Trump

[guythp]

Unfortunately this character was right about trump the first time and also about johnson getting in again in the uk :

[SuperMappy]

I don't think this is the story of How The Orange One Regained The White House. I think it's more This Is How The USA Unravels (and then the rest of the world realises it was actually doing something useful).

I honestly have occasionally wondered how bad things have to get before something changes because most people, over here at least, don't seem to give a damn about something until it effects them personally. Maybe now we can find out, but that is probably my sadistic side talking.

[KlaxonCow]

So, when Trump retakes office, we're going to get an almighty "revenge tour" for 4 years.

Hell hath no fury, as a narcissist scorned.

As with Obama, though that was motivated by simple racism, he's going to strive to "undo" every single policy that Biden enacted. Not because he necessarily even disagrees with them. But just out of vengeance.

He did it last time and he'll return to the task: every environmental law will be systematically destroyed. All of them, one by one. Trump didn't get through them quickly enough in his first term - he will re-engage with the mission with renewed vigour to get it done.

Ukraine falls. Because Trump is going to phone up his best friend Putin - who he keeps saying he "admires" because he's a "leader of his people" (put another way, it's an inter-tyrant bromance going on) - and concede everything to him.

No idea what kind of disaster we're going to get in the Middle East, as Trump's racism means that he both hates Muslims, as they're non-white "terrorists", AND he hates Jews, as he subscribes to all the conspiracy theories about them wanting to take over the universe. That one is a dice roll. But hating both sides, I think complete disengagement - American isolationism - is going to be the order of the day, as with Ukraine. Let them kill each other, I don't care, as they're doing everyone a favour.

Trump has no capacity to believe in God. His narcissism prevents it. But he will roll over for everything the religious right demands, as he maintains the lie of his religious conviction.

And then, when it's time to kick him out, he just won't go. But he's had a "trial run" already. He knows the weaknesses now. And he suffered absolutely no consequences for it last time and it's his last chance to attempt it, so he will be even more brazen. The Qanon "troops" will actually murder people next time, as Trump will be more brazenly explicit that this is what he wants, they'll be seeking revenge for last time (just like their "leader") and he can now push them: Go further, because we cannot lose again. No, there's no "steal the election" rhetoric this time, as he can't run for office thereafter. This'll be a more existential "rescue America from the leftist fascists", which is a harder push. They'll go too far this time, as everything pushes them harder, yet nothing significant happened to suggest any real consequences.

There needed to be consequences for Trump's actions, but as there were absolutely none whatsoever at all, we will reap the whirlwind. There's now not an inch of him that feels threatened nor scared by "the rule of law". It didn't touch him. It didn't even really slap his wrist. He's had it explicitly confirmed: Do whatever the fuck you want, as nothing will happen.

The Doomsday clock is at 5 minutes to midnight. Because, yes, he will now win.

[Little stoned kiwi]

My hedge, if Trump gets in, is he'll die or be unfit sooner or later. The court cases and primary have taken a lot out of him and now he has to run against Biden.
My wild imagination tells me he won't want to leave office if he makes it to the end of the term. But am comfortable it won't get to that.

[KlaxonCow]

A good point.

American democracy could well be saved by the fact that he's already ancient and this will be in another 5 years' time from now, where he will, indeed, have been pulled from pillar to post by courts, by the pressure of the job, by constant media attention, etc. that it might well end up just killing him off.

But, well, the old maxim: "hope for the best, but plan for the worst".

Indeed, from a quick google, Trump's father died 93 years old and one of his grandfathers at 88 years old (the other grandfather was 43 years, but that's because he died of the Spanish Flu, not because of the family genetics). He, unfortunately, has the genetics on his side to "live long and prosper", from a quick cursory glance.

It might happen, but you can't depend on it. Trump is perfectly spritely for his age, unlike Biden. He can't string a coherent sentence together because he's an idiot and always has been, not because there's any signs of dementia creeping in there (although, true, if he did start losing it mentally, then how would we even tell?).

[tufty]

yes, he will now win.

That's a pretty wild call, in my book. He didn't win last time, as a non-indicted sitting president with full support of the Republican machine. This time he's mired in massive judicial woes, a legally declared insurrectionist, he has obvious cognitive failings, and it's been shown that a significant part of the Republican base can no longer stomach him.

[F-ZeroOne]

Something that doesn't get talked about is what happens after, if Trump loses a second time. I mean, look what happened the first time round. Obviously Washington DC will become a fortress, but I'm pretty sure neither he nor his supporters will take the hint that hes not wanted.

[KlaxonCow]

That's a pretty wild call, in my book.

Well, maybe I am reading too much into the recent "Biden is senile" attacks and giving them too much weight and credit.

But the problem is that, looking online, Americans are responding to it.

And that response has been a bit like David Cameron's Brexit campaign - a known losing strategy - where, if you remember, Cameron's campaign thrust was "let's remain as part of a reformed EU". He never once, in that campaign, did he just say "let's remain in the EU". No, it was always qualified "...as part of a reformed EU". He was constantly, every single time, effectively conceding that his opposition had a good point but, don't worry, we'd introduce "reforms" that, for some reason, we hadn't managed to do in the last 40 years, so why would the EU suddenly reform itself? Particularly if "Remain" had won, so where would be the pressure to make reforms, at the UK's request? No, they'd just voted "Remain" in this scenario, so all the pressure is off. They're not going to have another referendum on this 5 minutes later, are they?

Like, I've always been consistently a Remainer and criticised Brexit throughout. But this doesn't mean I thought Cameron's utterly shit campaign strategy of "concede that the opposition might have a point by refusing to ever say 'Remain in the EU', but always 'remain as part of a reformed EU'".

Particularly when, you know, that opposition was not honestly conceding that Remain might have some good points in return. It was all "Remoaners" and red buses telling people that voting Leave would give 60 trillion squillion million pounds to the NHS every 3 seconds.

And I'm detecting that same imbalance. In that Democrats responding to the "Biden is senile" attacks are mounting a Cameron-like crap defence, against Trump's strategy of, you know, just outright lying that he is the greatest God King who ever lived. Indeed, it's double-clever in that other Republicans have made the "Biden is old and senile" accusations, while Trump hasn't touched it himself, so they sneak out the attack but Trump looks all "I have the moral high ground" by not personally engaging with it.

The online response I'm seeing from the left and left-leaning commentators is "well, Trump's also old and a mad bastard too". Which is entirely true, but it's doing that "Cameron bad strategy" of conceding that the opposition is right, just that Trump's not a better option. They're actually implicitly confirming "Biden is senile" by responding with "but Trump's also an old man who can't string a sentence together".

Indeed, there are echoes of that poor defence in the thread just now. The notion that Trump's going to keel over and die any second now. Nah, that's not going to happen. He's in perfectly rude and spritely health, considering his age. From a family line, where their genetics has typically seen them reach ~90 years in recent generations, which gives him over 10 years left. And, simply, he just doesn't look or behave as old as he is.

This is a poor strategy, as it's just not very convincing, I'm afraid. I mean, Trump might keel over and die tomorrow, for all we know. But there's really nothing to indicate that at all and he's got the family genetics that suggests he's probably got another 10 years left.

That's the unofficial Biden defence online. "Yeah, Biden might be old and senile, but Trump's hardly a spring chicken either". True, but he's more convincingly "older than he looks" than Biden by quite a margin.

And the official Biden defence was equally kind of ridiculous. With Democrats saying that he was a super-sharp mastermind for all the fine details and had the passion and energy of a 20 year old... and everything that we haven't seen hide nor hair of in any of his public appearances ever.

Honestly, the official Democrat response to the Biden senility attacks was almost like a North Korean press release - that the "Dear Leader" has just magically scored 19 holes-in-one on his first time ever playing golf, whilst healing cripples and lepers by just touching them, because he's a magical God King sent from Heaven.

In fairness, there are many months before November and these Biden senility attacks might all be forgotten by then.

Because perhaps the biggest influence on "Leave" winning the Brexit vote was the horribly bad timing of there being a wave of Syrian refugees, trying to come to Europe, exactly in the exact wrong week for the vote. Polling had it quite clearly - one week earlier, Remain would have won and, one week later, Remain would have won. But the vote landed exactly in this "weak spot" where immigration was front page headlines and Farage just knew to position himself in front of that poster, which made it look like there was a massive queue (but the actual origin of that image was that immigrants were being moved - so it wasn't "a queue to get in", as Farage hopes you'd read it, but actually was "let's march all these immigrants from here to our new facility over there" and it's a tight shot, so your imagination inserts extra people out of shot, who weren't actually there).

So perhaps this is not the repeat I fear of the left losing miserably to the right because it has no strategic bones in its body, and does stupid things like concede to honesty that maybe the opposition has a semblance of a good point, in the face of that opposition not conceding a gorram thing but is actually projecting "Trump is the God King Messiah" in response.

Or, more generally, the right has been on the rise all over the planet, not because its arguments have been particularly convincing. It's because the left - and the centrists - are doing such an atrociously poor job of convincing anyone of anything.

Like, Sir Keir is not really convincing anyone, in truth. It's that the Tories are imploding, with the second worst economic record ever - and the first worst was no less caused by a fucking World War, for pity's sake, and they've almost made things as bad economically, as when the Nazis were actively bombing us and we had rationing.

In that context, Labour really aren't doing all that well at all. How the shit are they losing a PR battle against Boris and Liz Truss? Sir Keir is struggling to look good, next to "pandemic death clown" and a cabbage with no charisma whatsoever, who nearly completely destroyed the economy the first time she opened her mouth in office.

The right has been on the rise around the world, not because it's really winning people over with its cunning arguments. But it's more the failure of the left, the liberals, the centrists to convince anyone that the "post-war liberal consensus" still works.

I'm happy to concede that maybe I'm over-egging the current mood, when there is, indeed, many months left to November and so much can change. But this is more that the left / liberals continue to score unforced own goals all the time that I remain extremely disappointed that they only ever win anything these days, just by being the default option, when the right implodes.

[guythp]

The Doomsday clock is at 5 minutes to midnight. Because, yes, he will now win.

I think you're referring to Watchmen? but I'm afraid the doomsday clock is currently still at 90 seconds to midnight, I shit you not.

[KlaxonCow]

I think you're referring to Watchmen? but I'm afraid the doomsday clock is currently still at 90 seconds to midnight, I shit you not.

Well, Watchmen itself is referring to the real doomsday clock. But it's because of Watchmen that I was made aware of its existence.

And, yeah, I'm being generous to say "five minutes to..." because the real doomsday clock has always been extremely pessimistic as hell.

Mind you, with Ukraine, NATO expansion, everyone building up their nukes, China eyeing up Taiwan after watching if Putin will get away with Ukraine (which is another reason why we really can't let Ukraine fall, or it might trigger the whole world to go back into "conquering mode", if it sees Putin actually getting away with it).

Climate change. AI "singularity". And there's still that asteroid Apophis on its way:



So, yeah, that asteroid is going to "thread the needle" in 2029 - on Friday the 13th as well, just to rub it in - and depending on how exactly it is perturbed by Earth's gravity, there's a chance it swings back around in 7 years - 2036 - and smashes into Earth.

So, all in all, though pessimistic at "90 seconds", I can see exactly why, tallying all that up, they've come to that conclusion.

And, in the paraphrased words of Radiohead, we do it to ourselves, we do. We do it to ourselves, just us. Us and no-one else.

War and climate change is perfectly unnecessary. An unforced error on the part of humanity. We could prevent that.

The one that's not our fault is the asteroid. Like, humanity should get together to deal with these real problems that the universe or our planet throws at us, without creating extra problems that don't need to be there.

The other problem with the asteroid. If, after approach, the astronomers calculate that, you, it is headed straight for us next time, we need the world to get together to do "Armageddon" for real. Send up a probe to smash into it and change its orbit - and the earlier the better for that. You can't do it 5 minute before impact, but if you knock it just slightly off 6 months earlier, then you can change the orbit enough.

But the worry is that the world doesn't rise to the challenge, simply because it's too busy pissing around with pointless wars and trying to be rich burning fossil fuels and other shit.

The worry is that this stops being a satirical comedy and becomes our reality:




p.s. the astronomers who named Apophis have a dark sense of humour. If you've ever watched Stargate SG-1, there's a plot where the false god Apophis sends an asteroid at Earth. The idea being that we're looking for enemy alien ships, so he's being sneaky. Taking an asteroid and then firing it towards the Earth, hoping we don't notice the collision course before it hits and takes us out like the dinosaurs. So we really do need to prevent this asteroid from wiping us out, as we can't be ended by something that's been jokingly named after a Stargate SG-1 episode.

3.5 billion years of evolution can't be punctuated by such a bad joke.

[Kelloggs]

I would have thought Apophis (same root as "apoptosis", which is cell death, so I suspect it may be an Egyptian god of death or similar) would be a name that predates Stargate-SG1 by several thousand years, given that Stargate picked its System Lord names from historical earthly deities. Possibly the astronomers were having a joke, but it might be a longer-standing one.

[Harlequin]

I would have thought Apophis (same root as "apoptosis", which is cell death, so I suspect it may be an Egyptian god of death or similar) would be a name that predates Stargate-SG1 by several thousand years, given that Stargate picked its System Lord names from historical earthly deities. Possibly the astronomers were having a joke, but it might be a longer-standing one.

Apep, also spelled Apepi, Aapep (Ancient Egyptian: ꜥꜣpp(y) *ʻAʼpāp(ī); Coptic: Ⲁⲫⲱⲫ Aphōph), or Apophis (/əˈpoʊfɪs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄποφις Ápophis), was the ancient Egyptian deity who embodied darkness and disorder, and was thus the opponent of light and Ma'at (order/truth). He appears in art as a giant serpent. Apep was first mentioned in the Eighth Dynasty, and he was honored in the names of the Fourteenth Dynasty king 'Apepi and of the Greater Hyksos king Apophis.

Once [the asteroid's] orbit was sufficiently well calculated, it received the permanent number 99942 (on June 24, 2005). Receiving a permanent number made it eligible for naming by its discoverers, and they chose the name "Apophis" on July 19, 2005. Apophis is the Greek name of Apep, an enemy of the Ancient Egyptian sun-god Ra. He is the Uncreator, an evil serpent that dwells in the eternal darkness of the Duat and tries to swallow Ra during his nightly passage. Apep is held at bay by Set, the Ancient Egyptian god of storms and the desert.

Tholen and Tucker, two of the co-discoverers of the asteroid, are reportedly fans of the television series Stargate SG-1. One of the show's persistent villains is an alien named Apophis. He is one of the principal threats to the existence of civilization on Earth through the first few seasons, thus likely why the asteroid was named after him. In the fictional world of the show, the alien's backstory was that he had lived on Earth during ancient times and had posed as a god, thereby giving rise to the myth of the Egyptian god of the same name.

The mythological creature Apophis is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable (/ˈæpəfɪs/). In contrast, the asteroid's name is generally accented on the second syllable (/əˈpɒfɪs/) as the name was pronounced in the TV series.

[KlaxonCow]

Yup, that's the one.

Although Wikipedia fails to note that it really was the plot line of an episode that he tries to destroy Earth sneakily by sending an asteroid our way to hit us and wipe us out, hoping we wouldn't notice a space rock in time, as we're too busy looking for his alien ships.

Like, it's not just "likely". They're almost definitely making a joke, with the name, to humorously reference Apophis's attempted asteroid attack on Earth.

Good news, though. SG-1 do thwart the plan and the Earth isn't destroyed, so the series - and humanity - were able to continue.


Here it is, in fact. The way they stop the Earth being destroyed is to expand the hyperspace bubble around the ship to include the asteroid and then hyperspace straight through the Earth:



So all we need is a captured alien ship with a hyperspace engine and we'll be alright.

Or we could go for a more "Armageddon" route and, like, put nukes inside the asteroid to blow it up. Though that one is messy - breaking it up could just create multiple rocks on later collision courses with the Earth.

The best route is, as I say, going to the asteroid a few years before it arrives and then just giving it a slight "nudge". Because years of slightly drifting off its original orbit will hopefully put it far away from the Earth and at no danger of hitting us. As I said, the earlier, the better.

Note that, of course, we could take advantage of it flying past in 2029 to land something on it. Then that something can spend the next 7 years pushing it "off-course", to completely change its orbit.

But, as I say, the real problem is that humanity's dumb and we'll be too busy having a war or cutting NASA's budget at exactly the wrong moment (because Qanon / the religious right think that space is a "woke" conspiracy theory by the left, and doesn't actually exist and it's just a trick to steal all their 2nd Amendment guns and raise taxes for communism). So, just like action on climate change, fuck all happens. And then we all die.

[tufty]

And then we all die.

We all die whatever happens. Might as well go out with a bang.

[zip accident]

That's a pretty wild call, in my book.

Well, maybe I am reading too much into the recent "Biden is senile" attacks and giving them too much weight and credit.

But the problem is that, looking online, Americans are responding to it.

And that response has been a bit like David Cameron's Brexit campaign - a known losing strategy - where, if you remember, Cameron's campaign thrust was "let's remain as part of a reformed EU". He never once, in that campaign, did he just say "let's remain in the EU". No, it was always qualified "...as part of a reformed EU". He was constantly, every single time, effectively conceding that his opposition had a good point but, don't worry, we'd introduce "reforms" that, for some reason, we hadn't managed to do in the last 40 years, so why would the EU suddenly reform itself? Particularly if "Remain" had won, so where would be the pressure to make reforms, at the UK's request? No, they'd just voted "Remain" in this scenario, so all the pressure is off. They're not going to have another referendum on this 5 minutes later, are they?

Like, I've always been consistently a Remainer and criticised Brexit throughout. But this doesn't mean I thought Cameron's utterly shit campaign strategy of "concede that the opposition might have a point by refusing to ever say 'Remain in the EU', but always 'remain as part of a reformed EU'".

Particularly when, you know, that opposition was not honestly conceding that Remain might have some good points in return. It was all "Remoaners" and red buses telling people that voting Leave would give 60 trillion squillion million pounds to the NHS every 3 seconds.

As opposed to Corbyn's remain campain of (said quietly) "leave".

And then we all die.

We all die whatever happens. Might as well go out with a bang.

That would be a shame, the indivuals die, the species goes on, sometimes, and sometimes it's another species, but life has so far kept on keeping on.