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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. Old Ted would just challenge you to fight Jim Jordan.
  2. It’s a bit of one of those stories we tell ourselves to make us feel better, but I can connect with the Jon Stewart take on Biden as the tragedy-stricken figure best suited to see us out of these dark times. As I’ve mentioned above and elsewhere, it’s not so much that the current policies are cruel and terrible (they’re cruel and terrible), it’s that we’ve become cruel and terrible — full of hatred and division. That works hand in hand with the Trump movement; he arose out of this division and hatred and continues to amplify it as his only strategy. It’s impossible to function or even rationally deal with policy in this environment. Even the perfect policies would fail under these conditions — it’s more fundamental than the right legislation. Our culture and social order is failing. Biden is relatively inoffensive politically and has a life story with a good bit of tragedy — the stutter, the accident, Beau’s cancer, even Hunter’s addiction. If I squint hard enough, I could buy him actually repairing some of the broken parts of our social order, to the extent that a president can impact this (Trump has surely proven that they can). Actual humanity can go a long way to getting back to arguing about marginal tax rates.
  3. If the question is was my vote for Biden or against Trump, it was without a doubt against Trump. I think Biden will be competent enough as a president, but that’s less of a factor than Trump. I would have voted for Lenin’s reanimated corpse against Trump. As to your scenario, I’d go talk with Biden. I don’t want vengeance against Trump, I just want obscurity for him. I have no intention of ever listening to him speak again. I just want to pretend that he doesn’t exist. Justice for him would be nice, but really, he just needs to go away.
  4. Everything he does isn’t bad, but because of the transactional and divisive way he “leads,” everything he does is destructive to good social and political order. This is ultimately bad — worse even than whatever good things he might accomplish.
  5. I live in Georgia, home of the gun-toting, self-proclaimed Trump conservative governor. My wife has taken to calling our state’s reckless COVID response as the disgusted insult, “liberal,” since the conservative response would surely be more measured than what we’ve seen here. At first I thought her comment was fodder for the wives thread (if not for the CR issue), but the more I think about it: 1. it’s correct — the conservative approach would be to protect life rather than radically experimenting with the public health 2. it must annoy Trump conservatives that use “liberal” as an insult have it pointed against them. Part of what makes the term conservatism so tough to nail down is all of the hacks using the term to give credence to their incoherent worldview. In the modern use of the term by its adherents, conservatism is nothing more than a post-hoc justification for whatever is most self-serving and expedient.
  6. Rex Ryan gets it.
  7. That’s a masterclass in presenting info in the least clear way possible.
  8. So can we definitely say that they don’t have anything on Joe since they’re going so hard after Hunter?
  9. So Bernie to Texas and Jackie Sherrill for president?
  10. Can I get a translation?
  11. We live in the post-truth, alternative facts era. This is why there needs to be pushback against only focusing on policy (the policies suck no doubt). You can have a discussion with people with radically different philosophies and perspectives as long as you agree on the reality. There’s no longer an objective truth, so there can’t even be a real discussion. Even someone who agrees 100% with his policies should be voting against him, not because he’s a meanie, but because he’s destroying the fabric of our culture. Of course Biden is ending energy, so he’ll destroy the fabric of the space-time continuum. Yeah, this sounds like a win to me. The one redeeming part of COVID has been the built-in excuse to not deal with the in-laws.
  12. The post-truth conservative values on display.
  13. You call yourself lifesaver. I call you pimple popper MD!
  14. Whether or not they ever were, truth, justice, and the American way are demonstrably no longer conservative values.
  15. A few night ago I dreamt that I could breathe under water and the water was a light pink color. Biden’s America. You can pry my Skyline from my cold, pre-diabetic hands.
  16. Before the pandemic hit, I had a few interviews for better jobs. They asked me how my experience would apply to the new job and some strategies I’d take for dealing with their problems. I yelled at them about their unfair questions and asked what their questions were for the other candidates. They were so biased that they hired someone else.
  17. We’re watching Wall-E for the 1000th time. I remain committed to refusing to listen to our current president speak ever again. He’s debased my country long enough. I’ll be checking here for the highlights.
  18. Clara Rockmore proved the instrument has artistic merit.
  19. This right here. Dismissing the Trump movement as simply a meaner version of the old GOP misses the fundamental things that have changed. It used to be, we all operated from a generally same reality with different viewpoints. Some were genuine philosophical difference and some was cynical spin, but we all pretty much had the same reality. The Trump movement has politicized objective reality. We can’t even discuss policies or issues because of the secret knowledge of the Gnostic Trump movement. It’s fundamentally paralyzing. Writing Trump off as a meaner version of previous candidates is the same justification that lifetime GOP voters use to vote for him — they “vote on policies and wish he’d talk less.” It ignores the more basic things that are destroying us the are unique to the Trump movement. Everything is fundamentally broken in a new way. The policies don’t even matter anymore because we’re broken before we even reach that point. You can’t discuss issues without a shared, non-politicized reality. Even if his policies didn’t suck, he would be destroying us. Conservative or liberal policy doesn’t destroy the country, this movement is.
  20. From Georgia, straight D and abstained on any unopposed Rs. At best, running as an R calls your judgment into question. More often, it also calls into question your character and acceptance of an objective reality, even at the local level. In a normal world, I’d be very slightly right of center. I voted for the initiatives and amendments because they were really sensible.
  21. The Trump movement is built on the alienated, and millennials have the most to be alienated about with regards to the crumbling American dream. Is there something regarding mobility, alienation, and Iowa that might make that cohort extra Trumpy? Those numbers are surprising in comparison to the rest of the state.
  22. I like Decency 2020, since it’s: 1. obvious what you’re talking about. 2. doesn’t technically endorse anyone. 3. points 1 and 2 are a really strong case for Biden. If you tell a Trump voter that you’re voting for decency, they know it isn’t their guy, and that’s actually really damning.
  23. All the posters outside of the top 10% are probably complaining about their “academically competitive high school.”
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