Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the so-you-say dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post about the push to post the Ten Commandments in school, in reply to a comment asking us not to insult the people asking for this:
Yes, we could avoid insulting Christian nationalists who want to turn the country into an authoritarian theocracy in the vein of Gilead.
But why should we?
In second place, it’s an anonymous comment on that same post, with a similar take on the matter:
These aren’t Christians at all
They’re fascists, and this is their way of attempting to demonstrate their power and impose their will. It could just as easily be some other document or icon because it really doesn’t matter: this isn’t about content, it’s about power.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from That One Guy about Trump ordering Republicans to kill the journalism shield law:
Gee, I can’t imagine why such an upstanding, law-abiding citizen might want to make it easier to sue reporters and make them expose their sources, chilling any attempts to hold the powerful accountable for their immoral or outright illegal actions…
Next, though it’s from a different post on a different subject, another comment from Stephen T. Stone channeling Robert Caro seems like a good followup to that one:
Power doesn’t corrupt—it reveals.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is one more from Stephen T. Stone, this time about a favorite old subject:
🎵 I tried to say it was RICO, the courts said “no no no”
In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the Brendan Carr’s hatred of NewsGuard:
From Carr’s bullshit letter:
NewsGuard also works with web browsers, including Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Microsoft’s Bing [sic]. NewsGuard has partnered with social media companies. And it offers products for AI systems and app stores. In other words, your products may use NewsGuard or you may enable your customers to use NewsGuard.
So beware folk, NewsGuard may be in your backyard, in your living room, next to you in your bed.
You may have been married to NewsGuard and kiss you darling NewsGuard every morning, without knowing it.
If you have any suspicious, please call +1(555)-F7CK-CARR.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Ethin Probst (whose name I accidentally misspelled in last week’s post – now fixed, sorry about that!) about “Trump Derangement Syndrome”:
You know, TDS was never a good name, because it sounds like your just telling people that Trump is deranged. Which is pretty funny because it’s actually true.
Finally, because why not dip our toes into the beef, we’ve got a comment from Mamba about Drake v. Kendrick:
Drake couldn’t win an elocution contest against middle schooler. Mostly because he’s be working on getting a date with her instead.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
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Oh wow, TD loves anti-Christian, pro-communist propaganda.
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Maybe those christians should stop trying to fucking revoke peoples’ rights then, ay??
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Being against conservative Christians trying to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy doesn’t make someone “anti-Christian” or “pro-communism”. Regardless of whether you want to believe this, plenty of practicing Christians in the U.S. don’t want the country to become a theocracy. And I’d bet that if any of those Christians are “pro-communism”, their numbers aren’t as large as you want everyone to believe.
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According to Martin Luther King Jr., <a href=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/communisms-challenge-christianity”>a Christian can never be a Communist and vice versa.
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I know many who would disagree with that assessment. MLK doesn’t dictate others’ beliefs.
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According to Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian can never be a Communist and vice versa.
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Still boring.
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Christians are fine. It’s those conservative born-again assholes that we hate.
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Considering the kinds of things Techdirt regularly objects to, I have a hard time imagining what you must think “Christian” means.
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For shame. You could have been a useful member of society, like latrine digger or night soil collector, but ironically, you chose the shittier path.
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True Christianity is far more “communist” than you would know, seeing as how you don’t read your own holy book.
The greedy, selfish power-mongering pharisees you think of when you use the word Christians aren’t Christian in anything more than name.
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You couldn’t correctly define communism if your life depended on it.
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stay mad imaginary friender
cope
rope
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“Christian”
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“communist”
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Anti-disease, pro-human.
Christianity
MrWilson said it best, and I won’t repeat it because res ipsa loquitur.
But (having read all comments prior to my post here) I’m not seeing any solution. We (the readers, and extrapolating, the mass of US denizens, citizens, voters) know the issues.
How do we solve them? If 51% say “let orangotango run the country” do we have an answer for this? Sure, he’s NOT a woman, he’s NOT Black, and that just makes him super acceptable?
Please, someone more clever and intelligent, tell me (and the 49%) how we can get a leader who will lead us in positive directions.
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That’s easy – take the vote away from ignorant people. And by that I mean, those who choose to remain stupid even though this country has an over-abundance of opportunities for educating one’s self.
I’m not gonna take any guff about not being able to get ahead in life, or being deprived, or other such nonsense. My personal motto is “If you don’t see an opportunity, make one!”
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Define “ignorant” in a way that lets you take away the vote from people you don’t want voting but also allows people you want voting to keep voting even (and especially) if they would otherwise fit your definition.
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That is a problem, but it’s a risk any other solution to the problem (as stated) is going to have. You fundamentally can’t fix 51% of an electorate going one way while avoiding it.
Honestly, the status quo doesn’t really do that, either. Everyone can vote until they vote in fascists who restrict the vote anyway ends up with the same problem.
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Everyone that voted for Trump in the recent election.
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The conundrum is that the Dems can’t get away with playing dirty because they don’t gaslight as much as the Republicans do. Conservatives have no problem with lying to their voters and making up fake culture war issues. Hell, it’s done for them by Murdoch and Shapiro and Owens and Musk and Jones, etc. If the Dems start playing dirty tricks, the Republicans will already be doing the same and are better at it. If you try to disenfranchise voters, you’ll lose your own base. It especially won’t be a useful or even possible gambit since voting is controlled at the state level and many states are run by Republicans who are gerrymandering the fuck out of their districts to ensure they’re going to win even where they’re at a disadvantage. When you propose purging voter rolls or otherwise restricting access at the poll, the Republicans in office will be all for it and women, LGBTQ, and voters of color will be targeted, further weakening the chance of a Democratic victory.
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There are a lot of unknowns for exactly how the next four years will play out, with numerous scandals and showdowns coming, so new players may emerge, but if I had to guess, the Dems who want to win in midterms and the next presidential election are going to fall back on a lot of “safer” white “moderate” men like Gavin Newsom. Whether it’s accurate or not to say that voters are racist and sexist enough that female candidates or candidates of color won’t be as viable to win, I think some will want to hedge their bets in favor of the safer play. But there’s also plenty of criticism over the years that Democrats don’t always seem like they’re motivated to win. Some might want to double down. There will be urging from progressives not to go with another Bill Clinton, but that’s the direction I’m guessing they’ll go. The irony is that I would guess a white male candidate could possibly be more progressive than Harris presented herself during the campaign and still win because the racism and sexism likely did influence a lot of votes, but whether it was enough to be a topic of debate for time to come. But hey, maybe Trump will mishandle a pandemic again and enough of his followers will refuse masking and vaccines to sway the next election…?
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That is always the Dem’s “fallback” (read: first string). It’s probably the wrong way to fall unless the party motto is “US-type conservatives, just less batshit insane”.
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There are certainly ways to improve our electoral system. But I think this election has me pretty despondent that even if we do, we’ll still have a population that’s approximately 30% straight-up fascist and 20% or so indifferent to fascism.
It’s that second group I despair of. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude; at least it’s an ethos.
What do you do about the sort of person who lived through Trump’s first term and thought “Yep, I could go for more of that”? I don’t think there’s anything you can do. I don’t mean to understate the roles that misinformation and voter disenfranchisement played in this campaign, but ultimately about half of the people who voted voted to go for another round of that. I just don’t know that there’s anything we can do to reach those people.
There’s not a lot of good news, but the good news is that swing voters are, by definition, fickle. If we still have a functional electoral system in two years, then I think we’re going to see a pretty massive backlash against Trump in the midterms, and I don’t think voters will be eager for another Republican president in 2028.
But I’m afraid that’s a big fucking “if”. If Republicans have their way, we’re looking at rigged elections from here on in and they’ll never be out of power again. But our political system is rife with inertia and things are difficult to change, and for now that works in our favor and not theirs, and the GOP is wracked with incompetence and infighting and the last time they had a trifecta it resulted in no significant legislative accomplishments except (surprise, surprise) tax cuts for the rich. And Johnson’s majority will be even narrower than Ryan’s was. It’s possible that this will merely be a dark period in American history and not the end of our democracy.
But even then. Even then. Even then we’re still at the mercy of the swing voters. Let’s say Democrats win in 2026 and 2028. Then what happens in 2030 and 2032? ’34, ’36, and on and on? I think at best we’re looking at this ping-pong match where control swings back and forth between the two parties continuing forever, while the world burns.
I’d love to be wrong. But I’m fresh the fuck out of optimism. People voted for Trump. On purpose. A second time. I can’t make anything positive out of that.
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Because there is no solution, that doesn’t involve violating some sort of modern norm in terms of democratic participation, or violence, etc.
The fundamental assumption behind democracy is that the masses will more or less converge on the “right”/”good” answer, at some point. We had a pretty nice run post-WWII, and the hope was that things like rising education etc would keep it going. But if that assumption doesn’t hold, there is no good solution.
Ign'rnt peeps
Democracy is a thing, and until 2016 was pretty well understood except for that 56 year old question of “What WERE the Germans thinking…” but that’s old and hashed out so let’s skip forward.
And again we arrive at the question of why I MUST BE ALLOWED TO VOTE and yet there are others who must not… and who will determine the groups. SO read what Mr. Stone said in response to A.C. and I ask:
Who determines whom the blithering idiot is that is not entitled to have a vote?
…and when that criteria is set… if I’m no longer allowed a vote how may I challenge it… and if I can not… having been forever disenfranchised… can I ever regain it?
THESE are the issues that plauge the system into maintaining the rule of one man one vote. Except for Republicans trying to remove the vote of anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
Don’t call me a hater. Just explain to me why Republican states, attorneys general, corrupt politicians, and old timey pieces of crap are WORKING HARD to ensure nobody else can vote.
How long until they rmeove “voting” entirely so they don’t have to “care” who votes?
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That’s not really how it works in a dictatorship. They still have elections. Just not fair ones.
Strongmen love maintaining the image of democracy. Putin keeps getting re-elected in a landslide every six years. And North Korea is a democratic people’s republic, don’tcha know. It says so right in the name.
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THESE are the issues that plauge the system into maintaining the rule of one man one vote. Except for Republicans trying to remove the vote of anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
Don’t call me a hater. Just explain to me why Republican states, attorneys general, corrupt politicians, and old timey pieces of crap are WORKING HARD to ensure nobody else can vote.
You answered your own question.
Republicans go above and beyond in voter suppression because they worry that maybe the majority of people won’t vote for them and their policies if everyone that can vote does. Mind, after this last election where a majority were either blatantly pro-fascist or indifferent towards it that worry might not be as grounded as they think it is, but if they’re already willing to rig the game in their favor why take the chance?
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Important to note: In several states that voted for Trump in the national election, people also voted for progressive policies (e.g., enshrining abortion rights into law). Republican policies really aren’t as popular as Republicans want you to believe they are—they’re just better at messaging (and flooding the zone with bullshit) than Democrats.
Re: Re: Re: 'Sure he's against everything we value, but I'm sure he'll back us on this.'
If I wanted to feel like I’d just experienced a concussion I’d be tempted to ask those voters what the hell they were thinking, voting for the same policies that their preferred presidential candidate and his party are rabidly against.
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He hates the people they hate.
I used to think it was more complicated than that. Now I don’t.
Re: Re: Re:3 The time for granting the benefit of the doubt is well past over
Fair enough, it’s quite possible if not likely that it really is as simple as ‘I voted for him because he gives me an excuse to be as terrible a person as I want to be without feeling bad or guilty about it, since if it’s good enough for the president it’s good enough for me.’
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And as a result Republican voters will rail against Obamacare but are angered if you suggest taking away their ACA coverage.
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As the sweet taste of schadenfreude…
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I’ve come to believe that it’s more a matter of people really liking the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party but also supporting “but don’t eat my face” laws.
Not a "fix" but a step in the right direction
I believe you need four foundational elements to even begin to approach a solution:
If we fail to do the above, we won’t move much further away from where we are now.