Throwaway05
4hr ago
I mean it makes sense, Graham dying and it being announced immediately would just raise more questions about the lack of updates. Although it's entirely possible it was just timing.
Throwaway05
5hr ago
Trump seems to personally love American power and want to retain it, hiding the assassination of a high profile public figure goes against everything he's done with his presidency and his revealed personality.
At the same time he'd have two MAJOR prongs trying to force the information out there - the majority of the American political and military establishment (which supports pressure on Russia) and any adversaries who find out (because Trump hiding it and then it being revealed would be a massive embarrassment).
It doesn't make any sense.
You would also need to hide it from his family who would presumably have similar political inclinations.
Throwaway05
5hr ago
Mitchel McConnell and the Collapse of Common Sense.
Before I start -
-Please don't feel personally attacked if you bought the FUD, you are not alone.
-It could totally turn out that the recent releases are doubling-down in which case whoops, and feel free to judge me later.
Anyway.
After weeks of speculation, Mitch McConnell appears to be alive (per CNN, Fox). This is good news (because death is bad, and also because he is one of the most competent people remaining in American government). It seems like he and his family wanted some privacy and that he was sick (probably held down by some pneumonia it seems?).
This was always the most likely outcome.
Despite that we've seen a crap-ton of conspiracy theories, and I think these are a microcosm of the decline in America and perhaps the modern world. On reddit and most of blue social media this was painted something that the evil Republicans were doing for evil Republican reasons (with a sidebar of his wife/handler immediately fleeing to China). The mainstream media bit into it as a tabloid chaser (...how far we've fallen) and as a cudgel to hit the Republicans with, and of course you can also blame the 24-hour news cycle.
Posters here and more moderate/right-leaning spaces did better but some still went in on conspiracy theories.
Lest we think it is online only I deliberately polled some people I know in real life.
This never really made sense though. The political hit from having been caught lying about this would be high (well for Republicans, anyway). The benefits on stalling are murky. The amount of family and other people you'd have to keep in the dark was high.
It was silly. Perhaps some people didn't mean it seriously, but that's the problem isn't it.
Too much of politics is low information, demanding people have an opinion, and that opinion is valueless and sometimes more of humor thing or as we talk about with woke a religious stance more than a policy position.
People being stupid and silly isn't a new invention but people are asked about or forced to state their opinions more often and can do so publicly and without later shame for saying something ridiculous. On the other hand the people we used to look to for information have fallen off the rails, and on the gripping hand people feel entirely comfortable completely throwing out experts because the experts have lost a step, not realizing random individuals or influencers really aren't doing any better.
And of course we have what we see anytime a Republican aligned figure is ill or dead - the grave dancing.
The whole thing has been tremendously gross but I can't help but think we'll get more of it.
Throwaway05
7hr ago
Update: he, his office, and his physicians have now been making public statements.
I hope everyone updates their priors!
Throwaway05
7hr ago
What would anybody gain by hiding this? If he was killed by the Russians that would be a tremendous leverage point in negotiations, probably infuriate Trump and bring him in line with the average governmental employee about Russia.
It would justify WHATEVER with a large portion of the American public.
You'd also have to work tremendously hard to hide the outcome from his family.
Some military deaths are sus - those usually involve the bodies being unavailable and no utility in revealing the truth.
This is not that.
Throwaway05
12hr ago
So it helps that he's on twitch more than YouTube from my understanding, which means that more volume and less filtered content.
I'm no expert on the guy since most of my knowledge about him is served involuntarily, but I have seen stuff that credibly is authentic (for example: when they committed a crime and had to go court, the girl who was caught cheating on her bf with him on twitch, the time his fans were pissed because he made out with someone who was trans). Also sometimes it def looks like he's paying people to be there. Also he gets blown off. Def a mix, but anything who believes that girls in their late teens or early 20s don't eat that shit up missed a lot of formative experiences.
Throwaway05
12hr ago
That's exactly what had happened, though. The US accepted and signed very unflattering terms.
Did they sign unflattering terms or did they agree to things they would never have to act on because Iran, Israel, or the US would promptly renege?
Throwaway05
19hr ago
I mean he doesn't succeed "all" the time and disgruntled people want to signal boost when he fails, but you can find lots of footage of him succeeding with no effort or when he shouldn't.
Notably, people online tend to claim that he has paid the people who it does work on.
Throwaway05
2d ago
Yes. OB spends more on malpractice insurance than most people make in a year.
Throwaway05
2d ago
A couple of things are happening here.
Part of it is the decline the secretary - it used to be that most of these people would be one capable secretary, those women now work "real" jobs and much of the duties have been outsourced onto doctors, outlook, and other similar stuff. Some of the job remains, but the talent pool is...lower.
Healthcare often actually involves razor thin margins, immense government subsidy, unions or government employees and all kinds of other crap. Someone has to man the phones and officially do the job. Usually they don't, so you hire more people hoping that enough women at the desk creates some function.
It doesn't. During training usually I did my job and the front desk's job.
I find this conversation so triggering so I'm a bit disorganized here but other poster's have noted an element of claims and other things, usually the people sitting at the front desk are the front desk staff and do front desk things, but it's not necessarily going to be obvious if it isn't also an MA workstation, or someone who does insurance stuff, it just seems like a homogeneous pile of women.
Throwaway05
3d ago
different ex-girlfriend story drop a few weeks ago in the NYT, but the take was "She's a conservative just doing politics, so we can ignore her allegations".
Importantly - it seems like they knew about this and didn't publish so that they could spin that narrative.
Throwaway05
3d ago
that one angry woman with accusations of sacrilege is enough to render any random politician un-electable,
okay, good, because that isn't what happened here.
The guy has MULTIPLE (and credible) accusations of various types of sexual malfeasance. Including things he has admitted to.
He appears to have issues with alcoholism, drunk driving, and poor impulse control.
He has expressed interest in violence, murder, and rape and taken steps to potentially participate in these things.
He has endorsed abhorrent policy (as defined by me - ex: socialism).
The whole Nazi thing.
Ideally he would have been disqualified long prior to this point but if this is the straw then so be it.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Okay so do you assert all the complaints about this guy are false (so he should be elected anyway)?
What about the stuff he and his supporters have admitted to, is that false?
Or do you think this stuff is real and that it is usually not false?
I'm confused.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Let's make sure I got this right - you don't care how bad a person he is, even if he was Hitler you'd fine with that because you want someone to survive a sexual assault scandal regardless of how abominable or real it is, did I get that right?
I'd assert that this may be satisfying and at the same time the opposite of what you'd want to do if your plan was to alter how the electorate responds to these things.
Throwaway05
3d ago
I defend this guy because I want a candidate (who has politics I don't even agree with) to win an election regardless of how much female-privilege-associated (re: "consent violations") dirt appears, so that people stop listening to women when they invoke it.
I mean you realize you are supporting a guy who supposedly said he would love an excuse to rape men, right?
Throwaway05
3d ago
Two things can be true at the same time.
MeToo involved a bunch of bullshit.
This guy is by his own uncontested words a huge shit bag in multiple ways, including in ways that would make you think he's the likely sort to commit sexual assault.
The contested stuff is just a cherry on top.
Additional process information includes the fact that this stuff was out their for months and then held back by various individuals, it wasn't fabricated right now, and the fact that the people who vetted him found and knew about a lot of this and admitted it.
It's blowing my mind that people are defending this guy.
Throwaway05
3d ago
The Dems presumably have access to a good-sized professional network of lobby organizations, activists, and businesses. There are also many political positions that are much less visible to the public.
Usually but this guy was an outsider they wanted to get rid of.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Shocked? No.
But Trump is vulgar, being a sex pest makes sense, rapist maybe less so but not shocking. This guy is HEINOUS. He bragged about having thoughts of raping men for dominance, like it makes more sense than not!
Vague, nebulous post-hoc signs are a problems but this guy is not that!
If you had to make a most Sus guy in a lab it would look like this guy.
Throwaway05
3d ago
It is so weird.
Throwaway05
3d ago
This guy is probably the most obvious sexual assaulter we've had in recent memory, even more obvious than some of the people who have previously down weird sex stuff.
The guy has posted about fantasizing about raping and killing people...and joined the military to do that (in how own words!), claimed to be a huge WWII buff but got a Nazi tattoo, has significant infidelity problems that aren't contested, and I'm not even sure that's all of it.
Hearing that he was a rapist or a sex pest is more unsurprising than anything.
Throwaway05
3d ago
If we're being conspiratorial though why leak this stuff after the primary, but before the deadline for changing the ballot line.
The post-mortem on this is going to be interesting if it ever becomes publicly available, the number of people I've seen on the left and the right in the establishment who note that everyone knew about this stuff (including the NYT) is unreal.
Throwaway05
4d ago
It's so weird, why are people defending this.
Is it a j00 poster thing? I hate that that is my first thought.
Throwaway05
4d ago
I mean I don't know for sure, it sounds like they may have additional sex crime allegations of various kinds. I was hearing from journalists months ago that "everyone" knew about these accusations and that some of them were being held onto or quashed (in the case of the NYT).
Most of the people who were saying that are saying more stuff is left in the tank.
Throwaway05
4d ago
Unfortunately the euphemism treadmill does not allow that, see for example "IPV" (intimate partner violence).
Yeah he was probably seriously ill in the hospital and I haven't seen any commentary refuting that - the conspiracy theory is that he was dead or brain-dead and it wasn't commented.
Look at this almost all of these are things that people KNEW were fake at the time. They weren't conspiracy theories where something was being hidden, it's that the dominant narrative was ass. The biggest exception is the Mandalay Bay shooting....but nobody has any firm theory with any evidence behind it or anything beyond "that was weird af" and pure speculation.
This probably extends to your next point - conspiracy theories are getting dumber because stuff that would previously be a "conspiracy theory" (like MK Ultra) has enough penetrance that anybody interested in knowing or learning about them does.
Although plenty of conspiracy theories were always super dumb - ex: moon landing faked.
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