Prelude to the Apocalypse

[quash]

it's technically more focused on the "new right" as compared to the likes of the Nazis (which, I always love to note, the modern right largely refuses to even define as "right wing" in the first place)

Actually, many alt right types embrace the label and seek to re-appropriate it from the groups who have made it synonymous with skinheads. The times, they are a-changing.

So, first of all, if there really are alt-right folks in favor of a welfare state, they're not really conservative at all, at least not in the economic sense

Correct. They see the merits of a social safety net, but only want it to be utilized by law abiding, ostensibly white, citizens, and they typically don't want it to be used without consequence.

moreover, if they want to simply roll back things to the "affirmative action for white people" state I referenced (and you ignored) quite a ways back, that's simply another means of favoring institutional inequality, albeit with the "but we're so terribly oppressed as we are now!" fig leaf crudely stapled onto it.

It wouldn't be affirmative action for white people because, for starters, this would all be functioning within a homogeneous society. But even then, it wouldn't serve as a way to ensure that everyone can get an education and a good job, more so as a way of ensuring that people don't die from hunger or sickness.

In any event, I'm not sure who's denying that "the right", as big as it is, doesn't have divisions within it

Well, it was only a subject of discussion numerous times in this thread, each time with you and others denying that such divisions exist, while claiming that Trump was somehow representative of the entire Republican party.

but the aforementioned rejection of egalitarianism is what ties the whole hot mess together, and this rejection very much extends to tax policy and wealth distribution across the board. And yes, this principle, in case the hard numbers didn't already tell you so, very much applies to Trump.

Rejection of egalitarianism isn't a "hot mess", it's a survival instinct. It's not always the right answer to everything, but it's not something anyone can deny outright, whether they want to admit it or not.

It does apply to taxes and redistribution of wealth, but I somehow doubt we mean this in the same sense.

I'm sure there are outliers you could point me to, but as I said, once you get to that point you're already outside any meaningful definition of "conservative".

Well then, what do you call someone who wants a socialist white ethnostate? A racist liberal?

THE JEWS

This is the part where where most people's eyes roll into their brains. While there are certainly powers that be who control many aspects of international banking and policy who are Jewish, the link I posted earlier about Soros funding anti-Israeli organizations should serve as proof enough that reality is indeed stranger than fiction.

Well, aside from the whole "not only are you a self-hating pawn of the establishment, you're a clandestine Clinton agent attempting to get me arrested for leaking classified information onto a tiny video game forum" thing, sure, why the hell not.

Hey, it took you this long to entertain the notion that maybe not all Republicans are represented by Donald Trump. I had to make things interesting in the meantime somehow.

[Xyga]

'alt-right' is just nazism no matter how people try to twist semantics in all directions, just switching scapegoats in their stinking rhetoric when it's convenient to federate more kinds of assholes.

[quash]

Definitely can't and won't deny that there is a strong Nazi element, though I wouldn't necessarily label all of them as such.

In any case, it's best to know who you're criticizing, that way you don't misdirect your concerns and discredit yourself.

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

I was wrong again. You know when there is a really funny joke that keeps getting funnier? Then eventually it starts to become a bit forced, and eventually not funny at all.
I felt from my vantage point I was distanced enough for perpetual ironic merriment but now my schadenfreude is getting less pleasurable. Mr. Trump is going from a funny clown to an insane narcissistic clown that has no control over his body.
The opposition seemed shocking enough to warrant the sarcasm to piss off my friends, I mean Mrs. Clinton is in the pockets of all the good people who want to gradually destroy the planet and society through perpetual war and climate change denial for big profit, and I’ve always thought that if USA is going to fight a war with airstrikes drones and napalm it would be a courtesy to do it on their own continent instead of someone else’s, but at this point I hope neither candidate wins the election and instead a computer runs the government like on Evangelion.

[BryanM]

I would be overjoyed if we could just take a mulligan and keep Obama.

A computer that just wants everyone to join together in one big group hug? Better than humanity deserves.

[Durandal]

I would be overjoyed if we could just take a mulligan and keep Obama.

A computer that just wants everyone to join together in one big group hug? Better than humanity deserves.

Have checks and balances taught nobody anything? It's safer to divide control between three or more AI systems rather than one megasystem, so one system only has to be contained in the case of a rebellion. You put one AI in charge of basic life functions and government, another for anything science related, and another for controlling every door in the USA. Then you're good to go.

[Xyga]

It's safer to divide control between three or more AI systems rather than one megasystem.

But what is M'badi/Trinidad without the mighty Melchizedek ?

[Ed Oscuro]

He refuses to say what part of the justice system are being destroyed by SJWs (seeking to get rid of jury trials, in the non-example from before, one of the worst attempts to support an argument with evidence in my memory).

That's not what I was arguing at all you fucking windowlicker. I said that social activist groups clamor for extrajudicial treatment of social issues, not that they get it.

Learn to fucking read. For fuck's sake.

hahaha are you for fucking real

1.) it still doesn't matter
2.) you still tried to pin it to Hillary
3.) and you still dangled this red herring out there as if it's actually going to be an issue after the election, so yeah, how is this a problem if SJWs don't "get it?" Or does this boil down to a complaint about protected speech?

I guess this is the kind of thing we're hoping a Hillary appointed Supreme Court justice would approve? I honestly don't know, you tell me!

mmm yeah, another strawman here too

So basically, you're worried about the political speech of people about policy changes you say don't happen.

[quash]

I've been analyzing mainstream media coverage of Trump over the past few weeks, and I've noticed that there's two particular angles of attack they've favored recently: that anonymous sources have dirt on him, and that he's communicating with dog whistles.

As we should all know by now, any "anonymous source" of information that's less than favorable to Trump is actually the man himself intentionally spreading misinformation. As for the dog whistles, I guess if you look into his words deep enough, it's likely that he is signalling to both government officials and more extreme elements of the right wing.

This all had me thinking: what if it doesn't start or end with Trump? What if there's even more subversive methods of self snitching and dog whistling going on?

I thought I was the smartest guy in the room when I pointed out that BulletMagnet is a Correct The Record shill, but I was dumb in how I went about addressing it: directly calling them out is exactly what they want you to do. This is especially true when they post under a name they've used for years; it's a veneer of plausible deniability. The truth of the matter is that some shills are so good at what they do that they can only hide behind their true identity: just look at Bernie "DNC Fundraiser" Sanders or Gary "Controlled Opposition" Johnson.

It should have been obvious to me from the beginning that he was a shill. The first piece of misinformation he asserted was that Trump was being supported by the GOP establishment, something that was so blatantly wrong to anyone who had been paying the slightest bit of attention to the election at that point. But it served exactly the purpose it needed to: it subverted the narrative of the thread in such a way that the onus was now on me to prove that he wasn't, and all he had to do to disprove it was say it wasn't true.

Fast forward to now: we've established that he's a shill, but he can't overtly admit it. So his way of telling us is to go back on the first piece of misinformation he planted in this thread by acknowledging that Trump isn't a product of the party establishment. Much like the Don himself, he's the only one who can surrender this type of information without directly exposing himself.

We also have a dog whistler amongst us in Xyga. To the untrained eye, his posts seem like vocal dissent towards my views. However, upon closer inspection of his posts, it becomes clear that he is signalling to me as a fellow member of the intelligence community that he's a French spook. The reason he focuses so much on framing my views as being racist is so that he can lure other, hopefully French, posters into voicing views that fall under their new criteria for hate speech.

Even Ed Oscuro is in on it. His last post, for example, starts with "hahaha are you for fucking real". On the surface, it seems like he's ostracizing me for my views, but in actuality, he's laughing at the fact that I haven't yet caught on to the fact that he too is a shill.

I don't want to ruin the illusion any more than I already have, so I think it's best we let this post slide and continue to be fake people having a pretend discussion on the internet.

[BulletMagnet]

I thought I was the smartest guy in the room when I pointed out that BulletMagnet is a Correct The Record shill, but I was dumb in how I went about addressing it: directly calling them out is exactly what they want you to do. This is especially true when they post under a name they've used for years; it's a veneer of plausible deniability.

Any doubts I may have had that I was being trolled are sure as hell gone now. Get lost.

[Xyga]

We also have a dog whistler amongst us in Xyga. To the untrained eye, his posts seem like vocal dissent towards my views. However, upon closer inspection of his posts, it becomes clear that he is signalling to me as a fellow member of the intelligence community that he's a French spook. The reason he focuses so much on framing my views as being racist is so that he can lure other, hopefully French, posters into voicing views that fall under their new criteria for hate speech.

You must be happy in your psycho fantasy.

[Durandal]

This all had me thinking: what if it doesn't start or end with Trump? What if there's even more subversive methods of self snitching and dog whistling going on?

I'm living more conveniently with the notion that everyone around me is an idiot until proven otherwise, as a means to explain the inexplicable things happening in the world and on the internet: pure idiocy. Though I suppose pretending that instead of idiocy, many bad things happening on the internet were orchestrated and pre-meditated by old men running the world, can also bring peace to one's mind. Unfortunately idiots can be shown the light, but even if a shill is paid to spread the false idea that 2 + 2 = 4, their intent must be malicious and therefore anything they say must be discarded and ignored.

[quash]

I think the real issue here is that nobody wants to look in the mirror and realize that the same insane thought process I outlined is being used to play to their confirmation bias.

Ah well. I guess people won't ever stop to think about things being too good to be true.

[Durandal]

I think the real issue here is that nobody wants to look in the mirror and realize that the same insane thought process I outlined is being used to play to their confirmation bias.

Ah well. I guess people won't ever stop to think about things being too good to be true.

You crossed Trump's Great Wall of Irony a long time ago, dude.

[quash]

Did I? Pretty sure one of the very first things I said in this thread is that he's going to back off from almost every promise he'll make during this campaign.

Did you hear that? Revisiting the deportation policy? Allowing amnesty for illegals? Nah, must've been the wind.

[Giest118]

Assuming that quash is in fact a member of the Intelligence community, his paranoid behavior would indicate that he's forgotten what it's like to be a normal person just trying to get by in day-to-day life, since he can't fathom the very idea of someone who isn't in on at least three different conspiracies.

Which goes quite a way toward explaining the kind of thought process that would lead one to vote for Trump.

[quash]

Or maybe, just perhaps, I know things most people don't. Because I'm limited in how much I can actually discuss things, I go for the "show, don't tell" approach when necessary.

Trust me, if there is one person on the planet that hopes I'm wrong about the current state of global affairs, it's me.

[Giest118]

Nah dude, I think I finally get what your deal is.

You're deep into "intelligence," and what that's gotten you is a rotten view of the world. The more your find out, the more you find out that everything is shit. Whether you're aware of it or not, this has caused you to resent knowledge itself. And then Trump came along, and gave you something that you find wonderful: an unknown quantity. You have no idea what his deal is. His behavior is so erratic that you can't think of a conspiracy that he could possibly be in on. Your near-schizophrenic view of the world can't fit him into a mold. This registers to you as a good thing because the opposite, a known quantity, has become synonymous in your mind with corruption and decay... so as an unknown quantity, you believe Trump must be a maverick and a hero.

But the thing is, Trump's erratic behavior isn't necessarily a sign that he's not "in" on the eleven-trillion conspiracies, nor is it a sign that he's going to be benevolent. What it's a sign of is that electing him would be equivalent to rolling a d20 with no modifiers. Getting a 1 means total human extinction, getting a 20 means world peace and all economies made 10,000% better forever, or, he could land somewhere between those two extremes. What the fuck do we know? Random chance doesn't care about humans. Meanwhile, there's Clinton. She's the equivalent of rolling a d20 that only has 9 or 10 or 11 on every side. Not super good, but I find that more palatable than putting extinction of the human race on the table as something that we should risk happening. I have shit I want to do with my life, and I can't do it if I'm dead from Trump nuking the first random asshole who tweets at him.

[Volteccer_Jack]

What it's a sign of is that electing him would be equivalent to rolling a d20 with no modifiers. Getting a 1 means total human extinction, getting a 20 means world peace and all economies made 10,000% better forever, or, he could land somewhere between those two extremes. What the fuck do we know? Random chance doesn't care about humans. Meanwhile, there's Clinton. She's the equivalent of rolling a d20 that only has 9 or 10 or 11 on every side. Not super good, but I find that more palatable than putting extinction of the human race on the table as something that we should risk happening.

So there's two basic flaws with your reasoning here. The first is the "with no modifiers" part; there are a hell of a lot of modifiers. Most important is that the American government is structured to minimize the amount of damage a lone asshole can do (what political parties have learned in recent history is that they have get a large group of people to work in tandem to cause real damage, a factor which actually favors Trump if our goal is to minimize the damage of the next President), arguably a major reason for our success up to now given the very high number of assholes we've elected throughout our history. It's obviously hard to go into any precision here, but the die is obviously heavily biased in favor of landing in the middle somewhere, and IMO, also toward numbers above 10. The second problem is the idea that Hillary Clinton is a "neutral" choice. We know a lot about Hillary Clinton from her time in government, and her track record so far is objectively on the negative side.

More generally, Clinton benefited from a concerted political and media effort to put her where she is now, while Trump's current position occurred despite an obvious concerted political and media effort to stop him. This weirdly puts the arrogant selfish petty dickhead rich asshole in an underdog position. Because our country is just that fucked up nowadays.

[Ed Oscuro]

"knows things most people don't" = getting lost in the culture wars to the point that quash contends (or perhaps "offers food for thought," I have to be careful) that the average Democrat / Clinton voter's real agenda is to crush civil liberties in the name of social justice. Not jobs, not immigration reform, not international peace, but getting rid of the jury trial to handicap WASPish defendants. This "knowing things" of course doesn't include any real details on what actually is dragging down our criminal justice system.

...do note that Trump's recent immigration ad seems to suggest that what we really need is a police state. This, of course, ignores that the footage mostly seems to be of exactly what we have right now, and that Trump has admitted on substance that his immigration plan is a scam.

[Ed Oscuro]

Most important is that the American government is structured to minimize the amount of damage a lone asshole can do [...] We know a lot about Hillary Clinton from her time in government, and her track record so far is objectively on the negative side.

Doesn't the dissonance between these two statements strike you?

What's this negative Clinton record you talk about? It also includes fighting for universal healthcare twice, ensuring care for people injured by working at ground zero in New York, and instating the CHIP plan, amongst other real accomplishments. There is the Iraq Resolution, for which her words have been pretty consistent and not quite like people suggest. It is also a case where the balance of power tipped decisively to the executive, which held all the critical information. The Bush Administration was able to press the case for war, paint an inaccurate picture of Iraq, and was able to ignore the spirit of the Iraq Resolution, and then was able to conduct other actions without oversight from the other branches. This happened for years; there's still been no judicial review of the legality of many executive actions from that point in time.

Right now the American executive branch is the largest and most powerful it's ever been, especially in the accommodating post-9/11 atmosphere. People put tons of emphasis on Clinton's vote, along with most all other senators, for the Resolution, but just as consequential is the establishment of the gigantic Department of Homeland Security (the house and senate votes were even more supportive) and the domestic spying programs, which often have operated outside the law.

[BryanM]

fighting for universal healthcare

Please don't call massive giveaways to private insurance companies "universal healthcare". She, and the fucking senate democrats, won't even support the public option.

Apology accepted in advance.

Right now the American executive branch is the largest and most powerful it's ever been

That's why we have to destroy it right now. With a literal, not figurative, nuclear bomb.

[Bitter Almonds]

No matter how $hillary tries to paint her vote to invade and occupy Iraq nowadays, it's still a vote for an unending war that funnels more money into the pockets of her filthy rich friends. If she didn't vote anticipating this result, then she's a dangerous idiot who's also unfit to be president.

[quash]

Trump has admitted on substance that his immigration plan is a scam.

Look, I get it. You wanted Bernie and got duped out of your $27 which are all now firmly in Hillary's hands. But that's no reason to have grapes so sour that you obscure Trump's backing off from his immigration plan as a bad thing for your agenda. If anything, you should have been hoping for this all along.

[quash]

but I find that more palatable than putting extinction of the human race on the table as something that we should risk happening. I have shit I want to do with my life, and I can't do it if I'm dead from Trump nuking the first random asshole who tweets at him.

Here you are worrying about Trump nuking someone while the US is moving nukes from Turkey to Romania as we speak.

Why are you creating an illegitimate fear while completely ignoring a legitimate one?

[ED-057]

What's this negative Clinton record you talk about?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/ ... inton.html

[Bitter Almonds]

What's this negative Clinton record you talk about?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/ ... inton.html

So $hillary is basically a dickless cheney.

[Ed Oscuro]

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/a ... on-meeting

I know I say "read past the headline," but it's a bit discouraging when the apparent motivation of most reporting is "burn the fucker down!"

Trump has admitted on substance that his immigration plan is a scam.

[fanciful ad-hominem unread and flushed]

The "substance" of every quash post, ever.

What's this negative Clinton record you talk about?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/ ... inton.html

Did you even read through that shit?
A third is completely false (see the Clinton Foundation article above)
A third only seeks to tie the Clintons to other people's scandals with no evidence (Iran-Contra)
And the final third is mostly debatable, a fair amount just shrill anti-American armchair quarterbacking.

[Durandal]

http://www.usasupreme.com/assange-i-wil ... mber-26th/
Assange's got the dirt. For real!!!

[quash]

Completely ignoring context, accusing people of things they never said or did out of thin air, refusing to acknowledge any evidence that goes against his narrative, and spreading misinformation only to backpedal on it later.

Every Ed Oscuro post ever, my friends.

Anyways, Hillary's giving her alt-right speech pretty soon. How this goes is really anyone's guess: either she effectively conveys that they're a threat to the neoliberal order (unlikely), inadvertently promotes their ideology by going too hard on the fear mongering (likely), or this becomes her Howard Dean moment and ends up wasting everyone's time because nobody cares about some neckbeards on the internet posting frog memes.