Mewis
11mo ago
It may be that some Blues think that the US would be better off if Trump was dead. But it's a nasty thought, and the kind that shouldn't be expressed.
At the same time, it's very silly for Reds to get so up in arms about political civility and politeness. Of course it is inappropriate to openly fantasize about the death of your enemies, but this is something that Sam Hyde (affectionately quoted in this thread) has been doing for years now. This notion that "now the gloves are coming off, it's different this time" is just not true. People will whip themselves into a frenzy, take some scalps, and then waste their breath explaining to others how it wasn't really their fault, the guy had it coming, whatever whatever. It's tedious and pathetic, particularly when their idea of "wielding power" is snitching on people to their boss. That's the plan, is it - call the manager? That's not wielding power, that's begging actual power to intervene on your side.
This "golden opportunity" will fade. Some libs will get fired. Most will not. Of the eighty million Americans that voted for Biden, maybe you'll get four hundred of the most replaceable and impulsive, and most of them will just walk effortlessly into new jobs. Maybe libs will be a little bit more careful with their speech in the future and not saying obviously outrageous things. Is that what you want? For libs to be nicer to you?
The issue with conservatives is not that they're cruel. You need to be capable of cruelty. Enforcing laws is cruel. War is cruel. Borders are cruel. It's that they're petty. This cruelty is not in service of anything but resentment that the libs got away with it for so long.
Mewis
10mo ago
Political parties are mechanisms, at this point, for funnelling donations from the faithful into the pockets of campaign managers so they can run ads telling the faithful that their enemies are weird.
Mewis
1yr ago
This is what they call 'four quadrant" films, films that penetrate all major demographics. Marvel has it pretty spot on with no sex and minimal romance, and you can't argue with money.
Mewis
1yr ago
Yes, though many government departments and place names have been translated into Te Reo as well, with often the Te Reo name taking priority over the English one.
It seems like a pretty spectacularly bad policy, one seemly optimized for divisiveness.
Mewis
9mo ago
She prepared, but she prepared a bunch of talking points that were mostly unconnected to the questions. If she knew what the questions were, wouldn't her responses have been more relevant?
Mewis
11mo ago
Putting the ball in Iran's court is in fact, a very safe move, because Israel has provoked Iran countless times and Iran has never done anything significant. Especially since the alternative would be killing this guy in Qatar - a country that has relations with Israel. Israel has for once made the responsible choice by choosing to piss off an existing adversary that already hates them, and to respect a nation that is working towards normal relations.
Mewis
1yr ago
"recording a video in public while being Palestinian" is not a crime, last I checked.
There is no way to "passively" prevent someone from going where they please, and if that place is a public place, you have no right to do so. You also have no right to claim a public place, and in doing so deny it to your ethnic, religious or political enemies.
Mewis
1yr ago
This sort of romantic neo-nazi image is ridiculous. The Nazis were not high trust. In fact they were the total opposite, a heap of the most venal, odious, dishonourable bandits to ever come out of Germany (which is saying something). They had no concerns for honour or trust or mercy, no respect for the traditional religion of Europe, no respect for the ancient peoples of Europe. They started vast wars over money and land, lied habitually, ran a horribly corrupt state built on exploitation and outright slavery, and slaughtered millions.
Nor was their state really ever intended to be self sufficient. From the start, the intention was to loot, conquer and subjugate their neighbours. Indeed, the German nationalist project was mostly complete by 1938 with the annexations of Austria and the Germanized regions of Czechoslovakia, and scarcely a peep from the Allies. But the Nazis dreamed of imperial domination and glory, not self sufficiency. Instead of rallying the nations of Europe against Bolshevism ( an easy task), Hitler squandered his credibility. By the end of WWII even anti communists like Churchill were drinking with Stalin, and it was left to the US to establish an anti communist front in Europe - well, the half of it that was left.
It's interesting because we have a much better example of reactionary "we don't do globalism here"autarky from the 1940s - Franco, who carefully avoided entanglement in either WWII or the postwar international order. That didn't work either, but he failed with more grace and less bloodshed than Hitler.
Mewis
2yr ago
Do you have anything to offer in support of this account of human interaction or did you just imagine it?
Mewis
11mo ago
Kamala Harris is a little bit wasted as veep, when she would be better suited to a more significant role like daytime talk show host or fun aunt. As President? She seems clueless. She's never won anything like a competitive campaign, she has California cooties, and though being Black And A Woman impresses Democrats, it doesn't impress anyone else. She will also need to own the unpopularity of the Biden administration. I would rate her chances as better than Biden's, but worse than Trump's.
Mewis
1yr ago
Not to tell you how to feel, but I really don't believe that the source of your anxiety or bad-feel is world events or trends. They may be what your brain is coming up with to explain your mood, but that's because it's easier to blame a Thing rather than a Lack. If you had needy kids, a needy wife, a great career, millions of fans, an amazing social life it would sound totally insane to be worrying about Peak Oil or Arian heresy or whatever is going to damn us.
Mewis
11mo ago
Republicans are hating on the switch because they see it as a potential weakness, and the reason it doesn't seem to be getting traction is that Democrats are so totally shameless about having spent the better part of a year trying to gaslight everyone about Biden's age.
Mewis
9mo ago
Oh, I like Peter Thiel as well. I don't really know what you mean by "all I need to know".
I mean, look, clearly there are gay men who give themselves over to a life of mindless hedonism. There are straight men who do that too! Most of them do not end up running billion dollar companies at the cutting edge of technology. To an extent, Sam Altman might see AI as his "baby". In that sense he is probably not that different to many other CEOs or founder-owners who see their company as their baby, or artists seeing their art as their baby, or anything. But that's something quite different from being a hedonist or a short termist or a misanthrope. Many parents would set the world on fire to keep their babies warm. That doesn't make them misanthropes or short termists.
Mewis
1yr ago
My understanding is that Biden is, personally, an incredibly stubborn person and prickly about his ability or lack thereof. that's not unusual for a politician, but I don't know if anyone could do this.
The issue is not that him being removed from the candidacy looks bad. It's better to admit a mistake and fix it than to soldier on. The issue is that it raises the question - who the fuck is running the country today while Biden is apparently unable to carry a conversation?
Mewis
1yr ago
Counterpoint: this same economic malaise is very common among developed Western countries. It is the US that is the outlier here in managing to remain economically buoyant over the past 15 years while peer economies like the UK and Canada have muddled through.
Mewis
1yr ago
That seems like rather a crude reduction. Yes, I would think that young people fighting in war do think about their future... Including the possibility of marriage and family.
Mewis
1yr ago
Because it's far more appealing to join the western sphere of influence than to remain in Russia's. NATO and the EU offer Ukraine a powerful security guarantee, prosperity and liberty.
Mewis
1yr ago
That's highly dependent on how people interpreted it. A fair few people castrated themselves, and more went into the desert to pursue lives of extreme asceticism. Remember that early Christians were like, a millenarian cult that believed that Jesus would be back in a few decades... Then a few centuries...
Mewis
1yr ago
Biden was not selected democratically (a great deal of maneuvering was done to give him a royal road through the primaries) in the first place. And bemoaning the lack of democracy now is silly. If Trump was hit by a meteor tomorrow, would that be antidemocratic, in that it would deny many people their favoured candidate?
Mewis
1yr ago
Did he pour the drinks down her gullet? Yes, alcohol impairs your judgement. And yet you are still responsible for the choices you make, wise or foolish they might be.
Mewis
9mo ago
To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?
I think these days basic nutrition knowledge is pretty widespread. I mean it's not very good quality - someone that says "you need carbs for energy" is missing the mark but they at least have the concept of a macronutrient. I did meet a guy once who I had to explain what calories, protein and carbohydrates were to.
Mewis
1yr ago
I don't think this is really valid. Maybe the median black doctor is fine and knows your arm from your arse. But the people on the tails... Truly bad doctors don't just mess up, they can ruin lives and leave corpses. If that's even 5% of the total, it would be a catastrophe.
Mewis
11mo ago
That's because all those games have an element of snowballing that makes it more difficult for teams that are behind to come back. If in football, you got an extra player every time you scored a goal, it might well not be worth continuing to play when you're 0-4. After a certain point, a chess or MtG player can be certain that there's no move or card that can turn the game around.
Mewis
1yr ago
The manbear question is funny because the female response is so ridiculously confirmatory of stereotypes about women that you honestly couldn't make it up. Literally hundreds of women freely outing themselves as neurotic brittle narcissists by tweeting "at least the bear doesn't demean my intelligence or forget my birthday". It's beyond parody.
I've always suspected that the fictional sport of Quidditch is based on JK Rowling just not liking football and inventing the stupidest sport imaginable to express that dislike.
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