u.s. politics: sundowning on the american empire

[DMC]

30 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Oooh! The Chinese going Dem!?! I'm all for It, we'll win!

Get your Mao on y'all!

[Fragile Bird]

I see that technically speaking the Chinese did not devalue the yuan, the government simply did not interfere in it's fall.

The really funny thing here is that Trump has been attacking the Fed chair all year because he wants lower interest rates, screw the independence of the Fed, and so rates were lowered a quarter percent last week. But since the US is the world's currency safe harbor, because of Trump's tweets last week announcing the new tariffs and the suggestion the Chinese were not negotiating fairly, the US dollar is strengthening. Trump is disrupting markets around the world with his bullshit. 

He really is a child with a gun, waving it around and glorying in his power. I hope he ends up shooting his dick off.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It’s so odd, I’ve never owned a firearm or felt the need to carry one with me to feel safe.  And it’s not that I dislike them.  I’ve gone to ranges and rented weapons it’s fun to shoot, just don’t need one with me.

Me neither. And I'm staunchly anti-cop (in their current form), so calling them is almost out of the question for me. And I still don't feel the need to purchase a gun. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

I watched the video recording of the rally in Panama City shortly after reading the El Paso killer’s so-called manifesto. It is a document littered with phrases and rhetorical devices injected into mainstream discourse by the president and his supporters—talk of a “Hispanic invasion,” accusations that Democrats support “open borders,” and the like. As Trump faces the possibility that he will lose the presidency next year, he may become more enraged, and more willing to deploy the rhetoric of violence as a way to keep his followers properly motivated. The Panama City speech was an important moment in Trump’s ongoing effort to make the American presidency a vehicle in the cause of marginalizing and frightening racial minorities; the killings are a possible (and predictable) consequence of such rhetoric.

He’s Getting Worse
Trump is turning the American presidency into a platform for the wholesale demonization of minorities.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/trump-getting-worse/595453/

Quote

 

Guns, for them, are not about hunting or self-defense or the frontier spirit or any of the other fig leaves that are brandished every time their true agenda starts to show. It is about asserting the primacy of a group identity, protecting it from threats both real (inexorable demographic change) and imagined (invasions of Hispanic rapists and murders). We know this because the NRA broadcasts these fears back to its own acolytes all the time. In 2017, some six months into Trump’s presidency, the NRA released a notorious ad in which a scowling Dana Loesch, the group’s spokeswoman at the time, recounted all the crimes that an unnamed “they” had committed against “our” way of life: comparing Trump to Hitler, getting Hollywood elites to push “their” narrative, recruiting “their” ex-president to spearhead the hashtag-resistance. “The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom,” she said, “is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.” The other-ization, the paranoia, the not-so-subtle call to arms—all hallmarks of white supremacist propaganda.

The NRA trafficked in racist tropes well before the Trump era, reaching a kind of delirious peak during the presidency of Barack Obama (“their” ex-president). One ad from 2015 features NRA head Wayne LaPierre excoriating Obama for failing to crack down on crime in his hometown of Chicago, where “gangbangers” and “thugs” were causing “third-world carnage” with their violent acts—the implication being that the black president was happy to take guns away from white hicks every time a mass shooting occurred, but was silent on the real gun problem being perpetuated by black criminals. “He waits for a crime that fits his agenda,” LaPierre said, “and blames the NRA.” He added, “The good, honest Americans living out in farm towns, in Nebraska or Oklahoma, or working two jobs in inner-city Chicago or Baltimore ... they see through it all.” (The people in the inner city working only one job, well, they’re presumably almost as bad as those gangbanging layabouts.)

 

Gun Culture Has Always Been About White Supremacy
The mass shooting in El Paso reveals the darker undercurrents of the gun control debate.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154652/gun-culture-always-white-supremacy

[Bonnot OG]

an amazing thread.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I see that technically speaking the Chinese did not devalue the yuan, the government simply did not interfere in it's fall.

The really funny thing here is that Trump has been attacking the Fed chair all year because he wants lower interest rates, screw the independence of the Fed, and so rates were lowered a quarter percent last week. But since the US is the world's currency safe harbor, because of Trump's tweets last week announcing the new tariffs and the suggestion the Chinese were not negotiating fairly, the US dollar is strengthening. Trump is disrupting markets around the world with his bullshit. 

He really is a child with a gun, waving it around and glorying in his power. I hope he ends up shooting his dick off.

He's certainly shooting my stock portfolio's dick off, such as it is -- it sure as hell ain't massive, but though it be but small, it be mine own.

What I CANNOT BEAR is that fuckin' hypocritical LYING address of his.  Who the hell does he think he is fooling?????  He must be rather scared with the news that the El Paso manifesto is written of everywhere as filled with his language -- and then the STOCK MARKET -- let them not look at either one!

[Fragile Bird]

Somebody wrote a nice speech that he read off the teleprompter. It was all bs that he'll walk back within a day or two.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Somebody wrote a nice speech that he read off the teleprompter. It was all bs that he'll walk back within a day or two.

Indeed. Never listen to anything he has to read. They're not his actual thoughts. 

That said, I wonder if now he regrets all those racist tweets. They make his comments even that much more laughable. 

[Fragile Bird]

He regrets nothing.

[Martell Spy]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

He regrets nothing.

Not even getting pissed on by Russian prostitutes under Putin's cameras. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Not even getting pissed on by Russian prostitutes under Putin's cameras. 

How do you think he dyes his hair? 

[The Anti-Targ]

10 hours ago, Ice Queen said:

Most of us don't spend every waking minute in front of a computer, TV or gaming console. I don't know anyone who does that. We have adult responsibilities and there's no time for that. Maybe it's an age gap. We liked video games, but the world wasn't connected. Player 2 had to be physically present and put the quarter in the slot or ready with the joystick or controller. There was still physical and real social interaction with other human beings.

My kids were older when online gaming became a thing. Maybe that's a factor, too. My daughter was 17 or 18 when a boyfriend introduced her to it. We had a PC that was in the dining room and everyone could see what you were doing. They did not get their own laptops till they went to college. Of course we had gaming systems like Sega (which was the height of technology!) then Game Cube, Wii,  X Box and Nintendo DS.

What you're essentially saying is that it's okay for boys and young men to torture and abuse women in gaming culture and they should just toughen up, and that abuse should be expected because hey, they're women. So you're just justifying the budding psychopaths' unrealistic views of women. As fragile as their egos are, they take silence as encouragement. 

Toxic masculinity will never be eliminated until other men call them on it. Have you ever done that? 

Ask yourself why more young girls and women don't game. Part of it is the inherent and rampant misogyny, but another part of it is that most of us don't get off on guns and killing things, even in a non-real environment. As we get older, other things become more important, like raising children. It's kind of hard to play when you barely have time for a shower.

I once dated a guy whose 24 year old son lived at home. He was so introverted it was a little scary. He went to work every day, but the minute he got home he went straight to his room and started playing. He would go to virtual parties instead of socializing in real life. No girlfriend--he didn't have the first clue how to go about talking to a woman. I remember thinking that he was a potential mass shooter. 

Edit: I don't think gaming is the problem any more than D&D or playing Ozzy Osbourne backwards was. But certain personalities gravitate to that world, and I'd be willing to bet that gaming allows them to express violent tendencies and attitudes they already had.

 

I don't want to go on another rant. My main beef with your original post was the sweeping statement that video games are stupid and unhealthy. Are there stupiod and unhealth video games, yes. Are some people using video games in a stupid and unhealthy manner, and ruining it for others? Yes. But don't blame all video games and all gamers.

Yes I do call out toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity can't be defeated by men alone or women alone. Women are needed in the social spaces where it exists, and it is the responsibility of men to make sure those women are safe in those spaces and for men and women to be seen to be mutually respectful and supportive.

Social change around gender issues has always needed tough women to be in the vanguard of social action and discourse. And a lot of the time tough women have been in the vanguard of social change outside of gender issues. But it's not fair to ask someone or tell them to be that tough person. But those tough people are needed. Preferrably it's not something people should need to do to effect change. Unfortunately the current methods of social and political discourse do not lend themselves to change without conflict and contention.

I see Trump is directly scapegoating video games for these latest shootings now. All that does is divert attention from the root causes.

Interesting to see what has happened to 8Chan today. Interesting also to hear the guy who started 8chan apparently being surprised and disappointed at what his creation turned into.

[Zorral]

Friends have been trying to make book for how long it will take for racist in chief to walk back his teleprompter speech and begin urging violence against people of color and women again.

Stock market news being what it is I've walked back to more like 32 - 48 hours other than my original of less than 24.  I'll probably be wrong.  Which is why I don't gamble, stock market not withstanding.

6 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Social change around gender issues has always needed tough women to be in the vanguard of social action and discourse. And a lot of the time tough women have been in the vanguard of social change outside of gender issues. But it's not fair to ask someone or tell them to be that tough person. But those tough people are needed. Preferrably it's not something people should need to do to effect change. Unfortunately the current methods of social and political discourse do not lend themselves to change without conflict and contention

In other words, to make it shorter and sweeter, you are saying that as usual men make the disasters and women are not only supposed to cope, but clean it up and kiss the owie and make it better -- for men.

Women cannot fix rape culture and gamification.  Only men can.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Indeed. Never listen to anything he has to read. They're not his actual thoughts. 

That said, I wonder if now he regrets all those racist tweets. They make his comments even that much more laughable. 

That would require him to see his tweets as racist, which just won't happen. The thing about racist people is that they do not think they are racist, they see their view of the world as truth, and "truth can't be racist". So if they see someone doing something they think of as racists they are mentally incapable of linking that action back to their own thoughts, words or deeds.

[The Anti-Targ]

28 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In other words, to make it shorter and sweeter, you are saying that as usual men make the disasters and women are not only supposed to cope, but clean it up and kiss the owie and make it better -- for men.

Women cannot fix rape culture and gamification.  Only men can.

Nope. But if that's the way you want to interpret what I wrote there's probably nothing I can say. I will note you didn't quote the paragraph that immediately preceded the one you did quote. Men and women are as 2 wings of a bird. The bird can't fly if only one wing is strong, and the bird can't fly if the wings aren't working in coordination.

[all swedes are racist]

11 hours ago, DMC said:

  So, it at least prevented me from seeing the entirety of Titanic for a few more years.

 

10 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

That's the real fucking tragedy. I mean the Jack/Rose plot is serviceable for its time as far as romance stories go, but the real draw of that movie is the last twenty minutes.

ok well don’t spoil it, let him enjoy the surprise at the end

[DMC]

29 minutes ago, a good and nice guy said:

ok well don’t spoil it, let him enjoy the surprise at the end

Yeah I was still holding out hope those kids made it.  Now I'm not gonna care one bit about propeller guy's backstory.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, DMC said:

Yeah I was still holding out hope those kids made it.  Now I'm not gonna care one bit about propeller guy's backstory.

I hope, at the very least, you learned that if your first ax swing goes horribly wrong, have faith that your second will be perfect for unexplainable reasons.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I hope, at the very least, you learned that if your first ax swing goes horribly wrong, have faith that your second will be perfect for unexplainable reasons.

The reason is love you soulless jackass.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, DMC said:

The reason is love you soulless jackass.

Love??? That two timer wouldn’t even make space for Jack to get out of the water.

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

Dude, the tremendous surprise that the film features Billy Zane gets sprung way earlier than that.  James Cameron is a genius. 

Clearly you didn’t listen to Hansel. Put some respect on Zane and his awful toupee.