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Wow. Trump Derangement Syndrome has killed Tenacious D. On stage in Australia yesterday, when asked to make a birthday wish, Kyle said "Don't miss trump next time."
Today, Jack Black cancelled their tour and appears to have killed the band.
I've found the reactions of intense disappointment that Trump wasn't murdered to be really disappointing but unsurprising. My parents (who I was with when it happened and I broke the news to them) immediately expressed disappointment that he was still alive. Watching people post these sentiments publicly online as if they are completely unaware that advocating for the assassination of your political opponents is really bad and completely unacceptable has left me amazed. How can people not realize that it's a bridge too far? They're literally saying that to preserve democracy, they need to assassinate the leading candidate, a level of cognitive dissonance beyond anything I've seen.
That said, I also find the current cancelations hilarious. The very people who are calling Trump "literally hitler" are now pearl clutching that it's not okay to try kill Hitler. The catastrophizing wasn't acceptable before either - maybe this snapped people out of their delusions?
I was surprised by my own reaction, too. I was a lot happier that he survived, and a lot more impressed with his immediate response than I expected to be. Trump grew in my esteem a lot.
In a way I think Gass’s response is somewhat rational. If you truly believe that Trump is a unique threat to our political system, why wouldn’t you want him assassinated?
I think there is also some meat here in that if Trump had been assassinated, most of the rest of the GOP would just have adopted his policy positions but dispensed with the insane hysteria and backlash Trump the Character generates. You don’t have to be Trump to win this election and maybe even the next election when the democrats are this incompetent. Trump ideas packaged in a more media and PMC-friendly face would be a political juggernaut, I think.
Hot take but it might have been better for people who believe in his platform for him to have actually been assassinated. Not only would it give the platform a sympathetic halo but let’s be honest here that Trump the Character is uniquely toxic for American politics. His job is done, he’s stamped the GOP in his image and realigned them, but I think his personality is holding them back at this point.
Don't assume this is a consensus feeling. It is absolutely not.
What does "toxic" mean? I hear it all over the place. "Toxic masculinity," "Toxic work environment," "Toxic relationship." But what does it mean besides "bad ++" ?
What makes something toxic in my mind is the idea that it spreads. One person being a dick at work can lead to people being more likely to act that way and everything gets dragged down.
I don't think so. That would be 'virulent'. 'Toxic' is immediately poisonous at point of contact. It damages others directly. Probably it's closer to 'dysfunctional' with overtones of 'makes it difficult for others to function well'.
But mostly, like 'fascist', it's just 'things the left doesn't like', so yeah, doubleplusbad.
People use the word in a political context to mean both things. I've heard phrases like "David Duke is toxic to the republican party", which is more or less your framing (and the traditional one), but I think Tacherus is using it in the more colloquial and current way. It's what I thought of first, and I believe what most millenials and younger mean most of the time. With this connotation, a "toxic" friend is not bad because they are a bad person, in fact they might have a few really good qualities that you love, but the worry is that overall they rub off on you or interact with your life in a way that is harmful and spreads and you think you're better off without them. In other words, it's possibly a two-way street, but most of the time it's more the notion of entanglement and prompting negative reinforcement loops/patterns.
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