MaximumCuddles
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User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
When was the last time they were in such a precarious position, losing every branch of government and being at an absolute nadir of lack of trust in their favored institutions? The 19th century?
I’m not being smart, I’m genuinely asking. From my understanding of history they just got absolutely walloped on a scale not seen since before the 20th century. Am I wrong?
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
I’d say it’s manifestly obvious that our institutions have much less value than they did in the past.
There has to be a limit to how much they can beclown themselves and burn through their credibility until the currency they use to keep themselves afloat, reputation, is virtually worthless.
Clearly I’m not alone in feeling this, Trump has a mandate and I hope he uses it good and hard.
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
That “why not” had a lot more punch in his first term eight years ago, but now? The man has gotten into a slew of political knife fights and came out alive on the other side.
Success breeds success, victory brings victory. You see a black swan event, but it very well might just be the opening in the armor to hammer the deep state and scoop out the soft brains.
Second term, no need for re-electing. He doesn’t need speaking fees or book tours. He’s already clearly been targeted and survived to tell the tale. If anyone capable of burning the boats behind him and conquering, it’s him.
I’m not 100% on this either, I could see him being conciliatory. But I think the deep state is much, much more vulnerable than either the black-pillers and “nothing ever happens” crowd thinks.
Me, personally? I hope what’s swimming around in his mind is similar same as mine;
“The ram has touched the wall. No mercy.”
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
I do think it’s a distinct possibility that it’s really “different this time” because the institutions have tanked their credibility so completely in a way never done before, and the second Trump administration seems more primed to detonate the vest over and over again instead of cooperate.
In many ways the second Trump administration will likely be like the first, but there’s a significant non-zero chance they will pull a Milei and just start slashing and burning.
Why not? There’s virtually no downside.
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
I both hope and legitimately think it’s possible this could be the beginning of the end of the Democratic Party.
After nearly two centuries, they might not survive this. The Whig party doesn’t exist anymore.
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
A realization that the “return to normalcy” promised by Biden was either absolute bullshit or that normalcy was terrible, actually.
MaximumCuddles
18d ago
You being unbanned on Election Day is really incredible timing. Welcome back.
MaximumCuddles
23d ago
Is JD Vance here? Maybe, maybe not.
But if he was here, I don’t imagine he would be a prolific poster. Very busy guy, you see.
He’d most likely be a lurker that posts in inspired bursts and then slinks back into lurker mode for days, or weeks, or even months. He might have even got an AAQC or two.
He’d have been lurking around since SSC and the split with the subreddit, so he’d have some intermittent poasting history over at /r/themotte but probably not before.
I imagine he checks TheMotte regularly between his busy work life that doesn’t allow him much screen time.
He’d also be mega-based, undoubtedly.
Anyways, I’d look out for a guy like that.
MaximumCuddles
28d ago
This line if reasoning about backlash drives me crazy, depending on the speaker it’s inevitably either dishonest or hopelessly misguided.
I voted against Trump in 2016 for reasons they turned out to be false, and for him in 2020 specifically because of the high probability of a horrendous backlash.
I saw his enemies slip the mask after 2016, I wanted much much more of that. I wanted his enemies to reveal how psychotic and narcissistically hateful that I knew they were, for everyone to see. That way when they popped their heads up to scream ghoulishly for blood, the body politic could (rhetorically) bash their fucking skulls in with whatever was handy (in Minecraft).
Sometimes you have to induce a fever to kill a disease.
MaximumCuddles
28d ago
If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.
MaximumCuddles
29d ago
There was a very simple way to head Trump off at the pass; say you’re going to do something about illegal immigration, which is wildly unpopular with the body politic, and then fucking do it.
That’s it. That’s the whole game. That would have stopped Trump because he would have never developed his constituency, which wasn’t invented by him but simply ignored by both parties.
There was electoral gold in the streets just waiting to be picked up but a prospiracy driven primarily by rank class hatred blocked it. All it took was one defector.
MaximumCuddles
29d ago
That makes it worse. A longer time span gives more evidence to come to the opposite conclusion, not less.
MaximumCuddles
29d ago
I think it literally just means that lib aligned PMC will be embarrassed at cocktail parties.
If that sounds uncharitable, I’m quite serious. “Global Standing” is what a tiny percentage of the international elite feel about the USA, not the unwashed public at large.
MaximumCuddles
29d ago
Considering who owns the most megaphones and controls their content, I find this opinion absolutely astounding.
MaximumCuddles
29d ago
The idea of “Trump damaging our standing globally” to me is always 100% tied up into class anxiety amongst the PMC.
Trump is popular, and not just in the USA. He has rapport with and the respect of many world leaders and their respective publics; just not the ones that the cosmopolitan upper PMC consider their “equals”.
I see this very plainly. So many blue tribers of this type simply can’t be seen, even to themselves, to be “one of those people”. They’ll complain about the “excesses” of the Democratic Party until they’re blue in the face but are basically never going to actually do anything to push back against it.
The chapo types, rarely right about anything (pun intended), were 100% right about the libs.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
If those other issues were dealt I would bet enormous sums of money that support for stolen election claims would deflate slowly like a balloon over the course of several years.
Opposition to very commonplace and common sense election security measures is legitimate dry tinder for ever wilder rungs of supposition. And every day it’s not implemented the plausible deniability of the worst, least charitable takes about trumps enemies shrinks until we are at the point we are currently at, where the conspiracies start to seem more plausible even by people like myself who are naturally skeptic and repulsed by woo and snake oil salesmen.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
Swapping out Pedro Ximenez Sherry for the simple syrup is one of the greatest small changes you can make to a classic cocktail.
It’s crazy sweet but figgy and date-y.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
On the gaming front; I’m absolutely obsessed with UFO50, a top tier collection of 50 8-bit style games with modern design elements.
I’m not particularly nostalgic about the 8-bit era as it was coming to a close when I started playing games as a kid but these are really impressive. As a collection it’s astounding, some of the individual games are amongst the best I’ve ever played. And there are 50 of them!
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
This is the drink I go for when I’m out on the town;
1oz Aperol 1oz Reposado Tequila Shake, pour into an ice-filled high ball glass
Pour 2oz dry Prosecco or Cava on top, garnish with ruby red grapefruit slice.
Comes out a beautiful salmon color if done right, it’s both light and boozy and keeps your tastebuds alert.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
Napoleon: “Britain is a nation of shopkeepers, we needn’t fear them.”
Same energy.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
Based on his other responses in the thread I’m guessing he thinks the Wermarcht was pretty competent.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
where is the evidence that the American or British are particularly effective soldiers.
Time on task.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
My favorite response to this on Twitter;
“In 2023 there was footage of Haitians eating people, and the thought that they might eat cats is too offensive to consider?”
Bush meat is a real thing. Recent immigrants from countries that eat bush meat doing what they did in their home countries before they are acculturated to their new environment is not even remotely shocking to consider. I’d be more amazed if it didn't happen.
MaximumCuddles
1mo ago
This is a nuclear level cope, I have a hard time taking this seriously. Sneak attacks work, that’s why people use them.
If Israel had even close to population parity in any of those wars some of the nations that had waged war against them in the past likely wouldn’t even exist today.
Jews are disproportionately rich and PMC. Trump support is déclassé. A lot of people severely underestimated how stigmatized being a Trump supporter still is after eight years.
I honestly think that’s most of it. Call it my tribal theory of the cocktail party.
There are some notable defectors and early adopters who paid a high social cost for supporting Trump. Each subsequent person is less likely to pay a cost.
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