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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Kamala has no potential positive external events, and many negative ones.

The economy is the biggest one. Unemployment can't really go down in a way that matters to voters, wages can't really go up without driving up inflation and interest rates, the stock market is doing fine but no one cares. She can't get good news, only bad news. A recession would doom her.

And on foreign policy, Kamala is in a terrible position, because once again the Biden team is by Blob standards doing a good job. The stalemates in Israel and Ukraine are the best results the mainstream can get. Any side "winning" would be horrible for her. Any ceasefire is going to taste like ash to 2/3 of people.

And she's constantly at the mercy of various ongoing crises allowed to fester in America. An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde. Some teenager who thinks they're trans could beat up a girl in a locker room. Some particularly bad wave of fentanyl overdose deaths could run through the country. Letting these things fester puts you at the mercy of the eye of sauron.

Kamala could lose an election of the economy goes to shit, if Russia wins the war or if illegal immigrants suddenly decide to start raping pretty women.

Yeah, you're right. They could derail the campaign....but that would derail any campaign. If anything, hoping for freak events shows that Kamala holds the cards right now.

A lot can happen between sept-nov, but it is still only 3 months.

The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.

Zooming back to our last normal, non Trump campaign, Obama and Romney both had hopes and fears from unemployment numbers, or overseas entanglements, or scandals and controversies. Obama could have been sunk by bad numbers or buoyed by positive ones, and Romney vice versa. By comparison, Don has nothing to lose and Kamala has nothing to gain.

The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.

What if Biden is declared unfit in early October and a new wave of enthusiasm for the First Woman President gives her a 5% boost to carry her through the election a week or two after she assumes office?

That didn't happen in Veep, and that show is unfortunately a crystal ball for US political developments now.

...I guess? But I don't see that happening. If anything, Biden resigning might remove some first woman president energy since at that point it already happened.

If that was going to be beneficial it already would have happened.

An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde.

There is no one so photogenic the media couldn't ignore.

Yea the media smothers all the migrant rape and murder stories pretty hard. The only migrant murder/rape stories that make it out is if it was mass captured on social media and impossible to ignore, like the muslims attacking random white people at the pub in the UK. Without public eyeballs the media just repeatedly confirms coulters law over and over again.

Illegal immigrant rapes Taylor Swift. The dankest timeline.

With her resources & body guards, my immediate suspicion would be that it was Taylor doing the raping.

She has private security.

I’m not suggesting it is likely to happen and hope it doesn’t. But I’m just saying that would break out

Alright... Taylor Swift rapes illegal immigrant.

How terrible, can you imagine the backlash for peaceful members of the Swift family.

I think that's actually the only plausible way that such sex could even occur, given many people's stated beliefs about rape via power differential.

The stalemates in Israel and Ukraine are the best results the mainstream can get. Any side "winning" would be horrible for her.

Am I missing something? A Ukraine win sounds like something she could brag about, though obviously it's not about to happen before the election concludes.

And she's constantly at the mercy of various ongoing crises allowed to fester in America. An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde. Some teenager who thinks they're trans could beat up a girl in a locker room. Some particularly bad wave of fentanyl overdose deaths could run through the country. Letting these things fester puts you at the mercy of the eye of sauron.

All of these can be swept under the rug by the media until she wins. You need something that breaks containment. A recession would probably be the worst that can happen to her.

A Ukraine win would be a disaster for Kamala politically, as the Nazi-auxiliaries start launching reprisals against collaborators, which for a sufficiently large Ukrainian win would include most of the population of Crimea. Winning would not be a liberation, it would be a conquest. Closer to a shorter term Nagorno-Karabakh than de Gaulle rolling into Paris.

As for media containment, I just don't believe in it anymore. It doesn't exist.

https://sectv.com/lehigh-valley/channel-lineup/

If you live in PA (the keystone swing state) and you get CNN, you also get Fox News NewsMax and OANN. Twitter is somewhere between open to and pushing right wing stories.

Who is doing the containment, the newspapers no one reads?

For all the efforts of the NYT and Slate, for some godforsaken reason I know where Loudon Virginia is, and more about Hunter Biden than I ever wanted to know. When a story gets momentum, it goes. People still do really believe and care about things.

I mean, the UGCC convincing Ukraine to suspend freedom of religion isn’t on Fox News.

The kind of Ukraine win you are talking about probably leads to nuclear weapons being used. Which is bad.

There is no world where Ukraine wins decisively. Both sides are tired and maintaining stalemates.

With the impending Russian winter, it is too late to start a fresh invasion. There isn't enough time to establish control of newly captured outpost and establish supply chains before the country freezes over.

I agree with this. I was responding to a comment from the the other poster about Ukraine conquering Crimea.

Exactly.

So Kamala can't have Ukraine lose, and she can't have Ukraine win. She can't have Israel lose, and she can't have Israel win (although that's more or less categorically impossible anyway). Only bad news from abroad.

For all the efforts of the NYT and Slate, for some godforsaken reason I know where Loudon Virginia is, and more about Hunter Biden than I ever wanted to know. When a story gets momentum, it goes.

I don't think you're exactly a typical normie.

If you live in PA (the keystone swing state) and you get CNN, you also get Fox News NewsMax and OANN. Twitter is somewhere between open to and pushing right wing stories.

This might have (and did) work back in 2016, people were a bit more open mided back then. Nowadays any news coming from the outgroup is immediately dismissed.

People still do really believe and care about things.

I sure hope you're right.