Prelude to the Apocalypse

[BryanM]

That's a pretty cool easter egg they've found in the computer simulation, hadn't noticed that one yet..

---

I've mentioned before that many humanists often like to dismiss the very possibility of that "technological singularity" thing, mostly along emotional biases lines. Yeah some of the stuff is bullshit, like "nanomachines are magic" stuff, but "dumb machine make smarter machine in a feedback loop" is a perfectly cromulent premise. DNA is a very dumb machine that eventually produced us, it doesn't have to be an AGI right away to start snowballing.

When I was in a gloomy doomer mindset from the confirmation that the apocalypse was unavoidable (I was 5x the asshole I normally am back then, sorry guys), I used to bully them slightly by trying to reverse their conclusions against them; the very idea the people with power would allow Bernie Sanders to hold any power is itself a "political singularity". An insane world were absolutely insane, impossible things like rising the minimum wage might happen.

I guess it's obvious I never intended for this to be, or viewed this, as a "Trump" or "politics" thread. Both existed long before 2015, and Trump has already served his purpose in absolutely destroying the corporate liberals' pretense of being right about anything. The world is at a transitional crossroads, in a highly volatile age of change. My hope at the time was this was actually a thread about the transition of power away from the dictatorship we've been in for decades; but had to revert to material matters when that didn't happen.

Hope is indeed for the stupid and hopeless.

So here's a meme that was given as a response to the guy who wrote the "AI Will Save The World" thingy. Who dismissed it as "it's just math/software." Also: it's just an inert toaster, but also powerful enough to turn our world into a utopia.

Spoiler

[Sengoku Strider]

Trump has already served his purpose

Racist.

[BIL]

tbh I thought this thread was about universal healthcare >w>

So you're an Uninsured Burger, and you've had a stroke

Spoiler

[BryanM]

That is my own personal litmus test of "bare minimum worth voting for."

It's the reason why Sanders was such a stark line in the sand: if you supported universal healthcare, you either voted for him or you were actively fighting against universal healthcare, aka, someone full of shit. That's why liberals hate his guts; while they hate Trump for revealing everything they say is bullshit, being "educated" and showing "decorum" means nothing, politics really is just a circus with a bunch of dumbass clowns jerking off for our amusement. (Obligatory 24/7 AI debate link. It's been more than four hours since I've linked to it.) They hate Sanders much much more because he makes them look bad because they don't want anything to fundamentally change for the better, ever.

These people within the ruling caste are all just mere men. So power is all about maintaining that illusion of faith. Churches come in many different forms and varying aesthetics, telling people to obey authority and they'll see their re-ward as soon as they're dead. Good 'ole profit motive. Think how a non-profit religion would operate, they'd be like a bunch of Quakers standing around in a circle preaching, talking, and listening to each other. Like some kind of.. some kind of filthy forum.

Obligatory Dark Place clip. I recommend Dark Place to everyone, perhaps excessively. There's not many TV shows that you can burn through in an afternoon that are so rewarding. That give back more than they take.

----

There is some grim lol's to be had from the future of humanity being decided by the March 2016 primaries. They're talking about the possibility of AGI within five years, so the machine god being assembled while under the regime of the 2027 Trump Administration (from prison) is some ridiculously dark fanfiction.

[BulletMagnet]

None of this will effectively get enough moderates to circle the wagons around the guy for higher ups to take legal risks for him

I had initially intended to post a lengthier response to your previous post, which to at least some extent is surely true, but frankly I think this not only gets to the point a lot more effectively than I could but all but completely overrules a lot of the factors you list.

The problem, as I've said before, is not that the hardcore faithful actually believe the things they say they do - how many of the legislators who voted not to certify the 2020 election in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot thought they were doing the "right" thing? And how many of them have since apologized or expressed any measure of regret whatsoever for their actions? - but that not only them but pretty much the entirety of "moderates", from elected officials right on down to everyday voters, are endlessly willing to act like they're stupid or deluded enough to believe them, because insisting in the face of all available evidence that there are unanswered questions about the election/investigation/etc. gives them a pretext, embarrassingly flimsy as it is, to drop the facade and go full authoritarian the second something doesn't go their way.

The "pushback" we've been told is coming for literally decades now, with precious few exceptions - which, as you know, are dealt with very harshly when they do speak up - just isn't there.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm not sure that article presents anything new though, I had pretty much those numbers in mind when I wrote that. The fact that Trump only has 53% support among republicans in the primary shows how precipitously his support has crumbled, he won the 2020 primary with 93.99% of the vote.

Sure, you can point to conservatives still supporting him. But you can also point to his former national security advisor, chief of staff, his other former national security advisor, navy secretary, other other former national security advisor, secretary of defense, homeland security advisor, former communications director, other former communications director, and national economic director all coming out and criticizing him publicly, on record. That's a lot of people trying to cut the tangled parachute cords from the burning MAGA plane. There's also the "He was wonderful but it's time to move on" crowd who are quite vocal.

I see a fair amount of criticism of Trump on conservative forums since the indictments, where there used to be absolutely zero. Protestor turnout for his arrests has been Smokepurpp levels of support. He was a gimmick candidate whose gimmick - indestructible business winner man - has been shown to be completely hollow after 3 bad elections for republicans under his brand. I'm sure Trump will delay the Florida & eventual Georgia trials past the primary, shuffle through a general with a zombie candidacy with tepid support, and be sent off into the Bermuda sunset on a raft for a Viking grease fire funeral.

Then, finally, they can focus on the real issues plaguing contemporary society.

[BryanM]

Hey Captchas are doin' fine.

---

For the record, YouGov is an internet polling outfit. It skews more affluent, tech-savvy, and younger. In other words, it's more anti-Trump and pro-Biden than the general electorate.

These things always have a fair amount of error in them as well, as they have to weigh their respondents to estimates of their demographic in the broader population. When an election is decided by 1 or 2 percentage points, it's not going to give a perfect answer.

It is really cool to see a polling outlet publish on scribd.com though : D

The "pushback" we've been told is coming for literally decades now, with precious few exceptions - which, as you know, are dealt with very harshly when they do speak up - just isn't there.

Imagine that, liberals and conservatives have all internalized that obeying authority like some kind of drone in an ant colony is the correct thing to do? I am shocked. Shocked I tell ya.

My favorite is whenever a liberal complains about all the whiners that just "envy what other people got" when everything is getting better and better. (3.5% "unemployment"! Woohoo! If you think things look good now, wait 'til it reaches 0%!) Someone in the comments will bring up a plethora of other metrics that suggest perhaps things are not getting better, like the suicide rates (up across the board, but teen girls are really killin' it there). Crickets in response.

Always love it whenever the talking points of libs and the fash overlap.

The fact that Trump only has 53% support among republicans in the primary shows how precipitously his support has crumbled, he won the 2020 primary with 93.99% of the vote.

No sitting president had any actual opposition during a primary in modern times. They didn't have an actual primary in 2020, just like the democrats aren't having one now. (God bless Marianne for trying though.) Nobody on earth, not even FDR, has gotten 94% of some people to vote for them in a real election.

(Note that 2004 Bush got 98.1%. The sitting president always gets 88%+, with 90% at worst. It's a worthless metric. Go ahead and look at the all-star cast that collectively lost to the "nobody" candidate on the ballot. I think that's when you don't fill a box for anyone running for a position. It's not allowed to hold office and isn't like a vote of no-confidence.. So it's effectively less meaningful than registering a complaint to the manager at a Wendy's.)

His share of the primary vote in 2016 was ~44.9%, and that's of course inflated as people gave up toward the end.

Still lol'ing at the GOP implementing a winner-take-all system for their 2016 delegate allocation. They were hoping Jeb Bush would snowball, and watching their horror and desperation at what they did to themselves as they desperately propped up everyone and anyone, hoping they could unify the opposition against this shithead with 30% of their electorate in his pocket. The jobbers they propped up in 2012 against Romney (a new one every month!) were there to create the illusion of choice, while dividing the votes of the opposition. (Gotta love our "democracy". Gotta love our modern church, TV.) The jobbers they propped up in 2016, they actually hoped one would be a real contender! : D D D

53% support is massively higher than what he had in 2016, and makes him the presumptive nominee. The only way they have a prayer of beating him is to Obama voltron the fuck out of the opposition day 1. That's what they were hoping they would be able to accomplish by pushing DeSantis.

My assumption made back in 2015 of electing a president (named Donald Trump) that's serving time in prison is very feasible. Back then I thought it had around a 20% chance of happening. Today I give it around 35% odds.

But the odds of him winning the primary are like 80%, imo. And that's probably conservative: with his ~20% unfavorable rate, how is the #resistance gonna get enough people to unite behind the appointed "lesser evil" guy they don't like, either?

Familiarity counts for a lot in this imaginary friend showdown. Our countrymen's neurons love this guy now, completely imprinted on him.


... did u know they can imprint on almost anything? There's this one guy who spent most of his day underwater, and eventually fell in love with an octopus. It's not just weebs that can become unaligned~

-------

Shit, now I remembered that they're waiting for Feinstein to die in office so they can select her successor instead of leaving it up to democracy. Knowing about this shit isn't good for mental health at all.

[Sengoku Strider]

Your conclusions here are faulty. No sitting president had any actual opposition during a primary in modern times. They didn't have an actual primary in 2020, just like the democrats aren't having one now. (God bless Marianne for trying though.) Nobody on earth, not even FDR, has gotten 94% of some people to vote for them in a real election.

(Note that 2004 Bush got 98.1%. The sitting president always gets 88%+, with 90% at worst. It's a worthless metric. )

His share of the primary vote in 2016 was ~44.9%, and that's of course inflated as people gave up toward the end.

This is all reasonable and I'm sure true. But wait, there's more!

Ron DeSantis Stronger Than Donald Trump in Swing States, Poll Reveals

The poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and released on June 20, shows DeSantis beating President Biden in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, with 47, 46 and 48 percent of the vote against the president's estimated 45, 40, and 45 percent, respectively, in each state.

Trump, according to the same poll, would be defeated by Biden in all three states when voters were presented with hypothetical presidential election match-ups.

But let's say that horse race betting more than a year out from an election is a sucker's game, on account of it kind of is just newspapers filling space between cataclysms. There are so many intangibles that point to Trump's support being nowhere near as solid or fanatical as it was last time around. Like...

Remember how half the 50-60 year old chubby beard guys in America went covid suicide bomber for TrAllah?



Now contrast that with the smaller crowds of people showing up for his Florida evil deep state persecution arrest despite it happening at MAGA ground zero.

The man was averaging 45k likes or something on his tweets pre-ban, with followers hanging on his every word. Here are the top communities on his empty bot-filled echo chamber Truth Social now:



DWAC, for those out of the grifterloop, is the publicly-traded SPAC that Truth Social was supposed to merge with. MAGAworld....excuse me:



Magadonia, Legendary Land of Patriots bought thousands and thousands of shares thinking it was going to be their Gamestop (they even stole all the 'HODL' and 'To the moon' memes verbatim). Except the SEC blocked the merger because it was an obvious scam, and financial reporting irregularities have it about to be delisted from NASDAQ and those shares are worth $12 now. You can practically see the tumbleweeds blowing by as the spooky Scooby Doo ghosts emerge from the native American burial server it was built on.

And most importantly, the best read I think you can make is the volume of right wing folk art being made about Trump and/or Joe Biden's dingledong.

Spoiler

I just don't see stuff like this anymore. The flames of passion are clearly dimming. If the evangelicals bail on him for DeSantis as they're debating I think that's about it for him. At the end of the day he's still the hero who got rid of abortion for them, they wouldn't even dream of it if they didn't think he was a serious liability.

[BryanM]

I do agree with you that the intensity of his following has dimmed, as well as old people continuing to die as they always do.

For the general election it might not make much of a difference, as opposition might decline in intensity to match it. It's kind of pivotal to the overall see-saw effect our elites have engineered to keep their parties viable. CGP's example of comparing it to flowers and butterflies is the best metaphor to quickly describe it.

DeSantis like most unknown generic politicians is at the height of his popularity. The only politician I've ever seen in my lifetime get more popular than the generic baseline was Sanders. (Which would have been carved away by the media as soon as he ever became an actual threat.)

As always with polls, I beg everyone to look at aggregate top numbers. "News articles" based on one by definition are cherry picking AND spin, they can not be anything else. Like the one we had in here earlier that tried to say that Zoomies are gun-loving murderhobos when they're identical to millennials on the subject.

One thing that's amusing here: Florida and Ohio tend to be the only swing states that really matter a damn. Only one poll has been released on either of them publicly so far. For how important they are, I guarantee you there's been many of them done privately.

And no poll on our newest swing state: Texas. Harumph. : [

Probably another toss up election for the third time in a row. We'll see things more clearly by late summer of next year.

Things will start getting interesting around 2030. You know what I mean by "things".

... I mean things. And stuff.

[Sengoku Strider]

For the general election it might not make much of a difference, as opposition might decline in intensity to match it.

You might be right. The Biden Crime Family Syndicate is so desperate that they'll destroy the entire world to distract people from Hunter's monstrous doings.

[BulletMagnet]

But you can also point to his former national security advisor, chief of staff, his other former national security advisor, navy secretary, other other former national security advisor, secretary of defense, homeland security advisor, former communications director, other former communications director, and national economic director all coming out and criticizing him publicly, on record.

A number of those same people have, in front of those same cameras and microphones, stated without reservation that, even though they apparently think Trump is unqualified for office, a threat to democracy, guilty of multiple crimes, etc., if he's the nominee they'll still fucking vote for him. If this is how the open "traitors" plan to act come Election Day, where do you think the beyond-parody "well, y'know, I could really go either way, because Trump and Biden are equally bad" hordes are headed in November, let alone the supposedly "wavering" faithful?

As comforting as it would be, especially for pollsters, to equate "I don't support such an utterly unacceptable candidate for high office" with "I'm not going to elect such an utterly unacceptable candidate to high office", that's simply not an assumption any honest observer is able to make at this point. I can't speak for the situation in Canada, but down here "centrism" in any meaningful form simply no longer exists.

He was a gimmick candidate whose gimmick - indestructible business winner man - has been shown to be completely hollow after 3 bad elections for republicans under his brand.

This, I would posit, is what you misunderstand about what Trump's actual "gimmick" was, and remains to this day: the way you build a base of everyone from gazillionaires to the destitute and from religious fanatics to Neo-Nazis is to promise all of them the singular, magical thing that will cause each and every one to instantly and permanently drop any objections to literally anything else he has ever done or could ever do: "I'm going to really piss off a bunch of people you don't like." You've presumably seen me refer to it colloquially, in my famously delicate fashion, as "yeeeeaahhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhhh".

Every contingent of Trump's base, and frankly the GOP base at large, can point to a million hoped-for things he or the party has either failed to deliver or outright worked in opposition to, but the one crucial item they have come through for them on with flying colors is yeeeahhhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhh, and all indications are that the streak will continue in perpetuity, because the contemporary right's leadership, Trump first and foremost among them, has absolutely figured this out, and even the supposed "moderates" are gleefully injecting it directly into their veins ("well, he's a complete piece of shit, sure, but he shakes things up"). Until Trump's actual opposition gets this through their heads and reacts accordingly the Lucys of the electorate are simply going to keep yanking that football away every November from now until the authoritarians just get rid of elections entirely.

[BryanM]

Reading all the copy of DeSantis's campaign melting down before it even starts is a little fun I guess. I mean, the guy in The Great White Hype at least managed to make it all the way to the boxing match at the end.

Who's the next guy in line to take out the Trumpster? ..... do they have a backup plan? ...... is it going to be Rubio again?

..... Ted Cruz is gonna be the #2 guy again. Isn't he. And they're not going to unite behind him until it's too late. Again.

the beyond-parody "well, y'know, I could really go either way, because Trump and Biden are equally bad" hordes are headed in November, let alone the supposedly "wavering" faithful?

Let's ignore the constant election interference (such as the stuff that kept Texas from giving its electoral votes to Biden. Once again, not my words, but claimed by the former Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton.) that inevitably will lead to the end our farcical pretend elections sooner or later. Or the Washington Generals' compliance in it by just standing there and helping them by remaining silent about it. Let's pretend all this is just a show on TV. Because in the day to day lives of normies, that is all it is.

What have the Democrats managed to do to make their supporters feel like their lives have gotten better? Besides the banishing the orange man for four years thing. Did that year of 8% inflation help them any?

This isn't about numbers or having the right arguments or anything like that. It's like that planet in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that was going to successfully wipe out the entire universe: It's about who cares more.

How pissed off were you when George Bush and friends stole the election ("the steal", as they call it these days) and possibly completely changed the arc of history?

After so many decades of the same shit, it's hard to care. When this is what we want. When this is the best we can do. Hillary vs Trump, for forever.

[Sima Tuna]

..... Ted Cruz is gonna be the #2 guy again. Isn't he. And they're not going to unite behind him until it's too late. Again.

Amazingly-fat mega-fatass Chris Christie has been shitting on Trump hardcore and getting a lot of play in the news. Could he be the Great White Whale Hope?

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/ ... -rcna87016

... Oh. Womp womp. Guess it's back to My 600 Pound Life for you, Chris ol' buddy.

[Sengoku Strider]

This, I would posit, is what you misunderstand about what Trump's actual "gimmick" was, and remains to this day: the way you build a base of everyone from gazillionaires to the destitute and from religious fanatics to Neo-Nazis is to promise all of them the singular, magical thing that will cause each and every one to instantly and permanently drop any objections to literally anything else he has ever done or could ever do: "I'm going to really piss off a bunch of people you don't like." You've presumably seen me refer to it colloquially, in my famously delicate fashion, as "yeeeeaahhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhhh"

The republicans have an infinite supply of obnoxious loudmouths. If that was all they wanted, Limbaugh or Gingrich would have been president long before him. It was his aura of success - and particularly the fictionalized version of it portrayed on The Apprentice - that made them think he was a tough-minded but fair business genius and caring family man celebrity superhero. What all those groups you listed have in common is that they believed he was incredibly capable and could deliver what they wanted without being beholden to a party leadership many of them saw as selling them out.

The asshole factor definitely did put him over the top in the primaries. Jeb! & Rubio weren't used to fending off middle school zingers and he made them look like wimps, the one truly unforgivable right wing sin. And for sure there were Joker-memeing frustrated people who voted for him hoping he'd burn it all down. But he also has an army of church grannies out there who genuinely believe he is the nicest guy who has ever walked the face of the earth. And a parallel group who believe in him because they genuinely believe the republicans are the only ones fighting for the working man, and his flaws prove his purity as one of them at heart.

[BulletMagnet]

What all those groups you listed have in common is that they believed he was incredibly capable and could deliver what they wanted without being beholden to a party leadership many of them saw as selling them out. [...] But he also has an army of church grannies out there who genuinely believe he is the nicest guy who has ever walked the face of the earth. And a parallel group who believe in him because they genuinely believe the republicans are the only ones fighting for the working man, and his flaws prove his purity as one of them at heart.

In case you couldn't already tell, I have an incredibly hard time believing this. Trump's utter moral void, open contempt for most of humanity, and endless litanies of laughable incompetence are incredibly plain to see, have been for literally decades, and anyone who refuses to acknowledge and/or handwaves them away at this point is either staggeringly ignorant to the point that they have no right to call themselves "engaged" citizens, or, far more likely in my view, only cites those ludicrous "reasons" to support Trump as a flimsy patina over what they're actually after with him in office. Literally nothing else is a dealbreaker, and he can - and has - endlessly failed at everything else without any real pushback from anywhere in the "center", let alone the right.

You have no idea how much I'd like to be proved wrong on this, you really don't. But the fact of the matter is, the only people even attempting to compete with Trump are centering their entire strategy around trying in vain to be an even bigger asshole than he is.

[BryanM]

It was his aura of success - and particularly the fictionalized version of it portrayed on The Apprentice - that made them think he was a tough-minded but fair business genius and caring family man celebrity superhero.

I prefer to mostly ignore symbols like these, it's all a bunch of malleable post-hoc guff. His lore and mythology is as meaningful as that stuff is in a video game. The fact he eats garbage fast food probably matters more.

Really all it comes down to is they know the guy, and they like the guy. He's their imaginary friend. Or someone they can live out their fantasies vicariously though.

The liberal's ideal of a politician: a guy in a suit, graduated Ivy League, successful multi-millionaire lawyer backed by the banks and other capitalist interests, sounds like a slimey lizard because they don't know how to talk to people.... It's anathema to someone outside of that culture.

"Education" is what the liberal credits 100% of their success to, quite often. Their family's status is often overlooked in favor of the cult of the self. (Ego preservation is such a big deal to you humans. The USA is especially obsessed in thinking in terms of people as "winners" and "losers".) That's where classic solutions like "just go to college" and "just learn to code" for out of work coal miners and such comes from. All those people know that, for them, there's no pot of gold waiting at the end of that rainbow. (It's gonna be great when replacing people with machines really starts to kick in.)

On occasion, I think about David Brooks. One of the liberal chatbots that get paid well to groom minds into the right shape. 22 years ago I used to watch him on the News Hour and wonder: "When is this guy going to become a democrat already?" And then whatever fuckery Bush and pals were up to that week came up, and Brooks would hem and haw and be like "Yeah... that does sound pretty bad. Buuut..." and then he would give some weak excuses that well-off professionals (devoted to decorum and "calm voices") could tell themselves to feel fine with sticking with the republican party.

Eventually I tried rubbing some brain cells together and realized Brooks will never change sides; he's literally paid hundreds of thousands a year to say what he says. But liberals that are like Brooks, but aren't paid to be a political goon, don't have as strong of an incentive to stay in the party. The "wishy-washy flip-flopper" Magnet brings up sometimes is probably more likely to be this kind of person, when adjusted per capita.

When the democrats have become the party of wealthy elites and the people who can't stomach fascism, guess who's left to stick around in the republican party?

It's never really been about Trump. 2008 Trump would have been obliterated by "hope and change". 2016+ though? This is his time.

No hope. No change.

Trump's utter moral void, open contempt for most of humanity, and endless litanies of laughable incompetence are incredibly plain to see, have been for literally decades, and anyone who refuses to acknowledge and/or handwaves them away at this point is either staggeringly ignorant to the point that they have no right to call themselves "engaged" citizens, or, far more likely in my view, only cites those ludicrous "reasons" to support Trump as a flimsy patina over what they're actually after with him in office.

Besides the incompetence thing (that's Hillary's thing), the "selfish void of a human being" thing applies to Obama roughly as equally as to Trump.

The Chris Rock bit about George Bush not giving a fuck always comes to mind. "You could be hanging off the edge of a cliff, just needing one fuck to live, and he'd be standing there with a pocket full of fucks. And he'd say 'Oooooh... you know I don't give a fuck.'" Obama is totally the same guy.

Able to act in a flash if some banks need a bailout or Bernie Sanders is about to win the presidential primary. But republican election fuckery? Republicans stealing a supreme court seat?

Ah, that stuff is fine. Ronald Reagan in another suit of flesh is always cool with that.

As always, baffled by why you care so much about what your enemy does and so much less about what you can do. If you're seriously thinking about voting in a republican primary to try to get Ted Cruz over the line, or you just want to complain about the enemy destroying you left and right all the time with their superior intellect and strategy (to the Democrats, not you specifically. The only control you have over strategy are the Dem primaries), maybe it's worth it to reevaluate your ideology slightly, and readjust it to fit better with the world that is and will be.

Reminder that the "real" winner of the 2016 election was neither Kang nor Kodos, it was "nobody".

[orange808]

It's gonna be great when replacing people with machines really starts to kick in.

That's going to be delicious.

[BryanM]

It is kind of amusing how Trump is a warped fun house mirror of a stereotypical "politician" though. Suit + Money = Politician. It's like a cargo cult, if you wear the trappings of a thing then you're that thing, right? You can see how that would be appealing to people who believe the lie they, too, can some day raise themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Anyway. Reminder what the 2028 election plans are:

The democratic nominee is Harris. With Buttigieg as her most likely sidekick. Harris is almost as popular as head lice. But that's by design: she's supposed to lose the election. It's the republican's turn in the White House, after all. (And if Trump loses next year and is still alive by then, he could be the guy! I like to pretend he's still in prison somehow. It's just funnier that way.)

It's really hard to think the see-saw effect is a natural emergent outcome of reflexive opposition to the party in power, when they're so transparent about it.

Another example of Democratic smarty man hyper competence:

Who was McCain's running mate when he ran for president?

Who was Romney's running mate when he ran for president?

Now.... Who was Clinton's running mate when she ran for president? What is a story of one thing she or he did that was memorable?

That was a more recent election than the other two, I'm a craven weirdo freak who pays attention to this shit, and I have almost no freaking idea. Did you? Were you a hardcore enough Hillary stan?

-------------

Meanwhile, this camera company is running this sad advertising campaign begging people to "not give up on the real world".

Imagine seeing something like that even a year or two ago.

[Sima Tuna]

Everyone remembers McCain's running mate because she was so hated. Good example of the party deliberately sabotaging itself. Not that McCain was a good candidate for the Republican ticket anyway. He was another ancient geriatric and the conservatives I knew at the time called him a RINO. So he wasn't popular within the party. No idea how good or bad he was as a politician, but that's not a point when you're talking about a popularity contest.

Biden will win the next election, assuming he lives long enough. If he dies then Kamala might bungle it, on account of her massive unpopularity. Not that people like Biden, but he has "brand recognition." If he pushes through the student loan forgiveness then that'll be another reason for the Democrat base to turn up for the vote. A few crumbs to the working poor are a feast compared to what the Right offers.

[BryanM]

I'll be sticking with "coin flip" until next year's polls say otherwise. These things are hugely volatile and meaningless until the last few months of an election.

Honestly looking at the Russian government, a kind of incompetent mob state with factions backstabbing each other constantly, is pretty much what our GOP is turning into. As a natural consequence of draining liberals out of that party. The best of all possible futures would stuff liberals back in there, but then that would require having a leftist party and we can't have that.

Modern Russia really is a natural endpoint of conservatism: giving up on development and investment in the future to the point where they have to sit upon the accomplishments made in the past by great scientists and engineers. People who would certainly still exist today, if they were funded. I guess there's a reason that trope in fantasy of a "golden age" full of scifi wonders resonates a bit. A good example why public policy matters; statesmen in the past managed to rise that place up from a starving wasteland into a super power. Statesmen in the present are putting it on course to becoming a colony state.

The predictable campaign against nerds bringing up concerns about x-risks and s-risks has started up. The meme response to this goes like:

Every inventor ever: "My invention is safe, trust me!"
Response: "No it's not, it's dangerous!"

These guys: "My invention might kill all of your loved ones : ("
Response: "No it won't, you're just trying to look cool!"

It's really an apocalypse pile-up here. While they're individually not as exciting as they are in the movies, if we get five or six of them all at the same time, I think we can make it work!

Good example of the party deliberately sabotaging itself.

Universally hated by the media. If the media tried to push her, she would have been a beloved dumbass instead of a hated dumbass.

I do agree with the McCain campaign that they were behind and needed a bold gimmick or move. The main issue was that she didn't have an established character sheet when they added her to the campaign. As a blank slate, public opinion on her was completely malleable from external forces.

It didn't matter though. After George Bush, nobody was going to be able to beat the socialist promises "hope and change" made. It was always going to be a landslide, and if the democrats had paid out even 1/4th what they implied, we'd be living in a communist utopia or something by now. Instead of teetering on the brink of fascism and the abolition of elections.

[Sengoku Strider]

In case you couldn't already tell, I have an incredibly hard time believing this. Trump's utter moral void, open contempt for most of humanity, and endless litanies of laughable incompetence are incredibly plain to see, have been for literally decades, and anyone who refuses to acknowledge and/or handwaves them away at this point is either staggeringly ignorant to the point that they have no right to call themselves "engaged" citizens, or, far more likely in my view, only cites those ludicrous "reasons" to support Trump as a flimsy patina over what they're actually after with him in office. Literally nothing else is a dealbreaker, and he can - and has - endlessly failed at everything else without any real pushback from anywhere in the "center", let alone the right.

You have no idea how much I'd like to be proved wrong on this, you really don't. But the fact of the matter is, the only people even attempting to compete with Trump are centering their entire strategy around trying in vain to be an even bigger asshole than he is.

Well, take a step back here and think about the country you already know. In the US 50% of people read below a 6th grade level. 60% of people never read beyond headlines. 60% of people have no internal monologue. And distrust of news media is so low 60% of people don't even respect the Weather Channel, and they're ranked #1 by a mile:

Spoiler

Even Fox News, the #1 news channel, tops out at 3.26 million for The Five, their highest rated show. That's only 4% of the number of people who voted for Trump last time.

But even discounting all that, I think the puzzle piece that makes sense of people who did read his mean tweets and still think he's Jesus II: Jeez Harder is the protestant work ethic. It's an article of conservatism as old as America that financial reward comes from earning God's favour through hard work. His perceived wealth and status is proof of that in and of itself. The only other way to make money is from Satan, who Trump is obviously not in league with because he's saving the children from that awful Hillary and the commies and the gays and rap immigrants.



That's a broad demographic, but it includes the people who consume and vote for this stuff:

South Dakota State Rep. Joe Donnell Claims Mount Rushmore Is a Demonic Portal Spreading Communism Across the Nation

“And so that’s what we’re dealing with,” Donnell declared. “I just know that God is doing something. Even Donald Trump’s landing in the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore on July 4, when the governor Kristi Noem put the message out that fireworks are returning to South Dakota, that was a prophetic word. And God spoke to me said, ‘When Donald Trump steps foot on this territory, there’s something that’s going to be done as far as the Constitution being upheld. It’s gonna bring a breakthrough with the Constitution.’ And I kinda got the feeling that what we’re really dealing with in that portal was communism. That witchcraft altar and those things that are happening in the Black Hills; what we’re really dealing with is communism; it’s the ideology and all the demonic entities and spirits behind that.”

...I mean, I kinda get it. Trump using his Cosmic Cube to save Mt. Rushmore from interdimensional communist witch portals on the 4th of July sounds like a way more fun Marvel Comics type of world to live in than real life. I could totally see myself camping out there if I didn't know any better.

[BryanM]

60% of people have no internal monologue.

This is probably the thing I find most horrifying about our reality, at least for things below the cosmic scale.

I don't care if it's 60% or 1%, the idea there are these fake shadow people walking around with minds that are as functional as a chatbot or less is terrifying.

I already have a huge problem with non-ADHD people who are able to turn their brains off. But to not engage with language or logic at all?

Suppose it'd have to be necessary to exist in a world where people think it's normal to be subservient and enslaved by grass. Freakin' grass...

[BulletMagnet]

Well, take a step back here and think about the country you already know.

As undeniable and consequential a force as anti-intellectualism is in the USA, how tempting it is on a reptile-brain level to simply file Trump's unkillable support under "they're all a bunch of ignorant morons, unlike myself of course", and how impossible it is to read the minds or motivations of others amidst any effort to determine what really makes them tick, I just find it incredibly difficult to believe that so many people who are fed such utter nonsense by Trump and others like him genuinely don't know they're being openly insulted and treated like gullible children.

I find it far more likely, especially given how entirely dismissive nearly all of them are in the face of every contrary fact thrown their way (and yes, I know a portion of that is just human nature, but in my view that's nowhere near enough to explain this ghastly phenomenon on its own), that in the same manner as Limbaugh's audience wore his designated "dittoheads" label with pride, pretending to believe anything and everything, no matter how ridiculous (and, not coincidentally, are always sure to demand "personal beliefs" be kowtowed to above and beyond literally everything else), gives them cover for literally any reprehensible action they may commit. As George Costanza noted, "it's not a lie if you believe it".

I suppose there's a measure of irony in such a stance on my part, since it's drawn at least in part from my own experience, having been raised to believe various things that I nowadays blush with shame to recall; notwithstanding, despite possessing (to say the very least) no particular intellectual or perceptive capacity beyond the bare ordinary, I managed to internalize enough things I encountered that contradicted what I'd been taught, and left the latter behind, and countless millions of others have done the same throughout history. In the end it could be said that I'm holding the modern right (and "center") to the same standard they like to hold others to when it comes to making a living: "There's nothing wrong with you, you're just taking deliberate advantage of whatever touchy-feely nonsense is trendy at the moment so you don't have to try as hard in life as the rest of us."

I could very well be wrong, of course, but I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if such a concept as "conservatism is actually a mental handicap" were ever voiced out loud (and I'm quite sure more than one person has been fool enough to do it), somehow, despite their willingness to swallow every last morsel of self-destructive, humiliating shit Trump and the GOP gleefully shovel down their throats, they would absolutely find it within themselves to be insulted by that.

[orange808]

Sacrifice is the only genuine measurement of a person. Almost every human being fails the test miserably. As it always has been and always shall be.

If you didn't give anything up, you didn't really give anything at all. Let's stop pretending the right has a monopoly on selfish behavior. Lefties fail the standard at high rates.

Years ago, I had a boss that got very upset when I challenged him on ethics. We were collecting money from customers for charity, but we credited customer donations to the firm in adverts. In this case, we didn't provide any discounts or match the donations. We "sold" own stock at retail price and advertised the entire effort as generosity from the company--with no mention of our customers at all. You wouldn't believe how red that little fucker got when I said the entire thing was shady. Think other people supported me? They didn't. Everyone in that room told me that it's an "everybody wins" situation and there's nothing wrong with getting ahead and "giving back". I'm not sure what we gave back, though. We couldn't even be bothered to say our customers were generous; the firm took the credit. Seems like the company used a guilt trip to enrich itself and lied about it afterwards.

[Sengoku Strider]

As undeniable and consequential a force as anti-intellectualism is in the USA, how tempting it is on a reptile-brain level to simply file Trump's unkillable support under "they're all a bunch of ignorant morons, unlike myself of course", and how impossible it is to read the minds or motivations of others amidst any effort to determine what really makes them tick, I just find it incredibly difficult to believe that so many people who are fed such utter nonsense by Trump and others like him genuinely don't know they're being openly insulted and treated like gullible children.

Well hold up, this whole thing started with me arguing that a whole lot of them have realized they were sold a line on the guy, and that's why his support is softer than the Washington Post needs you to believe for another 16 months. But if you ask how it could have even come to that point to begin with?

A large number of conservatives seem to think that Stephen Colbert is serious and is genuinely right wing. Ohio State even ran a study a while back - 2015, a meaningful year for our discussion here - asking people which way they leaned politically, and showing them footage of his show. Those who leaned conservative going in were more likely to believe him:

Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

And these are the ones who went to university, this study was run on undergrads. Here is a situation in which reasonably high functioning people are being made fun of to their faces by someone opposed to them politically, without detecting it because he knows all their lingo. What do you think happens when all their pundits and neighbours and AM radio hosts and relatives and social media and pro wrestlers and church members are saying what a great guy Trump is all the time?

[Sima Tuna]

I find it quite hard to believe that 60% of people have no internal monologue. I think it's more likely that they do have it but have misidentified it as something else, such as a religious experience. I was raised very hardcore conservative christian and the way they described being "saved," talking to god, how to know what was right or wrong etc... Man, it blew my mind when I grew older and realized they were just describing internal monologue. Which of course makes sense. It's why "God" always agrees with what you believe is right and wrong, of course. It's how every christian can "know" that god is real and they have a personal relationship with him.

I'm tipping my fedora a little hard here, and if you're one of those christians who isn't that way then I'm not talking about you, obvs. But there are definitely religious people out there who experience internal monologue, describe internal monologue, but then ascribe their internal monologue to a secondary, external force. Which they call god.

Spoiler

One of the big ways I found this shit out was when I became an atheist. That little voice inside of me that I always assumed was God didn't go away. How could that possibly be, lol? How could I still have a little voice inside of me telling me what was right and wrong, and how could I feel that my conduct had become more rather than less moral as a result of becoming less religious? Well. It's all very simple and very silly in retrospect. But we were all kids once.

To summarize, I don't think 60% of people have no internal monologue. I think most people have an internal monologue even if they ascribe it to something else. Maybe they don't realize they have it, but they do.

[BryanM]

There is a tendency to overestimate the capabilities of others if you yourself are above average. Since the sample size you have of minds is one. It's normal to project that other people would roughly be at the same level, they're human, right?

But reflect that the "100 IQ" thing reflects 50% of humanity, and it's a very very low bar.

I remember that there was a group of three friends who took the ASVAB (military entrance test) at the same time as me. The recruiter gave them their scores first, and the third guy had something in the 80's or so. His friends were congratulating him for having the highest score.

Then he read my score and the air got a little awkward for a beat. I knew english and had basic math skills; I wouldn't have missed a single question even if I had been 13 years old at the time. Nor at 10, if my school had taught me algebra in the 4th grade. (Which would have taken them all of.... 20 seconds. It's kind of amazing they can write 300 page long textbooks with only one idea in the entire thing...)

I guess that comes at a cost of being completely incapable of caring about other people's social lives. Which seems to be something most people dedicate a significant number of neurons to. I found it weird at the time that anyone that went to a public school wouldn't know all this basic stuff; it's not like it was asking the definition of "esoteric" or anything.

Anyway, feral kids who never learned a language feeling like "more" of a person once they do... minds fall on a ridiculous spectrum. And the environment severely molds it as well; forget weebs imprinting on animated guys/ladies, there are people who imprint on trees or sealife. Spend enough time underwater and well, it can make anyone weirdly aligned. As would watching nerdy Youtube instead of TV.

I don't believe 60% either, but I know that might be my bias. It could be that high. I can't read minds, but I can observe second-order effects like the current state of civilization.

Sacrifice is the only genuine measurement of a person.

I think that's a sublimely elegant way of looking at morality.

I know I'm trash; I'm not some insane narcissist that has to believe some childish lie that I'm a "good person". I'm not a good person just because I don't go around kicking people in the head or something - no one deserves a gold medal for not being an absolute s-tier asshole.

It's like giving yourself a diploma for being able to use toilet paper, what the hell is wrong with humans....

Nor does being nice to animals count either. This is basic stuff, here.

Spoiler

advertised the entire effort as generosity from the company

aaaah..... The ole spend $1ooooooo to tell people you gave $1 trickorino, minus the dollar. Or the old "charity foundation" that exists to keep their slaves overseas alive or to perform some debt-seeking abroad.

"Bullshit is the glue that holds society together."

[Sima Tuna]

I know I'm not exceptional, though. My IQ tests when I was a kid were around 95ish. I'm mediocre in every way that's measured. I got high grades in school and later in college, but that's because I like to read and I'm good at bullshitting. I'm awful at math.

If I can figure something out then I just assume most people can. I can't accept that a majority of people lack internal monologue. I've never met a single person who seemed not to have that capacity. Granted, they didn't tell me if they did or not. But I can certainly infer with the religious ones and some others.

I think it's much, much more likely that uneducated people experience internal monologue without knowing what it is, and then self-report or believe they don't have it.

[blazinglazers69]

Just want to chip in and say I've been lurking here for awhile and the discourse is very refreshing. I don't have a ton to add honestly, but I will say that I've noticed a lot of speculation with regards to how conservatives think,
so I'd like to throw in the perspective of one of my favorite scientists/scifi authors, Peter Watts.. Highly recommend him in general.

In a nutshell, there's data to pretty much conclusively demonstrate that "belief trumps data." Our brains are not evolved for decoding reality--they're more for social cohesion to the tribe since this confers an evolutionary advantage. It's easier to start a fire and hunt with a tribe than to be alone so...our brains evolved for conformity, not standardized testing, critical thinking, etc. I think this is important to keep in mind as we've progressed so much technologically that we now have a society that's so complex that we simply aren't cognitively well equipped enough to maintain it and survive. Hence our lack of a response to climate change and our coming collapse. We need massive updates to our software, but the clock is ticking.

--

My personal response to this has pretty much been numbness so that the despair only trickles in instead of flooding in and rendering me (more) dysfunctional. I'm 100% less engaged with all of my relationships than I was 5 years ago. It takes way more energy to socialize. Societal collapse is big, but we can also view our inner collapsing as a result.

I have to agree with BryanM and pretty much acknowledge that I'm trash as well lol. I mean, just the fact that I eat so much meat while loving the hell out of my dog makes me a hypocrite. My response to collapse was to try phone canvassing for Bernie in 2020 (which was horrible, awkward, and did nothing except piss people off) and getting a vasectomy. So pretty much my overall response to humanity at this point in history was to sterilize myself and say, "yeah, human beings aren't great and are at best biology run amok." I can't fix anything, but I refuse to contribute to the problem. Look what we've done to nature. Look what we've done to biodiversity. We deserve what's coming.

[BulletMagnet]

Well hold up, this whole thing started with me arguing that a whole lot of them have realized they were sold a line on the guy, and that's why his support is softer than the Washington Post needs you to believe for another 16 months. But if you ask how it could have even come to that point to begin with?

Perhaps I didn't put enough emphasis on it in my previous post, so I'll mention it again: many of Trump's most prominent, vocal critics, who openly call him a criminal and a threat to democracy, - and, in direct response to your assertion about Trump's core "businessman" appeal, absolutely know what a massive fraud he is - also state without reservation that if they somehow fail to stop him from clinching the GOP nomination - good luck with that, by the way, considering that the rock-solid diehards are the ones who show up for the primaries, and even the "moderates" simply aren't biting - they still plan to vote for him.

To frame it a different way, even for the so-called "Never Trump" contingent, to all appearances nothing Trump has done or threatens to do, be it illegal, immoral, or outright totalitarian in nature - is ever going to be enough of a deal-breaker to overcome the sheer dopamine rush of the yeeaahhhh fuck yooouuu yeeeahhh Trump unfailingly provides. Anyone who was ever serious about abandoning Trump and/or the GOP has already done it, and about as many people actually did so as disappointed Dems made good on their promises to move to Canada. The result? Even the most brazenly "anti-Trump" figures on the right and "center" are more willing to take a rank, steaming shit on the country's founding principles than just plain stay home, let alone pull the lever for *shudder* The Other Guy.

And again, if even the supposed "opposition", after everything that's happened, still can't be persuaded to actually oppose Trump and his enablers in any meaningful fashion, why in heaven's name would anyone believe that the "on the fence" voters, let alone those who previously and proudly voted for Trump but now tell pollsters they "don't support" him in some vague capacity, somehow do intend to take concrete action to that end come Election Day? Why would the weeellll, y'knoooow... crowd be any more likely to actually follow through when the ones willing to publicly criticize him (or, far less likely, the party continually propping him up) have already told us in no uncertain terms that they won't?