DTulpa
6d ago
+1 for Antz superiority, and fond memories of my father helpfully pointing out to me that Gene Hackman's character was a Nazi.
Anybody who refers to Trump as God Emperor is putting on a trollish performance. Maybe they do support Trump across the board, or maybe they're more mixed, but it is not to be taken as sincerely held belief. It is said specifically for other people to hear and see, prompting either a high five or a sour facial expression to be mocked. One should also consider its usage in our ironic/post-ironic/sincere-but-not-really discourse.
I refer to him as God Emperor with some regularity, and I am nether religious nor an imperialist. This wasn't a good gotcha even when Kimmel did it. "Oh wow, did you see this photoshop of Trump on a golden chariot ascending to heaven wearing glowing laurels and weilding the Ancient Sword of Prophecy? How insane! Yikes".
I don't think the Left got this excessive with their Obama worship, but I think that's because it WAS taken more seriously. You don't want it to seem like a big joke. With Trump, just putting his face anywhere out of context feels like a punchline on its own. "Trump is watching you poop".
DTulpa
13d ago
I was reading a blog post on ACX some time in the last year - can't remember what about. Something contentious, I reckon. Probably election-related.
I'm scrolling through the comments, names not even registering as I skim through. I find myself reading a particular one and feel a tingle in my brain. "Boy, this guy sure does sound like Darwin" I thought to myself, assuming he was just a 'type', after all.
I scroll up to see who made the post, and Oh - I'll be damned.
We'll never have proof of anybody's identities even when self-admitted. But sometimes a poster is so singular in their style that you can smell the person behind the comment four sentences in. Darwin was such a poster. Too weird to live, too rare to die. God bless.
DTulpa
19d ago
I definitely know a few hard leftists/socialists who were quick to go cold on him as well. But in general Dem normie-sphere, he was a gold standard POTUS who reigned without controversy, and his photos were posted wistfully in the Age of Trump.
I sense that too has been fading, though. Although I think that's more due to aging out of relevancy than a reappraisal of the man and his admin.
You could say they're not the real Left, but they're the one that matters.
And as a big Obama supporter for both his terms... yeah, there was a 'culty' (generously described as enamored) vibe going on. Even the Daily Show poked fun at this, with John Oliver even going to the DNC in 08 and getting little more than 'Obama will fix everything' from the crowd attendees.
Awesome. I guess our 'lived experiences' cancel each other out, then? As in, it should have been predictable that unverifiable statements like 'Progs I know are more Christian than actual Christians' was going to be an unproductive dead-end in this discussion, and why did you even bother with it?
Maybe your friends are totally angels. It's rather weightless compared to your vanguards that freak the fuck out when they see a crucifix in a public building, or give themselves the sweats over Pete Hegseth's tattoos. For extra fun, go look up who Bernie Sanders invited to sing at his recent rally. Meanwhile, the Left (coded non-religious) reports more mental health issues and their compassion dries up the moment 'refugees' get bussed to their towns.
DTulpa
3mo ago
"tranquility, forgiveness, humbleness and charity"
I'm on board with the accusation that many Christians are only nominally so. But it is absolutely laughable that you think Progs have exemplified these values to any significant degree given the last 10-15 years, if not more. I've seen almost none of these things from the Left as of late. Nor do I recall them exemplifying these values any more than the average person on the street from my teen years to early adulthood - a time when the idea of ever voting Republican for any reason was unthinkable to me.
I've seen that incident noted out in the wild a few times, and so I'm guessing there's an effort to make it the signature image of this fiasco.
We'll see if that sticks. I was rather nonplussed by the video given what 'trampled by horses' conjures in my mind. I see a miscreant whose actions finally met their consequences in the middle of a firework-exploding fracas, and he is actually OK by the end of it.
I'm obviously based, but I think the currency of 'poor innocent protester hurt by fascists for literally no reason' is losing value.
DTulpa
3mo ago
Being discriminatory against the Muslim faith (and others that are considered 'brown-coded') is against the progressive handbook. It has no problem shitting on Christianity and blaming it for much of the evil in the world. This hatred is often excused because of 'white supremacy', but also 'power differentials' before the former term really took off in the zeitgeist. It was very common for me in the 2000s to hear something to the effect of 'Islam isn't as bad as Christianity because Christianity has more power', which was hard for even me to swallow as a Democrat who posted on /r/atheism.
If you haven't witnessed the hand-wringing over Hegseth's 'Deus Vult' tattoos and how he's a closet Nazi, I can't help you. If you dont know what the Church of Satan is, ditto. And if you haven't noticed that any depiction of the 'evils of religion' in fiction invariably summons up a stand-in for a pope or a priest (never an imam) with the serial numbers occasionally filed off, then you haven't consumed media in the last 20 years.
Here's where I am willing to help out, though!
[Verse 1] Does his D go deep So deep it puts an ass to sleep? Who’s the 6 to his 9 And what are his other kinks? If he grows all the trees Does he taste every peach? Is your god fucking you and fucking me? I know creation must get lonely After all he’s one and only And his son was so well hung I think the big man deserves one
[Chorus] Does your god have a big fat dick? Cause it feels like he’s fucking me Are his balls filled with lightning? Do they dangle like heaven's keys? Does your god have a big fat dick? Cause it feels like he’s fucking me
[Verse 2] When he whips out his meat Does your world fall to its knees? Does he shoot wads of honey And cum twice on Easter Sunday? What’s his favourite position? Missionary? Magic bullet? We all give him no lover Just a hand and a mother Can he cum a shotgun blast And shoot salvation up your ass? Does he chew cunt like bubblegum And give blowjobs like a vacuum?
[Chorus] Does your god have a big fat dick? Cause it feels like he’s fucking me Are his balls filled with lightning? Do they dangle like heavens keys? Does your god have a big fat dick? Cause it feels like he’s fucking me Does your god have a big fat dick? CAUSE HE’S FUCKING YOU AND ME!
Feelin' cute today, felt like droppin' a lil' vulgarity. Teehee!
Very few people would be comfortable if this song made reference to the Quran or something related to Judaism. But it's fair game because we all know who the singer is targeting. I know it, and so do you. And it can be belted out a political rally hosted by a Darling Of The Left - with the speaker entirely comfortable with it and an audience that has no problems accepting it. Frankly, they like it. One would think that if you actually liked or respected Christians enough (or feign such things in an attempt to ply votes from them), one would reconsider the wisdom of letting this kind of thing take center stage at your political event. But they don't care, because Fuck Christianity and its woman-controlling, gay-hating, Sky Daddy nonsense.
But you're familiar with this. You can't not be if you've hung around in liberal circles for any extended time in the last two decades. And I know it exists, because I sang those same songs when I was of that tribe - before progressivism, atheism, and 'intellectualism' bottomed out and I had to concede that they were not bearing the fruits I expected.
DTulpa
3mo ago
There's this chronic inability on the Left to call out people in their own tribe that agitate for and perpetrate violence. The Right isn't perfect either, but I didn't see this much resistance or 'gaze-aversion' when required to denounce the miscreants in their midst. And TBF, I think they too increasingly lost interest in doing so since the utility of it is less than zero.
At best, you get something like Biden's 'condemnation of ALL political violence' that only names the Proud Boys, whereas Antifa 'is just an idea'.
This arouses the suspicion that their political leadership is actually okay with somebody else doing anything between knocking over conservative BBQs to killing Elon Musk.
This is probably just sour grapes on my end, but I think a distinction should be drawn between her campaign itself and the backwinds of one of the softest, non-hostile media environments I have ever seen for a candidate. People are giving Trump crap for his NABJ appearance, but are there any examples of Harris or her surrogates being able to survive a similar waltz through a lions' den? Every interview I've seen with Harris has her nonsensically flubbing through easy lay-ups provided by sympathetic journalists. Then there's the retroactive editing of articles from years ago, the refusal to grill her at all with regards to covering for Biden's obvious unsuitability for office, and an inability to make a case for her beyond riding a coconut with a smile.
Without the aid of the news orgs and a voting base that has totally mindkilled itself in the last few months to justify her ascension, this campaign would be stillborn. The power comes not from some expertly-run campaign, but the media putting its ass on the scale to glide her through. Biden was a beneficiary of this dynamic, too. This isn't a novel whiny excuse. Rightoids have tagged this as the true threat for years, and it doesn't matter if Biden, Harris, or some other thoroughly unimpressive Dem candidate is the avatar being supported.
DTulpa
11mo ago
This week we had a homeless woman fully evacuate her bowels in front of a kids museum, with families and children about. She is apparently known in that area for being aggressive and walking around with no pants. I briefly saw crap like this (haha but not really) when briefly visiting San Francisco, and it's the kind of thing you expect will stay only over there even though you know full well there's nothing stopping it from popping up in your own backyard. I thought I was being trolled when I heard.
The local subreddit has decided this is an issue with lack of public restrooms, and I feel the Hitler rising in me.
DTulpa
5mo ago
It's fine for a character to gloat and talk out of his ass. In an RPG, can I call him out in dialogue?
I can tell arrogant Mr Euro that nobody gives a shit about his country and USA #1 if he wants to talk that way on my turf (no offense to Europeans, just making a point). Can I do the same with Musa? All I've read indicates that you're kind of saddled with this guy for much of the game with no real way to push back or drop him.
It's like when an RPG has a self-announced trans character who clearly functions as a mouthpiece for normalizing transness or to extract sympathy, and my only responses consist of "That's so great and brave for you, m'lady!" or choosing another topic. Being gagged like that is frustrating.
If I can't talk back to these people because the dev is squeamish about writing 'problematic' dialogue or risking the gaze of game journos, then at least give me the option to kill them for whatever reason I feel like.
DTulpa
11mo ago
She inherited that media. It took literally zero effort on her or her campaign's end to spin up the gaslighting machine in her favor. If you're able to show me a throughline between an action she took or a message she broadcasted and the ridiculously fawning coverage she has received (between bouts of imitating ostriches), please do.
If this is what qualifies as 'expertly-run' under your definition - which is to be understood as third parties doing all the heavy lifting for you -then it means nothing to me.
DTulpa
4mo ago
I don't care about NATO. Ukraine has never been an ally to me, in either an official or unofficial capacity. Giving dictators bloody noses - this isn't 1942, and it's not as if the bloody noses left across the Middle East have reaped many rewards for myself or their locals. If Europe is concerned about their sovereignty, then they should start acting like it.
The spell of the mythical do-good American hegemony has been assailed from all sides and rotted from within. This isn't a defense of Putin. I'm just done with this bullshit, and no ra-ra'ing is going to pull me back in.
DTulpa
8mo ago
I think wokeness was on the ascent prior to Trump descending the escalator. While it did get turbo-charged under Trump, it also clearly revealed itself and was increasingly unable to sanewash its prescriptions through anodyne description (ie. "Do you seriously take issue with an academic approach to female representation in media? Seriously, a problem with academics?"). Without Trump, I think the poison pills could have gone unnoticed for longer.
And 2024 is not 2016. There was a period where culture makers could more freely indulge their fantasies of a mythical Modern Audience that would monetarily reward their tainted output. In the time since, we have had major, recurring flops across multiple industries, and some clear indicators that audiences aren't chomping on this hook. There will be some token displays of staying in the fight, but this experiment has mostly failed. Important money men will want to pivot away.
DTulpa
8mo ago
I don't get it. I can't reconcile "she ran a pretty good campaign" and then several paragraphs later read that her doing interviews was essentially a liability with nothing to gain.
Surely this speaks to big problems that can't be papered over with "hey, she never took a dump on stage!".
DTulpa
5mo ago
I don't want to weird out my friend. You could say "No true friend would care if you're a closeted homosexual and why would you want to be friendly to such a person", but the fact of the matter is that many friendships are conditional on one not giving somebody else the ick.
And the need to not signal homosexuality is infinitely stronger when it comes to women, if for different but much more obvious reasons.
The only people who could be confused by this are a very small minority of women and asexual aspies.
DTulpa
1yr ago
What a take, indeed. What exactly would NPR have to do to qualify as 'too left' in your book? Softly recommending guillotines for the rich in the coming socialist revolution? I bet even that wouldn't count!
Look, we get it. There's about a dozen principled leftists that are keeping laser-focused on 'real issues' who don't truck with facile wokeness. They never count for shit, and the ones who do show up are seemingly always Squad-type woke/socialist hybrids, but they have my sympathies. However, wokeness is a thing absolutely concentrated on the Left, and I don't think you get to cleave yourself from it so cleanly just because you too don't like their company.
I wish more feminists were more like you, then. But I think it would be hard to argue that the things FC listed weren't advocated by feminists as feminism, and you were cleared out of the room.
I'm sympathetic to people like you who may have been boxed out by a wayward media machine - in much the same way I think many reasonable LGBTQ voices got boxed out by the strident 'blockers before 18' movement sucking all the oxygen out of the room. But I can't help but be suspicious that both groups suppressed their misgivings due to outgroup fear, the want to not be a 'bad ally', or were content to soak up the secondary benefits up until it looked like they might be drying up.
I'm ashamed to say I want full transcripts of Grok's smut fantasy of Will Stancil because I couldn't go another sentence without dying of laughter in bed last night.
Like - shame! Shame on Grok for doing this. But 'Truth hurts, but this'd redefine in. Who's next?' was almost perfect mic-dropping.
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