-
Posts
9321 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
24
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Everything posted by 956 Worldwide
-
These types of stories make me cringe because Trump will be paying attention and this type of stuff enraged him and his team. Every journalist in Washington is looking to do the “federal employees prepare to resist Trump” story and all that will do is serve to accelerate his assault and give ammo to GOP moderates to go along.
-
The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread
956 Worldwide replied to Horn Dog's topic in Cloak Room
https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-arab-americans-michigan-dearborn-aea96b9161a77de1fa47d668e23edb98 -
Maybe wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen. It’s time to remind these rural communities why their great-grandparents all voted for FDR. If they want to vote for stupid ass culture warrior shit, let them have their shitty, underfunded schools. Filibustering ethanol subsidies or rural health programs would be a good place to start.
-
Is this where we note the creation of an “Iron Dome” for the United States? A nearly impossible and unneeded boondoggle that will bloat the Pentagon budget while also divert badly needed funding to make the force more lethal and capable of fighting any likely future war? But there’s this: https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-is-already-calling-in-favors-with-trump-1851693687
-
The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread
956 Worldwide replied to Horn Dog's topic in Cloak Room
Joe Rogan’s podcast is a psychological warfare engine, it is specifically designed to create the fact-free, confusing, frustrating miasma that defines the American information space especially for 18-29 males. It is popular with them not because it offers a productive way to grapple with disappointments or overcome them, but because it serves to validate their anger and confirm their lack of agency in a hostile and unnavigable world. In healthy information space, it is immediately apparent that the ravings of RFK Jr. are not worthy of the same consideration as the thoughts of a renowned astrophysicist, but the cumulative effect of being a Rogan listener is to come away with a very different feeling. Not that RFK Jr. is wrong and the physicist right, or even that they have equally valid claims, but instead that it is impossible and pointless to try to adjudicate. Rogan had clearly been driving the boat more often into the specifically right-wing fever swamp, although the common thread of his show is to elevate the dark and conspiratorial on par with rational and even interesting discourse. He’s been wildly successful, and his audience has been conditioned to do the opposite of critical thinking. It’s all just vibes and via a form of reflexive control they will adopt the vibes Rogan is feeling which was always going to be Trumpy this cycle. He has independently invented and created a medium that closely follows Soviet information warfare doctrine, which is really effective. At best a standard and mainstream actor like Kamala gains nothing tactically, and at worst it’s harmful among the target audience because they have all been conditioned to reject and distrust anything that appears mainstream. Strategically, any form of liberal democracy depends on educating future generations to reflexively reject media like Rogan’s.- 4646 replies
-
- 13
-
Our new VP-elect is approvingly quoting well known fictional sociopaths, so things are really accelerating quicker than I thought, I imagined we might get to Inauguration Day before the admin started openly channeling Cormac McCarthy’s personifications of nihilistic violence and hostility.
-
The single most important thing that has to change
956 Worldwide replied to RabidM's topic in Cloak Room
Everything about this post, from the truly stupid belief that sending EDA Bradley IFVs affects your pocketbook to the astoundingly cruel “who gives AF if Ukrainian parents get shoveled into mass graves and their kids carted off to Magnitogorsk as long as I made it to Six Flags” is the perfect distillation of why you will never have the America you want. You don’t deserve it and you will never get it, because the things you say, believe, and do will never, ever create the conditions for it. -
The single most important thing that has to change
956 Worldwide replied to RabidM's topic in Cloak Room
I think we need to consider that maybe Biden’s biggest own goal was expanding rural broadband access. -
Sorry, I forgot what a great model of discourse I was interacting with; carry on with Socratic enlightenment.
-
Anyway, I think there is a pattern from JFK through Biden on how the democrats can be president: have a gifted politician present an optimistic and inclusive outline of an America that works for everyone and steer clear of shrill and angry rhetoric which only works for the right wing. Worked for JFK, for Clinton, for Obama and once for Carter. And I do think to be fair to Kamala she tried to run that campaign but didn’t get to do it in a primary and was pushing against inertia. This is not unique to us, incumbents around the world got PUNISHED.
-
I mean, what’s your deal? I don’t think Latin American style populism was a good solution and said so. You asked why I don’t want it and said I said why. You’ve said that “populism is Bernie Sanders and that’s the solution.” And fair enough, I don’t begrudge your fondness for the guy, although a twice-failed primary candidate maybe isn’t the model for winning elections.
-
A blind commitment to ruinous economic policies that leave everyone worse and an open door for real fascists is the favored leftist populist end-point.
-
Take a look at this chart, it breaks down economic perceptions over time along party lines. A couple things: 1. Clearly D and GOP voters view the economy partially through the prism of who is in the White House and believe it is better when their guy is in charge. 2. The effect is extreme among Republicans; absent a black swan event like Covid the economy can only be good when their guy is in charge and bad when the other one is. I think it’s accurate to say this election was about the economy ONLY for non-Republicans.
-
Populism is fundamentally the distillation of politics to confrontation between two groups: “the people” and “the elites.” The first group is virtuous and has legitimate interests; the second is in opposition and works against the interests of the legitimate group. It rejects pluralism, where different overlapping groups with recognized interests seek to balance via compromise and consensus in favor of winner take all politics. Interests do not merely compete or differ; they can only conflict. Right and left populists define “the people” and “the elites” differently but the division is what is key. The second element is political leadership that positions itself not as the representative of all of the people, or constituents, or a polity; but as the embodiment of “the people” and their will which by necessity is recursively determined by the political leadership when it comes to discrete policy decisions. Downstream of those two streams are a lot of things: irresponsible rabble rousing rhetoric, blinkered short-term reactive decision-making, the constant shifting of in-group and out-group definitions, appeals to grievance, and delegitimization to demonization of political opponents.
-
This is a great post and touches firmly on why “let’s just do our own populism” is not only bad for the country but ultimately bad for electoral politics. Problem one is that you can’t out-pander a panderer or out bullshit a bullshitter. Starting out down the populist road of exploiting vibes and offering promises just puts you on a race to the bottom where your opponent has no floor at all. Second is that it puts you into a recursive loop of ever more irresponsible veering into immoral and dangerous policies. All over the world the experiment has been run, but there’s no way to run as a populist then course correct to good governance. You eventually have to deliver on your irresponsible and impossible promises and then you’re stuck upping the ante with more irresponsibility or losing to the less scrupulous opponent who will up the ante by either promising more or offering to hurt the people standing in the way. It has just a miserable track record of success when tried. It offers no pressure valve, because trying to course correct literally entails going against “the people.”
-
See, it’s funny because it means millions of good people losing their future to Vladimir Putin.
-
I’m sorry I can’t smirk, I’m just having to think of the most courageous leader of the 21st century being forced to negotiate the future of his people with Elon Musk. “We need to have Mexican-style leftist politics here” is . . . a take.
-
Thanks, @InkaUtexas for tagging me. I know I’ve dipped from this thread. This might be my last post in here. In early March 2022 I was in deep southeastern Poland. So deep that it wasn’t always really Poland. I was there with the grandmas and the kids with cats in their arms and the moms trying to carry all their luggage. I caught my first case of COVID in a World Central Kitchen outpost. I really haven’t left there and every day since has brought Ukraine to me. This is true: Ukraine is heading towards a loss in this war, whether faster or slower. I did not say that Russia will win, but Ukraine is heading for a loss. That is where the road heads. Ukraine is smaller, Russia is bigger, and Putin wants Ukraine to lose more than we want it to win. It’s a math equation now. I have never been more proud of being an American than I was in March 2022 but since the about the summer of 2023, all that has been whittled away down to nothing. 2022 was the purest test of whether America wanted to be America since 1941. We failed. Many of us don’t want to be America anymore, and many of those who want to be America are not brave enough to actually do it. I don’t know who makes me angrier, except maybe myself. The Poles and the Balts and the Czechs are better Americans than we are but they just don’t have enough. Sometimes only America can be America. This has consumed my life for almost 1000 days, and it will continue to consumer it until it ends one way or another. I’ll keep at it, but I can’t look at my Ukrainian friends in the eyes anymore and I can’t write about it anymore.
-
This loops back into online incel/MRA culture. They really get excised over the idea that they have to register for the selective service.
-
Man, you are not reading me at all. Like most people on this website, I am a man myself. I actually really dislike grievance politics no matter where it’s coming from, there is a strong tendency on the far left and the…well, just the ordinary right… to think that we can solve things if we just keep expanding the circle of the aggrieved. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, we can’t just keep shoveling shit into bigger piles on fewer plates. That isn’t an answer. Part of growing up is realizing that the system isn’t fair. And then realizing that the system is even less fair to other people. And yeah, young men do need to grow up and realize that their problems are not unique or specially worse. And that the way to fix them is to try and help yourself and others. Not to make sure others have it shittier than you do. I do realize that doesn’t message test well. Part of what (used to) be an (unrealized) ideal of American masculinity is telling yourself hard truths that aren’t popular. I prefer telling young men that, as opposed to coddling their grievances to no real end. Call me a reactionary, I guess.
-
Also, I need to point out that all this deep analysis about how schools and government and corporations and women and society is stacked against young men and working to against them—- you’ve basically reinvented systemic racism and CRT from first principles except for men. And that’s not to dismiss some super real and acute ways we fail boys. And men. But also women. And gay people. And minorities. So maybe start with some fucking empathy and an attitude of helping yourself and each other.
- 404 replies
-
- 13
-
Yes, pandering is an extremely effective messaging technique. It really does work to tell angry young men that none of their problems are their fault and that by joining with you they can get everything they want and take revenge on the women that won’t give them Just One Sex. But as you’ve hit on, you CAN’T counter-message that. And the histrionics here about what the Dems actually tell young men is fairly cuckoo. The counter-message of nominating an ex-football coach infantryman with a nice traditional family to partner with a black woman to work together for all Americans didn’t work. He got called a beta cuck because he dared to demonstrate that men don’t have to be like this. Young men chose the panderer because he promised them that none of their problems are their fault and that they have no responsibilities to fix them, that will all be done by someone else, with other people’s resources. Which actually may be the common thread uniting the far left and far right.
- 404 replies
-
- 11
-
It’s time to unironically post that “weak men create hard times” meme because by all measures, even tradcons have complained that the current generation of young men is the weakest and most feckless we have seen. They just didn’t realize they were doing their own meme. A bunch of comfy, weak, atomized little shits who formed parasocial relationships with people like Rogan and Tate gave us this.
-
Can I ask, what does it mean for DJT to do a “good” job. Because if we define it as successfully doing most of the things he says he wants to do, I will be super unhappy. On the other hand, he is sui generis as a candidate in that even his supporters often say he won’t ever do the things he talks about all the time. So maybe that is what a “good” job looks like. All his supporters really want him to do is feed the hate machine and fertilize their grievances, and I think he will do a good job at that.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!