Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.
2016? Shit the press gave him all the free press when he was doing the birther shit with Obama.
Damn, that’s high praise, thank you! It makes me feel better because I woke up fighting myself on “Oh man I wrote way too long a rant” and “DAMMIT! I didn’t even mention the Evangelicals worming their way into politics!”
To everyone else, reading this… read about history folks! I, like everyone else, thought history was boring in school. If I were to put on my tin foil hat, I worry it’s done on purpose as it helps realize nothing happening is actually all that new. And it’s rather easy to do, put a coach as the history teacher who just hands you a textbook and makes you regurgitate names and numbers that don’t mean anything but meets criteria (No Child Left Behind, Bush Era for me) just makes everyone hate history.
Yes, I did drop names, policies, and a few dates, but those are examples to point to and you better believe I don’t remember a single one of those by heart, I have to look them up when I reference them. The theory is there, and once you get into devouring the actual meat of history it is absolutely bloody fascinating.
He can live out his remaining time in Russia as a wanna-be oligarch, and Putin will treat him like a leader-in-exile.
Honestly think he’d be safer in North Korea. Kim Jong Un could at least see him as an ally of “the world is against us.”
Putin already views Trump as a puppy that makes messes on the carpet… while running a dog fighting ring.
Personally I hope so. They’re burning the world, it’ll at least be fun to watch them flounder in the process.
Hell, I think my biggest problem is I can’t think of anything dumb enough before they’ve already got it
I used to think I was a pessimist. But now after multiple “There’s no way people are that dumb” and being wrong I must be an absolute optimist.
Or how about the part where all their chicken’s bland as shit. “Spicy” my ass.
Popeyes is the superior chicken fast food. I’ll fight anyone on this hill.
I’ve had practice eating at Popeyes.
Boy howdy I’m just imagining HIPAA with this.
Hooooooooooooooooooboy. Mainly, he got lucky in time. WARNING, WALL OF TEXT
This is a continuation of the build up to the original civil war in America, when post reconstruction under a President who was sympathetic to the confederates after Lincoln was assassinated. You’ve had generations still calling for civil war (spend 30 minutes around a group of Texans and see if you can get out without hearing them declaring Texas never signed to become part of the union again). With the “war of northern aggression” myths that are pervasive you’ve got people believing that it was DC that invaded the south instead of the south attacking first, as well as “states rights” making it seem like big government is picking on the states.
Into the racism territory, the original civil war was about slavery. Full stop. If you have questions, please refer to declarations of causes of secession from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas (which its formation was specifically stealing it from Mexico to become a slaveholding state), Virginia, then look at the Constitution of the CSA Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3). States rights indeed.
This may seem odd to dredge up all of that but living in the South this has been the drum I grew up around my entire life and spoken of as gospel. Am a descendant of a Confederate officer and people tell my family that we should be proud… I’m proud of my parents for responding that he’s a traitorous piece of shit and deserved to be hung. This offends the locals in modern era. Now with jobs that had me traveling, you find the Virginia battle standard (that’s not the Confederate flag, the actual Confederate flag is mostly white, then they changed it to the “blood dipped banner” with a red strip at the end because the actual flag looked too much like a flag of surrender… ironically changed the month they surrendered. Whoops) all over the country in small communities. It’s weird to see “It’s heritage, not hate” in Ohio. So the ghosts of the Civil War are not yet gone.
But lets get out of the Civil War and move to more modern wounds the country still has festering. The Civil Rights act when taught in schools is almost treated like it was ancient history… my dad’s high school cancelled prom because the principal would not have the first integrated prom in the state, people are still alive from that era and anyone thinks hatred was overblown, Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne and federalize the Arkansas National Guard to protect 9 students because the Governor mobilized the National Guard to bar their way into the school. Following Ike, you had JFK a Democrat who ran with LBJ, the running mate was chosen because LBJ was your old school southern Democrat, wildly racist, which spoke the language of the very angry South. JFK was pushing integration, but as VP, LBJ actually seemed to spearhead it harder than JFK, and when he became President after JFKs assassination made it a point to continue integration full steam ahead (not a saint, his words to people still racist… he was a complicated figure in history). He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and changed politics in the country for the foreseeable future, the Southern “Dixiecrats” felt betrayed by the Democratic party. This was added on by the Southern Strategy pushed by Nixon and his political strategist Kevin Philips.
The words of Phillips himself in 1970, warning: language of the era
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
During the Nixon era, the War on Drugs started up. Former Nixon Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman told outright the war on drugs was made because you couldn’t arrest people for being against the war or black, so tie weed with hippies and blacks with heroin and now they had a ready made excuse to disrupt communities, arrest leaders, raid homes, and vilify them on the news. Another one of those talking points of the Republicans you hear about today was a Nixon favorite “the Silent Majority”. We all know about the Watergate Scandal, and if you don’t good lord a writeup of it would take up more than I’ve written now, but an overreach of Nixons power and lead to his impeachment trials. So Nixon is a shamed president, we don’t need to look at him anymore… Except many of his policies are quietly still used by the Republicans, which shouldn’t be a surprise, one of President Trump’s political consultants, Roger Stone, has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
Against the war… RIGHT, another boogeyman of the US: Communism. Understand Fascism, Socialism (often attributed to Communism, since we’re talking US politics, the words are interchangeable even though in reality they are not), and Anarchy were political theories that butted heads about the same time. During WWII it was even in the US “we gotta stop the communists” and of course the Cold War made it worse. Containment, the US doctrine to prevent the spread of Communism started roughly with Truman, as put in by Nixon on the trying to go against hippies, the attitude continued and still Communism is a bad word today. Good lord that discussion is its own article, but good to remember that we have situations like McArthyism, a second Hooverism where persecution against left wing individuals under the guise of “weeding out communists” has happened and getting called for now where people were encouraged to turn in people suspected of communist sympathies, happened a lot in Hollywood, so a distrust of the conservative crowd of the liberals and such like the “Hollywood Elite” is ingrained in our society for nearly a century.
THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY, good lord we finally got here. It can really be chalked up to their patron saint Ronald Reagan. Old Ronald pushed a lot of the economics that are still worshiped by the right wing today, as well as much of the political control. He was an odd duck, not a politician, but an actor who got a cult of personality going and a massive following that felt he could do no wrong. Wonder who that sounds like? No idea. Again, another point where I could go a long time how his administration shaped the country but there’s a really important one that explains how we got here. The 11th commandment
Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
Look at the Republicans for decades after that. They softballed each other while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Republican does something distatetful the Republicans would protect, but a Democrat do something and hang them out to dry. This became the main doctrine of the Republicans, lockstep together and do not faulter. Clinton sleeps with someone, Impeachment trial, W starts wars with countries not involved in 9/11 nada, Obama and Biden impeachment inquiries for… reasons? The republicans started their “win at all costs” move, a lot spearheaded by Mitch McConnell (yet another… good lord long article)
This is going to seem like an aside, but is important, during this, 9/11 happened and the real advent of 24/7 news cycles showed up. This will be important because this beast lives on advertising, it’s a for profit business, and so keeping butts in chairs and eyes glued to the screen is very important.
So in comes the turd in the punchbowl, Donald Trump. He doesn’t believe in rules. He is more intimate with guys in drag than the truth. He’s ran as a democrat to get president, failed miserably. Ran as republican, failed miserably. But the perfect storm happened. A black guy is in the White House! 24/7 news is blasting anything they can. Trump has been able to stay in media and keep crowds entertained, honestly his true talent is working crowds. So he finds that “birther” conspiracy and ran with it, all the major news networks were happy to parade Trump on and give him free publicity, Fox because he’s helping spread hate against the Democrats, CNN and MSNBC happy to show him off because “haha, look at the dumb conspiracy nut” and gave him ALL of the press. Then the primaries came after Obama, and a pile of Republicans, all following the 11th commandment are together, being nice, cordial, while jockying for who’s in charge. And Trump ignored the rules, tore each and every one of them apart, so the divisions of a pile of candidates who softballed and he threw elbows landed him the nomination.
I want this understood, this is still VERY MUCH an ELI5, truncated and painted with the broadest brush explanation of what’s going on. I could go into fuckups of the Democrats, that Bill was the beginning of the end of the actual left wing to corporatism or the running of Hillary being a dumb move, but you asked about what did Trump tap into. The TLDR is “We’re still dealing with shit that came up before Lincoln was elected.”
I have one for those that worked at Disney World. “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?”
At this point there’s a con happening all over the country all throughout the year. Dunno where “south” is for you but the big one I know about is Texas Furry Fiesta in Dallas in March.
Granted Texas has like 4 of them going nowadays by itself lol.
I have the aftershockz Air. Aftershockz as a company apparently changed and went to Shockz when I got my second set so there I got the openrun. I still find my using the Air for my work time which is my more used one, but I think I got used to the fit of it (ran with those for like 3 years) but the openrun works pretty well IMO.
I’ll toss in as I have two, a set at home and at work.
For music, they’re honestly kinda meh. They’ll get the job done if you want some music but lets be frank you’ll find better sound quality headphones out there.
The reason I absolutely find them game changers is they allow me to wear them when I’m at work. I work on mechanical equipment in hospitals, so I need to hear what’s going on around me, one earbud can block up a side but this means I can hear when someone is talking to me. Also I found that earbuds didn’t fit me well so would potentially fall out, these wrap around the back of the head and stay in place, even when I’m working in some strange positions. And when I’m pulling out the power tools and things are going to be loud, I stick in earplugs, and I can hear what I’m listening to better even.
Phone work, I was shocked because my last job I was in a cargo van with minimal insulation so A LOT of road noise, but I’d hear the person I’m talking to with little issue and they could hear me well. Makes hands free phones a lot better.
I listen to podcasts, audiobooks, and the like. I mean chew through so many of them it’s not even funny. Because of that sometimes I found with the single earbud one you’d have something in stereo, well that single earbud messes it up and you gotta set it to a mono sound. These you’ve got that dynamic sound going.
So in short, if you’re going for audiophile level stuff, pass on these, but for daily drivers in day to day life they’re on the top ten things I’ve ever bought.
Pen, pocket journal, wallet, phone, and whichever pocket knife I grab that day.
I’m really a simple person, but I"m going to go into my favorite pocket knife and I’m angry that it’s not made anymore. The SOG Q2. It’s a “baton” shape" IE, slightly longer than a standard pen. Has a flashlight, bottle opener (with flatehead screwdriver, in other words beveled the bottle opener) and knife. The opening mechanism is such I’ve never had it accidentally come open on me, can be opened one handed, and to keep it from closing you’re literally holding the body that goes over the knife.
I’m going to assume this isn’t “lottery” ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn’t live that differently, and immediately begin with “quitting work.” That’s the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you’ve just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can’t be bought back, time.
You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.
Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you’re looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you’re done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn’t give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.
So lets assume you’re working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can’t afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it’s still the getting the time off. They’ve got bills to worry about, the ones you’re not even thinking about. Sometimes they’ll show up, other times, not so much. So either you’re out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don’t have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you’ll run into the others that don’t have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more “normal” to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of “take a ride in my Lambo” and finding it fun, it’s a frog in the pot situation, you’ll go back to your roots and go “How did I live like this?”
That’s not cool man…
They said medieval, that is way too late.
Gee… wonder if this ever could have been predicted when Patriot Act was brought out.
Bentonville AR is being turned into a bicyclists haven. To the tune of Arkansas laws are making it that bicyclists don’t have to pay attention to traffic laws. That’s neat, wonder why… Ah. And while bicycling is one of the better things I guess billionaires can do, in the region buying bicycles are far beyond affordable anymore to a walmart wage because it’s gotten so over the top fancy, and the Waltons literally have a helicopter with a bike rack to fly out to the trails. My dad is irritated because of how often it shakes his house as it goes over.
Same city, Alice Walton had a really nice museum built in the area that was surely out of the good of her heart… Ah. Unless really local, one might not know of her nickname “Drunken Alice” where she has a history of dwi’s and wrecks, including one where someone was killed, yet somehow nothing seems to stick.
Yea… I’ve got a bit of an axe to grind with the Waltons having grown up in their personal playground, I agree with you to think this is a problem with just Amazon is ludicrous, and despite only living a state away it’s amazing to hear how people bitch about Amazon, it’s chokeholds, it’s problems, its wrecking of the country, and gives a full pass to Walmart. We live in an oligarchy.
Completely unrelated to my bitching about Walmart, but a perfect example of execs doing this nonsense and how I got in trouble because I can’t stop snarking: Worked for a medical testing facility, ran by a doctor. Said doctor buys himself a brand new shiny Lamborghini, then through the whole email has an announcement that for one day for 4 hours where any of the staff can get a picture with the Lambo and share on the company page. Now I met said doc once during training, but otherwise worked 3rd shift with two other people, he certainly never showed up when we had issues.
So when the day happened, it was one of those I commented it’s the first time I think I’m glad that 3rd shift gets ignored on any staff events. Think about it for a second, then ask the others “Who has the newest car?”, turns out was a Nissan Juke. So each of us go out and get a picture with the Juke, then sent the pictures in to where people were supposed to send in the pics with the Lambo. Turns out they got 4 pictures, the 3 with the Juke, and 1 with the Lambo. Got told by our manager said doc was pissed and to keep our heads down.
I remember an old reddit post about what it’s like to not like football by replacing it with archeology. I felt that in my soul.
Personally, I enjoy the drinks I’m drinking. And no, I’m not saying where it tastes like candy but I drink in the manner of responding “I don’t understand the question.” when I’m asked “What would you like with your gin?”
Part of what I drink helps because slamming it hurts, but I like that slight burn when sipping (Why yes I like spicy food too but I digress), that burn is a nice speed limiter so it takes a while to even get a buzz. There at the slight the term “social lubricant” shines. I’m not deep in my head, all the worries, anxieties, etc I can actually set aside and enjoy my time rather than going through the list of shit I need to get done a thirtieth time.
If you don’t like it, it’s perfectly fine, getting drunk is not something necessary to live life.
I disagree with this. It’ll take some revolution, but can be avoided bloody.
On revolution I do say vote. The 2022 election was a turnout of 52% of the voting age population. Just barely over half, and that’s the second highest turnout to a nonpresidential election year since 2000. All the oxygen always goes to the Presidency but what OP is dealing with comes up in local elections, and the local and state shit deals far more with your day to day than the national. Hell, when national laws even come up, weed is still schedule 1 “more dangerous than cocaine” to the federal government but just about every state has legalized it.
It’s not a quick solution, and it’s not as simple anymore as “go out and vote” but gotta kick everyone up who hasn’t given a shit (if they’re not voting, think they’ll back you in a revolution?). It’s a fucking slow ass slog that takes daily fighting, like I’ve got a group that I’m the one who posts the ballots, the dates, the links, honestly do everything but bang on their doors and drag them to the polls but it’s a little bit that helps. As I saw “A vote is not a valentine. You’re not professing your love for the candidate. It’s a chess move for the world you want to live in.”
The Republicans have been doing that for years, they’ve never let a single dem run even for superintendent across the country uncontested. They worked slow and methodically to get the supreme court. Their revolution can be argued to have started as far back as Nixon. We’re arguably at their end game, but it seems like they’ve overreached this time, it’s time to start clawing back territory.
The reason though I’m against a bloody revolution is, yes it’s useful as a last resort, but it honestly is at that in the chess analogy above picking up the table, throwing it in the room and starting a riot. You hope you come out okay but at that point it’s really up in the air who comes out on top. Guillotines come up a lot, and France is doing pretty well right now. But remember between modern France and the guillotines was a messy time post revolution that was stabilized by someone who declared himself Emperor and attempted to conquer all of Europe.