Inverted

Any functioning legal system should have a way of publicly executing, or at least exiling and seizing the assets from, somebody behaving like Trump right now.

A genius gone too soon.

I am not sure if it makes a difference to how long it lasts, but I believe dose 1 gives you immunity just over 90%, and dose 2 takes you to near 100%. So the choice is between gradually giving people almost total immunity, or quickly giving people pretty decent immunity.

I would have guessed you wouldn’t be able to have one now, but apparently gatherings of a certain size within “hospitality venues” are fine up until after Christmas. Most people who are interested are only really making a deal out of the mask. I don’t think it is particularly sincere, either.

Luv me Brexit. Luv me Strictly. 'ate Lockdown. 'ate Remoaners. Simple as.

Strangely, the fact that we’ve hit the worst case scenario in just about every way makes it easier enjoying Christmas. It really is hard to envisage things being worse, which is quite calming in a way. An amoral, corrupt government with a crushing majority, beyond any accountability, a mutant strain of the virus possibly born within the UK, the entire country being quarantined by much of the outside world, cases and deaths potentially peaking in the midst of Winter, and then No Deal Brexit and a mass disruption of food and medical supplies taking effect at the exact worst moment. And if we do ever somehow emerge out the other side of this nightmare, we are immediately going to go into an economically devastating, ideologically driven round of austerity that’s going to make the first one look like child’s play. Whatever fragile remains of our economy that are left will be stamped harder into the dirt. Any chance of a semblance of economic recovery will be immediately snuffed-out. The country is fucked, and even if this government was booted out at the next election - which it will never be - that would still be too late to set things right.

The problem up here is most people think its good enough for the ScotGov to be at least not as bad as Westminster. Which still leaves plenty of room to be absolutely shit.

Lmao this country is doomed.

This was not what I imagined when we were told we were going to become "Global Britain".

Customarily it's expected (which is an almost concrete, but not legally binding, obligation) that a minister will resign when found in breach of the code. But that kind of mechanism only works with normal politicians. It doesn't work when your government is run by a clique of media stooges and robber barons who only want power in order to siphon-off public funds to themselves and their mates.

From whatever anecdotal impressions I can claim to have from the ground, people’s behaviour is not much better in Scotland. I for sure haven’t been following the rules - I am still trying to be disciplined about who I get in contact with, but my “Bubble” has grown into 2 or 3 households that I am in regular contact with. But I seem to be limiting myself much more than almost everyone else I know. The lockdown fatigue seems to have become overwhelming at the point when most people asked the obvious question of “why can the kids go to school, be in close contact with dozens of people, and then go home and be in contact with their whole family, but everything else needs to be limited?”. The only response that makes any sense would be “We know that schools are causing infections but we feel it is essential enough to bear with, even if that means we need to curtail less important things”. Some people would be angry, but it at least makes sense. Instead our intelligence is insulted by a dismissal of any idea of child transmission, and jargon about “school-adjacent community clusters” rather than just admitting the obvious. You don’t need to be scientist - anyone can see school kids running around in groups, in public places, without masks, and see the obvious risk. People will start to second-guess any system of rules when they don’t feel they’re being dealt with openly and honestly.

The biggest giveaway that Brexit was and is going to be a fucking disaster is that within months they were looking to assign blame for it. You’d think somebody at least would be wanting to take credit if it was going to bring even the most remote benefit to anyone whatsoever. Its also why its politically in their interest not to make a deal. If there’s a deal, there’s some definite “thing”, with their name on it, that they’re objectively answerable for, that you can call “Brexit”. If we just crash out with nothing, then all the consequences are just some shapeless calamity that’s fallen on us, and the media can spring promptly into action shaping the popular memory of what happened and who’s to blame.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/18/jeremy-corbyn-refused-labour-whip-despite-having-suspension-lifted I am clapping and crying in relief now that Sir Keith has shown he is willing to intervene so rigourously in the party disciplinary process to punish Jeremy Corbyn for his failure to prevent political intervention in the party disciplinary process.

Dancing to Killing in the Name of, wrapped in a Blue Lives Matter flag, is the perfect distillation of the sheer meaninglessness of modern Republican ideology.

Yes it's also partly the fact that all of the states needed to agree to join, and so the smaller ones naturally would only join on the condition that in some way their voices count equally to what were the economic powerhouses at the time, like Virginia.

That is exactly the point. The founders knew exactly what the consequences would be if you let the majority decide things and what it would mean for people like them.

The British electoral system is kind of dumb, and a bit of a relic, but the American system was explicitly designed to protect a propertied minority from the threat of meaningful democracy. So in that sense, the American system does work well.

If Trump was British and ran for PM he would win a crushing landslide. The only reason he polls poorly here at the moment is because the media has no particular reason to try and sell him to the public. If he was running for power, and they had to try to do it, they could easily manage to put him in No. 10. In fact, Britons as a nation are so impressionable, that - given a full electoral cycle - you could get us to vote in just about anyone you can imagine.

To me the fundamental shaper of how optimistic people are, is whether they see Trump as the problem or as a symptom. To me the fundamental problems are: 1 - almost half of the population of the United States, consciously or not, has an essentially fascistic political outlook (disgust at a perceived cultural hegemony, emotional attachment to authority, rapidly shifting mentality between triumphalism and self-pity, idolisation of strength and obedience, and most of all, a conspiratorial way of understanding the world) 2 - a large part of that segment of the population is too detached from material reality to be rescued by persuasion, and the GOP enjoys too strong a position to forsake them, 3 - the leaders of the liberal establishment generally can not grasp the depth of the prior 2 points, and in any case can not accept that it is an essentially internal issue, based on the USA's own failings in its economic, legal, and social development. Beating Trump is at best a slight reprieve. Certainly I'm glad if it happens but it means nothing if the Democrats do not start getting their act together in ways they have completely failed to so far.

Isn't there something that evangelicals believe about the Israelites' return being required for the apocalypse to come and for the faithful to be saved? I was always under the impression that fuelled much of the American neocon policy in the Middle East.

The difference is that when it comes to violence or radicalism Castro is nowhere near Hitler. Castro was more legitimate and less oppressive than any of the darlings of the USA in Latin America like Pinochet, Stroeßner, or Videla. Furthermore, his achievements came against an overwhelming tide of international economic resistance which the economies of the Condor regimes did not have to contend with. It is not controversial to most Americans to have supported any of those guys, so Castro shouldn't be controversial in the slightest. And in any case it's a moot discussion, because whether you have Bernie or Biden, a hysterically anti-communist demographic like the Miami Cubans will always go with a right-wing strongman. The entire reason they're in Florida is because the masses in Cuba overthrew their precious right-wing dictatorship. There's no use pandering to them because they are so consumed by hate and paranoia that they are a political lost cause.

It's seems that the idea of populist right wing government is no longer a 'protest' option. People have voted for it, seen it in action, and if anything experience of it has won voters.

I really thought it was going to be easier than this. This whole ordeal reminds of the scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre where they're holding down the girl so that Grandpa can get an easy kill, but they can barely get the hammer to stay in his corpselike hands.

At least if the Americans get a 2nd Civil War, they'll have a chance to finish the job that the Union left undone in 1865.