It’s the state of mind caused by simultaneously believing two (or more) things that conflict with each other.

And while they’re arguing about who’s causing the most chaos, the rest of us are left wondering—how did it get this bad?

Actually, that’s easy.

It got this bad because our system is so warped and corrupt that most politicians can no longer even pretend to run on policies and principles. If they get elected, they’re going to do one and only one thing - they’re going to serve the interests of the wealthy individuals and corporations that pay them the fattest bribes. They obviously can’t run on a promise to do that, but they can’t promise to do anything else because they’re not going to do anything else. So they run on hatred and fear - they run on things like “ELECT US BECAUSE THE IMMIGRANTS ARE EATING YOUR PETS!!”

It really is just that simple.

And those are the people this whole thing is intended for.

You’ll note that none of the people involved responded to attempts to get further statements or clarifications from them. That’s because they know it’s indefensible bullshit. They said it just so that it would get out there so that the faithful would see it and add it to their credo, and now they’re going to ignore it.

It’s become obvious over time that one of Trump’s primary strategies in life is assigning his failures and faults to other people. He lives in a sort of permanent fog of projection.

I wonder who he’s trying to fool though. It’s so constant and seemingly effortless that I suspect that it’s really mostly for his own benefit - that it’s not just the story he’s telling other people, but the story he’s telling himself.

These groups understand the Republican voters, many of whom are not inclined to rank candidates. Ranked-choice voting favors the more malleable Democrat voters who will do so.

Or in other words, Democrats are more likely to actually think about their votes and find things to appreciate in multiple candidates, while Republicans are more likely to just slavishly vote for whoever has an [R] after their name and disregard everything and everyone else.

And arguably more to the point, Republican politicians count on that.

I think you have forums confused with microblogs.

I presume I’m supposed to care, but I dont, and I don’t know why anyone would.

Love the responses from the influencers. They’re all silent about it until Johnson claims that he’s a “victim,” then there’s this sudden rush of “Yeah… yeah - that’s it. Me too! I’m a victim too!”

Uh huh…

Just be patient.

With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.

The part that really gets me is the news media taking him seriously.

I keep waiting for a moment when some reporter is going to start talking about Trump’s latest, then just stop in the middle and say, “You know? That’s it. I just cant do it any more. This guy is a blithering lunatic and I’m done pretending he’s not.”

Not like I actually expect that - I’m much more cynical than that. Still though…

Hmm…

I would assume then that the effect is somehow tied in with the fact that the light is diffused and relatively dim, since it’s simply a fact that the blues and greens are the colors that pop. Possibly there isn’t enough light to show up orange or red - effectively, everything is sort of in shadow?

And by contrast, as I write this, it’s very smoky where I am, and yes - the light is notably orange. And I’ve noticed before that when it’s like this, shadows have an obvious blue tint.

This is an example of a thing I’ve said repeatedly about Trump - I’m willing to bet that he’s 100% sincere about this. He’s not dissembling or diverting - he actually, sincerely believes that he had every right to interfere in whatever ways he wanted.

Why?

Because he’s a near-total sociopath. I don’t think that concepts of truth and falsehood or right and wrong are even coherent to him. I think his entire measure of everything is wholly personal - if he wants it, then it’s right and if he doesn’t, then it’s wrong, and if he believes it, then it’s true, and if he doesn’t, then it’s false. And it really is that simple. It’s not that he lies, but that he lives in a fantasy world in which whatever he believes is true and whatever he wants is right.

Pretty much.

Don’t get too hung up on the name - it’s just a personal bit of shorthand. What I’m talking about is the actual phenomenon. Parrish’s paintings are just the closest popular representation I’ve seen of it.

It seems to happen most often in late summer, when (in my area at least) afternoon thundershowers are relatively common. There are times when the clouds will roll in, but they’re not dense enough to bring rain, and just at dusk, the light through those clouds is diffused but oddly clear, so in spite of the fact that the light level is low overall, colors, and especially blues and greens, really pop.

In HSL terms, it’s essentially 100% saturation but only maybe 30% light, and since the light shifts toward red/orange, the blues and greens are the colors that stand out the most.

What I call Parrish light - the distinctive tone that’s prominent in Maxfield Parrish’s paintings.

It’s a relatively subdued but clear reddish orange that I see most commonly with relatively uniform but thin thunderclouds at dusk. It makes blues and greens much more vivid, in spite of the fact that the overall amount of light is relatively low. And it’s glorious.

Why do you people RANDOMLY scatter ALL caps words through EVERYTHING you write?

Is it SOME sort of Pavlovian THING? Like you see a SENTENCE with a random assortment OF all caps words, and THAT says to you that IT’S the kind of FAKE truth you PREFER?

I think there are two different things at play there, and both have been mentioned, so all I can add is that it’s not one or the other but both. (Well - that and a song)

Partly it’s the common human need to feel that we matter - that our lives are in some way significant.

And partly it’s the fear of death and the resulting desire to believe that we’ll “live on” at least figuratively.

And the song is from Shriekback and is directly on topic - Dust and a Shadow

Airbnb is a fine example of a sort of variation on enshittification.

The way it works is a new company with a new and notably cost-effective way of doing things comes along and is unsurprisingly wildly successful. And then, inevitably, that leads to them hiring a whole raft of executive parasites who all have to be paid obscene salaries for doing nothing of any real value, which means the company needs to raise prices and cut back on services in order to generate more profit to pay those salaries. And meanwhile, the new executives, with nothing of any note that they actually need to or even can do, but with a need to create some illusion that they’re necessary, have pointless meetings in which they propose and wrangle about and eventually approve and implement new policies and new plans that are generally awful.

And pretty quickly and not coincidentally the new company ends up at least as bloated, mismanaged, overpriced and under-performing as the companies they so recently replaced.

See also: Uber, DoorDash and the entire streaming industry.

Broadly because the entire dynamic of left-wing partisanship in the US - both for the politicians and for the voters - is built around the binaristic idea that the only alternative to supporting the Democrats is supporting the Republicans, and that doesn’t work if they admit that there are more possible positions than just those two.

And by imposing the partition plan instead of holding a plebiscite, the UN overtly violated its own charter.

It strikes me that what we have here is basically the plot of Frankenstein, played out over 80 years of world history…