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I'm gonna be honest. None of this shit is good for my health. Just this whole presidential cycle, the constant hysterics and nonsense about this judge or that prosecutor or some bureaucrat. Endless think pieces about how every single bit of minutia will decide the election. I've been trying so damned hard to just tune it out. I'll start paying attention again in October when I'm about to vote, but maybe not even then. I'm so hardened in my choice, it's difficult to imagine anything changing it.
Yeah, I watched the first debate, because I wanted to see a primary source first hand before the spin machine got to it. That was sad. Biden was old, but Trump seemed old too, just not as much by comparison.
Yeah, I got sucked into the hysterics after the assassination attempt, but I'm trying to stay away from the conspiracy rabbit hole. I want to believe it so bad, I have a feeling if I start down that road, next thing I know I'll be getting sued for $1B.
I honestly didn't believe Biden would drop out, but here we are. All the coup talk, it tickles my lizard brain, which makes it even more dangerous.
I think I need to try harder to just ignore all that shit. For starters, it stresses me the fuck out. Second, it keeps me way too distracted from work and family. Third, I'm so close to wrapping up this bitchin walnut gaming table I'll be posting all about in the Friday Fun Thread, and the last thing I need is to be doom scrolling instead.
Fun aside, had a huge storm around here lately, and for whatever reason we lost cell phone reception in our area again. So now my shop it totally unreachable digitally. I kind of love it.
I just want to go into a coma until after the election at this point. I'm done. I can't take it anymore.
I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns, not by people arguing in good faith. This is probably part of the reason why one sees so many online accounts make stupid arguments that fall apart after just an instant of thinking. It is not just because there are many stupid people, it is also because, since there are many stupid people, astroturfers have an incentive to craft the kind of simple, catchy arguments that appeal strongly to emotions even if they do not hold up to rational analysis.
Besides astroturfing, another issue is that actual organic online political discourse on both sides is dominated by people who sit online for hours a day making political content. And people like that are not representative of the overall US population. I think that on average, they are less mentally stable and more prone to wild irrational theories. After all, you're probably more likely to spend hours a day writing about politics if you actually think* that Project 2025 will put gay people in concentration camps or if you think that the Democratic Party is a front for a cabal of pedophiles who communicate by talking about pizza than if you think that no matter who wins, it doesn't really matter that much. It also goes the other way. Being constantly exposed to other mentally unstable people's political arguments online can have a radicalizing effect, especially if one gets caught in an echo chamber.
*Or if you have LARPed yourself into almost-thinking it, into enjoying it as an exciting fantasy while perhaps not truly believing it in the depths of your mind. Which I think is probably true of many people.
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Are we talking about billiards and craps and whatever gaming table or are we talking about tabletop/miniatures games gaming table?
One of those nice board gaming tables with the recessed playing surface and the toppers for dual use. Been my project the last few months. Bought the lumber all the way back in April. Had to finish making the new kitchen cabinet doors before I could get to it though.
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That is why it is prudent to limit general media intake.
What is the point of the debates, now? I have a general enough idea of what each candidate wants to if elected, enough to make a decision at the polls, so why do I need to watch them?
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I noticed this yesterday as well. My wife was working from home, so we grabbed lunch together, and I just could not shut the fuck up about the Kremlinology of what exactly Nancy meant by the "easy way or the hard way" and the third shooter in Butler, and all sorts of other esoteric bullshit. All of this is interesting, but at some point, I need to just drop it and talk about what toy we're going to get the dog instead. My wife's patience for my babbling is near infinite, but I must be testing it at this point.
From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":
If you want to argue that women are subhuman, or should be considered subhuman, you can actually do that if you want, provided you're willing to put the effort in to write it like everyone is reading; expending some effort into anticipating and addressing other perspectives, for example. What you can't do is post a low-effort quote that assumes women are in some way equivalent to cows as part of some ancillary point. Posts like this are not conducive to good discussion with people who disagree with you, and the assumptive close is generally not a communication strategy we encourage here.
Two AAQCs, but since then two previous warnings for the exact same infraction, and this isn't a particularly marginal example of rule-breaking. I'm giving you a three-day ban. Please take some time to consider how you're choosing to engage here, read the rules, and try to follow them better in the future.
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Wow, this is one of the worst things I've ever read and I've been reading this forum since the ssc days.
Owning up to having sex with a cow is a weird flex.
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I love seeing the flip side of the Law of Merited Impossibly coin.
I'm beginning to find my purpose on the Motte.
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I'm glad you're having fun.
But I can't tell what you mean, and I think it would be a better comment if you spoke clearly. Perhaps there's some parallel in Derek Jeter's life you could use as a metaphor.
The Law of Merited Impossibility is usually defined as "it will never happen and it's a good thing it did" and is usually (here, at least) invoked against the Dems/Left, the Motte posters implying that the left claims there's no intention to genocide whites while cheering for reduced white percentages (for example).
I'm assuming FiveHourMarathon means to say that in a very similar way, the reactionary right claims that they do not seek to oppress women, only to restore them to their "good and natural role", while on Jim's blog they relate women to livestock.
Do admitted neoreactionaries actually claim they don't want to oppress women? And do normal tradcons claim women are cattle?
The answer to both questions would seem to be no. Harrison Butker didn't say women were cattle; he said being a stay at home mom was more valuable than having a career. And the dreaded Jim just openly admits that he thinks women need domestic violence to keep them in line.
Quick aside but how old is Jim do we think? Is there a general best guess? According to something I read somewhere he has been pontificating about how much all the groups of people he hates are bad and responsible for all the problems in the world since at least the mid 1990s. Its insane to me that he may be in his 70s or even 80s and still doing this. If I could find a woman who loves me the way Jim hates women and black people I would be very happy.
Gotta start using this- I’d previously used ‘find you someone who looks at you the way Bob menendez looks at foreign bribes’.
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The invokers of the Law of Merited Impossibility rarely bother to check whether the people saying the two contradictory things are actually the same people, in my experience.
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I'm flattered you pay this much attention to my comments.
You write well.
I've figured out the Derek Jeter parallel!
From 1996-2003, the Yankees won four world series and two other pennants. They had the highest payroll in the game, and were frequently criticized for buying championships. But, Yankees fans protested, Jeter and Posada and Williams and Pettite and Rivera were all farmhands, the Yankees had really developed their way to a championship. Then in 2009, the Yankees incontestably and openly bought a championship, signing big time free agents who lead the way. Still, the Core Four of it all, but it's tough for any fan not to admit some truth to those allegations.
Similarly, right wingers get accused of misogyny all the time. For every policy choice, even if supported by many women, probably for drinking Diet Mountain Dew. I'm used to dismissing it.And normally it's bullshit. But then you see a post like /u/erwgv3g34 above, and it is the real honest-to-goodness article, self-justifying its own hatred by the Law of Merited Impossibility. The wokie says: "Nobody is getting fired for not going to a mandatory Diversity training, that isn't happening; but the fact that you're so upset about this shows how important a Mandatory Diversity Training is, in fact you probably shouldn't be employed if you find that objectionable." This comment says: "Women are too stupid, cow-like herd animals, to understand politics. You can tell because when they try to do politics, they don't understand how stupid and cow-like they are." It's rare to see it in the wild, because typically online the demand for crazed misogyny outstrips the supply, but it's tough to deny on that one.
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The women in my life are even more interested than I am. My mother has gone from hating politics and "not being able to look at that man" to watching the RNC each night and watching most of Trump's speech while reading aloud twitter theories about Biden almost dying, while my girlfriend went from saying she won't vote in November to wondering aloud whether she should vote for Trump. She also says repeatedly that she hates Kamala Harris and she hopes this is not who we end up with for our first female president. And both are pretty upset about the Biden situation.
I'm not sure that bullet changed Trump, but from my bubble it sure seems like it changed some moderates and conservative never-Trumpers into Trump-boosters.
I also think a lot of discussions about Democratic attacks against Trump being applied to any Republican, while true, miss that Trump himself has a polarizing effect with conservative women and moderates above and beyond whatever Democratic messaging says about him. Democrats will say any Republican is Hitler, and Democrats will always believe them. The problem is with not repelling swing voters and conservative women. The hoes that need to not be scared are voters who would go for Mitt Romney or Ron DeSantis (my girlfriend sent me repeated messages about Ron DeSantis being well-spoken and successful before he flailed out of the primaries, and my mother says she really likes Vivek Ramaswamy) but don't like Trump because he's a philanderer who insults people. If he can stick to not being overly insulting, he can win in November.
I think most of the interest is just how weird the election cycle is. Most people aren’t actually interested in politics, they’re interested in political drama. Ask these women to name five policies they actually want and who’s advocating for that policy, and 9/10 people couldn’t do that. They like politics when it’s juicy and nobody knows what’s going to happen next. It’s almost a soap opera at this point. And women tend to eat that up.
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I think my wife has even less resistance to this shit that I do. She brings up stuff even I never heard about. So at least I know I'm not tanking my marriage by being too online.
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If you’re trying to tune out, writing a big motte post about how much you don’t care is not really necessary, and is probably counter productive to your goals.
One of the dank failure modes of social media obsession is reading and re-reading one's own comments.
Picture the scene in a weeks time when Whining Coil succumbs to the temptation to re-read his own comments. Soon he reaches a big post about how bad all this is for his health. That gives him the opportunity to turn off his computer and play with his dog. That is in line with his goals:-)
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Huh?
It’s an interesting and self-aware comment about how overwhelmed he is. It’s probably pretty close to how the average politics spectator feels nowadays. Nowhere does he say he doesn’t care either—he cares quite a bit and explained its effects on him over 7 paragraphs.
Right back atcha: telling users a post was unnecessary is unnecessary, unless it’s rule-breaking.
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My point is not that I don't care, it's that I'm trying not to care and failing. Include my post in my failures. There just aren't a lot of places I can get that meta about it.
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