Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

The Election from Hell 2016

This has nothing to do with video games. This blog was created ultimately to rant about stupid things, (things that I find stupid.) That encompasses a lot of things. I’ve tried reigning it in more toward games but everything outside of that is technically still fair play. This is relevant because it is the single most stupid thing I have ever seen in my life. It is driving me insane and I feel that I need to write about it somewhere before I explode. This is a very long post full of anger about politics but If you’re a huge Trump supporter you may save time and read the much shorter abridged version here:

[Jewish lies written by a Liberal cuck and paid Hillary shill.]

If you’re an intelligent and open-minded human being then feel free to read the full version below:

I’m thirty years old and married with children. I’m a white man. I’ve never voted before. For my whole life I have never cared about politics or elections. I’ve been the definition of apathy when it comes to voting. I never registered or sought to identify with a particular party. I always thought it was a pain to follow and research candidates and props to make informed decisions. What does it matter anyway? I’m one person with one vote living in a hard blue state. (Grew up and lived in mostly red counties.) No matter who gets elected, America continues to exist and chug on with ultimately minimal change or disruption to your everyday life no matter how much of a whiny little paranoid bitch you are. That has now changed. ALL OF IT.

From the primary election in 2015 I was at least aware that Donald Trump was running as one of the like two dozen people to be the Republican candidate. Oh yeah, that sleazy, belligerent fuckstick, I thought. How kooky of him. I was reminded of the Gubernatorial election in California when we elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. I recall Gary Coleman and some other weird shit on the long list of people throwing their hats in the ring to be governor. How weird that was. I thought Trump would likely be weeded out early in the nominee running because why the hell wouldn’t he? He has no political experience and the shit comes out his mouth ranges from laughable to repulsive. How could this sideshow possibly garner enough support to propel it anywhere. Surely the registered Republican base recognizes the grave seriousness and immense responsibility of choosing the next president of our nation and leader of the free world. Apparently not, because he won the primary and became the GOP nominee. Okay… Go get the popcorn and buckle up because once this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re going to see some serious shit.


The GOP is now in ruins. People are switching out in protest, refusing to endorse Trump or voting for him with clenched teeth because Trump does not represent Republican values as we’ve known them AT ALL. My how suddenly progressive the holier than thou family values party became when they out of the blue elected a candidate who’s had three wives, tells people on Twitter to check out a sex tape, been in Playboy Magazine, wife posed nude, referred to his own daughter as a “piece of ass” and has no discernible religion or even a solid ideology to grasp. Now piece of ass comment aside I don’t care about ANY of that. I don’t think that it solidly indicates that Trump or any candidate is too worldly, morally bankrupt or incapable of leading America as president. What I find most fascinating is that the sanctimonious GOP establishment who has touted these Judeo-Christian ideals as the necessary foundation of a noble and strong American society tossed that shit right out the window once they realized that it was contingent to getting their fingers on the White House. They’ve outed themselves as having morals of convenience which become fluid if necessary to conduct a power grab. Excuse me while I now feel sanctimonious right back at you. What happened here is that the GOP’s very naive core voting base which they keep locked in the basement with token offerings of guns and government instituted Christianity escaped and found someone more interesting who told them everything they wanted to hear. The actual GOP establishment was left scratching it’s head in confusion going “Well gosh I always thought our voter core’s needs resonated strongly with that of our obscenely rich white men with solidly backward beliefs about women’s health and reproduction.” The don’t and they haven’t for who knows how long. They only stuck with you because you were the closest they could get to what they actually wanted, not because you were relevant. So now that the curtain has been pulled back we can see exactly how things work and that there is a clear division in party ideologies. There is no going back to what it was before. They either change what the GOP is all about or it vanishes altogether. I say good they deserve it after creating this monster in the first place. Unfortunately they may be replaced with a nationalist/fascist party so that sucks. We're going to see a mass migration of actual Republicans. The funny thing is that we now see Trump trying to lure these actual Republicans behind him by pretending to give a shit about their stupid cornerstone beliefs like stripping women of their health/reproductive rights and stripping gays of their marriage rights because doing so will reinstate the value of our straight marriages which was stolen by them, right? Is that still the narrative? I have to say it's only gotten more stupid since marriage equality has been legal for a while now.

It’s really interesting how evangelical Christians have stuck with Trump. The mental gymnastics being used to rationalize their obvious cognitive dissonance is “Sometimes in the Bible God uses an evil man to do his work.” Okay but here’s the thing see, sometimes in the Bible SATAN uses an evil man to do SATAN’S work. In fact I dare say that’s far and away the most common use for evil men. I’m not voting for Trump on the off chance God is planning on turning him into Paul the Apostle. Here’s a reminder I think many Christians need on a constant basis: when asking yourself what would Jesus do always remember YOU’RE NOT JESUS.

Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.” We don’t know precisely when America was great but we know one thing, it isn’t now. Yep, despite what your life might be like in America, Trump literally says we’re all living in a third world country. I guess someone had better tell all the illegal immigrants that are “pouring into our country” this because they still mistakenly believe it’s better than the countries they all left behind to start a new life. A motherfucking white male American millionaire born into perpetually sustained affluence and given every advantage in life says his country, the one that’s allowed him to possess everything he has, is terrible and the system is rigged against him. Meanwhile the crowd of mostly white middle class men cheer and nod their heads in agreement. Yeah, what a hellhole, right guys? If someone can convince your stupid ass that you’re living in a shithole when you can just look out the window and see that you’re not, they can convince you as to the reason of why you’re living in a shithole. It’s illegal immigrants. Yes remember when some dirty Mexican stole your beloved dream job of digging ditches in the sun and then raped your wife? It’s those very same people that caused the dire struggle of the middle class white man and his so so many unjust problems that no one else could possibly understand. Keep up the fight, brothers! We shall overcome! These bad hombres sneak across the border to relocate their families in America for the express purpose of stealing and raping Americans because they can’t just find something to steal or rape across the street from their house in mexico with much less travel and punitive consequences.

This is a typical cornerstone of the “alt right” ideology. As you might have guessed, the “alt” in alt. right is short for “alternate reality.” Within this alternate reality is an ever present danger of being murdered or assraped by immigrants so you need to fight them off with assault rifles and RPGs but the government is perpetually moments away from taking your guns away so you need to stockpile weapons to fend off their helicopters, tanks, drones, bombers and legions of well trained soldiers which will completely steamroll you regardless during the impending hostile takeover. It’s not really something compatible with regular reality which is why illusion breaking things like facts such as illegal aliens trying extra hard to behave so they can stay in America often need to be perceived as lies from the Jew or Liberal conspiracies. If Trump is elected, America will essentially become the crotchety old shut in at the end of the lane who watches through the blinds with a shotgun as he waits for a hooded negro to materialize on the sidewalk. If you can’t see why this is an issue you are already one of them and it is too late for you. I’m not going to say it’s fine and dandy that it’s possible for people to just come right into the country undocumented but I’m not going to conclude that the answer is a wall and a gestapo immigration force.

The next time some dipshit tells you America is a third world country ask them what their definition of a third world country is or ask them to name some countries they’d rather live in or they think have it better because I assure you nothing meeting a higher number of their standards exists. I always find it hilarious when right-wing nutjobs idly threaten to leave the country if X happens. Like, where you gonna go, bitch? Canada? Enjoy your no guns and excellent healthcare. The truth is you hate the idea of America. You’ve always hated the idea of America and you want it to be something else entirely. The country you actually want to live in doesn’t exist on this planet and likely never has because it’s nonsensical. You are not the patriot you think you are. You are closer to a separatist peddling toxic and seditious garbage.

Trump’s whole campaign is founded on fear and exploitation. The message is that we're being robbed by immigrants, threatened by Muslims and the solution is to stop America from getting any less white. I remember early in the campaign where Trump had a rally where he invited someone who's relative was raped and killed by an illegal immigrant. Okay that's sad but what's your fucking point? This is why we need a wall? Congratulations, you just utilized a logical fallacy which can be used to vilify literally any group of people you want permitted you can find that one person who hates them for it. Like no white man ever raped and murdered anyone when they illegally immigrated to the New World? You're using specious reasoning to appeal to people's emotions like pre existing hate and suspicion. Tying an entire group of people to the actions of an individual is unethical and unhelpful. I know it’s cliche to compare someone to Hitler because dreadfully uncreative people overuse it to describe anyone they don’t like, particularly politicians even when they share no compelling parallels with the infamous Nazi dictator but Trump is Hitler 2.0. It’s the very same rhetoric. A man comes into a dire situation, an ACTUAL dire situation. Germany was ACTUALLY on the ropes after WWI. In America a dire situation is we have to wait a couple of days before getting the power to kill people with our finger. Man comes into a perceived bad situation and says wow, everything’s terrible. We need to get back to our roots. We need to make our country great again. You know what the problem is? It’s those assholes over there. Someone should get rid of them and I’m just the guy to do it. And the rest is history. History I don’t think we learned well enough from.

Trump, for a majority of his presidential campaign was doing or saying something notably reprehensible or stupid on almost a daily basis. That is not an exaggeration. He’s slowed down (relatively) toward the end but he’s done so many things that you don’t even remember most of them. Some things I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on like retweeting a supposedly anti-semitic image, (maybe he just read it and didn’t even notice the visual elements,) or supposedly kicking a crying baby out of a rally. I watched the clip of him speaking at the podium to some unseen woman trying to leave with a crying baby. I can't even really explain what was happening here but one thing was certain, it was indescribably awkward and uncomfortable to witness. Was this… a joke… gone horribly awry? Let me just say this: Clinton is not very funny. She is cringeworthy half of the time she jokes but when Trump jokes, especially with sarcasm, we can't even tell if it's a joke because his view of reality is so distorted that it's just as likely that he’s being sincere about the odd thing that he just said. And I'm sure it's left many a rally goer awkwardly looking to the rest of the crowd for clues on how to respond appropriately. Are we cheering this time or laughing nervously while side eying one another? The media will often pick up these comments which may sound shocking to many and cause a small backlash and then Trump will respond later that it was obviously a joke. How are we supposed to know? Here, try this joke next time.

Q: What's the difference between a Trump gaff and a Trump joke?
A: About 24 hours.

But anyway there were three things that I can recall that didn’t just get glossed over. They actually caused people to step back and think for a moment before eventually shrugging it off and concluding “This is fine.”

Judge Curiel Saga

Judge Curiel is a second generation Mexican American born in Chicago. Why the hell am I telling you this first? Because his heritage is of great importance to Donald Trump. He is the judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case happening in a few weeks. When he decided to unseal documents related to the case and make them public, Trump went completely ape shit. He had these… uh… things to say.


His assertion was essentially that the judge couldn’t do his job properly because he’s Mexican. That’s racist. All judges are going to see cases in their careers where they have a personal connection with something in the case. Regardless they are instructed to best maintain impartiality. In rare cases there are judges that are bad at this such as the one in the infamous Brock Turner rape case but Curiel is actually known for being particularly harsh in cases with Mexican drug cartels to the point where a hit was put out on him. Hell he didn’t even have a connection with this case. The case is about fraud and whether it happened or not. Trump is the one that tried to make it about race. And why did he even mention the wall? Curiel is an American citizen, dumbass. The judge didn’t do anything wrong so get over it gracefully. Also you’re running to be my president and I’d very much like to know about your fucking fraud case.

Khizr Khan Saga

At the Democratic National Convention a Muslim Attorney and father of an Iraq War veteran, Captain Humayun Khan who was killed in action spoke. He raised an open question to Trump. Would my son, a man who sacrificed everything for America, even have a place in your America? Uh oh. An upstanding Muslim family with a fallen veteran child. Bet it never occurred to you that Muslims like this could possibly exist. Khan proposed Trump had never read the constitution and said he had “sacrificed nothing and no one.” Trump responded by trying to redirect, accusing that Khan’s silent wife on stage was not allowed to speak, (like he gives a shit,) when in reality she said nothing because she loses her composure when seeing images or speaking about her dead son. Trump followed up with a week long Twitter bitch saying that Khan had no right to “viciously attack” him like this. He also claimed he’d sacrificed plenty which of course spawned the ironic hashtag #Trumpsacrifices. Everything Trump has done in his life has been to benefit himself. If someone else benefited from his actions it was purely coincidental. He has never once thought about someone else and helped them at his own sacrifice unless is was ultimately going to come back to him with interest in some shape or form. He’s the antithesis of the idea of sacrifice. He’s certainly never done anything comparable to the sacrifice of a soldier, especially a dead one. His reaction to Khan was absolutely appalling. When a Gold Star family raises a valid point that one of your main policies will essentially be vilifying their dead war hero son, you shut right the fuck up. Unless the next thing that comes out of your mouth is a heartfelt apology from down on your knees, you SHUT YOUR STUPID FUCKING PIG MOUTH and drop it. Even if they are out of line which they aren’t. Trump has also shown contempt for POWs and soldiers who have PTSD. Well, Mr. Trump, perhaps you could have done a much better job serving your country than them but we’ll never know because you had some widdle bone spurs. Trump loses his shit around veterans because he's a narcissist who can't handle being around someone who is inherently more respected and venerated by society that him. I see him as president begrudgingly awarding a soldier the Medal of Honor and then feeling suddenly compelled to tell everyone in the room that his genitals are large and he has lots of money. This whole ongoing debacle drew harsh backlash from everyone including the GOP. Even Fox News, which is now just the Trump Apologist Network was struggling to jump right in on this one because he’s in direct conflict with one of their main heavily touted ideals. This was one of the cardinal sins he committed during his campaign that I feel clearly disqualifies him from the presidency. If you are not going to show respect to each and every veteran and their families you have no fucking business telling them where they’re going to fight and die. I motion that Captain Humayun Khan receive the Medal of Honor for going above and beyond the call of duty by helping save America from one last bad guy… while dead.

Trump Tape Saga

The biggest October surprise we got was the Trump Tape, a recording of Trump talking to Billy Bush on a mic he was not aware was on. On that tape was Trump speaking in very crass terms about physically sexually harassing many women… whilst married to his current wife. He essentially claimed his celebrity status gave him access or free reign over whoever’s body. After this tape leaked, Trump said he had never actually done any of the things that he had claimed he had done in the tape. Really? Because either you are speaking about things that you did or you are attempting to portray yourself as a sex offender just to impress some douche bag. Either way, what the fuck is the matter with you? And then all these assholes swarm into Fox News trying to enable his shitty behavior. “This happened eleven years ago.” Oh yeah, he was a young and reckless sixty year old. I’m sure he’s attained enlightenment since then and is a completely different person now. “It’s just locker room talk. All men do it.” No. No they don’t. Bragging about your many consensual sexual conquests is one thing. Bragging about violating/hurting people is unacceptable no matter who you are, end of story. And that goes quadruple for a fucking presidential candidate. Why are you trying to make this kind of behavior acceptable? Why do we not just offer everyone the basic human respect and dignity they deserve? It really isn’t hard. Also a man who feels the need to boast that he grabs women “by the pussy” sounds like a man with a very tiny dick.

The whole thing was quite shocking to... idiots I suppose. Wait. You mean the dirty old man who created and judges Miss Universe and berates its contestants as animals is a sleazy douche bag with no respect for women? I would have never guessed. Didn’t alter my opinion of him whatsoever but what really disturbed me deeply about it was that while it did damage him momentarily in the polls, people were still coming out and defending something that was clearly indefensible. I know that Fox News is fine with sexual assault because of Roger Ailes but can you imagine if this tape instead had Hillary Clinton on it making similar remarks about men. Do you think Fox News and other Trumpeters would jump down in the sewer to provide the same defense for Clinton? Hell no! It wouldn’t be “locker room talk” and “We’re not electing a pope.” It would be scowling news correspondents shaking their heads and wagging their fingers over a banner that reads “Hillary’s War on Our Moral Fabric.” People have been asking all election, “Is there a double standard for Clinton?” Yes there is and it was made manifestly apparent by the right trying to downplay blatantly abhorrent behavior coupled with awful direct and indirect implications for Trump’s actions and mindset. Where is the fucking line? Do you have any scruples at all? Do you you stand for anything? At what point does your conscience outweigh your lust for having a “Republican” in the Oval Office? Or are you just willing to follow him all the way down the rabbit hole into hell itself? That’s not how morality works. If you view something being right or wrong as contingent upon who did it, you’re doing it wrong. This is the most stupid and absolutely appalling game of Emperor’s New Clothes I’ve ever seen.

The vast majority of the things Trump claims he will do are just cardboard cutouts with nothing holding them up and completely disintegrate under the smallest amount af scrutiny. How are you going to make Mexico pay for the wall? They don’t care about your wall. They don’t care about you. I dare say they don’t have a spare four billion dollars to spend on your wall. Mexican President Nieto explicitly told you they wouldn’t be paying for your wall. Hours later after meeting with him Trump said back in the US “Mexico will pay for the wall. They don’t know it yet but they will. Believe me.” Okay, we’re back where we started. How? No I will not believe you. I want answers you walking colostomy bag! That money’s coming from the American taxpayer or it’s not happening at all and you fucking know it.

How is he going to implement his proposed Muslim ban? Are we going to invent religion detecting machines that you walk through at the airport? Are we going to make everyone coming in sit down and take a test and hope the terrorists all answer truthfully that they’re Muslims? Are we going to just blacklist entire countries that have registered Muslim populations above a certain number which would likely need to include many European and other non Middle Eastern countries? None of that sounds feasible or effective.

He’s going to bring back our jobs from being outsourced overseas. Okay that sounds great except for one thing. I’m no economist but wouldn’t bringing back those jobs cause the cost of everything to spike to offset the costs of companies using the more expensive US labor? Is that better? That’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

How’s he going to revive the coal industry. Is he going to use a time machine to take us back to the Victorian era when coal was a highly relevant energy source? Oh that must have been the time when America was great. It all makes sense now. Or perhaps we’ll see him invest in developing steampunk technology for the future. Steampowered sex automatons! Wait, that’s a terrible idea. Imagine the burns. Now that I think about it his policies are basically leading us to a Bioshock Infinite nation. Everyone get into our big racist Victorian island and float away.

He just about never clarifies how any of his big policies work and they are all logistically nonsensical. He just says shit that people want to hear and it all sticks because you idiots have the suspension of disbelief of a three year old. Candidates like Dole and Romney who lost their elections as the Republican nominee have to be kicking themselves right now. All this time they naively assumed that their base was intelligent enough to want things like well explained feasible plans for solving America's issues when they really could have just used their Jedi mind trick, jangled some shiny keys in their face and claimed that if they were elected president they would cure cancer and personally shit out a flying solid gold Bentley for each and every American.

Trump's off the cuff remarks are the most mentally grating things I've ever heard. It would not be uncommon to hear him say something like: "Folks, we’ve got an illegal immigration problem in America. Illegal immigrants are immigrating illegally and let me tell you, it’s an immigration problem." He sounds SO GODDAMN STUPID when he’s off the teleprompter. I can not believe that people’s brains don’t explode from the sudden thought vacuum which occurs when he opens his mouth. If you just read that image, what in the everliving fuck was that? I have never heard anything like that from a sober person. That was not an answer to a question. That was a free form jazz odyssey of word diarrhea. What is hidden in there that makes people go “Wow! This guy knows his shit! He’s taking us places!” I listened carefully to him during the debates and the jist of what he said every time he was asked a policy question was “The way Obama is doing it is stupid. The way Hillary wants to do it is stupid. [looping reiteration or meaningless gobbledygook to fill time if needed.]” Very rarely did he actually offer a genuine solution and legitimately attempt to answer the question. Why does no one else notice this? Why do you just let him get away with it? This feels like a Kickstarter scam. Just because you refuse to look behind the curtain doesn't mean anything is going to be back there when you elect him.

He has no discernible ideology to anyone because it's an amorphous ideology. The ideology is “Me first at all cost.” He will do whatever he wants to whomever he wants to get whatever he wants. He keeps saying he was against the Iraq war. He wasn’t. He praised the Clintons at one point. Now everything they did was Satan. Before, he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Now he doesn’t know him. He does not follow a pattern. He just goes where the money is. If he thinks you are useful for obtaining something he wants, he will stop and entertain you momentarily. He will pretend to be or care about whatever you wish until he gets what he desires and then you can fuck off and drown for all he cares. His entire campaign is a giant scam.

I’ve heard a lot of the same arguments from Trump supporters throughout his campaign as to why they’re voting for Trump and they’re all bullshit. Every last one of them.

“He’s a doer.”

They speak in terms as if he’s already fixed everything. As I've said, his policies are largely magic wand politics. Assuming something he proposed actually made sense, both you and him are going to have a rude awakening when you learn that checks and balances exist and no one wants to help him do anything because he's burned all of his bridges.

“He’s a strong leader. We need strength right now.”

People point to Trump’s air of smug and bombastically blunt certainty about everything and his willingness to tear into anyone he deems bad without restraint as “strength.” He’s going to stand tall and not take crap from anyone. Trump as you see him is Trump at a Trump rally. He only thrives in an environment where he has control and is filled with loyal idiots who came to revel in communal hatred for Hillary Clinton and hear spectacularly outlandish claims and promises. When you remove him from this supportive energy source of boundless echos and accolades and put him in say a presidential debate in a swing state or Mexico he is practically staring at his shoes and whispering like he’s an eight year old who just went over to the neighbors’ house to apologize for the baseball through their window. It’s a facade. He is a paper tiger if ever there was one.

“He’s an outsider and not a politician.”

This is such fucking stupid logic. You assert that all politicians are inherently lying, plotting manipulators on a quest for power and money and that someone by virtue of having no experience in politics is automatically better. Your Lord and Savior, Donald Trump is everything a bad politician is and more but minus the qualifications and experience. Oh but at least he’s not technically a politician, right?  This is like if you screamed “Help me! I’m being attacked by a vicious wolverine,” and someone responds, “No, you’re actually being attacked by a vicious honey badger,” and then you’re like “Oh, that’s a relief. I thought it was a wolverine.” A shady scumbag businessman is in no significant way different from a shady scumbag politician.

“She’s the candidate of status quo. He’s the candidate of real change.”

Again, stupid logic. Change is not inherently a positive thing. It’s just making something different than what it was. The status quo you’re talking about is American sitting passively in a rocking chair and not really accomplishing anything. The change you are talking about is America putting on a blindfold and jogging down the New Jersey Turnpike in rush hour traffic.

“He can’t be bought.”

He’s literally a one man special interest. He has a brand and is head of a real estate empire which includes a “university” investigated for fraud and some bankrupt casinos. He is the personification of big business and as president is going to do things that benefit big business as we can already see from his tax plan. This is the expedited prepackaged form of “being bought.” This is like coming back to your flattened house after a tornado and saying “Oh, good. Now my house can’t burn down.” Also, having a “not bought” status is only achievable if the candidate does not accept big donations. He has.

“He’s telling it like it is.”

He’s telling it like you’re willing to believe it is.

“He’s an F U to the establishment.”

I’m all for flipping the bird to the establishment and pissing on their stupid little games but I also have a brain capable of weighing the factors involved in any decision and simulating the outcome. Electing Trump as president to spite the establishment is like scuttling your ship to spite the captain. Teehee! Won’t the captain have egg on his face when we all drown. Sure showed him. It's not worth it by a long shot.

“We need to think about the Supreme Court seat.”

That’s it? You’re voting Trump because you need a warm body wearing a republican sticker to select the new Supreme Court justice and prevent the filthy DemoRats from getting any leverage in the government? “Oh no, the Supreme Court justice” is your dire worst case scenario? I have to say that looks pretty trivial against the dire worst case scenario of electing Trump which is “Oh no, the planet is fucked! We’re all dead!”

“Hillary’s going to trample our constitutional rights.”

Based on what evidence? Oh and don’t think I don’t know that whenever you raise the broad issue of “constitutional rights” you’re only talking about second amendment gun rights because that’s the only thing you ever jump up and advocate in it. And no, the second amendment does not ensure that you receive the rest of your rights. What does that even mean? If it came down to it you’re going to point a gun at someone until they give you freedom of the press or right to a trial? Hillary Clinton has given no indication that she’s interested in repealing the second amendment. In fact she’s confirmed the opposite. Now you can make the baseless argument that she’s lying and secretly plotting to do it but let’s rewind. Remember about eight years ago when Obama took office and he was going to press the “Take their Guns” button and it was all going to be over for gun rights? Here we are eight years later. Nothing has changed. Obama hasn’t even lifted a finger but in all that time you’ve been on pins and needles sounding the alarm and crying wolf and every time there’s a mass shooting in America gun sales skyrocket because Obama’s gonna do it this time. I can feel it. So now that Hillary’s knocking on the White House door What is different this time that makes your irrational alarmist bullshit on the mark? That’s not even mentioning that a president alone lacks the authority to just repeal an amendment. You’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate a fear based on a stupid fantasy you invented.

Going back to constitutional rights. I’d argue that Trump’s mindset and speech indicates a greater threat to our constitution. He’s barred news outlets from his rallies like Politico and Washington Post who are liberally biased and hate him but it doesn’t matter. People are going to shit on you and you need to accept that because people are allowed to express their opinions in America. After the Presidential Debate spoofs on SNL which made fun of the candidates he said SNL is terrible and “should be canceled.” He alluded that the New York Times would be out of business when he became president. He spawned the hashtag #repealthe19th (women’s suffrage) after saying he would win easily if only men could vote. He’s claimed that our democracy is an illusion and everything is rigged to hand the presidency to Clinton. After being behind in the polls late for a time he said “We should just cancel the election and give it to me.” WE SHOULD BYPASS DEMOCRACY. The system is corrupt and rigged but if it was rigged in my favor that would be fine. Does this sound like the very avatar of liberty, the leader of the free world talking? Does he realize he’s not running to be godking of North Korea?

His proposed Muslim ban is an awful idea. Whether he intends to or not, he is setting the precedent that all Muslims are to be assumed terrorists. Granted there are already plenty of mouth breathing cave dwellers who believe this. Yeah, that would mean that a fifth of the world population is terrorists. And nevermind that much of terrorism and counter terrorism/innocent civilian clashes in the world is going on between two opposing Muslim sides. Trump would be (already has) singling out a group of Americans and telling them they are not wanted here while simultaneously declaring to those that are already suspicious or hateful of them that hunting season is now open. If you are going to put all Muslims in the box with ISIS you’re just going to have a bigger box of ISIS. The first, most obvious step toward keeping someone from becoming a terrorist is to tell them they’re not a terrorist. This proposition is anti American, detrimental to the human race and beneficial to terrorism. What’s that, you say? The Japanese internment? You mean that shameful thing we did back when blacks were also second class citizens? Fuck off.

America first is another one of Trump’s policies. It’s more like a mindset where we don’t kill our jobs with outsourcing and are less likely to invest in preventative measures for foreign issues letting the neighborhood go to pot until something scary starts knocking at our door because that kind of attitude worked out great in WWII. I don’t really know where this America First shit suddenly came from. Were you putting America first when you dodged the draft? Were you putting America first when you weaseled out of your taxes? Were you putting America first when throughout your entire career and on to this day outsourced your jobs and bought overseas every chance you got? Were you putting America first when you thoughtlessly tried to destroy the American people’s faith in their country’s democracy to save your ego? That doesn’t sound like America First. That sounds like Trump First. It has never ever occurred to Trump once in his life to do something for America until SUPPOSEDLY right now because it’s a lucrative stance to have.

When Trump is ahead in the polls he’s jerking himself off on stage about it. When he’s behind in the polls the polls are “rigged” with no evidence. When the FBI recommends no charges for Clinton on emails the FBI is incompetent and the Justice Department is an “arm” of the White House protecting Clinton. When upon finding more emails the FBI announces the reopening of the case days before election against protocol Trump has “always respected” the FBI and the director has “restored his reputation” and then they don’t recommend charges again and then they’re crooked trash again. When the fire marshal cuts attendance for a trump rally he “doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.” When the first presidential debate is during Monday Night Football and might get lower ratings because of it it’s a Democrat conspiracy even though the debates were decided by a bipartisan committee before he was even the nominee. Everything is a slight or a conspiracy against him. If something bad happens it’s always someone else's fault. The liberal media is conspiring against me to lift Hillary. The “liberal media” is not forcing you to say and do stupid things on a daily basis. They can only work with what you give them which is everything. Maybe if you’d played more team sports as a child you’d have a healthy method of dealing with failure or loss. And on that note If I’m watching a 49ers game and they’re losing, I don’t immediately suspect refball as the first three causes. I can analyze variables which include the actual Niners team. Harbaugh left. The talent was gutted/left. The management is incompetent. Kaepernick can’t make a pass greater than fifteen yards. They lose because they suck. I don’t need to concoct a conspiracy theory about the NFL telling the officials and other workers to gouge the Niners sneakily from all fronts because Kaepernick won’t stand for the National Anthem just so I can believe they’re a good team. These things that Trump says come from a mindset symptomatic of a personality disorder. How can anyone stand to be around a person who believes they’re never wrong and blames everyone else for their problems to a ridiculous degree?

I can’t imagine Trump actually enjoying being president. His only experience is in his business which follows the model of a dictatorship. He only cares for an environment where he calls the shots, answers to no one and if he doesn’t like someone he can dismiss them with the wave of his hand. If he became president he’d be immediately disenchanted with the idea once he found out he didn’t have anywhere near as much power as he believed he’d have, it requires patience, cooperation, the will to serve others, continual interactions with many many people who can’t be dismissed and focused attention on a lot of things that are of no interest to him. He doesn’t fit the job description in portfolio or personality.

I never realized until now how important it is to be a good role model when you're president. If you think and act like a shit, suddenly all the pariahs and dregs of society begin to slither out of the woodwork thinking it's fine to walk around in the daylight. Trump has already done measurable damage to the country without even setting foot in the White House. Bullying has risen in schools. A black church has been burned and a large scale domestic terrorist attack on a Somali housing complex intended to ignite a “race war” has been thankfully foiled. Trump has also urged his supporters to go out and watch the polling sites for signs of a rigged election, whatever the fuck that means. Many of these followers including gun nuts and white supremacists groups have answered the call and plan to be creepily loitering around polling locations basically setting the table for widespread election day violence. The utter recklessness of this fucktard is nothing short of astounding. If I were President Obama I might consider mobilizing the National Guard before hand.

When you think it’s highly suspicious that Hillary deleted many of her Secretary of State emails but Trump absolutely refusing to release his tax returns for no valid reason is fine.

When you’re appalled by Clinton’s response in Benghazi but the rise of Trump stoked hate crimes and domestic terrorism is fine.

When It bothers you that Hillary could be sworn in as president while being investigated by the FBI for emails but Trump having two court dates between now and then for fraud and child rape is fine. (Okay the accuser dropped the rape case as I wrote this.)

When it bothers you that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes but when Donald Trump doesn’t pay his taxes it’s not only fine, it’s “smart.”

When it bothers you that Hillary's husband (who’s not running for president) has had infidelity issues and rape accusations but Trump having a recording of himself proclaiming he believes in Manifest Breastiny, rape accusations and a dozen other accusations of sexual misconduct is fine.

When you think Hillary poses a threat to our national security because of her mishandling of sensitive materials but Trump publicly beseeching Russia to launch cyberattacks on America is fine.

When you think Hillary will cause WW3 just because but Trump wanting to disband NATO and wondering why we don’t use nukes is fine.

When you’re certain upon your own inkling that Hillary’s going to attack your 2nd amendment rights but Trump wondering why we don’t use torture and showing utter disdain for freedom of speech and freedom of the press when it’s against him is fine.
When Hillary saying that “half of Trump’s supporters belong in the basket of deplorables” is hurtfully prejudiced but Trump saying all illegal immigrants are criminals, all Muslims are terrorists, a Mexican Judge can’t do his job because of his ethnicity or him getting sued by the Justice Department twice for racial discrimination in his housing is fine.

When the Clinton Foundation accepting money from countries who mistreat women bothers you but Trump misappropriating funds from his own Foundation to purchase portraits… of1 himself is fine.

When it bothers you that Hillary lies about things but when Trump has made a flat, unskewed true claim in a remarkably minuscule 4% of his professionally fact checked claims and 70% of them have at least a mostly false rating and he is the lyingest liar since lies came to Lie Town is fine. It means you have your head shoved up Trump’s ass and are subsisting entirely upon his shit. It is so so SO incredibly apparent that Trump is the worse choice here. Stop pretending this is a hard decision. It's not EVEN a decision. He is a veritable cross section of just about everything bad the human race has to offer. If Clinton did half the shit Trump did, she’d be dead in the polls. I find it difficult to believe that this many people are this weak-minded, this gullible and this stupid but maybe I’m giving you too much credit. What is this enormous invisible thing tipping the scale toward trump for you? Even if Clinton is as corrupt as you say and she gets elected, America will still be America. With Trump? The America Experiment has failed. We’re privileged to live in a country where we get to choose our government officials. Maybe our choices this cycle are less than perfect but to willingly choose the ill prepared, erratic, inflammatory, blowhard with no experience and no plan who’s full of contempt for what America represents and everyone who’s not a rich white yes man flies in the face of logic and the very reason our founding fathers constructed our democracy which was to protect us from shit like this. If you truly believe that our democratic system is rigged then allow me to invite you on behalf of America to not participate in it. 

The way I see it there are only two explanations for anyone wanting to vote for Trump over Clinton besides just being a racist. Either you’re a Republican and you’ve stigmatized the Democratic party to the point that they are just automatically the worse choice in your mind regardless of the candidates; you’re so used to voting Republican that you’re willing to turn a blind eye to the unending cascade of red flags coming out of your candidate just to assure yourself it’s okay to continue voting Republican. Or… (and I didn’t think it was this for a while,) or, whether you are aware or not, you are scared absolutely shitless at the prospect of having a female president and don’t want to admit it. I know Trump’s wheelhouse demographic is white men, practically ONLY demographic. They’re turning out to protect their thousands year old empire. If the US gets a female president their reign comes to an end and they’re that much closer to being on a level playing field where you’re expected to respect the former lessers that surround you. I used to think it didn’t really matter if the president was a woman but with the way this election has played out it has become clear that if a line of thought is clouding your mind and causing willful blindness to such an absolutely ludicrous and dangerous degree it must be eradicated forthwith. It’s time to evolve and get the fuck over it.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Princess Jellyfish

This is an anime about um… well… I’m not quite sure. It centers around this small boarding house in Japan that has for whatever reason attracted an ensemble of severely mentally ill/socially awkward women. They consider themselves a sisterhood and pretty much an island from normal society. All of them are in general, ugly, insane, worthless drains on society. (I believe one of them has a job.)


The main character is a teenage girl named Tsukimi who moved in recently. Being the main character means that she has to be grounded closer to the normal end of the spectrum than the others so that normal people watching the show can at least be in the general vicinity of common ground. (Like how in chick flicks, when the protagonist is supposed to be a nerd/dork or social outcast and they basically take a super hot actress, put glasses on her and make her run into poles occasionally and call it accurate.) She’s not actually ugly, her agoraphobia isn’t as severe and the only creepy quirk she has is her bizarre hardon for jellyfish. She’s completely obsessed with them. I guess she associates them with her dead mother who used to take her to the aquarium.


One night she meets a girl and brings her back to the apartment. (No, not like that, you pervert.) Turns out the girl is actually a dude in drag. Tsukimi freaks out because men aren’t allowed in the building. She tries to send him on his way but he keeps showing up at the doorstep from then on, always dressed in full drag, very fashionably and with makeup on. I guess the joke is that this guy is more attractive, fashionable and feminine than the rest of the female cast, not that the bar was set all that high. I mean, seriously, they look like a re-imagining of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids if they were female and Japanese.




I think what pisses me off most about the characters is that I can’t see their eyes. Occasionally in anime you’ll have maybe one megadork character with stupid spiral lens glasses that they never take off but this is three main characters whose eyes you never see. Oh and speaking of glasses, the one with glasses who looks like the teacher from SZS has about five lines in the whole show.


Mayaya always dresses in a track suit and gestures like Bruce Lee in a fighting stance. They actually make a reference to this in the slough of movie references in the intro. When I say she gestures like that, I mean she does it all the fucking time. It is literally her resting pose. She can’t just stand like a normal person. This is one of those things that people might be able to accept in anime but when you start trying to apply it to reality, you suddenly realize just how stupid it is. Have you ever run to school with toast in your mouth or held a popsicle in your mouth with no hands. Try it That shit get’s messy really fast, it starts to hurt from the cold and you look like a moron. Have you ever smiled at someone happily with your eyes closed? Try it. You’ll be booked as a sex offender by the end of the day. Now can you imagine going through your day-to-day routine in a constant Jeet Kune Do stance?


This would have been the part where I photoshopped several images of Bruce Lee in the same pose, going through his daily routine but I’m too lazy.


Anyway, the actual plot goes something like this. Kuronoske’s family is actually extremely wealthy. His dad and half brother are both stodgy local government officials. Needless to say, his crossdressing isn’t really appreciated all that well at home. That being said it actually surprised me that he got very little flak for his deviant behavior, especially being in a family of politicians. On top of that, he’s actually an illegitimate child. I don’t know what the media is like in Japan but in the US that shit would be flying all over the tabloids if word got out, possibly having a negative effect on your career so you’d want to keep a pretty short leash on Kuranosuke. But the worst he ever gets is groans and eyerolls. In a realistic scenario he probably would have been kicked to the curb the day he was born but again maybe it’s different in Japan with a collectivist society.


His brother Shu is sort of their father’s protege, straitlaced and boring as a contrast to Kuranosuke. One day at their immaculate mansion, he sees Tsukimi leaving and becomes interested in her. Kuranosuke seems to want to set them up and takes both of them to the aquarium. Tsukimi ends up crying when she sees the jellies and hugs Shu. He hugs back and then they sort of have a moment. Kuranosuke gets kind of jealous when he sees them. If you’re jealous then stop trying to set them up, you dumbass. At this point, you’re liable to think that there is some kind of love triangle forming or at least some bonding of some sort but no. Shu and Tsukimi barely interact for the rest of the show and Tsukimi and Kuranosuke never really get any further than they are this moment.


There’s nothing wrong with having platonic relationships but either have them or don’t have them. Don’t sort of allude to a more than friends relationship and then never follow up on it like you forgot you were doing it or something. The whole show is like that. They start doing something and then get distracted and never mention it again.


Shu’s part of a committee in talks deciding whether to approve a neighborhood refurbishing program which would include tearing down the shithole that all of those freaks live in and putting in something nice. The person heading the proposal for the committee is a young woman who it is implied is placed in that position as bait/sex appeal. She gets close to Shu, has a drink with him, puts roofies in his drink, brings his unconscious body to a hotel, gets in bed with him and takes a picture of them together in bed. They didn’t do anything but he doesn't know that. It’s a blackmail scheme to use as leverage to greenlight the project. (So this is what it takes to start a scandal in Japan.) This was seriously their game plan for the proposal from square one? Why didn’t they just propose it and see how it panned out and then maybe consider doing illegal shit if it fails and it’s really all that important to them. This might have made sense if they had established beforehand that Shu was very likely to kill the program but they didn’t. As far as I know, he had no strong opinions about it whatsoever so why do this?


Over the course of the show, this woman is holding this picture over his head to get him to basically do whatever she wants. She gets him to introduce her to his father and go out on mock dates with her. There’s really no mention of the program again. She just appears to be dicking around. On one of these mock dates he gets pissed and tells her off before leaving. She gets depressed and drunk dials him later that night with a slurred voice, passing out on the phone. He gets worried for some reason. (Oh no, that bitch that’s been constantly manipulating me and threatening to ruin my career might be in trouble. How terrible.) He shows up at her place and finds her on the sofa posed with a big bottle of pills. Unfortunately she’s not actually dead. Surprise, they’re vitamins! Funny joke! He slaps her in the face and leaves. Later, during a soliloquy, she reveals to the audience that she has a crush on him. Oh, you have a crush on him. My silly mistake. See for some reason I got the idea that you were just being a complete fucking psychopath. I’m glad you cleared that up for me.


How am I supposed to believe that she likes him? At what point did she indicate or express any fondness for him? When did he ever reciprocate similar feelings beside out of the fucking blue when he checked on her? This can be one or both of only two things: an accurate look into a serious psychological issue that she has and/or it’s the most shittly written relationship development I’ve ever seen. In fact, shittily written relationship development all around. If she actually likes him then she should show it by not blackmailing him. Her character had the potential to turn a corner by deleting the picture and relenting but she never even considers it. She comes down hard on him and doesn’t yield at any point. What is she even trying to accomplish? She never says anything about the program. She just seems to be acting like a sociopathic child torturing a puppy for thrills. Does she actually want a relationship with Shu now? Can you imagine what that would be like?


“So how did you two meet?”


“Funny story, see she drugged and kidnapped me and then took pictures to try and blackmail me. Now we’ve been together three years and she’s still trying to blackmail me.”


Red flags! Red flags everywhere!


At one point, a private eye gets hired to tail Shu to see what the hell’s going on with this lady and again you think, oh man, shit’s gonna go down now. And again you’d be wrong. It doesn’t.


Kuranosuke figures out about the proposal for the neighborhood refurbishing and tells the freaks. Then he makes a plan to collect money by selling their assets so that they can buy the building and save it from being bulldozed. He makes them all start going to the proposal meetings. He also gives them all makeovers so that they don’t give everyone eye cancer when they walk in the door. Even after the makeovers, you still can’t see their eyes.


They can’t scrape together all that much because they're unwilling to part with their shit. They set up a booth at a flea market and discover that Tsukimi’s homemade jellyfish doll becomes a hot item instantly. (I don’t know. It’s Japan.) They quickly begin mass producing them for their booth but once more we really never see where this leads. Maybe you could say that it’s a precursor for the part where Tsukimi and Kuranosuke team up to design a stupid-looking jellyfish dress which actually gets some notoriety at a big fashion show. But it ultimately has the same conclusion so who cares?  


One of the big problems with this show is that everyone is unrealistically accepting of their circumstances. There should have been a lot more tension than there was. Shu should have been torn between his blackmailer heading the restructuring proposal and his brother who is friends with the people that the project directly affects. Shu should also resent him in general for being the lovechild of his dad’s affair which ruined his parent’s marriage and gave him a phobia of women. Kuranosuke should have been put under pressure by his father to stop his cross-dressing antics from both intolerance and fear of it effecting his own career.


Nothing gets resolved at the end. Shu still thinks that he slept with an insane person. The freaks never figure out that Kuranosuke is a guy and don’t get over their aversion to men. Their scheme to raise money never accomplishes anything. Their successfully designed dress never accomplishes anything. The PI investigation never accomplishes anything. Tsukimi’s relationship with Shu or Kuranosuke never goes anywhere or does anything. The building owner tells the freaks that she won’t be selling so the place can’t be bulldozed anyway which essentially makes what little conflict they were able to establish, completely pointless.       


So the whole story can be pretty much be summarized like this: some people are kind of trying to demolish this building and the people that live there are kind of trying stop them and OH LOOK, A BIRD!


The story is so wishy washy and ill defined. No one ever just has a clear cut logical motive for their actions. No one follows through with anything. Nothing that happens has impact on anything else. Make Shu noticeably against the restructuring. Make the project leader blackmail him to get his support. Make her either a cutthroat business woman who doesn’t care or make her start to like him and then decide to stop blackmailing him. If she continues blackmailing him then make buying the building a feasible solution to save it. Then make Tsukimi’s stupid ugly jellyfish dress save the day. Good stories require a visible dilemma or a visible sense of conflict. That’s how you get people invested. That’s how you get people to care. That’s how you don’t leave everyone blueballed at the end, wondering if there was supposed to be a message to the story or even if it constitutes a story at all.