He can’t even win a war with a crossword puzzle.
Ok… Part of me is having trouble not believing that Trump is trying to tank his entire campaign, while making it look like he’s not trying to tank his entire campaign. Like, I don’t think he really wanted to win last time, and I think having experienced the job he wants it even less this time, but he has to actually campaign and make a good show of it both for ego and staving off jail time reasons, so maybe he’s waking up every morning going “…ok what if I wear a really obvious diaper under my pants? Maybe that’ll make them stop voting for me…”
But most of me is just realizing, nah, he is actually legitimately making choices that are that stupid.
If it’s good enough for DeSantis to tank campaign creating fake drama vs cultural stars, it’s good enough for Trump
If Trump loses, I hope they have Taylor Swift play at Biden’s Inauguration. I don’t even like Taylor Swift’s music, but it’d be a nice slap in the face to the GOP.
I can hear my mom yelling about it now. Funny how she was mostly ignorant about here existence until Fox News started complaining about her and now she hates her guts. Always liked watching the super bowl until this mess and now she’s “maybe I don’t bother”.
But if I poke her about it she turns into “I am not just parroting them. You need to stop reading CNN and all those brainwashed sources.”
It’s so close to realizing, but won’t cross the line. I have read about 2 articles from CNN in my entire life. The entire news industry hates maga now. It’s pretty much just FN, Newsmax, and the absolute far end of the spectrum of hate preachers and Alex Jones that say anything close to what you want to hear, as far as I can see.
Yeah if the entire world can agree on something, but my preferred group is the holdout, I think I would re-examine my view. It’s just mind boggling that just one huge mainstream network says stuff that all the others disagree with, and that’s the one you are just so sure it’s right about everything.
You should try to sit down with her and watch, “The Brainwashing of my Dad” documentary. See if anything resonates with her at all.
Alternatively remind her that the RNC had Clint Eastwood speak at the convention, talking to an empty chair strangely…
She is stuck on that side. If she knows some kind of news or information is not sanctioned by Fox News she automatically either avoids listening to it in the first place, or discounts it immediately. Even on just local news (and this is a very conservative area, at least this half of the state) if they say something about gay people, or just mention a gay event and if they don’t immediately say something negative about it, she just rolls her eyes.
Even with a TV show she likes, if gay characters do a gay thing (omg 2 dudes kissing!) she will literally make the noise… Umm what is the word for it… Retching, I think? Whatever the barf noise is called. She will literally make that noise and look away from the screen.
There is nothing rational about this kind of behavior, you can’t win this argument. The chess board is already on the floor here.
So I don’t know anything about that documentary, but if she has any reason to think it’s not sponsored by Fox News, it’s literally just fiction at best and “Communist Marxist propaganda” at worst.
Yeah that’s sad but I can completely understand. Religions have been abusing this for eons and now it’s being used directly for a political ideology. There comes a point where reason doesn’t even matter.
I feel this… They think that, just because the only way they know how to consume “news” is through trashy 24 hour news channels, that you must be doing the same, but with “liberal” sources.
Just more projection.
I really feel this is a Streisand Effect taking action. There’s no way this doesn’t make Taylor Swift more political.
Her voter-turnout drives will be massive for the election.
Oh and if you hear any of these people complain about celebrities, remind them that they got Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair at the RNC in some demented rant.
Also Trump himself.
and Ronnie Raygun.
Donald Trump is losing the war against his own stupid mouth, of course he’s not going to win against the Swifties.
Everyone wants Taylor Swift to enter the political fray but I’d be a little wary if you value democracy. Swifties have a charismatic leader, are very organized, and everyone one of them likes to make five year plans and let 100 flowers bloom. We’ve seen that combination before and it got very messy for a few years.
I’m not following what you’re getting at. Are you suggesting that Taylor Swift is going to run for president?
No. I was suggesting she’s going to lead an army of Swifties and seize power after a violent civil war and become America’s version of Mao Zedong. Communist parties tend to make 5 year-plans. And when Mao came to power, he originally talked about “letting 100 flowers bloom” as a reference to allowing dissent and alternative ideas. That only lasted a couple of years before a crackdown (and then, after that, some much much worse events).
Comparimg Taylor Swift to Mao.
Okay.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t a sincere comparison.
I don’t want Swift to be an actual candidate or anything, but I am amused that Trump picked this fight.
Frank Herbert has entered the chat.
I see a holy war spreading across the universe like unquenchable fire.
They call her Reverend Mother Taylor Swift
The difference between Swift and Trump is that Taylor understands she needs to give back to her fans, in music and performances. Trump just sees his fans as providing something for him, their money in donations and ego boosts.
She can run for office next time.
“Donald Trump and his far-right ‘holy war’ against Taylor Swift could cost him the next presidential election.”
News from a completely normal and not broken at all timeline. Imagine reading that sentence to someone 10 years ago.
I feel like that headline would be completely normal during the 80s satanic witch hunt.
I think they’d be confused about why a real estate celebrity is going after a 1 year old girl but yeah not too far off
who has ‘pop star saves democracy’ on their bingo card?
Isn’t that the plot from half a dozen 1980s movies?
I feel like this was a Jem and the Holograms episode.
Shit. Is she actually Kevin fucking Bacon‽
10 years ago was still 2 years left in the final Obama administration. Add on just a bit more to really drive those 2014 people crazy:
“After an unsuccessful violent insurrection to stay in the White House after being voted out, Donald Trump and his far-right ‘holy war’ against Taylor Swift could cost him the next presidential election.”
We’re about 80% of the way to Idiocracy.
That’s being generous…
We’re past Idiocracy. President Camacho listened to the smartest person in the room. Trump thinks he is the smartest person in the room.
Trump knows he’s not the smartest person in the room. Trump wants to claim to be the smartest person in the room, and enjoys watching nobody correct him. That makes him feel like the most powerful person in the room. He doesn’t care who the smartest is, as long as he gets to claim it and all the credit for everything smarter people do near him.
When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Nitpick: He’s gone on record as saying he doesn’t hire people who he thinks is smarter than he is.
That’s part of the kink. He says that so that smart people who want to work for him will tell him they think he is smarter than they are. It’s a power move. Like the handshake thing.
After I got out of a relationship with a malignant narcissist, I realized that everything they do and say is a power move. They live in a world without objective reality. They cannot tell the truth because they function for a delusion. While you are thinking that you’re having a conversation sharing ideas, they’re observing you up and down to measure your strengths, weaknesses, social power, and threat to their social power. They listen intently to create a character they will present to you so that you enmesh with them. They run little secret experiments to learn how you react to things. Once they’ve figured you out, you’re going to have a bad time. The sad thing is that underlying all this, is that they feel deeply insecure. They confuse envy for love. The more of an asshole a malignant narcissist is, the more they’re telling the world they’re insecure because the more they want people to envy them, which means the more they need love in their delusional world. Trump is extraordinarily insecure.
They’re not trying to win the popularity contest. They’re trying to win the “do what we say or maybe one of our violent followers will try to kill you” contest. That’s what Hannity means by “think twice.”
They abandoned the pretense of nonviolence and freedom of speech for their enemies quite a while ago.
I guarantee you Taylor Swift has some of the best security in the world, so I’m guessing that doesn’t worry her much.
They could still bomb one of her concerts, or drive a car into fans waiting in line, or some other type of stochastic terrorism. Like a lot terrorism, it’s not necessary to do enough to actually endanger a real high percentage of people, just enough to make anyone who won’t toe the line a little fearful about their safety because of it. A little bit’s enough.
That usually backfires though.
Yeah, maybe so. I hadn’t really realized it before you said this, but historically the violence that helps usher in a fascist takeover is either police violence or big, public, mob-style events – not this sneaking around planting pipe bombs nonsense. I think you may well be right that stochastic terrorism ultimately inspires more resistance then obedience.
The only analogs I can even think of where a successful fascist takeover was accompanied by terrorism in secret, are the Reichstag fire and the false-flags from Putin’s early days – and both of those inspired a strong reaction against the party that, supposedly, was the one that had perpetrated them.
Maybe, but I don’t see how that would end up helping Republicans, so if that does happen, it will be some lone crazy. That’s always a risk.
although getting a lot of people who are apolitical but have progressive values to pay attention by bombing their favorite pop star isn’t going to have a favorable outcome for the bombers
That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I mean, they’re just music fans.
I see you’re not familiar with their work
I was making a joke about Swifties. ;)
Ah got it
We’re talking US politics, no jokes, only dread and unhappiness allowed here
🙂
do what we say or maybe one of our violent followers will try to kill you
Having watched Fox News from time to time I am amazed that this kind of thing hasn’t started happening more often yet.
Bro what the fuck
I read your comment, then I read the article. Well said
You know what’s telling me the real truth? The TV. You know who’s a horrifying enemy who can’t be trusted? My dad.
(Only some parts of the TV; the others are all horrible dangerous lies)
It’s amazing how dumb this entire situation is. To my knowledge she hasn’t even publicly endorsed a candidate or political party, right? Just suggested her fans register to vote?
Here she is speaking about Republicans in a 2020 documentary. I would say it’s a bit more than asking people to register.
Edit to add: She comes across so genuinely in this clip, I really love it. Listen to her speak and then think of any time you’ve ever heard Trump speak. I can understand why they feel threatened.
It’s amazing how dumb this entire situation is. To my knowledge she hasn’t even publicly endorsed a candidate or political party, right? Just suggested her fans register to vote?
Is it really amazing anymore? Bud Light sent one specially printed can to a trans influencer last year and they lost their shit for months. (You know everything they did, I’m sure, so I’m not going to catalogue it here.)
Dumb? Yes.
Ridiculous? Yes.
Conservatives behaving in a way that shows us yet again just what kind of people they are? Yes.
Amazing? No.
They are not “snowflakes” tho.
They are not “snowflakes” tho.
😉
Elections have become entertainment. Same with the house and senate. Everybody wants to be famous.
She did call Marsha Blackburn,“Trump in a wig”. Her fans aren’t stupid.
Registering to vote helps Democrats more than Republicans, because first time voters and younger voters are more likely to vote Democrat. Republicans do better when less people vote.
Registering to vote helps Democrats more than Republicans, because
first time voters and younger voters are more likely to vote Democratmany more people want to vote for Democrats.Though your original version is also correct.
Yes, absolutely. If we made voting mandatory, made Election Day a national holiday, and actually managed to get our turnout over 90%, the Democrats would landslide every election and the Republicans know it.
An awful lot of Republican policy makes sense when you view them as a party with a shrinking base. They’re trying to eek out what they can before shifting over to a new base.
Rubio, Cruz, and De Santis have been trying to build Hispanic bases, though none of them are really charismatic enough to pull it off.
Who would think that 3 personally repulsive people from the Let’s Kill Immigrants and Deport Their Families Party would have trouble making inroads with Latino voters? It’s a real mystery!
The Latino vote has started trending to the right, so they’re not wrong for trying.
Dems need to do more to secure their vote.
Almost like Dems need to actually do something for minorities instead of taking their vote for granted.
the democratic party is controlled opposition. their job is to prevent left wing policies even at the cost of republicans winning
Perish the thought!
You’d be surprised how much of the Latino community are folks like the descendants of the Cuban bourgeoisie who fled Cuba when the communists took over, devout Catholics, people who jumped through all the hoops to immigrate legally and are really salty about the ones who took shortcuts, etc.
their ideology is literally and metaphorically dying off and the only way they can retain power is by destroying democracy. everything they do is to make sure people can’t vote them out, up to and including a fascist coup
Either that or run on a platform people actually want to vote for, but yeah the destroying democracy thing is probably easier.
Yes. That is all she did. Got them to register to vote. She didn’t even hint at who they should vote for. That might change now, and not the way Republicans want.
Honestly, it’s such an incredible own goal. By aligning themselves in opposition to her, Republicans are begging for her fans to vote against them.
Republicans understand that demographics are against them, and their only chance is to whip their base into a froth while simultaneously making it harder for Others to vote.
Ding ding ding
Just like it is every election season. Republicans rely on the electoral vote, propaganda, and systematic diseducation (idk if that’s even a word, case in point?) to ensure victories over the populace
“Education” is from Latin “educ” which means “lead out”. The reverse would be to lead in, which is “ducere in”. So if you want to make a new but old-fashioned word, I suggest “ducereination” or because the “e-i”" syllables are uncomfortable to say and would have likely been dropped over time, “ducerination”. The “c” might be pronounced as an “s” or as a “k” depending on how the word would have evolved since ancient times, but I prefer a “k” sound (which I think is the wrong one according to Google) so it sounds like the “c” in “education”.
Note that I don’t know Latin.
If you go with educere, you probably want to use inducere, which accidentally is the root of actual words
I don’t know a goddamn thing about Latin grammar, but it looks like you could follow the etymology of “education” more closely. The “educ” part is itself derived from “ex ducere”, so we could probably have “inducation”
Y’all. Did you have your coffees this morning?
There’s already an organically evolved etymologically rich word for the “passing of closed thinking”, that harkens back to “leading in” or Inducing…
Indoctrination.
Yeah, but the right only agree that indoctrination exists when it’s colleges indoctrinating people into free-thought which they call being woke. Say that word to them and they’ll be like “rubber, glue, you” because that’s about as many syllables as the average right-winger can muster, and about as intelligent a complete thought as I expect from them as well.
I guarantee you they’ll feel the same way if you say ducerination or inducation. Words they don’t understand are inherently an attack, just like woke, which originally meant someone or something that was championing the rights of people in modern times
lol, great point
It is a word now
Disinformation is the word
Misinformation: Untrue or misleading information. Anyone can fall victim to it. Even the smartest among us can be misinformed.
Disinformation: Intentionally untrue or misleading information. This is information that is targeted towards people who are most likely to fall victim to it: Suckers
If you’re watching a show/video and the advertisements are mostly bullshit things like supplements, (legal) drugs, and/or weight loss products the show/video you’re watching is made for suckers. The folks selling these things know their marks.
She and Travis are pro-vaccine so that’s all the endorsement they need to hear.
Correct. They’ve tacitly acknowledged for quite a while that discouraging their enemies from voting is a big part of their strategy, though, and I don’t think anyone involved thinks the Taylor Swift fans are also Trump fans.
Honestly, if someone tries to tell you voting won’t change anything, just point to how hard they try to rig the systems that drive it and how much they freak out about any indication that their enemies are planning to vote in large numbers.
just point to how hard they try to rig the systems that drive it a
My city: 80% white, 20% Asian, and rich. Voting is super easy.
City next to mine: nearly 100% POC. Every election multihour long waits to vote.
Yes, I have tried to help but I can’t do much besides pass water bottles out and give out voter registration forms. They won’t let me be an election worker unless I live there.
It’s been going on ever since black people got the right to vote. It’s been suppress the vote ever since, from whatever level of the right.
That may as well have been a direct attack against the GOP. Their whole motus operandi is suppressing the vote and voter apathy, keep people away from the polls and sick of the whole process. They don’t really need to run a better campaign than their opponent, just make their opponents’ supporters so sick of all the noise and both-sidesing everything, they just sit out the whole thing because there’s no difference between anybody, right?
She endorsed Biden in 2020 so there is a good chance she will again.
Nah, this is Vermin Supreme’s year and I’m sure she agrees.
Surf’s up, space ponies!
It’s 2024 and Swifties are scarier than Anonymous; Maybe it’s glass-ception and we need to go through more of them.
Swift/Kanye for president
Kanye has no business being anywhere near an elected office unless someone gets him back on his meds.
There’s no mental illness that makes you say Nazi shit, I think he might just be an asshole
It can be both
Oh he’s definitely crazy, but it doesn’t excuse him
Of course there is. Do you think that schizophrenic people actually believe all the crazy bullshit they say during an episode?
The schizophrenia sufferers I’ve worked with seemed not to have a definite or enduring sense of what they believed, but none of them said Nazi shit. No, that was the old guy with FAS who was raised by an actual nazi.
I’m so sick and tired too of him saying that he’s bipolar. He’s 1000% self diagnosed and it does a disservice to mental health professionals and people who suffer from bipolar disorder.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After weeks of Republican media pundits and a former presidential candidate vilifying her, going as far as saying she’s a Defense Department psy-op, it seems all but certain Trump will jump into the fray soon as well after Rolling Stone reported one of his confidants predicted a “holy war” against the pop sensation.
If that and the aforementioned survey are correct, that means there are nearly 137 million voting-age Swift supporters situated across the US, or approximately 60% of the total number of votes cast in the 2020 presidential election for either Biden or Trump.
Sure, many of those millions of conservative fans won’t cross the aisle in retribution for sullying Swift’s name, but Biden won nine states in 2020 by less than 100,000 votes.
If just a small fraction of Swift’s Republican fans defect over such attacks, it could legitimately help Biden secure a second term in the White House.
A colleague of mine was baselessly slandered as a groomer and a pedophile, had their family doxxed, and received death threats from Swifties for the crime of simply enjoying Beyoncé’s recent tour more than Swift’s.
The Swifties’ condemnation of that opinion, as minor as it was, highlights a major reason they’re more dangerous to Trump’s reelection plans than any Democratic leader in the country: While Democrats have routinely refused to “go low” instead of “high” responding to Trump’s bullying, Swift fans have never held back and they’re not held to the same standards and in positions of power.
The original article contains 460 words, the summary contains 249 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
My friends dad who had spent his entire life as a staunch republican like Reagan style came to her and said “who do you want me to vote for, you are going to be here I wont”.
I hope this perspective shift happens with all boomers.
spent his entire life as a staunch republican like Reagan style
TBF his perspective hasn’t changed that much. It’s his party that has abandoned him.
Reminds me of my grandfather, who was one of those “Voted for Eisenhower 'cause Lincoln won the war” types according to my dad. He voted straight Republican in every election until 2004.
See, the Bush campaign started handing out Purple Heart Band Aids as part of the swiftboating of John Kerry. My grandfather, who had earned a Purple Heart and delivered one to his dead friend’s parents, didn’t appreciate the joke, and voted Democrat for the rest of his life.
Love the John Prine line!
Ray-gun was a Trump precursor. It was Bush Sr. that took a step back from the brink and went back to just being an awful jackass.
Yup. All of the problems in the US are basically a game of “6 degrees from Reagan”
Thats fair!
I avoid pop culture wherever possible so I am almost entirely ignorant of Swift’s musical catalog. That said, the attention the republicans have been giving her lately has me interested enough to start listening to her music to see what the big deal is. I have found quite a few songs I enjoy and Apple Music has been suggesting more and more of her stuff that I find myself not skipping.
So, the GOP war on Swift has added at least one more person to her fanbase 🤣
I feel the same about Taylor Swift. It’s not really my genre of music, but I like pretty much everything she does and can’t think of any song I actively dislike. My daughter’s into her, so it’s nice I can listen to music with her and legitimately enjoy it.
Same. I don’t listen to her, but my kids love her. She’s cool and aspirational. She’s a great role model.
Indeed. As is Lizzo, as long as your kids can handle a little profanity.
It’s not my kind of music, but someone the WGA and SAG/AFTRA gave their blessings to show her concert movie during their strike because she said, “okay, I’ll give you whatever you’re asking for” is okay in my book.
Plus getting her fans to register to vote is just a good act.
I didn’t think it was but as I’ve started listening, I’m finding a lot that I actually enjoy. It started with “You Need to Calm Down”, my wife was playing it in the car and I dug the music (has a god beat, is interesting vocally, etc.). Then I listened to the lyrics and was a bit taken aback because of her apolitical reputation.
She’s got much more of an edge than I expected so Ive got a lot to explore :).
She’s popular because she puts out catchy pop songs. You missed out on like 13 years of bangers.
