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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Trump is an idiot, and the shark thing is just more idiocy, but he’s cogent and amicable. Which wins him zero points with people that think he’s Satan incarnate, but makes him a fun underdog to root for by his black pilled conservative online base. Biden seems like he’s tired and waiting for his afternoon nap most days. He has the charisma of an old slug.

So yeah, I guess the tl;dr is that left-wing media still doesn't get Trump because they only look on the surface, and when they do a deeper dive, they aren't charitable.

I could very well use this sentiment to describe the right’s dismissal of Obama in 2008 as “surface level” and “uncharitable.” Many a conservative radio personality enjoyed making fun of the “tingle down the leg” of Obama’s adoring media fan base. It doesn’t help that Obamamania was best represented as a “feeling” by his supporters, with excited yips for “change we can believe in” coming from his young, weirdly obsessed fans. Trump supporters similarly seem to be saturated with “feelings” that Trump is the answer to decades of corruption, that he’s going to clean up the swamp and make America great again.

Same shit, different tribe. Real governance is much less fun than leg tingles and shark stories.

Really, really interesting Obama comparison I did not expect. There's some fascinating shifts going on with time about views on the Obama years. There's a group who think he sold out to the moderates, there are some who think he was a closet moderate (or even neocon) all along, some who still think he's like the Antichrist, some who think he was a dreamer who got crushed by political reality and infighting, and some who don't really remember much about him other than "good vibes" and that he didn't seem to have very many major scandals.

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