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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • It’s too bad we couldn’t have put AI to good use instead of the thing most of the elite have reached for first (destroying jobs).

    We could have generated deepfakes of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers saying great things about Donvict (while out of office), fabricate an entire election for him in the run-up to 2024, and surround him with a set of paid actors telling him he’s President, letting him sign bullshit EOs and legislation. Have someone fashion a Nobel Peace Prize and deepfake the news about it and so on. All “channels” on his screen(s) are just a stream of AI deepfakes all praising Dear Leader Donvict.

    Just generally making him feel like a Bigly Important Big Boy, all tucked away in an old folks’ home or Mar-a-Lago.

    I would even take someone like a Romney over this nightmare. Certainly Kamala would have been 1000x better than this…but apparently we cannot even have mildly nice things.


  • I just don’t think term limits are anywhere near the panacea some people seem to think they are. I’ve heard crusty old conservatives mutter “term limits” about politics ever since I can remember. Almost in the same tone I hear some of them say “cull the herd” and “tort reform” these days. It just seems like some mantra to repeat.

    And now I see others outside the conservasphere sometimes taking up this mantra. It strikes me as a distraction, if I’m honest. The real problem is money and legalized bribery and I don’t know what term limits would possibly accomplish, other than just having more people with no experience in these roles. There is nothing to say they could not be groomed by the likes of Thiel and just do self-dealing from minute one just because of their age or the number of terms they have had.

    I’ve always been baffled by this heroic notion of a magical outsider, brought into politics, and simply by virtue of being an outsider that it would be a good thing. Politician is about the only endeavor where there is this odd wish to have a NON-expert in that position. The term limits mantra often seems to go hand in hand with the pining for the outsider thing. And I’ll just never get it.

    Being a politician is like any other field, and requires expertise. I don’t see people pining for term limits on doctors, mechanics, plumbers, businessmen, dentists, etc., and I sure don’t see people signing up to be the first to have their teeth drilled by an outsider, just to “shake things up”.





  • It is true: I am highly dismissive of some kind of arbitrary cutoff based on age or term limits.

    I completely understand the deep frustration with certain individuals, for example, Schumer and Pelosi. But it has little to do with their age or the number of terms they have had, in my view. Things like this should be determined, by voters, on a case by case basis.

    If people are really that animated about changing the guard, then they need to do the work and show up on primaries, whether that is going so far as running themselves, or working for campaigns, or at least voting. But arbitrarily preempting the choices that others may want to vote for if they like a candidate, regardless (or perhaps because) of age/years of experience seems very unwise.




  • Yep. I don’t really see any positive organizations/groups love-bombing young men.

    Honestly, my generation also heard rather dire messages of a bleak future for us - literally, one of my first memories of punk was listening to “No Future” by the Sex Pistols. We were watching our parents grinding it out as economic hardship and new ideas about how to run corporations hit our parents. Ronnie Raygunism and Thatcherism seemed to result into young men falling into groups like the neo-Nazi skinheads in some areas, but that was at the margins and there were no “influencers” and there was no way for people like to “find the others” like this.

    Back then, if someone bitched like these incels or these douchebros wanting a trad wife - they’d be told they are just too chickenshit and lazy to clean themselves up and learn to talk to women. They were not able to all find each other, en masse, have a few of them profit off of it, and then tell each other it is all the fault of the womenfolk. That’s not to say all of us were in a healthy place, but at least there was no multiplier effect like there is now.

    I was one of the biggest fans and boosters of the 'net in the early days. These days, it seems to have so many negative effects, especially on the impressionable.


  • I think there is a real male loneliness epidemic and a crisis of identity among younger males, it seems.

    Few people/institutions seem to be offering men an off-ramp from this confusion and stress…except for this toxic brosphere stuff, sadly. It really explains a lot about things like the Proud Boys.

    Like you - I would not suggest a church as the solution. I really don’t know what the answer is for healthy outlets and support structures for men truly is, though. People yelling “men suck” at them is likely to only push them deeper into the worst behaviors.

    Historically, this kind of discontent has never ended well.


  • But yeah violent misogyny must be met with feminism with teeth. We will not go back.

    I don’t know: these people seem to be getting a permission structure from the government. Honestly, I’ve been watching some of this stuff and mostly being quiet about a lot of it, even online.

    But if you ask me honestly? I’m terrified about the direction things seem to be going. I’ve seen lots of unhelpful intergenerational warfare, mostly about boomers and Gen Y taking shots at one another, while my generation (Gen X) is playing the part of the forgotten child, just as we always have. Boomers seem to get blamed for everything in life, but it’s not like these other generations don’t have any agency!

    But I’m very concerned about Gen Z and alpha, and just where they are going. It’s possible some of these people may break out of their mind forged manacles and moderate themselves or become more progressive, but that’s not how these things tend to work. People tend to drift to the right as they get older, not the other direction. And if they are starting at the trad wife position at such a young age?..yikes.


  • Well, gosh. This falls right in line with what I’ve been saying and wondering aloud about things like the Fourth Turning.

    The Archie Bunker thing was something boomers stood up to make fun of their parents’ generation. That is the kind of thing that all this ginned-up inter-generational warfare that seems largely directed at the boomers (and the Silent Generation and Generation Jones somewhat) seems to miss.

    And now we have all these younger “influencers” (barf) doing this kind of thing openly and unironically in the brosphere. The trad wife influencers. And those people and their fans are not the boomers…








  • I think it’s orchestrated, myself.

    It seems nihilistic and doesn’t seem to have any real aim other than further dividing Democrats. There is nothing inherently good or bad about someone’s age (well, unless they haven’t fully developed the PFC - there is a reason there are age requirements at the lower end) when you are trying to determine if they are fit to lead.

    Now, if people were to propose using more advanced screening techniques to catch things like Alzheimer’s or other problematic things (I’d be a fan of trying to screen out various traits that lead to really bad leadership, myself, but obviously implementation would have many problems and of course many detractors), that might make more sense. But no, we are listening to what sounds like petulant teenagers having tirades about older people and it’s rather boring. All of us were 14 once, but most of us evolved since then. The idea that you are only going to have representation from people who are in your “generation” is an incredibly silly and narcissistic one.

    Lastly I keep saying this, but: this particular period of time is really not going to age very well if life extension and other breakthroughs come online.