Outlaw83
2d ago
Even before Swift, Kelce was more famous than even a very good football player that he was due to his podcast with his brother, and that unlike many football players, who can be shockingly uncharismatic and boring, they're actually funny, interesting, and such together.
I can sort of see the conspiracy argument if it was truly random TE or LB, but if you actually know the NFL, you know Kelce isn't a random player, even if TE isn't usually a sexy position.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
America has some of the loosest party discipline in the world, because of how we choose candidates and our two party system. In general, parliamentary systems can have news articles saying, "the party has chosen this," and be basically correct, because people who disagree enough to not go along with the party simply become independents or 'lose the whip,' which is a sign they'll be deselected at the next election.
Outlaw83
1mo ago
Every single "Ripped from the Headlines" Law & Order story in many cases is more salacious than the actual case is almost 100% of the time. Because even 'ripped from the headlines' stories are sometimes not tight stories for a 43-minute show on network TV.
The only reason you're seemingly upset about this portrayal, which from your description, is no less over the top than other 'ripped from the headlines' story I remember from when I watched the show, as opposed to the other portrayals of criminals, is you don't think Daniel Perry is a criminal and is instead, a hero. Welcome to being for criminal justice reform then, I guess.
Also, the actual reason Law & Order moved from more realistic crime stories in it's first couple of seasons to basically ripped from the headlines and rich people doing terrible stuff wasn't wokeness - it's that the over the top stuff got more viewers.
Outlaw83
7mo ago
Sure, but it's a nice bonus we're wearing down an enemy, it's helpful to our larger geopolitical goals, and it's by actual standards, pretty cheap since most of our "spending" is writing off 1980's and 1990's military equipment.
Outlaw83
8mo ago
I think the person talking about Vivek being the only person not ensconced in the swamp or whatever is being silly.
But, look into DeSantis pre-2020. He was deep with the Club for Growth, Chamber of Commerce, Koch Brothers, etc. Which is ya' know, what you do if you're a rising conservative star, but he wasn't some independent go-getter and hell, his SuperPAC currently has backing from every right-wing billionaire not on the Trump train.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, the actual issue is, for some of those jobs, you actually have to pay more than other jobs that are actually more skilled. If you give somebody an option between making say, $15 at an Amazon warehouse, $13 working at a Starbucks, or $20 working doing fruit picking, a lot of people will pick option A, and some will still pick option B.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Speaking as a leftist, the $1000 expense thing, along with the "paycheck to paycheck" polling is one of the dumbest things my fellow leftists point too as proof of how horrible it is for America, when there's plenty of better things to point at. Now yes, do I have a spare $1000 lying around? Not really. But like most American's, I've got credit cards with healthy limits for a true emergency.
Now yes, people in say the bottom third are legitimately in real trouble, which is why as a leftist, I support a massively expanded welfare state and all the other stuff most of this site thinks will lead to the end of society. But, a random nurse and teacher living in suburban Wisconsin are fine if ya' know, a transmission goes out. Yeah, it'll suck, and they'll only be going out to Applebee's 1x a month instead of 2x a month for a few months, but as long as nothing else screws them over, they'll be all right.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The problem is of course, I'm sure ole' Meatball Ron has voted for restrictions multiple times on the federal level while he's in Congress, will be endorsed by numerous groups that want pro-life restrictions on the national level, and I'm sure the 2024 GOP convention will endorse national pro-life legislation.
More importantly, there's about .01% of the population cares about federalism - all they'll know is the GOP candidate signed a restrictive abortion law. Plus, the Liberal Media and SuperPAC's will have plenty of time to talk about the GOP's long history of supporting federal abortion bans and basically push the idea, "do you trust what Ron DeSantis says or what the Republican Party has said for 40 years", or whatever a smarter person than me can write.
Plus, there's just a decent chance that to try to win over evangelical voters in Iowa, he'll just go ahead and endorse federal restrictions to try to win a caucus.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, considering they were nerdy guys, I'm sure more than a few people who made the atomic bomb read sci-fi stories, still looked at the original comic book, and may have enjoyed some westerns or noir films. It wasn't all Oppenheimer quotes all the time. It's just today, the line is less clear, and people are more open about their hobbies. Hell, we had people involved in the creation of the beginnings of space industry that were weird sex cultists.
It doesn't really matter how scientifically literate the median American is, as long as the coffers still go to various scientific endeavors, who turn out can invent new things and use the gender somebody prefers the same time, just like they got used to having non-white males as co-workers.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The fact we can be so unserious, yet still rule the world just shows how powerful we are. We can talk about the Avengers, then drop decades old tech in the DOD equivalent of the backyard shed and basically ruin Russia's ability to make progress.
Outlaw83
29d ago
Yet, Biden won the 2020 election, did much better in the midterms, the Democrat's have continually won special elections, and so on.
Now, it's true cities have shifted to the right some (even though that's somewhat overindexed by people online). Eric Adams replaced DeBlasio in NY, various other more center-left/centrist Mayor's got elected in Phiadelphia and other major cities. All these people won fairly easy - it was a little tougher for Adams, but RCV is made to create a close final round. In a typical two round system with an actual campaign, he probably wins 55-60% initially.
But, any politicians rightly or wrongly, actually perceived as just Republican's in sheep's clothing will lose. Eric Adams, the woman in Philadelphia who won, etc. were all able to basically run as "Democrat's who understood crime was bad," and had progressive policy positions other than that. Like, Eric Adams has had some wacky ideas and endorsed Bernie in 2016 after all!
On the other hand, in Los Angeles, Rick Caruso was basically a rich centrist who got coded as Republican be he was a developer, was white, and went a little too far on some issues, and also, his opponent, Karen Bass was a normie center-left Democratic congresswoman, which mean she got massive support from every elected Democrat in California.
Then, in Chicago, it was even worse, because Paul Vallas, who worked under Obama and whatever, seemingly got deep in the same pool of stuff that shifted formerly centrist people right, and said a bunch of dumb things on radio shows and in campaigns, that allowed a black self-described socialist to beat him, despite the crime issue htere.
The actual problem for this idea of a right turn in the cities overall is things are worse than say, 2015 by some measures, but in many cities, things are already better than they were in 2020, and nowhere got close to the 80's and 90's numbers that allowed right-leaning Mayor's to actually win power. In 2024, even our criminals are lazy and don't do their jobs.
Plus, there are other factors - the Republican Party is a more conservative party socially, and it's more of a nationalized political space. In 1989, you could be a fairly liberal New Yorker, but throw a vote to Rudy, because hey, he's a prosecutor, but he's socially liberal, etc. Now, any right-leaning candidate has to deal with the fact that his base base of 10-20% Republican's in a major city have been radicalized, the median urban voter simply does not trust Republican's and has never voted for one in their lives, and you not only have to answer for whatever wacky things Republican's do in Alabama or Texas, you have to denounce it, or lose those votes.
So yeah, in 2022, there was a shift in NY & CA, especially among Asian & Latino voters for two reasons - the abortion issue was strongly off the table, and crime was a major issue. In 2024, I question whether we'll see the same shift. Yes, Trump will do better than he did in 2020 because of electoral polarization, but I simply don't buy the polls showing the greatest racial realignment since Civil Rights (I also don't believe Biden is suddenly winning older whites either).
No, it's mostly a bunch of weird situations and specific political moments.
In 2028, yes, if Trump doesn't win in 2024 is alive and out of prison (or maybe if he is in prison), he'll run again.
Otherwise, on the GOP side, you'll have a bunch of normal-aged politicians like DeSantis, Noem, Kim Reynolds, Stefanik, Abbott, Vance, on the GOP side who are all normal politicians ages.
Same thing on the DNC side - Kamala, Whitmer, Shaprio, Walz, Newsom, AOC.
Again, like or don't like these people, but they're all normal politicians ages. Same thing with the House & Senate leadership. Jefferies & Mike Johnson are normal political ages. Schumer & McConnell will be both are on their way out in the next 2-4 years.
Putting aside Trump, outside of him, I'll bet you a Trading Spaces dollar both nominees are under 70.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The basic issue is despite some famous by Internet standards people giving the idea that the median under-30 white male is some angry dude who thinks wokeness is destroying everything, not only is the Democratic vote among white males under 30 higher in 2020 & 2022 than it is among 65+ white males, the Democratic vote is likely higher today, than among those same 65+ white males when they were under 30.
So, not only is the "dissident" right losing the pure numbers game, due to immigration and intermarriage and everything else, they're losing any kind of possible support among their target demographic.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Yeah, like, it's totally shocking the ambassador there when talking about a political change in the country to mention...prominent opposition politicians? If there was a tape of a Russian diplomat talking about Trump winning and then mentioning a bunch of likely Cabinet nominees, I wouldn't think that was proof of some weird underhanded plan for a coup.
Like, am I sure she was happy about ole' Yanukovych imploding? Sure.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, maybe, maybe not for the peasants who made it to 60, but there are billions of people alive today who would've either died in childbirth, of some random disease, or been sent off to die because some noble wanted 9 more square miles without a choice, and so on, and so forth.
Also, I just think people who think peasants were dumb, happy proles are kind of ignoring the actual history of medieval Europe, where not only did medieval peasants actually gain economic power because of plague rats, but there were multiple peasant uprisings and the like.
I'm just fundamentally against pastoral nostalgia for medieval times, whether it comes from edgy right-wingers who hate capitalism and think peasants in 1450 were happy, religious serfs or edgy left-wingers who hate capitalism who think peasants were happy laborers who worked less than they did.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Also, local government and people within that local area actually having actual power.
The dirty secret is one of the ways France, Spain, Germany, etc. can cheaply build trains, metros, and even housing at times is simple - the federal government has immense powers to step in and say, "sorry, we're doing this, giving you market value for your land, and you have no recourse in the law at all to stop us."
There's other things, but this is something people on both sides overlook.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Yup - the rise of the Trump Right, and QAnon all rose because of stuff a lot of people would consider cringe, as well.
Outlaw83
4mo ago
If you want the latter to happen, you need women fighting for it, not men advocating for it, and claiming that women want it. Even if it's true.
Outlaw83
8mo ago
Yeah, those people were dumb. There was no great movement toward the Right of the youth during this time, as you can see by looking at actual voting results.
Even recently, there is a big story about the rightward movement among teen boys, and if you actually look into the numbers, it's barely outside of the margin of error and more importantly, no evidence of long-term change. Plus, it shows, as you'd expect, that most teens don't have an ideology at all. But even back then, the "alt-right pipeline" was a relatively minor part of Youtube, and yes, people freaked out about it incorrectly. Gamergate didn't cause Trump to win - higher turnout among low-salience middle-aged voters in the Midwest gave Trump the win.
I get it - just like my more left-wing friends think if they can just make the right arguments, everybody will be a socialist, you guys think it'd be a generation of edgy right-wingers if not for Youtube "controlling access to information."
But, most people are normies who don't want to be mean to people they get to know. Whether it's the nice Trump-voting waitress at their local Applebee's or the trans kid across the street.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, Japan is ahead of the West and the ruling party is as strong as ever.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Also, to piggyback, in my normal life, the vast majority of the people I keep track of from my fairly normal suburban/exurban high school in Florida are either married w/ kids or serially in fairly long-term relationships. Even out here, in supposedly SJW-infested Seattle that's also a tech hub, do you know what I see when I actually walk around in the outside world? Lots of couples.
I really think the current "crisis" is a combination of some bad data (even the GSS data seems kind of flawed) and the type of person who's not getting laid being very loud and overrepresented on the Internet.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
His appeal includes William Wallace, though.
Scotland got snuffed out as an independent nation before it could do any imperialism.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
1.) If you ask the median person, whether they'd want a scenario where every ticket was $150, or there was a chance they had to pay $190, but somebody on the same row as them got to pay $110, they'd absolutely despise it. People despise surge pricing, even if there's a somewhat better argument for it. People want stability and firm prices, not basically having to roll a dice every time they try to make any purchase.
Ironically, both libertarians and socialists at the ends of the economic chart think people should be nothing but economic input and output machines, and don't like it when human beings act differently.
2.) The difference with hotel & plane prices is the time dynamic - when two people buying a ticket on the same row, at the same time, can see a different price, that's when people get pissed, and the reason hotels and flights get away with it is twofold - there's less feelings connected to a plane flight and more importantly, there's not thousands of people trying to get the same flight at the same time.
3.) Why do artists care? Because contrary to popular contrarian opinion, not all famous people are unfeeling sociopaths hell bent on screwing over as many people as possible. But, even looking at things selfishly, artists understand that to an extent, having only an audience that can afford insane ticket prices will be a less hyped audience than people for whom this is basically the high point of their lives, as opposed to somebody more focused on being an influencer in the first row or whatever. But also though, many artists probably have memories of being unable to afford tickets to the people they liked, and want the ability for many types of their fans to able to get into a show.
4.) The combination of basically automated scalping + Ticketmaster's pointless fees + their monopoly of tickets plus stadiums is what really upsets people. If somebody waits in line for 12 hours to get the first tickets, then sells them, people may not like it, but they can respect it. They have zero respect for some dork who wrote some code so they can buy 8 zillion tickets on the first day.
I joke, but only halfway that if Biden came out tomorrow and said he was starting anti-trust action into breaking up Ticketmaster/Livenation and pushing regulatory rules to limit fees, he'd gain ten points in approval overnight. Donald Trump would beat Ticketmaster in an election in even deep blue states.
Outlaw83
29d ago
Let's be honest here - nobody is censored here, but it turns out, people don't like arguing 20-on-1 anywhere in society, regardless of ideology. Which is true of left-leaning spaces as well, for conservatives. But, well, those spaces don't do the whole "we're not censoring viewpoints" thing, they just say forthrightly, 'yeah, this is a place for people who agree on x, y, and z. Like it or leave.'
Putting aside what other people have mentioned, cultural change happens really fast a lot of the time, once it reaches an inflection point.
Look at race relations in 1960 and then in 1975, in the culture and the media.
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