9 thoughts on “APPEAL TO OCCAM”

  • democommie says:

    To the list of negatives, you can add (in all likelihood) a list of concessionaires and musicians who got/will get stiffed by the PouterUS campaign staff.

    Oklahoma's governor is an idiot for not at least TRYING to stop the thing from even happening.
    I don't mean that he should have called up the campaign staff and ask them to postpone it or something. He should have had his AG hang enough paper to keep the courts going for a couple of weeks.

  • waspuppet says:

    I’ve been saying for a while that an unquantifiable but surely significant number of voters are going to either vote for Biden or stay home for no deeper reason than they are simply exhausted with Trump. MEMEMEMEME every single day for five years now.

  • Heywood J. says:

    Given the massive hype around this thing, the fact that they could only pull in 6,200 true believers in a +25 state seems like potential doom for Orange Foolius. However many tickets were dispersed, it was a data-grabbing, list-building op to begin with, and that's all garbage now.

    In a broader "cultural" sense though, a big part of Trump's "appeal" to the cultists is that he's a "winner" who gets shit done, a robust he-man who tells it like it is and pushes back on his opponents. They can't deny the reality of what they just saw — a whiny, pathetic old man who literally spent over ten minutes complaining about a wheelchair ramp, and proving he could drink a glass of water. And his billion-dollar campaign "Death Star" just got royally clowned by a bunch of TikTok teens and K-pop fans.

    Hatred and fear are what they thrive on. But mockery and ridicule are his kryptonite, both in the way he always reacts like a pissy teenaged drama queen, and by how it exposes the "he-man" myth for what it really is. The cultists won't switch over to Biden, but they can be discouraged enough to stay home, if enough people just keep pointing and laughing. A couple of well-placed Grampa Simpson memes, and he might find himself on the ropes.

    And it's not like any other red-state governors are going to be lining up to have the snake-oil circus stop in their state, ripping off their public services and generally being way more trouble than they're worth, for a handful of bozos. If the gov of the next proposed site just says no thanks, that's going to be a body blow.

  • Hazy Davy says:

    The bigger point, though, is that there is a ready and willing K-Pop Army, Reddit, whatever….to be called into action for things where action can work.

    Honestly, DOS hashtags like #MAGA or #KAG with K-Pop videos. If there's a hashtag POTUS wants to use, co-opt it.
    He has 3 key strengths:
    – Self-aggrandizement
    – Cheating
    – Viagra-ing his base through just about any communication.

    Any dent folks can make in 1 and 3…

  • Heqit says:

    I think there was real damage done to the Trump campaign by the K-Pop fans and others, and that was to the data mining operation. All the data they thought they'd gotten from this event – names, addresses, high-interest contacts – is all WORTHLESS, and that's a huge blow to a campaign that runs on email and micro-targeting. No one's claiming that the bogus ticket reservations kept the numbers small – that was definitely COVID-19 and Trump's own repellant aspects – but the efforts at undermining their data collection were superb. The kids are all right.

  • BuckyBlue says:

    Despite the fact that the TikTokers didn't stop anyone from going to that rally, and trump has only himself to blame for that, the campaign believed that they were generating insane hype for it. They believed the numbers, and then to have it come back so spectacularly to earth, on live TV, is just, well, awesome. Trump looked like a defeated man when he stepped off Marine1 Saturday night. He doesn't have the grit to get up off the canvas, he'll tweet and whine, but even his own followers seem to have gotten enough of that. The TikTokers did us all a huge service. We'll see what happens in Phoenix, another state with skyrocketing Covid cases.

  • geoff says:

    I think the GEB's campaign got off light, as the very small crowd story has sort of overtaken the slap in the face to african americans/ non- asshole white people of scheduling their '68 Comeback Hate Rally originally a) on Juneteenth (which I assume is a fairly big deal in OK, being right next door to TX) and b) in Tulsa, home almost 99 years ago to the day of the "single worst incident of racial violence in American history" (wikipedia). (I think Native Americans and historians might quibble with that, but we can agree it was very bad.)

    The whole thing was more of a fucking dog megaphone than whistle, and I think that's being overlooked due to its "failure". Actually I'm sure it was very successful in reminding those in the know that the administration is firmly on the side of white supremacy and not at all shy about showing it.

  • democommie says:

    @ geoff:

    Yep.

    Stage managed hot'n'burnin'batshitstoopitKKKrazzepantz will STILL be hot'n'burnin'batshitstoopitKKKrazzepantz.

    I am Trumpligulamygdala, listen to me whine.

  • Inkberrow says:

    This election will now be won on whether Americans of all stripes hew more towards America Good than America Bad, and more against white supremacy than against demonization of whites. COVIS-19 is a neutral element. The philistines at both edges have framed it thusly.

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