President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to rebrand the Pentagon as the “Department of War,” telling reporters in the Oval Office it was a more “appropriate” name given the state of the world.
It’s more honest, and a retvrn to its original name. Time to drop the pretense.
BREAKING NEWS: In an unprecedented move Trump renames DoD to Department of War
I wonder if that would have mollified the libs. My hunch is mostly - maybe? They’d fixate on the exact wording but Hayes would have only gotten - I dunno - ~20% as many likes. In any case - it’s surreal to hear the libs whining and moaning about this as if it was equivalent to Trump’s extra-judicial executions of 11 people on the open ocean that was not only illegal but in addition he was too fucking lazy to create even a laughable legal justification before he did it. He just did it. And that seems pretty ominous.
as if it was equivalent to Trump’s extra-judicial executions of 11 people
my initial instinct is that to them it is. mainstream politics has been cleansed of the majority of its substance as the parties edge ever-closer together. what’s left besides aesthetics? especially after the 2024 election, it seems that mainstream liberals have become more and more openly apathetic about the state of the world. their single issue is trump and everything he does is Bad™. their ideological framework doesn’t leave much room for such nuance
at least that’s my first thought. maybe it’s always been like this and i’m just too young to remember
The US now is post-policy - intelligent policy anyway. The republicans want fascism and to make their enemies suffer. The libs want Trump to finally go away for good and for the US to return to what it used to be. My political memory goes back to Ronald Reagan. I first voted in 1984. I was a liberal for most of my life so that colored by thinking and clouded my memories. But my opinion from then to Obama’s first two terms - liberals did talk about policies and think about them a lot. That’s long over.
I know now some if not a lot of it was insincere. And with Obama’s first term American politics had already become a lot like reality tv or sports. Both “teams” want their team to win but just as importantly they want the other team to lose. Now they don’t even care about what a future democratic president with a democratic congress could do or might do. They just want to win the game.
The other day I watched bits and pieces of William F. Buckley on his show Firing Line. I watched him speak with Margaret Thatcher and Reagan. Over decades - he did 1,500 shows where he talked tediously and pretentiously episode after episode on policy. Of course - it was plainly obvious that his show wasn’t a debate show or even actually a news show.
It was a highly partisan effort cheerleading show to show conservatives were not only right about everything but more intelligent and more cultured too. He had such a weird affected and fake mid-Atlantic way of speaking. It’s kind of amazing to me Firing Line was on tv for that long. A chud would be bored and annoyed after just minutes of watching and listening to Buckley.
Trump broke the liberal brain. Just this morning after I woke up my half-asleep brain was thinking how simply the word “Trump” is a thought-terminating cliché for them. They consider it their duty to virtue hate the guy 24/7. On Bluesky I have feeds I made myself. So Trump gets his own feeds and I filter him out in my main feeds. I need long and ideally mostly Trump-free breaks at Bluesky. C’mon libs… Housing? Public transportation? Taxes? Any policy at all? Or mention the GOP once in a while! Trump is getting a gigantic amount of help!
Nope. It’s Trump! Trump! Trump! etc.
Plus - the feed site is a bit buggy so posts with “Trump” in them come through into my main feeds anyway. And memes are filtered out only if alt text is used and it often isn’t for anti-Trump memes. There’s no effort to be funny or silly. I do not need to see the nth tedious meme like “Trump grifted BILLIONS in just six months. LET THAT SINK IN!” It’s not just that one fucking man. American politics contains multitudes.
Sometimes lib post have only the male personal pronoun with no context. But it’s clear the post is about their bugbear bête noire. I see posts that make me laugh like “I can’t wait for him to die,” or “He broke the law! He’s a felon! Why isn’t he in jail!”
My political memory goes back to Ronald Reagan. I first voted in 1984.
this is kind of a change of subject but how do you explain his decisive win both times? i’ve been saying reagan was tragedy and trump is farce, all their victories being explainable by deliberately incompetent democrats. still, that seems so simplistic as to be wrong and i’ve been wanting to ask a comrade who lived through that time
I’m probably nearly as mystified by Reagan’s wins as you are. So much has changed in America and my own life that my answer right now would be weak and facile. I’ll likely get back to yout today or tomorrow. But first - I need to find an article or two that explains things to my liking that also twigs my own faded memories of that time. Sometimes I put off googling for years. This is an extreme case. I’ve wanted to remind myself of Reagan’s hows-and-whys for at least nine years since Trump’s 2016 win.
If my simple google trick of “before” like “before:2020” works - I’m sure I’ll get back to you. Google results focused on now are real garbage.
Ninja edit. A Bill Hicks’ standup routine included the line “I’ve noticed a profound anti-intellectualism since about 1980…” Yet now things are 100 times worse. It’s unbelievable for me. Fucking polio could make a comeback due to antivax stupidity becoming mainstream, etc. etc. etc. As bad as the Reagan era was - at least the GOP wasn’t 100% batshit insane.
seems like since the soviet union’s gone the empire has no more reason to find competent imperialists. the new guys are all out of touch and it seems like they genuinely believe the stuff the old guard had to say. like one of those old kingdoms that fell because all their leaders were inbred
If the NYT wanted to they could’ve written…
I wonder if that would have mollified the libs. My hunch is mostly - maybe? They’d fixate on the exact wording but Hayes would have only gotten - I dunno - ~20% as many likes. In any case - it’s surreal to hear the libs whining and moaning about this as if it was equivalent to Trump’s extra-judicial executions of 11 people on the open ocean that was not only illegal but in addition he was too fucking lazy to create even a laughable legal justification before he did it. He just did it. And that seems pretty ominous.
But there is a precedent.
my initial instinct is that to them it is. mainstream politics has been cleansed of the majority of its substance as the parties edge ever-closer together. what’s left besides aesthetics? especially after the 2024 election, it seems that mainstream liberals have become more and more openly apathetic about the state of the world. their single issue is trump and everything he does is Bad™. their ideological framework doesn’t leave much room for such nuance
at least that’s my first thought. maybe it’s always been like this and i’m just too young to remember
I don’t think so.
The US now is post-policy - intelligent policy anyway. The republicans want fascism and to make their enemies suffer. The libs want Trump to finally go away for good and for the US to return to what it used to be. My political memory goes back to Ronald Reagan. I first voted in 1984. I was a liberal for most of my life so that colored by thinking and clouded my memories. But my opinion from then to Obama’s first two terms - liberals did talk about policies and think about them a lot. That’s long over.
I know now some if not a lot of it was insincere. And with Obama’s first term American politics had already become a lot like reality tv or sports. Both “teams” want their team to win but just as importantly they want the other team to lose. Now they don’t even care about what a future democratic president with a democratic congress could do or might do. They just want to win the game.
The other day I watched bits and pieces of William F. Buckley on his show Firing Line. I watched him speak with Margaret Thatcher and Reagan. Over decades - he did 1,500 shows where he talked tediously and pretentiously episode after episode on policy. Of course - it was plainly obvious that his show wasn’t a debate show or even actually a news show.
It was a highly partisan effort cheerleading show to show conservatives were not only right about everything but more intelligent and more cultured too. He had such a weird affected and fake mid-Atlantic way of speaking. It’s kind of amazing to me Firing Line was on tv for that long. A chud would be bored and annoyed after just minutes of watching and listening to Buckley.
Trump broke the liberal brain. Just this morning after I woke up my half-asleep brain was thinking how simply the word “Trump” is a thought-terminating cliché for them. They consider it their duty to virtue hate the guy 24/7. On Bluesky I have feeds I made myself. So Trump gets his own feeds and I filter him out in my main feeds. I need long and ideally mostly Trump-free breaks at Bluesky. C’mon libs… Housing? Public transportation? Taxes? Any policy at all? Or mention the GOP once in a while! Trump is getting a gigantic amount of help!
Nope. It’s Trump! Trump! Trump! etc.
Plus - the feed site is a bit buggy so posts with “Trump” in them come through into my main feeds anyway. And memes are filtered out only if alt text is used and it often isn’t for anti-Trump memes. There’s no effort to be funny or silly. I do not need to see the nth tedious meme like “Trump grifted BILLIONS in just six months. LET THAT SINK IN!” It’s not just that one fucking man. American politics contains multitudes.
Sometimes lib post have only the male personal pronoun with no context. But it’s clear the post is about their bugbear bête noire. I see posts that make me laugh like “I can’t wait for him to die,” or “He broke the law! He’s a felon! Why isn’t he in jail!”
this is kind of a change of subject but how do you explain his decisive win both times? i’ve been saying reagan was tragedy and trump is farce, all their victories being explainable by deliberately incompetent democrats. still, that seems so simplistic as to be wrong and i’ve been wanting to ask a comrade who lived through that time
I’m probably nearly as mystified by Reagan’s wins as you are. So much has changed in America and my own life that my answer right now would be weak and facile. I’ll likely get back to yout today or tomorrow. But first - I need to find an article or two that explains things to my liking that also twigs my own faded memories of that time. Sometimes I put off googling for years. This is an extreme case. I’ve wanted to remind myself of Reagan’s hows-and-whys for at least nine years since Trump’s 2016 win.
If my simple google trick of “before” like “before:2020” works - I’m sure I’ll get back to you. Google results focused on now are real garbage.
Ninja edit. A Bill Hicks’ standup routine included the line “I’ve noticed a profound anti-intellectualism since about 1980…” Yet now things are 100 times worse. It’s unbelievable for me. Fucking polio could make a comeback due to antivax stupidity becoming mainstream, etc. etc. etc. As bad as the Reagan era was - at least the GOP wasn’t 100% batshit insane.
seems like since the soviet union’s gone the empire has no more reason to find competent imperialists. the new guys are all out of touch and it seems like they genuinely believe the stuff the old guard had to say. like one of those old kingdoms that fell because all their leaders were inbred