#Trump often acts from a paternalistic mindset.
There's a trope of a father threatening, Do x or I'll do it for you, as in, Shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you.
Well I think Trump gets this one backwards.
His latest rhetoric seems to be, Open the straight or I'll close it for you!
Siiiigh
I really do think he sees himself as something like a father to all, someone to give everybody advice and take care of everybody and end all the suffering and all of the other stuff.
He's just a really bad father though.
#Trump often acts from a paternalistic mindset.
There's a trope of a father threatening, Do x or I'll do it for you, as in, Shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you.
Well I think Trump gets this one backwards.
His latest rhetoric seems to be, Open the straight or I'll close it for you!
Siiiigh
I really do think he sees himself as something like a father to all, someone to give everybody advice and take care of everybody and end all the suffering and all of the other stuff.
He's just a really bad father though.
Conservatives trying to square their circles...
MAGA, for years: #Iran is a death cult. They don't value life, and 42 virgins and etc.
MAGA, today: Why doesn't the death cult bow to our demands as we threaten death?
#Trump supporters keep suggesting that critics of the guy have a knee-jerk reaction against any position he takes, because it couldn't possibly be that the criticisms were founded.
But it's funny to realize that so many of his supporters have a knee-jerk reaction to assume that he's right. In fact, they are explicit about this, talking about having faith in his judgment even if they don't understand it.
Funny how that works.
Maybe in the back of their minds they recognize their own prejudices and just project that onto everyone else.
Every once in awhile Trump's die hard supporters accidentally lay out the case for him being a failure and a loser.
They just lack the self-awareness to hear themselves saying it, as they only interpret things as confirming their biases.
It does remind me of the moment in Arrested Development where Lucille says her husband is no criminal mastermind as he can barely operate the paper shredder.
I've said #NoKings is terrible branding because the other side gets to just say, well right, we don't have a king. It's so easy to brush off.
So what are alternatives?
Well I think I would start with No Felons off the top of my head...
This is why I've been saying #NoKings suffers from terrible branding.
The branding makes it incredibly easy for folks outside of the choir to brush it off.
The high profile conservatives setting policy for the US right now are just this stupid.
He really didn't realize that an island has set coordinates, that #Iran doesn't have to go to the Russians to figure out what the coordinates are.
I'm not.
US conservatives are convinced that protests against #Trump are staged by people being paid to protest, but pro-government demonstrations in #Iran represent the legitimate feelings of the country.
(nevermind the dissonance of then expecting the country to pivot after regime change)
The conservative movement is being run by some of the dumbest people these days.
And that's how we get folks cheering on the idiocy that Trump engages in.
I Decompiled the White House’s New App
The official White House Android app has a cookie/paywall bypass injector, tracks your GPS every 4.5 minutes, and loads JavaScript from some guy’s GitHub Pages.
Archive: ia: https://s.faithcollapsing.com/q...
#uspol-technology
https://blog.thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app
#BrianKilmeade: The US should just go take the Strait of Hormuz. We'll just own it. It'll be easy. And we should start escorting ships through--it won't be a problem. Just like we did decades ago. #USPolitics
Idiots advising #Trump on US policy are at about this level, completely unaware that these terms and determinations have real, significant legal implications.
Kilmeade being so low key about giving up the imminent argument shows he has no idea how important that concept is in the US system of governance.
#ClayAndBuck: You know things are going well in #Venezuela because there hasn't been any media coverage of it. The media would cover it if things were going badly. (So they say after I was hearing media coverage about how it was going badly) #USPolitics
The biggest #Trump supporting influencers helping shape conservative thought and US policy, ladies and gentlemen. God they're morons.
Right now the US is caught between senile boomers and young people who are more interested in taking shots of Fireball at tailgate parties than knowing how the world works.
Pretty much explains the whole situation.
Understand that this administration, and much of the #GOP that's setting US policy, is driven by boomer nostalgia based on naive misundertandings of history.
From wanting to bring back battleships through wanting to return to good ol' days of white picket fences and family values, that's why they constantly refer in rosy terms to irrelevant scenes of times that never were.
And all of that while these authorities age into senility.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)