To be fair, we have a former actor and comedian as the president. The difference is he isn’t a fascist piece of human garbage, not so much in the career paths.
From what I’ve read, Zelensky as comedian made intelligent political and anti corruption criticism. Making jokes about the bad things in life, highlighting them, setting the stage for something being done about those problems. Broader than his on screen personality, he had middle class beginnings and on the back of his comedy work, he build a successful career as TV producer/executive. You probably know more about this than I do.
Trump as TV personality looked more like the most clueless person in the room, while all the actual work was done by others behind the scenes. No intelligence, no social commentary. Before his role in the apprentice, Trump had started his business career as a Nepo baby, and as a businessman he had failed every venture that he had tried, each time leaving a bloodbath of unpaid bills behind, a reverse Midas. And once his face was known from TV, he started with large scale scams like Trump University.
I ponder that sometimes. I wonder if a comedian has made such a solid leader because a comedian’s role to society is to speak truths that go unheard, and to make unbearable times bearable. I find myself questioning if every leader shouldn’t be a comedian
Reminds me of this character in Watchmen. Calls himself the Comedian, but never makes “jokes” in a classical sense. He is cruel, overly patriotic, violent against protesters, seems to enjoy massacres in Vietnam. Only one other person understands that he is actually against these things and tries to show them this hyperbolic mirror of their own totalitarian views. But everybody else doesn’t understand it, they take it face value and admire his “patriotism”. He never breaks role until the last moment (or even then just in the movie?).
as i recall the characters who get “the joke” are the comedian, rorschach, ozymandias, and dr manhatten, each of whom respond to the trauma of getting the joke entirely differently. the comedian embraces it, laughs at it, lets it consume him. basically decides “the world is fucked up, i might as well personally have fun.” i don’t recall him ever showing any sympathy towards the world. his terrible actions are ultimately justified by that he is the stand-in for captain america: his violence is government backed. the crucial difference between captain america and the comedian is that captain america represents what america could and should be, a future for us to work towards, whereas the comedian represents what america is, a present for us to move away from. i think that aspect is a very clever piece of writing by alan moore as the time when he was creating the watchmen was very politically different from when jack kirby was creating captain america. i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how incredible jack kirby’s explorations of fascism, militarism, and jewish identity are all through his career. i think alan moore did jack kirby justice in taking a lot of captain america’s tropes and superimposing them onto a fascist. i think jack kirby did an incredible job of showing us the lunacy of nazis in his super villains (something i didn’t give him enough credit for until this year when i saw how these freaks operate when the mask of respectability is removed), but by alan moore’s time, the value of an aspirational symbol for what america could be was diminished as america turned more and more fascist, making super imposing captain america’s tropes onto a fascist felt uncomfortable and upsetting. but also, having now seen trump voters up close and personal, it’s incredibly accurate to the mindset. both jack kirdy and alan moore did an incredible job depicting fascism in the hopes we the people would see their work and grow and change.
This campaign would stand a chance at actually winning.
AOC and Stewart are both well known, basically celebrities.
AOC is actually capable of recreating the mix of genuine charisma combined with well articulated, meaningful actual policy points that Obama did in 07.
Jon Stewart is obviously no stranger to politics, and is possibly the literally ideal ‘attack dog’ that the VP usually plays in a campaign, for an anti corporate / billionaire campaign.
Let AOC be as principled and erudite as JFK and Stewart be as cutting and ‘no bullshit’ as Lyndon Jonhson.
…
Are either of them perfect?
No.
Are they basically the best possible options?
Well, Bernie is awesome, but he’s too old.
Absolutely utilize him as much as possible during the campaign, be at every rally, fucking have him be the head of a leftist version of what Elon is, god knows by the time 2028 rolls around, the executive will have formally and informally assumed way too much power.
Put Bernie in charge of purging the Trump/Elon pukes, directing the revokation or countermanding of everyone of Trump’s executive orders, undoing Citizens United, and reassembling the checks and balances.
…
Other than that… are any other democrats or leftists anywhere near as well known and widely, generally liked by non fascists? Who aren’t bought and paid for by corpos?
Some surveys seem to support that this direction could have worked. As a German, I supported the course of the Democrats to go with a presidential candidate and policies that democratic conservatives could get behind. About half of the voters in the US want less democracy, more totalitarianism. For a chance to stop Trump, it seemed reasonable just get all supporters of freedom and democracy behind a single candidate. But maybe I was wrong.
I have my doubts that there will be an election in 2028.
About half of the voters in the US want less democracy, more totalitarianism.
Apparently a recent poll said 71% of Trump voters are against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (food benefits for very poor Americans).
So… that would mean more than 2/3 of Trump voters are astonishingly stupid, ignorant, easily swayed into a cult, as these cuts were very obviously the intent of Trump, and outright stated goals of Project 2025, which was created almost entirely by former Trump administration staff.
… But, that makes sense, as the average adult American literacy level is that of a 5th grader (10yo to 11yo), and 21% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, with literacy skills at or below a 2nd grade level (7yo to 8yo).
I have my doubts that there will be an election in 2028.
Ya know, this sounds downright plausible. More so than any other ticket I can imagine anyway, middle-of-the-road corporate democrats sure are played out, but hey, from what I understand the Dems literally argued after the election about whether they didn’t go left enough or didn’t go “center” enough, so.
I think it might be part that and part the fact that the war happened in the first place. Like, before the full scale invasion, he really wasn’t that remarkable. But I guess sometimes hard times do actually make strong men.
The last supposedly Ukrainian person I talked to here was very anti Zelenskyy and wanted him to just lay down arms. What’s your opinion on the matter? Do you want your country to keep fighting? Do you qualify for the draft yourself?
I myself would be neither for nor against Zelenskyy, if it was peace time. Normally, there would have been elections last year, so there would be a non zero chance we would have had a different president already, if not for the war. But, since that’s legally not possible right now, here we are, and I’m not about to go protest in the streets demanding to have elections as soon as possible.
That said, I am very much against being occupied and invaded. While also not willing to be drafted myself, since I know I would be quite useless on the battlefield. So the best I can do right now (to help in the war, that is) is to keep donating money for the equipment for our army.
I recognize I’m being hypocritical, since I wish to be protected without having the resolve to enlist myself. But I also recognize that, were I to enlist, my value in actually protecting Ukrainian lives would be very low.
Given the current state of Ukraine as a going concern
Three successful years of holding their own against everything Russia can throw at them? I’d say that’s freakin’ amazing and a ringing endorsement of Zelenskyy’s leadership!
Is that what the Russian/Ukraine front looks like to you? Seems like they’ve been feeding their young men into a meat grinder so they can lose hundreds of miles of territory on a basket of false promises from DC. They aren’t holding their own, they’re being slaughtered at the speed of Russian artillery.
REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Well, in a classified briefing, I stood up and asked what the casualties were on the Ukrainian side, and in that meeting I believe, you had representatives from the intelligence community, and they were briefing us, and they went out of their way to tell us how many Russian casualties there were, and they would not answer my question of how many Ukrainian casualties there were.
And this was a briefing to Congress in a classified setting. They really didn’t have an excuse, other than they weren’t really sure, which seems like an incredible lie. So then a few months later, I’m in the Speaker’s office, and I asked the Speaker if he knew the number of casualties in Ukraine? He began telling me how many Russian casualties there were. I said, Do you know how many Ukrainian casualties there are? And he said, No. I said, Have they ever told you? And he said, No. I said, Have you ever asked? He said, I should ask. So the Speaker of the House doesn’t even know. Didn’t even know at the time how many casualties there were. And if you ask, for instance, an AI assistant, how many Ukrainian casualties there are, even the AI assistants here in our country can’t tell you how many. At the time when I drafted this, AIs came up with wildly different numbers because they’re relying on everything that’s been published. And there’s virtually nothing reliable that’s been published.
…
MASSIE: We’re just being fed propaganda in these classified briefings. And if other members of Congress couldn’t see that when I asked the question, then shame on them. Part of the reason I asked that question in that setting, was to show the other members of Congress that they’re just giving us one side to try and motivate us to keep sending the money and weapons. I think it’s obvious that they’re just feeding us propaganda in classified settings, and then I think it’s also true that the Speaker himself has been a subject of propaganda and lacks the curiosity to even question the narrative that we’re being fed.
Ah yes, because clearly Zelenskyy is solely to blame for the current state of Ukraine. I guess he’s mind controlling half of the world leaders simultaneously and playing 5D chess with everyone.
One would think you’re his biggest fan the way you’re giving him credit for everything that’s happening in the world.
Idk about blame, he does seem to do the best job I have ever seen though, and also he seems to have morals and empathy, something I have never seen in any politician in a long time
Ah yes, because clearly Zelenskyy is solely to blame for the current state of Ukraine.
Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan. Obviously, nobody is responsible for Ukraine except the villainous ork monster Vladimir Putin and his tribe of savages.
Zelenskyy certainly didn’t commit to an escalation in the conflict that his country couldn’t handle or trust a bunch of NATO state department officials who were more interested in using Ukraine for weapons testing than inclusion in a European commons. And how could any conscript forced up to the front lines because he couldn’t bribe his commanding officer have anything to complain about in how Zelenskyy’s military leadership has run the war.
One would think you’re his biggest fan
Is there any tyrant I haven’t loved? Muammar Gaddafi? Saddam Hussein? Ruhollah Khomeini? Daniel Ortega? Jacobo Árbenz?
You’d almost think I’m against these horrifying pointless military conflicts on principle.
Seeing as you’re against military conflicts (all of which are pointless and horrifying, on that I agree), maybe that anger should be directed against the person who actually started the full scale invasion. Unless you’re implying that Zelenskyy “escalated” the war by not immediately surrendering to Putin.
maybe that anger should be directed against the person who actually started the full scale invasion
To what end? To further justify another three years of slaughter?
Zelenskyy fucked up by escalating the border conflict with Russia. Putin fucked up by charging into a quagmire. Western Europe piled in to squander billions on slaughter. Ukraine took its pound of flesh through 2022 and had an opportunity to sue for peace, end the conflict, and secure its sovereignty, but backed down when Blinken scuttled the deal. And then we spent the next two years accomplishing nothing but nightmare after nightmare.
At every point, every state actor involved decided the best response to the situation was to double-down. And what did it win them? Americans lost their civil government. Ukraine lost the Donbas and its soveriengty. Russia lost hundreds of thousands of its young people. Germany lost its cheap energy and may lose its liberal governance.
“Maybe blame the guy who started it!” gets you nothing. Its just another excuse to extend the conflict. To double down. To insist we need another year of butchery in Eastern Europe.
End the fucking war. You don’t have to like the guy on the other side of the table to do the right thing.
To be fair, we have a former actor and comedian as the president. The difference is he isn’t a fascist piece of human garbage, not so much in the career paths.
There’s a timeline where Jon Stewart is POTUS and he and Zelensky have already put Putin where he belongs in the Hague.
From what I’ve read, Zelensky as comedian made intelligent political and anti corruption criticism. Making jokes about the bad things in life, highlighting them, setting the stage for something being done about those problems. Broader than his on screen personality, he had middle class beginnings and on the back of his comedy work, he build a successful career as TV producer/executive. You probably know more about this than I do.
Trump as TV personality looked more like the most clueless person in the room, while all the actual work was done by others behind the scenes. No intelligence, no social commentary. Before his role in the apprentice, Trump had started his business career as a Nepo baby, and as a businessman he had failed every venture that he had tried, each time leaving a bloodbath of unpaid bills behind, a reverse Midas. And once his face was known from TV, he started with large scale scams like Trump University.
Those are 2 very different career paths.
Yeah it’s the difference between John Stewart and Steve Harvey
Man, I fucking hate Steve Harvey. He’s such a piece of shit.
I ponder that sometimes. I wonder if a comedian has made such a solid leader because a comedian’s role to society is to speak truths that go unheard, and to make unbearable times bearable. I find myself questioning if every leader shouldn’t be a comedian
Reminds me of this character in Watchmen. Calls himself the Comedian, but never makes “jokes” in a classical sense. He is cruel, overly patriotic, violent against protesters, seems to enjoy massacres in Vietnam. Only one other person understands that he is actually against these things and tries to show them this hyperbolic mirror of their own totalitarian views. But everybody else doesn’t understand it, they take it face value and admire his “patriotism”. He never breaks role until the last moment (or even then just in the movie?).
as i recall the characters who get “the joke” are the comedian, rorschach, ozymandias, and dr manhatten, each of whom respond to the trauma of getting the joke entirely differently. the comedian embraces it, laughs at it, lets it consume him. basically decides “the world is fucked up, i might as well personally have fun.” i don’t recall him ever showing any sympathy towards the world. his terrible actions are ultimately justified by that he is the stand-in for captain america: his violence is government backed. the crucial difference between captain america and the comedian is that captain america represents what america could and should be, a future for us to work towards, whereas the comedian represents what america is, a present for us to move away from. i think that aspect is a very clever piece of writing by alan moore as the time when he was creating the watchmen was very politically different from when jack kirby was creating captain america. i’ve been thinking a lot lately about how incredible jack kirby’s explorations of fascism, militarism, and jewish identity are all through his career. i think alan moore did jack kirby justice in taking a lot of captain america’s tropes and superimposing them onto a fascist. i think jack kirby did an incredible job of showing us the lunacy of nazis in his super villains (something i didn’t give him enough credit for until this year when i saw how these freaks operate when the mask of respectability is removed), but by alan moore’s time, the value of an aspirational symbol for what america could be was diminished as america turned more and more fascist, making super imposing captain america’s tropes onto a fascist felt uncomfortable and upsetting. but also, having now seen trump voters up close and personal, it’s incredibly accurate to the mindset. both jack kirdy and alan moore did an incredible job depicting fascism in the hopes we the people would see their work and grow and change.
unfortunately not enough of us did
Entirely Unironically:
AOC for Pres, Jon Stewart for Vice Pres, 2028.
This campaign would stand a chance at actually winning.
AOC and Stewart are both well known, basically celebrities.
AOC is actually capable of recreating the mix of genuine charisma combined with well articulated, meaningful actual policy points that Obama did in 07.
Jon Stewart is obviously no stranger to politics, and is possibly the literally ideal ‘attack dog’ that the VP usually plays in a campaign, for an anti corporate / billionaire campaign.
Let AOC be as principled and erudite as JFK and Stewart be as cutting and ‘no bullshit’ as Lyndon Jonhson.
…
Are either of them perfect?
No.
Are they basically the best possible options?
Well, Bernie is awesome, but he’s too old.
Absolutely utilize him as much as possible during the campaign, be at every rally, fucking have him be the head of a leftist version of what Elon is, god knows by the time 2028 rolls around, the executive will have formally and informally assumed way too much power.
Put Bernie in charge of purging the Trump/Elon pukes, directing the revokation or countermanding of everyone of Trump’s executive orders, undoing Citizens United, and reassembling the checks and balances.
…
Other than that… are any other democrats or leftists anywhere near as well known and widely, generally liked by non fascists? Who aren’t bought and paid for by corpos?
Some surveys seem to support that this direction could have worked. As a German, I supported the course of the Democrats to go with a presidential candidate and policies that democratic conservatives could get behind. About half of the voters in the US want less democracy, more totalitarianism. For a chance to stop Trump, it seemed reasonable just get all supporters of freedom and democracy behind a single candidate. But maybe I was wrong.
I have my doubts that there will be an election in 2028.
Apparently a recent poll said 71% of Trump voters are against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (food benefits for very poor Americans).
So… that would mean more than 2/3 of Trump voters are astonishingly stupid, ignorant, easily swayed into a cult, as these cuts were very obviously the intent of Trump, and outright stated goals of Project 2025, which was created almost entirely by former Trump administration staff.
… But, that makes sense, as the average adult American literacy level is that of a 5th grader (10yo to 11yo), and 21% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, with literacy skills at or below a 2nd grade level (7yo to 8yo).
As do I.
Krasnov 2028?
Asteroid YR4 2028.
Redirect! Rebuild!
rofl
Ya know, this sounds downright plausible. More so than any other ticket I can imagine anyway, middle-of-the-road corporate democrats sure are played out, but hey, from what I understand the Dems literally argued after the election about whether they didn’t go left enough or didn’t go “center” enough, so.
I think it might be part that and part the fact that the war happened in the first place. Like, before the full scale invasion, he really wasn’t that remarkable. But I guess sometimes hard times do actually make strong men.
Yeah but plenty of leaders have been absolute shit under pressure is kind of my point
The last supposedly Ukrainian person I talked to here was very anti Zelenskyy and wanted him to just lay down arms. What’s your opinion on the matter? Do you want your country to keep fighting? Do you qualify for the draft yourself?
Those seem to be quite loaded questions.
I myself would be neither for nor against Zelenskyy, if it was peace time. Normally, there would have been elections last year, so there would be a non zero chance we would have had a different president already, if not for the war. But, since that’s legally not possible right now, here we are, and I’m not about to go protest in the streets demanding to have elections as soon as possible.
That said, I am very much against being occupied and invaded. While also not willing to be drafted myself, since I know I would be quite useless on the battlefield. So the best I can do right now (to help in the war, that is) is to keep donating money for the equipment for our army.
I recognize I’m being hypocritical, since I wish to be protected without having the resolve to enlist myself. But I also recognize that, were I to enlist, my value in actually protecting Ukrainian lives would be very low.
Given the current state of Ukraine as a going concern, I can’t imagine anyone seriously bragging about their vote for Zelenskyy.
Gave us a good hard look at what the Jon Stewart Presidency would have looked like.
Three successful years of holding their own against everything Russia can throw at them? I’d say that’s freakin’ amazing and a ringing endorsement of Zelenskyy’s leadership!
Is that what the Russian/Ukraine front looks like to you? Seems like they’ve been feeding their young men into a meat grinder so they can lose hundreds of miles of territory on a basket of false promises from DC. They aren’t holding their own, they’re being slaughtered at the speed of Russian artillery.
Tom Massie: Washington purposely blacking out Ukraine casualty data
…
Ah yes, because clearly Zelenskyy is solely to blame for the current state of Ukraine. I guess he’s mind controlling half of the world leaders simultaneously and playing 5D chess with everyone.
One would think you’re his biggest fan the way you’re giving him credit for everything that’s happening in the world.
Idk about blame, he does seem to do the best job I have ever seen though, and also he seems to have morals and empathy, something I have never seen in any politician in a long time
Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan. Obviously, nobody is responsible for Ukraine except the villainous ork monster Vladimir Putin and his tribe of savages.
Zelenskyy certainly didn’t commit to an escalation in the conflict that his country couldn’t handle or trust a bunch of NATO state department officials who were more interested in using Ukraine for weapons testing than inclusion in a European commons. And how could any conscript forced up to the front lines because he couldn’t bribe his commanding officer have anything to complain about in how Zelenskyy’s military leadership has run the war.
Is there any tyrant I haven’t loved? Muammar Gaddafi? Saddam Hussein? Ruhollah Khomeini? Daniel Ortega? Jacobo Árbenz?
You’d almost think I’m against these horrifying pointless military conflicts on principle.
Seeing as you’re against military conflicts (all of which are pointless and horrifying, on that I agree), maybe that anger should be directed against the person who actually started the full scale invasion. Unless you’re implying that Zelenskyy “escalated” the war by not immediately surrendering to Putin.
To what end? To further justify another three years of slaughter?
Zelenskyy fucked up by escalating the border conflict with Russia. Putin fucked up by charging into a quagmire. Western Europe piled in to squander billions on slaughter. Ukraine took its pound of flesh through 2022 and had an opportunity to sue for peace, end the conflict, and secure its sovereignty, but backed down when Blinken scuttled the deal. And then we spent the next two years accomplishing nothing but nightmare after nightmare.
At every point, every state actor involved decided the best response to the situation was to double-down. And what did it win them? Americans lost their civil government. Ukraine lost the Donbas and its soveriengty. Russia lost hundreds of thousands of its young people. Germany lost its cheap energy and may lose its liberal governance.
“Maybe blame the guy who started it!” gets you nothing. Its just another excuse to extend the conflict. To double down. To insist we need another year of butchery in Eastern Europe.
End the fucking war. You don’t have to like the guy on the other side of the table to do the right thing.