Prelude to the Apocalypse

[orange808]

Hauling illegal immigrants out of prisons to the border is a quick and painless circus act. Biden could have easily done it without harming his support, provided he wasn't a centrist lap dog with very little real support (to begin with).

Real people don't care if immigrant criminals get deported. I'm not convinced Trump will follow through and take cheap labor from his rich friends. We'll see. I bet he's got an angle. We'll see what kind of stunt this is. His supporters are stupid, so he doesn't have to actually do it. They don't know or care. Trumpers don't keep score or pay attention.

[Sengoku Strider]

Hauling illegal immigrants out of prisons to the border is a quick and painless circus act. Biden could have easily done it without harming his support, provided he wasn't a centrist lap dog with very little real support (to begin with).

Real people don't care if immigrant criminals get deported. I'm not convinced Trump will follow through and take cheap labor from his rich friends. We'll see. I bet he's got an angle. We'll see what kind of stunt this is. His supporters are stupid, so he doesn't have to actually do it. They don't know or care. Trumpers don't keep score or pay attention.

I'll put you down for "The Purge wont actually be that bad" then.

[orange808]

Hauling illegal immigrants out of prisons to the border is a quick and painless circus act. Biden could have easily done it without harming his support, provided he wasn't a centrist lap dog with very little real support (to begin with).

Real people don't care if immigrant criminals get deported. I'm not convinced Trump will follow through and take cheap labor from his rich friends. We'll see. I bet he's got an angle. We'll see what kind of stunt this is. His supporters are stupid, so he doesn't have to actually do it. They don't know or care. Trumpers don't keep score or pay attention.

I'll put you down for "The Purge wont actually be that bad" then.

Put me down for: Trump is a serial liar and his rich friends love cheap labor.

If he follows through with what he promised, it will create all kinds of chaos and hurt the people that put him back in power. We'll see what happens.

Not my fault either way. I didn't vote for him.

Put me down for, Trump will have an easier time doing evil things that won't hurt his rich supporters. If there's an alternative way to make a profit and dump losses onto unsuspecting American 401k's, it's not a problem for Republicans. There's no way ro exploit this for a quick profit. Expelling cheap labor will bring nothing but pain for predominantly white American "small business".

I still suspect a political stunt. It's all his followers need. They don't know or care what Trump really does. I posted Trump's "accomplishments" from his first term earlier. MAGA people don't know any of that. They're stupid.

SpaceX (Elon Musk) just tried to have the federal labor board ruled unconstitutional. Trump isn't going to champion American workers or try to lift wages. I'm sorry, but it's difficult to believe he'll expel cheap labor. We'll see.

[Sengoku Strider]

Put me down for: Trump is a serial liar and his rich friends love cheap labor.

If he follows through with what he promised, it will create all kinds of chaos and hurt the people that put him back in power.

Not if you put them all in prisons to labour. Now you've got a dependable, on-schedule supply of them.

[orange808]

Put me down for: Trump is a serial liar and his rich friends love cheap labor.

If he follows through with what he promised, it will create all kinds of chaos and hurt the people that put him back in power.

Not if you put them all in prisons to labour. Now you've got a dependable, on-schedule supply of them.

Prison meat processing plants after he guts the FDA? Sounds about right, but let's not give them any more ideas.

Hey, they can stuff the people into the grinder at the end of their shifts. And, we all wonder why our Tyson chicken cutlets taste a little gamey. They'd do it if they could. Just start fresh everyday! Fresh meat and fresh workers!

Yeah, I gave up on Republicans...

[neorichieb1971]

No point having borders if they mean nothing. In the past 10 years i've been going thorugh immigration at the airport only to come home and see folk coming over on boats without a passport.

If you have one, you have to have the other.

[Sengoku Strider]

Wrestling lady seems like the most qualified and logical person to do this job.

Spoiler

The job being to dismantle her own dept.

[BryanM]

I read a youtube comment the other day that stuck with me. A guy recounting his experience as a paper boy. Apparently about 10% of the people on his route were predators, ranging from very hot to creepers like Herbert from Family Guy.

Suppose it's appropriate we consistently have those kinds of people in positions of power... in some ways this is kind of refreshing, reminds me of that Gil Fullbright bit. 'I'll do those backroom deals, in front of your face!' The mask never hid anything, and now that it's off, everyone can stop pretending to be anything but monstrous.

Does anyone ever talk about the internet in this whole "prelude to the apocalypse" thing?

..

I wonder how many of you get up out of bed and read your favourite apps, websites and forums before you do anything else? Then wonder why its PM already and you haven't done anything yet . Crazy world we live in.

It comes up a little bit. I used to often talk about how it's too good to last in so many ways, that they'll have to take it away from us.

Millennials and below went 70%+ to Bernie. We're gonna wrest control of the primary electorate from the Gen X'ers and boomers soon - maybe 2028 or 2032. Can't allow that. With our 82% nazi senate and all.

(I lol'd originally at the recent Onion video about the skinheads running a sweep against the klan, 'of course, people want to see their racism, they don't wanna cover it up!' But the senate being 82% nazi really doesn't make it feel like satire, so much as a bland literal recitation of reality. Who else should be our president, than a hitler-latent-space kinda fellow? I can kind of understand why so many journalists became grifters in this era - if screaming at the top of your lungs for decades accomplished jack shit and fuck all, why wouldn't you just give up and join Team Bag? Get some blubber off this bleached whale before the dynamite goes off..)

And yeah, useless chatter can feel like wire-heading sometimes. I had to completely unplug from all inputs to get any writing done this year; it feels weird man, when you detach from all these things that don't matter.

If you wanna be productive, work's gotta come first. But once it's done, you don't care about the chatter as your brain used up all its attention for the day.

I've been thinking a lot about how important inputs are to minds these days..

I'll put you down for "The Purge wont actually be that bad" then.

Orange is weirdly optimistic about things always staying the same!

A lot of humans are like this. There is no past, there is no future, there is only an imagined framework of now. It freaks me out!

Spoiler

[orange808]

Orange is weirdly optimistic about things always staying the same!

A lot of humans are like this. There is no past, there is no future, there is only an imagined framework of now. It freaks me out!

Nope. I can explain if you like.

It's the same reason we'll never actually change the health care system or get guns off the streets. Truly purging illegal immigrants is hard work that will require a lot of planning, labor, and sacrifice. You think Americans are going to do that? We'll see.

A proper policy change would require a lot planning, hard work, and determination. Everything is connected and it all works in concert. I still seriously doubt Trump is going to shock the markets and hurt his rich friends. Ultimately, he'll also poke a hole in the economy and his own stupid followers will turn on him (and blame him for doing what they asked for).

When I was young, I didn't understand how deeply everything (around me) is connected. Reductive reasoning and the Socratic Method made a lot of sense at 15, but the appeal has faded with every passing year.

Everything is ridiculously complicated. Beyond the natural world where things don't always have to make sense (infinite curvature of a singularity can hold everything in the universe inside a finite space). Light doesn't escape because there's no way you could look at it. It's impossible to see, but it exists. It's impossible, but it's not.

People make even less sense; contradictions are a normal part of human cognition and we don't always act in our self interest. We're even capable of spite and altruism--where we intentionally work against our own individual best interests. Most of the time, we're just daft, lazy, greedy, and stupid.

Oh yes. Trump will do terrible things. No doubt about it, but he'll need to bring the American aristocracy to heel if he really plans to follow through on all of his agenda. I expect most of his "accomplishments" will involve supercharging neoliberalism and dialing America back to a new 19th century Gilded Age of Robber Barons--using authoritarian policy to counteract the gains democracy has made since then. With authoritarian power, they can finally crush organized labor and democracy for good.

Oh, I'm not the least bit naive. The most depressing part is: the policy changes that will really fuck us all are the ones Trump CAN DO.

It's not really that hard to change the country into a third world banana republic without fucking the economy in the process. All they want to do is stop doing things and there's no additional steps afterwards. There's no replacements for the programs they will eliminate.

Quitting can be easy. Not putting in effort is easy by definition. If you didn't need money, you could quit your job. Not going and doing your job wouldn't be hard to implement. Same thing, here. Not enforcing regulations, not paying benefits, and not counting votes isn't really that hard to do. It requires little planning, it's easy to implement instantly, and economic consequences aren't guaranteed.

Trump can do that shit now. The authoritarian part needs to come together before he can force "shared sacrifice" on rich American aristocrats. I don't like referencing pre-WW2 Germany, but there are some loose parallels. Regardless, I seriously doubt Trump can just spend his first year purging all the immigrants. You've got the cart in front of the horse.

Republicans are fucking liars. The immigration issue and the leaky border happened with their consent, because they benefit from it. It's easier for them the way it is. They're not going to sacrifice and work if they don't have to.

-----

P.S. I'm not a humanist and I can't wait for AI to fucking stomp pretentious and condescending, centrist, and smug Reagan Democrat "creatives" into the dust. I can't wait to tell one of them that, "I want fries with that". Bring it on. Those fuckers didn't give a shit when everyone got fucked over.

My issues with your silly "AI is alive" shit is rooted in what I know, not philosophical bullshit. Despite my own ramblings, I have little patience for philosophy. Most of philosophy is a Rube Goldberg machine. For.example, I can tell the difference between right and wrong and contractions are part of life. Cultural Relativism doesn't make something like Sparta okay--or even a neutral subject. Those people were fuckers. I don't need to talk around in circles. It's obvious they were fuckers.

It's frustrating that people say LLMs are parrots. If you've ever spent any time bonding with a clever bird, you would understand that: even a parrot is properly conscious. LLMs predict tokens based a model. A slot machine appears random. It isn't. Perception isn't reality. Can consciousness somehow be built? Of course it can. Look in the mirror. We're just not there yet. When we cross the threshold, it will become obvious. The philosophical double talk will be as tiresome as some egghead telling me Sparta was a different place and time, so their slavery state was fine.

Humanist people are frustrating. Sure. If I could completely describe and understand everything about my brain, it wouldn't make me any less alive. My problem with LLMs being "alive" is more than just pulling back the curtain. Knowing how it works doesn't change anything, right? We do understand bacteria and viruses very well. Bacteria is alive and a virus is not. LLMs don't meet the criteria for me. Knowing how it works helps me make that distinction, but it's not an automatic decision based solely on the ability to analyze how a LLM operates.

No my views aren't based on some silly "nothing changes ever" bullshit.

[neorichieb1971]

The only thing I see growing in this world is one gigantic rat race. The rich don't care how bad the working class have it because they are behind a firewall just looking at their profit pie charts.

I don't believe in any government that cannot control the markets and you cannot control the markets until the governments of the world make policies for a level global playing field. If the UK ups the minimum wage, we experience further inflation through the markets so the policy is just a higher numbered wage with zero benefit. The governments only spend money to say they have, with zero accountability for how it is being spent. Folk on benefits have side hustles, housing given to them when they have their partners right with them anyway with a full wage.

In the UK we have speed cameras catching people going to work, whilst people on benefits sit at home with no chance of ever getting caught. We have a school curriculum which teaches how to serve 9-5 jobs of which a healthy amount of them will just go on youtube and make money there (People in the USA are generally good at doing this comparing UK to USA living standards whilst sitting at home watching the views go up). There isn't really any education which gives you a compass these days if you end up in a standard of mediocrity.

I am starting to see cars go through red lights at night because nobody is watching. I am seeing folk doing 23mph in a 40mph zone swerving all over the place at night, probably under the influence of alcohol because nobody is looking anymore. If you look around, who is upholding the law and standards?

I have a friend who wants to sell his house which he only got a year ago because he mentaly cannot fathom a way to pay it off. So he wants to go back to renting simply because making a monthly payment seems more doable.

I have a son in the USA who pays 5k a year for auto insurance and has to live with his brother because he cannot afford to even rent a place. My 17yo niece is passing her test this month hopefully, only to meet the same situation and is willing to spend her whole life savings on 1 years insurance. I believe her car will be half the value of her 1 year insurance.

I am surrounded by struggling people who ALL work, some have 2 jobs. I won't be surprised if I am on the chopping block in 2025 as I am heavily dependent on how many businesses go into cloud platforms rather than Datacenters. Also dealing with offshore teams in India doing a fair share of the work.

The car industry is in turmoil because of energy prices and customers being confused on what propulsion system is best to buy right now. Steel is not profitable without government handouts, retail has been in decline since Amazon took over the world with a bit of help from covid19 and excrutiating rent prices for shops that have almost zero footfall.

The USA has an extreme benefit of having most of the tech giants and yet its a country with 30 trillion debt.

so yes, the world is a confusing place right now. And doing the right thing in the traditional way will likely see you running a financial treadmill. If you're lucky.

[orange808]

I know of a very wealthy city where it's standard for three cars to blatantly run through a red signal every time. It's a local custom. You will get into an accident if you enter the intersection when the signal turns green. I learned by getting honked at and nearly smashed.

It's so expensive, none of the service people that work there actually live in the city. They commute from poorer (but still expensive) suburbs close by, mostly immigrants barely scraping by in rattling cars (that are also barely working/passing emissions).

Chicago recently worried that traffic cameras caused more accidents where they were installed. Although, there's no way the city is going to abandon them.

Traffic safety cameras double as an unfair poor tax. Rich people don't drive as much. The fines also don't work on an income sliding scale. Beyond that, less money means more DIY. If you can't afford services, you have to do it yourself. That creates nearly impossible frantic schedules and push people to speed. Money does buy happiness. The cliche was made up by a rich geezer to keep poor people from robbing/killing him.

[Sengoku Strider]

QAnon is trying to rationalize Trump putting a bunch of molesters and sex pests in charge of America.



"This one weird Bible trick is the only way to know if Matt Gaetz parties with 15 year olds or not."

100 100 100

[BryanM]

The gymnastics they have to do is beyond parody. Hate 'globalist' (a made-up word that means 'capitalist' or 'Jewish' depending on how dumb and/or racist you are) George Soros? Your hero put a bunch of his guys on his staff.

That one character who says its gay to have sex with his wife would probably be over the moon if daddy Trump had sex with her.... There's some really fucked up shit going on there. Remember how they constantly called everyone who wasn't a nazi a 'cuck' back in the day? I never imagined 'every accusation is a confession' would apply to that, I just joked/bullied people over it. But yeah, that's the natural end point of authoritarianism - you debase yourself to the point where those above you on the hierarchy can do anything to you, while you lay down and take it. It's dark man.

Well, since we're a nazi country with or without Trump, here's a song made by a nazi. I think it's really cool.

At least the International Cricket Council throwing its weight around is a single drop of sanity in these volatile times.

In the years that followed, Hitler would send Bloch postcards, warm holiday greetings, gifts of his artwork, and expressed concern about Bloch’s wellbeing after he implemented anti-Jewish laws once he became Führer.

ffs..... yeah, humanity never changes.

[Lemnear]

Well, since we're a nazi country with or without Trump, here's a song made by a nazi. I think it's really cool.

I have a friend who posts quite regularly on NRW ...and as a result he introduced me to many artists from that channel either online or in person...why do you say he's a Nazi? I'd like to know..

[cvaniafan]

They were hoping for Kamala's victory, they end up with Donald.

[orange808]

They were hoping for Donald all along.

-
'Merica!

YEE-HAW!

[BryanM]

Some seventh seal type harbingers of doom going on. Marshall Brain dying is a bad omen we're not getting that gay luxury space communism thing from the machine god. But perhaps the worst omen of all guarantees us Armageddon:

Chris-chan... is having a kid.

Yes, I know. Let all the screaming out.

The Last Armageddon battle theme song seems appropriate here.

I have a friend who posts quite regularly on NRW ...and as a result he introduced me to many artists from that channel either online or in person...why do you say he's a Nazi? I'd like to know..

I was pretty sure Mythical Vigilante was whining about getting shit from people for being a Trump supporter when I was looking for more of his songs many many years ago. Not trusting my memory, I searched around and yeah, even in 2018 when it was obvious Trump was a bog standard neocon at best (and when our friend quash here disowned him) he still supported the guy 10,000%.

In a thread about how Obama and other democrats were neocons (which is true, but that doesn't make your team non-neocon now does it).

MV may or may not wear the uniform and do the fancy salute - it doesn't really matter since he shares the same ideology. Not every 'liberal' believes the same things across the board (the only universal requirement is supporting capitalists foremost, even at the expense of the rest of society), and so, too, do the fascists vary from one another.

That music scene itself does skew male and white so you know where the more than half of the community stands. The same is true of the AAA video game scene and thus, gamergate.

(The Korean gamergate thing where psychos had a meltdown over Limbus Company's summer swimsuit character wearing a wetsuit was bloody insane... no women were involved in this decision or her design, so they had to dig for a woman to scapegoat for this assault against manhood or whatever insult the video game staying true to its aesthetic and not producing cheesecake meant....

... they're seriously triggered by art where the thumb and pointer finger kind of look like they're making a pinching motion. (Which is a emoji that means 'small PP' in the Korean twitter gender wars.) It's absolutely deranged.)

Anyway, yeah, everyone is happier if you don't know anything about the people involved in content you consume. Rowling would have made lots of people happier if she didn't open her mouth. I love Ghostbusters, but also I know Ivan Reitman was a staunch libertarian. Ditto for Penn and Teller.

But at least those men wouldn't derive pleasure from exterminating the Palestinian race off the face of the planet. Probably. Maybe.

That's really the line between nazi and regular bog-standard evil shitbag, to me. Participating in ethnic cleansing. The way the senate voted on the topic and how loyal she was to the donor's orders, I don't have much faith Kamala would have been any different from Genocide Joe...

Really, Internet Hippo said it best: "I don't understand the people who say it's good to be informed about things. I'd give anything to go back to not knowing anything."

[Sima Tuna]

Anyway, yeah, everyone is happier if you don't know anything about the people involved in content you consume.

I can enjoy the art without enjoying the artist. There are always limits of course, as with everything. But Hitler's paintings would still be shit even if he wasn't Hitler.

When we reach out for art, we are trying to touch a part of our humanity that's bigger than we are. On some level, I think if the art is successful in doing that then it doesn't matter what kind of dumb shit the artist believes. The art has a worth separate from the artist. Not so say the art wasn't influenced by the artist of course. The artist still created it. But the art is bigger than the artist. The art can transcend the limitations of the person.

[BryanM]

Don't really like it when people dump on people's art... it really was shitty all those people pooping on George W.'s paintings. At least he was doing something with his time. Something more productive than passive media consumption or his former activities.

Hitler's work has a kind of endearing eeriness to them, as the geometry of his buildings refuse to converge to a single point. You kind of get the sense of deep wrongness, like you're in a dimension with those robots from hell that Joe Rogan suggested could be powered by human flesh.

Which would be metal as fuck. Yes, Hitler would have been a more successful artist if he drew such scenes straight out of hell. I won't deny that.

And sure, if realism was his goal he was half assing things. And he could have aimed lower than the absolute peak schools, or at least had a backup plan. This kind of inflexibility when things aren't absolutely perfect is one of the biggest weaknesses of the conservative mind. (Their tenacity is one of their strengths. I always shake my head whenever some commie says 'Bernie is too old'. Just imagine a Trump supporter saying something like that about Trump - it's fucking impossible.)

On the upside, that inflexibility helped cause his military campaign to fail spectacularly once it was challenged by comparable force.

.... anyway, I'm just saying there's better things to critique Hitler on than his paintings. They're not the worst thing. Just boring and crooked at worst.

[orange808]

Conquest is expensive. Hitler refused to learn from Napoleon in many ways--and it goes far beyond pushing the blitzkrieg into Russia. Then again, what else could be done? As time went on, America was funneling in support. Hitler needed to eliminate the Allied foothold in a hurry and keep American support out. The clock was ticking.

First of all, technology at the time limited Germany. The UK and America were difficult to strike. Well, the UK was difficult to conquer. It was more than a concentrated effort to match his military might.

Ultimately, Germany had to grapple with America's industrial engine. He couldn't disrupt it. It was too far way to attack! Over time, American assistance continued to flow in, while the German apparatus was always vulnerable to assault. As technology matured, Germany was under increasing threat, but the tech wasn't moving fast enough to bring America into the crosshairs. Europe got "smaller", but America was still off in the distance--well out of range.

It's guns and butter. There's pure economics at play. American assistance to UK (the allies) flowed out essentially free. Germany had to rely on the spoils of their conquest. It was a huge nest egg, but it continued to dwindle. There's an imbalance. Germany had to finance their war. The Axis grew isolated. The Allies had America behind them and a large tab. The Allies could tap large resources with (comparatively) little worry about the cost. Germany had bills piling up on the books and borrowing costs had to increase. Without a game changer that never came, Germany was likely doomed to run out of money before the Allies.

Here's a secret. It's true. America raised taxes and implemented large rationing restrictions when the government didn't really need the tax money or the restricted resources! Yep. They took extra taxes! They took away things that were technically available on the open market! Heresy! Evil! Someone call the free market cops! OH MY FUCK!!! BIG GUBMENT!!

Why? Well, war creates massive government spending. America essentially reached full employment and it followed the Great Depression. A surge in demand would over heat the economy. That would drive inflation. You can cool inflation by raising borrowing costs, right? WRONG. You sure as fuck can't. You cannot collect enough straight up taxes to fund the war. Borrowing is the only way to fund war. It's too expensive! You need to borrow, so you need low cost loans to fund the war. The Allies made smart and correct backroom deals. (Taxes didn't fund the war. They couldn't fund it. Taxes took money away and retarded consumption! EVIL!!!!) They kept the economy cooled down, kept borrowing costs down, and they could maintain a relatively inexpensive stream of borrowed cash to keep the Allied war machine alive. Beyond that, it was understood that Europe wouldn't have to pay the tab.

Germany had a limited amount of time to push the Allied foothold (America) off the continent. I wouldn't say the Allies simply waited out the conflict and outlasted Germany, but that's a big part of the story. For those that remember, Napoleon had more than ideological motivation to keep advancing--even when he had made peace agreements. It was an economic crossroads. He couldn't afford to fund his military without more conquest. Faced with a choice between his army and transitioning to a new legitimate economy based on innovation/production, he powered ahead with conquest. Once Hitler got started, he found himself in the same situation. Also like Napoleon, Hitler didn't have the technology to attack far away enemies that continuously replenished resistance. Of course, that was more local and inside Europe for Napoleon. It was still a tech limitation.

[orange808]

Interesting timing after discussing Germany's war economy. Russia is facing a currency crisis today. This was inevitable. For what it's worth, Putin didn't raise taxes or add any rationing to his monetary policy. It wasn't even politically feasible. He wasn't expecting this war to last this long when he planned it. Borrowing costs are under pressure from every direction--and it just got worse.

And there are people out there that want to quit now? Why? Ukraine isn't running up a tab. Russia is! China is keeping records of everything. They expect to get paid. That's the thing about evil, it's fucking greedy. Absolutely greedy all the time.

China will have to make a decision. They can either start funding an endless proxy war or let Russia lose.

And, MAGA "freedom loving patriots" want to quit now?

Fuck.

[Sengoku Strider]

Anno domini 2024.

[Sima Tuna]

Interesting timing after discussing Germany's war economy. Russia is facing a currency crisis today. This was inevitable. For what it's worth, Putin didn't raise taxes or add any rationing to his monetary policy. It wasn't even politically feasible. He wasn't expecting this war to last this long when he planned it. Borrowing costs are under pressure from every direction--and it just got worse.

And there are people out there that want to quit now? Why? Ukraine isn't running up a tab. Russia is! China is keeping records of everything. They expect to get paid. That's the thing about evil, it's fucking greedy. Absolutely greedy all the time.

China will have to make a decision. They can either start funding an endless proxy war or let Russia lose.

And, MAGA "freedom loving patriots" want to quit now?

Fuck.

What is Ukraine's military personnel situation like? My concern with Ukraine wouldn't be their funding or supply of arms. The west is helping with those. But both Russia and Ukraine have lost a fair number of troops.

Not that I'm suggesting Ukraine should give up. They've held out this long. The longer they draw this out, the worse it is for Putin.

[orange808]

What is Ukraine's military personnel situation like? My concern with Ukraine wouldn't be their funding or supply of arms. The west is helping with those. But both Russia and Ukraine have lost a fair number of troops.

Not that I'm suggesting Ukraine should give up. They've held out this long. The longer they draw this out, the worse it is for Putin.

Ukraine needs even more modern weapons. They need advanced weapons to absolutely obliterate the North Korean reinforcements. Send them home in wooden fucking boxes. We need to hold the line and wear them out.

Yeah. Yeah. Putin and his red button. Push it, shithead... Blow up the Ark, Indy. Go ahead... Oh... You can't, huh?

We need more help with sanctions. Keep tightening the grip. Choke those fuckers. No. I don't give a fuck about starving babies in Russia from sanctions. Their leaders chose this. My liberal lefty compassion has limits. Putin started a war. War sucks. Cry me a river. Make them suffer. Turn the screws. Over and over.

Iran has an Israel problem. That path is chosen and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not going down the rabbit hole; it's decided. The upside on Ukraine is that Iran has problems of their own. They aren't going to be helping Russia like they could a year ago.

We need to keep going. Biden is doing the right thing. Tighten the screws and keep going. Keep unwinding Europe from Russia and keep sanctioning the living shit out them. Putin didn't plan for this to stretch in 2026--so let's keep it going. He'll run out of resources first--and only China will be able to bail him out.

By then, China won't be making investments anymore. This becomes a expense. They'll have to fund a proxy war with their own money--and take a loss. Time to call their bluff. Do they want red ink? Even at 22% interest, runaway inflation will drown loans to Russia--and investors will lose money. This is not the time to make a deal.

Donald Trump and his supporters aren't patriots. They don't believe in freedom. They're chickenshit money grubbers. They're greedy and evil. They aren't patriots. They want to give up on freedom because it's too expensive. The same fuckers that always say freedom isn't free. They're not even real Americans. Real Americans wouldn't cut a deal with commie reds. (They don't use the word right, so I don't have to--either.)

[cvaniafan]

They were hoping for Donald all along.

Oh nooo !

[Lemnear]

I have a friend who posts quite regularly on NRW ...and as a result he introduced me to many artists from that channel either online or in person...why do you say he's a Nazi? I'd like to know..

Spoiler

Spoiler

I was pretty sure Mythical Vigilante was whining about getting shit from people for being a Trump supporter when I was looking for more of his songs many many years ago. Not trusting my memory, I searched around and yeah, even in 2018 when it was obvious Trump was a bog standard neocon at best (and when our friend quash here disowned him) he still supported the guy 10,000%.

In a thread about how Obama and other democrats were neocons (which is true, but that doesn't make your team non-neocon now does it).

MV may or may not wear the uniform and do the fancy salute - it doesn't really matter since he shares the same ideology. Not every 'liberal' believes the same things across the board (the only universal requirement is supporting capitalists foremost, even at the expense of the rest of society), and so, too, do the fascists vary from one another.

That music scene itself does skew male and white so you know where the more than half of the community stands. The same is true of the AAA video game scene and thus, gamergate.

(The Korean gamergate thing where psychos had a meltdown over Limbus Company's summer swimsuit character wearing a wetsuit was bloody insane... no women were involved in this decision or her design, so they had to dig for a woman to scapegoat for this assault against manhood or whatever insult the video game staying true to its aesthetic and not producing cheesecake meant....

... they're seriously triggered by art where the thumb and pointer finger kind of look like they're making a pinching motion. (Which is a emoji that means 'small PP' in the Korean twitter gender wars.) It's absolutely deranged.)

Anyway, yeah, everyone is happier if you don't know anything about the people involved in content you consume. Rowling would have made lots of people happier if she didn't open her mouth. I love Ghostbusters, but also I know Ivan Reitman was a staunch libertarian. Ditto for Penn and Teller.

But at least those men wouldn't derive pleasure from exterminating the Palestinian race off the face of the planet. Probably. Maybe.

That's really the line between nazi and regular bog-standard evil shitbag, to me. Participating in ethnic cleansing. The way the senate voted on the topic and how loyal she was to the donor's orders, I don't have much faith Kamala would have been any different from Genocide Joe...

Really, Internet Hippo said it best: "I don't understand the people who say it's good to be informed about things. I'd give anything to go back to not knowing anything."

I also ask because this is not the first time I hear certain things, but it was about the entire genre, and it seems strange to me... after all, the person who runs NRW is a young black guy dressed in 80's style, including the haircut .

[orange808]

Lemnear "has black friends".

Sumeday, yu gunna git yu one a dem dubble widez an a big ol spayce by dat der swimmin hole. Everywon in dis hear paerk gonna know dat yu a sumbody, yessir.



Also, transgender rights polls at #14 among nationwide Democrat priorities, shithead. You're just stupid and don't understand the world around you.

Most of us, myself included, don't do business with people with facial tattoos. I also avoid people that don't look like they shower.

You don't understand the world or the political spectrum around you, but you feel like you deserve to chime in about it. Go play your banjo. Yeah, I know I'm stereotyping your dumb ass. You honestly believe the shit you post and that's what makes you so stupid.

[BryanM]

Jesus christ orange... might want to delete that one, or at least look at who you're saying it to....

I also ask because this is not the first time I hear certain things, but it was about the entire genre, and it seems strange to me... after all, the person who runs NRW is a young black guy dressed in 80's style, including the haircut .

Eh, I don't know the guy so who knows. No reason to go off on a witchhunt.

The 80's may have been cool in some ways, but it was also the era of Reagan and codified cocaine capitalism. There's people who watch American Psycho who think the protagonist is a cool guy that one should want to be like. The guy who tried to shove a cat into an ATM during a psychotic break.

Sabaton's album about the last king of Sweden, with songs like Carolus Rex, is very popular with the fash. Feeling powerful is something that makes media feel cool to experience. (Those hyper violent cultivation novels where a guy would murder and torture billions of people to increase his fire resistance by +0.1% do seem inherently more exciting than the (real) communist equivalent would be.) It's only natural we have a fashwave subgenre on things.

Black MAGA is one of those weird things. The guy running who was a self-proclaimed nazi (his words were apparantly 'I am a black nazi', which he tried to roll back during the election of course) losing was one of the better highlights of election day. I suppose a lot of the MAGA-coded people look like lunatics, in a way only Trump can get away with due to the mythology and all the time on TV on his game show built up. Parasocial relationships are weird.

That one guy who was bummed out when some other MAGA guy told him they only wanted him for his vote and that he'll never be one of them... He seemed really bothered by that, which surprised me! That's the worst thing a person from your side has said to you online? I find that hard to believe! He must not spend a lot of time online!

It just brings to mind that one debate in 2016, where Carly Fiorina got up and poured all the men a drink. Maybe some people among the subjugated and scapegoat groups will be allowed inside the clubhouse, but it ain't gonna be as an equal.

That old video of Bernie giving a lecture to highschool kids about the Southern Strategy has been making the rounds lately, and I totally understand why.

MAGA is crossing lines to the point that families and relationships have to break apart - like a cult that intentionally isolates its members. Grandma voting to deport her family is not going to make her very popular with her family...

So much easier to blame and punish those with no money and no power. Trying to raise taxes on billionaires slightly is like trying to punch out god, and you're not supposed to do that. Besides how hard it is.

.......... freakin' easy mode cowards........ they honestly feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for beating jobber democrats and cheer like seals about the rich continuing to get richer. smh.

[orange808]

Jesus christ orange... might want to delete that one, or at least look at who you're saying it to....

Did the person in question know that transgender rights is a peripheral issue among real Democrats? Nope.

Same old Republican trailer trash shit.

They're gunna takez away r dickz, givez us a microchip compewtur chip vaxxeen, an makez us all git the autismz.

[cvaniafan]

shithead. You're just stupid and don't understand the world around you.

Aww
poor baby, he's so touchy

You don't understand the world or the political spectrum around you, that's what makes you so stupid.

You're repeating yourself, you already wrote that above ! But yeah I agree, fortunately we have geniuses like you to understand the world as it should be understood, and to predict the victory of the losers.