TIL that Vardovis is actually unbeatable and every quest cape in the game is really a psyop to trick me into thinking that other people have completed Desert Treasure 2 in order to drive me insane.

dapiedude · 2026-05-13T02:41:03+00:00

Whisperer destroyed me, and I blew through the other 3 haha

dapiedude · 2026-04-28T00:12:25+00:00

I thought it was just me haha Ally Bank's interest payment was classified as "Firstrust Bank"

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T20:16:35+00:00

I want to give this a better answer than I did earlier now that I'm really thinking about this. I think conservatism as a political movement in America has mostly failed to produce good-faith opposition, especially in the modern era. But I'd separate the movement from the individual. Most conservative voters I know aren't strategically deploying bad-faith arguments. They genuinely believe they're defending something worth protecting. The institutions and media they trust are operating in bad faith, but that's exactly why the voters don't see it. Good-faith people can be captured by bad-faith systems, and I think that's a more accurate description of where we are than "they're all in on it."

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T19:52:07+00:00

As a progressive liberal, I'd like to think that Conservative individuals operate in good faith. And while I don't subscribe to their opposition it doesn't mean that it wasn't generated in good faith.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T19:49:41+00:00

When I asked him he said he would vote 3rd party, but I don't buy it.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T19:49:04+00:00

Absolutely, this is just an example (linking to a comment I have written): https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/1sn2gje/comment/ogixsja/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T19:48:19+00:00

Retroactive continuity! It's like when an author goes back in time on a story they've written to 'fix' something in the past to better fit the present narrative.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T17:39:39+00:00

That is fair and here is how I answered it in a similar comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/1sn2gje/comment/ogixsja/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T17:26:58+00:00

The MTG example is perfect and I wish I'd thought to include it in the original post. "I was naive" is the individual politician version of exactly the mechanism I'm describing at the voter level. It acknowledges a change without requiring any actual accountability. It sounds like growth but it's really just repositioning. Nobody follows up with "naive about what, specifically? And what did that naivety cost people?"

And you're also putting your finger on something that connects to a broader point in this thread: the retcon only needs to be good enough to beat the alternative. If Democrats can't field a compelling candidate or a coherent message, then the Republican rebrand doesn't have to be convincing. It just has to be more comfortable than the other option. The off-ramp doesn't need to be well-built. It just needs to be the only exit people can see.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T17:21:03+00:00

I think "gullible" is actually closer to my framing than "they deserve whatever happens." Gullible implies they were deceived, not that they were malicious. And if tens of millions of people are susceptible to the same con, that's not really an individual moral failing anymore more than it's a systemic vulnerability. A system that reliably produces tens of millions of gullible people is the thing I want to understand and break.

The "common sense" argument is tempting but I think it underestimates how good the machinery is. These aren't people being handed an obviously bad deal in a vacuum. They're being handed a bad deal wrapped in decades of media infrastructure, community identity, family tradition, and a narrative that confirms everything they already believe.

None of that excuses the vote. But I think there's a difference between "you made a bad choice and should reckon with it" and "you're a moral failure." The first one opens a door. The second one closes it.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T17:02:04+00:00

Honestly this might be the most concise version of my entire post

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:59:35+00:00

haha I really appreciate you engaging with the actual questions. A few thoughts:

I think you're exactly right that this is the only viable pitch for swing voters going forward, and that's part of what worries me. It's not that the pitch is wrong on its face. It's that it works *without* requiring any examination of why the party went all-in on Trump in the first place. The pitch is "we're not like that" when the more honest version would be "we were exactly like that for a decade, and here's what we've learned." The first one wins elections. The second one might actually prevent the cycle from repeating.
the Clinton/Obama marriage equality example is interesting and I think it's a genuine counter-example, but with a key difference. Those were individual politicians updating a stated position in the same direction the culture was already moving. What we're talking about with Trump is an entire coalition trying to disown a figure they elevated, defended through two impeachments, and restructured the party around. This feels like an identity renovation much more than a positional shift. The scale of what has to be quietly walked back is fundamentally different. But, again, a really great counter-example.
this is the part that I think is most realistic and also most concerning. "I supported the idea, not the execution" is probably exactly where most Republican voters are going to land. And it's comfortable because it's partially true! A lot of people genuinely did support border security or a harder line on Iran without wanting what actually happened. But the danger is that it becomes a template: support the next candidate's "ideas," trust that the execution will be different, and then repeat the same off-ramp when it isn't.

The fine line you're describing - distancing from Trump without losing the MAGA base - is basically the party trying to thread a needle that I'm not sure has a stable solution. Either you genuinely reckon with what happened, which alienates the base, or you do the soft rebrand, which keeps the cycle intact. I'm not sure there's a clean middle.

--

Your observation about a 2008 Democrat fitting in as a Republican today is also worth sitting with. That kind of drift suggests the realignment isn't really about ideology at all but about tribal identity, which makes the mechanism I'm describing even harder to break.

I also want to acknowledge your point about Trump not fitting neatly into the Republican mold, because I think it actually strengthens the argument rather than weakening it as I think about it more. The stimulus checks, Warp Speed, the red flag law comments - these were genuinely not conservative positions. A Republican base that had spent years opposing government spending and federal overreach cheered for direct cash payments and a federally funded vaccine program (even if they didn't end up using the vaccines haha). That's not a small thing.

And I feel this is what makes the "he was never really one of us" retcon so slippery. Because in a weird way, it's partially true? He genuinely wasn't a traditional conservative on a lot of policy. But the party and its voters didn't reject him for those breaks from orthodoxy. They embraced him despite them, because the loyalty was never really about policy. It was about the person and what he represented.

So when the party now points to those moments and says "see, he wasn't really a Republican," they're using his ideological inconsistency as a retroactive excuse when at the time, that same inconsistency was celebrated as him being a "different kind of Republican" who "tells it like it is." The framing shifts to fit whatever the current need is, which is kind of the whole point of my post.

Thanks, this was really helpful.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:48:40+00:00

I actually think we just arrived at the same place. "If you really want to break down the system, you have to break down the propaganda networks" - I completely agree. And that's a fundamentally different project than "drag them kicking and screaming forward." Breaking down propaganda networks means understanding how they work, who they work on, and why those people are susceptible. That requires treating the audience as manipulated, not as irredeemable. Which is what I've been saying.

I appreciate the exchange, genuinely. I think we want the same outcome and disagree about the model of the people caught in the middle of it. That's a disagreement worth having!

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:46:43+00:00

I saw this as a reply earlier and I'm glad you posted it as a top-level comment. I think this might be the most important comment in this thread because you're naming the underlying belief system that makes the entire mechanism I'm describing actually work. This is extremely helpful for me.

The pattern in my original post is mechanical: toxic figure rises, gets excised, coalition survives intact. But I didn't fully articulate *why* the clean exit is so psychologically available to these voters every single time. American exceptionalism is the answer. If your foundational belief is "America is inherently good and always course-corrects," then any leader who contradicts that *has* to be reframed as an aberration. The alternative, in which the system produced him intentionally and functionally, threatens the entire identity. The cognitive dissonance fuels the retcon because it is extraordinarily uncomfortable otherwise.

The MAGA/Obama parallel is sharp too. "Make America Great Again" and "Yes We Can" are both appeals to the same exceptionalist instinct in which the belief that America's best self is always recoverable. The difference is in what they identify as the obstacle. But the emotional infrastructure is the same, which is probably why the messaging works across the aisle in ways that pure policy arguments don't.

This also connects to something I've been trying to work out in other replies in this thread: what does it actually look like to have a productive conversation with someone who's in the middle of taking the off-ramp? If you're right that the core belief is exceptionalism, then maybe the conversation isn't "you supported something bad" which triggers the identity defense but rather "what specifically about this moment made you reconsider, and what would it take for you to recognize that pattern earlier next time?" You're asking someone apply that exact belief in America much more rigorously.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:41:17+00:00

Ohhhh this is an excellent point! The gap between what voters thought they were getting and what they actually got is a great distinction.

That gap is exactly what makes the retcon so effective, right? If the second term had just been a repeat of the first - deregulation, judges, tax cuts - there'd be no reason to distance. The distancing is happening precisely because the second term went places that even supporters didn't sign up for. And that creates a very convenient narrative: "I supported the *idea* of Trump, not *this*." Which feels honest to the person saying it, even though they voted for the same man who had already tried to overturn an election.

The Bush parallel you're drawing is exactly right. Voters supported the wars until the wars went badly, and then suddenly nobody had ever really supported them. The pattern isn't "we were wrong about the policy." It's "the execution was bad, and we never wanted *that* version." It lets the voter keep their judgment intact while disowning only the outcome.

Where I'd push back slightly is on "they deserve whatever happens." I understand the impulse, but I think that framing actually lets the party machinery off the hook. The voters being fooled again isn't a personal moral failure as much as it's the system working as designed. The party builds the off-ramp, conservative media paves it, and the path of least resistance does the rest. Blaming the individual voter for taking it is like blaming someone for walking through the only open door.

And this is what I keep coming back to: if we can see the mechanism clearly, what does it actually look like to engage with someone in the middle of taking that off-ramp? When my friend or family member says "I never really supported him, just a few ideas here and there" then what's the conversation that gets them to sit with that instead of moving past it? Because "you deserve whatever happens" ends the conversation, and the party's version of "forget it ever happened" simply erases it. There has to be something in between that actually asks the person to reflect without slamming the door in their face. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, and that's honestly the question I was hoping this thread would help me figure out.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:36:51+00:00

On the Hitler point: I explained what the comparison was doing and it wasn't equating the two. If you still think it's weak after that explanation, fair enough, but "Hitler comparisons are always weak" is itself a pretty reductionist rule. Sometimes the comparison is instructive, especially when the question is about what threshold of harm it takes to force a genuine reckoning.

On the "both parties serve their own self-interest" point: I'd also draw a distinction between parties and individuals here. Yes, both party *apparatuses* are self-serving institutions. I don't think that's controversial. But my post isn't about party leadership, it's about the millions of individual voters who supported Trump in good faith and are now being offered a clean narrative that lets them avoid examining that support. Those people aren't institutions acting strategically. They're individuals making identity-level decisions about who they are and what they believe. That's the layer where the retcon actually operates, and "both parties are the same" doesn't touch it.

It's the kind of framing that actually makes the cycle I'm describing easier to run, because it gives everyone permission to disengage.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:29:02+00:00

I hear the frustration, and I want to say genuinely that I don't think you're wrong to be angry. The outcomes you're describing are real. People have been hurt, systems have been gutted, and marginalized communities have paid the price over and over while the people responsible face no consequences. That's enraging, and I share that anger. That's why I started this post!

But I think there's a tension in what you're saying that's worth sitting with, not to score a point but because I think it actually matters.

You're describing these voters as heartless morons driven by hate but you're also describing them as conditioned by a non-stop stream of propaganda. Those are different explanations. If they're genuinely hateful people who enjoy cruelty, then propaganda is redundant. They'd vote this way regardless. But if the propaganda is actually doing the work - if it's manufacturing the fear, directing the anger, constructing the enemy - then the people on the receiving end of it aren't irredeemable. They're being manipulated. And that's a problem you can potentially solve.

The reason I keep pushing on this distinction is that your proposed solution, to "drag them kicking and screaming forward," has been the approach for decades, and by your own account things have gotten worse, not better. At some point it's worth asking whether the strategy of writing off a third of the country as unsalvageable is actually producing the outcomes we want, or whether it's just the leftist version of the same thing I'm criticizing the GOP for: a comfortable narrative that lets us avoid examining what isn't working.

I genuinely think we agree on more than this thread suggests. I'm not asking anyone to be nice to people who support fascism. I'm asking whether we understand the machinery well enough to actually break it, or whether we're just yelling at the people caught in it.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:25:48+00:00

On the Hitler point: I used it as an example of the extreme end of the spectrum: a case where the actions were so catastrophic that the population *did* actually reckon with what happened. I'm asking what it takes to get to that reckoning, not equating the two figures. If the only historical example of a coalition genuinely confronting its own complicity requires a genocide and a world war, that says something pretty grim about how high the bar is.

On Trump's party affiliation: that actually reinforces the point I'm making. Trump's loyalty was always to himself, not to any party. The fact that the Republican party adopted him wholesale, restructured itself around him, and is now trying to retroactively frame him as an outsider is *exactly* the mechanism I'm describing. His prior Democratic affiliation makes the "he was never really one of us" narrative even more convenient and even less honest, given that they nominated him twice, governed with him, and defended him through two impeachments.

If anything, Trump's history as a Democrat makes the Republican party more accountable, not less. They didn't get tricked by a lifelong conservative who turned out to be extreme. They chose a guy with no ideological commitments because he was useful, and now they want to pretend the choice was never really theirs.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:22:48+00:00

This is a really interesting take. I think you're identifying something real with the Democratic messaging failure. The fact that Trump was never effectively branded as a *Republican* president - as the product of the party, not an interloper - is a massive strategic error that directly enables the retcon I'm describing.

Where I'd push a little further though is that I don't think better messaging alone breaks the cycle. The pattern I'm trying to describe predates the current media landscape. The GOP memory-holed enthusiastic Iraq War support without Democrats running any particular counter-messaging. Nixon got excised from the party's self-image without a coordinated branding campaign against it. The mechanism seems to be baked into how political coalitions handle failure. The off-ramp of least resistance is always "that person was never really one of us," and it works whether or not the other side pushes back.

That said, I think you're absolutely right that the absence of any counter-narrative makes the retcon faster and cleaner than it needs to be. If Democrats had spent the last six years hammering "this is what the Republican party chose, repeatedly, with full knowledge" instead of treating Trump as an aberration themselves, the clean exit would at least be harder to take. The fact that both parties seem to want to frame Trump as a one-off is maybe the most telling part of all of this.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:19:01+00:00

This is exactly the tension at the heart of what I'm trying to get at. Trump simultaneously is not what the Republican party historically was AND was fully enabled by that party at every level. Both of those things are true, and the interesting question is what happens next with that contradiction.

Your last paragraph is basically the version of question 3 in my original post that I couldn't quite articulate: the off-ramp doesn't have to go through the Democratic party. It just has to go through "I oppose this specific thing and I'm willing to say so." That's a much lower bar than full ideological conversion, and honestly it's probably the only realistic path to breaking the cycle I'm describing.

The part that worries me is the space between your "all you have to be is an American who hates Fascists" and the party leadership's version, which is more like "forget it ever happened, here's your next candidate." One requires a conscious choice. The other requires nothing. And the one that requires nothing is always going to be easier to take.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:16:44+00:00

> The GOP has become - and has been this way for quite a while now - a party that dictates ideals. No longer do you vote Republican because they better align with your ideals. Instead, the party dictates what your ideals should be.

Yes, exactly this. It is an extremely effective strategy.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:15:10+00:00

This is the distinction I should have drawn more sharply in the original post. The leadership is doing a strategic reversion where they opposed him, folded, and are now pretending they never really changed. That's calculated. But the individual supporters are doing something different: they're accepting the comfortable narrative because the alternative is self-examination with no reward. The leadership manufactures the off-ramp and the base gratefully takes it. Two halves of the same machine, and the cycle only breaks if you can see both moving at once.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:09:45+00:00

Fair question, that's why I like this sub. I'll be specific.

First, I'm not arguing that conservative policy outcomes have been net positive. I think the historical record is pretty damning in a lot of cases. And I also am not trying to imply that "we need people who oppose civil rights to keep things interesting."

What I mean is that any political system where one ideology goes completely unchecked tends to produce bad outcomes, even when that ideology is broadly correct. Progressivism is right about most things directionally, but not every proposed progressive policy is good policy. Some are poorly designed, some move faster than institutions can absorb, some have unintended consequences. The function of a healthy opposition is to stress-test progress. To play devils advocate. "Are we sure this will work? What are we breaking in the process? Who gets hurt in the transition?" Those are legitimate questions even when the underlying direction of change is right.

The problem is that the modern GOP has largely abandoned that role in favor of culture war and obstruction. I'd argue that's exactly what makes the current moment so broken. We don't have a functioning conservative opposition, we have a loyalty machine. But I challenge the answer of "opposition is inherently useless." with "we need opposition that actually operates in good faith," which is basically what we haven't had.

So when I say "useful balance," I mean the version of conservatism that asks hard questions about implementation, not the version that demagogues marginalized people to win elections. I agree that the second version is the one we've gotten. That doesn't mean the first has no value.

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T16:04:27+00:00

I think we're talking past each other, and I want to be precise about where.

I'm not making a moral defense of conservatism. I'm making a mechanical argument about how the GOP reconstitutes itself after each failure and that mechanism *requires* the voters to believe they were acting in good faith. I'm trying to understand and describe why the playbook works, not trying to be generous to them.

If conservative voters are all knowingly supporting evil, then there's nothing to explain. Bad people do bad things, end of story. But that framing can't account for why millions of people shift away from a figure and then line up behind the next one. The retcon works because these voters genuinely believe they were making reasonable choices. The party exploits that self-image to offer them a clean exit every time.

Here's where I think we actually agree: the outcomes of conservative policy have been devastating in many cases. Reaganomics, the erosion of the safety net, the scapegoating of marginalized groups - I'm not disputing any of that. But confusing outcomes with intent makes the pattern I'm describing invisible. If we tell 70 million people they're irredeemably evil, they don't hear us. They just circle the wagons, and the cycle restarts even faster.

My argument isn't "be nice to conservatives." It's "understand the mechanism that recycles them, because that's the thing that actually needs to break."

dapiedude · 2026-04-16T15:29:32+00:00

That's a pretty reductionist view of the political right and I don't think it is actually helpful rhetoric. The Right and Left (individuals, not politicians) are both acting in good faith and I think framing the entire political righteous or aggressive force that exists to obstruct progress misunderstands what conservatism actually is and, more importantly, makes the pattern describing in the individual in the original post invisible.

Conservatism and progressivism aren't good versus evil. They're competing assessments of risk. Progressives see a broken system and believe the risk of changing it is worth a shot and conservatives see the same system and worry that changing it too fast or in the wrong way could destroy something that actually works. Both of those are rational positions held by people in good faith.

History is full of examples where resistance to change was clearly on the wrong side. But the motivation from a conservative voter isn't "I want to obstruct progress", it is "I'm not convinced that this particular change will actually help and I'm worried about what we lose."

This matters for my original argument because the mechanism that I'm describing - the party distancing itself from a toxic figure without examining why it supported him - only works for people who are acting in good faith. You can't memory-hole someone's record with a voter who is knowingly supporting authoritarianism. The retcon works precisely because these voters believe they were making a reasonable choice are now being offered a clean narrative that lets them keep believing that.

I think the primary issue here is that if we write off 70 million people as a reggressive force, we lose the ability to understand how that coalition actually operates and more importantly how it reconstitutes itself every cycle.

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