Elon Musk is a dick thread

[redbreegull]

I see toast is back on boomer facebook

[Disco King]

Why do we progressives have to make the bad guys look so badass when we criticize them? Sinister duotone black-and-red high-contrast photo, text that looks like the title card of a David Fincher movie…



The correct move would have been to use this image. And Comic Sans.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Elon Musk before his gender affirming surgeries

[MyOneAndOnly]

Dude has had more plastic surgery than the Kardashians

[Toast]

Time Magazine totes pwning dRumph.

[Toast]

[Disco King]

When you try to troll by accidentally posting the other side's meme

Good job

[Cool As Ice Cream]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

i meant competent as in effective at achieving his goals, producing results, getting things done. for example, winning the presidential election while spending a lot less money than harris. that's undeniable competence relative to his opponent. and for me, it's one of the most relevant skills at being a leader - deploying resources effectively to generate the results you're after.

as for replacing government workers with knowledge of their jobs -- it'd be useful for us to consider specifics, i don't know which ones you're referring to. but i can tell you from my own experience, existing knowledge and experience in a job is often overrated, especially if you want to change the way things are done. (with obvious exceptions, things like doctors, pilots, etc. etc. of course experience is vital and required. but knowledge workers, administrators, managers, and the like, that's different)

i don't yet have an opinion on the canada and greenland stuff yet, i'm not informed enough.

and on the RFK thing -- i really think that a big challenge here is we are all operating with different information, and unless we make the thankless and sometimes difficult effort to seek it out, it's very hard if not impossible to get something close to the full picture. you wrote that he doesn't believe in vaccines whatsoever. but here is a quote from a book of his:

"People who advocate for safer vaccines should not be marginalized or denounced as anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible."

so it's not a fair statement that he doesn't believe in vaccines whatsoever. it's just not a true or accurate statement.

and for me, there are so many of these examples like this out there, where the prevailing perception we're given is one thing, and the truth is more nuanced or entirely different. the one i already wrote about, where the media here led all of us to believe that trump was supporting white supremecists by saying "there were fine people on both sides" and authority figures like obama ran with it -- i don't need to type all that up again, it's in an earlier post, but that stuff is happening in all directions, people are intentionally misrepresenting things to support a narrative that they hold already and want others to believe, mostly to make their side look better and the other side look worse. and many people, myself included, accepted this kind of information initially. but it's indefensible. and it should make all of us reconsider the credibility of the people and organizations who make misrepresentations like this.

shouldn't the truth matter more than trying to bolster one's chosen side? that's part of what i'm striving for here, to get as close as i can to understanding the truth (on the handful of matters where i'm able to make the time and dig in), and i'm striving to be more loyal to the truth than to any one side.

this is - after all this time - still doing my head in.
it all sounds fairly reasonable, but aarghl

[smashingjj]

[smashingjj]

I feel weird posting the fruits of my YouTube algorithm here, but this video is so fucking on point, it should get a reward

[smashingjj]

not a Nobel prize maybe, but a like and a subscribe

[smashingjj]

the Nobel prize of our time

[smashingjj]

look at this boomer

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Cool As Ice Cream

this is - after all this time - still doing my head in.
it all sounds fairly reasonable, but aarghl

it's a better defense of the bad guys than one usually encounters given the apparent general intelligence and articulative abilities of that slice of society, but it's still just a defense of the obvious bad guys

[redbreegull]

like pointing out that there are liberals who play fast and loose with facts too does not negate the fact that Trump is one of the most maliciously, crookedly deceitful people on the planet who lies as easily as he breathes. the guy is so bent he could swallow nails and shit out corkscrews

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

it's a better defense of the bad guys than one usually encounters given the apparent general intelligence and articulative abilities of that slice of society, but it's still just a defense of the obvious bad guys

This is why I'm kind of disappointed that Whatcolor kind of just excused himself from that discussion.

It is so hard for me to wrap my head around people who defend or minimize Trump and Musk (especially now) that I just want to pick the brain of somebody who seems mostly normal and rational who does this. A lot of normal people had to vote for this guy. But most of them don't spend their free time talking about politics online, so when I go into online spaces with Trump supporters, they are almost always going to be the die-hard MAGA cultists who will not have anything resembling a good faith discussion. I want to find the regular Joes who are like "I dunno, I think these guys are a little crude, but they're smart successful business people who know how to get the government on track" and gain an understanding of why they think that, how they came to thing that, how they reconcile that with things we are seeing right now, find out if they are even seeing the same shit in the first place, etc.

But also, even if Whatcolor were still in the thread, conversing with him on this would require me to find the time to organize all the specific things I want to ask him about so we could discuss the details and not just stay on the vague, broad level of sentiments about general directions.

I think part of the impotent feeling I have about current events is that I feel like just going into spaces with people who already agree with me and bitching to the choir is itself an expression of resigned powerlessness. Like, "man, this shit is crazy, innit?" "Yeah man, you're right, I don't believe it." I can watch some liberal pundit deliver my takes and go "yeah man, you tell 'em," but that's not really that useful or even comforting when they're not even telling them, they're telling me. The bubble doesn't affect anything, and there are other people in other bubbles having totally different discussions. I try to look at conservative media to see if they have some reasonable take that I just didn't consider due to ideological blinders, and… I just get Jesse Waters advancing patently fallacious arguments, not anything they makes me go "damn, I didn't think about it that way."

[Disco King]

So this week, Tim Walz made Elon Musk cry and then Musk's attempt to buy an election failed.

Sounds like comedy's been legalized.

[Cool As Ice Cream]

Originally Posted by Disco King

But also, even if Whatcolor were still in the thread, conversing with him on this would require me to find the time to organize all the specific things I want to ask him about so we could discuss the details and not just stay on the vague, broad level of sentiments about general directions.

i personally find it really difficult to have this conversation online.
i think it'd be better if we were in the same room.

[smashingjj]

I'm not good in those conversations anyhow. I'll try my best online, but irl I'll often forget things I should say.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Disco King

This is why I'm kind of disappointed that Whatcolor kind of just excused himself from that discussion.

yeah, he voiced that he didn't like the leftist echo chamber here which is fair. but I've pointed this out before, being "moderate" or seeing both sides equally, or the assumption that both sides are equally as bad is its own bias and creates its own echo chambers. The "regular" people who voted for Trump might not be on the internet seething about politics all the time, but I'm certain they go hang with their friends or whatever and all talk about how everyone is insane and they're the balanced ones who see both sides and aren't blinded by ideology etc etc, but of course that is its own biased narrative, that like being extreme, often exists to provide a feeling of individual self-justification more than it actually makes any sense

[redbreegull]

Don't be surprised if the non-cultist folks who voted for Trump don't just suddenly "wake up" one day because of how bad things are though, regardless of the "both sides" rhetoric. People are just incredibly obsessed with their own validation, this is one of the strongest human impulses I think. It's getting rarer, but there are still people who will defend the Vietnam War tooth and nail, despite it being so widely considered a military, moral, and humanitarian disaster. Despite the fact that consensus history and what you read in school textbooks is about what a fiasco it was and how much it damaged the United States. You can still find a fair number of old coots, even liberals, who will defend the US intervention. Why? Because they supported it at the time and it's hard to admit you made a really bad mistake. It's too uncomfortable for most people to think critically about themselves like that. I suspect that "normal" Trump voters will still have excuses decades from now on why they made the correct decision to trade a chunk of their democratic and economic security to the ultra elite in exchange for nothing.

[Disco King]

When I studied political science, one interesting fact that stuck with me is that when you try to survey the voters of a politician who later turned out to be unpopular… you can't find them anywhere. They just go missing.

Well, actually, they just pretend they didn't vote for the person. The numbers just don't match the proportion of the vote the candidate got. "Who the fuck voted for this guy? Not me, that's for sure."

I think this is what we'll see with the "moderates" who voted Trump. They'll just pretend they didn't. The people who already made him their identity and posted online about it will have to own it and convince themselves it was the right choice in order to not feel dumb, but a lot of the "quiet" ones will just pretend it never happened. "I voted third party, you know."

[MyOneAndOnly]

When people commit themselves to something that ends up being horrible and wrong, it's easier for most of them to double down on it than it is to admit they made a mistake.

I've seen it in my career over and over. People wind up working for a terrible company and slowly they modify their political views to rationalize that what they're doing isn't a bad thing. People do it with religion. For instance, staying in the Catholic church despite the pedophilia, rape, abuse.

MAGA is even worse. It's a personality cult. It's easier for these cult members to blame everyone in the world except themselves and the Orange Cheeto Monster than it is to admit they were wrong and they were scammed. Especially since half the country has been telling them for 8 years they're being scammed

[hnibos]

Im not surprised that whatcolor is a dickhead about all this stuff.

[FoolofaTook]

dude

do you work at Blunts and Bodega on Colonial??

[hnibos]

No

[FoolofaTook]

think I met your twin ...

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

think I met your twin ...

hey Took I just met a step-cousin today I had no idea I had who is sporting a Bombadil tat on his right bicep

[hnibos]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

think I met your twin ...

unless this is ******, im not sure why anyone here would know how i look like or why a street called colonial could be relevant to me. anyways i left that shit hole state years ago. Best decision of my life

[Squish Squash]

Are you not familiar with took? He’s probably saying you’re a raccoon or something.