Was auch immer das Internet mit der Menschheit macht, es ist auch eine Plattform, auf der viele historische Kulturformen weiter existieren können.
Radio-Hörspiele zum Beispiel. Als der Massenkonsum schon längst zum Kino und dann zum Fernsehen umgezogen war, entwickelte das Radio seine vielleicht spannendsten Inhalte. Wie einige Podcaster gerade wieder neu entdecken, erlaubt eine Audioproduktion mit relativ einfachen Mitteln die Erzeugung von interessanten Szenarien.
Now that the SEC is looking into it they quickly would very much to forget that they were much involved in the SLV pump and dump scheme:
writes the WSJ on February 12th
Just to be clear: That Silver talk was on the pages of the newspapers, but not on reddit. Nowhere to be seen.
I forgot who said that malice should be ruled out as long as stupidity and ineptness can be used as a reasonable explanation. Which is, I am afraid to say, the case with both the NY Times and WSJ. They are well written. But so much of what they write is nonsense. Amazing that people still fall for it. And buy silver. Following the detour laid out by the papers for them …
Found him! The Capitol Mob was a bad scene. Really bad PR for Trumpists: A bunch of weirdos all with Trump flags, zip ties, all sorts of nonsense. But now, finally, those who think that Trump is good have finally found the culprit: John Sullivan. He was among the idiots on January 6th. And he is not a “Patriot”. Brown skinned even. For those who are willing to believe that the election was stolen it is also clear now that all thing bad were just his work. And probably lots of other ‘antifa’ people that their sleuthing and hearsay will “find”. Just as their pole watches (their spellings, not mine) found lots of evidence for voter fraud, they will find that Jan 6th was a BLM/antifa project all along. You know: No real patriot (or True Scottsman) would do the things of January 6th.
And you just need a kernel, an grain to grow a crystal of lies around it. For many people it actually will be that January 6th was the work of John Sullivan. Together with a bunch of other people, who just happen to be elusive to the cameras of ‘the media’. The next thing in the big reframing will be a term for that day, those events. A new name that has this ridiculous blame shift somehow in it. And that is catchy too. It will take the whole narrative and put it on its head. Flat earth is always there to make any other Internet created story look less ridiculous in comparison.
And lots of people will believe it. They are deeper in this kind of delusion than one would fear.
The 45th President bookended his political phase with two similarly outlandish claims aimed to delegitimize the 44th and 46th President respectively.
While he jumped on the birther nonsense, he was instrumental in constructing the steal narrative that ultimately drove some looneys into congress. Through broken doors, not so much via electing them.
As of January 10 it is not exactly clear what will happen next. I was not a fan of efforts to impeach him. But then I realized that a potential impeachment on January 19th might be good thing: It gives Trump something that he can loose. It might prevent him from trying any further Hail Mary stunts during his last days in (it feels sad to write these words) office.
He no longer can start a war via Twitter. So there is that. Actually removing his Internet presence is the biggest single event that ever happened to the Internet. Others had magnitudes of more impact, of course. But launching Facebook or Youtube were gradual processes. Kneecapping this man is significant. And it is not only Twitter: Amazon stops hosting wannabe competitors. For services of a certain scale it is the end if the few very large cloud services tell you to go fish.
Switching provides isn’t that easy anyway I suppose.
Of course nonsense will not magically vanish from the Internet. Conservative people will not turn magically liberal.
Millions of people believe the story that they have been told. That Hydroxy would be the way cure for Covid, that Mexico would pay for the wall, that Clintons broken email server is the biggest problem the US faced ever.
Everybody prefers it not to up end his / her belief system. Our brains assume (falsely) that it is metabolically expensive and must be avoided at all costs. Only since a very short time can a person exist outside the direct social interaction with others. We developed while being dependent on band of our own. Presenting a consistent predictable position is helpful in creating stable social bonds.
But being stuck in a mindset, defending opinions and beliefs as if you defend your own existence is entirely stupid. In little things it is entirely random why we put the ketchup bottle not in the door of the fridge. Still two normal people can have a heated argument over it. The moment it seems that you randomly put the thing where you did your mind already and automatically has constructed a justification for it. Thoughts that make you look good, that make you feel right have magical tailwind in your mind. Strangely not unlike those that “proof” that you are a worthless POS. Later one more when you are on your own and debate with yourself.
While flipping TV channel one can come across a person that says something. In some situations it is not directly clear which party the person is affiliated with. People want to know though. You’ll be hard pressed to find a person in a US “news channel” opiniating along without also seeing a clear indication of his DEM / GOP affiliation. These days, when I see unknown congressmen or women quoted in a paper then I go to wikipedia to first check which side they are on. That is stupid.
But many people have it even more extreme. They are on the Trump Train. And they are cut off from their supply. They sit in a field somewhere. Just a week ago they were in a cozy yet noisy compartment. While they were in the checkout line, avoiding to get mad about everything they see, they could check what their guys had written. How he had created more liberal tears. No more.
I really wonder how life of some of those 80 million twitter followers is. For a while this picture
was something that I would not dare to dream off. As usual elation fades quickly. Too quickly. The orange man made us mad. By lying. By using his social media presence to bully others. To step on good ideas. To prevent things that could have saved lives. That could have made life better. DJT and his Internet presence broke things, it did not build anything to speak off. Except for a certain kind of rage in his disciples. There is a difference between the 74 million people that voted for him and the monkeys that walked on marble on Wednesday. The difference is not a hard edge though. There is no clear border between normal people trying to have the right values and those that think that HRC eats babies.
This gradient is the natural fallout from the fact that the whole right wing nonsense that started with the Tea Party is not based in any actual ideas. There is no canon. “America First” can justify basically everything. There is spirit. Just a grunt. Some feeling of injustice. Some anger. Directed at whatever & whomever. As long as the story is good.
Wednesday it appeared as if the grand children of the village people wanted to stage a quick reunion in congress. Although most of them were not exactly Friends of Dorothy. Their attire, flags, motives and agenda were all over the place. They were all equally angry and motivated. They wanted to ‘stop the steal’. But how delusional do you have to be to believe that things could be changed by their actions.
Actually their actions did change things. They sank the boat of their leader. Decisively. If they was a swamp in Washington, then they drained it in an hour. By the evening of that day it had been paved over. And those that wanted to get rid of DJT drove on it at break neck speed. It just took a couple of not well guarded doors and a bunch of amped up idiots to bring the orange phase of the American Presidency to an abrupt end. Amazing.
It is fun to imagine him fuming, trying to unsuccessfully relaunch something. Just to fail. Again and again. A downfall meme that nobody needs to create, we can build it in our head in an instant.
At this point hope that he does not cause any harm during his last 10 days. From January 21st on we then can do what would have been the best all along: Ignore him. He is an idiot with issues. And a piped piper for people that already fell for the Tea Party nonsense. Or would have were they not too young back them. Yes, they are much more numerous in 2020 then they were in 2010. And they will not go away.
Be that as it may: DJT didn’t have a good week. Lets put it that way. “All that winning”
Nonsense. 24/7 nonsense. Which is bad but tolerable in times when everything is humming along. In times when Government can make a difference it shows.
In the wonderful “Ship of dreams” I read that 10 people that survived the Titanic died by their own hand later in life. I instantly explained this to me that the tragic event must have tarnished their life.
Turns out that the overall rate of suicide compared to other reasons of death is 1.4%. Since 705 people survived the disaster the statistics would predict exactly that amount of people.
2021 a victories Trump will make his buddy Kanye ambassador to France. He likes to stick it to Macron and Kanye likes to make Kim happy. She would in turn have to be invited to all the fashion shows. Funny how the Dems declared a gay candidate un electable ‘because of the black vote’ (which in itself would warrant closer inspection) only then to loose to a pop star with psychological issues the size of Wyoming.
As time takes its toll what might have been a stream ones turns into a trickle. Such of which we could just witness. 43 presidential minutes condensed into the above. What nonsense. This is all that POTUS did during that time. Watching TV, clicking on nonsense links and tweeting out random crap that adds nothing to the world. Even his ardent followers can only react with ‘yeah, he is right’ to such nonsense. There is nothing there. Really isn’t. As he would say it: “Sad!”.
As if there would be no epidemic. As if there would be not seismic shifts in the global power landscape. As if there would not be a climate crisis.
