If there only would be simply the consistency of opposing corruption in the White House irrelevant of the party in power, I would respect your arguments more. But as you are a staunch defender of Trump even if the corruption is evident and corruption is corruption only when it's the workings of a Democratic cabal in the White House, it's simply meaningless. It's just typical American partisanship where the other side is evil and the your side are saints.

But of course it isn't only the Qatari plane. It's all the crypto schemes that the Trump family is making. Just like the Pakistani crypto deal that Trump's children got with Pakistan... and then the US chose to intervene in the Pakistani-Indian crisis. Trump just loves when they kiss his ass and give money to him.



Earlier it was those pump and dump schemes with Melania coins. Or then you have little newsbits that don't make headlines, but surely would have made if it was Hunter Biden, not Eric Trump. (I remember you all so pumped about dealings of Hunter Biden.)

HUNG YEN, May 21 (Reuters) - Vietnam's prime minister and U.S. President Donald Trump's son Eric held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday for a $1.5 billion luxury residential development with three 18-hole golf courses outside Hanoi.
The U.S. president's Trump Organization family business and its local partners received approval for the project last week from the Communist authorities in Vietnam, which is separately negotiating over tariffs with Washington.

And btw, did Hayes, or his "Presidential library" keep the fucking desk afterwards? I think not. But what would you care.

And don't forget that Trump get's Grift Force 1!!!

The United States officially accepted a luxury jet to use as Air Force One from Qatar, the Department of Defense confirmed to ABC News on Wednesday.

"The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations," Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

What a huge win for the American Democracy! Yeaahh! :grin: :up:

The whole process helps the economy too, because now the government has to rip off everything to make it the command center it ought to be.

(CNN) Converting a luxury jet gifted by Qatar to President Donald Trump into a replacement for Air Force One could potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it could take up two years to install the necessary security equipment, communications and defensive capabilities for it to be safely used by the commander in chief, current and former officials told CNN.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said Tuesday that the plane “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems.” Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said accepting it would pose “immense counterintelligence risks by granting a foreign nation potential access to sensitive systems and communications.”

Trump exclaimed in a social media post on Sunday that the Defense Department would be receiving a “GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily.”

And that is temporarily, because naturally the next POTUS has to have a new one... or continue to fly with the old one. :joke:

I've been ignoring this thread in favour of my blood pressure so have no clue where the discussion stands. — Benkei

In that the worst outcomes will come true ...just not instantly, but with time. So much time that the common man (or voter) forgets the issue and the media loses interest.

Now the US is actively assisting in the deportation of Palestinians.

(NBC News) The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, five people with knowledge of the effort told NBC News.

The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former U.S. official said.

In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago, those three people said.

No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions, the same three sources said.

And well, if for some reason my country is the happiest country on Earth (which I find always amusing), Israel is the fifth happiest country. I assume this didn't include the Palestinian territories. But they are more happy than you are in your country. So there we are.

World Happiness Report -rankings 2024:

1 Finland 7.741
2 Denmark 7.583
3 Iceland 7.525
4 Sweden 7.344
5 Israel 7.341
6 Netherlands 7.319

Actions are important. But do you not act according to any principle? — NOS4A2

Principles are indeed important. But are principles mental constructs of our mind or something else? That's the metaphysical question, yet it doesn't matter to the importance of principles themselves.

Think about that you love some person, be it your parent or child or a loved one. Surely there is that subjective part of you loving somebody. Is that then different if you believe in metaphysical question in nominalism or realism? In my opinion it doesn't matter.

Society is not a thing, though, complex or otherwise. It's just a name for a concept. — NOS4A2

And a concept is an abstract idea, so you are going in circles. Yet people do live in more or less organized communities that we call societies. And there's many words or names for this.

'Cutting waste and fraud' is a pretext, or a cudgel. — Wayfarer

Well, working and functioning institutions are an obstacle for Trump: they are indeed bad for the White House.

Hence if Musk's DOGE went on this crazy rampage through the corridors of US power, that itself was a good thing for Trump.

One’s metaphysics ought to inform how he approaches the other branches of philosophy, including politics and ethics. — NOS4A2

I disagree.

Politics and ethics as other moral issues are very important irrelevant of them being either our mental constructs or them being something independent of us. What we do, the actions, are important. The reasons why we do something only explain our actions, but the actions themselves are the important issue here.

If one believes the word “society” is just a general name he’s not going to spend a serious amount of time trying to change it. — NOS4A2

Now I don't follow your logic at all. Society is a word and we give words / names for complex things like society.

There has never been a nominalist, or rather, individualist country. America is close, I suppose, and has advanced beyond its collectivist ways in the treatments of groups and their memberships, but it still has a long way to go. — NOS4A2

Nominalism and individualism aren't synonyms. And here individualism or collectivism aren't metaphysical questions.

The top 1% own about a third of the nation's wealth. If most of the top 5% are Boomers, that explains much of the disparity. It's not boomers per se, but the ultra wealthy, who have the disproportionate wealth. — Banno

Nobody takes their wealth with them when they die.

Things like stock market crashes destroy wealth (which mainly wasn't there) and natural disasters and wars can destroy wealth literally.

Be more sceptical. — Banno

The question was if popular music, especially rock music, will continue to be listened by future generations, but that the rock music will be the songs that actually have been already made and "The Great" rock musicians that are listened are the ones that we now put to be the "GOAT"s. Basically something that we have seen with "classical music".

As we cannot just wait for the next Century to start and look at the musical environment then, we can observe if there are differences in the small niche "generations" that we talk about now.

Coming back to the OP, perhaps it should be interesting to first talk about music in Antiquity and in the Bronze Age. Naturally the obvious issue are the limitations of the musical instruments themselves. But first question here should be: how close is Rock'N'Roll, or our current music today, to the music from three thousands years ago. Obviously we don't have recordings and we have only modern representations of those (which are influenced by modern music), yet what I find interesting is how close that music seems to be to ours. Now, if there indeed is a continuation (and likely there surely is), then we aren't far too off how ancient music sounded.

An interesting history of the oldest song we know about, which also shows the problem of interpretation of ancient songs:



So how close is this (interpretation) of an ancient Egyptian love song to a modern rock ballad? If the interpretation is close (and that's an if), then I would argue it's not so far from modern music played acoustically.

But if someone kills another for some the sake of some name like “country” or “God”, then we have an instance of destroying what is boundlessly more valuable for the sake of an idea or figment. This, I fear, is the threat of realism. — NOS4A2

Umm... so this is behind your reasoning in that a metaphysical stance, nominalism or realism, can be a threat?

If nominalism rejects universals and the abstract and thinks these are just mental constructs, then to the above example it doesn't at all matter. The metaphysical question is hardly relevant: if "country" or "God" are either "abstract entities" or if they are "mental constructs" doesn't matter at all to the actions of someone taking a life of another person.

If you start with nominalism, then issue "good" or "bad", "legal" or "illegal" or things like "justified defense" are also simply mental constructs, but apparently very important ones for our society to function. It doesn't somehow lower or give more credibility to the action, if ones metaphysical view is nominalism or realism.

The stance of there existing universals and abstract entities doesn't create anything more to the issue. Metaphysics doesn't answer moral or social questions.

?

Not a chance.

But typical for Israeli propaganda effort, somehow in the gay Eurovision song contest, Israel got more points from the publec than Sweden from Finland which had a Swedish-Finnish band playing a song about bathing in the Sauna, which was the new craze here and had gotten enormous enthusiasm in Finland. (In the contest you cannot vote for your own country) But nope, a song that in Finnish Spotify-list is played 72nd (Israel's Eurovision song) got more votes than the song that on the same Spotify-list is number 1, higher than the Finnish eurovision song (4th).


Seems that one country wants to show that actually Europeans love them a lot.

That's probably what Trump thought as he entered office, but evidently it isn't so simple. — Tzeentch

I'm not sure even if he thought this way. Trump simply thinks that he's in good terms with Putin, so he would get the deal. Putin naturally won't budge.

Freezing military aid to Israel is another hot potatoe, considering the massive influence of the Israel lobby and the ramifications it may have for those who support pressuring Israel. This is why not a single US administration has managed to put meaningful pressure on Israel since ... Well, since ever? — Tzeentch

Basically Netanyahu is also an American politician, so well can he handle the US. For Trump there is no problem to back Israel and get money from the Gulf Arabs. He doesn't have to pick sides.

I've seen a number of people observe how the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s had very distinct styles, new musical genres, etc. This seems to have stopped in the 00s. — Count Timothy von Icarus

When it's music, this is extremely interesting.

The interesting question is how much of the Zoomers and Generation Alpha, basically those born this Millennium, do listen to music of far before their time from the previous century. If/When that happens, musical genres of the past might quite well survive for ages. That might be one reason, because now days popular music isn't so interconnected to time and generation.

Another one good argument is that when making music has become more easier, there simply is too much supply. What then the record companies choose to promote is a lottery. For a musician or a band to get to a great sound stage and to get the music to be played on the radio (with limited shows early playing) was very limiting. When you don't have to have a musician playing an instrument, but a computer will do just fine, it has become perhaps too easy.

Then there's the factor of the technology of the synthesizers etc, which has played a crucial part to the music itself. This has been one factor that has changed popular music and rock, as you also mentioned. You can easily hear the difference from the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's even if you don't know much of the musical instruments and synthesizers used. Today you can have popular music, which is quite similar to the 80's style, but you can notice easily the better sounds (and computers) used.

The problem is that, because it is so easy to actualize Drock, and Brock, and Krock, and Zrock, it might simply come and go without market share, entertaining only a few ears. The sound waves will be actualized, but perhaps not the "movement" as a social force. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Something "new" can indeed come, but the real question is if Rock and Pop music have already gotten to their Zenith and the classic hits will be listened for hundreds of years like we listen now to Mozart, Beethoven or Bach? We are as happy to listening to Bach as we are to Stravinski, even if there's centuries between them.

What if in the year 2100 or even 2200 people will vote Stairway to Heaven to be the best song of all time in Rock? And those Drock, Brock, etc. are simply fads or new genres while people still listen to "the oldies". How long will people be listening to Michael Jackson? I remember when the first radio stations come that just played 80's music and they have been for a while now. It may be that the core of those listeners are just Gen X'ers like me, but the real crucible comes for this argument when the generation that listened to this music genre at first dies of old age. We can already see it that there's not much if any popular music from the 1920's and 1930's played, but it's Beatles and the Rolling Stones are something that likely won't be forgotten. So Rock music from the 1960's and later will likely survive very long.

After the introduction of Rock'n'Roll, which was a huge step in musical history, there was another leap: Sterile computer music. Computers introduced trivial beeping sounds for alerts and indications. Ugly stuff. — Quk

And oh, just wait until you have AI making music. Now it's just sound generators, but I'm sure it will be composing, writing the lyrics, the whole show. Want to have a philharmonic orchestra playing in the back, no problem! Put Freddie Mercury -type to sing? Of course, change it to Madonna with a push of a button. :vomit:

AI made music pushed up in the charts by bots. Yeah, who needs humans at all with music?

Just as Banno and others have said, Rock'n'Roll is a historical synthesis of various musical genres which themselves have long musical and cultural histories. Popular music and especially the ability for masses to hear popular music through radio and through recordings creates a totally new environment for music, just as literature war revolutionized by the printing press. Besides, music has been a social and cultural event. Notice that there being a "Youth Culture" in general is something quite new. Hence the idea that you could play the Rock'N'Roll tunes with the instruments that they had in Egypt doesn't take into account all the things that actually have created those vibes that we notices that some music is rock'n'roll. It isn't just the music itself, it's far more than that.

If you even listen to music from the early Renaissance, you can notice the very obvious difference to later classical music of Bach and Mozart. Music has gone through quite many revolutions when we come to Rock'N'Roll from the Egyptian times.

China trade agreement. — NOS4A2

You cannot be serious. This is basically a cease-fire on tariffs (at very high levels of 30%/10%) for 90 days. Trade agreement my ass!

Executive order to slash prices of prescription drugs. — NOS4A2

I wonder how this will happen.

Stagflation, eh? Inflation hit the lowest levels in 4 years last month. Is that a consequence of Whitehouse policies? — NOS4A2

Yes, assuming if there would be the tariffs that Trump proposed on Liberation day. But wait, he just backtracks them every time, when the market gets restless.

And I can’t wait to see the flying palace gifted to the United States from Qatar. — NOS4A2

Of course, the new Griftforce 1 shows how cool corruption during this Trump era is. :lol:

So Trump "blinked"? — NOS4A2

Just like with the Liberation Day tariffs against the World, indeed yes.

And anyway, it's Trump who started this and whom the Chinese can blame. If the two countries go after 90 days back to embargo mode, China can take it, just like Russia can the embargoes. Both aren't democracies. Both don't have an opposition that is telling what an absolute disaster their policies are (in case of Russia, that could be done easily). Both countries can convince their people that they are a target of an US lead attack. If you economy takes a hit for that, so be it.

It's the Americans who can get angry if they have severe stagflation or empty shells, because it's a consequence of White House policies.

Thanks for that document.

To be sure, we know about only some of the payments that passed into former President Trump’s hands during just two years of his presidency from just 20 of the more than 190 nations in the world through just four of his more than 500 businesses. Despite the Constitution’s requirement that a president disclose foreign emoluments and seek Congress’s consent to keep them, it took Oversight Committee Democrats years of aggressive litigation against the former President to obtain the subset of documents from Mazars, Donald Trump’s accounting firm, that form the factual basis of this report. And then, in January 2023, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer made the abrupt and outrageous decision to release Mazars from having to continue complying with the Committee’s subpoena and court-supervised settlement agreement. Despite Chairman Comer’s decision to bury further evidence, however, even this small slice of a picture of unknown proportions allows America to glimpse the rampant illegality and corruption of the Trump presidency. It is true that $7.8 million is almost certainly only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money, but this figure in itself is a scandal and a decisive spur to action.

No other president had ever come close before to trying a rip-off like this simply based on vacuuming up foreign government money, which was the cardinal presidential offense and betrayal in the eyes of the Founders—an offense and betrayal made all the more striking here by the offender’s repeated laughable proclamations of “America First!”

Later the legal system should also go after people like James Comer, all the Republican enablers of Trump. But a great document, have to read it all. It will be interesting to read the history books about Trump administration in the 2030's or 2040's.

Yet it's now laughable how the Trump crowd was against corruption and hated the Clinton's having a foundation and getting those speech fees etc. Especially the idea of American politicians getting money from the Arabs. But now... it's smart!

:D I can picture him retiring to Sochi with a chuckle going "Fooled ya' all dumbasses". — jorndoe

Well, I think they are laughing about the many millions the family has made with the Trump and Melania coins and their pump and dump schemes:

A small group of crypto traders made nearly $100 million by buying Melania Trump’s memecoin minutes before it went public, research by the Financial Times has shown.

The first lady’s $MELANIA coin was unveiled on Jan. 19, the day before her husband was sworn in as president. It followed a similar move by Trump himself, who launched his own $TRUMP coin several days prior. But analysis shows that in the two and a half minutes between the currency going live and Melania officially unveiling it to the public on Truth Social, two dozen digital wallets purchased tokens worth $2.6 million. Following Melania’s announcement the price of the coins surged rapidly by over 5000 percent and most of the wallets that had purchased the cryptocurrency immediately sold off their holdings, with around 81 percent of traders selling the coin within 12 hours for massive profit.

One of the wallets, the Times reports, purchased $681,000 of $MELANIA 64 seconds before the announcement was made public. Within 24 hours, the same account sold the majority of their stock for $39 million when the surge was at its highest, before dumping the rest and making an additional $4.4 million over the next three days.

But Americans wanted these grifters to be in power. To drain the swamp, as they promised. Well, the house of Trump is draining money for itself, that's for sure.

It becomes just another tax now. Maybe that was the intent in the first place, but he hyped it up, to try and get some bonus effect. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. The 10% to 30% tariffs will just mean a little bit of inflation and acts as lifting the foot from the gas pedal for the economy. But the idea that will promote US manufacturing is delirious and an insane idea.

The effects of the April 2nd announcement still haven't materialized yet so we don't know how bad it will get. I don't think we're out of the woods yet though given the existing tariffs and more importantly the uncertainty. I feel like the 10% global tariffs may be here to stay because no matter how much Trump backtracks, they always seems to remain. — Mr Bee

The market desperately hopes that Trump backtracks allways and in the end makes deals that won't effect much. The long term impacts are different: they are huge and consequential. I think the dollar crisis that will end the current dollar reserve system and replace it with a likely multicurrency system has gotten years closer now.

That this crisis happens is sure, only the timing is not known. But when by all forecasts in the 2030 you would have all the US government income going into servicing the debt and mandatory programs, this course cannot prevail. How long it takes for the crisis to happen is unknown. Usually it takes far more years as people anticipate.

I think the basic reason was simply that after the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal, Hollywood executives simply went on to walking on eggshells, because let's face it, Harvey Weinstein had been one of the most successful movie moguls of our time. Hence any public media coverage or accusations of some corporation executives being bigoted or sexist was something that these people truly feared. How many billions you have made for the stock owners would not help you if you are accused being sexist or of using the "N"-word. And this created the opportunity for the "woke" to influence movies so much.

Hence when the media noticed that Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe didn't have much women in lead roles, the head of this Disney enterprise Kevin Feige responded by promising in 2018 more female superhero movies. This indeed happened and thus the MCU made bad and lackluster movies: usually because the storylines were bad, yet many times the directors were women who hadn't directed superhero-movies. End result was not so inspiring action movies. For example, The Marvels director Nia DeCosta had directed only two long films before the Marvels -movie. But she was black and a woman and the film had an all women lead. Now MCU is totally capable of making bad films that aren't at all woke, but needless to say that now Disney hasn't had true blockbusters for a while. That the wokeism is over can be seen from the Deadpool & Wolverine movie MCU did last year. Yet it is telling that there are only a few directors in Hollywood, that give us good movies again and again.

DaCosta directing the Marvels during the pandemic:

At that point we'll probably see them overreach like the feminists did a decade ago until the cultural pendulum swings away from them. — Mr Bee

Discourse especially in Hollywood always goes too far to excess as the pendulum swings, as you said. To similar levels of silliness, I guess.

The incredible stupidity of Trump's "Liberation Day" finally is getting to be over as Trump blinked and lower tariffs with China.

As Bessent said in an interview today: "Neither side wants a decoupling of trade". Well, Trump think trade is bad, but anyway.

When nobody is limiting this moron's actions in the White House, then they are then limited by the markets and the real economy. Still, 10% tariffs and the 30% tariffs on Chinese goods do have some effect... not of an embargo, but still something. Can we still avoid the Trump recession? Let's hope we can do that.



And has ever corruption been so evident? With the Qatari gift of a luxury jet for Trump, never. And this was the person the Trumpists believed to root out corruption and "drain the swamp"! :lol:



After the presidency, the 400 million or so luxury jet goes to the Trump Presidential Library Association... not to be part of the US Presidential fleet.

I already know that one of the biggest fears of Trump’s opponents is that a reality TV host and his rag-tag band of Fox News employees, children’s book authors, and private business men will do a better job than their over-educated bureaucrats and life-long politicians. — NOS4A2

Well, there's a myth that Caligula appointed his horse, Incitatus, to be a consul, because there were too many jackasses in the Roman senate. The reality is that he just said it likely to gain popularity. And I guess many Romans were happy with the thought. Not much has changed, I guess.



And actually you are wrong. If there are people that are accepted to be talented, they are then said to be "the adults in the room". Yep, you have people even in the second Trump administration that are called so. :wink:

Meanwhile, me waiting for a ssu prediction to come true: — NOS4A2

Lol. You will not see anything wrong with Kash Patel, never.

Right, skepticism over "illiberal democracy" doesn't tend to result in a wholesale abandonment of democracy. Rather, complaints against Brexit, Trump, Erdogan, Orban, etc. are generally against "populism" and a democracy that is "too direct." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Populism is many times very illogical. Populist can praise liberal/libertarian values and in the same time go against them. Perfect example of this is when populist claim to be "free speech warriors" and also curtail and limit views that they don't support.

The illogical aspect of this is even more clear when we look at authoritarian system like Marxism-Leninism. Democracy ought to have functioned through the party, and in fact the term "Soviet" is an adjective that comes from the Russian word for council or assembly. How democracy can work when the whole ideology starts with there being the class-enemy of the capitalists shows this fatal flaw in the thinking. In fact populism makes this separation of the "ordinary people" and the "evil elites" also, which basically undermines the faith in democracy from the start. Populism has the tendency to favor "strong men" who are needed because the republic doesn't work at the moment.

The case about democracy being "too direct" is basically made by there being a Constitution that cannot be changed with a simple minority or in some cases, at all. I do welcome these kinds of safety valves.

It looks like the Trump team has facilitated ceasefire negotiations between Pakistan and India. The comments of all involved are available on X, but we’re not allowed to post those kinds of facts here. — NOS4A2

Even if at start Trump was clueless when asked about this, at least here Trump's administration and Rubio have done the right thing and responded how the US should respond.

After the terrorist attack India had to respond yet both sides didn't want an escalation to all out war (with both sides having nuclear weapons). Hence here the US acting as a third man was invaluable.

I give here one of the few positive marks for Trump's administration.

- - - - -

Yet one should note one thing here: two nuclear armed countries can come to blows, hence nuclear deterrence doesn't mean that sides wouldn't end up in a situation were limited military operations are launched.

There are pretty vocal groups on the left and right who are skeptical about democracy, precisely because democracy can constrain liberalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Democracy can constrain liberalism?

Well, people naturally can vote to power undemocratic authoritarian people, who do away with democracy, the rights of the individual and the rule of law. Yet is that democracy in the end? Few if any authoritarians, even the Marxists, say they are doing away with democracy (but are just improving it to listen actually to the people).

Now democracy constraining capitalism and the market mechanism can indeed happen, but I don't think that is "constraining liberalism". The usual case is for example social democratic parties limiting the free market in the objective of curtailing the excesses of the free market, which typically tends in reality to form an oligopoly in the market, not the theoretical and perfect "free market". And people are happy with this. Most liberals and even libertarians understand that not everything can be solved by the market mechanism and naturally you have to have solid institutions for capitalism and the markets to perform well.

Besides, those that are sceptical about democracy (or neoliberalism) are nearly everybody simply angry about how badly the whole system is working currently: that it's only the rich or those close to power that benefit, or that there is corruption or inefficiency or useless bureaucracy. It's really only a very few people that are inherently against democracy as the vast majority believe that "the people" are still quite rational and capable of handling a democracy.

Ah yes, this is especially to @NOS4A2 and to our continuing discussion on the job that Kash Patel will do with the FBI. NOS was so eager and enthusiastic about this appointment at the start of this administration.

A very telling discussion on the FBI in Congress, worth the few minutes to watch it. It's just hilarious. So this is the way things are going like this with the Trump childrenbooks author heading the FBI:





:smile:

Then it became a South Park episode where Cartman is being persecuted by dreams in which all of his loved ones have been replaced by diversity compatible women in a place called Pander-verse. — frank

Wasn't this before Zegler? This was more against woke Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy and the "Force being Female" stuff? Yeah, same corporation, but anyway.



But now we live in Trump world where photos of the B-29 bomber that dropped the first nuclear bomb is deleted from Pentagon sites as it's name is "Enola Gay". Hence when the US administration goes after universities and other institutions because of DEI policies, laughing at woke Hollywood has lost it's flare in my view. It isn't anymore about criticizing the hypocritical elite establishments like Hollywood in the way they bow to all things woke, but being anti-woke has become part of the official policy. There's nothing fresh to this anymore.

And anyway, I think Hollywood corporations finally have learnt their lesson. But making movies is a slow process, Snow White was just the disaster waiting to happen and Disney knew it. So the corporation put it out because they did have a finished film and tried to minimizes the whole issue. Now it seems that the woke-era in Hollywood is over. Or if it's not over, then it's saved by Trump just like the liberal party was in Canada.

Why were these woke films so bad? Well, the wokeness wasn't only limited to the storyline, but starting from the director and the people writing the stuff was made with woke choices. So you had to have female directors, female writers and representation all along. And in the end you got movies and series where basically the people making the whole thing weren't at all in their ballpark.

Above all, what is learnt is that you don't take the expectations of the movie goers away BEFORE you show it. This saved Barbie from failure as Universal Pictures likely silenced people around the movie and thus audiences (and critics) only after paying the tickets and seeing the movie got director Greta Gehrwig's feminist plot. Yet if Margot Robbie would have gone around telling how feminist the movie is and how in the end Barbie turns down Ken because Barbie doesn't need Ken or men in the end, then I guess you would have gotten a Zegler-like response and Margot Robbie's career would be down the drains. Now we just can admire how good Robbie is portraying female villains.

Yes, but as I'm always wondering, does anyone give a shit about it? Is the corruption being stopped by enforcing the law? Where's the US marshals dragging him out of office? If the corruption isn't stopped and he can break whatever laws and regulations he wants, then there's definitely no democracy in the US. And if there's no democracy in the US, then what are the population opposing him waiting for to happen? For the storm to just calm on its own? — Christoffer

The US has already entered the sphere where many Latin American countries have been for a long time. Corruption will only be dealt with if there's a dramatic change in power relations. Just like in many Latin American countries or developing countries.


The US has now mediocre to weak institutions when it comes to check Presidential power. In a true democracy a tiny issue like putting foreign diplomats and leaders to check in Trump hotels when staying in Washington DC would have been considered corruption that could even have shaken the chair that the President sits on. Now it's just an example of how small and innocent the corruption was in the first administration.

It's some random guy no one has ever heard of posting a tweet. Sometimes politicians say edgy things to get attention. Big whoop. — Tzeentch

Your failing desperately in your defense of these far-right nativists:

René Springer (born 15 July 1979) is a German politician. Born in Berlin, he represents Alternative for Germany (AfD). René Springer has served as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Brandenburg since 2017.

This is a perfect example of these far-right populist parties in Europe: you have to listen what their members are actually saying. And this is just one example among many AfD politicians with similar rhetoric. Hating muslims is another topic these people love. Yeah, political parties can change their stances, but here I guess with AfD to do away with the nativist alt-right rhetoric would loose "the base" of the party.

Those who look at these issues objectively understand this. Those that will do anything to defend Trump/Putin -populists will deny everything.

Go along with the Musk-view that these are actually only libertarians who the evil established media is attacking.

So it seems that you take as proof that this is an non-issue the fact that the AfD states on a webpage that they "firmly reject unconstitutional demands such as the arbitrary collective deportation of foreigners regardless of an existing individual right of residence, or even the deportation of German citizens with a migration background."

Well great, they say that they basically abide with the current laws and won't break the law. That's... a good start. :roll:

However what AfD says otherwise actually are talking about. Like this, just to give one example:



So when a political party promises to deport millions of people to sustain the national identity, yes, it's not your libertarian party, but your nativist anti-immigration far-right populist party. You can try to ridicule me and troll all you want, but that won't change anything. The "Libertarianism" of this party is simply window dressing in order that people who don't love the neo-nazi tag can join in.

And then there's the obvious polarization with Germans supporting the AfD and the rest:

- Only 20% of Germans with a favorable view of the party say democracy in their country is working well. Among Germans with an unfavorable view of the party, 65% believe their democracy is working well.

- Only 30% of AfD supporters have a positive view of the EU, compared with 72% of those who do not support the party.

- AfD supporters have more confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin than those who do not support the party (45% vs. 10%). Nonsupporters, by comparison, have much more positive views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (61% vs. 31%).

- AfD supporters also stand out for having significantly less favorable views than nonsupporters when it comes to NATO (39% vs. 71%).

Yet if you want to support German Putin-lovers, the AfD is the party for you.

Yes, well the tie to Elon Musk and Trump hopefully backfires. After all, the best thing to happen to the support of the EU in member countries was the shitstorm of economic calamity that the UK headed into when it did it's Brexit.

The AfD is not even remotely fascist or nazi.

It's a libertarian party, which is the diametrical opposite of the type of authoritarian far-right movements. — Tzeentch

It might portray itself as libertarian and enthusiastically talk about being libertarian, yet it's stance to immigration, not only just to stop it, but talk of remigration, shows that this clearly isn't the case.

I'll just repeat I put on another thread on the issue:

I'm usually pretty critical when some European party is marked as being far-right or extremist, but with the "Alternative for Germany" AfD, it's quite obvious and I totally agree with the German domestic intelligence service, the BfV, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. When a political party starts segregating citizens of the country on the base of their race or ethnicity and wants to sent somewhere away German citizens, that is a clearly a threat to democracy. There's no way to look away from that. That AfD leader Weidel used the term remigration, a term popularized in the German-speaking world by Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, which refers to forcibly removing immigrants who refuse to integrate with German culture, regardless of their citizenship status, isn't just an error. The AfD leadership had met Sellner himself and afterward used the term. And there's many incidents to show just how neo-nazi many in the leadership of the party are.

The idea of AfD being this innocent libertarian/populist party that is wrongly accused to be extremist by the powers at be is simply incorrect bullshit spread by the alt-right itself. Normalization of people applying for citizenship is one thing, but changing the status of people that are already citizens is a truly toxic thing to do. One of the best ways to spread hate and disagreement amongst a population.

And that's why Putin and the Kremlin simply love these parties. As I said years ago.

↪neomac, they've been trying to demonize (and divide) Europe for a while, all part of the playbook.

Incidentally, it goes well with Vance's Munich tirade. :chin: — jorndoe

Which is just continuing.

US Vice President JD Vance on Friday accused Germany of rebuilding a "Berlin Wall" after action against the far-right AfD party, the latest heated criticism of the longtime ally by President Donald Trump's administration.

"The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt -- not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment," Vance, who in February defiantly met the AfD leader while in Munich, wrote on X.

And not only Vance, but Rubio too:

(CNN 2nd May, 2025) A remarkable exchange played out on X on Friday as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the government of key ally Germany of “tyranny in disguise” for designating the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist entity.

In a post Friday afternoon, the top US diplomat slammed the classification made by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, which allows it to increase surveillance of the political party. Vice President JD Vance later echoed the rebuke of the move in his own post on the social media platform. “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition,” Rubio wrote on his official State Department X account. “That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise.”

“What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes,” he continued. Rubio, who has been newly tapped as the interim national security adviser, said the US ally “should reverse course.”

In a direct reply on X more than three hours later, the German Foreign Office pushed back. “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law,” the account posted. “It is independent courts that will have the final say.”

“We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” the foreign office wrote.

I'm usually pretty critical when some European party is marked as being far-right or extremist, but with the "Alternative for Germany" AfD, it's quite obvious and I totally agree with the German domestic intelligence service, the BfV, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. When a political party starts segregating citizens of the country on the base of their race or ethnicity and wants to sent somewhere away German citizens, that is a clearly a threat to democracy. There's no way to look away from that. That AfD leader Weidel used the term remigration, a term popularized in the German-speaking world by Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, which refers to forcibly removing immigrants who refuse to integrate with German culture, regardless of their citizenship status, isn't just an error. The AfD leadership had met Sellner himself and afterward used the term. And there's many incidents to show just how neo-nazi many in the leadership of the party are.



Perhaps the US should btw need a Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution?

If there's a positive note, at least Secretary of the Treasury Bessent stated what the Trump administration is looking forward to do in an logical way. Basically a policy speach that Trump is utterly incapable of giving (apart of the very Trumpian attack on the IMF on going on woke issues like climate change). He gives a short interview after the speech:



In fact was positive is his view in energy policy of the importance of base load and then alternative production. Many politicians go for the trendy and politically correct view of alternative energy can give everything. But then Bessent is just one man who tries to influence just what Trump actually does.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick got Donald Trump alone and away from rival advisor Peter Navarro to convince him to put a 90-day pause on most tariffs, according to a report.

The president's financial team has taken hits over the administration's first 100 days, with many wondering if Lutnick should represent the administration on television. Perhaps no one has been more controversial than Navarro, however, particularly stoking the ire of 'First Buddy' Elon Musk

And another totally is what the Trump administration will end up doing.

Yet the executive branch can only enforce the laws made by the legislature and interpreted by the judiciary. — Harry Hindu

That would be the idea, which obviously US Presidents and especially Donald Trump doesn't understand with his "executive orders".

Both the executive and legislature have expanded the powers of their branches, establishing precedence for when the other party takes power, essentially both parties working together to expand the powers of government influence in our lives. — Harry Hindu

Even in a multiparty system this happens. Imagine a Parliament that would some day just declare: "Got it! All laws that we need have been done. We'll go home now, call us if we are needed." :wink:

Left or right Libertarians can only be those that are abandoning Libertarian views in favor of more authoritarian ones, as in looking to gov. to solve their problems, when their problem is the need to tell others how to live and what "choices" they can make. — Harry Hindu

I'm not sure if libertarians themselves see it like that.

So you think Trump wants to talk with Iran and won't attack (or let Israel attack) Iran?

Perhaps.

I think that as long as Trump is mired in his stupid tariffs and nothing happens in the Middle East, he won't take the initiative. Trade war with China is already a big issue.

Yet one third (or half of operational) B-2s are forward deployed still in Diego Garcia.

Seems that Trump's idiotic "Recession by tariffs" is coming closer. Hence Trump seems to be begging for the Chinese to "come to the table". Yet the consequences of the trade war are finally coming to shelves of American stores next month.

A good overall recap how international trade to the US from Asia (especially China) is starting to show:



It seems like that China is not in hurry to stop the trade war. Even so, two of the largest economies being in an all out trade war is not good for the rest of the World.

Weren't all of these measures simply Trump lashing out at a Government that he hates, using 'waste and fraud' as a pretext? — Wayfarer

I think that these guys were truly sincere in their goals, yet the disdain and hate they had towards the system was clear right from the start. The strategy of "Let's just go in quick and cut as much we can do and then solve later any issues that rise up" had basically the effect of just lashing out at the government. The normal way would simply been for Elon to go through the government and then make list of things to be cut and that to be given to the Congress to chew on. But yes, as you said, power went to their heads.

It seems the wind has been taken out of Musk's sails. He's said to have been having screaming matches with Scott Bessent in the West Wing and to have considerably annoyed many other cabinet members. — Wayfarer

Things can get heated in any administration, but with the inept leadership qualities of Trump it's a sure end result. And of course this was baked in from the start as there no DOGE officially exists and Musk isn't part of the actual administration (as he obviously didn't want to set aside his wealth and companies). The de facto but not de jure status was first seen as a great advantage, but when DOGE fails to do anything but stir up a mess, it becomes easily a nuisance in the administration.

) I think Musk was literally power-drunk when it all kicked of. — Wayfarer

Indeed he was. You could see it from his crazy attacks against various European countries (Germany, Poland, the UK).

But we shouldn't forget that the most power-drunk person has been and is still Trump himself. There is nobody around him that would saying anything against him, hence the only thing that get's him to change his views are the effects of his policies in the stock market and the economy. With Elon, it's his companies, with Trump it's the US economy and the international status of the country and it's alliances.

Sure they do. They want the government to "fix the problem" of gay marriage by defining it as a union between a man and a woman. The Libertarian's stance is, "Why are we looking to the government to define marriage in the first place?"

They want the government to "fix the problem" of abortion and God being eliminated from public schools.

Both sides look to the government to "fix problems", either economic or social, depending on which side you are on. So yours, and others, tactic to put Libertarians on the right side shows that you all really understand what Libertarianism is. — Harry Hindu

Ok, with "the government" I'm more talking about the executive branch. Naturally the right wants there to be the legislature and the judiciary too. This complex relation is shown when especially the right wants to act legislation to protect the freedom's and the rights of the citizen from the government.

Left-libertarianism might sound as an oxymoron, but it isn't at all, especially outside the United States. In the US it is right-wing libertarianism that dominates libertarianism, but I guess both have strong roots in classic liberalism.

Trump is going for all the strengths that the US has had and enjoyed: 1) The Economy, 2) The Alliances it has, 3) The Universities. And he also wants to devalue the dollar.

I heard about a study not long ago ( by Jonathan Haidt) which showed that conservatives have a broader set of values. - I think the current political divide in the USA is really a divide in moral development. I don't think it was always this way though, or at least not to this degree. — Brendan Golledge

MAGA isn't a normal conservative movement. Sure, many leftist commentators will say that this is actual right-wing politics simply exposed to it's true nature, but this isn't so. Radical authoritarian populism is quite different from the typical right-wing politics, just as Jonathan Haidt isn't a believer in the MAGA cult.

I see the right as seeing the problems, but mostly waiting for someone in government to fix the problems, which rarely happens. — Brendan Golledge

Especially in the US the right doesn't assume for the government to fix the problems, that is more of a leftist view. I would say that many on the right think that with the government, they are simply buying a service as they do in the private sector for other services. So you pay taxes and get services like the police, legal system, fire department and so on. And when they get poor service, they are angry. And thus many libertarians think that many services could be simply be provided by the private sector.

This view totally underestimates the role and importance of the institutions that a government creates. The liberitarian might make an exception when it comes to national defense (as even they understand that going with private armies wouldn't be such a great idea), but otherwise everything is just a service.

2. Kohlberg was probably right that women on average have a lower level of moral development than men — Brendan Golledge

:brow:

Was there a question?

As someone said, when debating the Culture War, one doesn't have to use the brain.

And anyway, it seems that "Elon Musk's unprecedented intrusion deep into the mechanics of the Federal Government", as @Wayfarer stated in the OP, is coming to an end. I think that Elon will be quietly going to withdraw from the Mar-a-Lago and the White House scene. So perhaps it should be good to look at what I first wrote in this thread three months ago.

As I've stated again and again. Elon Musk will be the most hated man in the US in the future. You see, it will be alright for the South African born billionaire to be hated even by the Trump crowd, as God-Emperor Trump cannot do anything else than his genius blessed acts. But Elon can go. Because this won't end happily, really. The man is bouncing too hard here and there.

Let's start from the basics. Musk owns a very overvalued car manufacture. Somebody now buying a Tesla will make a clear political statement. And that is bad. This is the reason just why corporate leaders usually try stay out of the media limelight. And the demand for Tesla has started to plummet dramatically. — ssu

Now a disastrous first quarter results made this clear to Musk. I gave too much credit to what DOGE could do as Musk didn't last even until the summer and the cuts have basically been meaningless as the Trump administration is spending a bit more than the Biden administration now. I presumed that DOGE could really to go for serious cuts in the expenditure (which would have made Musk even more hated). Likely now only the Democrats and liberals got offended about Musk, but Republicans didn't get to be as annoyed at him as I predicted. And for Trump, the midterms are too far off to notice that there might be use for having the Worlds richest man around (or one in the top ten). Then he might beg for Musk, but already that one election of a judge that Musk lost has shown that he cannot buy everything.



It seems that now Trump is likely to cave in his delusional ideas about tariffs saving everything when the recession hits home. Other countries just can wait and let Trump's situation get worse. That's the next step, but an issue for another thread.