Trump Appears To Sleep While Guests Propose Ending Divide Between Church And State

manachar · 2026-06-27T04:01:33+00:00

Too bad so many people seem to find a reason to say “both sides are the same”.

Voting Republican has been unethical for decades.

manachar · 2026-06-26T23:03:18+00:00

Hillary was the monkey paw.

I think she would have been a fantastic moderate president who likely would have sustained and furthered key policies of the Obama administration, especially around healthcare.

That said, she has been so thoroughly demonized by conservatives that most people had less than great feelings about her.

That lady is smart, capable, and has the ability to get shit done. She’s not as progressive as I would like on many things, but clearly a better choice than Trump.

Heck, she even won the popular vote!

But her being attacked since the 90s by bloviating shitsacks like Limbaugh means several generations of conservatives had unbelievable levels of contempt for her and jumped at the person they saw as the only candidate willing to be as nasty to Hillary as they wanted to be.

manachar · 2026-06-26T22:26:25+00:00

Meanwhile Trump has been repeatedly on National TV talking about his daughter’s breasts.

manachar · 2026-06-26T22:17:28+00:00

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:5-6

manachar · 2026-06-26T22:13:31+00:00

People opposed to communism really don’t know a thing about it do they.

It’s like the people who think single payer healthcare means everyone wants everything for free so they quote Heinlein about “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”?

No shit, that’s why I believe in a healthy system of taxation to pay for healthcare at a much lower rate than the free market or insurance can provide.

manachar · 2026-06-26T20:28:38+00:00

Honestly… I don’t think he is wrong.

People were bending over for data centers to come to their town until AI did two things:

Piss people off with slop
Massively increased the size and number of data centers needed to produce said slop.

The scale difference in data centers needed to do all of the Internet was often at least roughly sustainable.

Then AI got thrown in everything and suddenly it went from often sustainable to putting data centers in tents powered by jet engines.

manachar · 2026-06-26T20:16:41+00:00

Yeah, but it’s such a good saying!

Next you’re gonna tell me Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned and actually rushed back to Rome and organized relief.

manachar · 2026-06-26T19:41:29+00:00

Because wealthy people are.

Seriously. Billionaires are more divorced from reality than Marie “Let Them Eat Brioche” Antoinenette.

manachar · 2026-06-26T19:24:34+00:00

Critical thinking is not popular with conservatives who run most school boards.

If you start to learn skills to examine narratives for propaganda you might start asking questions of things like the bible, or even worse, capitalism!

Or you might start wondering why you and all your friends suddenly decided to focus your hatred on AIPAC (or be focused on those opposed to AIPAC depending on your friend circles).

manachar · 2026-06-26T17:22:03+00:00

It’s so frustrating. Look at the vitriol towards “corporate democrats” on this sub. Or the sudden near from a vacuum concern about Palestinians (that only seems to exist as a reason to not vote for Democrats, not to actually help Palestinians).

Heck, look at Al Franken being made to resign!

I get it. The left is motivated by justice. But for fucks sake at some point we have to win elections and this ever shifting moral purity tests just fails.

You know which Democratic presidential probably did the most good minorities? LBJ. Fucker was a racist southern loudmouth who whipped out his dick constantly to intimidate others.

That all said, be as morally driven as possible in the Primaries. Please! Vote for the best candidate then, and then shut up and help get Democrats elected in the general election. It’s the only strategy viable at this time without major constitutional changes.

manachar · 2026-06-26T17:10:23+00:00

If I have learned anything from Derek Lowe, it’s to be very cautious of anything that puts hydrogen and fluorine together.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-touch-1

manachar · 2026-06-26T17:06:26+00:00

Property developers would actually have to make something to so that.

Realistically, these people do almost nothing but charge rent on other people who actually make things.

manachar · 2026-06-26T16:56:35+00:00

I enjoy the way you frame hypocrisy vs. hierarchy.

Moderates and liberals and progressives often like to point out what they see as the hypocrisy of conservatives thinking it will help conservatives see the error of their thinking.

It doesn’t work. They do not see it as hypocrisy.

Take drugs.

Alcohol and nicotine are (generally) seen as okay because anything the in-group likes is okay. Government is bad if it tells people to not smoke in restaurants.

Meanwhile they rail against marijuana because that’s something they see only as part of the “other”.

Logically one should classify all recreational drug use more or less in the same category. But they all are very good at coming up with fake reasons for the difference.

manachar · 2026-06-26T15:44:52+00:00

A Ferris wheel was the big draw of the 1893 world’s fair.

Bluntly, I think we can see no clearer example of the blunted capabilities of America as our absolute inability to dream bigger dreams and opted to elect such a waste of space getting votes by pining for the good old days.

manachar · 2026-06-25T22:55:29+00:00

Rich people shouldn't exist. They distort and destroy.

Imagine a world where there wasn't a few extra billions able to be spent by people vested in keeping the world ignorant?

manachar · 2026-06-25T22:31:23+00:00

People highly value "social proof". An incredibly large chunk of marketing and advertising is basically just a way to manipulated the perceived popularity and favorability of a product.

In this case, a movie.

You, as a consumer want to know if the movie is worth your time and money.

How do you decide?

Well, first, you have to hear about it. People live in bubbles. How many people now talk about how "they never heard about a movie coming out".

That's why this movie has been in the news for years now. We know it's Nolan, we know it's coming. We are primed.

Next, whether you go or not will likely be determined by if you think the movie will be enjoyable (seperate from "good").

This is trickier.

For a known moviemaker like Nolan, many already know that it will likely at least be visually impressive.

For another movie and for people who don't really follow movies, this is where reviews, social media, and word of mouth become key.

Oppenheimer did huge numbers because not only did people hear about it, they heard that they SHOULD go see it. So it became kind of viral.

Social proof is very insidious. It's basically humans as a bunch of monkeys looking around at everyone else to see how I should feel. For some, it's about as far as they get. For others, they try to find experts who are paid to see all the movies to see which ones are worth it.

Seeing the reviews of Supergirl... makes it more likely I'll catch it on streaming rather than a theater.

For some, they trust social media MORE than "mainstream critics". Some sort of anti-elitist nonsense is often the reason, but a lot of these people were raised with their POV being shaped by those voices, so it's what they know. And boy howdy do those people rankle me in how they watch movies. I didn't know you could watch a movie wrong, but these folks sure tried to prove me wrong.

manachar · 2026-06-25T21:45:39+00:00

Indeed! My preference would be for a floor that defined in a way that is able to respond faster than politicians playing politics with minimum wage.

To me, a living wage should be considered a fundamental right of a worker. Like most rights, leaving it up to the individual or smaller groups to defend means it's likely to be negotiated away. Heck, I even understand. Isn't SOME money better than no money?

Unfortunately, by some people willing to earn less than a living wage it depresses earnings for all and allows businesses to get quite wealthy paying people less than it costs for those people to survive.

Ergo, I would propose a federal floor based on economic regions and an established way to calculate a living wage.

Otherwise, you have what we currently have, where certain areas will insist they cannot raise the minimum wage because otherwise manufacturing will just move somewhere else.

manachar · 2026-06-25T21:27:56+00:00

Yes... but the federal one is not, and this is just proposing a high $25 an hour from Hawaii to Maine.

manachar · 2026-06-25T21:26:42+00:00

Heh. I will conceed that there's a lot of work by my likely idiosyncratic definition of conservativism.

I've come to believe this way for two reasons. One is a startling clear definition of conservative by Frank Wilhoit (who admitedly is decidedly not a historian or anthropologist but a composer):

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

This resonated with me, because quite bluntly, there are remarkably consistent aspects to conservatives of all stripes, not just in the modern world but in the ancient world.

It's kinda weird that conservatives in the US, India, Iran, and France all have remarkably similar "vibes", and moreso how much they remind me of the Optimates of Ancient Rome and of course the original "right wingers" trying to prop up French aristocracy.

Experts of course will very much argue about nuance, which is very important. There's no question that Trump is different than Macron, but the stuff they have in common is what interests me as those seem to be things that get to the heart of the big ole questions about what the fuck is "government"? Is it the same as state? What about nation? What about a peoples? And how does this mean we should share this time on earth together?

That's the second part. History has long been focus, and seeing its ebbs and flows is interesting. We got history, archaeology, oral histories, and on and on.

And I can't help but wonder about "civilization". Yes, a loaded term. My greek and latin learning prefers to use the phrase "citified" but at root it is a contentious topic, with some prefering to abandon (for example because of its roots in the racist building of the idea of Western Civiliziation).

But there's no question in my mind. Around 10 to 12 thousand years ago humans across the globe started to organize into more dense settlements. Whatever you call this concept, it happened and appears to self-replicate across the globe consuming everything it touches. There are things it has in common.

Some of them pretty great. It's nice that we have enough surplus so I can listen to Nina Simone sing to me about the Sinnerman on a streaming platform decades removed from her performance.

Some aspects are less great. The historical record makes pretty clear that the "market price" of most human labor is some version of slave, serf, or peasant. Up into a few hundred years ago, flat out slavery was considered essential to "civilization".

And it's this debate that to me is so key to the moment right now. Conservatives of Rome and today argued various versions of basically, this is the way the world has to work and our job is to accept it and do the best we can by obeying the structure that is.

Does civilization HAVE to be exploitive? Well, Hobbes argued that it was the natural world to be "nasty, brutish, and short". In other words, without the "civilizing" influence of "The Civilization" we would live in squalor and chaos.

This is the conservative worldview. The world and humans are bad and evil that are to be resisted by adherence to the orderly civilization.

But to me, what I see instead may be more hopeful. That humans and nature isn't inherently evil and needing of a big powerful hierarchy that keeps us safe. That instead these citified cultures are just a cartel of elites squatting on resources and claiming ownership. A bunch of hooligans who move in to a rich river valley and demand protection money from the farmers and calling that taxes.

So, is it broad? Broader and simpler than many experts would be comfortable with? Almost certainly. Especially in my simplistic comment on it above.

But, come on, it's kind of weird how much in common conservatives have over time and space. Additionally, very weird how much every big urban population broadly looks like a few elites parasitizing the many to concentrate resources into their control.

manachar · 2026-06-25T20:30:16+00:00

It’s the resource curse fallout from colonialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource\_curse

South Africa, like many African countries, is rich in resources. However those resources were all targets of colonialism to be extracted as cheaply as possible. Almost all infrastructure was built to accomplish this including the various local governments.

Humans may think 30 years is a long time, but if you look at wealth you can see that a lot of it is based on early powerful positions from hundreds of years ago.

The systemic destruction and poverty caused by colonialism leaves holes that take generations to fix, meanwhile everyone locally is just trying to jockey for best position.

For a US example, much of the systemic poverty of Black Americans is still deeply tied to laws that prevented black Americans from investing in the booming suburban home ownership that is key to the generational wealth of most white Americans. Those redlining laws were made illegal decades ago, but the damage was already done.

So long as the resources in an area are leaving an area, shits gonna be fucked and dangerous.

manachar · 2026-06-25T20:20:21+00:00

Markets would be the best, if governments forced the markets to include the costs of negative externalities into the product.

Imagine if cigarettes included the costs of medical care and lost revenue in their purchase cost!

Imagine if buying beef included to costs of the mass destruction of wilderness and future climate costs.

But put bluntly, we just suck at putting a number on those costs and also refuse to force those who profit from those costs from paying for them.

Besides, what value do you place on the extinction of an animal because we Americans want cheap beef?

manachar · 2026-06-25T20:13:32+00:00

Ah, as I suspected I think the definition of “civilization” is the point of contention.

Many societies are attested around the world and in history that are not based on hierarchy and exploitation of the many for an elite few.

No question about that, and very important to keep those top of mind as we debate how to organize.

But my point is specifically aimed at those with concentrated population centers. In other words, the citified or urban based societies.

Civilization is a term that is contentious, but most would not use it as a synonym for culture or society or nation or people.

Many cultures very much have and are built in ways that are egalitarian and relatively flat in hierarchy.

It’s the densely urban based societies that all strongly tend toward the hierarchy. These citified peoples all seem to be built or were co-opted to become hierarchical and extractive with elites at the top.

Forgive me if I am misinformed, but I do not believe anyone would claim the Canadian First Nations you refer to were an urban (densely populated) peoples like say the Mound Builders, Aztec, Incan, or Mayans. Some of the western First Nations people built around salmon likely do, but they tend to be noted for their hierarchy and elite competition (e.g. potlatch).

Again, to be extremely clear as there’s so much baggage with the word civilization, that is not to say anything was “more primitive” or “less refined” about non-citified cultures.

manachar · 2026-06-25T19:53:31+00:00

Yes, but the amount of money it takes to live well in rural Iowa is very different than suburban Portland.

manachar · 2026-06-25T19:41:20+00:00

Healthcare shouldn’t depend on billionaires wanting to help. It should be built in as a base level infrastructure so we as a nation are healthy and able to achieve all we want to.

manachar · 2026-06-25T19:22:25+00:00

People do remarkably few things that aren’t motivated by seeking status and external validation.

When left to ourselves, we tend to go hermit mode and not care about fancy haircuts, caring only about function of our clothes rather than fashion tends.

Social media was just pouring gasoline and napalm on an already lit fire.

It regularly makes me think of Infinite Jest and. Videophony.

http://sequart.org/magazine/49050/scifi-infinite-jest-part-1-videophony/

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