US Presidential Election 2016: Sidney's Victory Lap

Most of all you, who has performed incredible mental gymnastics to claim race is not a factor in Trump’s popularity, despite falling over yourself in 2012 to portray Republicans as racist.

Peter’s Pence ???

Doonbeg is open for business

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Great news about Frosty.

A fantastic administrator, up there with John Delaney

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You do understand that people who fall into category ii) in your post also fall into category i), yes?

Find me somebody against Trump who disputed category i) here in relation to Trump voters, please? Or are you imagining it?

You’re a total hypocrite. You’re now making up a cliched straw man dichotomy, completely oblivious to the fact that after Brexit, you actually were the exact definition of the cliched straw man that you’re now complaining about.

You also agreeingly quoted a post referring to Leave voters as “racist pensioners”.

Ooft

I can confirm from first hand experience (my wife’s grandad), that racist pensioners did indeed play a significant role in brexit, the bitter fuckers.
She’s barely spoken to him since.

He hasn’t a hope of getting it.

If rents are up in Clare things are getting serious.

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Petrified bedwetters and imagined victim complex, hate-mongering, keyboard fantasy bullies like @HBV, @caoimhaoin and @ProjectNoSex can feel free to laugh at this on the meltdown thread.

The cult of personality is both a very powerful thing and a very dangerous thing.

Western society promotes individualism and the cult of the self. There are both positive and negative implications arising from this. But when a powerful and charismatic individual emerges to “lead”, people can fall in behind them unquestioningly, and any sort of critical thought on the part of the led can vanish.

Ordinary people have always found it difficult to understand complex issues. The last 15 years, going back to September 11th, 2001, have seen an attitude of negativity and despair pervade western societies. Adam Curtis has theorised that no longer are the major international issues of our time easy to understand, no longer can they be framed in a good versus evil narrative, and so ordinary people are confused. This engenders a pervasive attitude of negativity and despair in societies. The perception of threat is everywhere.

September 11th was initially framed as a straightforward good versus evil battle, but subsequent events mutated and developed into contradictory and confusing tangents. The US invaded Iraq, who were not involved in 9/11, in revenge for 9/11. The Saudis, who were involved in 9/11 (it was at least carried out by Saudis), were the west’s allies. The deposing of Saddam Hussein, which was supposedly a nudge to accelerate the overthrow of a dictator and let the “good, freedom-loving people” rise up in the way they had in Eastern Europe in 1989, instead mutated into a bloody civil war which is still going on today.

The Arab Spring, initially framed as a straightforward good versus evil battle and another event which was framed as a repeat of Eastern Europe in 1989, also mutated into various bloody and ongoing civil wars.

The West’s allies in Syria turned out to be arguably as bad as the brutal dictator they were trying to depose. Then the almost cartoonishly evil ISIS arrived to complicate matters even further. Outside actors such as Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Kurds and the Arab Gulf states add yet more layers of complication. Fleeing civilians were the innocent victims while they were still in Syria, but once they reached European shores they were portrayed as a potential enemy. There were no longer any goodies and baddies, only destruction, only despair.

The global financial crash is similarly beyond the understanding of the ordinary person. Was it the banks, was it the government, was it corruption, was it globalisation, was it capitalism, was it “socialism”, was it even “the lazy, good for nothing unemployed”, was it even us, the “ordinary people” in some way who were to blame? Any narrative can be spun. But most of all, nobody wants to believe it was “us”.

Since the rise of the INTERNET, information comes at us from all angles and overwhelms us. The ordinary person does not have either the time, the interest or the critical filters required to separate reality from lies and untruths. But the INTERNET is designed to promote our sense of self, and we feel we have to be part of the conversation, even if we are not equipped to comment knowledgeably. But our self also seeks out other like-minded people. We are individuals who also like to be part of a crowd. When angry individuals gather, a mob forms.

Anger creates fertile ground for the demagogue. Their confidence and charisma seduces people. They simplify all the complicated problems into easy to understand narratives. They blame others. It doesn’t matter if the promises and the grand statements they make are based on lies. They are easy to understand. They seduce.

Donald Trump is not so much “the art of the deal” as “the art of seduction”. All dictators, demagogues and people who use their charisma and the cult of personality to “lead” are similar in this way.

Hitler did it. Mussolini did it. Lenin did it. Thatcher did it. Chavez did it. Paisley did it. Ayatollah Khomeini did it. Putin does it. Farage does it. Michael O’Leary does it. Steve Jobs did it. Jose Mourinho does it. Eamon Dunphy does it. George Hook does it. Joe Brolly does it.

Some of those named are or were clearly a lot worse than others named but they all employed similar techniques (I’m not comparing Brolly to Hitler, by the way). Brolly has written recently about Tony Robbins. Trump also reminds me of Robbins and the worst of that sort of charismatic cult of the self and the self-help, self-delusion industry surrounding it, as, occasionally, and ironically, does Joe himself. It’s the power of the preacher.

US right-wing media has also employed the same techniques. Charismatic talk show hosts simplify narratives. They portray strength while also leading you, the “victim”. “Others” are to blame. Euphemistic language and lies are employed to fool people, to both explain things in “common sense” to the ordinary person, and to fool them. In the US, euphemistic language means “states’ rights”, “wealth creators”, “enhanced interrogation techniques”, “freedom”, “small government”, “voter ID laws”. “Common sense” is the ultimate euphemism."

And some things now no longer have to be cloaked. It’s “rapists”, “criminals”, “lock her up”, “you’re going to jail”.

Oppressors and the powerful become “the victims”. The genuinely victimised or powerless are portrayed as “the oppressors”. “Free speech”, “common sense” and “telling it like it is” are invoked to justify vilification. When reasonable people challenge abhorrent views and genuinely “tell it like it is”, the real oppressors are the first to take offence and hide behind their straw man version of political correctness (which the rest of the time they vilify). In reality the ones who loudly proclaim that they “tell it like it is” are the easily offended, they are exact same people they claim to rail against. The supposed “PC brigade” of cliche are in reality the ones who tend to genuinely tell it like it is.

Extreme politics relies on that sort of charismatic power of seduction. Everybody has an inner bully. Simplifying matters, understanding the psychology of crowds and using that to create a seductive, easy to understand message based on blaming others can release that inner bully, or at least make a willing follower of the “honest, charismatic” bully. The follower becomes subsumed into an almost quasi-religious, cult-like social order led by the Pied Piper bully.

It’s pretty much always doomed to fail and merely leave destruction behind it.

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:grin:

:joy:

meltdown complete

:joy:

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He was up all night working on that lads, don’t be laughing.

At least he had plenty of time to write it.

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I hope someone has the time to actually read some of SadSid’s hate filled tirade?

You have been reported for hate and racism, again.

did anyone even read it?

:joy:

I’m waiting for the bullet points version