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 ...
JohnR says:
"I don't know which is worse; your cowardice or your incompetence!"
Bugboy says:
As children and GOP so often do, they believe their own hype. Too ignorant to realize how transparent they are.
Michael says:
HA, that is awesome!
J. Dryden says:
"How can it be plagiarism if I *would* have said the *exact* same thing anyway?"
BK says:
Cheating is something that makes my blood boil. I'm actually the type of person who ratted out someone cheating on a college test in a 100 level class I was taking.
If you have to cheat in an extremely easy 100 level cultural geography class are you cut out for the university setting?
Oregon RObot says:
This shit starts at the HS level or earlier. A lot of my students just don't understand that to copy and paste is plagiarism…or, more likely, they do understand and know that most HS teachers are willing to let that shit fly if only to get them out the door. I have a few seniors who might not be graduating because they ran into a teacher who refuses to be insulted like that.
A Cat says:
Awesome!
I imagine there is a way via HTML to embed "This was plagiarized." into anything so that it doesn't appear in a browser, but when copy-pasted will show up.
Humans get themselves into such intriguing situations.
jazzbumpa says:
I might just copy this over to my blog . . .
Christina says:
We had one this semester. Kid copied everything out on his hand. I know, how Old School, right? Prof dragged the kid to the copy machine…not literally dragged but walked him with all respect and not in any way harming the child…where was I? Oh, right…gently brought the child to the copy machine and copied his hand.
grendelkhan says:
I suppose that if they weren't muddleheaded cheesewits, they wouldn't be plagiarizing in the first place.
Mike says:
Please tell me the paper had a comments section.
blogenfreude says:
This kid has a bright future at the RNC.
Mike Q says:
Wow. It shocks me that people actually do that. I imagine his argument was something along the lines of:
"Yo bro, listen, I wanted to include pictures, bro and Word screwed up somewhere. bro."
"I at least deserve an A-"
Unbelievable.
Shane says:
Mike….lol about the comments section. I am actually hoping to see that next year now.
Sour Kraut says:
And that young man's name was…Ben Domenech. And now you know the rest of the story.
peggy says:
I've seen that in high school too–only this kid copy/pasted Wikipedia.
Me: "Student, why are there a bunch of blue underlined words in your paper?"
Him: "Uh. I… thought it looked cool?"
FAIL.
Kati says:
I hope he copied it from wikipedia.
dadanarchist says:
That's pretty good.
I had a student copy directly out of the textbook this semester. I almost didn't believe it at first.
Hah-Man says:
Jeez. He didn't have the foresight to go over it and remove the tags prior to printing? Sloppy. A true dodge is often harder to pull off than just doing the work legitimately.