dasfoo
13d ago
A year ago when Hollywood was shocked that the Latin American trans actor nominated for Best Actress had posted racist things online, I found it amusing that everyone was so surprised that this person whose identity revolved around provocation and rejecting societal rules didn't contain their provocation and rejection of rules to progressive boundaries.
It's no surprise to me that people who are a) trans and b) interested in shooting people may also have a c) that defies easy categorization. Their umbrella ideology is "notice me; everyone else can go fuck themselves."
dasfoo
18d ago
when the other party was in a position to release them for years, but didn't, and didn't even promise to
Which gives Trump a golden opportunity to do what he loves most: look better than Biden. That he's not eager to seize on an obvious win is a little sus.
dasfoo
18d ago
Presumably -- I shouldn't presume this about anyone in Trump's 2nd administration -- Bondi was prepared for some jackwad to come at her with one or more of the more hysterical tips and could have not only crafted a comprehensive and intelligent rebuke, but could've dug up some bizarre tips about Lieu or anyone else.
dasfoo
18d ago
Doesn't this answer itself? Ted Lieu repeated accusations that Trump raped a child and killed it, this isn't a serious matter, these aren't serious people.
Explaining that would've been better than yelling at Lieu. It would've made him look foolish. Instead, she upped the foolish stakes.
I'm not joking when I say I miss the days of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield. Whatever crimes you may think they committed, they appeared like civil servants who take their roles seriously and are informed about how to make it look like our institutions are working. Now we have a clown show. You might think that the clown show more accurately reflects reality, but Joe Public is less likely to act like clowns are in charge when he can't see any clowns, and that's good for society.
If there's nothing substantial to be gleaned, why is there still so much being actively hidden? Does the Trump admin just engage in coverups for the fun of it? This strategy of drawing it out for seemingly no reason has been nothing but egg on their face over and over, why do they insist on slow walking it and hiding so much of the files?
I try to maintain skepticism in the face of most partisan-flavored claims, but Bondi's performance in front of Congress was so weirdly and unnecessarily belligerent, it's hard not to entertain the "What are they hiding?" questions more seriously now. As a conservative who is allergic to both Trump and TDS, it's bewildering to me how thoroughly his anti-civics adversarial temperament has spread throughout his administration in areas where it is best played cool. Why the AG chose to treat that hearing as a defensive MAGA brawl, drawing more attention to it, than just matter-of-factly answering the questions as if there are serious people working on serious matters, is something I will never understand. Ted Lieu's presentation of uncorroborated tip line craziness should've been easy for her to smack down with a clinical legal response, but instead she went apeshit. It has to be more than just incompetence, right? It's like actively malicious incompetence, at best.
dasfoo
21d ago
It reminds me of how the Hollywood studio system had grown stagnant in the 70's and 80's, which allowed up and comers like Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron to innovate and eventually take over the studio system themselves.
Your timing is off a bit there. The studio system declined in the late 1960s. "New Hollywood," incl. the Spielberg/Lucas class, got started circa 1967 and rose to prominence in the 1970s (Jaws / Star Wars), and then dominated the 1980s. Cameron rode their blockbuster wave a bit later, making his first big splash in the mid-80s.
dasfoo
2mo ago
Are "the proles" worried about CEO pay, or is it the left-wing academics/intelligentsia who are worried about it and ascribe those worries to "the proles." Most of the proles would like promotions to move up to the higher paying jobs, but maybe don't know how to optimize their skills to climb that ladder. There may be some fraction of over-educated leftist agitators who work amongst proles who, instead of utlizing their intelligence in more important higher-paying positions, harbor fantasies about CEOs earning less than warehouse workers, but most proles probably think they're crazy.
dasfoo
2mo ago
This is an academic test for both the student and the TA: Can the student craft an argument, citing sources; and, Can the TA judge the student's work on its academic merits, regardless of the TA's own viewpoint on the subject matter. They both failed. If the TA had restricted their comments to the essay's academic (lack of) quality, I probably would have little issue with it, but to complain about the use of the word "demonic" from an emotional POV rather than an academic one shows this this TA is not intellectually or tempermentally cut-out for this role. I did repect that the TA, sensing their potential for bias, asked a colleague for a second opinion -- but even that colleague could not focus on the academic quality of the paper, starting with shock that a paper would argue in favor of bullying. That educator should be fired as well.
dasfoo
4mo ago
TBF, many very sincere progressives find joking about Hitler even worse than sincerely praising him, because what kind of moral monster jokes about the worst person ever? (Meanwhile, Free Palestine, and its 2 million unironic Hitler admirers.)
dasfoo
4mo ago
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.
You would think any Democrat group with a modicum of foresight immediately deleted their chat histories the moment this story broke.
dasfoo
5mo ago
A single day of terrifying violence for legislators versus months and months of wondering if your town would burn down, or a mob would form outside your home, for years and years?
I live in a purple city directly bordering Portland, with its 100+ days of riots. There was even a Proud Boys vs Antifa fracas in a park 5 minutes from my house that made the national news. Yet, I never for one second worried about my town burning down or a mob forming outside my house. These "mostly peaceful protests" were still fairly isolated to very specific small urban areas. I guess if you were unlucky enough to live next door to a police precinct, you'd have reason to fear those things, but there has not been cause, IMO, for any general panic over these things, even near the heart of the problems.
dasfoo
7mo ago
The reason people thought there was a "client list" to begin with was because of people using "Epstein list" to refer to the lists of everyone who ever flew to a party hosted on his island
It's broader than that. The flight logs are mostly (IIRC) NY <--> FL. Epstein seemed to be very generous in flying celebrities and other notables around the continental U.S. on his plane. He was an avid networker. Only a fraction of the total guests in his logs flew to LSJ or the ranch in the western U.S. where some rumored dirtiness went down.
dasfoo
7mo ago
As I understand it -- and this is largely from reading through the "new" materials released last year, and looking through the flight logs before that -- all we really "know" that Epstein did wrong was inviting teenage girls to his dwellings and coercing them into sexual massages. There are lots of Miami police interviews with girls who give exactly the same account of this happening. This is what he was arrested for and subsequently put on that weird house arrest arrangement. All of the more salacious accusations came from two witnesses, Virginia Guiffre and Sarah Ransome, both of whom have erratically made and then withdrawn wilder claims, hurting their credibility. This is not to say that their claims of debauched, star-studded island sex parties are incorrect, but they have yet to be substantiated by credible witnesses or evidence. Since all we know about Epstein is that he enjoyed criminally procured sex for personal gratification, there may well be no clients, and there for no "client list" to speak of.
dasfoo
8mo ago
And yes: men don't care if you're smart and fun (though that's nice), they care if you have the requisite sexy figure.
One minor corrective here: sexy figure is one thing, but sexy attitude may not correlate. As someone who is recently divorced from an ex-wife with a very nice body but who was borderline frigid, dating a woman who is a little chubby but loves to fuck is a mind-blowing change in fortunes. Sex appeal has many facets.
dasfoo
8mo ago
Isn't the "Epstein was a Mossad asset" meme tied into the idea that Israel is blackmailing U.S. politicians to do its bidding?
dasfoo
8mo ago
In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule.
You just explained why any party that campaigns on cutting spending will never do it.
dasfoo
8mo ago
Yeah, it's a quick "No" for me, but I live in the Portland area and the women in my age range (40-55) are basically the Pussy Hat brigade from 2016-2017. It does limit the options when an entire geo region is a meme. There are a few conservatives, but I don't fit in well with them, either, unfortunately: I'm not religious or outdoorsy, I'm blue culture with greyish-red politics, and I'm not a masculine ideal. That leaves me mostly with the silent cohort of women who simply don't care about politics, which also sounds dull.
dasfoo
8mo ago
I’m recently divorced (politics didn’t factor, my wife was more conservative) and have been wrestling with this political absolutism in online dating apps and have gotten into some dustups about the topic in a dating subreddit.
A lot of dating profiles put politics first. As I live in a purple suburb of a radically leftist city, most of this manifests as “No MAGA.” As a “conservative” of the classically-liberal-anti-trump variety, I am not MAGA, but this sentiment extends to anyone who has ever in the last 30 years referred themselves as conservative or Republican. It’s impossible to open a dialogue about what it means to be “conservative” and whether MAGA is actually “conservative.” Nuance is dead. Thought has been replaced by memes.
I would swipe left on any “No MAGA” profile, anyway, because, to me, that mindset – that discussion of political differences is completely off the table – is what I find offensive, even if the person agreed with me on every other issue. As long as the discussion is respectful and aimed at understanding each other’s different views, it should be tolerable. My guess is that the “No MAGA” party would be unable to remain respectful during such a discussion, so in order to assert their moral superiority, they need to shortcut the conversation before it begins. The ability to understand an argument has atrophied, overshadowed by the rush of clicking the “like” or “dislike” buttons.
dasfoo
11mo ago
I think you accidentally hit on a part of the appeal of this style of discussion and why it’s so popular.
I think it's superimportant not to discount the effect that social media has had on this, too. People of all political stripes are easily seduced by "likes," and nothing gets more passionate likes than when one stakes out positions that make themselves and their followers feel more virtuous than the baddies over on the other side. It's not just an echo chamber, in which one hears their own positions reverberate, but a stadium in which the response is the roar of the crowd in deafening agreement.
Or, he's someone with no consistent or intentional worldview and he just does whatever he feels like depending on who flattered him most recently or what makes him feel most powerful at any given moment.
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