something to this
RE: https://www.threads.com/@melissakchan/post/DGUESKYomXg
@anneapplebaum2000@threads.net
Why do so many people dislike Zelinsky? Pattern recognition skills and failed Turing tests. Some people have better pattern recognition skills than others, MAGATs don't.
Calling Trump a f'cking idiot is mundane at this point. It's probably true, but it just doesn't matter compared to other truths about the man. He is a narcissist, a sociopath, and a master manipulator. Compared to those it's kinda moot weather or not he believes the firehose of bullshit that he creates. I don't think he believes them either. It's all too calibrated for effect, like over the horizon artillery rounds.
His understanding of media spectacle and the 24h news cycle keeps half of Americans locked into a PTSD loop of outrage and the other half leering at the next institution to be lobbed into the bonfire. The former can't believe he would be so stupid as to break the things he is clearly breaking. The latter are, for the most part, ignorant or indifferent the long term consequences. The distinguishing factor between these two tribes comes down to pattern recognition skills. Those who have them and those who don't.
Mastodon self sorts for people who are unafraid of complexity. If your reading this, I would like to thank you for embracing the defining attribute of anti-authoritarianisim. Studies have shown a high degree of correlation between authoritarian beliefs and a strong yearning for simplicity, for sameness. Simple answers are what "strong men" claim to deliver. Complex answers are not to be trusted, are probably lies, because you can't tell anyways. This is the reasoning of people who fail upward into adulthood. This is the internal reality of the millions of people making up the MAGA movement. Mull on this while reading the Trump Tweet I attached to this post. It's a masterwork of inductive self reinforcing manipulation.
The other reason so many people hate Zelinsky? Bots. If you don't understand maths, read at a 5th grade level, and have no idea what's going on in tech... Your not going to realize the 80 accounts showing up on your feed every day are Cambridge Anaylitica style bots. It's why people fall for that crap, they believe what bots believe. They calibrate their beliefs to the temperature of the room, it's a durable survival stradegy. Truth to them is synonymous with majority consensus, even if 9 out of 10 of those their calibrating against are chatbots.
Are Republicans Antide?
#antifa #republicans
https://digbysblog.net/2023/10/19/are-republicans-antide/
@br00t4c@mastodon.social
The GOP has been overtly antidemocratic and always will be. Look, it's right there in the names and has been since the post-civil war period.
The Republic-ican party isn't democratically oriented. They explicitly believe that the United States' governence should be in the fashion of a republic. With it's legislators and president selected from the ranks of it's aristocracy.
As they see it, plurality, even voting in the sense we broadly participate in currently, none of that is part of the package. It's the moneyed aristocracy's party. You sir, being an un-moneyed, un-landed, un-cultured, and un-educated in the ways of power lout will always be at the sway of powerful men and are by your weak nature unfit for the privilege of governance. Look, my good man, I'll prove it to you. If truly you were worthy of the privilege you would realize what the identity politics, the race baiting, and wedge-politic issues are that we employ against you. Cheap tricks to fool the masses. Because as I have so generously pointed out, you are unworthy, you cannot see them for what they are. "You are your own proof of incompetence." And so, reasoning along these lines the GOP has waddled along for over a century. They do not mind much, participating in this "game" called democracy, because they know/believe power to be of another nature entire from what you and I do.
Problem is, a century of accelerationist capitalism and changing demographics have undercut the homogenous voting population upon which they played this logic. No longer are niaive white males the bulk of the voting demographic. This logic has proven brittle. So they are slowly loosing their shit. This neveau-riche My Pillow™
clown is the verry evidence of their hysteria. 100 years ago some clod like him would never be given a seat at the table, now they have to offer up opportunities to the likes of him in exchange for ones willing to do their dirt work.
I'll leave you with the words of GOP strategist and architect of the southern strategy, Lee Atwater, from over half a century ago:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/tnamp/
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Plastic Garden Fauna 🦩