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We’ve reached the point of idiocracy where everything needs to be read aloud.
No, we haven’t. Quit comparing everything to idiocracy; it was overly optimistic compared to reality.
Our problem is not well-meaning stupid people. Our problem is malevolent smart people leading hateful stupid people.
And then have Grok summarize and “flavour” it.
…in an order that would surprise you
They still wouldn’t understand.
With gameplay footage of some mobile game in the bottom half
deleted by creator
readempathizeThat’s truly what they’re unable to do: consider others. They don’t know how it feels to be not-them, and they don’t care.
That’s a rational question. Unfortunately it won’t get the desired result, because the target audience is not going to behave rationally:
- The media that they consume is following the fascist playbook. They’re telling the audience that if things are not better yet, then it’s because there are others still left to blame, and the worse things get the harder those others are going to be blamed for it.
- Even if someone moves past that propaganda, it’s been ingrained into them that to accept being incorrect is to admit failure. They’ve been primed to dig in and double down, lest their peers see them as a failure, or even worse as others.
So many “My business is failing because of tariffs. Those dirty foreigners!” and then follow up with “Sure, I’d vote for him again! I support what he does.”
Yes. They are happier.
They aren’t interested in making life better for anyone. They want it shittier for everyone else rather than actually improve themselves so they don’t have exert any effort or make sacrifices. The suffering they do get from trump’s policies is unexpected or “worth it” to fuck over everyone else.
Exactly, it doesn’t matter if Trump’s administration makes life worse for MAGA supporters. He could make their lives a living hell for all they care, arguably they’re already there. His supporters just want to see people they don’t like get hurt. That’s it, they want to witness cruelty. Any conservative who didn’t jump off MAGA band wagon a long time ago has fully drank the cool-aid.
Over July 4th, I had a fun interaction with a guy running a firework stand in Indiana. I was out there visiting family, and my wife’s stepdad asks the guy at the shop if the tariffs are impacting him. His response:
“It’s fucked!” Then republican brain kicked in “b b b but u know it’s worth it in the long term”
No, they’re not. Sure there’s a core audience of people who just want others to suffer, but Trump’s approval rating is dropping. There are plenty of people out there that feel cheated.
Not that that’ll change anything.
These are not people locked in a North Korean prison, or Russian Gulag. They are not invalids or mentally crippled. The very few that are stuck in old folks homes where they have no say over the tv do not equal half the voting public.
These are adults with access to the same information you have. They own homes and businesses, they have college educations, and they choose the channels they watch/listen. It’s been a decade since Trump was first elected, and in that time they have also elected and re-elected just an insane number of pedophiles and straight up grifters whose only sales pitch has been that they will make minorities and the people who like them, suffer. The all heard Trump praise Nazis, and declare that he wants to be king, and they didn’t blink an eye. However, they were also the ones to loose their fucking minds because Obama wore a brown suit, so they obviously have not only the ability, but the desire to raise their voices against the government.
Stop condescending to Republicans. I know it pains you to think that Nana has a hateful side and would prefer not to have to drink from the same water fountains as those “darkies”, but as much as she loves you, she also hates someone else. She hates them enough to turn your future and all the generations that follow over to fascists who might just murder or enslave them. Even more importantly, she will do it again.This is factually incorrect. If you want more information as to why, I’d recommend looking into news deserts. They do not have access to the same information we have, largely because local newspapers have died completely. I’d also recommend looking into the number of local news stations across the U.S that are owned and operated by Sinclair and Nexstar, as for many people they are their only local option for tv news. I don’t even really wanna get started on social media algorithms, but it is the main place these underserved communities get their news from now, and I shouldn’t need to explain the issues of that to a Lemmy user.
I don’t think their approval of trump is the same as their happiness level. They could think trump is stupid on whatever hotbutton issue there is, like social security, but be glad the “illegals” are being rounded up, the military is being sent to liberal cities, and the tariffs are “hurting” other countries.
i agree. the only people that are happy are the ones that can say so because they are anonymous online, so it just seems like a lot. But if you walk around your cities and towns, you will notice a huge decline in trump flags and signs being up on houses now.
I am a construction worker in Texas. You are mistaken. I do agree that some light is starting to show through the cracks for people inclined to question what they have been told. There are plenty that are enthused about the actions being taken while simultaneously bitching about the state of the economy. Then they get mad and turtle up the moment you challenge their world view. I’m so tired of trying to rationalize people out of a position they didn’t rationalize themself into.
Think if they win, they manage to get into some sort space exploration, meet others. The first others they’d meet would laugh and subjucate Earth at best, destroy Earth at worst. That attitude isn’t tolerant with a big technology difference. Mean maybe they win the lottery and become the Cardassians from Star Trek or something, but doubtful. In the end there’s no upside to the hate, they’ll just be as miserable as they were with fewer people to blame it on. Maybe we need to teach mindful meditation to everyone you do get some perspective from that.
I don’t like Ariana’s music, but I respect her as a person and she’s very talented at what she does. Despite people constantly making fun of her.
I’ll admit, I used to be in the anti-Ariana crowd after the whole donut thing surfaced. (Despite being a dumb teen when it happened who, despite not doing things similar, could understand the social pressure of doing it.) But every interview snippet I’ve seen with her has shown that she’s got a good head on her shoulders and most importantly isn’t afraid to tell people they’re being a jackass on live television.
I’ll believe her and all these other wealthy philanthropists when they talk about tax reform. Everything else stems from that…
I didn’t like her because I thought she was fake because she seems to switch what race she wants to call herself every couple years. But then I realized a lot of people are fake, and it’s hardly the worst character trait. The rest of her makes up for that as much as anyone.
You know she had a social media manager handling her tweets? Even if she wrote that, she had it vetted by her manager to make sure it would hit well with her target demographic.
We’re talking about more than just this one Tweet. Try to not look at everything through the most negative, cynical lens possible.
Remember Taylor Swift. All talk, but when it came to climate change, she had to be shamed into limiting her private jet use.
Disney was highly supportive of Queer rights, until they weren’t.
Dixie Chicks actually put something on the line and suffered for it. They even changed their name to distance themselves even more from that part of history. I doubt a social media manager would have approved any of that.
Ariana Grande is just playing to her audience.
Dixie Checks
They even changed their name
Lol I had to look it up to see if this was a typo or not. I could see them needing to distance themselves from the “Chicks” part just as much as the “Dixie” part. They might have ended up just as The.
What was the donut thing?
To clarify another user’s response, they were donuts on the shelf to be purchased by customers, they licked them and put them back so someone else would end up getting them unknowingly.
She and Pete Davidson licked donuts when the clerk wasn’t watching.
They just want someone to suffer more than them
Respect to her for being brave enough, as a public figure, and risking an endless torrent of backlash.
I really doubt she thought and wrote those words. More likely someone paid her to attach her name to it.
She didn’t write it. She shared a make-up artist’s insta
Great. There it is.
You think that paragraph required a ghost writer? 🤣
For Ariana Grande? Yes. And confirmed she didn’t write it. She shared what someone else wrote.
Why couldn’t she have written it? Tbf, those are someone else’s ideas, but have you ever heard her speak in interviews? She’s quite eloquent, witty and bright.
She may seem eloquent, witty & bright when talking about her narrow areas of expertise, but politics & current events are not her areas of expertise.
Confirmed she didn’t write it. She “shared” it from someone else’s thing.
but politics & current events are not her areas of expertise
Aren’t we all? Yet here we are.
She’s quite eloquent, witty and bright.
By your standards, maybe.
The fuck is that supposed to mean?
E: Nvm, the ban explains much.
This is not how some Trump voters I know think at all; it’s not how they think of Trump. Bring up any of these points and they’d think you’re totally paranoid.
I witnessed a group of old guys watching the movie ‘One Battle After Another’ scratch their heads and have literally, honestly no idea what it was about.
It’s because they’re in the habit of watching Fox News or other ‘old’ media. Trump’s just some Republican like they’ve always voted for with a bunch of hysterical finger pointers, and any Democrat is basically Jimmy Carter or Hillary Clinton.
That’s only a portion of Trump voters though. There are a lot of younger voters with less ingrained brain washing that came recently from new media.
I honestly don’t know what you do about the people you are speaking of. I have some in my extended family and there is no convincing them of things after 3 decades of programming. Even foundational knowledge isn’t the same.
You tell them that Donald Trump is a felon. He committed 34 felonies. He was found guilty by a jury. But the judge decided not to punish him. It’s a crime that normally gets prison time and Donald Trump belongs in prison, but the judge was scared. They’ll try to deflect and make excuses and every time they do, you just repeat “Donald Trump is a felon”
That one is pretty straightforward, at least: they don’t think trump was really guilty of the crimes he was convicted of. In fact they don’t even know what those crimes were, they just assume the charges were baseless and brought by liberal haters. The judge who gave him no punishment was just correcting a wrong done to trump.
And that’s when you say a jury of 12 ordinary people looked at the evidence and said he was guilty. Trump said he didn’t do that, so they looked at the records, and they found that Trump falsified business records. He paid a pornstar to cover up an affair and a lawyer to manipulate online polls, both illegally declared as a legal expense. The fraudulent payments helped him illegally influence the outcome of the 2016 election, and are therefore felonies. If he hadn’t committed those crimes, he might never have been president in the first place. We don’t get to see what a fair election would have looked like because of his crimes, which a jury decided he did indeed commit.
And that’s when they abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
Don’t forget about the last part of the quote. In my opinion it could be there most important part. That is the reason to argue, because we want to show how ridiculous their arguments are to third parties.
And that’s when you repeat that he’s a criminal who rigged two presidencies through fraud and intimidation, and who according to the law belongs in a jail cell at this very moment.
Well not to mention the rape, and pedophilia.
The point is to appeal to authority. Authority didn’t convict him of rape and pedophilia, so it’ll only persuade people who care about finding the truth for themselves. I’m talking about persuading Fox News addicts.
you just repeat “Donald Trump is a felon”
Why, though? They don’t care.
But that was New York man, nuthin but commies out that way anyway
Yeah at some point folks get too old to change. You can try to get them off Fox News at least, but it just depends. Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes they really can’t even learn a new kind of remote/cable or whatever.
Younger folks are deep down the influencer rabbit hole, and I don’t know what to do about that (other than pushing Fediverse) since Big Tech has such an iron grip on everything. I mean, the future is definitely cyberpunk.
Here in WV them olds got fired up quick when they saw SS threatened. They might have to go back to work at 70+ and live the golden years in a golden shower they created with trickle down economics.
Good thing WV has tons of good-paying jobs available for senior citizens!
Ariana didn’t write this. That Instagram person Matt did, and Ariana reposted it.
Matt Bernstein, he’s also got a podcast called A Bit Fruity, which (imo) has some very good takes.
Nah it was Matt Berenstain
She licked that donut that one time and I haven’t been able to let that go.
You lick one donut, you get ridiculed for life.
You rape a bunch of women and children while committing financial crimes, you become President of the United States
What?
Trump is still a million times worse, but she hasn’t only liked donuts.
She literally stole a married man from his pregnant wife. Like he’s the cheater, but she’s clearly okay with him not giving a fuck about a wife and kid.
Once again, Trump and Ariana are nowhere near each other in evilness, but she’s done more than lick some donuts.
stole a married man from his pregnant wife
Crazy that he had no choice in the matter.
I quite literally state that yes, he’s the cheater, and yet that she’s also okay with that fact.
Knowingly going after a married person is fine now?
He could have just not cheated and the only problem would be her flirting with a married man, which happens all the time. All he had to do was turn her down.
I want a six pack of Ariana Grande licked donuts and after each one I’d be like thank u, next.
I broke up with my girlfriend, she’s bored, why she not coming over yet
Username checks out.
omg, that’s gross. where?
What’s funny is that if you just search “licks donut” all of the results are of Ariana Grande, poor woman 😂
I think it was some donut place in California.
Literally everybody is suffering and about to have a mental breakdown but some of them enjoy seeing other ppl suffer and that’s literally the only happiness in this land
Yeah. A comment that stuck with me is “the type that would happily eat shit just to make others smell their breath”. These types will suffer just so they can hurt others. They’re hateful as fuck
I keep asking the conservatives in my life this. Thanos snap, all migrants are gone, how has your life improved? The only straight answer I’ve gotten was a creative use of math to show how much the US would save on benefits. Their proof relied on an omission from their source about who is going to lose benefits. The cost of enforcement, detention and removal was outside the bounds of the original question.
creative use of math to show how much the US would save on benefits
As anyone who’s ever seen a paystub can figure out, illegal immigrants pay for benefits (social security & medicare) they are ineligible to receive, ie, they subsidize everyone else’s benefits. Their payroll withholdings also pay taxes at all levels. So, I’m curious how they figure cutting those subsidies saves.
This assumes they are still paid normally, and have taxes withheld by their employer. I know plenty of people, immigrant and natural-born citizen alike, that get paid under the table in cash, without paying any taxes.
That would require the employer cooking the books to hide income payments they’d otherwise report to IRS & state revenue departments. Often enough, illegal immigrants simply provide an ITIN (proof of work authorization & legality isn’t required to get one) or fake social security number & I-9 documents, so payroll is withheld anyway. That’s easier for the employer & is how I’ve seen it done.
I’m curious how they figure cutting those subsidies saves
Because they simply don’t believe the truth of what you said. They don’t believe undocumented immigrants pay taxes or even work at all. They believe they come to this country to sit around collecting welfare and getting free health care at the ER and illegally voting for Democrats.
The only straight answer I’ve gotten was a creative use of math to show how much the US would save on benefits.
And let me guess: that doesn’t consider the increase in expenses going towards funding ICE…
Thats not even including the tax revenue that’s lost since many pay income tax (with no representation or access to benefits) essentially propping the system up, in part, for everyone else. I assume they think they can make up the difference on tariffs (nevermind much of that cost is passed on to ordinary Americans)
When the Ottomans took over Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire fell, they began charging steep taxes on goods travelling from East to West. The Portugese, not content with paying the tax, launched maritime expeditions to reach India and managed to find a direct route from Europe to India going around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. This was the start of the Age of Discovery. Spain commissioned Columbus with the same goal and… well we all know where he ended up.
The point being when you charge an egregious tax or tariff people find a way around you rather than going through you. America is likely assuming its in such advantaged position globally that it can get away with it, but history shows that no nation / kingdom can survive alone and when you try to fleece people, they will find a way to exclude you.
when you try to fleece people, they will find a way to exclude you.
Ancap/libertarian types like to pitch that as a point for their world view. Still pretty much all the ones I know IRL and online all still voted for Trump. DOGE was a major gift for them too as it was a way to import ancap president Javier Melei’s ideas from Argentina to the US. Bit ironic how they’ve switched to pretending they never liked it or that Trump is a lesser evil.
The Portugese, not content with paying the tax, launched maritime expeditions to reach India and managed to find a direct route from Europe to India going around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
It’s worth adding that the Portuguese then took advantage of their stoutly-built, cannon-armed ships to loot and annihilate the existing shipborne traffic in the Indian Ocean. “Age of the Protection Racket” would be a better term than “Age of Discovery”.
Oh the first Portugese colonists including Vasco da Gama was inhumane monsters no doubt. The absolutely horrific, inhumane shit he did to take control of the Indian Ocean trade route makes him notorious.
What’s funny is how little people in previously colonial empire nations know their own history. A lot of these Christopher Columbus-esque folk are lionized in the European nations they came from. Which is a pathetic lack of introspection for such a highly educated place, in my opinion.
I mean humans have a great capacity for evil but European behaviour during the colonial era? Damn. Based on scale alone that has to be the benchmark for evil in the modern era.
has to be the benchmark for evil in the modern era
I mean … for all time. Even the Assyrians would be like “damn, you rode those people like horses and cut off their hands? We never did shit that bad.”
how much the US would save
Absolute speculation in response to a question about current state.
Thanos snap, all migrants are gone, how has your life improved?
Yes.
Whether they want to admit it or not, that was the whole point - spite and making the people that make you feel insecure suffer out of spite.
It’s a form of social regression that people in the Balkans like to sum up by saying “It’s not important that I feel good. What’s important is that the other person suffers.”
Some people only feel ‘successful’ through their perceived ‘position’ in society.
They want to believe they are above others.
If you think like that, then pushing others down is a perfectly valid route to happiness - and far faster and easier than working on yourself would be.
You know what, unfortunately for some in the target demographic the answer is yes. Those who capitulated and got jobs as ice agents got a huge sign on bonus and livable salary. Bribed to terrorize
Of course the answer is yes. They want the suffering. Everything else was just an excuse. They voted for the suffering of others, got the suffering of others, and are happy. Even if the price of groceries, gas, and everything else is higher, they don’t mind because they got what they really wanted.
