ndawg

Appreciated and noted. I'll say this... I buy the whole "don't feed the trolls" line of reasoning substantially less than I used to pre-Trump. I'm not responding to Chrispy because I think he'll ever listen. For every back and forth discussion with a troll there are many passive observers. For their sake, I'd rather this be the kind of place where stupid doesn't stand a chance.

The basis of our Great Experiment is a principled, rational approach towards governing. If you find that kind of thing cumbersome and unnatural, perhaps you should re-evaluate why you hold political opinions, or participate in our government at all. I'll take you at your word that you'd be better off than most other Americans in the next few years ahead, because it doesn't matter. First, you are admitting here that you don't actually care about the welfare of other Americans. I don't mean our entitlement program, I mean the concept. Welfare. Public. You don't give a shit about other Americans. That's why you responded the way you did. What you don't realize: America only works when Americans give a shit about each other. It dies when we don't. It's that simple. You don't want a United States of America. Second, you are not thinking long term. For instance, you will probably be alive in 20 years. What will America look like then? Are you crossing your fingers, somehow hoping that even if America is worse off under Trump's ilk, you will still wind up ahead because of your family situation? You should go read some books and get some perspective on life.

No one would dispute that you believe your middle finger is pointed towards Washington, but everyone else around you sees it pointed somewhere else entirely. I'm sure that your cynical posturing makes you feel smart, but I'll do you a kindness and just be frank: it only makes you come across as extremely naive to everyone else observing you. It would only take about 10 minutes of actual human brain activity for you to conclude that, however flawed you perceive Washington to be, Trump is quite obviously replacing it with a far, far more deeply flawed one. Aren't you getting sick and tired of trying to pretend to be an objective, rational thinker?

Remember that time when the Democratic candidate was thought to have a layup?

If these people are voting illegally, they certainly don't have a sympathetic government to show for it. I invite any conservative to take a gander at our elected representatives and venture their best guess as to how many of them are in office because of the votes of illegal immigrants.

Thanks for this reply. I wonder what extent journalists require originals when they source stories with photographs? It's a scary thought that entire swaths of people can believe in images and videos that have been entirely falsified. I remember that Ahnuld movie The Running Man bringing this up back in the 80s... creepy shit. But there are all sorts of other artifacts beyond images that have been easy to fake for a long time, so I bet we've solved this kind of problem before. For instance, I believe it's easier than ever, for instance, to forge legitimate looking checks, but I also believe it's harder than ever to get away with check fraud. I suppose there's merit to a glimmer of optimism that countermeasures may emerge out of necessity.

If there are machine learning algorithms that can remove human-visible evidence of alteration, maybe there can also be machine learning algorithms that detect the deepfakes.

Yep. I used to ask myself, "don't any of those guys have it in them to see above their own interests and, I dunno, maybe act in the interests of the three hundred million Americans depending on them?" For some stupid reason, I naively expected our politicians to be among our society's best and brightest. Nope. Those morons are the kinds of morons that only morons elect. They're just fucking dumb. They got played so hard, just like their dipshit base.

Heh. I can't seem to properly edit anything until after I publish it.

I gotta say, I'm full Brisket at this point. Everyone is saying "there is no more GOP anymore. There is the party of Trump." I'm going to take it a step further and say it's even worse than that. There are two groups of people that have always been threats to free societies: mobs and zealots. When we think of mobs, most tend to think of the people on top, but societies ruled by mobs are full of ordinary people just like us. The mentality of people among a mob is overtly criminal in nature, i.e. "might makes right," and there are plenty of Trumpists who don't even appear religious who have clearly regressed to a mob mentality. On the other hand, religious fanatics put on a moral public face, but behind the scenes their ranks are so brainwashed that they are committing all kinds of cruelties. Wanna know the point when a religion becomes a cult? The "prosperity" gospel. Preachers extracting every last dime from their "flock." Brainwashing the whole congregation into believing that everybody's personal outcome is their own fault. So you have the evangelicals, who are really by this point just cult members, generally identifying as Republican but often identifying as Constitution Party when they want to appear above the fray. You also have the Libertarians, who posture themselves as being above the cult but deep down inside haven't grown up enough to understand that their understanding of the world around them is only surface deep. They buy in to schoolboy fantasies about how the invisible hand will fix anything, when all of human history demonstrates that free societies have to keep bad actors in check. Conspiracy theorists outwardly project an image of wanting the "real" truth to come out, but inwardly they're more interested in getting in on the ground floor of whatever new order comes when their side wins. Paranoia about the "new world order" was always a projection: there's no mistake about it, the Q phenomenon is a bunch of amoral pussies who never grew up fantasizing about one day being in power. Of course, the left is vulnerable, too, but we're less deranged at this point -- which is no consolation, because our trajectory is the same. If there's any hope of getting out with our skins intact, we on the left, plus any defectors from the right, are it. But already our most radical are regressing into a mob mentality just like the right. And social media has been and will continue to be used by bad actors to advance the popularity of more radical liberals and diminish the moderates. In general, the ones with the most social media followers have the most say, and, if you wanted mob rule, who would you make sure had the most twitter followers? Mobs and zealots have always been threats to free societies, but independent, separate threats. After all, to the devout, mobs are lawless and depraved, and to mobs, the devout are naive fools. The "party" of Trump is actually way worse than that -- it's an overt political alliance between crooks and zealots forming right before our eyes. I don't know how to overstate the threat of that combination of power. Buckle the fuck up. Let's rebuild the wall that we lost and now desperately need -- the one that stands between us and stupid. From sea to shining. fucking. sea.

People can engage in public discourse with either the intent to advance it or the intent to harm it. There will always be people intent on harming the public discourse for their own interests, and they will always go to great lengths to conceal those interests, and the media's job is to work on behalf of the public and discern the two.

I would be really interested to see polling data that surveyed Americans for their level of anxiety about everything's at stake. The magnitude of the end of this presidency is kind of terrifying to gaze at.

And it's about the Democrats taking the fight to Trump, too. Trump's floated every olive branch just to say, "just give me something I can say is a wall." But they're determined to deny him even a manufactured victory. Stupid people still recognize strength and force when they see it. It's the one thing that strongmen always project. If Trump ultimately caves, as deluded as his base is, I suspect a good number of them will recognize it as defeat. When the government shutdown ends, if there's no money in the deal for border security, Trump loses.

That second play of our first offensive drive... when LJH caught a slant and the entire team pushed him for another... that told Georgia everything they needed to know about the team that came to play.

Of course! Building consensus is a painstaking, agonizing process. But it's what we need to do as a country to heal.

That would be like trying to arrive at a scientific discovery by filling test tubes and beakers with household cleaning supplies. That's a hard question to answer. Rolling up a summary of two and a half centuries of history is not an easy feat for anyone who wants their conclusions to be based on thorough analysis. The problem I have with your assertion is that it's stuck in a particular paradigm, i.e. it artificially subdivides concepts that are not mutually exclusive. We can increase social benefits and not become "less" capitalistic. Conversely, we can remove social benefits and not become "more" capitalistic. The very idea that there's a single line where we can put "socialism" on one side and "capitalism" on the other is actually absurd, but it serves a purpose. The rich don't want to help the poor (naturally), so they convince the poor that social programs will hurt them more than they help them. None of that really has anything to do with any -isms, even though it may appear that way on the surface. The United States of America in 1790 didn't choose between capitalism and socialism. And our understanding of economics and social dynamics has advanced bigly in the meantime. What is "capitalism" today versus when Smith wrote Wealth of Nations? If we want a better country, it's not about picking the right "-ism," it's about reaching consensus on what constitutes progress, and then doing the work. Is it "progress" if our rich get richer but our middle class dies off? Is it "progress" if people below the poverty line die of preventable diseases? So, I'm not trying to explain our success as a country. I'm suggesting you should stop using it to erroneously lend credence to oversimplified historical narratives. Instead, let's focus on how to make our country better (and what "better" actually means).

How do you know capitalism is the root cause of our success?

Let's not forget that the United States is not the only victim of Active Measures. I think there's at least a possibility of a stronger NATO coming out of this.

I tend to agree, too, but I'm going to wager that there are a whole lot of considerations we haven't thought of that pertain to telling both the American public and the rest of the world that one of our major parties -- and thus our democracy itself -- has been infiltrated by foreign governments. If you're in the position to disclose (or not disclose), do you take the "rip the bandaid off" road, or do you take the "resolve the crisis, restore order, and slow drip the nastier parts of the truth" approach? It's easy to say, "yeah, I would totally just rip that bandaid off." Now imagine the whole world is listening simultaneously, and that each and everything you reveal has grave potential consequences. It's frankly terrifying for me to even ponder it. Outside of Trumpkins, everyone and their mother realizes Trump is compromised, that won't come as a surprise. But I doubt the government will make public the full extent of the corruption of the GOP (and thus half our democratic government). At least not right away. I'm thinking about what would happen if just 30% of the Republicans in Congress were ousted because they were either on the take or complicit. I was too hyperbolic when I said "decades," but it still seems likely that great care and patience will be taken when revealing the aspects of this conspiracy that go beyond Trump's bunch.

On one hand, it was an incoherent, rambling mess. On the other hand, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I recommend you read it.

Oh, I just remembered! All those times when the GOP apologists characterized the Wall as nothing more than a campaign promise... Trump, they told us, knew that the physical wall was just a metaphor for better border security, and they only went with it because it played well with the rubes. Yep, here we are. It has been so. long. since. we. have. seen. Tahoe. Hope. he's. okay.

REDACTED.

I kinda think his plan is to make sure his team's legal paper trail (indictments, sentencing recommendations, etc.) can lead the House to turn up the heat on Trump and eventually, after public opinion sways enough to turn even the senate, impeach. After impeachment, he can put all the criminals who haven't flipped behind bars, without risking the perception of a deep state coup. The full report may well be sealed for a few decades to shield the public from the shock. Of course, nothing the House does this year will lead the Senate Rs to turn on Trump, so I doubt 2019 goes according to anybody's plan.

I love that 93% at the end. "... and is the most popular Republican in party history?" would have ended the sentence just fine. Adding that "ninety-three percent" is like a child guessing at what a fact-based discussion among grown ups sounds like.

Didn't I, though? Didn't I?