whoflungpoop posted:

I dont have the link or page #s to the election night part of their thread

someone should post it and everyone should, as hillary might say, "peep" it

RaySmuckles posted:

they want a deterrent to prevent the US from declaring war on them

currently the US is threatening to start a war with them

north korea is not going to start a war that will see its nation destroyed and its leadership culled. people don't get to power in a murderous dictatorship by being suicidal. come on.

i don't think north korea is great, nor do i love it. but i also don't see it as "dangerous." stupid and belligerent sometimes, sure. but so's the US and our belligerence has significantly greater consequences than north korea's. we're the danger. poo poo people in here are calling for war with one of russia's strongest allies, a war that they've declared to be a "red line" that the US shouldn't cross.

but nah, its north korea that's dangerous because somehow despite (poorly) managing a nation of millions they're actually a suicidal death cult just waiting to nuke everything in the region because their national leader is somehow bored of living a life of incomprehensible decadence and banging his army of sex-slaves

VikingSkull posted:

Please clap is the funniest political statement of our age

Testikles posted:

The internet is really what has made us all more rabid and hateful. These are my seven reasons:

1. Humans have very short attention spans. We like quick and easy digestible information. The listicle is only popular because it delivers information in an appealing format. Those short two minute UpWorthy videos are popular because they are easy to watch. Humans are lazy creatures and we enjoy getting the gist of things quickly. It take a lot of effort to sit down and read a book, and unless we're really interested in a topic, that's a high hurdle to jump over if there's something easy close by. The information delivered is less nuanced, more stark, and delivered in simplest terms.

2. poo poo that gets us riled up is more popular. For better or for worse, we like to feel things. Stuff that makes us happy, sad, angry, whatever, is going to be more popular than something overly clinical. Feelings are supposed to be quick summaries of complex information (we don't need to go over the many reasons why we should run when a lion jumps out at us, we just need to be afraid), and it's an easy system to hijack. We're therefore more inclined towards information that provokes a response, not necessarily something that is 'objectively true'.

3. There is too much information. We have near total information about the world. We always assumed that with total information we would make better choices, but now we are so flooded with it, that we can't tell what is actually important anymore. Now when faced with a complex issue we can literally bury ourselves in the details and miss the topic at large. To take a very low level example, if I wanted to go out and buy a car, in previous decades, I'd rely on the salesperson or the automaker for a select set of specs and maybe a magazine review. Maybe I'd consult a few people I know and trust and see what they think. I could mull it over and then decide. Now not only do I have that information, I now online ratings from multiple websites, I have youtube reviews, I have podcasts, I have facebook posts etc.The world is now able to weigh in on my car making decision. I now have to curate this information on my own and create trusted networks that were taken for granted before. But at the same time....

4. The gatekeepers have been bypassed. The internet has opened the floodgates for content creation. Where before we would really have to rely on a very select set of taste makers for our media, now anybody can produce content. Things that used to be hard to come by: the niche, the strange, avant-garde, conspiratorial and underground, are now very capable of being produced and delivered just as quickly as 'mainstream media.' What might have been a 'zine' trade between a few in the know, can suddenly blow up in a Vice article overnight. This has had the great advantage of bringing new talent and content to light that was missed by the gatekeepers. This served also to discredit them too. By intentionally or unintentionally missing information, the gatekeepers can appear ignorant or dishonest. It damages their credibility. People begin to ask why aren't things they find important being covered?

5. The internet destroys and creates tribes. Humans are tribal creatures. We naturally find reasons to cluster together, and they are arbitrary. In the past the easiest reason to form a tribe was by proximity. You lived in the same area and because you lived in the same area, you generally spoke the same way, dressed the same way, and did the same things. As civilization progressed, politics and economics helped shape that too. You could belong to a class, you could be part of a profession, and with proximity, and its offshoot culture, you could be an ethnicity or of a religion. So there were really only so many acceptable or reasonable dimensions of tribe. Regardless of how it forms, the tribe sets out many key things: mores and behaviours. The tribe tells you what to do, how to do it, and why it should be done. No person is completely immune to this.

On the one hand modernism and post-modernism has really screwed around with that. With the hyperfocus on originality and the individual, people feel dislocated from the world at large. People now have to find social meaning through other means and the internet has facilitated that. We can now bond over things that have stronger meanings to us like hobbies, experiences, or unsurprisingly sex. As people come together to discuss stuff, they start forming a community, and then eventually a tribe, complete with insiders and outsiders.

On the other hand, we are now exposed to how different we all are. Whereas before there were issues unspoken, and due to the limits of communication we could just assume that the world around us conformed to our expectations, with the rise of the internet, we suddenly are faced with the fact that people disagree. The large super tribes of government and nation are fraying because we can no longer take it for granted that other people elsewhere in the country, the state, the city, or even our own neighborhoods represent us. We start to cling to our fundamental beliefs in fear of losing ourselves. For conservatives, they might entrench themselves in religion, for liberals, it might be identity politics.

6. We all think we are the good guy. Nobody imagines themselves being the bad guy (excluding the rare case). At worst people might fantasize about being an anti-hero. They have unlikable qualities but these unlikable qualities are precisely what gives them an edge over their enemies. Now because who the good guys are, are defined by your tribe, there will be stark disagreement over who the good guy is in any scenario. Even groups of people who might otherwise agree will get into arguments because they are simply not the 'right' people. This might be fine if it wasn't for the fact that one aspect of being the good guys is often fighting the bad guys. The internet has created the perfect arena for this. With many clashing opinions and meeting tribes, you can now interject yourself into any fray you want to. If somebody is bashing your tribe anywhere at any time, you can be there instantaneously with little effort on your part, to fight the good fight.

Another effect is because we are the good guys, we tend to look for things on the internet that affirm our tribe and our identities within the tribe. It takes a lot to go out and challenge your own belief system and the path of least resistance is to ignore that. We build echo chambers for ourselves and even though many people might pride themselves on being open minded, they are usually only open minded to things that do not disrupt their tribal core beliefs.

7. Best of all, there are no consequences. Where tribal conflicts often meant the threat of violence or even death, the internet removes that from the equation. You can be as vile as you want with little or no repercussions. Things that you might never consider saying to a person's face are all suddenly kosher and because you will never meet this person, there is no reason to give quarter or relent. They are the enemy and their destruction can only mean affirmation of your beliefs.

The conclusion is that we have this scenario: we have rapidly reproducing unfiltered information often lacking nuance flooding the internet. It is difficult to sort through what is important and due to our tribal tendency and our own human faults, we will tend to select the easiest absorbable information, with the greatest emotional appeal, and what conforms to our beliefs. Other people are doing the same, and we are exposed to them. We realize we don't like them very much disassociate from them, and start to form our own social circles. We are constantly bombarded with contrary information, and begin to attack outwards against people who don't agree with us, because they are not like us and are bad people. On their own end they do the same. America is slowly filling up with warring tribes of people who do not follow traditional definitions, and the traditional definitions are falling apart. Everybody is splintering in every direction and there is no reason to compromise.

Amarcarts posted:

So what's the deal with Benghazi? People make a big fuss but has anyone actually articulated what Hillary personally did wrong? As far I can tell she didn't increase security after a request for more security, but that seems like more of an oversight rather than "treason", since the state department probably deals with thousands of different communications/requests on a daily basis.

I just ask because looking back the right-wing media were going rabid about it for years afterward leading up until the election and now you don't hear about it.

kikkelivelho posted:

Also this. The Hillary team had no way of knowing that Trump would be on the TV 24/7 spewing his bile. They also had no way of knowing that Trump's rampant racism and sexism was exactly what many americans wanted to see. The media gave Trump free advertisement throughout the drat campaign. That poo poo would never have happened in a country with competent and responsible news networks.

Blue Train posted:

Wtf is happening

Salty Josh posted:

I guess it would be too much to ask for her to just gently caress off.

FisheyStix posted:

I still can't believe the raw hilarity that jeb! brought to the Bush family. It's not like ol G.W. was an awesome speaker, but I wouldn't trust his little bro to do a show and tell day at an elementary school. Like, how did his family not pull him aside to be like "Jeb no, I'm begging you, you're a talented special boy but maybe you could be something other than president, like a fireman or an astronaut, just please, please don't"

OXBALLS DOT COM posted:

Also trump's big anti-immigrant roundup seems to mostly be deporting convicted criminals. hardly a crying immigrant child

Murder She Twote posted:

VikingSkull posted:

if she runs again and Trump wins I might seriously die of laughter

spacetoaster posted:

I remember all this idiocy the day after election. I had to stay away from FB for a few days to avoid posting on friends pages.

JB50 posted:

Look at this guy who doesnt live in the land of 10,000 lakes.

porfiria posted:

This feels a little like virtue signaling.

VikingSkull posted:

I would not put it past her ego to be doing this to force the DNC into backing her in 2020, and if they don't, laying the groundwork to run as an Independent to gently caress them over instead.

She's that vindictive, it seems.

Mordor She Wrote posted:

Voting democrat is an attempt at damage control from the fact Republicans quite literally want to destroy America, so it's still worth doing

VikingSkull posted:

I mean, there are people on that side who probably think those of us with Trump avatars are on Putin's payroll, but the sad truth is humanity is dumb as a general rule

Yug posted:

I thought they'd be linux creeps but maybe that's more bernie bro territory.

OXBALLS DOT COM posted:

Jk i know you're not bill Maher because I've seen you successfully make a joke

Maya Fey posted:

Lol kurt eichenwald tweeted a picture of his desk and he had a hentai tab open

Gammatron 64 posted:

I genuinely feel like people who supported Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders are the scum of the earth

I forgive the Trump supporters because they're just dumb and can't help it

OXBALLS DOT COM posted:

Mordor She Wrote posted:

Bernie wouldn't have won, he couldn't beat the most hated politician in the U.S in the primary, he sure as poo poo couldn't have beaten the frothing at the mouth mad Trump brigade.

Mordor She Wrote posted:

lol you actually believe that, Bernie even if he started at the same time would never pull the numbers in the primary that clinton or Obama did. He was too fringe and weird and didn't appeal to the party who is entirely made of crazy people, the republicans. Even if some how Bernie beat Clinton he would have gotten destroyed by Trump in the rust belt by not talking poo poo about immigrants and suggesting that unions are good, both of which are political poison now in the U.S thanks to the republicans. Bernie. Would. Never. Win.

OXBALLS DOT COM posted:

Lol all these people shouting that Trump is senile or retarded or whatever but he's never once forgotten who's President (he is)

VideoTapir posted:

Nancy pelosi doesn't have an aura of grandmotherliness, and as hateable as Angela Merkel is, Nancy pelosi is worse. Her age is the least of what's wrong with her.

Bholder posted:

I don't see how.

Instead of failing they would just do nothing.