check out the list of other videos from that channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFallOfNations
RUSSIA JUST KILLED ITSELF
CHINA IS FALLING APART
GREENLAND DESTROYS RUSSIA
DEATH BY VODKA
THE DEATH OF RUSSIA
RUSSIA IS GOING DOWN
PUTIN IS DONE
BLACK DAY FOR PUTIN
END OF ALASKA
END OF NORTH KOREA
IMMIGRATION KILLED CANADA
While the West drowned in its own diversity, Japan watched… and remembered who it was. Not with panic. Not with shame. But with the cold, ancient clarity of a country that knows what it's willing to die for. In a world that celebrates mass immigration — Japan says no.
It is AI generated (the "Not with panic. Not with shame." is a tell) and it is astonishing that not one of the videos discusses the shitshow that the US is operating currently. It's bullshit clickbait.
Since the topic is Japan-related, here's a video on Japan's declining population numbers and its resistance to immigration. The video is a bit lengthy and overwrought, but it addresses the demographic problems Japan is facing, such as a death rate that is approximately double the birth rate.
"This video explores Japan's unique stance on immigration, contrasting it with global trends and examining the nation's internal challenges. We look at the severe Japanese population decline and the resulting aging population, which are central to current societal pressures. Learn how Japan's birth rate decline and shifting demographics are influencing its politics and future direction amidst global issues."
This would not be the first time Trump (or assorted other RW powers) drop a case as soon as it becomes clear how much discovery will reveal. Eg, the Fox News Network paid three-quarters of a billion dollars rather than let what Dominion had from discovery go public.
Actually, it is still around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandrov_Ensemble
It had to be reformed in 2016, but that was after 63 members were killed in a plane crash.
Re: the Dean Scream: The tendency of journalists to mistake their herd instinct for repeating superficialities as inspired insights and then repeat their bullshit ad nauseum has a serious effect on election outcomes. It seems to happen more to Dems than Republicans. I don't think it is a conscious act on the part of big media. I think it is mediocre people who are way too high on their own supply, have no insights, live in a bubble, and like to sneer. The don't do this to Republicans because they like to pretend to not be biased.
Unfair and unprofessional as this bullshit may be, it still has an effect. Dems get slapped with these stupid labels and the labels become truths with the low info voters which is most of them, given that so many big media journalists can't be bothered to do their jobs.
So that's why as a primary voter I try to figure out which Dem will trigger one of those mindless collective sneer fests from the msm. Newsome will. It's guaranteed. I also try to see who is best at playing the media, speaking past the media and has the ability to define themselves clearly.
I don't think that Buttigieg would be a liability. The one thing I do think is that pretty much any candidate is going to be chancy and could well lose because the media is going to lean into the sports model of reporting and focus on the drama rather than on the substance. If Buttigieg did end up losing because something he did, or something about him blew up into a negative, then I'm certain that half of the pundits would have already half-written post-election analyses arguing that his gayness was just too big a feature for swing voters to get past, and they'd blame the loss on "activists" running the Dems. And then it would be a generation before the donors would have the courage to support any LGBTQ+ candidate for national office again.
Same way I don't think Harris will ever be given another chance at the presidency. Doesn't matter that she came damn close carrying a lot of baggage that had been forced upon her by the circumstances.
Meanwhile, given where we are right now in our politics, it's hard to even fathom how The Dean Scream was enough to sink a candidacy. Really? That? What a strange moment in time.
Trump's suit against the BBC looks like turning into an own goal. The BBC has filed discovery motions demanding Trump disclosure his taxes for the last decade or more (to substantiate, or not, his claims of financial harm), his medical records (to substantiate or not his claims of other kinds of harm). All that information he has been desperately trying to keep concealed.
nous is spot on with this, and it looks like a perfect description of Buttigieg. Too bad that being gay is almost certainly as big an electoral disadvantage as being female or black.
A decade or two ago, it was probably a worse handicap. But the country has changed. Not as much as one might hope, but substantially nonetheless.
Legalizing gay marriage looks (from where I sit anyway) to have brought a lot of gays out of the closet. With the result that a lot of people discovered that their friends and relatives included gay people. And the heavens did not fall. Buttigieg, himself, took things further. High profile (thanks to his Presidential run), "young-ish, charismatic, and a good communicator" -- and not particularly scary; not hitting any of the primary bigotry hot buttons.
You can argue that the country still isn't ready. But the country wasn't ready for a black President either. Obama won anyway. The bigots predictably freaked out, but he won anyway. Twice. I could see Buttigieg doing the same.
I observe that it's the Soviet/Red Army Chorus. Not a Russian Army Chorus (assuming there even is one these days).
Putin may dream of restoring the supposed glory of the Soviet Union. But his vision doesn't seem to extend beyond territory and military power. The idea that anything else might matter seems to be outside his comprehension. Economic welfare for the people? Anything resembling culture? Just no.
"I suspect that many of those low-engagement voters don’t know themselves what they are going to go for, so it’s a lot of guesswork. Most of the primary voters seem to have strong preferences and too much faith in the power of reason."
I think that's a real problem. I also think that electability IS an factor but we need to remember that elections are based on a lot of voters who think and feel in ways that we, the primary voters, don't understand very well which makes it hard to know what will make them jump one way or another.
Republicans nearly always vote Republican. There is a growing population of independents. They are a grab bag of people who arrived at independent from different directions and for different reasons. There are infrequent voters who come out for charisma or because there is a really visceral issue for them at stake. There are one issue voters who either vote for the candidate who represents their issue or don't vote at all. Democrats nearly always vote for Democrats.
So what we are really fighting for is the votes of the indies and infrequent voters--the people Dem primary activists are least likely to understand.
What this country needs is an antiTrump. That means a Democrat who is as big and boisterous an asshole as He, Trump (for "electability") but who is ruthless about deMAGAfication (a straightforward "policy") instead of milquetoast nuance. Someone who demonizes billionaires (a smaller class than trans people, let alone immigrants) and is not afraid to call MAGAts stupid. Someone who has yet to appear, alas.
I'm not kidding. For many years, I have been pointing out that "electability" is a crock. We nominated Kerry in 2004 because he was more "electable" than Dean. We nominated Obama in 2008, but not because he was The Electable One. We nominated Clinton in 2016 partly because Sanders was "unelectable". Can anybody claim with a straight face that "electability" in any but a post hoc sense was He, Trump's selling point to the GOP?
"Electability. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
wj - The challenge will be for such a person to get thru the primaries. Those tend to have a far higher concentration of, for lack of a better term, activists — people who do care, often passionately, about policy. At least some policies.
Convincing primary voters that “someone who can win a general election” should be a necessary criteria (not sufficient, but necessary) will be a non-trivial task. Not least because they, too, tend to live in an information bubble populated by others who care about policy.
We have a real structural problem with the primaries in that the voters who need to be brought on board often don't pay any attention to the election until after the primaries are done, leaving the primary voters and the donors to pick. None of the Dem coalitions in the primary seem to have any sense of what those people are looking for. I suspect that many of those low-engagement voters don't know themselves what they are going to go for, so it's a lot of guesswork. Most of the primary voters seem to have strong preferences and too much faith in the power of reason.
I think primaries are the place where ranked voting actually makes the most sense, in that ranked voting would not just take candidate support into account, but would also give a sense of crossover appeal. And if the primaries were done in two or three rounds it would also give the party a chance to see which candidates were gaining and which were losing support over time, and let the candidates adjust their approaches to some actual feedback.
Predictably, the reliably unreliable Trump has already pulled the plug on the pathetically optimistic Starmer’s elephant-trumpeted $40bn Tech Prosperity Deal, as part of his attempts to ensure access to the soggy brains of ChatGPT-ravaged Europeans for his acquiescent social media propaganda platforms, all those royal breakfasts wasted. What lemming-like impulse compelled the Labour government to agree to making Great Britain an enormous energy-draining battery to power the servers that spread unregulated lies about Europe anyway, whose liberal democracy Trump openly declared this month that he intends to destroy? Here’s $40bn, Mr Starmer. Now open the oven and stick your head in. Trump’s high-profile attempt to discredit British news providers goes hand in hand with the ongoing churn of social media accounts, many of which are just now unstaffed AI bots running helpfully from Russian addresses, mangling out unsubstantiated far-right propaganda designed to destabilise European democracies on now-unregulated American platforms. I’ve told the following story so many times even I am sick of it, and I love mind-numbing repetition: a racist auntie shared with me some Facebook flotsam in the form of an essay by an academic, explaining why Muslims are subhuman. I pointed out to her that neither the academic, nor the academic institution he belonged to, actually existed. “Yes,” she said, “but I still think the article makes a lot of good points.” This abject stupidity, combined with hi-tech nuclear-powered propaganda, is what democracy is up against. And Starmer is sleepwalking into European liberal democracy’s online accelerated death spiral, like Billy Blackberry ™ ® from the Munch Bunch ™ ® happily lowering himself into a smoothie maker and thinking it’s a tiny foam-filled jacuzzi specially designed for anthropomorphised fruit-men. Logically, Downing Street should turn itself into a massive content factory, flooding the internet with enough true stories about whatever positive news stories it can find, presented with enough wit and clarity to make them massively shareable, to counteract Musk and Putin’s propaganda. But the problem is Downing Street’s idea of working the internet is a TikTok clip of Keir Starmer standing near a tree. We’re doomed.
This is Steward Lee's latest, on Trump's war against the media, and in this case the BBC. There are various links throughout it, so I am splitting it into 2 parts in the hope that it doesn't go into moderation.
Part 1
Stewart Lee: Trump’s BBC lawsuit isn’t about money. It’s about destroying a news providerThe White House’s dead-eyed shark has monetised his presidency so well that he can pay whatever it costs to discredit institutions that may threaten him.
Donald Trump is taking legal action against the BBC for defamation. Apparently the adjudicated sex offender and pussy-grabbing serial liar still has a reputation that can be damaged. Even if all the president of the United States had ever done was that weird hand dance to Village People’s YMCA and his ill-judged playground impression of the disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, it’s doubtful his reputation would have far to fall, but here goes. In other news, you can say what you like about Fred West but don’t criticise his patio-laying skills, which were exemplary. There is now a terrible risk that, should Trump win the case, the BBC’s assets will be forfeited to him. This means he may own the Doctor Who franchise, and thus the Tardis technology itself, allowing Trump to turn back time in Britain on behalf of Nigel Farage, and return us to a homogenous warm-beer world of whiteness where you can hiss gas noises at Jews and say it was harmless banter if it even happened, which Richard Tice says it didn’t anyway, and he should know, as he keeps a close watch on British affairs from a sunbed in Dubai. It doesn’t matter how much the improbable legal action costs Trump, whose pockets are bottomless, especially since he worked out how to monetise almost every aspect of the presidency. You can even buy a Donald Trump cologne for men called Fight Fight Fight, after the phrase the president cried out after surviving the near-fatal attack on his right ear. I’m bringing out a Donald Trump scent for the ladies. It’s called Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Off Donald Trump’s Unwanted Sexual Advances. Sniff the Trump scent hard enough and it may even erase the memory of the president’s penis, which, according to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, looks like “the mushroom character in Mario Kart”, and is rumoured to have been the inspiration for the Can song Mushroom, after the group’s vocalist, Damo Suzuki, shared a urinal trough with the 25-year-old Trump in a Manhattan nightclub in 1971. Trump’s legal action against the BBC is worth it whatever it costs, because it allows him to spend however long the case drags on for repeating claims about the unreliability of journalists, specifically the BBC. This gradual process of erosion of public trust in news providers will benefit Trump enormously should, for example, anyone ever write scathingly about his monetisation of the presidency. Cheap at half the price! Is it possible that the death of accurate news reporting is just a side-effect of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and of dark forces trying to make sure whatever happened on Paedophile Island stays on Paedophile Island? And who decided to name it that anyway? It’s like Tracey Island but instead of being full of futuristic space-copter Thunderbirds saving lives, there’s just loads of middle-aged billionaires in toupees and Speedos leering at things. Trump’s instinctive attempts to create smokescreens for his corruption don’t even have to make any sense. The son of film-maker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle was charged with their murder last Sunday. Less than 24 hours later Trump took to social media to say that Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” (capitals the president’s own) as if some vengeful Maga-supporting deity had used the Reiners’ killer as his own instrument of justice. Did Charlie Kirk, a kind of saint who only wanted to spread love and kindness to all humanity, take a bullet in the face for this? And yet Keir Starmer still seems to think he can do business with this dead-eyed great white shark of a man. He’s going to need a bigger boat.
Obvs I can't vote, but I agree with both cleek and wonkie.
First and foremost, the Dems need someone who is young-ish, charismatic, and a good communicator, and then whoever that is needs to hammer on the idea that the middle class needs saving and expanding, and that tax cuts have not done the job for that. They need to run on restoring dignity and affordability to working people and reducing the influence of corporations and donors over elected officials
nous is spot on with this, and it looks like a perfect description of Buttigieg. Too bad that being gay is almost certainly as big an electoral disadvantage as being female or black.
I'm with Cleek. I don't vote on policy except in the very broad sense that Democrats try to devise policies to solve problems and Republicans don't.
I vote for whoever wins the primary. During the primary I tend toward whoever seems the most authentic, the best public speaker, and the least likely to do something stupid during the campaign, and the one who isn't being negatively stereotyped by the msm. Those are some of the factors that contribute to election chances.
My objection to Newsome is that the msm will collaborate with the Republicans to promote a negative stereotype of him and that will significantly impair his chances.
My objections to HRC were: she started out pre-slimed by Republican slander with a 50% negative rating and had a history of stupid decisions (Iraq and her campaign decisions during the primary race with Obama).
I didn't like Bernie, but he seemed less likely to lose the election to Trump.
I thought Harris would lose because we live in a society that is pretty misogynistic and has a wide and deep disrespect for Black women.
Right now my preferred choice is Pritzker, but that's tentative. I also like Buttigieg, also tentative. FWIW.
i guess what i'm saying is: right now, anyway, i don't care about policy details; i don't care about ideological purity; i don't care about authenticity or ambition. none of that matters to me because time has taught me that my preferences are irrelevant.
i really don't need to validate my specific policy ideals. they'll never get implemented anyway.
what matters is what the general public wants.what really matters is stopping The Party of Trump. so, any Democrat will do.
The challenge will be for such a person to get thru the primaries. Those tend to have a far higher concentration of, for lack of a better term, activists -- people who do care, often passionately, about policy. At least some policies.
Convincing primary voters that "someone who can win a general election" should be a necessary criteria (not sufficient, but necessary) will be a non-trivial task. Not least because they, too, tend to live in an information bubble populated by others who care about policy.
IMO, the person the Dems need is the one who grabs the attention of that huge mass of people whose political outlooks are completely alien to those of us who think we know something about politics.
cycle after cycle we spend a year debating the number of angels on the head of each of the candidates' pins. and then when the elections happen, the mass of voters go and pick the person who discredits our scholastic philosophies.
so, my vote is for the person who can win for the Dems. and i am 100% sure my own actual criteria are 100% irrelevant.
Everyone says they vote for whoever they think is “better on the issues” but how many people have any idea what policies a candidate is committed to on those issues?
to a good first approximation, zero.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend music thread #08 How do you get to Carnagie Hall?”
Wow - Christ indeed
"
check out the list of other videos from that channel.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFallOfNations
RUSSIA JUST KILLED ITSELF
CHINA IS FALLING APART
GREENLAND DESTROYS RUSSIA
DEATH BY VODKA
THE DEATH OF RUSSIA
RUSSIA IS GOING DOWN
PUTIN IS DONE
BLACK DAY FOR PUTIN
END OF ALASKA
END OF NORTH KOREA
IMMIGRATION KILLED CANADA
christ
"
The opening of Charles' video
While the West drowned in its own diversity, Japan watched… and remembered who it was.
Not with panic. Not with shame.
But with the cold, ancient clarity of a country that knows what it's willing to die for.
In a world that celebrates mass immigration — Japan says no.
It is AI generated (the "Not with panic. Not with shame." is a tell) and it is astonishing that not one of the videos discusses the shitshow that the US is operating currently. It's bullshit clickbait.
"
Since the topic is Japan-related, here's a video on Japan's declining population numbers and its resistance to immigration. The video is a bit lengthy and overwrought, but it addresses the demographic problems Japan is facing, such as a death rate that is approximately double the birth rate.
"This video explores Japan's unique stance on immigration, contrasting it with global trends and examining the nation's internal challenges. We look at the severe Japanese population decline and the resulting aging population, which are central to current societal pressures. Learn how Japan's birth rate decline and shifting demographics are influencing its politics and future direction amidst global issues."
Japan’s Clash With ISLAM Is Escalating — And the Nation Is Saying “NO MORE”
On “Author, author?”
This would not be the first time Trump (or assorted other RW powers) drop a case as soon as it becomes clear how much discovery will reveal. Eg, the Fox News Network paid three-quarters of a billion dollars rather than let what Dominion had from discovery go public.
On “The Wiles Interview”
That's my perception of Buttigeig.
On “Weekend Music Thread music thread #09 In Russia, Christmas music sings you!”
Actually, it is still around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandrov_Ensemble
It had to be reformed in 2016, but that was after 63 members were killed in a plane crash.
On “The Wiles Interview”
Re: the Dean Scream: The tendency of journalists to mistake their herd instinct for repeating superficialities as inspired insights and then repeat their bullshit ad nauseum has a serious effect on election outcomes. It seems to happen more to Dems than Republicans. I don't think it is a conscious act on the part of big media. I think it is mediocre people who are way too high on their own supply, have no insights, live in a bubble, and like to sneer. The don't do this to Republicans because they like to pretend to not be biased.
Unfair and unprofessional as this bullshit may be, it still has an effect. Dems get slapped with these stupid labels and the labels become truths with the low info voters which is most of them, given that so many big media journalists can't be bothered to do their jobs.
So that's why as a primary voter I try to figure out which Dem will trigger one of those mindless collective sneer fests from the msm. Newsome will. It's guaranteed. I also try to see who is best at playing the media, speaking past the media and has the ability to define themselves clearly.
"
I like Buttigieg. I like Booker a lot as well.
I don't think that Buttigieg would be a liability. The one thing I do think is that pretty much any candidate is going to be chancy and could well lose because the media is going to lean into the sports model of reporting and focus on the drama rather than on the substance. If Buttigieg did end up losing because something he did, or something about him blew up into a negative, then I'm certain that half of the pundits would have already half-written post-election analyses arguing that his gayness was just too big a feature for swing voters to get past, and they'd blame the loss on "activists" running the Dems. And then it would be a generation before the donors would have the courage to support any LGBTQ+ candidate for national office again.
Same way I don't think Harris will ever be given another chance at the presidency. Doesn't matter that she came damn close carrying a lot of baggage that had been forced upon her by the circumstances.
Meanwhile, given where we are right now in our politics, it's hard to even fathom how The Dean Scream was enough to sink a candidacy. Really? That? What a strange moment in time.
On “Author, author?”
Trump's suit against the BBC looks like turning into an own goal. The BBC has filed discovery motions demanding Trump disclosure his taxes for the last decade or more (to substantiate, or not, his claims of financial harm), his medical records (to substantiate or not his claims of other kinds of harm). All that information he has been desperately trying to keep concealed.
Oops.
"
Well, he does seem to be a steward of sorts.
On “The Wiles Interview”
nous is spot on with this, and it looks like a perfect description of Buttigieg. Too bad that being gay is almost certainly as big an electoral disadvantage as being female or black.
A decade or two ago, it was probably a worse handicap. But the country has changed. Not as much as one might hope, but substantially nonetheless.
Legalizing gay marriage looks (from where I sit anyway) to have brought a lot of gays out of the closet. With the result that a lot of people discovered that their friends and relatives included gay people. And the heavens did not fall. Buttigieg, himself, took things further. High profile (thanks to his Presidential run), "young-ish, charismatic, and a good communicator" -- and not particularly scary; not hitting any of the primary bigotry hot buttons.
You can argue that the country still isn't ready. But the country wasn't ready for a black President either. Obama won anyway. The bigots predictably freaked out, but he won anyway. Twice. I could see Buttigieg doing the same.
On “Weekend Music Thread music thread #09 In Russia, Christmas music sings you!”
I observe that it's the Soviet/Red Army Chorus. Not a Russian Army Chorus (assuming there even is one these days).
Putin may dream of restoring the supposed glory of the Soviet Union. But his vision doesn't seem to extend beyond territory and military power. The idea that anything else might matter seems to be outside his comprehension. Economic welfare for the people? Anything resembling culture? Just no.
On “The Wiles Interview”
"I suspect that many of those low-engagement voters don’t know themselves what they are going to go for, so it’s a lot of guesswork. Most of the primary voters seem to have strong preferences and too much faith in the power of reason."
I think that's a real problem. I also think that electability IS an factor but we need to remember that elections are based on a lot of voters who think and feel in ways that we, the primary voters, don't understand very well which makes it hard to know what will make them jump one way or another.
Republicans nearly always vote Republican.
There is a growing population of independents. They are a grab bag of people who arrived at independent from different directions and for different reasons.
There are infrequent voters who come out for charisma or because there is a really visceral issue for them at stake.
There are one issue voters who either vote for the candidate who represents their issue or don't vote at all.
Democrats nearly always vote for Democrats.
So what we are really fighting for is the votes of the indies and infrequent voters--the people Dem primary activists are least likely to understand.
"
What this country needs is an antiTrump. That means a Democrat who is as big and boisterous an asshole as He, Trump (for "electability") but who is ruthless about deMAGAfication (a straightforward "policy") instead of milquetoast nuance. Someone who demonizes billionaires (a smaller class than trans people, let alone immigrants) and is not afraid to call MAGAts stupid. Someone who has yet to appear, alas.
I'm not kidding. For many years, I have been pointing out that "electability" is a crock. We nominated Kerry in 2004 because he was more "electable" than Dean. We nominated Obama in 2008, but not because he was The Electable One. We nominated Clinton in 2016 partly because Sanders was "unelectable". Can anybody claim with a straight face that "electability" in any but a post hoc sense was He, Trump's selling point to the GOP?
"Electability. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
--TP
"
wj - The challenge will be for such a person to get thru the primaries. Those tend to have a far higher concentration of, for lack of a better term, activists — people who do care, often passionately, about policy. At least some policies.
Convincing primary voters that “someone who can win a general election” should be a necessary criteria (not sufficient, but necessary) will be a non-trivial task. Not least because they, too, tend to live in an information bubble populated by others who care about policy.
We have a real structural problem with the primaries in that the voters who need to be brought on board often don't pay any attention to the election until after the primaries are done, leaving the primary voters and the donors to pick. None of the Dem coalitions in the primary seem to have any sense of what those people are looking for. I suspect that many of those low-engagement voters don't know themselves what they are going to go for, so it's a lot of guesswork. Most of the primary voters seem to have strong preferences and too much faith in the power of reason.
I think primaries are the place where ranked voting actually makes the most sense, in that ranked voting would not just take candidate support into account, but would also give a sense of crossover appeal. And if the primaries were done in two or three rounds it would also give the party a chance to see which candidates were gaining and which were losing support over time, and let the candidates adjust their approaches to some actual feedback.
On “Author, author?”
Stewart Lee!
"
Part 2
Predictably, the reliably unreliable Trump has already pulled the plug on the pathetically optimistic Starmer’s elephant-trumpeted $40bn Tech Prosperity Deal, as part of his attempts to ensure access to the soggy brains of ChatGPT-ravaged Europeans for his acquiescent social media propaganda platforms, all those royal breakfasts wasted. What lemming-like impulse compelled the Labour government to agree to making Great Britain an enormous energy-draining battery to power the servers that spread unregulated lies about Europe anyway, whose liberal democracy Trump openly declared this month that he intends to destroy? Here’s $40bn, Mr Starmer. Now open the oven and stick your head in.
Trump’s high-profile attempt to discredit British news providers goes hand in hand with the ongoing churn of social media accounts, many of which are just now unstaffed AI bots running helpfully from Russian addresses, mangling out unsubstantiated far-right propaganda designed to destabilise European democracies on now-unregulated American platforms. I’ve told the following story so many times even I am sick of it, and I love mind-numbing repetition: a racist auntie shared with me some Facebook flotsam in the form of an essay by an academic, explaining why Muslims are subhuman. I pointed out to her that neither the academic, nor the academic institution he belonged to, actually existed. “Yes,” she said, “but I still think the article makes a lot of good points.”
This abject stupidity, combined with hi-tech nuclear-powered propaganda, is what democracy is up against. And Starmer is sleepwalking into European liberal democracy’s online accelerated death spiral, like Billy Blackberry ™ ® from the Munch Bunch ™ ® happily lowering himself into a smoothie maker and thinking it’s a tiny foam-filled jacuzzi specially designed for anthropomorphised fruit-men.
Logically, Downing Street should turn itself into a massive content factory, flooding the internet with enough true stories about whatever positive news stories it can find, presented with enough wit and clarity to make them massively shareable, to counteract Musk and Putin’s propaganda. But the problem is Downing Street’s idea of working the internet is a TikTok clip of Keir Starmer standing near a tree. We’re doomed.
"
This is Steward Lee's latest, on Trump's war against the media, and in this case the BBC. There are various links throughout it, so I am splitting it into 2 parts in the hope that it doesn't go into moderation.
Part 1
Stewart Lee: Trump’s BBC lawsuit isn’t about money. It’s about destroying a news providerThe White House’s dead-eyed shark has monetised his presidency so well that he can pay whatever it costs to discredit institutions that may threaten him.
Donald Trump is taking legal action against the BBC for defamation. Apparently the adjudicated sex offender and pussy-grabbing serial liar still has a reputation that can be damaged. Even if all the president of the United States had ever done was that weird hand dance to Village People’s YMCA and his ill-judged playground impression of the disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, it’s doubtful his reputation would have far to fall, but here goes. In other news, you can say what you like about Fred West but don’t criticise his patio-laying skills, which were exemplary.
There is now a terrible risk that, should Trump win the case, the BBC’s assets will be forfeited to him. This means he may own the Doctor Who franchise, and thus the Tardis technology itself, allowing Trump to turn back time in Britain on behalf of Nigel Farage, and return us to a homogenous warm-beer world of whiteness where you can hiss gas noises at Jews and say it was harmless banter if it even happened, which Richard Tice says it didn’t anyway, and he should know, as he keeps a close watch on British affairs from a sunbed in Dubai.
It doesn’t matter how much the improbable legal action costs Trump, whose pockets are bottomless, especially since he worked out how to monetise almost every aspect of the presidency. You can even buy a Donald Trump cologne for men called Fight Fight Fight, after the phrase the president cried out after surviving the near-fatal attack on his right ear. I’m bringing out a Donald Trump scent for the ladies. It’s called Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Off Donald Trump’s Unwanted Sexual Advances.
Sniff the Trump scent hard enough and it may even erase the memory of the president’s penis, which, according to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, looks like “the mushroom character in Mario Kart”, and is rumoured to have been the inspiration for the Can song Mushroom, after the group’s vocalist, Damo Suzuki, shared a urinal trough with the 25-year-old Trump in a Manhattan nightclub in 1971.
Trump’s legal action against the BBC is worth it whatever it costs, because it allows him to spend however long the case drags on for repeating claims about the unreliability of journalists, specifically the BBC. This gradual process of erosion of public trust in news providers will benefit Trump enormously should, for example, anyone ever write scathingly about his monetisation of the presidency. Cheap at half the price!
Is it possible that the death of accurate news reporting is just a side-effect of the Jeffrey Epstein case, and of dark forces trying to make sure whatever happened on Paedophile Island stays on Paedophile Island? And who decided to name it that anyway? It’s like Tracey Island but instead of being full of futuristic space-copter Thunderbirds saving lives, there’s just loads of middle-aged billionaires in toupees and Speedos leering at things.
Trump’s instinctive attempts to create smokescreens for his corruption don’t even have to make any sense. The son of film-maker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle was charged with their murder last Sunday. Less than 24 hours later Trump took to social media to say that Reiner died “due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” (capitals the president’s own) as if some vengeful Maga-supporting deity had used the Reiners’ killer as his own instrument of justice. Did Charlie Kirk, a kind of saint who only wanted to spread love and kindness to all humanity, take a bullet in the face for this? And yet Keir Starmer still seems to think he can do business with this dead-eyed great white shark of a man. He’s going to need a bigger boat.
On “The Wiles Interview”
Obvs I can't vote, but I agree with both cleek and wonkie.
First and foremost, the Dems need someone who is young-ish, charismatic, and a good communicator, and then whoever that is needs to hammer on the idea that the middle class needs saving and expanding, and that tax cuts have not done the job for that. They need to run on restoring dignity and affordability to working people and reducing the influence of corporations and donors over elected officials
nous is spot on with this, and it looks like a perfect description of Buttigieg. Too bad that being gay is almost certainly as big an electoral disadvantage as being female or black.
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I'm with Cleek. I don't vote on policy except in the very broad sense that Democrats try to devise policies to solve problems and Republicans don't.
I vote for whoever wins the primary. During the primary I tend toward whoever seems the most authentic, the best public speaker, and the least likely to do something stupid during the campaign, and the one who isn't being negatively stereotyped by the msm. Those are some of the factors that contribute to election chances.
My objection to Newsome is that the msm will collaborate with the Republicans to promote a negative stereotype of him and that will significantly impair his chances.
My objections to HRC were: she started out pre-slimed by Republican slander with a 50% negative rating and had a history of stupid decisions (Iraq and her campaign decisions during the primary race with Obama).
I didn't like Bernie, but he seemed less likely to lose the election to Trump.
I thought Harris would lose because we live in a society that is pretty misogynistic and has a wide and deep disrespect for Black women.
Right now my preferred choice is Pritzker, but that's tentative. I also like Buttigieg, also tentative. FWIW.
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i guess what i'm saying is: right now, anyway, i don't care about policy details; i don't care about ideological purity; i don't care about authenticity or ambition. none of that matters to me because time has taught me that my preferences are irrelevant.
i really don't need to validate my specific policy ideals. they'll never get implemented anyway.
what matters is what the general public wants.what really matters is stopping The Party of Trump. so, any Democrat will do.
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The challenge will be for such a person to get thru the primaries. Those tend to have a far higher concentration of, for lack of a better term, activists -- people who do care, often passionately, about policy. At least some policies.
Convincing primary voters that "someone who can win a general election" should be a necessary criteria (not sufficient, but necessary) will be a non-trivial task. Not least because they, too, tend to live in an information bubble populated by others who care about policy.
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IMO, the person the Dems need is the one who grabs the attention of that huge mass of people whose political outlooks are completely alien to those of us who think we know something about politics.
cycle after cycle we spend a year debating the number of angels on the head of each of the candidates' pins. and then when the elections happen, the mass of voters go and pick the person who discredits our scholastic philosophies.
so, my vote is for the person who can win for the Dems. and i am 100% sure my own actual criteria are 100% irrelevant.
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Everyone says they vote for whoever they think is “better on the issues” but how many people have any idea what policies a candidate is committed to on those issues?
to a good first approximation, zero.
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