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Notes -
Dem win, as I've been predicting since the biden-trump debate.
Literally nothing matters in this country except the institutions, and they are now as dominated by the ruling party as anything in China. And like in China, any apparent loosening of total control is just a slipup caused by intra-party feuding, like the Connecticut voting fraud case where someone got caught dropping off a garbage bag full of ballots for the wrong democrat in the primaries.
The real difference in this election is how little discussion there's been. I haven't felt the need to debate whatsoever, because it's as pointless as arguing with chatgpt. "Issues" don't matter, reality doesn't matter, only framing and who holds the megaphone matters.
Why get caught up playing the game of "that's misinformation! Well, maybe it's true but it's still malinformation! and anyway you're banned for Hate Speech, read the room." You can see all the moves coming 20 steps ahead, being right in retrospect doesn't matter because you still publicly lost the social power game against the guy who demonstrated his power to rig it, and the only winning move is not to play.
A nonexhausitive list of examples: violent crime & shoplifting rates, the state of the economy, inflation, #s of illegal migrants and the very existence of government programs importing them, Biden's senility, assassins' motivations, "woke and CRT doesn't exist it's all in Republicans' imaginations," Biden's nuclear crossdresser stealing women's underwear, there's no censorship on social media you're just banned for being a bad person, we must criminalize residential school mass grave genocide Denial, leftists don't support Hamas at all you're crazy for thinking so, "yeah well you're weird for noticing!". I could go on and on.
The people lying about all of these didn't lose anything by lying. They actually beat you by demonstrating that they can maintain the lie longer than the truth can stay solvent and then bury it in a ditch afterwards.
Like Scott said about arguing with Vox: they can lie endlessly and force you to burn ever more weirdness points correcting them.
I've been feeling this too, but contemplating that it may just be a side effect of getting old and having done all this before.
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