The photos of the "crowds" at the tank parade remind me of when Bill Hicks would come on stage in an almost-empty club, scan the room slowly, and announce "I've had more people in bed than this" ...
When the president sends a cabinet member on TV to announce "We are using the military to liberate an American city from its elected leaders," where do you go from there. What is left to say. The idea of that being anything short of a near-universal "Wait, what the fuck is going on" moment proves how far we've backslid.
This is from 2022 but it was absolutely right. The practiced buffoonery of Trump 1, all the "just kiddings" and "seriously but not literallys" absolutely succeeded in desensitizing people who are hardly paying any attention to the harder stuff they always intended to do next. ...
The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being "tough on immigration" is that the modal American's position on the issue is "Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones," and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff horrifies some of the same people who cheered when Trump promised to do it. There are true sociopaths who love this, but "No, I meant only the BAD immigrants! Not my coworker/friend/neighbor!" is as likely a reaction as enthusiasm. You cannot do immigration policy that satisfies these people because what they want is nonsensical.
So by the time center-left parties fully commit to chasing the far right by "getting tough" on immigration, the backlash has already begun to build and they walk right into it. "I thought you people wanted this!" No, they want something impossible and convinced themselves they'd could have it - the "eat whatever you want AND lose weight!" of immigration policies.
It is hard to grasp but large masses of Americans are both racist/xenophobic AND not racist/xenophobic enough to applaud what Trump is doing. It's goldilocks shit, they want a level of racism/xenophobia calibrated exactly to their personal preferences, and you just can't make that policy. Don't try. ...
AP: Trump extends olive branch, invites Musk to White House cellar to taste some brand new amontillado ...
Hoarsedick says:
Okay, I'll go first. I thought this was definitely Moore's best film. Granted, I was already aware of about 90% of the information, but the cinematic presentation and the fact that it was (more or less) possessed of some continuity was gratifying in the sense that most of America is painfully unaware of just how big an arrogant scumbag George Bush is.
I would have liked to see more about Cheney. I was surprised that there was little (no?) mention of the fact that the chickenhawks (less Rumsfeld) had other things to do circa Viet Nam.
I would have to say that my favorite part was the banquet at which Bush was commenting on his base. The fucking gall of that sonofabitch. I wish every person in this country that earned less than, say, 200,000 a year could see that. It's just the epitome of who the cock is. A rich, undeservedly privileged (not that I can think of what one would have to do to earn the 'privilege' of being patty-caked through life as a golden boy/girl who is painfully unaware of what mendacious puke they are), smug, ignorant, well, you get the point.
Already the the reactinaries, Christian fascists, oligarchs, mouthpieces, and unfortunate millions that listen to the aforementioned out of unintentional inability to discern the divisions within the conservative American right (such that they actually believe that, for example, John McCain and Ahnold are more or less 'part of the team' with demagogues like Limbaugh, Robertson, or Cong. Mark Souter (Amerikkkan Nazionale Sozialistichen Partei, IN) have begun the crusade to make sure that, like themselves, no one else sees the seiditious "Fahrenheit…"
They will no doubt spend the next four months ensuring that anyone jejeune enough to listen 'understands' that nothing that Michael Moore says can possibly be true. Rest assured, I will bathe in the hot, steaming pile of irony at these individuals (who were on board to go kill brown people in Iraq the day before the Bush administration began their campaign of insinuation) who will hammer away at the bits of Moore's film's insinuations. The primary difference that I see between MM's spinnish implications of greedy corporate corruption at taxpayer expense and the (as yet) moot claims that a tinhorn dictator governing a nation of impoverished sheep posed an imminent threat to the most powerful nation on Earth is this: Moore's can only be verified by getting information from the haves who currently control the most secretive govt. ever of said hegemon, whereas the Buzhis claims can only be verifed by their release of information from their most secretive of any govt. of said 800 lb. gorilla. Hmmm… okay, maybe the WMDs we gave Hussein are in Syria. Maybe… but frankly, I don't know, so for now I'll just pop some more FoxNewsertainment Soma and check out the new Emperor's fall lineup…
Oh yeah, the last hunk of the film about the soljas rings pretty true from my experience. The American military is a helluva' stew of all kinds of people, with a larger dose of alcoholism, domestic violence, racism (mostly by and against blacks and whites), and obliviousness to the reality that it is predominately a breeding ground of conservativism of the ilk mentioned before (Cf. "I'm a republican." "Why?" "Oh, I don't know, it just feels good."
A free $1 American bill for anyone that catches me at the bar and can tell me the ironicalness in the previous exchange.