I liked John Stewart's recent bit on this. He showed Biden talking super slow and un focused, and spent 5 minutes ripping on him. When you think Biden is thoroughly trashed he then shows a clip of trump saying "you can pour water on magnets to end them." And suddenly you remember who the competition is.
Here's the problem I don't want to play the dementia olympics for the president...
The fact that DNC insists that Biden is the only one they have that can beat trump should scare the shit out of you. That basically guarantees an authoritarian in the next 8 years because the republicans have a deep back bench of ghouls to replace trump when he dies.
And I'm just saying if trump wins and we can't defeat his geriatric thug version of fascism, then America will just fall to the next charismatic fascist wanna be that stumbles by.
DNC should just pick Jon Stewart or Tom Hanks or somebody. The previous president demonstrated that there are no qualifications beyond people liking you.
People act like he was a warning sign for why unqualified people shouldn't be president, but I kinda took it the other way around. If Trump, who is both incomprehensibly stupid and actively malicious, trying to hurt the country as much as he could, could manage to have his damage so limited, even with Republicans enabling him all over the place, then it stands to reason that anyone who is genuinely acting in good faith and wants to do the job well can manage it pretty okay, especially if they're ready to listen to available experts on everything.
How would the dems running someone else mean the repubs be suddenly decent?
The idea of a second trump term scares me.
As it should, I'm saying the republicans will not get better, they've got a roster of worse already in fact.
That the democrats are so convinced that Biden is the only one from their party who can beat trump, is a terrifying, because I don't know what charismatic demon the republicans are going to run next, but if Biden is the best they've got we're fucked.
The fact that the American system can't rid itself of a virus as decrepit and criminal as trump is a warning that whoever replaces him will waltz in without hassle...
On the (admittedly dim) bright side, there does seem to be something genuinely unique about Trump. I think at least part of it is that he was in everyone's living room for years, lording over celebrities on The Apprentice. There's already quite a bit of hero worship built into the American psyche regarding celebrities, and he pretty well set himself up as a celebeity among celebrities with that show. Combine that with him telling everyone it's ok to embrace that darkness and hate inside everyone else tells them to be ashamed of, and its a powerful combo. The Republicans have mastered the art of that same hate, but everyone but Trump seems to miss the mark.
The irony of them being so hateful that LGBTQ feel comfortable coming out now while simultaneously loving this feeling of being able to show off the real them would almost be funny if it weren't so harmful.
America didn't learn from Raygun's 8 years of 'trickle-down' hilarity. 'Great communicator' of what? Old celebrites might be popular, and make useful PR figureheads (after all, they're experts at play-acting). But (surprise!) usually make crappy leaders out here in the (more real) world.
I mean the reason they're so certain Biden is their best bet is the incumbent effect, which is REALLY HARD to beat. I think AOC is like the main example of someone being able to beat a big wig incumbent and she had some pretty extraordinary circumstances and personal talent to make that happen.
I'm just crossing my fingers that Whitmer goes for it next time because she seems like she's got a lot of credential to her portfolio already.
I get the incumbent effect, but it only goes so far... Much like the "well for all his faults, to any sane person he's clearly better than his opponent" effect.
I hope the democrats get their shit figured out and have someone they can push, but history shows they are bunglers...
I think most of us -are- pretty terrified already, and we can debate about what should be all day, but it won't change what's happening right now.
Why don't we debate what -should be- next year, and then be active about making it happen before we find ourselves in this position again in 4 years?
If America can't withstand the thuggish authoritarian incompetence of what trump promises, then it is only a waiting game to our inevitable fall to fascism.
Burying our heads in the sand an hoping for the best won't make that inevitable future any less inevitable...
I hope Biden wins, but we're just swirling the drain, we can make it take longer but we're falling in that dark hole.
Wasn't Palpatine a perfectly normal age for a human politician? I mean, he ate his own Force Lightning to the face and only came out looking like a melted wax statue.
Whereas Yoda being three days older than dirt legitimately did cause problems... Among them, Palpatine.
He would've been relatively normal aged in episode 3 but by the time of Yoda's death he was geriatric.
Also pretty sure his "deformation" was due to his corruption from the dark side and he simply hid it using sith powers and used the force lightning thing as a ploy to help make him seem like a victim
If that is legit cannon and not a retcon they wrote it as if it were a retcon. Which is equally dum.
It follows the extended universe which used to be canon before Disney bought the franchise.
In the original canon the dark side corrupts everything it touches. The more you use the dark side the more it corrupts you physically. Most dark side users were deformed in some way (think the yellow eyes) but palpatine learned a way to hide that disfiguration from his master plagueis.
It's all actually explained relatively well in the extended universe.
Basically Lucas did stupid shit, nerds who took it way more serious then him fixed it in books...then Disney threw away the books.
I stand by what I say. They could have added that detail very easily in the prequels and would have been great cover for Palpatine.
I know nothing about extended star wars lore but figured his appearance was from the dark side. Maybe it was covered or heavily alluded to in the movies? It's been a while
I agree honestly. But the same could be said about a lot of things in movies Star Wars included.
Also Yoda dies like 3 days after this. And Palpatine lives for 30 more years. Somehow.
And then 30 years after that he came back as a ghost of himself. Sound in mind and uh... force ghost body... too. Dude was able to simultaneously pilot an entire fleet of Star Destroyers with his background thoughts.
Honestly, I'm warming to the whole Darth Sidious for President thing. He might be my dark horse third party favorite.
The Jedi... the Sith... you don't get it, do you? To the galaxy, they're the same thing; just men and women with too much power, squabbling over religion, while the rest of us burn. At least the Sith are honest about what they're killing for. The Jedi are pacifists... except in times of war. They're teachers... except when it comes to telling their students the truth. And when they save you, it's only so you can suffer more.
Strangely, the message of this quote sorta fits in USA’s politics today.
EDIT: more gooder english
at least the Sith are honest I mean, no, the MFers lie to everyone about everything because others are just means to an end so Sith manipulate others to get the desired reaction/outcome. Lie, truth, doesn't matter. Say whatever gets you more power.
And even if Sith were honest about why they wanted to kill you, they are still trying to kill you.
It's intentionally weak logic. You could flip it on its head by arguing that at least the Jedi are trying to help you dispute their flaws.
Atton Rand, the character that says this in KotOR2, is a perfect example of the problematic nature of this both sides view. Yes, the Jedi were not perfect and their flaws ultimately led to incredible suffering and the collapse of the Republic along the way. But the Sith were actively trying to collapse the republic and cause suffering. The Sith created a facist state that (if it had been successful) would have created persistent suffering indefinitely, with no hope or escape. No one thinks Luke is the bad guy form overthrowing the Empire and restoring the Jedi because the empire was utterly evil.
Like Atton Rand (depending on the path chosen), a reasonable person should realise that it is better to work with a flawed agent/system trying to do good, than to allow those flaws to cause ambivilance toward both the flawed agent/system and an obviously evil one.
Atton Rand (who's name was chosen for its similarity to "atone" as in atonement) can change from this view and end up rebuilding the Jedi order (if you play light side). Likewise, the correct answer to the "both sides" argument is to throw off ambivlance and work to fix the broken but beneficent system while fighting evil. The Democrats in the US, and left-center liberals in other countries, have flaws. Fight to fix them. Don't both sides and allow absolute evil to eliminate the flawed good.
And even if Sith were honest about why they wanted to kill you, they are still trying to kill you.
Okay, so Yoda sent me to pick up a 100,000 clone troopers and said "Don't worry about that Order 66 thing its probably fine".
Yoda is dead, though. Palps is never going to die because Disney has an unlimited supply of cocaine for their braindead writers.
It's only because American Democracy is dead and burried that there are no other choices than these two geriatics.
Healthy and trully Democratic systems naturally respond to a situation such as this by having more choices.
... which many countries don't have, because 'First Past the Post' systems naturally lead to only 2 viable choices.
They'll also be an election coming up soon in the UK - I can choose between 'Sensible Conservative' or the currently ruling 'Lunatic Conservative', but anything else would be a wasted vote.
Somewhere between -'anything else is a wasted vote' and 'leftists who refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils are enabling fascism' - is political leverage to push for better policy.
That leverage doesn't exist when the majority of Americans have an IQ under 95.
Edit: in case the downvoters think i'm just being crass and elitist, the US has a relatively lower IQ score than the rest of the developed world and the average global IQ by definition is 100. I bring up cognitive intelligence scores as a means of illustrating that your average voter in the US doesn't or can't comprehend warring political ideologies and the implications a 2nd Trump presidency will have, as illustrated by working class folks continually voting R.
You cheapen and undermine your argument when you start talking about IQ like that, it conflates some arbitrary measure of intelligence with politics and ideology which has nothing to do with intelligence. Plenty of people who are absurdly booksmart with super high IQs are complete rightwing nutjobs or believe in utterly ridiculous bullshit conspiracy theories that drive their politics.
The cancer is in our cultural belief systems (and alarming lack of empathy as a grounding value) not our brains.
Republican alaska instituted a four candidate IRV system. Its bonkers that people aren't talking about reforming the US presidential election system to something similar. Not to mention a national initiative system. I know these would require constitutional amendments but it doesn't require an amendment to talk about it.
A constitutional amendment isn't necessary to achieve a substantial part of what's necessary for presidential election reform. States choose how to allocate their electors, and could choose to do so proportionally. At least two states already do this. If even just a few key states allocated electors proportionally, the biggest problems with presidential elections would be addressed, specifically, candidates winning the election despite losing the popular vote.
Allocating electors proportionally is probably the easiest path to more sensible elections because states already control this, but more importantly, it's an easy sell to citizens. Convincing citizens of a state to allocate all electors based on the national popular vote despite how its citizens vote is really difficult - no one wants their electoral power to go to a candidate they don't like. The approach has been to get a group of state to agree.
In contrast, convincing citizens to allocate their state's electors proportionally is fairly easy - no one wants their electoral power to go to a candidate they don't like. Support for that doesn't need multiple states to agree. It can proceed individually, and each time it passes, there's an immediate effect. The most important places would be large swing states. It would probably only take Florida, Ohio and Michigan to prevent any realistic chances of an unpopular candidate winning. But you don't need them per se. You could target Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and a few others. Even if just a few states agree, the impact would be very large.
Oh yeah, I lived in the UK for over a decade, right after having lived in The Netherlands (who have Proportional Vote) for almost a decade, and am well aware of just how horribly rigged the British voting and political system are, especially after Brexit (which I saw first hand, after which I did my own personal Leave of a country I, frankly, see no positive future for)
My own country, Portugal, has it's own rigged system that gives nice 15% boosts to representativeness versus actual votes received, for the 2 major parties, though fortunatly it's not just one seat per electoral circle, so whilst nowhere as Democratic as PV at least there are 8 parties with parliamentary representation, small parties still get half the parliamentarians that their votes would've yielded under PV (unlike in the UK where the Green Party gets 1 million votes in 40 million - so 2.5% of votes - and ends up with 1 seat in 600 - so about 0.15% of seats), and even with the rigging the upcoming elections (next month) do not seem on track to yield a parliamentary majority for any one party.
It’s not an indictment of the American system that the choice is between two geriatric men that unquestionably support weapons exports to a potentially genocidal state because my favorite Disney franchise also has old people in it.
The current American system is that you can protest and mock one for supporting genocidal state. The other will kill you for embarrassing him and his supporters will cheer him on.
In fairness, said Disney Franchise also involved two geriatric men that unquestionably support weapons exports to a potentially genocidal state.
Yoda requisitioned the Clones that would one day assassinate the entire Jedi Order. If that's not a cryptic warning to future Biden Voters, as my man exports another $100B to Israel ultra-nationalists and Ukrainan Cool-Dudes-With-Swastika-Tattoos-We-Swear-Its-Not-Like-Afghanistan-They're-Cool-Bro-Trust-Us... Idk, man. Just don't be surprised if a couple of American office buildings spontaneously explode in another twenty years.
If you want an even deeper cut, consider that the OG Star Wars was a parable for the Vietnam War and the Emperor in this story was liberal Republican Gerald Ford. If you want an even deeper deep cut, don't ask which South Carolina Senator Joe Biden eulogized in 2003. Just try not to think about Yoda doing a tear-drenched wake for Darth Maul.
Literally none of this addresses the "support palpatine instead then" problem.
"Yoda and Biden are bad, actually"? Wow, you're very smart.
Literally none of this addresses the “support palpatine instead then” problem.
If I remember my Star Wars cannon correctly, Palpatine took office precisely because the prior Chancellor lost control of the largest business conglomerate and kicked off a civil war. The Jedi were fully behind Palpatine's ascent to power in Episode One and actively supporting his rule well into the Clone Wars TV series.
“Yoda and Biden are bad, actually”? Wow, you’re very smart.
Reject Obi Wan Ideology. Embrace Ahsoka Tano Thought.
The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, 'Why are we not acting to stop this?' Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench.
America, hate to breake it to you: If you have no choice (and Trump isn't one) your democracy is already dead.
I'm a millennial and I think it has been for most of my life. Ive seen two people become president who didn't win the popular vote- and I long ago became convinced this system can't be fixed. It's working against the poor, for the rich as it was meant to. We need to tear it down and try again, we need drastic change. This said, police abolition and even the barest redistribution of funds from that to address the living conditions that cause crime in this country is one shortcut I fully believe in. Police organizations started as slave patrols and even today primarily criminalize poverty and hurt struggling individuals. They have no duty or obligation to prevent violent crime. Furthermore, in America it's one of the most overbloated areas of federal spending and that money could easily give everyone a higher quality of life instead of being used to turn free-thinking citizenry into free labor and sustain the brutalist temples of inhumane evil called prisons.
It's been dead for a bit, people are just realizing. Which is why they're renewing efforts to disarm regular people.
Palpatine is a stupid bitch. Just wait for him to shoot his dumb ass lightening and then reverse it on him.
HE ALWAYS FALLS FOR IT
biden is not comparable to yoda though.
star wars is an allegory to the vietnam war. the US is the empire.
Star Wars is often "Schrödinger's Political Allegory" - the Empire is British/Roman/German but also American (if Endor = Vietnam, and Jedha = the Middle East), but the Rebels are somehow American too. Whatever side you're on, you can use Star Wars to cast yourself as the good guy, and the other side as the baddies.
I realise that Lucas has said that the ewoks in Return of the Jedi were representations of the North Vietnamese. If you look at Rogue One, though, Saw's men are called terrorists, they use IEDs, it's a desert environment ... so the Rebels are, um, ISIS? Who do we want to win again?
Star Wars has always been too flakey to say Rebels are definitely this, or the the Empire are definitely that. It's popularity, and it's use by people on any part of the political spectrum as a a recruitment tool, depends on the fact that the US is magically both.
mostly because Disney did not understand the origional, and it is not in their interst to paint the US as baddies so it lost the political message
Yoda was blind to the rise of fascism and got overrun by the emperor. He also supported a questionable system that clearly had lots of issues for hundreds of years.
Star Wars isn't an allegory to the Vietnam War. That's just something Lucas said to sound smart. At no point during the plot of the OG trilogy does it draw parallels to any of the real world events in the Vietnam War.
Nah, Lucas confirmed it.
While interviewing Lucas on AMC in 2018, James Cameron said, "The good guys are the rebels. They're using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire. I think we call those guys 'terrorists' today. We call them 'mujahideen.' We call them Al-Qaeda."
Lucas agreed with Cameron, adding, "When I did it, they were Viet Cong." He explained that the Vietnam allegory was front and center in his mind when making the original "Star Wars" in the mid-1970s, as was the American Revolution.
Again, shows you how much Lucas knows about history. The Mujahideen were allied with the US during the Soviet-Afghan war.
All I know is that following this logic, Trump must militarize seagulls:
I mean I agree with this, they are the same, and both choices we have are functionally the same and beholden to capital. and also too old
Now I want to see a deepfake video of Biden saying, “when 900 years old you reach, look as good, you will not” in his normal voice.
I'll settle for someone throwing Trump into a bottomless pit.