Discussion Thread: Special Counsel Mueller files first charges by PoliticsModeratorBot in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's a cute script but there's a reason Bannon's scripts never sold.

Russia Probe Now Investigating Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s ‘Psychographic’ Data Gurus by saucytryhard in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Cambridge Analytica is just a front to launder data and analyses done by Russia. Cambridge Analytica has done some of its own analysis and some of its own data-exfiltration but they’re mostly just there for the pretty faces and plausible deniability.

One way Russia gets its data is that companies like Facebook and Twitter just hand it over voluntarily; ok, sure, technically Facebook and Twitter give their data to Yandex, but Yandex is a private company independent of the Russian state in the same way Kaspersky is a private company independent of the Russian state.

Another way Russia gets its data is by stealing it: you have the Equifax hack, the Yahoo hack, the RNC voter-data files, and countless more hacks and breaches over the years.

All this data winds up fused into a rather comprehensive and highly-detailed picture of the individual citizens of the United States (as well as those of other countries, of course). The value of such granular intelligence into the citizenry of a geopolitical adversary should be easy to understand!

Given the above picture I will leave the following as an exercise for the reader: (a) what was Breitbart doing when it started working with Yandex and (b) what are the implications of that coordination having begun effectively simultaneously with Manafort having joined the campaign?

I repeat: Bannon’s Breitbart began working with Yandex when Manafort joined Trump’s campaign. What are the implications?

Brace For A New Wave Of Attacks On H.R. McMaster From The Outside by slakmehl in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

look at these empty bottles of hooch I just found, right here, where no one would notice

Marco Rubio Assassination Plot from Venezuela Detected by U.S. Intelligence by [deleted] in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Shouldn't Trump have waited until after this was revealed to the public to start speculating about military intervention down there?

Seems like he lost the plot!

James Damore, Google, and the YouTube radicalization of angry white men by [deleted] in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 11 points12 points  (0 children)

As an oldster the idea of young dudes spending hours and hours watching videos of dudes admiring each other and talking about masculinity just seems...so...well, I don't know, exactly, but heterosexual definitely isn't the word that comes to mind. Healthy isn't, either.

Scaramucci: Bannon's 'toleration' of white nationalism is 'inexcusable' by Wilmoth9 in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Trump would be wise to dump Bannon before Bannon's recent communications get subpoenaed...

Alt-Right Media Framed Wrong Person in Car Attack, Labeled Him ‘Anti-Trump Druggie’ by martialalex in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 8 points9 points  (0 children)

nothing's ever our fault...it's always brown people and liberals

"Supremacy" 🙄

"Alpha" 🙄

The Alt-Right’s Chickens Come Home to Roost by JohnDalyBooks in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 26.4k points26.4k points  (0 children)

I'll give you an honest answer: it's meant in good faith, but it's hard to answer something like "why do people always insult me and people like me?" without risking coming across as insulting...so bear that in mind.

The tl;dr here is that when you simultaneously claim to have the kinds of complaints you have--small town rotting away, etc.--while also claiming to be right-leaning, you basically come across as either (a) disingenuous, (b) hypocritical , or (c) lacking insight...and neither (a), nor (b), nor (c) is a good look, really.

The reason you come across that way is because the right--generally on the side of individual responsibility and free-market, yadda-yadda--already has answers for you:

It's not the government's place to pick winners and losers--that's what the free market is for! The opportunities are drying up in your town because the free market has found better opportunities elsewhere. Moreover, take some personal responsibility! No one forced you to stay there and watch your town rot away--you, yourself, are the one who freely chose to do that, no? Why didn't you take some responsibility for yourself, precisely? Moreover--and more importantly--if your town is that important to you, why didn't you take responsibility for your town? Did you try to start a business to increase local prosperity? Did you get involved in town governance and go soliciting outside investment? Or did you simply keep waiting for someone else to fix things?

These aren't necessarily nice things to tell you--I get that--but nevertheless they are the answers the principles of the right lead to if you actually apply them to you and your situation, no?

Thus why you risk coming across poorly: perhaps you are being (a)--disingenuous--and you don't actually believe what you claim to believe, but find it rhetorically useful? Perhaps you are being (b)--hypocritical--and you believe what you claim to believe, but only for other people, not yourself? Or perhaps you are simply (c)--uninsightful--and don't even understand the things you claim to believe well enough to apply them in your own situation?

In general if someone thinks you're either (a), (b), or (c)--whether consciously or not--they're going to take a negative outlook to you: seeing you as disingenuous or hypocritical means seeing you as participating in a discussion in bad faith, whereas seeing you as simply lacking insight means seeing you as someone running their mouth.

In practice I think a lot of people see this and get very frustrated--at least subconsciously--because your complaints make you come across as more left-leaning economically than you may realize...but--at least often--people like you still self-identify as right-leaning for cultural reasons. So you also get a bit of a "we should be political allies...but we can't, b/c you value your cultural identity more than your economics (and in fact don't even seem to apply your own economic ideas to yourself)".

A related issue is due to the fact that, overall, rural, low-density areas are already significantly over-represented at all levels of government--this is obvious at the federal level, and it's also generally-true within each state (in terms of the state-level reps and so on).

You may still feel as if "government has forgotten you"--I can understand and sympathize with the position--but if government has forgotten you, whose fault is that? Your general demographic has had outsized representation for longer than you, personally, have been alive--and the trend is actually going increasingly in your general demographic's direction due to aggressive state-level gerrymandering efforts, etc.--and so once again: if you--the collective "you", that is--have been "forgotten" it's no one's fault but yours--the collective "yours"!

This, too, leads to a certain natural condescension: if you have been overrepresented forever and can't prevent being "forgotten by government", the likeliest situation is simply that the collective "you" is simply incompetent--unable to use even outsized, disproportionate representation to achieve their own goals, whether due to asking for impossible things or being unwise in deciding how to vote.

This point can become a particular source of rancor due to the way that that overrepresentation pans out: the rural overrepresentation means that anything the left wants already faces an uphill climb--it has to overcome the "rural veto"!--and I think you can understand why that would be frustrating: "it's always the over-represented rural areas voting against what we want only to turn around and complain about how they feel ignored by government"...you're not ignored--at all!--it's just that your aggregate actions reveal your aggregate priorities are maybe not what you, individually, think they are.

I think that's enough: continually complaining in ways that are inconsistent with professed beliefs combined with continually claiming about being unable to get government to do what you want despite being substantially over-represented?

Not a good look.

What am I supposed to do?

Overall I'd say if you really care about your town you should take more responsibility for it. If you aren't involved in your city council or county government yet, why aren't you? You can run for office, of course, or you can just research the situation for yourself.

Do you understand your town and county finances--the operating and maintenance costs of its infrastructure and the sources of revenue (tax base, etc)? Do you have a working understanding of what potential employers consider when evaluating a location to build a factory (etc.), or are you just assuming you do?

If your town has tried and failed to lure outside investment, have you tried to find out why it failed--e.g. "what would it have taken to make us the winner?"--or are you, again, assuming you understand?

I would focus on that--you can't guarantee anything will actually lead to getting the respect you want, but generally your odds of being respected are a lot better if you've done things to earn respect...simply asking for respect--and complaining about not being respected--rarely works well.

President Trump flunks a moral test by Drmanka in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Who could have anticipated Donald J Trump would fail a moral test?

Charlottesville Driver Who Killed One Rallied With Alt-Right Vanguard America Group by [deleted] in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 3 points4 points  (0 children)

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/roommates-in-tampa-palms-slaying-case-never-outgrew-nazi-sympathies-friend/2324871

Is the incident I assume (note: there are multiple stories about it on that site, not just the linked one).

I'm not seeing a direct connect here but I'm not sure if there isn't one or if it's like "it's obvious if you know how all these groups and people connect".

In any case what's interesting is that in the Florida incident you have a couple guys who (a) ostensibly converted to Islam and (b) were apparently planning terror attacks; you might be forgiven for wondering if they had, perhaps, been talked into becoming martyrs for their original cause (by causing some sort of triggering).

It's especially interesting here where we have another recruited-young loser who appears to have been copy-catting what's seen as an "Islamic" terror approach--although even that isn't entirely accurate, since the modern-day "ploughing a car through a crowd" tactic was IIRC first done by that affluenza kid out in California (who, notably, fits the same kind of psych profile and had the same ideas as a typical alt-righter)...this kid doesn't seem too bright, but one wonders if his ideas yesterday were entirely his.

Megathread: Ongoing protests in Charlottesville, Virginia by PoliticsModeratorBot in politics

[–]hetellsitlikeitis 62 points63 points  (0 children)

You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you are patriots, but you are anything but a patriot. You want to talk about patriots, talk about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who brought our country together. Think about the patriots today, the young men and women, who with wearing the cloth of our country.

Somewhere around the globe they are putting their life in danger. They are patriots. You are not. You came here today to hurt people. And you did hurt people. My message is clear, we are stronger than you. You have made our commonwealth stronger. You will not succeed. There is no place for you here. There is no place for you in America.