2D3D
6mo ago
Destiny seems to catch endless flak from Hasan and Vaush for (insert leftist infighting meme). I think its Palestine and Defund The Police that caused the biggest leftist rifts, so off the top of my head I would think that is what catches the ire of leftists.
There is much scorn to be levied at the entire streamer culture and the parasocial relationships engendered with especially pathetic hosts, but Destiny is really mid even by those standards. I love that Breadtube streamer types were convinced that getting Harris on their podcasts would have changed the electoral needle of young men, which is a hilarious lack of awareness of who even ends up listening to their pieces in the first place.
2D3D
6mo ago
There is already a museum of memes, where a PWC manager is immortalized for all to see. More people have seen this disappointed pakistani man than any religious icon. By kb of digital space, that man is a god alongside dicaprio and harold.
2D3D
6mo ago
The act of defying Trump publicly was itself a form of ring-kissing. Lips were firmly planted on the O-ring of the presumed actual power brokers, the professional intelligensia of media academia and moneyed professionals that propped up the DEI establishment (its a real thing, I saw the contract for DEI consulting services my company had to engage in order to qualify for ESG benchmarks required to be part of fund portfolios). Trumps capture of the presidency was viewed as an aberration, a confluence of sexism and gerrymandering that caught the true powers off guard. The dominant calculus communicated by media was that Trump was a fluke, and the Resistance was just waiting in the wings to resume its rightful place over Trumps accidental reign.
Honestly, the left had a series of surprisingly good accidental victories from 2018 to 2022, allowing midterm senate correction, covid and Roe overreach to be conflated with the presumption that Trump was a spent force. The end of ZIRP cuts much of the fat that could be showered onto the DEI establishment that propped up the power of The Resistance. With that gone, the shadow of power of DEI has been exposed. Now there is a new ring needing to be kissed, and I do suspect it is less disgraceful for the likes of Altman and Zuckerberg to kiss Trumps ring than subject themselves to Joy Reids screeds.
2D3D
6mo ago
I really wish latinx was around when I was in college. Id have had so much fun introducing my latino friends as latinx at parties full of white kids. My friends would have to grin and be polite as I wax effusively about their journey to the hallowed shores of america where their latinx identity would be given the respect in this safe space of understanding. It'd be seeing a human pressure cooker in action.
2D3D
6mo ago
Its the same as Islamic fundamentalism - apostates must be killed because to have read the quran and yet reject it is proof of the foundational incompatibility of the heretic with logical existence.
The difference of course is that I can unironically find at least five jihadis in my 1st order peer group who will take a few weeks break off their comfortable lives to go on a beheading spree throughout the holy land if airfare was covered and their legal immunity upon return was covered. Despite decades studying and working in the educated professional world I cannot think of a SINGLE progressive/leftist who would actually even pull the trigger themselves. The leftists want Someone Else to do the dirty work of executing their intellectual will. The jihadis at least bother to justify within their doctrine why the apostate must be killed. There is nothing in the leftist philosophies that mandate gulags, much less executions.
2D3D
6mo ago
They're already doing that to themselves. Turns out that debasing oneself to attract girlbossses doesn't actually make one more likely to secure mates. Thankfully the Ivy graduates have defined social success to include non-reproductive bonding structures, making the act of finding a friend a sufficient hurdle to have surmounted to achieve social grace. Yet even that barrier seems to be increasingly out of reach thanks to the new social status meta of mental-trauma induced insufferability.
2D3D
6mo ago
From the linked article:
All the while, the heteronormative centre chugs on. XF challenges this centrifugal referent, knowing full well that sex and gender are exemplary of the fulcrum between norm and fact, between freedom and compulsion
This reads like fanfic by pseudointellectual transhumanist autogynephliacs (cough dresden codak). The centrality of sexual identity to modern transhumanistic language is honestly kind of weird, and it crops up in weird places quite often. The Transformers forum was filled with weird transsexual fetishists for awhile and they had to ban all the Megatron/Starscream fics because it was getting too weird. And if you've been on the TF wiki, weirdness is kind of their baseline state of being.
2D3D
6mo ago
Ruy Texiera, who has been mentioned here a few times, is one of the most eminent names back in the late 2000s and early 2010s that crowed about the emerging democratic majority that would render the republican party permanently on the backfoot. He wrote the book 'The Emerging Democratic Majority', crowing about the electorates changing demographics rendering the traditional republican base of angry old white guys a diminishing minority. Its not like he was the only one presuming as such, Lindsay Graham himself said that there weren't enough Angry White Guys for the republicans to rely on forever.
Yet, if anyone has followed Ruys work since about 2014 onwards, it would almost seem that Ruy is a hardcore conservative. While the argument tracks that the republicans may have moderated their rhetoric about migrants and social conservatism, the much more attributable fact is that the left went fucking crazy after Obamas 2012 victory, and thought that they had free license to go full progressive. Following Michael Browns shooting in 2014, the cultural left which was in the ascendancy in the USA went in the direction of intersectionality, merging disparate disparate outcomes into a semicohesive web that castigated all achievement as unfair exploitation by a legacy white male establishment. The leftward sprint was so fast (I blame Elevatorgate, frankly) that people who were actually succeeding on what they (mostly rightly) perceived to be their own merits started questioning the reality that was being presented by the left, and simply by questioning they were cast out as uncle toms. These unmoored agents were now receptive to the siren calls of normalcy. As Ruy keeps saying in his interviews (like in The Bulwark where the comments all call him a delusional ultraconservative), he didn't leave the left, the left left him. His language now has some cope that he never claimed the emerging democratic majority was inevitable and that he maintained that it required the democrats to continue representing the white working class fairly, and while I think this is a bit of an ass-covering exercise, it still somewhat tracks.
One of the most amusing aspects of media post-election 2024 cope is that the normie voters were tricked into believing a lie from a right wing media ecosystem that had been totally unknown and impenetrable to the left, and if only the democrats had just reached out even harder to spread their message to the unwashed masses they would have been converted to their point of view and have agreed that Trump was so manifestly unfit that there was no real choice but to vote for the democratic platform. Till now I have not actually seen any lefties consider that maybe the unwashed normie masses had actually listened to what the left had been saying nonstop since 2016, and that the message was rejected on its own merits. The left likes to pretend that the election started from July 2024 when Harris was appointed the knight to slay the dragon trump, ignoring that reality existed before 2024 and all the language spread nonstop by democrats and democrat activists was on public record for all to see. The greatest enemy Harris had in 2024 was not Donald Trump, it was Harris 2019.
2D3D
6mo ago
Third world bribery is hilariously different from first world bribery. A policeman shaking you down for a random traffic pit stop is unheard of in the developed world, whereas the networked corruption of opaque contracts and awards buried within bureaucratic legalese are a misty shadowland for third world.
2D3D
6mo ago
Blame Disney. Making Gypsies hot exotic innocents who deserve pity made all criticism of domestic underclasses impossible to maintain without cries of 'racism', a charge that magnified its weight from the 1960s till now. Guy Ritchie making Travellers hot probably didn't help either.
On a more serious note, the Europeans successfully kicking Irish Travellers and Gypsies out of cultural capitals and into third rate cities (Marseille always had a reputation and right now Malmo is its own meme) probably had a great deal to do with the acceptability of a postracial European polity. Out of sight, out of mind. Some places being perennial shitholes regardless of foreigner presence probably contributed greatly to the presumption that shitheads are race-agnostic, blinding polite society to the racialized nature of shitheads till it became too late.
2D3D
6mo ago
If natural resource wealth were the primary determinant of economic success, South America would blow the USA out of the water with its relative geographic safety and immense wealth. Yet their people all seek to emigrate to the USA.
Speak to third world migrants and they all have a distorted but extant view of USA as the shining city on the hill where their labors will not be seized by a politico or a noble. For all the complaints about the oppressive foot of the US government on the necks of its people that commentators both left and right love to decry, nothing compares to the petty corruptions that smother daily life in third world countries. Hell, the US governmental oppressiveness does not compare to the bureaucratic machine steamrolling across people and businesses in relatively competent western european institutions.
The gilded cities of gold promised to migrants by their kin that landed in the USA through their own sweat and toil is real for them, when compared to the shittiness of their home countries. The USA is not Europe where the promises of riches and success are so dependent on navigating local bureaucratic contexts that the promises of wealth are afforded better by criminality and fraud.
USA is not perfect, and there are many migrants who have found the US wanting compared to their homes. But it is telling that there are so many more who wish to drape themselves in the stars and stripes and disclaim loyalty to their home countries. Grifters do exist, and the USA under the democrats refused to acknowledge that bad actors could possibly exist, but Europe provides both a compliant state and weak people to leech off on. Barring the Canadian collapse, the USA will be able to stave off the camp of the saints for a good while more.
2D3D
6mo ago
I've come to realize that A Song of Ice and Fire is poorly written historical fan-fiction
Agreed, Martins writing style was good for the tone of the subject matter covered in GRRM, which ultimately is the mundanity of perceived evil. Evil acts are just acts that happen in the normal grind of a shit world with shitty actors.
The problem is that after he got tied up rewriting Dance Of Dragons and Feast Of Crows for years, he just lost interest in plotting a path to the end. Autistic commitment to the mundanity of terrible things happening to good people means an autistic commitment to timelines, and GRRM got sidetracked in his main plot, introducing new characters primarily as a plot progression point - Quentyn to bring Dany out of Mereen, or Aegon II to get Tyrion out of Braavos - and the concepts he could write into that character to show how shit life is for heroes became more interesting to write than Dany fucking about as a shitty administrator, and it just became a sprawling web of concepts vaguely anchored to a main plot GRRM lost interest in literally last century.
I don't actually think GRRM is smart enough a writer to really walk the talk of criticizing the lack of 'Tolkeins tax policy' or whatever smugfuck Gritty Real World concept must be elaborated on to refute the narratives of high fantasy. The construction of his world is shoddy enough to begin with, but how a world is constructed is never the point of a story. A world is simply the skeleton on which the flesh of a characters interactions are draped onto, and GRRM was pretty good at having character moments. The problem is that his characters needing to mechanically interact in consistent manners meant he had to work more on that skeleton, and the failings became increasingly untenable to work together. A particular irritant I have is his concept that economic prosperity of Westeros was founded on Lannister gold and later the largesse of loans taken from the Iron Bank. Like, what the fuck bro, your main setting literally is about multiyear winters, fucking spend more than 10 lines talking about agriculture if you're so committed to subverting the handwaving of Tolkeins economics-free world. At least Tolkein talked about the sacking of the Shire and the terribleness of replacing pastoral idyll with industrialization, whereas GRRM spends way too much time tracing incestuous bloodlines instead of making his world not revert to 'eternal refrigeration'.
2D3D
6mo ago
I literally eat raw onion slices with grilled meat skewers. Satay needs the acrid sharpness of unprocessed alllium to contrast caramelized sugar and soy sauce marinated meat.
Also onions on burgers are super common! The Animal Style of In'n'Out has grilled onions, Five Guys has onions 3 ways as toppings, White Castle has shaved onions, an Oklahoma style burger has a literal mountain of onions, every fancy burger place puts onion rings or fried onions as a topping addon in addition to grilled raw or caramelized options. The whopper and big mac both have onions! I HAVE to know which burger product in the USA is heavily patronized which does NOT use onions, except for baconator and shack stack.
2D3D
6mo ago
The difference is that the PRC only really cares about the KMTs dispute of continuity of government from the 1911 Xinhai revolution, which is the theoretical successor to the Imperial China polity and its associated territorial claims. Cultural successors to different time/regions of China include the San Francisco and Flushing Chinatowns which practice the Cantonese ways of the 1800s, the Thai Chinese who practice a syncretic Thai-Teochew pattern of especially gaudy taoism (other southeast Asians are migrants who hold little affection for the mainland), and even the Joseon who at one point proclaimed they were the successors/avengers of Ming China following the Manchu conquest of the Han. Yet all of these are unimportant to the PRC because no one else claims legitimacy over the mainland.
The KMT are in fact colonizers in the truest sense, being a foreign people (KMT nationalist government, soldiers and displaced Nanjing intellectuals) that displaced the local power structures and cultures (Ainu/Japanese colonial subjects+local bureaucrats) while acting as a disputed successor to a foreign regime that had not ruled over Taiwanese for half a century. These putonghua speaking nobles ran roughshod over the minnanyu speaking islanders who cared not for the squabbles of the mainland. That the KMT was entertaining thoughts of reclaiming mainland China through an Operation Revival style invasion of the Inner Sphere was the maim reason for the continual dispute between the PRC and ROC.
Fast forward about 60 years and a LOT of cultural upheavals roiling the world, and the PRC obsession with the ROC seems less like actual intra-Chinese dynastic succession politics that basically characterized the vast majority of Chinese imperial history and more a consequence of a heavily interconnected world with a force of first resort actually able to project power to its vassals. The eastern roman themes draped the livery of Constantinople on their standards, but no levy of Aleppo trained with a Hellenic muster. By contrast the Taiwanese Armed Forces practically beg to be placed under the command and responsibility of their US friends, for force competency and blame absolution purposes. Whether this assessment is accurate or even shared by the PRC is unknown, but it certainly seems that Taiwans irredentist claims to the Qing holdings would not be maintained if Taiwan did not have the US 7th fleet nearby.
2D3D
6mo ago
The unpersoning of Roland Fryer is quite telling. The whiff of possibility that the US 'carceral state' is not actually a product of systemic racism is so antithetical to the dominant intellectual theme that it must be quashed lest any doubt fester and spread to other 'systemic' narratives.
To recap, Roland Fryer is a black academic at Harvard who focused on racial disparities in minority vs white outcomes. He lead a successful minority-focused program (Opportunity NYC) that had positive ROI in terms of dollar spend to material outcomes. He is most controversially known for his 2016 paper on statistical encounters between police and minorities. Unlike the vast, VAST majority of black and minority studies academics, Fryer concluded that police encounters resulting in shootings or incarceration of minorities is statistically identical (if not actually less harsh) than white encounters when factoring in weapon possession, prior arrests, cooperation or other material factors.
https://jimgeschke.substack.com/p/the-rise-fall-and-redemption-of-roland
He was tarred and feathered by multiple academics subsequently, and a Title IX complaint against him resulted in his exile from academy.
The intense backlash against a successful black intellectual is quite fascinating, and identical to the contempt expressed towards any black man who explicitly rejects grievances. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWorther. The common thread all these men have is that they do not accept that the USA is foundationally racist and that blacks failures are due to external societal factors.
The reason for costs spiralling in the USA for government spending is this externalization of responsibility: the state must prove that the disparate outcome is NOT due to the state failing an unspecified deliverable. The existence of the disparate outcome is taken as proof that the state - as the legal responsible entity of last resort - has failed in its responsibility and therefore must invest even more resources into whatever is required by these champions of the dispossessed. And when these proposed solutions - prison furloughs, death penalty appeals, welfare enhancements that differ by state, special treatment for self declared medical (including mental) conditions, redress of human right violations - fail to change recidivism rates, then it is taken as further proof that even more must be done.
The only way to break this cycle is for a criminal to accept their own responsibility and cooperate with the justice system. But with increasing resources afforded to the noncooperative, why would anyone consider cooperating? There is unlimited incentive to costlessly defect, and minimal incentive to cooperate. The prisoners dilemma fails in real life game theory because iterated games punish defectors in the next round. If there is no punishment now or forever for defecting, and the calculation is performed by do-gooder externals, then dr robotniks pressing that defect button with the biggest smile on his face.
2D3D
6mo ago
The 'they/them' ad even had resonance in whatsapp forwards here in Asia. Basically it is the embodiment of '白左‘, or white leftists, which are very much an unpopular category here. Using Kamala Harris own words that she would devote resources to an extremely fringe undeserving minority is basically chum for Asians who dislike white culture that is viewed as punishing success.
While any Harris response likely would not have been transmitted outside for network effects, the fact that no attempt was made is still extremely telling. Harris made an attempt to counter her bad reputation with men with those extremely cringe ads, but at least she tried. The they/them ad had no response from Harris, because responding means she did not actually support they/them. The ad ended up resonating because it was perceived as, and likely is, true.
2D3D
7mo ago
Progressives do not want criminals to turn into the law enforcement mechanism because progressives do not believe crime is real in the first place. Or at least progressives have convinced themselves that crime isnt real, hence the logical next step of abolishing law enforcement.
Self actualization for progressives is contingent on having an oppressive force to actively resist, because their set worldview is already perfect and does not require convincing externals. Said oppressive force must be manifestly engaging in oppression, and so law enforcement against criminal minorities is coopted by progressives to be proof of their worldviews conception. People being criminal assholes isn't because they are shitheads, its because they are systematically oppressed by the big bad state.
In the progressive conception there is never any need for law enforcement labor, and it is impossible for minorities to commit crime when there is no oppressive force incentivizing them to do so. Manifest failures like Christiania, CHAZ, East Hastings, Kensington, etc etc are simply proof of how oppression is so systemic that criminal minorities absorb the culture of white oppressors to oppress themselves.
The labor of law enforcement is false labor for the progressive. It was never needed, and so should never be compensated. Ironically, law enforcement is required for the progressive worldview to continue existing. Without law enforcement, progressives have no manifestation of the oppressive structure and no external force blameable for progressive failures. The progressive worldview requires law enforcement to exist more than it wants it to be abolished, because if law enforcement is gone the progressive ideas have to stand on their own, and deep down all progressives know their pet minorities will find it easier to scalp defenseless dangerhairs than armed magasuburbs.
2D3D
7mo ago
The MacPherson Report published in 1999 forms the basis of UK law enforcements soft-touch approach to racial minorities and is critical when considering how the UK Met has gotten so soft (till maybe 2022). Every instance of a criminal black being arrested became an example of systemic racism, mandating inquiry and review. Police officers could potentially become racist by osmotic absorption of racist beliefs held by seniors, but the far more likely outcome is their absorption of 'sod this paperwork' effort-to-outcome practices.
The London public which serves the UK civil and political administration decries every instance of white rule enforcement as racism, cries which are eagerly taken up by Good People in London who need to display their moral credentials to the people around them. 'Its their culture' are the blinders automatically applied whenever nonwhites (except for adjacents such as orientals/jews/ibo/sikhs) do anything wrong at all, while 'systemic racism' will be screamed whenever a policeman looks at a brown rapist funny.
The current lefty narrative around the rotherham rapes and all the other muslim gang rapes of children - actual pubescent sub 10-16 year olds, not 'teen' 19 year old 'migrant children' - is that the institutional classism of the police made them dismissive of the claims of rape. In reality the police get attacked as racist for even asking if the muslims are doing anything bad, so why would they bother. Just shut up and let the browns do whatever the fuck they want, thats what the London elite prefer after all.
2D3D
8mo ago
That would be the ultimate carbon offset scheme. Excuse me, I am setting up my extrasolar carbon credit synthetic swap. I will be messaging you all from my carbon neutral space mansion soon enough.
2D3D
8mo ago
You are free to call me or anyone else an idiot all you want. In fact, you are free to call anyone who develops gold plated stealth systems idiots, like the Russians or the Chinese.
Stupid idiots who cannot see your manifest genius in googling advertised capabilities of thermal cameras and high resolution satellites provided by small scrappy cheap startups. They can see a 20km by 20km space with 30cm fidelity on a geosynchronous position. The size of the pacific ocean within Chinas EEZ is after all only a mere 4 million square kilometers. You only need 40000 satellites in geosynchronous positions and no cloud cover for real time coverage. Oh and a reliance on having an enemy that does not have long range munition delivery platforms that go even further out than 200km from the EEZ. And obviously radar works perfectly aimed at the ocean, which famously is not made up of radar reflective matter. Hint: read up on what radar signals reflect off of before you spout off your next gish gallop of justifications.
You are the smart one, and everyone is an idiot for not making the smart move of spamming scrappy solutions that vranyo clearly delivers as superior to gold plated western tech. The Russian and Chinese MIC keep crowing about their SU57, SU75 and J35 only because they PRETEND to be interested in these capabilities. You are free to call everyone idiots for pursuing this gold plated technology and your own cheap scrappy solutions like the Iranians and Houthis are doing is way better as military tactics and strategies go. Potshotting an enemy to claim victory while hiding among civilians is excellent for propaganda, and the propaganda war is all that matters. Thousands of dead palestinians, yemeni and lebanese are inconsequential when you get to flood telegram with stretched out clips of your munitions hitting one target on repeat.
2D3D
8mo ago
I think there is an ex navy commander on this forum who commented something similar. I know my own experience basically had 'spaz out mechanically' as A2 doctrine. Its the opposite of hoarding potions for the final boss, just use everything asap.
2D3D
8mo ago
Yeah, that is present. It is extremely irritating, and you can tell when it is going to lead to an irritating cliffhanger.
However, nothing is as irritating as either Chinese style bullet comments where social media comments fly across the screen as the most irritating chyrons ever, or the canned laughters/splashes that infest East Asian variety shows from 1980 to 2080. Shifting away from that is a hallmark of producers who worked in the west, and that alone makes up for the cultural destruction the west imposed on the world with the simon wellfication of snarky bitches being hosts for 2 decades,
2D3D
8mo ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KlTvsthaBqU
By your own presented logic, video evidence is sufficient proof. If this is fake, then why is yours not fake? What makes YOUR belief in veracity superior to this sources? You cannot present proof for one argument and then argue that proof for the converse using the same logic as your argument is invalid. that 'Ukraine fakes video evidence because superior S400 cannot possibly be destroyed by inferior ATACMS' is extremely weak.
no one will tell you what happened because it's likely secret and in any case involves some complex mission profile,
As arguments go, this is weak. Theoretically someone out there has a perfect argument that is so perfect that its mere existence obliterates all other arguments. Thus, the existence of this theoretical means all the other arguments are invalid, even if said theoretical is not actually presented.
This is effectively a religious argument, but for the anti-MIC. God, discounted.
You are free to believe in the superiority of a 3000 buck thermal camera being a superior option that obviates all other equipment. I can give you, for example,
that comments on exponential decay fidelity of thermal cameras.
But thats not the point is it? Proofs of Gods miracles failing to manifest are not proof of Gods nonexistence, it is merely proof of Gods secret capabilities that are beyond the ken of us mere mortals. The more proof provided that this Gods teachings fail, the more Gods disciples present new arguments out of nowhere to prove that God actually has more tools, so more fool the heretic. Stand proud, for God remains unblemished.
I can tell you that acoustic sensors are the worst failures of detection systems ever because of ambient noise pollution, and you'll come up some something else. I can tell you that beam riders have notorious falloff for BVR aplications because and atmospheric EM diffraction overwhelms OTH signal boosting systems. I can tell you that 'finding a target' out at open sea is in fact REALLY FUCKING DIFFICULT and shore based missile spam is basically being Cao Cao in Zhuge Liangs arrow boat trick at Red Cliff. I can tell you that the failures of the USA in Afghanistan or Prosperity Guardian are definitional in nature because the force was so overwhelming in nature that the normal tasking of 'defeat the enemy' is automatic, with the mission moving to the far more gnarly 'destroy' part, and observers fail to consider that 'defeat' being automatic is not in fact easy.
None of that matters. God, the manifestation of 'cheap stuff better than expensive stuff', is pristine eternally. Belief is all you need. Belief in the superiority of cheap stuff and vranyo. And Belief that your paeans to your God will make him manifest, while ignoring that Gods church is busy sucking down all the heretic dick it can find because its own teachings rotted the house from the inside.
2D3D
8mo ago
Korean shows arent optimized for fairness. Physical 100 is fucking insanely unfair, but its just really fun. Similarly I think the restaurant challenge was also poorly designed but showcased different thinkings among the chefs. I think there was an element of 'too many chefs will end up fighting' but cultural deference to leadership stopped egos getting in the way. I cannot help but contrast this with US reality TV where insane bickering is the norm.
I think the restaurant challenge ended up being much closer than it had any right to be, and the diners were more the star of that episode than the chefs. I loved the sight of a giant black man just steadily wolfing down plate after plate of food while the korean diners all gave their commentary and insight on the food. Man knew what he was here for, and he just gave it his all.
Political inefficacy by not having a sweeping unassailable majority is not the win condition, because that is impossible. Focusing on stymieing tactics employed by adversaries is missing the forest for the trees: public official elections are mass referenda of the dominant social mores salient to the population.
The 2016 Resistance insisted that the electoral college was invalid as a referenda because the popular vote was the true means of judging who was actually representing the culture of the nation, as was the 2020 election contestations that sought to delegitimize the results as first principles. In both cases the politicians elected were crippled by the normal morass of government functioning, yet the Culture War - the very title of this forum thread - pays scant attention to inconsequential details like tax policy. Instead, conflict points of salience are debated on moral/intellectual or numbers grounds. No one actually cares about womens sports to care about trans women shitting up the sport, people care about trans women being an exploitation point for bad actors to claim moral unassailability.
The presumption of eventual victory is why Trump 2016 inspired so much more resistance than 2024. Losing the popular vote as well as the electoral college and frankly almost all other down ballots of note is as total a repudiation as can be. Isolated defeats such as prosecutor recalls, no matter how common, can be attributed to tactical failures. There is no intellectual motte to retreat to in this comprehensive defeat, no comforting fact to point at to disclaim the strength of the repudiation. Hell, this election even showed the relief army of minorities turning their banners and joining the enemy enthusiastically.
The democrats basked too long in the glow of Californias massive population inflating the moral merit of their positions. Republicans are used to being told "everyone hates you!", deservedly or not. Democrats have no similar experience, and their fall into infighting to lay claim over the scraps of their coalition is already happening for all to jeer at.
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