Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
They
Who is "they" here? Are you claiming the attempted assassins were not random nutjobs, but agents of the Deep State?
I mean, maybe one can say that parts of the Secret Service seemed remarkably unconcerned should something happen to him under their "protection," but 'if someone should take him out for us, that would be good' ≠ 'we need to take this guy out'.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
Online, it's hard to tell to what degree all the cataclysmic tweets and videos from leftists melting down hysterically and screaming that we're going to enter an era of plantation slavery and the Handmaid's Tale are nutpicking (the reason LibsOfTikTok is so popular is that Millenials and Zoomers so freely provide so much content) and to what degree they reflect a genuine widespread sentiment.
I know that Tumblr is very far from a representative sample, but the histrionic posts coming across my dash thanks to the #politics tag have been plentiful enough to exceed mere "nutpicking."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
It baffles me that no previous Republican government has done this. It's such an obvious low-hanging fruit.
And it always baffles me how people don't conclude that maybe Republicans haven't done this because they can't.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
There's also things that could be emulated from the example of Tony Abbot in Australia — were Trump and Congress able to get such things enforced. But it doesn't matter how much they want to do the things you list, when all the permanent bureaucrats actively work against them.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
I want your predictions for what actually gets done in terms of the Republican party platform for 2024, from this site:https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform
Pretty much nothing, because the Constitution hasn't described the actual structure and functioning of our government for at least 80 years, and so, no matter what powers the president and congress are s'pose'da have according to musty old texts nobody in DC cares about, in reality they have basically no power over the Permanent Bureaucracy.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
You won and you have a mandate
"Won" a bunch of figurehead offices with little-to-no power over the vast Permanent Bureaucracy (and associated institutions) that actually rules.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
If Trump keeps on winning so much
What has Trump actually won, really? What makes people — on both sides — think he's going to be any more "in charge" of the executive branch than Biden currently is?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
TikTok
Try spending some time on Tumblr. Given the stereotype of your average Tumblrina, the responses have been exactly what you'd expect. Hundreds of thousands of women are going to die of miscarriages each year, and hundreds of thousands more are going to kill themselves to avoid being forced to give birth after being raped by their uncles. Latinx are going to be rounded up into death camps and mass-murdered. The "fascist Supreme court" is going to "overturn Brown v. Board and the entire 14th amendment" (Yes, those are literally from a post I saw.) Some claim the 13th amendment is getting repealed.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
Why should there be any memes referencing these movies?
Because Valkyrie is about an attempt to assassinate Hitler, and Inglorious Basterds ends
First of all, they are old.
Didn't stop this Inglorious Basterds meme from being posted on /r/moviescirclejerk just two years ago. It's text reads: "Plot holes: in Inglorious Basterds (2009), the antifascists kill and scalp Nazis instead of voting blue."
Well, "voting blue" clearly didn't work to stop Nazi II: Electric Boogaloo. And like so many people on Twitter and Tumblr are saying, we've got about 90 days left to somehow save Our Democracy and the lives of millions of Women, Latinx, LGBTQ+…
If failing to kill Hitler gets you into the history books and played by Tom Cruise in the movie about you, then imagine your legacy for taking out Hitler 2.0: Orange Edition?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
Sure, but that just belabors the point — you think those Biblical "complaints" are a valid historical account, but plenty of people question the historical accuracy of, well, practically every part of the Bible, and those who argue the other side would dismiss these stories of Carthaginian infant sacrifice as being just as much false anti-Carthaginian libel as the Roman ones. So again, how do you decide? Here, the archeology helps, but without that, is it really just "pick a side and agree with their claims" like @hydroacetylene says?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
11d ago
Looking at internet memes going around in response to the election, I've been surprised by a lack — so far — of ones referencing the movies Valkyrie (2008) or Inglourious Basterds (2009). Is anyone else surprised by this? Or are they out there, and I've just missed them? Am I not looking in the right forums?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
11d ago
How do people determine which past accounts are to be counted as valid historical records, and which are to be dismissed as past propaganda? For example, there's the whole Carthaginian infant sacrifice issue — real history, or anti-Carthaginian libel? Or Aztec skull towers — actually existed, or just lying conquistadors demonizing their Indigenous victims? In those cases, we at least have recent archeological finds giving solid support to one side (but even then, some still dispute them). But when such physical evidence isn't obtainable, what then?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
12d ago
@Capital_Room, @naraburns, and anyone else who wants to: I'm asking you now for a number on Trump getting murdered or otherwise failing to assume power (e.g. faithless elector scheme, fake elector scheme, 1,000,000 fake votes showing up).
It's a bit early to tell — everyone still seems to be reeling and emotional over the results. That said, while a lot can happen in two months, and I'm not ruling out any of the above, I'm going to have to rate it fairly low — something like 10-15%. The surprising lack of Valkyrie memes (or references to von Stauffenberg in general), as well as the relatively conciliatory attitude of Democrat party elites — "Kamala Calls For Peaceful Transfer Of Power To Adolf Hitler," as the Babylon Bee calls it — makes it seem more unlikely.
On the other hand, said "peaceful transfer of power to literal fascist" attitude on the part of our elites raises my estimation as to their confidence in having "Trump-proofed" the government over the last four years, and that people on both sides should probably stop acting as if Trump is going to have any more authority or control over the executive branch than Biden currently does (i.e. basically none).
As long as I've been politically aware (~30 years now), the Republican party has consistently failed to turn electoral "wins" into actual political victories (save tax cuts for the wealthy, a bigger military, and "well, the left only got part of what they wanted this time" that is really just losing more slowly). The go-to excuse has always been whichever branch[es] they didn't control. Why can't a Republican president get things done? Democrats have the House and/or Senate. Why can't a Republican Congress get things done? They'll get vetoed by a Democrat president. Why can't a Republican president and both houses of Congress all together get anything done? The liberal activist judges on the Supreme Court will just strike it down.
But now we've got the closest thing to a trifecta. The White House, the Senate, and probably the House of Representatives — and with a lot more "MAGA" populists and fewer old party-establishment swamp-creature squishes. Plus, the most favorable Supreme Court in my lifetime. So, when 2028 rolls around, and nothing's been accomplished and everything has still moved leftward, what excuse is left? How do you keep right-wing voters believing that if they do everything they're told, and just show up and vote in large enough numbers, they can win, once it's finally made obvious that the game is rigged, and that "If you lose, you lose. If you win—you really lose."?
So, I actually have some hope. That is, I hope the next four years will finally convince enough people that voting doesn't matter, that there's absolutely no way forward for the right within the system and the law, and to give up entirely on that futile path.
wouldn’t this type of fraud be trivial to prove after the fact?
No, because AIUI, it's literally illegal to try to obtain the evidence necessary to prove it. (Edit: I think /u/The_Nybbler has posted comments here to this effect.)
To again quote "L" at Jim's:
It literally would not matter if there wasn’t a single genuine voter for Kamala in any of those states. The vote is whatever the people counting the vote say it is. Guess who those people are?
By the way, there’s not a single mechanism or institution that would ever support any kind of challenge to the results. Musk can say whatever he wants, in the short time he has before prison, and it doesn’t mean anything.
…
Again, doesn’t matter if they exclusively counted votes while utterly shitfaced. You have no institutional means to stop them saying the total is whatever we want and no ability to use force. You’re done, simple as.
[Emphasis added]
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17d ago
Who do you think will win, Trump or Harris?
Harris, because we'll get as much turnout from the living-impaired voter demographic as necessary to ensure she wins.
Relatedly, do you think there will be issues certifying the election results?
No, because Republicans lack the wherewithal to block certification no matter how obviously fraudulent the results. We could have North Korean election results, and people will just throw up their hands, grumble, and plan to vote harder in 2028.
And of course - do you think we'll see outright political violence?
Only if Trump somehow manages to miraculously overcome the margin of fraud — in which case, we will see strong attempts to block certification. We'll also Trump given a lengthy jail sentence in New York, which left-leaning state law enforcement — and possibly the FBI — will attempt to arrest him so he can be extradited to serve said sentence before he can be sworn in. Expect large, organized uprisings to stop the Fascist takeover.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Which demographics is she pulling in 2024 that Biden DIDN'T pull in 2020? Make the case for me because I don't see any way she pulls better numbers than Biden.
A much larger portion of the cemetery demographic? The non-citizen demographic?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Kamala has no advantage that Biden lacked
Except what Curtis Yarvin dubs "Moore's Law of election 'fortification.'"
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
How about riding a shark, with 250 pounds of dynamite strapped to his chest, into the mouth of an active volcano?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
I can recall the following instances from high school where I was either aware of or partially complicit in theft:
Sounds to me like you just hung out with a particularly bad crowd. Nobody I knew growing up was anything like this (and I come from a rather poor background, probably much lower class than yours).
Plural of anecdote is not data, personal experience not necessarily representative, etc.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
whatever the hell else you think kids steal these days.
You're talking as if "kids" as a general category are broadly guilty of shoplifting something. IME, most kids didn't, and don't, shoplift; and those who do tend to be greatly concentrated in terms of class, culture, family background, etc.; and much as with crime in general, it's dominated by a small number of repeat offenders.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
But that's where I worry about the election cycle. Four years is not long enough to rebuild the entire federal bureaucracy.
First, I — like many — would question just how necessary so much of the federal bureaucracy is. There was that discussion here recently about what the Department of Education does. I'd also point to some of Curtis Yarvin's comments in this interview by Harrison Pitt about bringing in Elon Musk to head a "Department of Government Efficiency":
Well, if you wanted to run the government efficiently, you would do actually the California startup thing, which is you would simply replace it with a different organization; and which is about approximately 100,000 times easier and more effective than trying to take a process-oriented bureaucracy and turn it into some kind of mission-oriented thing.
It would be like, you know, if you told Elon Musk, basically, that he had to build a space program and start with NASA, he would simply fire all of NASA and build SpaceX.
…
Like you can't actually make these organizations more— I mean, you cut a little here; modify, tweak a little, but you can't make them into organizations that are even 1/1000 as efficient as SpaceX.
Moreover, if you're doing this kind of organization where you're just, like, "okay, I'm going to replace the State Department," uh, great, then you're face-to-face with an even more knotty question of what is the State Department, and what does it do, and why does it do it, and is this organization going to have the same goals and missions as the State Department; because the State Department is, of course, living in this sort of, like, exquisite historical fantasy, which it itself has constructed, of the Global American Empire.
…
You would not, if you actually worked from first principles in the way Elon Musk does when he launches a rocket, you would be, like, I don't even know even the concept of a rocket is up for grabs here, because if you look at what the State Department does, and the system it administrates, it is almost entirely a contingent product of history.
…
There's all of this just frame-breaking, where you try to make this thing— we're going to make the State Department more efficient, and you start thinking harder and harder what is the State Department? Why do we need a State Department? Right. And you're just basically, as you get more and more galaxy-brained, you're basically just, like, the reality is the United States does not have an Executive Branch, it has an administrative branch.
So, if you focus only on rebuilding the most core, essential functions of the federal government — can we get by for awhile without a Department of Energy? Transportation? HUD? CPSC? USAID? The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service? the Postal Regulatory Commission? — I can see quite a lot getting done in just four years.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
Thanks, fixed. (Like Hakan Rotmwrt said, "High-quality racism is extraordinarily hard work.")
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
20d ago
but it shouldn't be some impossible feat of man to convict thieves.
It's not, it's just very difficult under the system as shaped and maintained by our ruling elites. (I am once again reminded of a trad-cath friend's argument that pretty much all of the US's problems, this one included, have known and simple solutions — not necessarily easy, but simple — only we're not allowed to enact out any of them, leaving a single political priority.)
As if something is wrong with us, society, and not them, the criminal.
This gets to a key point in my "disparate impact" effortpost, as well as the Emile DeWeaver "Crime, the Myth" piece I linked and quoted here, particularly the bit:
Then there’s a second myth, that crime is an act committed by an individual. Calling an act a crime is instead a choice we make as a society about how we respond to harms committed in our community.
(Emphasis added).
The criminal laws we have did not descend from the heavens. They are a social construct, a societal choice, and we can always choose differently; laws have varied quite a lot across human history.
It's a matter of where we place the problem. I remember an anti-HBD piece from @ymeskhout, giving the example of a game law limiting shellfish harvesting from a beach, and how everyone caught breaking it was a Cambodian immigrant. One can frame this as a problem with the Cambodians, and ask how we get them to stop over-harvesting shellfish… or we can frame it as a problem with a law that disproportionately punishes Cambodians by labeling behaviors more common among them as "criminal." One could easily eliminate said disparate impact by repealing the limit on shellfish gathering, after all.
If, instead of picking our leaders by elections, we did so by a test of sprinting ability ("There's only one Big Giant Office, and whoever outruns the fireball wins!"), the racial makeup of our government would be rather different, wouldn't it? (A lot more Kenyans, Afro-Caribbeans no?) Similarly with all the "13/50" memes; if you replaced the current US criminal code with that of, say, the Kingdom of Dahomey, would the racial disparities stay nearly as stark?
The position in the Kendi, DeWeaver, etc. space is that to frame the problem as being with people is inherently bigotry, and incompatible with values of tolerance and equity. The problem must be seen as with the system, and to address any problems, we must change who and what our society chooses to label as "criminal," and how we treat those so labeled.
I'm reminded of all the "Positive Action" self-esteem building crap we got in grade school back in the late 80s and early 90s (I thought it was stupid and nonsense back then, and my opinion has only gotten lower). It was full of "you're perfect just the way you are" assertions. Take this idea — the flower of liberal tolerance and the individualist view that "[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" — and combine the value of "equity," and this seems to follow rather straightforwardly.
There's a core liberal impulse here — a "the laws were made for Man" view, a "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men… it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it" view — that we must adapt "the system" to fit, and bring equity and fairness to, the people in all their diversity and freedom, rather than force people to adapt to a particular "system" created by one specific culture, reflecting a specific set of values, out of all the many possibilities.
I can't find it again in a cursory search of my browser history, but I know I saw a piece in a "legacy media" outlet asking how they deal with our situation wherein so much of the American public have turned against facts and truth and willfully chosen to be ignorant. To support this description of our current landscape, the author cited the well-surveyed decline of trust in the establishment media and increasing turn to alternate outlets; then immediately wondered how you fix people who have stopped trusting in Truth and have willfully turned to listening to liars instead.
It was pure Principal Skinner "Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong" attitude. There's quite a lot of that these days. There's nothing wrong with the legacy media and its trustworthiness, it's the people who've stopped listening that need to change. There's nothing wrong with Democrat policies (except maybe compromising too much with the right), it's just that so many voters are driven by racial grievances and hate, and are beyond reasoning with. The Party and the Media did not fail the people, the people have failed the Party and Media. "[T]here aren’t people worth “winning over,” there’s just a country overwhelmingly clogged with trash to eliminate."
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