Current Affairs - The Bear and Badger

Facewon

Yeah, wish I'd never heard of backpilling.

Fucking hell.

SpaceGazelle

Still, focus must be maintained on the gun laws. Angry pensioners would be spraying remainers if we had the same in the UK.

GooberTheHat

Has Neil deGrasse Tyson always been a bit of a dick?

https://mobile.twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1158074774297468928

LivDiv

Yeah

SpaceGazelle

Jesus what a list. It might have carried weight if he'd focused a bit on deaths by the million.

SpaceGazelle

And would still be beside the point.

hylian_elf

He seems to be a dick and also very much a moron.

SpaceGazelle

He has a general point about the press, stats and what we allow ourselves to be enraged by. It's the list that's upsetting me. He's black ffs.

Tempy

I know there is some criticism of Bellingcat but the article on the 8chan stuff is on the money and easier to parse than the web of nested tweets Face linked, imo

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/08/04/the-el-paso-shooting-and-the-gamification-of-terror/

g.man

That's fucking depressing reading. We seem to be living in a world that's far beyond satire now.

SpaceGazelle

It's a focal point for stupid white men but the main problem is still the guns. It's always the guns. Guns guns everywhere. Stupid wars, stupid laws.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/03/30/the-cost-of-an-ak-47-on-the-black-market-across-the-world-infographic/#4463c9d27442

Brooks

There's more to it than guns. US culture needs a reboot entirely.

SpaceGazelle

Yes, without fucking guns. 1 AK47 for every 35 people in the world.

LivDiv

Genie is out of the bottle innit.
Not saying they shouldn't change the gun laws but it is gonna take much more than that.

Brooks

It's necessarily a multi-generational project that involves neutralising the slop of aspirational zeal, appeal to self-sufficiency, structural denial of human failure and frailty and undereceptiveness to nuance that is the American id.

To some extent, this is same as it ever was - an empire wobbles, it goes kind of nuts.

LarryDavid

If the past 3,000 mass shootings haven’t made them look within and question their fucked up society I doubt this one will.

SpaceGazelle

@ Brooks

It's finished and it knows it. Just doesn't have the numbers to compete and seems content to mainly harm itself these days and we'll see if they still have an appetite for war. I suspect isolationism, which won't do either tbh, not with the warming.

hunk

Mass shootings have always been part of american culture; it's part of the romantic 'wild wild west' when everything was better mythos. America was built on guns. Guns can make America great again.

Bless the NRA! Bless the 2nd amendment!
MAGA!

hunk

If I were Trump I'd post that on my Twitter

SpaceGazelle

What's more American than shooting a local in the face? The Empire of course. That boat has sailed but the Yanks pretend they're still good at it.

LivDiv

hunk wrote:

Mass shootings have always been part of american culture; it's part of the romantic 'wild wild west' when everything was better mythos. America was built on guns. Guns can make America great again.

Bless the NRA! Bless the 2nd amendment!
MAGA!

The thing about that Wild West (awiki wild) was that it wasnt particularly wide spread and cattle driving was a tough life that took discipline.

The wild west shootouts were more akin to payday drunken fights outside Wetherspoons.

Cattle trails started linking up to towns with rail stations where cattle were sold and shipped out. Young men who had been on the road would use their pay to get drunk, whore, fight and shoot each other.

It's a nation that glamourises chavvy fights.

djchump

Would be nice if the soshul meedjuh firms that made bank (because engagement) off of shitheads radicalising morons would use the same filters and programs that keep ISIS out to shut down the rest of the terrorists.
But yeah, would probably auto-block a bunch of GOP and the president in the process, so that would be lolz.

b0r1s

SpaceGazelle wrote:

@ Brooks

It's finished and it knows it. Just doesn't have the numbers to compete and seems content to mainly harm itself these days and we'll see if they still have an appetite for war. I suspect isolationism, which won't do either tbh, not with the warming.

Yours and Brooks posts seem to imply it’s culture is on a downward spiral, the end of an empire. As though it was ever at a high point. Built by black slaves on the dead bodies of Native Americans it has never been a country with a clean soul. The id of white Americans can’t be fixed in my eyes because the dream of what they want America to be is at the cost of non-white races. I would hope for them to be isolated from the world, as they were pre-WWII, but their militarised economy won’t allow it. They will target another Middle Eastern state (Iran?) in the next decade, kill hundreds of thousands more in the name of democracy and prop up their economy while telling the world they are bringing peace.

Brooks

In terms of fortunes for the avg white US voter, things have definitely been better, or at least more predictable. And it was very much easier to gloss over the flaws.

Kow

What country has a clean soul (what does that even mean)? Let's not pretend the US isn't the most powerful country in the world, in terms of economy, military and yes, culture. Even though that culture may be vapid and throw away or whatever, it's still the most dominant at this point in time.

Kow

But it's long since gone past its high point, it's true.

b0r1s

Yeah the soul thing was a bit of hyperbole. But it is a country that doesn’t want to break away from its glory days of white superiority. Worryingly it’s also having its affect on the UK too, it’s not even subtle anymore.

Kow

It's not like the UK is on any hurry to break from its "glory" days either. That's not much to do with the US. It's been struggling with it since the end of WW2.

Diluted Dante

A majority of Americans support gun control. The problem is Republicans.

dynamiteReady

LivDiv wrote:

I know someone who has started to fall down this rabbit hole. Known him about 4 or 5 years, can go into more detail if it's of interest but I can track how it has happened. Regular /pol and 4chan user. Spicy memes triggered his dark sense of humour and aligned to some moderate right wing views at first, a gate way if you will. Havent seen him in about 18 months but work with a close mate of his who fills me in on what's happening. Since the last time I saw him he has started attending "Free Tommy Robinson" marches. I cant say how far he has fallen, that could be the extent of it, he could turn up on the news tomorrow. One thing that is certain though is that there is a direct correlation between his own dumb fuck decisions and how far he falls into victimhood and hate. What do you do though? He hasn't actually done anything to my knowledge that would put him on a watch list. He isnt gonna listen to other viewpoints he is fully indoctrinated. Something that is quite scary about it is that the guy isnt stupid, he isnt a gullible mug and he is genuinely witty and funny. It is actually quite sad to see him go this way.

This is what I'm wondering... How much of this is just an American problem.

Over here, we've traditionally seen US political... umm... turbulence... as an American product that doesn't export as neatly as say, Nike, or Five Guys.

Everyone thought Bush was a dick (pun) too... What's changed?
A feeling of active participation, perhaps?

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