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Honest question - what do you believe the Democrats will do as a consequence of particular Trump actions that they would not do otherwise? In short, what concrete effect on Democratic legislative or activist actions or priorities do you think a less-crass Trump administration would have?
My god... it’s Nancy Pelosi flying a KC-135 stratotanker full of piss!
How did you break into my Grok video gen history? Please delete this
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Damn it, don't make me laugh as I'm mourning the end of common decency!
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Incorrect. It's piss and vinegar in a 50:1 ratio!
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On one hand, the Trumpian open vulgarity and corruption is easier to discover and critique. On the other, there's the argument that the fig leaf- jawboning, sue and settle, saving your stupid jokes for the Correspondent's Dinner- is important.
The Age of the Fig Leaf is over.
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Newsom, for one, seems to have adopted the Trumpian social media posting style, and I see that being praised. So there is precedent for the Democrats to copy what are deemed successful ploys of his, even if formerly they would have held their nose about it. I do dread to think what they might copy from the shit-dumping. Nobody needs this kind of vulgarity.
Agreed. It's distasteful. I'd prefer if that kind of behavior did not exist.
Meanwhile, that guy is POTUS while nobody offers me or you(*) so much as a small-town Mayorship. Who's doing it wrong?
True, all too true!
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Well, let's think of other things the left finds as unpleasant as shit dumping. Maybe they'll call him Hitler? Or just say they like when right-wingers are assassinated?
Or make a balloon of him as a big baby. Or call him "Drumpf", "Cheetoh", or, well, or a rapist, or a pedophile.
The laws are flat. The norms are flat. The Devil has turned round.
I remember back in 2015-16 when I hung out on a rapidly-radicalising SJ board, "Agent Orange" was used a fair bit. Of course, some of the members kept switching codes, IIRC because they were worried search spiders would include them in searches for "Trump" and thus display him as being talked about a lot.
(I mean, I can barely talk on the latter front; there are certainly things I try not to call attention to, although I don't play the You-Know-Who game.)
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I think we've seen a few brakes taken off, a few restraints both parties exercised (imperfectly) in the past, but the precedent of acceleration means everyone is going to have less and less restraint now. So when the Democrats accelerate, Republicans will be outraged, and Democrats will say "But Trump."
I'll skip over the 'what's actually happening and who's done what' debate, since I don't think we'll make any progress if you're already decided on a script, but:
What, precisely, is the proposed mechanism, here? Over on Earth Beta, do you think the Butler County assassin would have held back because his tyrant hadn't made a poop joke while wanting to deport millions of thousands of illegal immigrants? Would a state judge not have ordered already-cast primary ballots to be left uncounted, because not!Trump only 'started a riot' and didn't make fun of a disabled journalist? Is their goatee'd Charlie Kirk still breathing, because even if he still wanted to shove trans people back into boxes, at least he didn't punk on a particularly goofy student before the media reporting mangled his quotes to make him into a turboracist?
There's serious policy disagreements, approximately zero people in power in politics are interested in actually persuading or compromising on those policy disagreements, and even the virtues of an opposing side are being twisted into vices... and the poop joke is what people are going to remember? I'd like a world where professionalism was important, again. But leaving aside the many ways I could argue we've not been in that world for a long, long time, I just don't think the pragmatic argument holds water, or has held water for much of our adult lifespans.
I don't know what fucking script you think I'm following, but no, there is no mechanism. No, I do not think Trump refraining from literal shitposting would make things better. You're right, the brakes are off and it's too late. Congratulations, you win. I am not arguing for pragmatism. I am describing what I see. I do not expect "Who started it and who was worse?" to be a relevant question in the future.
I dunno what you're following, but you literally gave a list of what analysis and response you expected here, which me very uninterested in discussing the actual facts on the ground.
That's a much more straightforward answer to the question:
And was I wrong? No, I was not.
Hm.
Do you think that the post I wrote above is just slapping into that category? If so, do you understand why I'd be uninterested in trying to go into deeper discourse, or expect it to be unproductive?
Do you think I was interested in going into "deeper discourse"? I don't care who you think is the wrongest wrong in wronglandia. It doesn't matter. Was I unclear?
Do you think my posts above are about -- or even discussing! -- who was the wrongest wrong in wronglandia? Or did you just decide that's what everyone responding to you could only possibly be discussing?
Because I'll point out, to be extremely explicit, that I did not actually say that Republicans hadn't done anything bad, that there's no remotely charitable read of "approximately zero people in power in politics are interested in actually persuading or compromising on those policy disagreements, and even the virtues of an opposing side are being twisted into vices" that would exclude Republicans. You might even notice that I pointed out, to be extremely explicit, some things that Democratics were peeved about, and some of them could at least be described as reasonable differences of opinion.
I think there's a deeper discussion, on that matter, and if you don't care, I'm not going to waste my time or yours any further.
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Thomas Mathew Crooks’ computer had search results for both Trump and Biden campaign stops, presumably to see which would occur nearer to Crooks, and Trump was the unlucky recipient of that horrid game of chance (and, even more so, the now-deceased Corey Comperatore).
I’m guessing on Earth Beta, Crooks is still a nihilistic malcontent who takes a shot at whichever candidate forces him to spend the least amount of time in the car so he can make national news and have his posthumous 15-minutes of fame.
Unless they don’t have social media and irony poisoning on Earth Beta, then Crooks eventually dies alone in anonymity.
That's a massive degree of confidence on a tiny amount of evidence.
As opposed to what other evidence, including any Crooks had expressed about politics? With what evidence we have, depressed loser who came to prefer infamy to life seems as probable as any hypothesis.
So, to get this straight, your position is that shooting Trump and having Biden in his browser history are roughly equivalent levels of evidence as to whom he wanted dead?
My hypothesis is that a guy, for whom there has yet to be produced a single piece of evidence that he expressed an opinion on either Trump or Biden in any direction (before or after the shooting, via manifesto or the like) who didn’t just search for Biden, but specifically both Biden and Trump campaign stops in relation to their distance from his residence, picked Trump as his target for assassination, because Trump’s campaign stop in PA was indeed the closest to his residence made by either candidate.
Yes.
I strongly suspect if Biden had made an announced, scheduled public appearance closer to Bethel Park, PA than Trump did, that Biden would have been the target.
You seem to be very invested in your contrarian take, but I'll try to spell this out one more time. Shooting Trump is strong evidence of his opinion on Trump. You don't get to exclude the one huge and highly unusual piece of evidence that we all have and then say the pithy culture-warrior line "there has yet to be produced a single piece of evidence...".
The default boring position is that he hated Trump for political reasons, because Trump is a divisive political figure and he shot Trump.
Now, it's possible the default boring position is wrong, but you need strong evidence if you want to convince non-ideologues like us of this. Searching for Biden campaign stops he could attend does not even distinguish him from fans of Biden. I would struggle to call it "evidence" of anything.
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