To state the obvious Harris chickening out of a second debate after faring terribly in the first would have been treated very, very differently that the "Savvy choice, sir" reaction that Trump chickening out mostly did
To state the obvious Harris chickening out of a second debate after faring terribly in the first would have been treated very, very differently that the "Savvy choice, sir" reaction that Trump chickening out mostly did
I will note that in every single cycle of ppl bitching about the (relatively short, not at all uniform, & scattershot) school closures, not once has "well how did teachers feel about closures" bc asking that would a) blow up quite a few narratives & b) treat teachers as if they mattered in this
It’s weird how literally 1.5 million people died and most discourse centers if we went too far.
I feel like losing my mind every time we do another round of Covid discourse because I live in Bergen county NJ, I saw the freezer trucks full of dead people with my own two eyes
they like Trump and want to help him and telling the many, many people who understand the world through the filter of the NY Times or Washington Post that the real world is full of anti-Trump protesters would not help Trump or help him win.
RFK Jr as an epitome of his class rather than an outlier illustrates why & how American elites are failing their country
I've said this before, but only one party caring about governance makes it, in turn, a magnet for public anger about governance
Chris Van Hollen is interesting because he makes a center-left case for Palestine. He argues for Palestinian rights not on leftist but on liberal grounds. It is highly philosophically coherent to do that, and yet few politicians do.
Just watch, it's hitting number one with a bullet
its interesting to compare this to the scant evidence that "BIDEN HAS PARKINSON'S" had behind it
Anti-pill propaganda has been shot through social media for years now, and I suspect it's one of the reason that Gen Z is not dating as much.
lmao YOU LITERALLY TARIFFED LUMBER
really any complaints about covid in the US and the response to it should just be laid at the feet of donald trump, who was, in actual fact, in charge at the time. there was, as usual with him, no leadership or plan, just endless obfuscation, dithering, and finger pointing
if I were a dem politician talking about covid, my line would be, we made hard decisions to save lives in a period of extreme uncertainty and there were bad tradeoffs but it’s fucking unseemly to still be whining about bars being closed in the wake of one million excess deaths
happy labor day
Still gotta work today but I'm gonna wear my nice new dress, call that Slaybor Day
This is an immense sign of weakness and the only viable reaction is to push HARD against MAHA and paint the entire RW movement as culpable for it. Be hard, be cruel, be offensive, do not let them worm their way out of the label of idiots thoughtlessly killing children for no reason.
This is 100% fossil fuels using anything they can as a screen for themselves
I'm sorry but this is insane www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
BRICS still isn’t a thing. It was a Goldman Sachs marketing pitch to drum up investment in developing economies, then some people ran with the label because they like the idea of a broad, powerful, anti-US, anti-West, anti-Global North, whatever you want to call it, alliance. But it isn’t one.
i do occasionally wonder what happens if there's another pandemic under Trump because if RFK Jr is any guide, it's not going to end well
i mostly try to not think about it but it's very hard for me to imagine a pandemic happening in the next decade at least where the people screaming about mask mandates in stores aren't firing guns instead of yelling
i'm not going insane to see the dark souls font at the bottom right
We gotta cook up a psyop about how the wicked vizier JD Vance poisoned the king to seize power and that's why it's vital all True Patriotic Americans stay home in protest on election day.
THERE ALSO WERENT HEALTHY TEACHERS lol like people want to pretend this was purely top down
and one reason the schools didn't open was *because you couldn't keep them staffed*
honestly i don't think Americans care primarily because they view any form of social control/restriction as a personal affront, no matter the human cost. it's why you have the post-COVID anti-vax turn
Like any of these fools could make it past the Asylum Demon
Goddamnit
The bars also stayed open because constant drinkers can die from stopping cold turkey and every medical professional already had too many patients
Lately, whenever the topic of the major wrestling promotions (especially WWE) needing to provide much greater travel support and security services to female talent comes up, I think of Ashley Massaro explaining in her November 2017 affidavit just how dangerous it got for her and other women in WWE.
Bloodsport. It is his favorite film, after all.
We’re only a few years removed from creatjng a vaccine to protect against a deadly airborne virus in a matter of months. Now, we have a scion fail son running the CDC into the ground not because it failed, but because its success conflicts with RFK Jr’s eugenicist ideology.
They're going to Baghdad Bob the economic data until the lies crash into reality the hard way.
Media literacy complaints notwithstanding, it's really just the same laziness and shallow thinking that defines The Discourse(tm). So long as a guy says the right magic words, anything they do is forgivable. And if they don't? No action can ever be sufficient.
The thing about nonsense takes like this is that what they're really saying, while failing to realize it, is that *they've* become more comfortable with blatantly evil acts as time has gone by. Literally all they need is some lip service from the villain that they're doing it for the right reasons.
I'm guessing this didn't get much media coverage.
I am not the first person around here to say this but I will say it anyway: it turns out it is possible to be an atheist and also recognize the antichrist when he shows up to be evil and shit
Real talk, the best actual criticism I’ve seen of Disney/Marvel/Lucasfilm’s approach to LGBTQ issues is they’re putting it mostly in small discrete chunks they can censor out easily in the Middle East and SE Asia Go big or go home
hammer them on child marriage, pedocon shit dismiss their concerns over The Trans (sports) Question with utter contempt
Reminder: the apparent plan was to spirit these children away in the middle of the night without them ever seeing the inside of a courtroom to challenge their deportation. Children.
The party of marrying off teenage girls to adult men wants to look at your daughter's genitals, this is literally true and shouldn't require any effort to sell. President Pedophile should be the easiest thing imaginable to run against, and yet
Nipplemind Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sideboob Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bra
all American schools should ban phone use during class hours, but we CAN compromise by bringing back Internet-connected computer labs where the nerd kids can retreat to look at fanfic during lunch
Don't worry, it stays pretty scary but they do get some friends and learn to lock in
This is seriously the nucleus of the whole present era of transphobia in which we find ourselves: in order for any of it to make sense, we must suppose that the idea of being transgender popped into existence 10 years ago (and it's a rolling 10 years, like Bart Simpson's date of birth).
Deranged society
Remember this for when it all comes crashing down and former Republicans claim they never really supported Trump and they were horrified by what he was doing. The overwhelming majority of Republicans are getting exactly what they wanted.
Wait, you’re telling me that there are consequences for picking a bunch of stupid unnecessary fights with America’s neighbors and allies and otherwise generally torching US soft power?
This is why they wear masks. Not because they fear harassment, but because they know accountability is coming and they want as little as possible. The government will shred employment and operations records before it turns over political control, and every effort should be made to get them now.
H. H. Holmes & Gardens
To pick one of many possible examples: the Nazis basically went “those world class nuclear physicists are nerdy eggheads and way too Jewy, not like manly Aryans” while Hitler had people researching the occult. The 20th century equivalent of thinking Putin’s military will easily win because pushups.
Mussolini didn’t actually make the trains run on time. That’s propaganda. 20th century fascists did “sheer vandalism” and elevated superstitions above science, often in self-harming ways. The competence of fascists is another of their self-aggrandizing myths. It’s just that destroying is easy.
Jo Cox was murdered by a man with a house full of neo-Nazi agitprop and this was then retconned into a vague narrative about social media abuse
With apologies to The Clash, it looks Rudy really can fail
Trump keeps people on their toes with a firehose of bullshit and stuff that's so old it sounds new. can you actually see Vance doing that? he cares way too much about how he's received
the challenge of red state tyranny and the captured courts will remain, to be clear. but federally it's going to fall apart
Hell yeah, Lydia Deetz knew what's up.
The whole "if both sides are yelling at you, you must be doing something right" bit is something I've seen a lot
honestly CVH might be the best choice for a senate majority leader when chuck retires
By the reckoning of most centrists, wouldn't that mean he must doing something right?
Woke really doesn't mean a damn thing anymore. Sourdough's woke because it's replaced white bread, even though it fucking hasn't and 90% of the options in a grocery store are white or whole-wheat.
Bookworm Fascists realizing 90% of their "comrades" are complete midwits and losers will never stop being a hell of a cathartic moment.
smell their fear. savor it.
Republicans in swing constituencies are retiring left and right. you think that’s because they think Daddy Trump is going to rig the elections?
I get that not everybody is an electoralist but it takes some effort to ignore the absolute streak of beatings the GOP is taking in elections right now
Researchers are actively studying this, but there seems to be some pretty decent scientific evidence supporting "letting kids have smartphones in school isn't good for learning": phys.org/news/2024-09...
Trans people turned your sex mommy into a sex daddy. The queers turned your sex mommy gay, no sex for you, now.
That's what they're saying when they post a tradwife running through a grain field and "retvrn." Jews plotted to steal your would-be white tradwife sex mommy. Black men seduced your would-be white tradwife sex mommy. Immigrants stole the good job that would impress your would-be sex mommy.
The far right succeeded in this country in large part because adult men were angry about this supposed theft, and the Nazis learned to channel that rage. "[Marginalized group] stole your sex mommy!" is quite literally their rallying cry a lot of the time.
Not just yearn for it, but feel entitled to it. These men believe they are owed a seamless transition from babying by their mom to babying by their wife. The fact that they are not in fact guaranteed that free domestic and emotional labor (delivered by women, of course) is experienced as robbery
I believe in free speech, but I also believe people who use theirs to convince others not to get cancer treatment for survivable cancers should be prosecuted for murder girl had the NHS, she could be alive and not even in medical debt right now, but her mom valued Alex Jones more than her life
there are no tariffs on the current leading U.S. export, “voluntarily acquired delusional disorders that lead you to kill your kids” nypost.com/2025/07/30/h...
NO we are pregaming "it fuckin happened" we are NOT pregaming "oh but Vance will be worse" we are not doing this. log off. have some hot chocolate. pet a cat.
I'll note again that all of the ppl talking this way on this guys shitass little program think of themselves as on the left & are no doubt big supporters of Mamdani but none of them are capable of realizing how reactionary positions like "we're full" are absolutely antithetical to his entire ethos
The moment he hopped on a plane to Russia he surrendered the very ability to be objective about it.
Dictatorships are qualitatively different countries from democracies. On some level it is broadly impossible to be "just a resident" of a dictatorship; you are either a dissident, a perpetrator or a bystander. Someone who is indebted to one cannot be a dissident by definition.
At the end of the day someone who seeks asylum with a tyrannical regime is knowingly making the choice to become their catspaw. And you can say oh well its not like he had another choice but on some level it doesn't matter if he did or he didnt
This is how I recall it going down, Snowden's reaction certainly seemed a little surprised
The funniest thing about the Snowden Saga was him loudly proclaiming that Russia wasn’t going to invade in Ukraine *while in Russia* then 6 months later popping out of his bunker to be like, “hey who amongst us hasn’t been wrong about Russian imperial projects”
There exists no way to suggest the troops might be The Bad Guys in acceptable political discourse. Therefore the media must reason its way backwards to the desired outcome.
An insurrectionist pointing guns at you and buying you a one way ticket on the USS The Implication is itself a crime.
“They call it the friend-enemy distinction, folks. Big, strong men would come up to him with tears in their eyes and ask Herr Schmitt, what if I just want to kick somebody and he said go ahead, we can always make up a reason later. He’s being recognized more and more.”
oh no, i'm late for a meeting and i dropped all my excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) on the floor!!
Philip Roth said Trump’s native language wasn’t so much English as it was Jerkish. I think Jerkism is central to Trump’s appeal—the thrill of saying or hearing him say what you’re not supposed to say in politics, or in polite society.
ultimately i think the central thesis of trumpism might be true nihilism, just the absolute disdain for the idea that anything matters at all beyond winning an argument in the eyes of your supporters. there is no such thing as competence. there is only loyalty and occasionally bad press. that’s it
there are a few ways to make sense of it: eugenics and using disease to cull the population has a long fascist history, but also the idea that nothing *actually* matters beyond controlling a narrative is a core trump belief, so telling people we are healthier than ever is the same as being healthy
at their core, trans rights, abortion rights, and vaccine rights are actually all the same issue: they’re all about bodily autonomy, and the willingness to concede any of them puts the others at risk.
15 years ago today I took an incredibly on-the-nose photo
I saw the preview for this movie on the Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture VHS a dozen times before I finally got to watch it and goddamn is it magic. No spoilers, just find it and see it soon
Trump going from a joke gameshow host to a titan of the right came because he openly said Obama was a African invalid usurper without the pretense
the scolds on here really are so annoying. when i said the right felt humiliated by a black president, someone accused me of blaming our problems on a black man. when i say the humiliation of the war on terror shaped reactionaries, i get tacitly accused of being racist for ignoring obama’s impact
youtu.be/FY6rS-O7frs?...
this is why they are trying so hard to meme authoritarianism into existence--because they don't have the actual bureaucratic infrastructure to do it the old way
yes, it's completely impossible to imitate even if you aren't a weird freak like Vance bsky.app/profile/king...
you need the plausible deniability of being everything to everyone Trump has mastered over the years, Vance has none of that
there is zero longevity to this regime like as soon as he goes that's it, Vance will crumble and lose any hope of not holding elections
Saw another reply post saying “nobody will be punished for any of the administration’s crimes” in response to a post saying there need to be charges. Again, I say: fuck doomerism. You don’t have to be 100% convinced justice will be done but being the opposite is a self-fulfilling prophecy.