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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   24924 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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Just a thought about Vance's chances for presidency. On the one hand his electoral chances are slipping. On the other hand he has the greatest opportunity anybody will ever have of becoming the "American Caesar": 25A Trump, attest to the foreign subversion of US government, invoke any and all power under the sun (all the ones Abraham Lincoln used, any new ones since then), ignore the courts, air out the dirty laundry to stir the masses, orchestrate mass FARA surveillance and prosecution campaign (remember FARA allows you to surveil anyone who is a degree of separation from the target), sue for peace with Iran with an offer that throws Israel under the bus.

It won't happen, but Vance actually has the crisis at his fingertips to become one of the great American historical figures. Instead he'll take the flak for the war and Rubio I guess will be the GOP nominee.

Vance just isn’t personally charismatic. Yes, he beat that stupid oaf moron Walz, but so could almost anyone. Absent an upset Newsom will win if he wins the nomination, probably even against Tucker (who I doubt will run).

I think when we have posts like this where a poster calls a series of broadly successful politicians uncharismatic and/or stupid, we should make it an expectation that the poster cites some examples of politicians they do think are charismatic. Somebody has to have charisma and intelligence to have reached the top in a cutthroat hierarchical game filled with competitors. They didn't all luck into becoming senators and governors and vice presidential candidates.

This place is feeling like one of those barbershops where every modern athlete sucks and couldn't carry the jockstrap of [guy from when the barber was a kid].

I always thought Obama sounded exactly like a mediocre adjunct law professor and could never see any charisma, but given his successes, I'm obviously the wrong one.

Ditto that when People magazine called Bill Clinton the sexiest man alive back in the day, though I'm a straight dude so that probably has a lot to do with it.

Bill Clinton is incontrovertible evidence of the sheer power of charisma. The man looks like a corrupt cartoon mayor character named Potato McDrunkie, yet the near universal consensus of people who've met him personally is that he's almost superhumanly charming.

a cartoon corrupt mayor character named Potato McDrunkie

Should I be offended at racial stereotyping there? 🤣

I agree, Bill has charisma by the shedload, and it's part of why Hillary failed in her endeavours, she comes across as even more robotic and schoolmarmish when it's Bill's effortless charm standing beside her. I never trusted him an inch, but it's no wonder he went into politics, he could indeed charm the birds out of the trees.

Hand to god, I only realized how anti-Irish it looks after posting. Typically, I try to keep my Irish bigotry nice and subtle. I was really just commenting on the fact that Bill Clinton looks like an alcoholic and also looks like a human potato.

Bill Clinton looks like an alcoholic and also looks like a human potato.

Not helping, given that Bill:

(1) claimed Irish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (though that is probably more Ulster Irish, given the tenuous roots in Co. Fermanagh)

(2) William Cobbett had strong opinions on the Irish and spuds, and how if the English rural labourers were brought to live on potatoes then they too would be degraded to the level of the Irish:

Little time need be spent in dwelling on the necessity of this article to all families; though, on account of the modern custom of using potatoes to supply the place of bread, it seems necessary to say a few words here on the subject, which, in another work I have so amply, and, I think, so triumphantly discussed. I am the more disposed to revive the subject for a moment, in this place, from having read, in the evidence recently given before the Agricultural Committee, that many labourers, especially in the West of England, use potatoes instead of bread to a very great extent. And I find, from the same evidence, that it is the custom to allot to labourers “a potatoe ground” in part payment of their wages! This has a tendency to bring English labourers down to the state of the Irish, whose mode of living, as to food, is but one remove from that of the pig, and of the ill-fed pig too.

I was, in reading the above-mentioned Evidence, glad to find, that Mr. Edward Wakefield, the best informed and most candid of all the witnesses, gave it as his opinion, that the increase which had taken place in the cultivation of potatoes was “injurious to the country;” an opinion which must, I think, be adopted by every one who takes the trouble to reflect a little upon the subject. For leaving out of the question the slovenly and beastly habits engendered amongst the labouring classes by constantly lifting their principal food at once out of the earth to their mouths, by eating without the necessity of any implements other than the hands and the teeth, and by dispensing with everything requiring skill in the preparation of the food, and requiring cleanliness in its consumption or preservation; leaving these out of the question, though they are all matters of great moment, when we consider their effects in the rearing of a family, we shall find, that, in mere quantity of food, that is to say of nourishment, bread is the preferable diet.

...Then comes the expense of cooking. The thirty-two bushels of wheat, supposing a bushel to be baked at a time, (which would be the case in a large family,) would demand thirty-two heatings of the oven. Suppose a bushel of potatoes to be cooked every day in order to supply the place of this bread, then we have nine hundred boilings of the pot, unless cold potatoes be eaten at some of the meals; and, in that case, the diet must be cheering indeed! Think of the labour; think of the time; think of all the peelings and scrapings and washings and messings attending these nine hundred boilings of the pot! For it must be a considerable time before English people can be brought to eat potatoes in the Irish style; that is to say, scratch them out of the earth with their paws, toss them into a pot without washing, and when boiled, turn them out upon a dirty board, and then sit round that board, peel the skin and dirt from one at a time and eat the inside. Mr. Curwen was delighted with “Irish hospitality,” because the people there receive no parish relief; upon which I can only say, that I wish him the exclusive benefit of such hospitality.

...[This was written in 1821. Now (1823) we have had the experience of 1822, when, for the first time, the world saw a considerable part of a people, plunged into all the horrors of famine, at a moment when the government of that nation declared food to be abundant! Yes, the year 1822 saw Ireland in this state; saw the people of whole parishes receiving the extreme unction preparatory to yielding up their breath for want of food; and this while large exports of meat and flour were taking place in that country! But horrible as this was, disgraceful as it was to the name of Ireland, it was attended with this good effect: it brought out, from many members of Parliament (in their places,) and from the public in general, the acknowledgment, that the misery and degradation of the Irish were chiefly owing to the use of the potatoe as the almost sole food of the people.]

Fear not, I do not accuse you of anything more than stating the obvious! 🤣

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