I have a suspicion that a lot of Republicans see some of the current shenanigans as theater, and the Democrats do not. Ie, seeing George Bush in a cowboy hat or a flight suit was silly and ridiculous, but it was acceptable political theatre. Seeing Biden in a similar getup would be atrocious and politically costly. So, to the GOP, MTG ranting on twitter (ffs) about masks being analogous to the holocaust isn't "real", it's her political performance designed to troll the libs (or what the fuck ever). She isn't expected to actually believe any of that, especially to the GOP insiders, who "know" her and how she votes/thinks/etc. There seems to be an emphasis on "real" knowledge, insider information and priviledged information on how to manipulate the levers in power, which stands to reason considering the Trump administration's MO, and it's not what you are publicly exposed to. I think there's a word for that, maybe....deceit? They are treating their supporters like MLM salespeople, trying to somehow prove what public figures claim publicly is false. No wonder things like QAnon are so appealing: their behavior is so ludicrous (and their policy so ridiculous), there has to be an alternative explanation....you're just not cool enough to receive said explanation. It remains unspoken who this theatre works on, what it does, or what it helps, but it's acceptable as long as it provokes the other team....it absolutely cannot be subjected to any scrutiny whatsoever, because if it does, it collapses (no one asks the flat earthers if they have a pilot's license, per Bill Burr), like asking MTG what the fuck a high-school grad Karen from rural Georgia knows about the fucking holocaust. You would only be subjected to more inanity by asking. Democrats, however, either fall for this trick far too handily, or entertain the notion that this whack-a-doodle Karen actually thinks along those lines. It is kind of amazing to see a political party fail this spectacularly, and it not be a Mike Judge production.
I don’t even want to know what depths you have to sink to get THAT rich in that particular career in law. As you said.... gross.
As someone who doesn’t visit Twitter more than maybe once a week in order to understand some references here, I have to say, news articles are getting more and more mad-libby when you aren’t aware of the context. “When a suspicious package filled with white powder showed up at his house in Kentucky on Monday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he knew exactly who was to blame for inspiring the threat: pop singer Richard Marx.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/r...-80-98called-for-violence-e2-80-99/ar-AAKlTeN
Remember when people used to think Rand Paul wasn’t insane? Before he thought that soft rock artists were conspiring against him?
Basically the guy said he'd buy Paul's neighbor a drink, which must have been the reason someone mailed Paul a suspicious package days earlier.
Seriously? Yo, fuck Richard Marx. How DARE he offer to buy a drink to somebody who beat up a twisted lunatic. Celebrities need to stick to being classy when it comes to politics, like bailing out murderers while screaming at Costco managers.
They are still able to raise money on this issue, and until that dries up, they will continue to fuck around with this nonsense. I have no fucking idea how that's legal, or who is donating to this bullshit, but it won't go away. It doesn't help that CNN asks 8 people at a Klan rally "who won the election" and reports that kind of polling as if it indicates where the country stands on the matter. We're 6 fucking months away from the election, and they are still showing those bullshit polls every Goddamned morning. If half this country truly believed the government to be illegitimate, January 6th would look like a shoulder rub.
I got fed up with these "redneck safaris" years ago. Trump wins an election "we need to understand what Trump voters are thinking." Biden wins an election "we need to understand what Trump voters are thinking." I'm tired of the media pretending that we're going to learn anything from gazing into the moral and intellectual abyss that is Trump's base.
I disagree, I think we all need to understand how this "works". Because ultimately, a healthy chunk of us are existing in an alternative reality, and it's not like we can continue to write off 30-50% of the fucking electorate. I don't want to know what Trump voters are thinking, that's either patently obvious or it's dubious they are thinking at all. I want to know how they go to this conclusion, that is vital. The dangerous truth is that Trump supporters aren't stupid, mislead (at least entirely), or illogical, but they came to wildly different conclusions about our nation. Knowing (and fixing) how that happened is pretty fucking important. I just don't trust CNN to do any of this sensitive and important work. To clarify the post, I am griping about shitty polling.
Maybe the reason that the media pitches to the Lowest Common Denominator so often is because they are the majority. “Big Bang Theory” was the number one show on TV for over a half a decade, 35 years ago it was “Sixty Minutes”. Stupid is the new black.
This. I know several pretty hardcore Trumpsters and they are far from unintelligent, redneck knuckle draggers and they 100% believe to their core that the election was stolen. These are not the idiots on social media spouting off inane bullshit about the Pelosi eating babies or whatever but business owners, college graduates, LEO's, executives etc. People that if you had a conversation at dinner and politics never came up, you'd enjoy talking to them and wouldn't think they're some mouth breather idiot.
Case in point, a good friend and coworker, and one of the few die hard trump supporters who is actually respectful of my actively hating him, said a few days ago that he felt the country had never come together so much as it did under trump. this guy is in his mid 50s, very smart and compassionate, we just have different viewpoints. He’s even coming to do some work on our house even which I can’t because of long covid stuff. But when he said that, my jaw dropped because I simply could not fathom a reality in which “the country came together under trump” was a thing that happened. I believe that he genuinely thought it was true though, and I’m still trying to understand how someone could reach that conclusion. (Best I can come up with us that he thought the country united against hating a common enemy: the “libs,” though he’s too smart for that and hasn’t ever used that kinda language before.) I think this is what we need to understand though. That there exists this entire segment of the population completely divorced from reality. And they think we’re the crazy ones. And we need to understand what makes them tick, beyond just the meme-y language. Sadly, I think social distancing and online communication has only worsened that. Reminds me of what @suapyg is doing. We just need to have more good conversations with people.
I strongly agree, and I think the current iteration of the GOP is doing as much as they can to ensure these folks simply don't vote in the next election. It's a common narrative: Trump brought new voters off the bench, and without him, they go away, but it's hard to verify. However....that dislike, distrust and hate didn't just happen to manifest spontaneously. That was fomented, and understanding how is pretty important. I think it's naive to pretend that disliking government is a natural state of affairs for the wealthiest country on earth, boasting the world's strongest military, the highest standard of living and all the other trappings of American exceptionalism. Our government put men on the moon, ended World Wars, and kept an incredible peace for 70+ years....so how and why is it common to dislike, distrust and hate them? Especially in a representative democracy, where (supposedly) we are electing folks that represent us. Compared to other governments, up until very recently, ours was pretty fucking awesome at some things. No one came out of the womb an anarchist, they had to learn that shit, and it needed to be reinforced. That reinforcement is what I'm interested in. That element of dislike/distrust the government seems to circle around Republican officials (not coincidentally starting around the Reagan administration), and it keeps circling the bowl, getting more and more putrid every year, until you literally have a con man (Donald Trump) elected president in plain view of all the various cons he's pulled. The question is how/why did that begin and how does it stop? I say it's important, because again, half the electorate not believing in an election or participating in the next one isn't just something you can write off as "casually disgruntled".
Have you checked with Canada? Or Australia? Hell, even Costa Rica is pretty proud of what they are able to accomplish. Sure, no one is 100% thrilled, and most folks don't go around patting each other on the back going "this sure is better than those beheadings, starvation and bombings, eh, pal?". I agree that the stories you highlighted there are key narratives, but you didn't randomly Google all that shit did you? No, it was presented to you as evidence of how shitty our government is over the years. I could point to just as many, if not more, success stories, but that's not how it works, is it? I'm not saying our government is beyond criticism or isn't guilty of the things you mentioned or far, far worse. I'm saying most other places have shit like that too, and they don't use it as a reason to become disenfranchized. For some reason, our country uses it's government's failures not as impetus to change, but as a reason to nope the fuck out of democracy? Also, it seems to be that the government is playing a much bigger role in people's lives than it used to.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/why-israeli-defense-forces-soldiers-161838853.html I don't think that will stop a bullet.
"Hot Girls of the IDF" is not a new thing, they've been on the internet for decades. Enough to make any hot blooded Israeli boy "volunteer" for service.
We all know how hot chicks have a reputation for just signing up for hard, dangerous work. Luckily Israel doesn’t have to rely on pesky things such as “consent” to join their military. Hating muslims is literally the legal duty of an Israeli citizen. One of the great things about being God’s Chosen People is the utter lack of choices you get to make for yourself, although maybe if you were lucky you got to help Wonder Woman kick a few brown kids in the face back in the day.
Feinstein in the news again for saying something that makes everyone really worried that she has dementia. And not as a political hatchet job the way Republicans tried to do with Biden; but with mostly Democrats sounding the alarm.