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The right idea. Twitter is already super-bad for my attention span and so short-form video seems like it would make it worse.
Elon Musk stuff
As I said I'm not interested in discussing this stuff anymore.
Well um, yeah. The idea that the civil service is impartial is super weird actually. It has to be partial to some ideology in order to function in the first place.
Anti-vaxxers are mostly;
Religious types (Hassidic Jews)
Hippie, ultra-naturalist types (ie left-wing people)
Anti-Mainstream COVID Information types (ie right-wing people and also Alex Berenson, you should look him up if you want to learn more about this stuff)
Oh wow. Okay.
I don't really think you get the line of thinking.
The line of thinking is that the government is inefficient and will probably get away with whatever (like, iunno, the Iraq War) if you don't push back. That means these people will default not trust what the government tells them, especially if it goes against gut instinct.
The COVID Amnesty discourse happening right now encapsulates it nicely.
"Public health experts" and the CDC burned through their own status capital at an alarming rate and it isn't Donald Trump's fault.
I can understand that someone might have a fundamental distrust of government ideologically, but it's another thing to use that ideology to overwrite all good sense and "decide" what is or isn't true.
And, accepting vaccination requirements in general before COVID because of the "status capital" of public health experts/CDC but not anymore after it is still indicative of a re-prioritization of influences determining one's worldview to have ideology override other things.
Also, "uncertainty" is an excuse considering that COVID is basically just a particularly serious type of airborne/respiratory-transmitted illness, for which there are already existing templates for people to understand these things with regards to how to act in public. Sure, the scope of recommendations and chatter about this is unprecedented, but not the kinds of behavioral reponses themselves: get vaccinated, and wear a mask when around other people in public, except when you have to take it off for reasons. This isn't to say that the restrictions (on whatever) as implemented in any particular place were necessarily optimal, as uncertainty certainly affected how they were done, but that doesn't justify going "fuck your restrictions!!111" and abandoning good sense wholesale either (regardless of whether it's due to frustration or ideological conviction). (And "uncertainty" definitely doesn't justify people who did things like intentionally breathing/coughing/spitting on others.)
As for the "ideology" of a functioning government: If there's an "ideology" to to this it would be something very generic, along the lines of wanting something like a stable, safe, prosperous, and enjoyable society where people can lead fulfilling lives. It's not something that fits onto either side of the ideological battle lines of politics...unless things like the very idea of a society is being thrown onto one side of said battle lines.
Childhood vaccines are all for diseases that we very well know will possibly severely hurt or maim a child (like, you know, Polio). That is to say, it's a risk assessment process. Many children across the world receive vaccines regionally, which is why lots of adults have to get certain vaccines when they travel.
How many people even did this? Was there like, a movement I missed?
You say "generic", the USA says "Democracy", China says "Socialist Capitalism", Qatar says "Religious Theocracy", and so on.
Again, like I told you, there are many NRx people who believe gay men will lead "more fulfilling" lives if they get married to women and have families rather than give in to their sexual proclivities.
On the other hand, there are literal Quillette Centrists who believe that cheating within the context of a marriage should be allowed and will help said marriage thrive, therefore the married couple will also lead "more fulfilling" lives.
However, in modern US context, gay marriage is allowed (if not celebrated to a cloying extent) and infidelity is often the basis of a divorce.
Don't pretend the pillars of any given civilization are "generic". This is just a reflexive thing people say when you that find the government you live under is close enough to your political ideals to live with.
I guess it wasn't in the context of the article, but concepts like "rooting out systemic racism" and "climate justice" are also very much about upending the idea of modern Western hegemony, ie society.
I guess the difference is the right-wing is clear about what it wants, whereas the left is much more academic and obtuse.
The issue of accompanying conditions (autism, anorexia, more generic body dysmorphia, depression, anxiety, OCD etc) being rushed into the "it'll be resolved after we affirm" box is something that for me was this big issue that was being ignored by the relevant authorities, and it's something that is still being greatly ignored in the US, but at least other countries finally noticed.
Similarly, on the concept of "neutral policies";
Suella Braverman, current UK Home Secretary (for a Conservative government in case you think this is important), also spoke recently about how this has all gone too far.
From an article covering the speech;
In other news, a few days ago Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon faced a massive backlash after revealing a new ridiculously lax policy on gender self ID.
And regardless of their ideological persuasions they still have a number of common features, from traffic controls to professional licensing to courts of law to societal recordkeeping and so on.
Ideology, in the way you're using the term, is not the be all and end all of how a society functions.
Unless you're going to widen the scope of the term to include even the very idea of having a society. Like, for example, if we're going to run on the notion that people getting along with each other peacefully is too an "ideological" goal and thus fair game for politicization...
lolwut
There are multiple problems in what you just said.
1. society (especially at the fundamental levels I've been talking about) =/= modern Western hegemony
2a. "rooting out systemic racism" and "climate justice" =/= upending modern Western hegemony
2b. "rooting out systemic racism" and "climate justice" =/= upending society
Note that "rooting out systemic racism" means stuff like "let's figure out if people have biases associating black men with crime and see whether that's making law enforcement too harsh on black men", and "climate justice" means stuff like "being aware that rich countries can deal with the impacts of climate change far easier than poor countries can".
I say this because the only way I can imagine these two things being "upending society" or even "upending modern Western hegemony" is if I replace what I mentioned above with completely bonkers ideas like "white people should be subservient to black people" or "destroy all cars and force all people to be vegans".
Also, it's ironic for right-wingers to be rooting for that same "modern Western hegemony" that gave us the Enlightenment and ideals like equality and scientific understanding and a general desire to appreciate the world.
Frankly, if there's any clarity in what the right-wing "wants", it's that it just wants to be against stuff for the sake of resentment. And even when those things turn out to be good ideas supported by others (even their traditional allies like big business)-- such as with various proposals related to mitigating climate change -- they'd still rather insist on decrying such things as "woke" and widening their culture war further rather than just admitting that progressives do have some good ideas.
That's how we got to the point where anything has become fair game to them as an ideological battle line.
Aye, 'tis true. Thing is, they're mistaken for generic because they might as well be. Last time they weren't was when the norm was you could buy a government post from a guy who got it thanks to his grandpa being the meanest hard-ass in the village.
edit:
By the way, @glennmagusharvey, don't you guys have, like, some elections or whatever right now?
The results are...a thing.
The conventional wisdom -- based on precedent and based on polling -- is that midterm elections are detrimental to the president's party (i.e. the Democratic Party in this case), while favoring the opposition (the Republican Party). With a literally 50/50 U.S. Senate and a very slim Dem majority in the House of Representatives (by merely a few seats), most expectations were that the Republicans would pick up both houses of Congress, and it was just a matter of how much.
That said, polling did occasionally show some bright spots for Dems at times, though overall the polling picture was never particularly clear. Still, Dems retaining control of either house of Congress was considered not particularly likely.
It seems the national mood turned out to be actually surprisingly neutral, but also seemingly easily affected by local political conditions. At this point, there are enough elections whose results are not yet known (votes are still being counted) to definitively conclude who will control Congress, but the probability seems to favor Democrats somewhat, particularly in the Senate.
Meanwhile, at the state level, some wildly divergent results happened -- sometimes even with neighboring states. Florida and New York, in particular, turned out to be nearly unmitigated disasters for Democrats, while Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota were huge successes for them. Typically swing-state Florida saw two-digit blowout victories for Republicans for statewide offices, though this didn't quite contribute much to gaining federal House seats beyond that which Republican legislators had already baked in due to redistricting. And typically Dem-leaning New York had a surprisingly close gubernatorial contest accompanied by unexpected Republican gains in the House. On the other hand, Dems picked up a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and have also managed to gain majorities in a number of state legislatures, including the Minnesota State Senate, Michigan State Senate, Michigan State House, and Pennsylvania State House. The first three of these, along with winning currently-Republican-controlled governorships in Maryland and Massachusetts, have given Dems a "trifecta" in each of these four states (control of governorship, state senate, and state house).
Lots of results in western states are still uncertain at this point, most notably a ton of House seats in California, Oregon, and Washington, plus statewide posts in Nevada, and basically everything in Arizona.
Overall take: neutral to slightly Dem-leaning national environment, but results can vary greatly by state.
People aren't just abusing account verification and the lack of staff to police content; they're now going heavy meta and playing off each others' impersonations.
So yeah, this goes quite far beyond someone pretending to be Nintendo of America and putting up a picture of Mario flipping the bird to the whole internet.
(Yes, that's also a thing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/11/10/middle-finger-mario-becomes-mascot-of-elon-musks-twitter-blue-verification-free-for-all/?sh=24c102e525a6 )
There is a perfect subtle trollface at 1:59.
(and using CNN's site as a baseline for the House because their site doesn't suck as much as MSNBC's or CBS News's do in terms of giving me clear lists of what is called and what isn't and how they count stuff)
It looks likely that the U.S. Senate will be headed for a slim but ever so slightly larger Dem majority, sitting at 50-49 now, with a Georgia seat to be decided by a runoff election in about a month, which by conventional wisdom seems likely to be won by incumbent Raphael Warnock (D), giving a 51-49 majority for the Dems.
Note however that there is also an unsettled Senate race in Alaska. The party of the winner is certain, as Alaska uses instant-runoff voting and the top two finisher are both Republicans. However, Lisa Murkowski (R) is much more moderate than Kelly Tshibaka (R). Right now, Murkowski trails Tshibaka by a small margin, but Alaska is nowhere near done counting votes yet.
Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives...is complicated, because there's more stuff going on, but for now let's use CNN's list of uncalled races. I think what they have currently is pretty reasonable.
Their current scoreboard is 204 D, 211 R, with 20 uncalled races.
9 of these 20 are races that I feel have pretty foregone conclusions, and all in favor of Democrats. 7 have already been called for Dems by other outlets, and the two that use instant runoff voting are very likely to go for Dems. (In the following lists, the Dem candidate is listed first; the Repub is listed second. This is an arbitrary choice I'm following for consistency.)
AK-AL Peltola vs. Palin (IRV) - Peltola has an overwhelming lead over Palin and has already defeated Palin before in a very similar matchup (Nick Begich (R) is 3rd place again, and Chris Bye (L) is barely a factor at all).
CA-09 Harder vs. Patti
CA-21 Costa vs. Maher
CA-47 Porter vs. Baugh
CA-49 Levin vs. Maryott
CO-08 Caraveo vs. Kirkmeyer
ME-02 Golden vs. Poliquin (IRV) - Tiffany Bond (i) seems to have supporters who prefer Golden according to polls, and Golden is already ahead of Poliquin by a few percentage points even before IRV.
NM-02 Vasquez vs. Herrell
OR-06 Salinas vs. Erickson
That leaves 11 seats uncalled.
Here are some less-certain projections I've made about the remaining seats:
projections (D)
AZ-06 Engel vs. Ciscomani
CA-13 Gray vs. Duarte
projections (R)
CA-03 Jones vs. Kiley
CA-45 Chen vs. Steel
NY-22 Conole vs. Williams
OR-05 McLeod-Skinner vs. Chavez-DeRemer
projections (undecided)
AZ-01 Hodge vs. Schweikert
CA-22 Salas vs. Valadao
CA-27 Smith vs. Garcia
CA-41 Rollins vs. Calvert
CO-03 Frisch vs. Boebert
If pushed, I feel like AZ-01 and CA-22 might go to the Dems while CA-27 and CA-41 and CO-03 might go to the Repubs. This would result in a House with 218 Republicans and 217 Democrats.
However, and this is a BIG caveat: California results are still very incomplete. There are some races which are basically only about half-counted at this point. So while I can attempt to call these races, these are most reasonably assessed (at this time) as "too early to call".
Furthermore, AZ-01 and AZ-06 and CO-03 are quite close races, without clear indications as to what portions of the vote have yet to be counted. (Projections often rely on understanding what votes are left and extrapolating trends based on things like how many there are, what county they're from, whether they're in-person or mail ballots, etc..)
Sidenote: A big reason for California's taking a while to count votes is that they allow mailed ballots postmarked by election day to be received later (though of course there's a deadline for that too). California is not unique in doing this; Alaska does it too, for example. Just that California gets a lot more attention for doing this because it has a lot more people, thus more seats and more elections. (In contrast, some states such as Florida say that the ballots have to be received by the elections office on or before election day, which allows for quicker results, but also means possibly leaving a ton of uncounted ballots, especially if the post office takes a while to process the increased volume of mail due to people voting by mail.)
Another factor is whether state law allows for ballots to be processed and/or counted before election day (or for that matter, before the end of election day). California and Arizona don't do this.
(Note that these don't seem to be cleanly partisan issues. Arizona has up to now had Republicans in control of the state government, both the executive and the legislative, while California has had Democrats in control.)
Given the reactions both sides had to these elections, if the Dems avoid losing the lower house stuff's going to be curious.
Also, I recently read a children's book which happens to be halfway relevant to this thread: kids choosing a vegetable to plant in their kindergarten, er, garden. Turned out one of them was severely allergic to sorrel and it was removed from the ballot with the agreement of all, because nobody should be excluded from playing in the garden. (Radish won.) I was like, only in a children's book the sorrel faction would just concede the point instead of, like, declaring they're unjustly oppressed by the evil allergic-to-sorrel. Or, on the following day, a new kid, Vova, showing up in the kindergarten, with pockets full of sweets he only shared with the sorrel fans.
Lauren Boebert, on the other hand, is in CO-03, which is only R+6. Right now I think we're waiting on overseas and provisional ballots; her margin is about 1000 votes at the moment but those two groups of ballots tend to be rather strongly Democratic, and there's reportedly several thousand of them. I don't know what the current progress is in processing ballots. IIRC there's also still time for provisional ballots to be cured, so it may be waiting on that.
Yeah we went over that!
I'm actually a little mad that DT couldn't let that political tiff with her go because it's super pointless to be splitting the vote when you can win (advice Sarah Palin should also take).
I'm more mad that he's poisoning any potential Herschel Walker win (since DT is like, poison to Georgia races).
Boebert's loss was kind of a big deal which I thought would have been memed to death by now.Oh wow she actually isn't losing right now. Counting your chickens and etc.
I don't super get a "bunny" vibe from MTG, she seems like a normal soccer-mom gone rogue, whereas Boebert has that thing where the fact that she wears glasses makes it seem as if she's actually a secret OnlyFans girl (which is one of the many jokes -which are wrong and misogynistic and stuff but also funny- people made about her).
I wanted to post here more during the results period but I felt like we'd definitely get in a fight.
Relatedly I can't believe Blake Masters actually made this video. Also re:Blake Masters, there was no way he was going to beat an Astronaut with a Sad Backstory that was relevant to his politics, but he did a surprisingly good job of not getting absolutely trounced.
Relatedly, he also got caught in an abortion quagmire (as pro-life as I am overturning Roe when it was really threw a spanner in the works for the midterms).
IIRC I think someone ran the numbers (not me though) and found that Blake Masters actually underperformed Trump the most compared to other Republican U.S. Senate candidates.
As for not getting trounced, it seems that simply getting the nomination of either major party (and assuming there's no significant intra-party opposition) seems to guarantee the nominee a certain "floor" of support, by including some people who'll hold their nose to vote for the nominee solely for their party affiliation. Which on one hand can mean voting for questionable candidates, though I also have to admit it's a pragmatic approach.
(In fact, I suspect that this effect helped Mr. Trump get his famously flukey win in 2016.)
As for Boebert and Greene I personally find them to be not particularly interesting beyond the fact that they have highly objectionable political views and records of grandstanding on them. They're rarely worth mentioning in my social media presence, particularly in the limited times I talk about politics outside of politics chats. Though incidentally most of my social media presence isn't on here these days.
TL;DR Elon Musk declares something about what's wrong with Twitter, is contradicted by staff, fires staff on suggestion from a rando, then declares what staff said as if it were his own idea...and misunderstands the problem, directing an implemention of a "solution" that promptly breaks two-factor authentication.
From what I've heard, if you're using two-factor authentication on the Twitter app, don't turn it off, or you won't be able to get back on it.
Well, they're like the Squad. In the end it turns out they do nothing but amplify what other, saner, more tolerable people are saying.
This reminds me of an MTG ad I once watched (I feel weird using this acronym but not referring to Magic) where she actually blew up a real car. I mean I'm not a peace drum-thumping paint-throwing environmentalist but it's probably not necessary to do such damage to something that could be properly scrapped unless you're doing something important* (*like filming a TV show).
Yeah but that can fall out if nobody turns out (especially during a midterm).
He did not do as badly as you'd think, basically.
There was this RW thinking that electing technocrat types backed by the Thiel machine would save the RW school of thought and lead it in a new direction.
I... guess not.
Also related; everybody seems to be giving Kevin McCarthy a really hard time over who got what funding, except those decisions were mostly made by others and to the extent that those others were elected officials it was most likely Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott.
I don't really like Kevin McCarthy but I like it even less when people spread bunk.
Also yes please move Elon's Twitter Adventures elsewhere.
Referencing Magic: the Gathering in relation to her initials is probably like trash-tier wordplay at this point in political chats, just because it's so incredibly obvious. And maybe it's because I hang out with liberal/progressive/Democratic folks, but no one I know really wants the two to be associated either.
(This remark isn't meant to be judgemental of your mentioning it, just some commentary I thought of.)
Not stated in this video is that I think what's essentially happening is that people in the middle class on downward are, on average, "trading down" to cheaper housing, and these companies that own these manufactured home communities are basically forcing existing residents to move further down (to homelessness basically) and end up getting the new people who are moving down from other homes (e.g. because normal single-family homes and condominiums are unaffordable).
The various things going on with the rules and the rents and the improvements are probably a combination of:
* well-meaning efforts to spruce up the neighborhood in order to attract buyers (these new people trading down), whose introduction they see as "revitalizing" the community
* to some extent, to make the investment profitable, and
* to annoy "undesirables" enough to move out, where said "undesirables" may be well-meaning people. For example, if a longtime resident who can't pay more has a lot of flowerpots outside, then banning outside flowerpots encourages that resident to leave, so that a new buyer who can pay more can be attracted.
https://www.vox.com/23142734/america-mass-shooting-gun-violence-control
Frankly speaking, it's just not possible to get around the fact that the greater availability of guns, practically and physically, makes it easier for people to access and use guns.
The article also points out how SCOTUS jurisprudence on the issue has shifted from the idea of a well-regulated militia (as the 2nd amendment actually states) to an individual gun ownership right, especially for the purpose of self-defense.
With her it was super obvious that Trump didn't like her due to the impeachment thing and Kelly Tshibaka wasn't even a real candidate honestly.
Sees Vox
Tunes out because can't
All I know about Guns is that there really should be more Door Control (you should look it up it's hilarious in a "you really don't care if people die at all huh") so that everybody is safer.
Also aside from Vox, Vice is like my most irksome outlet (aside from Salon and maybe Jezebel*) so thanks for figuring that out.
*The NYT and CNN are extremely irksome but I partake in them on purpose so I would guess they aren't that bad.
Anyways so
Donald Trump was seen having dinner with Nicholas Fuentes, who I mean we all remember who that is (well, he's a Quarter-Mexican White Supremacist who is like,the alt right figure) and that he was at the Jan. 6th Riot.
Apparently, Nicholas Fuentes was Kanye West's guest (????) when Donald Trump met Kanye. I guess they got along over the whole Jews-Secretly-Rule-The-World thing.
However, according to "sources" with Axios Trump had a long meal with Fuentes and somehow people in Trumpworld did not realize who Nick Fuentes was.
According to Trump, Kanye invited Fuentes to Mar A Lago (and once again, nobody in Trump World at said dinner realized who Fuentes was like, immediately). They only realized once he'd sat down and spoken with Trump for a bit. Like, really?
Anyways according to this account Fuentes was only removed a bit later and Trump claimed to not know who he was. Like, maybe this is somehow true? Maybe?
People are coping by claiming that somebody on Kanye's team somehow got in contact with Fuentes in a magic operation to frame Trump but man I don't even care anymore I'm just really over it.
"There are TV shows about Satan being a good guy but some rando goes on a podcast and everybody feels the need to disavow??" like... how is this your real position.
"We replaced the Adam and Eve story (or was it the Jesus story, I can't even remember) with WWII and therefore the foundational story of modern Western society is rotten somehow." how does any this honestly have to do with this guy's meltdown?
Like, I get it; I like free speech, but that also includes pointing out when stupid people say bad things, no matter how much you wished they were smart and said nice, thoughtful things instead.
It's like fusion cuisine, really.