domain:parrhesia.co
sun_the_second
23hr ago
I think a cult of personality is when a statesman is treated not merely as a statesman who did a great job, but an exceptional, well, personality. It's when sycophants say "Stalin raised this country from its knees (and no one else could)", not "we raised this country from its knees under Stalin (he was a great help)".
No_one
23hr ago
Yeah, pretty much. But there's no peak nor end to cinephilia or any other arena of art-snobbery. I'm sure among cinephiles you'd find those who look down on people who think Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia' isn't actually self-indulgent artsy trash and a true person of taste and discernment likes some more obscure indeciphrable film with better cinematography.
HereAndGone
23hr ago
I think if, in your very own acceptance speech, you are already writing your place in the history books of tomorrow about future generations recognising the great job you did, that counts as "establishing a cult of personality".
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
23hr ago
The “third term” thing has always been crazy to me. The guy is 78 now, if he wins a third term, he’ll be 82 at the start and 86 at the end. I don’t think anyone could do the job at that advanced age. I’m not sure about Eric Trump in any case, but he’s much more logical than Trump term 3.
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
23hr ago
We are three generations into the liberal experiment of the emancipation of women and the resulting sexual revolution and birth rates are already in the terminal phase.
The birth rate declining to replacement already happened 150-100 years ago- women were emancipated at the very tail end of that period. And note that that was when countries were far more rural than they are now, which skews the results significantly... if we assume 50% rural and those families are all having 3 kids, then 50% of the country is only having one kid.
Industrialization caused a significant decline in [real or perceived] socioeconomic opportunity per capita compared to the 1800s, which is why SK's birthrates are as bad as they were in the [urban] US in the 20s and 30s [combined with them being a country where the benefits of industrialization were more captured at the top; Japan is a case with a similar culture where that was less true and they're doing a bit better as a result]- it's just that, because the US won WW2, it got a temporary reprieve from having to solve the actual issue for a while. But we never solved the issue, and now it rears its ugly head again.
HereAndGone
23hr ago
Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities.
By comparison with Hunter Biden, though they may not be perfect, they're not as messy. Even The Onion can only mock Eric and Don Jr. for being childish idiots, whereas they had to go from 'Biden won't pardon Hunter' to 'Biden pardoned Hunter'.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23hr ago
The oceans stopped rising?
...one of your examples of a cult of personality around Obama is a misphrased version of his own speech?
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.
This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
This was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
He's exhorting the troops ('if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it'), and he's not even saying that the oceans stopped rising but that the rise begins to slow.
Meanwhile, a considerable share of American Protestants believe(d) that Trump is anointed by God to be the President, and the share is not insignificant even if there's a comparison question regarding whether all Presidents are anointed by God.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump, it was taken up ironically because hell, yeah it was funny and cool at the same time.
I'm not sure what the satire part is in reference to. Probably the first memes I saw about Trump (his campaign didn't instantly take off in the online crowd so it ook a bit of time for them to start accumulating in places where I'd spot them) were God-Emperor memes, presented in a ha-ha-only-serious tone.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
23hr ago
while they have some tricks those will be impenetrable to patients.
I know that if the ending of the name is the queen of the fae, it's going to be really fucking expensive.
ABigGuy4U
23hr ago
One especially funny detail from that era is that you saw a lot of people nostalgically pining for their idyllic childhoods back in the Nineties... the 1890s.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
23hr ago
They should go back to the old-fashioned "Dr. Billings' Soothing Syrup" type names.
Not even close. If the argument was merely "some people really like Trump" vs "some people really liked Obama", sure, but it's not. It is that you cannot criticize Trump and be a member of the GOP in good standing. Musk tried and very rapidly learned that if you tried to break ranks you were going to be whipped into line.
There's no Obama equivalent to cabinet secretaries beginning meetings by verbally fellating Trump. The degree of personal devotion demand and received by Trump from his followers is pretty much without parallel.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump
If you mean literal GEoM memes, perhaps yes. If you mean artwork where Trump is portrayed as a heroic and/or borderline deific figure (often in comical contrast to his actual appearance), no. Maybe it was started by some internet troll, but his base picked it up and ran with it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
Can you actually point to any societies that collapsed as a result of, say, not exerting "sufficient intrasocietal controls on male avarice and female caprice"?
I think you can point to a lot of societies that absolutely failed to flourish because they didn't do this. I remembering reading the goofy book "Sex at Dawn" some years ago. It purported to show that monogamy and marriage was unnatural and that, akshually, tons of totally fine societies had practiced various forms of poly-like relationships.
Except all of its examples were undeveloped hunter-gatherer tribes that are still mostly existing in the stone age. Lots of sub-saharan examples and even a few from Papua New Guinea, aka the actual murder capital of the world.
When life is a constant battle against starvation, you don't have the luxury of resources to have to think long term. You live that beautiful, simple, horrifyingly savage life of "one day at a time." Once you figure our larger scale agriculture, you start to have more stuff and then you upgrade to the perennial problem of how to organize society. Every society that's flourished has settled on long-term pair bonding and marriage-til-death. Some have carve outs for lawful divorce, but the intent is clear.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23hr ago
To Rightists with daughters reading this: are you concerned that they might encounter "natural family planning" on the internet and really f*** up their life?
No, they are going to learn it as part of the puberty talk and will have a Tempdrop to warn them when their period is about to start.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23hr ago
From the right of the party and from the left of the party. (Of course Sanders is technically not a Democrat, but in practice, he was and is.)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
23hr ago
To name a few:
- Pushback from conservative Democrats on ACA. Nowadays, it's popular to blame the GOP for the ACA being the watered down version that finally passed, but it faced significant opposition from conservative Democratic senators (most notoriously Lieberman, but he took a lot of the heat for a larger body of centrist Dems).
- Left-wing critiques of Obama foreign policy (and before you suggest it, no, this is not '50 Stalins' criticism), especially re: drone strikes
- The Trans-Pacific Partnership was opposed by both progressive Democrats and more traditional labor Dems
- Joe Manchin openly set himself up in opposition to Obama's policies, especially on the environmental front.
The cult of personality around Obama didn't hold a candle to Trump's.
Thrills up the leg? The Light Worker? The oceans stopped rising?
Granted, all that was his first term, the gloss had worn off by the time the second one came around.
The God-Emperor stuff was both funny and a satire by someone not a fan of Trump, it was taken up ironically because hell, yeah it was funny and cool at the same time.
Not to mention having the instincts that let him react like this in the immediate wake of the assassination attempt, leading to what you have to admit is an iconic image.
anon_
23hr ago
That's not the analysis that the Court directed in Bruen. If there was an analogous restriction at the Founding, then it's presumed to be a longstanding restriction.
You can wishcast for a different Bruen that creates a bright line that says nothing short of a conviction suffices. That is not the Bruen that we have today.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
23hr ago
The great advantage of any given Wawa food item is it's situation within the context of the entire Wawa menu. At 2am drunk on the boardwalk with your friends, somebody wants coffee, somebody wants cigarettes, somebody wants a sandwich, somebody wants a burrito. You all go to Wawa.
HereAndGone
23hr ago
would Eric or Don Jr. draw enough attention to fatally weaken another MAGA candidate and throw the race into confusion?
Did Jeb! work to weaken the Republican alternatives to Trump, by which I mean had he not been in the race, would the support and party machinery have gone to someone else (maybe Ted Cruz) who would have been stronger and therefore successfully challenged Trump, or was it Trump's moment and the rest of them were fatally flawed as being identifiably part of the Establishment? (Do we really want the world where there was a President Cruz instead?)
I don't think Jeb's support, such as it was, mattered that much in the end - he had four pledged delegates to Cruz' five hundred and fifty-one, so clearly the support wasn't behind him despite being a Bush. I think the same would be true for Eric or Don Jr., they just wouldn't have enough recognition of their own to do any real damage as splitting a MAGA vote. I think anybody wanting to vote for deSantis or Vance (if they go in 2028) would be deterred by "vote for Eric Trump instead".
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
23hr ago
I'll take a Jersey Mike's over most of the other sub shops, especially the execrable Subway.
But, much like @FiveHourMarathon, I identify as a Wawa Hypernationalist. When one factors in value in calories-per-dollar, Wawa is even more of the clear choice.
Now, if we're talking about ultra-premium sandwiches from traditional Italian joints, we have to confront the truth that the meats are secondary for overall quality to the bread itself and the freshness of the veggies, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. Tony Soprano ate his "gabagool" raw, or dipped directly into a mustard jar. Tony Soprano was a trash goblin from New Jersey who lived a caricature of his own life. This is not who you model your sandwich rubric on.
AnonymousActuary
23hr ago
I'd be worried about my daughter sleeping around outside of marriage in general
HereAndGone
23hr ago
Wow, child of political officeholder is open to idea of someday running for office themselves. This has never ever happened in the history of the world before. Nope, no dynasties of Dalys, Bushes, Kennedys, Gandhis, every local politician round my way... this is why there isn't a whole Wikipedia article about US political families besides one about the practice in general. Yes, this is all about "an illegal 3rd term" for Trump.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
23hr ago
In part, the other part is social media and the 24 hour news cycle effectively preventing compromise. The government used to be much much less transparent, in large part because whatever news there was traveled slowly enough and was infrequent enough that by the time the public found out about something, chances were pretty good that the deals had been worked out in the back rooms of congress before you could find out about them. In the 21st century, that’s impossible— the media is broadcasting everything in near real time with social media encouraging everyone to opine, get mad, and call the switchboard to demand that the only acceptable way forward is to do exactly what we want you to do.
How do you solve real problems when you’re on Big Brother 24 hours a day?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
This man has been convicted of no crime.
This is a bizarre statement to me, Trump's cultists are not "mainstream" in any meaning of the word.
I'm old enough to remember the dozens of covers of actual mainstream newspapers and magazines with pictures of Obama with the Presidential seal positioned just so behind his head to give the appearance of a halo.
Do I need to provide links to the "Lightworker" articles or the newsweek "god of all things" Shiva cover? This is either absurd revisionism or you're very young.
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