sp3ctr4l

I agree with all of that.

Maybe ... 5 to 10% of Dems, like Federal Congresspeople, State governors... are willing to meaningfully go against pro corporate policies... at least more than half of the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of psyop used to induce or intensify infighting among younger leftists, but I also wouldn't be surprised if ... there really wasn't something specifically aimed at doing exactly that.

I know Russia has been very successfully employing the uh, hyperreality tactic, just fund or assist or influence enough people who are bombastic enough in any political persuasion, publish and spread baseless nonsense all across the spectrum to just sow general chaos...

But I do also think a lot of it really is people just adopting a vocabulary generally shared by leftists and then using it to their own, individual ends.

The thing with the CIA's Simple Sabotage model is that it describes basically every social circle or work environment I've ever been in, or hear about from a friend.

General incompetence and ... wasting time over petty stupid bullshit ... just sounds like the norm in America generally, for pretty much my whole life... but maybe I have just had particularly bad luck with that.

Fellow autist here,, here's my funniest Elon moment:

The cybertruck reveal, softball pitch into the window.

Musk audibly gasps and says 'O-oh myfuckinggod.'

Comedy gold.

That moment, right there, that was the high water mark.

Then, the window cracks, and shortly afterward, his entire general public facade and reputation begin to crack and shattet as well.

I do appreciate a visual metaphor.

Misleading and overly jocular.

It has been 11,182 days since it began.

The... they kept coming, and joining... and the seasons lost their familiarity... their very meaning... it became just a blurring vortex, an intensifying torrent of ever increasing ignorance and rage.

I ... can barely remember now, what it was like before...

11,182 days ... of September.

This is not a normal kind of human interaction, on the girl's part.

It very strongly indicates she is a spoiled brat, a narcissist.

If you think this kind of interaction is normal... well I see two possible explanations:

You are also a narcissist and that's why you think this is normal.

OR

You are surrounded by narcissists who have gaslit you into thinking this is normal, and you haven't had too many regular interactions with non narcissists.

Also, I don't see anywhere near as many total upvotes for 'she's into you dude, frost that cupcake!' as I do for 'this is the biggest red flag imaginable, let me write a short essay explaining why'

In fact, yeah, I don't see a single comment advocating the anon dive into her... affairs, over this.

There is a very fitting song for this.

Garbage - Stupid Girl

Basically, if this is a representative sample of this girl's personality ...

(huge if there, this is a single 4chan post lol)

... then she is a textbook narcissist, potentially to the point of being diagnosable with NPD if she doesn't grow out of this attitude, get a reality check that actually sinks into the subconscious.

A spoiled, pampered brat whose never been told no, who never gets any real, meaningful interaction or validation, and tries to fill that void with a grandiose self image, absurd overconfidence and privelege.

Angelica from Rugrats.

...And my take here would be the same if the genders/sexes were reversed, or some other combo.

It is pretty not normal for anybody to have that kind of interaction with anybody else, to just boisterously state they could have 'insert random person', then have rando anon just flatly reply 'sorry not interested', ... and then throw a giant hissy fit.

I am seriously hoping this interaction occures between 12 or 14 year olds, but looking at the horror kaleidoscope that is social media these days?

Yeah, could be anybody, any age, at this point.

Yep.

It is mostly just revisiting older news from decades before that... as would be reasonable when a newcomer to politics now seems to stand a reasonable chance of becoming President, might want to do a more thorough journalistic background check on the guy.

Leftists critical of Trump, back then, before even his first term, were ... you know, kind of worried about Trump having Hitler in his nightstand table, very, very obviously seeing him as a role model and source of inspiration...

And then they said things like ... is Trump a Nazi? Is Trump a fascist? This stuff is ... quite concerning, along with his bombastic rhetoric and extremely nebulous and fluid 'policies', that all seem to converge on a return to past greatness, hypermasculinity, racism, sexism... all very much in line with ... a populist, which historically very often leads to fascism...

And then almost every one else in the country dismissed that as hyperbolic nonsense, and 'everything/one you don't like is fascist' was born.

... And now here we are, evidently in the bizzaro clownworld timeline, where Trump is 'the joker, baby' all the Republicans are his brainwashed cult of goons, the Democrats almost all as well sane-washed the shit out of Trump untill way after it was too late... and, as is also predictable broadly by history, the leftists, with few exceptions, fought each other over idpol, purity tests and tone policing, effectively negating any coherent opposition.

Well, the 'listening to their constituents' thing certainly hasn't been going well lately... what with all the screaming matches, arrests, barely contained open revolts and what not.

They just kinda said those were all fake news and then stopped doing them.

I tried to type out 'megalomaniac' and unintentionally misspelled it as 'magalomaniac' in a comment i made somewhere yesterday.

Went back to my comment, noticed this, and then realized... no, wait, this is a good misspelling, and wrote an addendum.

I entirely support 'magalomaniac' and 'magalomania' as terms, lets get them in the DSM 6.

I get that.

What... would actually make much more sense would be to index the minimum wage to some other, per state metric.

A fraction of median income, some formula that actually does a good job of estimating a minimum standard of living...

But, that will never happen, because ... well basically half of voters and half state legislatures fundamentally either do not understand how to, or believe in laying a foundational safety net layer for society.

The income and CoL disparities within the US are... basically as wild as the differences between EU member states, but our governance systems are... well, pretty much fundamentally broken at this point.

Well, I would, but:

gestures at leg and wrist in braces, cane, utter state of poverty, lack of public transit in a low CoL city I can qualify to rent at with SSDI as my only income

More than that would create private business deserts in poor areas, forcing the locals to exclusively patronize corporations. More of the population would need social program assistance to help pay for the increased cost of our domestic food supply.

... If we're talking about Arkansas... all of that has already happened.

You know Walmart is... from, and based in Arkansas, right?

20 ish % of the population is already below the poverty line... and the poverty line is basically 'lets assume you have no rent and are homeless and just want to be able to buy food'.

That means 20% of the state is already getting SSI, SNAP, TANF, etc.

...

The US Federal poverty line is about $35 dollars a day. about $13k a year.

If you converted that to a full time wage, thats about $6.75 an hour.

The US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

50 cents of difference.

Hasn't changed since 2009.

From 2009 to 2025, if you go by CPI, a single 2009 dollar is worth about $1.50 2025 dollars, that is to say, prices have risen by 50% in 16 years.

...

Arkansas is literally an economic disaster zone.

41% of the state struggles with getting their basic needs met, multiple independent observers and international aid agencies have compared the level of poverty, lack of education, access to healthcare... to areas of the world recently devastated by wars.

You say the cost of living is 36-37k.

That must be for a single person.

As of Nov 24, the median individual income in Arkansas is $29,740.

That makes the median wage about $15.50 an hour.

The median individual income in Arkansas cannot afford the average cost of living for a single person.

Arkansas is already the state equivalent of a mentally unsound person being deemed incompitent to make their own decisions and be declared a ward of the state.

Bumping up the min wage would be more like doubling the care and support staff for the assisted living facility that is Arkansas, already massively dependent on Federal subsidies to the poor.... and the laughably tiny tax rates on giant megacorps that allow said megacorps to dominate its economy.

...

If you want to see what unchecked hypercapitalism looks like, you're looking at Arkansas.