Poor Jair Bolsonaro
He even cried at the airport in Brasília.
He wasn't allowed to board the plane to D.C. even he was one of the 'True Patriots' invited to go to the inauguration.
The Brazilian justice has not released his passport yet because of the pending processes in court, and the airport authorities didn't allow him to travel without one.
He is the only invitee of the "true patriots" that will not be there.
PFVA wrote:Poor Jair Bolsonaro
He even cried at the airport in Brasília.
He wasn't allowed to board the plane to D.C. even he was one of the 'True Patriots' invited to go to the inauguration.
The Brazilian justice has not released his passport yet because of the pending processes in court, and the airport authorities didn't allow him to travel without one.
He is the only invitee of the "true patriots" that will not be there.
See? That's (at least) what should have been done by the US to Trump 4 years ago.
F-ZeroOne wrote:Well, here we go again. Good luck for the next four years, everyone.
I do wonder how we'll all feel, in 4 years' time - IF the nightmare only lasts 4 years - about how, if Trump hadn't turned his head at the right exact moment, we could have been spared it all.
Will we feel like, in that moment, we ended up on the dark timeline... or will it just be the "4 more years of bullshit" timeline?
(Correction: It's the "4 more years of bullshit" timeline either way, isn't it? But is it the dark or the benign version?)
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
Yes, very much so. If the end target is people realising what a mess the oligarchy are going to make of things and that there is no deep state conspiracy preventing them instead showering us all in rainbows, the last thing that's needed is assassinations.
Dio wrote:Yes, very much so. If the end target is people realising what a mess the oligarchy are going to make of things and that there is no deep state conspiracy preventing them instead showering us all in rainbows, the last thing that's needed is assassinations.
Oh, come on. You know that's not how it actually works.
"You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into" - Jonathan Swift
Trump will cause disaster after disaster. And then he'll invent a bogeyman - it's George Soros and the Deep State, trying to stop him - and MAGA will lap it all up.
This is not even theory. This is the well-established track record.
Yet they still voted for Orange Jesus anyway.
Evidence and reason is completely meaningless to these people. That's not what made them Trumpers, and no amount of evidence or reason will stop them being Trumpers. They didn't reason themselves into that position, so no amount of reason can sever that connection.
Nah, it's a personality cult. If Trump had have been bumped off, then they'd have all regressed back to standard Republicans and religious nutjobs again within a couple of weeks.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
If that was the case then we wouldn't be seeing the parallel parties around the world (Brexit->UKIP->Reform, AfD, Le Pen et.al). It's not just one demagogue. There will be more to stand up and replace him.
All of these are arising because people can see the system's rigged against them and the right-wing demagogues promise to tear the system down and make it work from them. They're all bullshitting of course. What's most concerning is that so far it appears that the only possible way to let people see through the bullshit is to let them do their crazy shit for long enough to demonstrate that the promises of a better future afterwards evaporate - while the demise of the latter-day Tories shows that can work, the concern comes in because support does seem to be just transferring to the next bullshitters on the list (i.e. Reform).
Dio wrote:If that was the case then we wouldn't be seeing the parallel parties around the world (Brexit->UKIP->Reform, AfD, Le Pen et.al). It's not just one demagogue. There will be more to stand up and replace him.
All of these are arising because people can see the system's rigged against them and the right-wing demagogues promise to tear the system down and make it work from them. They're all bullshitting of course. What's most concerning is that so far it appears that the only possible way to let people see through the bullshit is to let them do their crazy shit for long enough to demonstrate that the promises of a better future afterwards evaporate - while the demise of the latter-day Tories shows that can work, the concern comes in because support does seem to be just transferring to the next bullshitters on the list (i.e. Reform).
I Think it's a pendulum thing, more or less. The more it goes one way, the more (pressure? tension? force? tendancy?) there is for it to go back the other. It can be held to either side for a while, but the longer it's held, the harder it tends to go back. I think the middle (which satisfys almost nobody) is the only place it can be held in the long term.
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
He knows what he's doing. He knew what he was doing when he did it twice.
He doesn't necessarily believe in what he's doing*, it's all part of the great Elon scam, but he's not doing it because he's mad. Even Steve Bannon says he's evil and racist.
* although he grew up in apartheid South Africa, so maybe this one is actually from the heart.
"massive retard™", "full of shit™", "tiny bitch™", "retarted™", "a bit of a one trick pony™", "petty™", "simple minded idealistic twat™", "miserable humourless fucker™"
zip accident wrote:I Think it's a pendulum thing, more or less. The more it goes one way, the more (pressure? tension? force? tendancy?) there is for it to go back the other. It can be held to either side for a while, but the longer it's held, the harder it tends to go back. I think the middle (which satisfys almost nobody) is the only place it can be held in the long term.
But again, this is interesting. I was chatting on this topic with someone with a more right-wing view, and their perception was very strongly that the last 20 years have seen a massive shift to the left in almost all politics and that the worldwide rightward shift is a reaction against that.
While I think there's some truth in that if you include social elements such as eliminating racism and all the gender mess as a left-leaning topic, they were insistent it was true economically as well. And that seems fairly obviously not the case, given the way that the top 1% get very much richer and everyone else gets very much left behind (and there weren't any actual examples of left-leaning economic policy in that timeframe offered to counter my simple example there).
It's not an isolated view. I've heard similar things (in less detail) from others as well.
All I'm left with is that social media's really fucked this whole thing up.
This is an interesting watch, as it's addressing the underlying moral differences between liberals and conservatives, in a non-political non-tribal fashion that actually gives credit to what right-wing thought is actually doing right.
(Features a cameo from kemper_boyd's "Jesusland" meme, by the way.)
I also like how he addresses that "purity" as a moral value exists on both sides, just in different forms.
For the right, it's about sex and virginity. But the left are actually just as bad, if you think about it, when you realise the left-wing "purity" is health foods and exercise instead.
And, viewed this way, it also makes sense that both sets of people would be required for survival.
You need some people preserving - or, well, "conserving", which is why they're called "conservatives", after all - the hard-work stuff that works.
But you also need the anti-authoritarians, the anything-goes liberals, the visionaries and the music makers (who are, of course, the dreamers of the dreams) as well, because we do also need to progress that status quo - because we're still a very long way from perfect and we need to see if we can make the world a slightly better place. Try this. Try that. See what works.
And, actually, it'd be a terrible thing to have a world with only one set or the other.
The conservatives, after all, would still be living in caves and subscribing to the moralities of that Bronze Age sex manual they call "the Bible".
That old irony that the science deniers and flat Earthers use those inventions of the computer and the Internet to disseminate their conspiracy theories that the liberals want to harm them (but while the liberals don't actually want to do that - after all, that's such an illiberal thing to do - it must be recognised that intense paranoia of "the other" is an important conservative trait to help hold the apple cart together).
But if you had a world full of liberals and lefties, then everything would splinter and fracture and deviate too damned fast to be able to hold everyone together.
SPLITTER!
I'm an uber-liberal myself. But I also recognise that, actually, you do need folks who talk in moderated tones to balance out my "wild words" every now and again.
Yes, I am an anti-authoritarian provocateur, as I love to be contrarian and make people think twice about things. Even when it's wrong, I still think the act of helping people see something familiar in an unfamiliar way is still a valuable exercise.
It also makes perfect sense that the poor tend to be more liberal - when you have nothing much to lose, then bring on the revolution! Can't make anything much worse than it already is, and there's a chance we might actually fix the world a bit this time around.
And it also makes sense that if you've become an uber-rich multi-billionaire from "the system" as it stands, then you absolutely do not want one inch nor iota of "the system" to change - because you have so much to lose and slim odds that the revolution is going to be kind to you. After all, we know what happened to the cake-eaters in the French Revolution.
And, as noted, paranoia is a crucial trait of the conservative. Invasions of brown people. Governments stealing taxes. Blokes who look like girls wanting to use the other toilets. Hording your wealth, scared shitless that it's going to be plundered. Living in "gated communities" with your own private security guards - because you know that those poor black people have every right to be angry at you, and you're in perpetual fear that there's going to be a French-Revolution-style "purge" of the rich at some point. Because you know, if they did ever mount a revolution against you, then it's perfectly deserved.
This is an aspect of humanism. Because it contends that we're on our own. No gods, no superheroes. Nothing's going to swoop down and rescue us. If we're to get out of this shit, then it's going to be - as it always been - by us slowly digging ourselves out of all the mess.
When everyone's in your "tribe" - because your tribe is humanity and everyone's human - then there are no tribes anymore.
It's just a lot of silly apes who don't know what the fuck they're doing and what the hell is going to happen next, just feeling around in the dark.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
Well America is a spent force and regardless the world is spinning around China now so fuck Trump. But it will be great watching the fires (maybe a bad anology) across the pond...
