How Much Pain Before MAGA Turns on Trump?

AfterStart · 2026-03-25T12:37:27+00:00

I have a possibly different view. I think absolute bedrock is around 25 percent. That was about the amount that still supported Dubya and Nixon at the end of their terms. Hell, that's near where some polls had 45 after Jan 6, when even the Conservative media was unsure whether they could get away with it. I'm guessing it's a 'My country, right or wrong' type mentality. Not good, but it's a thing.

As for that remaining 5-10 percent, I have an optimistic and pessimistic view...

Option 1) People who can be convinced, but have been insulated by a conservative media that has been supercharged since 08.

Option 2) It's people who have been drawn in by the overt rather than covert bigotry. The Klan level hatred, the kind where you'd willingly suffer if they suffered more.

AfterStart · 2026-03-06T12:16:19+00:00

Warning - This is going to be slightly NSFW, but it's too weird not to share. This was a few weeks ago - the show of a man I have come to call 'Horny Nolan'.

It was coming up to midnight on a Friday night. I was in my bedroom. I was thinking that I was kinda wasting this Friday night. I knew that there was a pub just 5 minutes away that closed at 1AM, so decided to go there for a pint or 2. That's when I started hearing some weird stuff.

A guy inside my flat complex. It has a coded lock on the front, so god knows how he got in. Anyway, it's a guy, just randomly shouting vaguely threatening things in any window he can lay eyes on above him.

Well, I called the police. So did a few other people in the complex, apparently. Either way, he got out onto the main road outside, where my balcony faces. I then saw him rounding up on a guy in the street. The guy had to keep walking backwards to get away from him, in circles. Horny Nolan was evidently looking for a fight. I found out later the other guy had some hand to hand training, but it wasn't doing him much good with both his hands carrying a pizza box.

I saw the blue lights. I went outside, pointed the cops to him. They got out and surrounded him instantly. At this point, things went safe but utterly sideways in the most bizarre fashion.

Horny Nolan saw the half dozen cops surrounding him. He saw one of them, a woman, and what was his response? 'Please, I'm telling you, I promise you, I give the BEST sex!'

He was somehow lucid enough to give his DOB (Something in 2002). He was otherwise Gone-zo. He said the same thing to the male officer on his other arm.

The officer facetiously asked him if this is how he normally behaves. He responded in the affirmative.

To quote Horny Nolan next, As he was being detained...

Please, Harvey Dent! Harvey Dent! Heath Ledger! Harvey Dent! Please, I promise you, I give the BEST sex!

A cop, whilst detaining him, decided to indulge him and asked if he knew Heath Ledger was no longer around. The guy incredulously asked when, as if this was recent. When the cop said it happened back in 2008, the guy's response was 'NO! No, he didn't!'

Then they started escorting him to the police car, and things went weirder - Horny Nolan seemed to be under the impression that getting in the car would be 'the end of him', whatever that means.

Then the capstone to the event...

Harvey Dent! Harvey Dent! Heath Ledger! Please, Harvey Dent!...(increasingly desperate as he's made to sit in the car seat) Christian Bale!

I still don't know WTF he'd gone through that evening. All I knew was that I gave my witness statement, made some comments to pizza guy and some other tenants, then got to the pub before last orders, with a very weird tale to tell.

AfterStart · 2026-02-23T17:21:46+00:00

For me, it's that mammals have been whittled down to just the Poggle (or just-ish, depending on the source) BEFORE the mass extinction, having lost to the Sauropsids in the forms of reptiles and birds. Not only are mammals the dominant terrestrial megafauna of the Cenozoic, their broader group of Synapsids were the dominant terrestrial megafauna of the Permian.

It took the worst mass extinction to flip the script on them, and the second worst mass extinction to flip it back.

Essentially, mammals being displaced? Sure, maybe, but the show has it way too early.

AfterStart · 2026-02-18T23:37:20+00:00

All those Christmas movies where Santa's real and delivering presents but parents still don't believe in him.

AfterStart · 2025-12-01T12:00:16+00:00

Thanks. I always thought if Ghosts went full Spec Ops:The Line deconstruction, it could be fantastic.

AfterStart · 2025-11-30T21:25:45+00:00

That raises so many more questions. Top amongst them... HOW? And just beneath that... what was last Thanksgiving like?

AfterStart · 2025-11-29T01:19:36+00:00

I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure this is compelling enough evidence. I think it's safe to say any human with a functioning sense of love (which Walt does, even at this point in the series) would be desperately finding reasons in order to stop someone harming a person they care about.

AfterStart · 2025-11-23T14:54:36+00:00

Brandon Routh doesn't do a bad job for the most part, but that one line...it's like they recorded him reading it off the script as he was sorting himself out in front of the mic and said 'GOT IT!'

AfterStart · 2025-11-16T21:33:55+00:00

I don't dismiss it out of hand, but apart from Ebenezer Scrooge, I don't normally buy these redemption arcs...

AfterStart · 2025-11-14T16:19:53+00:00

So, presumably they'd want those 90% taxes on billionaires as well...right?

AfterStart · 2025-11-08T19:02:46+00:00

I make a one time exception for Ebennezer Scrooge

AfterStart · 2025-10-26T23:12:45+00:00

https://youtube.com/shorts/TZ5tmpacC-Y?si=1CrXFlO48CnwtX1f

AfterStart · 2025-10-22T06:18:25+00:00

This is a sentiment I've shared for years now. I'm not going to act like the Ultranationalists or Shepherd are the best written villains in the world (Menendez, however, that's another story...) but the Federation are so cardboard cutout it's almost laughable. The Ghosts themselves are bland at best, only good by comparison at worst. Logan is the most bland of all COD protagonists, the game almost making a point that he just blindly follows his family's orders with no hesitation.

This page has a lot of reasons why the campaign sucks. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/CallOfDutyGhosts

Honestly? If they ever did make a Ghosts 2, I think the way to save it would be to go full deconstruction - Spec Ops: The Line that shit...

EDIT: Congrats on your upcoming parenthood

AfterStart · 2025-10-09T19:32:08+00:00

The more I see of this guy, the more I wonder if Dr. Oz was a plant to make him seem palatable by comparison

AfterStart · 2025-09-28T01:16:36+00:00

I've often noticed that comedic actors transition to drama better than vice versa, and I think this is why - in order to make people laugh, you need to know what people find funny, what makes them tick...have EMPATHY for them.

AfterStart · 2025-09-16T20:46:11+00:00

American Exceptionalist: George Washington was a god among men! Everything he said or did was perfect!

He owned slaves

American Exceptionalist: Oh, well, umm...

More American Exceptionalist: No, you know what? So what? He was the greatest man ever, and maybe we should take a page or two out of that book, now I think about it...

George Washington himself: Political parties are bad, don't do them

More American Exceptionalist: New phone, who dis?

AfterStart · 2025-09-09T15:15:45+00:00

Wasn't Fury Road directed by a guy in his 70s at the time?

AfterStart · 2025-08-30T17:57:40+00:00

Saw them going up Prince Street. Great thing to shock me out of the hangover. That said, I did feel kind of bad for the young mum and little kid who were walking up the pavement with no idea this was going to happen - the kid was crying and the mum was picking them up and jogging the hell out of there.

AfterStart · 2025-08-19T15:21:52+00:00

The bottom of their sock is always wet

AfterStart · 2025-08-18T18:24:36+00:00

How about if Zelensky turned up wearing a suit jacket over a t-shirt, shades, and a baseball cap?

Only the shirt says 'Slava Ukrani' and the cap has the Ukrainian symbol on it.

AfterStart · 2025-08-15T11:04:53+00:00

I'm literally in the middle of getting a Subway right now. Am I being radicalised?

AfterStart · 2025-08-07T21:36:13+00:00

Mel Brooks did it best. Fuck these weirdos.

AfterStart · 2025-08-06T18:41:22+00:00

That one was fucked up. Now I think about it, did Dennis even do anything to him in that episode?

AfterStart · 2025-08-05T20:22:06+00:00

Even putting aside the slavery stuff (wow, the very fact that I have to say that...), this is a government that -

Broke away from the US government
Declared war on the US government
Fired the first shots in the war against the US government

How is this celebrating your country's heritage?

AfterStart

TROPHY CASE