BrickHorn

You’re like a poor man’s Jim Breuer routine. Nothing clever or insightful or funny to say, so you just squawk like a fucking idiot.

If only a Good Fetus with a Gun had been there, this tragedy could have been averted.

I checked. He’s still a loathsome fucking weasel.

If that’s the plan, the world needs to demand meaningful structural reforms before we just start feeding money into Russian hands again.

Putin is an idiot. Since when has hiding in a bunker ever worked to do anything but delay the inevitable? Or more accurately, to ensure that the end is inevitable? It shows weakness and imprisons the tyrant to the whim of his protectors’ loyalty.

Negotiations imply desperation. Putin is in no position to negotiate right now. He has done nothing to pressure Wagner. He has imposed no risk on Priggles. He and his close advisors are reportedly on the run. What chips does he have?

My uneducated take is that is a realistic outcome and the coup’s failure is not at all inevitable. For me, the critical unknown is whether a substantial portion of the Russian military remains loyal. Putin may have some tricks up his sleeve, but the snowball effect of loyalty-switching does not bode well for him.

It’s an object lesson in the suddenness of regime change. Cracks form slowly, but the resulting collapse is swift. And whatever you think the status quo is before a civil war kicks off, it can change very quickly and dramatically. Loyalty is not static.

Guns don’t kill people. Toddlers do.

All the talking heads predicting a swift demise for this coup seem to rely on the numerical superiority of the Russian military compared to Wagner. They ignore a key dynamic of a coup like this: the military is fractured and it’s not at all clear that they will remain loyal to the Russian state. The numbers could very quickly level up. We’re already seeing a snowball effect in Wagner’s favor. Normalcy bias is a hell of a drug and it looks like Putin was on a raging bender.

This is why I shoot everyone I meet. You just can’t take any chances. People are absolute maniacs out there these days!

No doubt. Such a great point. I read all these sad woe-is-me tales about poor people and homelessness, and I’m just like “Did any of these stupid fuckers ever think to make more money? Duh!”

Banging sounds? Makes sense. If you’re going to die in a sub, might as well join the Mile Under Club.

Seems every year, twice a year, we see extended periods of unpredicted demand. At this point, these aren’t black swan events anymore, dipshits. How about we plan for the energy demands this state experiences on what is now a predictable, regular basis?

Congratulations to everyone who got an A on the test! Also, equal congratulations to those who flunked the test but who now know the correct answers after reading the answer key! Just fucking with you. I’m glad you finally woke up. But let’s not kid ourselves: trickle down was always obvious bullshit.

Don’t sell yourself short. For years (decades?), just like my parents, you bought wholesale into the malicious idiocy of Reaganomics. If people who fell for that laughable horseshit can be redeemed, who can’t?

No one learns. No one matures. No one ever recognizes the error of their ways and changes for the better. Isn’t that right, guy who was never an outspoken Republican activist?

Exactly. Like many Surly discussions, this one is distorted by the fallacy of the excluded middle. Brisket goes off on one of his trademark categorical tirades. I respond that the world is not so black and white, and that’s misinterpreted as advocating the opposite categorical extreme. Political discourse on the internet, same as it ever was.

And you’ll get nowhere with that, other than further entrenching the cultural divide. I understand the frustration. I’m no less annoyed than you or Brisket by Trump voters who justify their bad decision with idiotic wedge issue positions. But that annoyance doesn’t excuse counterproductive behavior. I’ll offer you a real-life counterpoint to defeatism. My parents are (spoiler alert: were) lifelong Republicans. My dad was fully on board with Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, etc. Both are religious and very firmly pro-life. Both voted straight-ticket GOP, including for Trump in 2016. Their friends and extended family are almost entirely right wingers. I had countless political arguments with them over the years. But I never called them racist or homophobic. Instead, I pointed out how the people they voted for worked to hurt people they loved: their minority grandchildren, their gay friends, their friends from the Middle East, their family who had fallen on hard times financially. Eventually it sunk in. (Trump’s obnoxious personality helped.) They’re now voting Democratic, calling out GOP bullshit online and in discussions with friends, pissed that Roe was overturned, and reading books critical of neoliberal economic lies. My parents were wrong about a lot of shit. They fell for the rightwing propaganda that permeated mass media over the past decades. It took work to remove the scales from their eyes, but ultimately it worked. And that’s due, in large part, because I began from the assumption that they are not hateful people. Are my parents more representative of MAGA or less? Fuck if I know. But I do know there are many, many Trump voters who are good people at heart and whose views result mostly from propaganda and lazy or sloppy thinking on their own part. In my view it’s worth engaging those people. If every one of us could convert just one or two Trumpers back to the good side, our country would be a much better place.

I’ve posted on this before and I guess I have to do so again. Your broad brush is wrong and unhelpful. Although racists tend to be right wing and racist populists love them some MAGA, not all Trumpists are racist. Dismissing them all as racists is not productive. Many Trumpers rightly recoil at such accusations and it gives them an easy excuse to dismiss their critics as bigots harboring condescending stereotypes of the white working class. In my view, the fact that so many racists support Trump and the MAGA movement is a potential wedge point to raise when talking to people who have fallen into the Trump cult for other reasons. “Do you really want to be on the same team as these neonazi assholes?” They might respond that it’s better than siding with communists or whatever, but that just gives you an opportunity to discuss how the kind of democratic socialism favored by even the most left-wing of Democrats isn’t even remotely close to communism and would be far better for working Americans compared to Trump’s sordid mix of Reaganist neoliberal bullshit with banana republic style graft. But if all you do is shout “YOU’RE ALL RACIST!”, you never get to those productive talking points.

On his next episode, Kirk will implore the FBI to prosecute woke ketchup under the Condiments Control Act.

Years from now, history students will study Charlie Kirk and the Red and Yellow Scare.

Son of a bitch was dug in like an Alabama tick.