US politics (2 Viewers)

[Lili Marlene]

Manchin is just a sensible Republican, who subscribed to the Dem YouTube channel and bought some merch so he can keep shilling for his interests in coal.

He's not part of the upcoming lurch, that comes from Trump acolytes and Christians who genuinely want to burn the whole place down.

I cannot fucking wait.

The entire Republican Party wandering around Congress like those January 6th lads, just bamboozled that they're on tv, accidentally shooting each other and slipping on banana peels, all while praising God and cutting the budget further and further.

 

[flashback]

I cannot fucking wait.

The entire Republican Party wandering around Congress like those January 6th lads, just bamboozled that they're on tv, accidentally shooting each other and slipping on banana peels, all while praising God and cutting the budget further and further.

yeah, this is what I wanted at one point, Trump to win and fill the place with Christ loving bootlickers, with the idea that you keep giving them more and more rope until they fuck up massively and people see them for what they are.

Then my inner Alan Partridge kicked in and I thought I'd be better off voting for mediocre center right pull the bandage off slowly bullshit.

 

[Lili Marlene]

yeah, this is what I wanted at one point, Trump to win and fill the place with Christ loving bootlickers, with the idea that you keep giving them more and more rope until they fuck up massively and people see them for what they are.

Then my inner Alan Partridge kicked in and I thought I'd be better off voting for mediocre center right pull the bandage off slowly bullshit.

Oh if the Dems refuse to move beyond Reaganism then things will just continue getting slowly worse and worse for a long time imho. Things have to get peasants-in-Russia-1916 levels of bad before revolutions happen. We'll see what a failing climate does, I suppose? Once again, I'd maybe recommend The Ministry for the Future for a possible happy path through this?

 

[flashback]

Oh if the Dems refuse to move beyond Reaganism then things will just continue getting slowly worse and worse for a long time imho. Things have to get peasants-in-Russia-1916 levels of bad before revolutions happen. We'll see what a failing climate does, I suppose? Once again, I'd maybe recommend The Ministry for the Future for a possible happy path through this?

Oh this?

The Ministry for the Future

Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organizatio…

www.goodreads.com

I must have not noticed your previous recommendation. Or more likely forgotten, seeing as I basically have Alzheimer's at this point.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Yeah, it's not an amazing book or anything, but it takes the issues we face very seriously and points towards way through them. A change from all-doom all-gloom dystopias. Worth a read!

 

[Richie]

yeah, brace yourselves for the onslaught of both sides are the same, so there's no point voting arguments.

I'm realising that this is probably a GOP driven narrative.

But that's clearly the cycle:
- ineffective Dem gov, shilling to every corporate interest going
- government is bad / all politicians are crooks / everyone's out to get you
- general apathy
- GOP storm into power
- Massive lurch towards authoritarianism + shilling to every corporate interest going
- JFC these guys are lunatics, lads, FFS vote. Things are getting bad.
- Dem regain power
- Huge sigh of relief, well done you guys, we did it!
- none of the lunatic policies from prev admin get rolled back
- ineffective Dem gov
GOTO 10

I think this Youtube lad gives a similar take here:

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[Lili Marlene]

The weird Tucker Carlson/Fox News Putin defenders is the strangest wrinkle in the past 6 weeks, I kind of feel the entire global world just made a decision to ignore it as attention seeking or something. One of our better reactions.

He's (Tucker) been hanging around with Orban and visiting Hungary for his show for about a year now I think.

 

[flashback]

The weird Tucker Carlson/Fox News Putin defenders is the strangest wrinkle in the past 6 weeks, I kind of feel the entire global world just made a decision to ignore it as attention seeking or something. One of our better reactions.

He's (Tucker) been hanging around with Orban and visiting Hungary for his show for about a year now I think.

I think the Ukraine thing is just a bit too real.

Let's imagine your mother is a strident anti-vaxer / Fauci is the devil / Ivermectin / 5G is controlling the chips Bill Gates is implanting into you - type. And a couple of family members have just died from Covid. It's too close, it's too real, it was a really horrible death. Everyone knows your Mother's opinions, she's been screaming them at everyone on Facebook and whenever you go for dinner. And maybe it would be OK to argue with her a year and a half ago, but you've just been burying dead people, and you're not in the mood. If she wants to keep banging on about them, fine. But you're not going to engage now, people are tired now, it's not a hypothetical.

For whatever reason Putin starting a brutal war with Ukraine has made a lot of people deeply upset. Tucker and the various people on Putin's payroll are still doing what they're paid to, but we're not dealing with their tinfoil hat stuff now. We can seem them digging trenches and dumping Europeans into them now, it's different somehow.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Tucker is absolutely not on Putin's payroll, he's a free actor in this shit. He's like the USA version of Brendon O'Neill, but with an audience of 250 million people or something.

I'm sure if you go looking you'll probably find some money coming from Putin and the Koch Brothers and the like, but he'd be doing this without them as well.

 

[Unicron]

Tucker and the various people on Putin's payroll a

Just a point on that. TC is from an extraordinarily wealthy background, his mother was/is a TV dinner heiress.

He could spend his life doing nothing, but he chooses to be a cunt on TV because he's a true believer.

 

[flashback]

Tucker is absolutely not on Putin's payroll, he's a free actor in this shit. He's like the USA version of Brendon O'Neill, but with an audience of 250 million people or something.

I'm sure if you go looking you'll probably find some money coming from Putin and the Koch Brothers and the like, but he'd be doing this without them as well.

He doesn't get a weekly cheque signed "Vlad", but Fox and the GOP is funded by interests that Putin supports. There's Russian money paying for propaganda in the US, and Fox is involved in that propaganda.

I mean, most Hollywood movies which include any kind of military stuff are supported / funded by the the US Mil, under the proviso they get to ensure they are represented in a positive light. (Ie US gov propaganda). Like the lad who directed Top Gun didn't receive a check from the US military PR department, but he was essentially on payroll.

 

[Unicron]

Like the lad who directed Top Gun didn't receive a check from the US military PR department, but he was essentially on payroll.

I think Brie Larson actually did adverts for the US air force as part of the deal that got Marvel access to jets for the Captain Marvel movie.

 

[flashback]

Just a point on that. TC is from an extraordinarily wealthy background, his mother was/is a TV dinner heiress.

He could spend his life doing nothing, but he chooses to be a cunt on TV because he's a true believer.

I guess I'm not 100% convinced he believes all of what he's saying. I think he enjoys the notoriety, this role as a troll / figurehead for extremists. Lots of these guys could just bugger off and take it easy for the rest of their lives, but they enjoy this feeling of power. Tucker is now a big deal, he's got his orbit of people, he's got a massive fanbase, his life is important.

He reminds me of that Canadian guy who started Proud Boys. He sold his stake in Vice and he was set for life. He kinda started it almost as a Political Correctness Gone Mad troll, and it just kept feeding back into itself until it become this cult. I don't think he set out to form what resulted, I think he ended up there and enjoyed the journey.

 

[Lili Marlene]

He doesn't get a weekly cheque signed "Vlad", but Fox and the GOP is funded by interests that Putin supports. There's Russian money paying for propaganda in the US, and Fox is involved in that propaganda.

I mean, most Hollywood movies which include any kind of military stuff are supported / funded by the the US Mil, under the proviso they get to ensure they are represented in a positive light. (Ie US gov propaganda). Like the lad who directed Top Gun didn't receive a check from the US military PR department, but he was essentially on payroll.

Why though? Why is a middling country like Russia spending so much of its cash on interfering with the USA? And apparently with great success??

I understand it on a macro level, as in you can assume that a global superpower like the USA is meddling in every Russian election, in every Irish election, etc., so you can also assume that Russia is doing what it can to cause a bit of havoc in the USA as well, but the idea that it's controlling the Republican party like a glove puppet, I don't buy it.

 

[Lili Marlene]

If anything, state run media like RT (and, uh, the BBC) is a threat to a company like Fox who want everything privatized.

 

[flashback]

Why though? Why is a middling country like Russia spending so much of its cash on interfering with the USA? And apparently with great success??

I understand it on a macro level, as in you can assume that a global superpower like the USA is meddling in every Russian election, in every Irish election, etc., so you can also assume that Russia is doing what it can to cause a bit of havoc in the USA as well, but the idea that it's controlling the Republican party like a glove puppet, I don't buy it.

The way I think about it would be they'd be insane not to. For the same reason that the other people do it, it's profitable. It's cheap to purchase US politicians and US propaganda devices, relative to the return on that money.

If you look at the kind of money the Israel lobby spends on DC, relative to what it gets for that spend, it's unbelievably well spent money. For a relatively few million invested you can get things like sanctions placed on or removed from agendas, or wars in Palestine removed from the public eye.

 

[sleepy]

The weird Tucker Carlson/Fox News Putin defenders is the strangest wrinkle in the past 6 weeks, I kind of feel the entire global world just made a decision to ignore it as attention seeking or something. One of our better reactions.

He's (Tucker) been hanging around with Orban and visiting Hungary for his show for about a year now I think.

I think there’s 2 reasons people are ignoring them. 1 is that People are probably pretty jaded from dealing and arguing with Tucker Tinfoil hat people over the course of the pandemic that they don’t have the energy to start into it again. They already know what the end result will be. Anger and a lot of frustration.
The 2nd is the much more selfish reason that unless you’re actually living in the Ukraine or Russia, this more than likely isn’t really going to directly affect you. People not taking the vaccine could affect you personally. There’s a lot more risk involved. You or your parents could lose out on medical care because some fucking idiots listening to Joe Rogan took horse medicine and now they’re taking up hospital beds. Or you could lose a family member because they’re refusing to wear a mask because they’ve been told they’re mind control devices.

With this war, I think most people have come to the conclusion that arguing with arseholes online about a conflict that you can’t do anything about is a complete waste of time. Plus right now, people can actually leave the house and see each other in real life so are less likely to be stuck at home and getting caught in the cycle of endless online arguments.

I also that people are directing their energy more to fund raising and looking at how they can help the people suffering by offering places to stay rather than arguing with racist cousin Bob in Alabama

 

[Lili Marlene]

The way I think about it would be they'd be insane not to. For the same reason that the other people do it, it's profitable. It's cheap to purchase US politicians and US propaganda devices, relative to the return on that money.

If you look at the kind of money the Israel lobby spends on DC, relative to what it gets for that spend, it's unbelievably well spent money. For a relatively few million invested you can get things like sanctions placed on or removed from agendas, or wars in Palestine removed from the public eye.

What are they purchasing though? Israel gets a massive missile defense system and the guarantee that no matter what they do to Palestine the USA will ensure there are no consequences.

Russia gets, what, to troll and goad the liberal media? To keep Maddow in a job?

What Russia is doing in the Ukraine is horrific, if a few troll farms can lead to the entire of the USA to breakdown then thats on the USA.

 

[seanc]

Why though? Why is a middling country like Russia spending so much of its cash on interfering with the USA? And apparently with great success??

I understand it on a macro level, as in you can assume that a global superpower like the USA is meddling in every Russian election, in every Irish election, etc., so you can also assume that Russia is doing what it can to cause a bit of havoc in the USA as well, but the idea that it's controlling the Republican party like a glove puppet, I don't buy it.

Bit of a hot take here, but Russia is not a "middling country". That's the whole crux of the thing.

I also note that some of you seem to think Russia has a plan. The plan has always been there is no plan. Just fuck shit up. They see how wrong the rest of the world is, all they have to do is help that along, it'll make Russia look better. And there is no real why.


Actually there probably is, but that would involve overthinking. He's a troll with nukes, financial reserves, a brainwashed and dispirited electorate and huge resources. And a massive chip on the shoulder.