sleeping_gorilla wrote:
I have never believed in a higher power or even Santa Claus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pP0YO8KGQ

Who do you think will win the next US presidential election?
I really hope it wont be Trump :(

Ozoneocean wrote:
Who do you think will win the next US presidential election?
I really hope it wont be Trump :(

At the very least Kamela needs to win to keep the incomparable Maya Rudolph employed for another four years.

This goes to show that sexism is alive and well in the USA as well as obvious in your face racism. People talk about dog whistles. No. The MAGA folks are sounding huge air horns.

Trump is a swaggering incoherent demagogue, the likes of which haven't been seen since Ancient Rome and precisely the kind of person the Founding Fathers feared would take over the republic.

Franklin said “a republic if you can keep it.” Can we?

Given the state of the judiciary in the USA right now, having experience of the bankrupt judiciary system in Greece that is similarly dependent on the ruling classes, I'm not very optimistic about the state of affairs. Trump probably will lose the popular vote. Maybe even the electorate college. But it's going to be easy to win in court at the proper venues, with the proper prepping and GOP pundits paving the way for calling the elections fraudulent and with the proper judges presiding + SCOTUS.

On the other hand, perhaps Harris is more palatable to the status quo as a whole for different reasons, proper decorum and a certain centrist moderate veneer one of them. Either way, November is going to be explosive I'm sure. :(

There is one thing everyone always forgets about the US Judiciary. Congress can override their decisions with a statute. Like the Supreme Court knocking down Roe v. Wade and putting abortion back with the states? Congress could just pass a law making abortion the law of the land. But Congress usually won't. Congress could also change the make up of the court putting in term limits or adding justices. It's all in the Constitution as if anyone bothers themselves to read it. Trump certainly hasn't. Most of the Project 2025 agenda is of dubious constitutionality.

the problem is simply that congress is unlikely to do any of those things. At an order from trump the congress managed to kill a bipartisan bill didn't they?

Kamala Harris did fairly well in the Presidential Debate against Donald Trump . . . unforunately, the same can't really be said for Tim Walz int he Vice-Presidential Debate against J.D. Vance. One thing that's for sure is that Trump and Vance both lied their way through the debates, but whereas Trump was still his usual deranged self full of his delusions of grandeur, Vance was able to put up an act and make himself seem polite and cooperative, which Walz ended up falling for hook, like, and sinker.

It's kind of hard to imagine what a Harris Presidency would be like, however, I can safely say I did not like the policies she proposed when she ran in the last election - such as extending school hours for children because she wants kids to get out of school at the same time parents get off from work, which is absurd and unreasonable: the school day is already too long for kids, there's really no need to extend it an extra two hours; besides, even if the idea is to cut down on travel time between parents getting out of work to pick up their kids and then go back to work till they get him may sound ideal on paper, that's just going to make the 5:00 commute all the more crowded and voluminous, causing more traffic jams and slowdowns.

But that's small potatoes compared to the fact the Trump has practically promised he's going to restructure our entire country and install himself as a Dictator who will never get out of the White House again until he dies.

Is that what he's going for? Not convinced he'd manage to pull off even half of it, but it's scary how people in power see Putin as an example to follow and not a cautionary tale.

I've always found it hard to get how so much can depend on one or two 90-minute debates on TV, but that's probably because I'm from a country where people just vote for a party and don't give much of a damn for the people that hide behind their party lines - and always stare in amazement when they get to know them after the elections.
So what's better? A system that promotes the smoothest talker, because people are too lazy to have a really close look at what political agenda they vote for (and their look at the people they vote for isn't all that close either), or one where people happily buy a cat in a sack because they're too lazy to have a really close look at the people they vote for (and their agendas for that matter, in many cases)?
I won't say both our countries don't need better systems but better people, because that'd be overgeneralising and would do injustice to a very large minority group with a brain. But it's tempting, sometimes.

On the other hand, notoriously bullshitting populists only ever become a problem if established politicians, by seeming too disconnected from their voters' worries, allow them to. If there's anything history should have taught anyone, it's this one sad truth. Democracy is not a stable system! Take it for granted, i.e. fail to care for a second and the damage is done. Germany and many other European countries are currently relearning this the hard way, too.

As a conclusion let me tell you that I deleted three beginnings of “Angry Middle-Aged Man” style rants now, which I'd like to spare you from, because I realised I'm just in my usual dark mood after reading the news. I read them every day because I care - but I'll grant everyone who doesn't it is a chore these days.

I mean, I will say this: if anybody bothered to do their homework on Biden like I did, they would've seen that he really was not the man for the job: he's far more right-leaning that people think he is simply because he's on the ticket as a Democrat; he supports Big Pharma, for-profit healthcare, and has done nothing to fix any of the mess left behind by Trump, hence why inflation (which Trump started with his tariffs, but nobody wants to admit it) has only gotten worse in the last four years.

The thing of it is, nobody wanted Joe Biden anyway . . . come to think of it, nobody wanted Hillary Clinton in 2016 either. Both elections, the people made it clear they wanted Bernie Sanders, but it was the DNC who gave us Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Personally, I was never the biggest fan of Bernie as a person, but I think a lot of his policies were exactly what the American people needed when they needed it. I think he was just too liberal and too progressive for the Party's comfort, hence why they gave us a more moderate nominee in 2016, and a more right-leaning nominee in 2020. Also, I think part of it too was for show: I think in 2016, they were just so desperate for Hillary to win just for the sake of being able to say America finally had its first female President in history; as for Biden, I think it's simply because he was previously the Vice President of our history's first Black President, so they like to play that card.

I think that the American electoral system, which more or less mechanically creates two big parties one against the other and the voter has only two choices, creates a situation where both parties have more incentives to speak bad of the other party rather than working on their own proposals. That said, there has been a shift in policy towards authoritarian right VS very bland left (at least economically, on cultural issues the left is stronger) both in the USA and in Europe.
I think Berlusconi in Italy was an early example, though it was not obvious at the time (Berlusconi hafd a very personalised approach to politics and also allied with MSI and Lega, two authoritarian/social right parties).

My opinion is that this is the long term consequence of a shift in the left: in the 80s/90s, the sort of big government economics the left used to stand for become unpopular, for various reasons. Thus many leftish parties pivoted towards a sort of left-neoliberalism (e.g. Clinton and Blair).
At the time they were very popular, because they did sort of mediate between what was perceived as economically efficient and what was socially desiderable (they were less bad than Reagan and Tatcher).
However, this meant that the left on the whole crawled rightwards, and therefore the right shifted too and went towards right-authoritarianism.

So today we have a center+left, with the center and the left often in struggle inside the same party/alliance, against a more united authoritarian right.

In 2016 the US had one of the worst people ever running. Hilary had a lot of baggage and turned off a lot of people. And the American people rose to the occasion and managed to elect someone worse. Trump was outspoken and became the narcissistic populist demagogue he'd always wanted to be. I read a pile of books on Andrew Jackson and his era and it put it all in perspective. There are a lot of really uncomfortable parallels to the 1830s right now. Except that MAGA combines the worst of Know-nothing xenophobia with populist religious fervor and nostalgia for a Biblical reinventing of America with all its -isms. And lurking behind it all is the Christian Identity movement of far right wing white supremacists.
Trump is great for straight, white males. He's even said as much.

And poor Joe. All his life in public service. He's been running for president for thirty years. He finally gets in amidst this great mess and he's past his prime to try to do much of anything except undo the worst of the damage inflicted by the previous administration. Everything bad from the past four years was fall out from Trump. People really don't know that reality of modern presidential politics. The first two years of any administration is dealing with the legacy of the previous one. The US is such a ponderous behemoth of a bureaucracy and economy that any change of direction takes a couple of years to show any effects.

And you have an electorate with no memory let alone any insight or knowledge about anything. Lowest common denominator voters. Populist demagogues just eat that up from Republican Rome through every other government that ever had elections. And inevitably they say you end up with an authoritarian regime and the democracy turns into a rubber stamp for the desires of the demagogue.

The US has a slim chance to actually make a change. A black woman should be a shoe-in. But with Trump it's okay to a reactionary bigot again. Just think of Archie Bunker and Nixon but with better public affairs and more charisma and you have MAGA.

Come on America, just last 12 years until my social security maxes out.

On the subject of Archie Bunker, we now have THE NEW NORM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7msKwDjV18M

This is a pilot for an animated series they're trying to get off the ground, the creators of which openly admit that this is a blatant animated ripoff of ALL IN THE FAMILY - right down to the titular Norm looking like an animated caricature of Archie Bunker . . . but whereas Archie Bunker proved to still be an endearing and likeable character despite his flaws, and who could also have his narrow, old-fashioned, closed-minded views challenged, Norm is just straight-up narrow, old-fashioned, and closed-minded, period. So much so they gave him a black best friend just so they could unironically play the, “He's got a black friend, so he's not racist” card. THE NEW NORM was made by the far right for the far right, and they're building it on being an “anti-woke” animated sitcom (as you can see, they point that out by depicting the show being performed before a studio audience), so anything they perceive as being “woke” like the character Non-binary Chaz is depicted in a poor, negative, and distasteful light. And this isn't even their first foray into such; they recently put out another “anti-woke” animated sitcom that rips off KING OF THE HILL, though whereas Hank Hill was show to be an imperfect man who wasn't entirely closed-minded or off-putting despite his conservative mindset, the Hank Hill rip off character is far more elitist who's somehow always right and everybody else is wrong (also, apparently Ben Shapiro voices a “woke” openly gay teacher).

There apparently is a rise of such far-right content cropping up in this day and age. Even disgraced Chris Savino has been working on a new Bible cartoon that rips off both Mr. Peabody and Fractured Fairy Tales, where a boy and his sheep friend are sent back in time to witness events from the Bible.

J_Scarbrough wrote:

There apparently is a rise of such far-right content cropping up in this day and age. Even disgraced Chris Savino has been working on a new Bible cartoon that rips off both Mr. Peabody and Fractured Fairy Tales, where a boy and his sheep friend are sent back in time to witness events from the Bible.

And who can forget “Lady Ballers,”starring Jeremy Boreing, Candace Owens, Brett Cooper, and Ben Shapiro

I hadn't heard of that one, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Candace Owens is a nut. She sees Baby Gonzo dressed like a princess and demands they, “Bring back Manly Muppets.”

I swear youtube wants to ram far right and anti woke crap down my neck. What have i watched that makes them think I'm into that?

It's not you!
I often listen to albums on YouTube when washing dishes and in the last week or so, they've starting inserting videos in between the songs. Which has never happened before. I'll be scouring a baking tray and suddenly an authoritative voice says “Everything you are about to hear is objective fact and undeniably true”, then on comes an interview with Andrew ‘Pinhead’ Tate.
Why they think a good album can be improved by pencildick energy I can't begin to imagine.

I'd assume the Trump campaign is just pumping up a lot of money into rightwing clickbait stuff?ù
99% of the people will ignore this stuff, but 1% will be influenced by it, and 1% might be enough to win an election, so for them is still worth the money.

Youtube just keeps hammering me with insurance ads, AirBNB ads, and car ads, moving up to luxury sports cars now LOL!
HAHAHA!
Yes I will by a luxury sports car with my made up magical money, In fact I will buy ALL the cars with it LOL!

No political ads fortunately!


Does ANYONE subscribe to the beliefs of Andrew Tate? The weird thing about him was that I only heard about him when he was already on the downswing. Apparently he had been around for years but somehow he'd totally flown under the radar ALLL that time and it's only when it's all coming crashing down for him that he suddenly explodes all over social media like a horrible bursting pimple. XD

I do not think that's a conspiracy though or anything sneaky- I ALWAYS subscribe to the stupidity of reality and the dumbness of people first before I will ever EVER give credence to a smart mastermind in charge of anything.
“Smart” people take advantage of chaos and profit from it while they can, they never create or manage it. Like a surfer doesn't make their own wave.

Anyway, Tate is an idiot. I think the reason he blew up on social media when he did was a combo of the whole woke/antiwoke pop-culture was trending at that time on social media and the idiot Musk relaxing controls on Twitter. That had the inadvertent effect of pushing the Tate drama out there.

Andrew Tate is a severely insecure little man appealing to all the other severely insecure little men that have all their sexuality socialization and sex ed, anatomy, and soft skills in general from Brazzers. He presents a fantasy to them of the “alpha male” ultra-rich, chauvinist Stepford-wife-but-sluttier stereotype, and they pay him to live vicariously through him. That's all there is, really.

It's not a conspiracy. It's praying on very weak, vulnerable, and low-self esteem boys that don't know how to be men even if they're physically adult. :/ Sad, really.

YouTube has clearly had a rightwing bias for years - for the longest time, content for Fox News kept popping up in my recommended lists, even though I never watch their content, let alone any content for these obviously and blatantly rightwing outlets. And yes, YouTube has presently been pushing Trump campaign ads. I suppose I could see YouTube as a business siding with the Trump camp: the way they continually shit on us smalltime Content Creators and focus on catering to these big partner channels who don't actually create content and yet have a shitton of money for doing nothing is not at all unlike how the right continually shits on middle and working class America and bleeds them dry to feed their money back into the pockets of the rich and the wealthy.

Then how come I get nothing but MSNBC and Harris/Walz advertising? It's based on your address. You're in a red state, I'm in a blue state. So you get fed conservative content and I get fed liberal content. I don't remember any Fox on my YouTube feed at all. All I get is CNN and MSNBC. I'm actually beginning to warm up to Rachel Maddow.

bravo1102 wrote:
It's based on your address.

100%
Youtube isn't rightwing they just market stuff that fits the demographic they get paid to market to.
This is why I get ads for luxury sports cars and international holidays- I live in a very rich area. I'm not rich by ANY stretch but Youtube doesn't care, they were paid to market ads to this particular area and they do it.
They're completely capitalist.

It's like all the gun people saying that Youtube has a leftwing “woke” agenda for slowly edging out gun videos in various ways - NO they don't they're just scared of being sued for “inciting violence” so they put limits on things so they don't worry about losing action from legal issues and they don't lose advertisers because of activist shareholders.

They only care about money XD

Left wing on economics
Moderate on social issues
The more time goes by, the more I realize how little I really know. And I’m becoming okay with that.

I do believe in God, and that we are spiritual beings in our essence, and that the true nature of life is spiritual. - having said that, I don’t know what God is, or what that spiritual nature really means…
The practical dude within me says that the only REAL label one can have in that area is ‘agnostic’. Because we just don’t know!

In the future I think science and religion (or spirituality) will coexist. One doesn’t actually negate the other. We’ll figure it all out eventually (I mean humanity will - I don’t reckon I’ll be around by the time that happens!)

Optimist, or at least I try to be. I like people, but I’m very solitary and private… more so the older I get, haha.

The majority of people with right wing political party standings I've bumped into are also just plain stubborn in whatever other general opinions they happened to come up with in that fantastic brain of theirs. So that puts me at odds with wanting anything to do with stuff that isn't leftist ideas.

There's one thing that happened in my area(New York City) in this election cycle that find fascinating. There were people who voted for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(who is about as far-left as you can possibly get) for Congress, and then those same people voted for Donald Trump for President. I'm very intrigued by the dynamics that brought such a thing about.

Youtube ads…

Apparently I'm judged to be in dire need of bargains on ugly furniture, mobile connections slower and more expensive than the one I use, hair colouring, hair lotions, some kind of artificial protein-stuff to drink instead of having proper meals, anti-haemorrhoid cream, cream against vaginal thrush, natural medicines to help me come to terms with the menopause, motorcycle parts on ebay, a package holiday on mallorca, rip-off “free” mobile games that require you to buy lots of money on extras to win any level, getting Amazon Prime, a lot of other equally useless things I didn't catch because I went to the bathroom…

…then these messages “fewer ads for this longer video” as if they kept me from noticing, that it's not just more ad breaks than a year ago but that they're also much, much longer - going to the bathroom before the “skip” button appears didn't use to be possible.

…and: “would you like to watch videos without ads by getting a premium account, (unless you get the almost reasonably-priced one, which will not get you rid of ads but only of money).”

In conclusion, to half-quote a movie cult classic, to my local Youtube I apparently look like an old b{tch?! Because it's trying to f#&k me like a b*tch!

(And because the presumable target group of the ads matches as well. And, no, I didn't make it up. I just unchecked most data-logging stuff in the app, and the videos I watch apparently don't matter nearly as much as my neighbourhood, where there really are a lot of women past their prime who keep their TVs on all day and night, presumably on YT, then.)

Adblockers, people. They will be your new best friends if you just install and use them.

@fallopiancrusader - that IS fascinating! What do you think happened there?
I know some people said that AOC and Trump both struck them as honest, and genuine, and fighters.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Adblockers, people. They will be your new best friends if you just install and use them.

Google has been ruining the ability to use adblockers for a while at they're not possible on TV or phones when using apps like Youtube and Amazon Prime etc.

Banes wrote:
@fallopiancrusader - that IS fascinating! What do you think happened there?
I know some people said that AOC and Trump both struck them as honest, and genuine, and fighters.

It's because the vast majority of people are absolutely politically unaware.
I wont say they're morons, though I would like too… That would make ME a moron though haha, because there's more to it than being an idiot unfortunately.

Most people do NOT know anything beyond the surface of most things. All they know about Trump or Cortez is that they seem like independent, strong personalities basically.

Otherwise very knowledgeable, intelligent people, who can be highly qualified, they can be in high profile jobs like doctors or lawyers and such, they can even be scientists or professors or something- unfortunately that doesn't mean they have much knowledge or awareness about the world outside their interests or profession or about history or politics or even things in their own fields outside of what they specialise in.

The fact is that most of us are a bit dumb about things and have blind spots. Politics is just too hard for most people so it's a huge blind spot.