I caught that yesterday. Now that guy deserves a Nobel Prize merely for saying what the rest of us have been thinking for 10 years or more.
My only critique would have been that Mr. Vistisen should have also instructed Trump to blow a dog while heās busy fucking off.
If you have the time, and stomach for it, hereās Trumpās full speech at Davos today.
Itās an hour and thirty six minutes of unhinged nonsense. He confuses Greenland with Iceland, calling it āIcelandā at times and āIceā elsewhere. Thereās also his usual rants about windmills, the state of European countries, and yet more complaints about the 2020 election. This guy is a complete embarrassment to the United States (and the human race).
I would rather drink turpentine and piss on a brush fire.
Orange at least made noises about not taking Greenland by force, so either his meds were adjusted or he listened to one of his staff about dialing back the crazy for an actually important conference.
Re-ratcheting the unhinged is only a matter of short time, though, IMHO.
Yes and he also didnāt really make convincing noises. A good analogy I heard today was that if someone said they should hit you with a hammer, but they wonāt do that, itās a threat that theyāll hit you with a hammer.
Look at all these sycophants fawning over Trump after his speech in Davos. Bootlickers all of them.
Tim Apple doing this was the last straw for me. Iām never buying an Apple product again.
Running a protection racket on an entire country does appear to be a great way to bring out the ring kissers.
āDon Orangeā¦I am honored, and gratefulā¦that you invited me to your receiving line of gutless turdsā¦ I pledge my never ending loyaltyā¦ā
Actually this is reflexive with politicians and those who seek to influence them.
For example Mark Carney, Canadaās PM, was widely praised for his very high-minded and eloquent speech at Davos, but it had a key aphorism quoted in it which I am starting to regard as a Big Red Flag: āIf you are not at the table, youāre on the menuā.
And sure enough, Carney, even as he gave the speech, a speech full of eloquent appeals to not appease authoritarians, was said to be āmullingā joining Trumpās so-called Board of Peace, and shortly after the speech, one of his underlings said heās decided to join and just hasnāt announced it yet.
Carney does not want to be āon the menuā so itās a position of fear. Heās trying to have his cake and eat it to. Heās just another hypocrite. No table is worth being at if you have to give up your integrity and dignity to be there, AND enable the agenda of a barking mad wannabe king.
Carney has a mixed record on other things. As soon as he took office, he eliminated a cabinet-level position for womenās advocacy, something that women had been fighting for for a long time. Then due to blow back he reinstated it, but with a much-reduced budget that kept the position as window dressing. He has endorsed and pushed for new laws that erode the civil rights of Canadians in the name of border security and the need for more surveillance.
Heās just another Joe Biden-esque politician punching right, afraid of losing the right and managing to lose the left, particularly the progressives, who he convinces himself he doesnāt need. That will open the way for Canadaās Trump, Pollievre, to take over and send Canada down the same road weāre going down in the US.
The vast majority of politicians are like this, unfortunately. If not worse.
Always trying to do the right thing to the best of oneās abilities and letting consequences follow is one thing.
Even remotely attempting to give the perception that one is doing so is something that one can at least try for.
Tim Apple can indeed now eat a bag of dicks.
I would say that about 10% of politicians do that, maybe 5% consistently. And Iām probably over-estimating.
It doesnāt have to be that way, but itās a combination of structural reasons why they donāt. It is why you have ICE deciding today that they donāt need a judicial warrant to burst into your home and beat you up, but Hakeem Jeffries is recommending his caucus not vote against ICE funding. He doesnāt want to be seen as against border security. He hopes this will blow over and they would prefer to focus on āaffordabilityā. So once again thereās failure to even apply pressure or slow down our descent into the abyss.
Tim Cook is craven enough to make nice with Trump because itās good for business. Same basic concept as Jeffries or Schumer. Same basic concept with the GOP legislators, differing only in the level of shamelessness.
Zuck and Bezos and Musk can also eat a bag of dicks. Or better yet, choke on them.
A pox upon all of them.
We actually have some hope in this regard, in the form of Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, who isnāt afraid to speak truth to power. But whether heāll gain power is on its own a question with no immediately clear resolution, let alone what heāll do if he does, or who will gang together to subject him to the Allende treatment if heās too successful at reversing the reich whinge corruption of the arena of political discourse.
ā¦and elites. Monied special interests have always had a disproportionate influence over western democracies. This is merely the most recent gaggle of them hovering around Trump. The only difference around with Trump is itās more obvious and blatant.
This in not a flaw. Itās a feature.
It would be a refreshing change for the electorate to be able to just see a parity in this scenario, I agree. Iād also like my hair back, but neither have short odds on occurring.
Itās a simple equation. Money equals influence. Influence equals power. No money or influenceā¦well, do the mathā¦
Medici, Rothchild, Musk, Zuckerbergā¦the difference is strictly a matter of dates and the societies they manipulate.
As much as people seem motivated and engaged to make a change at the moment, their willingness to make personal sacrifices is the key to their success. Well, that and the allegiance or acquiescence of the State military.
Even if an uprising is successful and a tyrant is removed, historically the principals that the uprising espoused will not endure. The smart money is on a fall into authoritarianism, or slow erosion back to a similar paradigm originally opposed.
It took America 250 years for that quiet part to be said out loud, but here we are.
Agreed. Freedom, equality, ādomestic tranquilityā are all a constant struggle.
A more poignant cycle to me is the tremendous costs and sacrifices of WW2 and the attempt to construct a āworld orderā to prevent that from ever happening again, only lasted 75 years before it imploded, and the seeds of its destruction were being sown in the immediate post-war years. In the US, the true tipping point of where we are today. it can be argued, was the 1970s when Christian fundamentalism abreacted to the collapse of Jim Crow by choking Johnsonās Great Society in the cradle. Thatās when they overcame their dogma that political involvement was a bad thing, when they invented the doctrine younger than a McDonaldās happy meal, that life begins at conception ā a unifying battle cry at a time when their true program of overt racism was driven underground. It only took them a couple of generations to destroy not only the post WW2 economic boom but everything the US had built for two and a half centuries.
They require a hyper vigilance to be maintained. Herein lies the rubā¦
Hyper vigilance in humans is a common sign of traumaā¦think PTSD. The constant scanning of threats devolves into scenarios where a threat reaction is aroused to all stimuli, genuine or innocuous.
An individual living in a constant fight or flight mode can also suffer other mental and physical co-morbidities. The effect on overall health and life span suffer accordingly.
Translate this to a political entity or State, and you see erosion of trust, erosion of the rule of law and a fragmentation of the society.
Look familiar?
I would posit that the entire model on which the American was establish under has always been fundamentally flawed. Not by social or religious agendas, but by primarily plutocratic imperatives.
At the founding only white land owners could vote in America. Slavery was codified in the Constitution. Ask yourself, who benefited from that?
During the Gilded Age monopolists began leveraging their wealth in political influence and manipulation.
In terms of effect on the common citizen, the deregulation and systematic elimination of financial sector oversight (Wall Street above Main Street) during the 70ās and 80ās has had a much greater effect on common citizens than any theist agenda could ever hope to accomplish.
Add in Citizens-United and you can posit a good argument that America has always been, and will continue to be an income defense industry for elites.
Where are the people in this equation? Charles Bukowski put it best in 1982:
āA whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.ā
Robin Dunbarās research on group dynamics determined that cohesion within a group begins to deteriorate at 150. Above that there is a rise in oppositional thinking. Trust declines while fragmentation and conflict increase. The āDunbar Numberā is debated to be as low as 69 and as high as 520.
Taking the number of eligible voters in just the United States and dividing it by the highest ānumberā leaves you with over 450,000 sub groups.
This doesnāt indicate societies will inevitably fail, but that their success is built entirely on the implementation of systems to address evolutionary shortcomings. As these are human systems, they are subject to human virtues and failings.
To counter a threat, you need to identify and define it first. āIf you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.ā - Sun Tzu
Yet another example (there are so many) of what happens when right-wing conservatives are elected. This activity is paid for be taxes.
Your analysis is essentially correct. For the better part of a century the primary focus of evangelicals was to maintain segregation and keep people they regarded as their inferiors in their place. When that became socially toxic, they switched to abortion as their key focus, while, as you say, keeping their true focus (racism) out of sight.
What I find mystifying is their willingness to wreck the post-war economic boom in order to maintain, and expand, their racism. Theyāll accept a lower standard of living as long as they maintain their social status at the top of the pyramid. They reject the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats because that would mean that even though their own boats would rise, so too would black and brown boats, and they cannot have that! When youāve been accustomed to privilege for so long, equality seems like oppression.
The United States has completed its exit from the World Health Organization (WHO), a process that started a year ago when the Cheeto signed an executive order.
With Trump and Bobby Brainworm in charge, Iām keeping my fingers crossed there wonāt be another pandemic in the next few years because the resulting carnage will be horrific.