says to support his opinion are rubbish: "You'd only have a ~50% chance of being president! Instead of the 0% chance you would have if you take my advice and refuse it!" Brilliant politikspeak. Not good enough to fool a goat but good enough for the decorous to feign that decorum was used here. (It was not used.) Due to Biden's age, most wouldn't be surprised if Harris was president in all but name, and then in name when he passes. She'd be a complete idiot to have refused the position.

So why did this guy try to stab her in the dick? The obvious reason would be that he's in another faction in the party. Maybe a part of the Pelosi faction that wants to elevate that Kennedy boob as the next god emperor. Maybe someone else. If he felt any affection for his former sex friend, enough to outweigh the obligations he has to his patrons, he could have just said nothing.

Duckworth being mentioned at the end also managed to remind me of all the Trump judges she has voted to confirm. So many.

[Mischief Maker]

Well if you're looking at donor lists, it's worth noting that The Hill is owned by Jimmy Finkelstein, a friend of Trump.


Today was the first day of Absentee Ballot drop-offs in Madison. I took care of it early, it was quick and the lady there was helpful and more than willing to sign off as my witness.

I now feel a weight off my shoulders similar to when I got a negative result from that covid test this summer. The way I see it, I voted for Bernie in the primary and against Trump in the general.

I strongly urge people to hold their noses rip the bandaid off for Biden ASAP so your vote is in the system and will be counted on election day. If it's too close to call on election day and all comes down to a slow trickle of absentee ballots mailed at the last minute through DeJoy's post office, expect a repeat of the 2000 Brooks Brothers Riot (only this time they'll have guns) followed by a repeat of the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision by the 6-3 Supreme Court. Trump pardoned Roger Stone for a reason.

Spoiler

And speaking of the 6-3 SCOTUS:

Confidential to Jimmy Dore, I never felt stupid for voting Hillary in 2016. At all.

Why did you keep bringing that up for the last 4 years after voting your conscience for Jill Stein?

And if you're a Trump supporter... voting's for cucks!