Tinidril

But America brings so much to the table! There's all the goods manufactured in America, there is all the creativity coming out of the American TV and movie industries, there is all the scientific research and knowledge that is totally not leaving. What about innovative software (licenses) and enshitified streaming services. America is on the cutting edge of defense and it's partners totally trust that America would never yank away support for those weapons at the whim of a mad king or anything.

Most importantly, how will the world ever get by without the American financial system that contributes nothing to the world and demands all the wealth in return? I think the world will find America hard to shake.

(Massive /s, just in case it's not obvious.)

Meh. We'll see what happens when it threatens their office. A lot of them have already started changing their rhetoric.

This time the Democrats have an actual flesh and blood candidate who actually stands for something. If he wins, will that alter your perspective at all?

American voters suck, just like they have always sucked, just like voters suck everyplace else. That's the field in which the game is played.

Being the lesser of two evils is not a good strategy. The greater evil gets all the attention and therefore enthusiasm. Good vs evil is a whole different dynamic.

Now it's time for the "vote blue no matter who" crowd to put up or shut up. So far, party loyalty doesn't seem very important to a lot of the establishment.

Why not really? Nobody would have blinked at the results if he lost the primary. If he loses the general, especially to someone he beat in the primary, there will be a lot more attention. This is especially true with a candidate who's popularity seems to leap forward every time a poll is done.

Thus my note about "social media and AI mass surveillance". What makes insurgency so effective is the enemy of the occupier could be anyone.

Way back in 2001 when Adobe flash was the exciting new thing on the web, I was the network/firewall admin for the data-center hosting the company website. I didn't get to argue about the site itself, since they had Microsoft in to do that. I did win the argument against the Microsoft engineers wanting to put the site outside the firewall for "performance". Needless to say my ass was on the line if performance was impacted.

Sure enough, the big launch day arrives, the Superbowl adds run, and the complaints all start coming in about how terribly the site was performing. They beat the hell out of it in the lab, so they knew with absolute certainty that the firewall was to blame. Lots of higher-ups were suddenly aware that I existed, which is never a good thing for a network admin.

I dove into troubleshooting and had my answer in less than ten minutes. The front page was a monstrosity made entirely of flash that displayed nothing until the entire page loaded - graphics and all. That worked well enough on a high speed network but, back in 2001, most people at home were on dialup. A little quick math on the size of the download had it taking over 40 seconds to just see the front page.

The site got a really rapid rewrite, and I was off the hook.

Wouldn't it have been easier to rig the primary?

The US lost in both Vietnam and Afghanistan because occupation is hard. There isn't an army on the planet that can even come close to taking on the US military in open combat, but insurgencies are a completely different animal.

Social media and AI mass surveillance might make a difference, but I kinda doubt it.

I don't think this is where we are headed, but it wouldn't be an automatic win for the military. Unfortunately, the people who end up in charge after an uprising usually end up being worse than the people they replace.

Carlin was great at spotting problems, but shit at recognizing solutions. He was an entertaining crank, not a leader. In the right category he was great.

I imagine it would feel a bit like punching a pile of dried leaves.

As a hopelessly straight American, I second the motion.