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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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How do you heal?

Stop escalating.

Trump was summoned into existence by the media. Their hate just makes him grow that much larger.

If Biden had been a gracious victor, he'd be coasting to a second term and would go down in history as a uniter. Instead, he decided to go all-in on hate. His speeches lately (e.g. at Morehouse) have been some of the most negative and hateful I've ever seen from a President. In the words of Donald Trump: sad. It didn't have to be this way.

No president would get re-elected in an environment of high inflation after trust in institutions was permanently lost after footage of them transparently lying to justify losing their nutty over the chink virus.

losing their nutty over the chink virus

This is unnecessary.

Thanks for telling us all you got vaccinated, smart move

  • -16

You've been spamming threads with these kinds of snide remarks, and the last time you did this you ended up getting banned and told to knock it off. Once again I am telling you to knock it off, and banning you for three days. If you have a point to make, make it clearly and directly. Stop attacking people (not just me, you've been attacking people almost at random for the past couple of days). Your contributions so far seem to be nothing but low effort and obnoxious. Keep it up and you will be permabanned.

If you have a point to make, make it clearly and directly

How could I have possibly been more clear or direct

No president would get re-elected in an environment of high inflation after trust in institutions was permanently lost after footage of them transparently lying to justify losing their nutty over the chink virus.

Sure they can. If nothing else, you can just make up election results saying they won from whole cloth, declare those "the official result" and punish any "election denier" who dares to claim those numbers are anything but 100% true and accurate.

But, like @The_Nybbler says below, you almost certainly don't need to go that far. Just use control of the media and the institutions to ensure enough of the peasant masses are marinaded solely in your official narrative, and enough of them will go along. Particularly if the other candidate is currently rotting in a cell somewhere.

Unless of course the media keeps telling people there's no inflation, to trust in the institutions, and never mind about Fauci's lies, COVID is so 2020, we've moved on. Which of course is exactly where we are.

People don’t believe the media to nearly the same extent as they did pre-2020.

I'm not sure this is true. It's just that believe different media.

to nearly the same extent as they did pre-2020.

Yes, but even though that belief is smaller, there's still enough to get Biden through, particularly given all the ovine Boomer Republicans who aren't going to vote for "a convicted felon".

Curious if that’s actually a large constituency and not just a handful of columnists.

and not just a handful of columnists.

I'm talking about people I know personally, fellow Alaskans, who acted similarly in the Ted Stevens case — including one person who argues that if you vote for "a convicted felon" God will literally damn you to hell for it.

You're predicting Trump loses Alaska?

Given how the elections here in Anchorage (~39% of the state's population) just went, how Blue this city has become, how Lisa Murkowski keeps getting reelected, our replacement for the late Don Young…

…well, I won't say it's by any means certain, it's far from impossible.

Trump was summoned into existence by the media.

Incorrect. Trump was summoned into existence by his followers. The media reported on his crimes.

If Biden had been a gracious victor, he'd be coasting to a second term and would go down in history as a uniter

If Trump had been a gracious loser, he might be worth nominating for another term. But he went all-in on hate. It didn't have to be this way.

  • -27

Trump was summoned into existence by his followers.

His "followers" didn't give him $2 billion of free media coverage during the 2016 cycle. When Trump declared, he was only polling 10% in the GOP primary. He didn't break 40% until March of 2016. He was lucky enough to be running against a weak and numerous slate of wooden neocons who hadn't seen which way the wind was blowing and couldn't get out of each other's way. When Ben Carson is your closest competition, you know things are pretty dire.

"he might be worth nominating for another term"

Do you sincerely believe that? If Trump had been a gracious loser, would you have personally voted for him? If Trump had been a gracious loser, do you think that would make him a better candidate than Biden? (After all, Biden hasn't been a gracious winner).

If not, I must call this out as a false equivalence. I don't think you're being sincere in this statement.

The fact of the matter is that the small group of American leftists who dominate our media and communications is consumed by its hatred for the right wing. The airwaves and Internet are controlled by a small group of people who cannot restrain themselves from broadcasting their irrepressible hatred for half the population 24/7, and that's exactly why we're all in this mess. There is no peaceful future as long as that nonstop firehose of visceral hatred keeps flowing through every media outlet.

For there to be peace, the media class needs to let go of that hatred.

What sort of demographics describe the composition of this small group of American leftists dominating the media?

I feel like you're trying to lead into some kind of "da joos" point, but if anything prominent Jews in the media have been unusually likely to break ranks lately. Between the increasing emphasis on race and the heating up of the Israel/Palestine conflict it's been a difficult few years to be a high-profile left-wing Jew.

Demographically I would say the people I'm talking about are disproportionately white women, but aside from that they tend to be pretty ethnically diverse.

Impossible to say

Impossible to know, or impossible to say?