I've never seen a country that wants a monarchy as bad as the US without ever managaing to get there
“Status, wealth and power are alluring. It’s the other side of average, the unattainable that is intriguing,” said Varma. Alluding to the younger royal spouses, she added, “People also love a rags-to-riches story. People love opulence, being rescued. So many kids’ stories involve princesses, kings. We identify ― or at least want to ― with feeling wanted, important, and in control.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/british-royal-family-obsession_n_5a4b0788e4b025f99e1d0a4b
can't wait for twelve years from now, the republicans are running on a platform of "if cena wins, we riot"
Cena's cousin has a rap group called East Coast Avengers and in their songs they usually rap about police brutality, mass incarceration, lower class violent restitution. They have a couple lib lines here and there but ngl they're surprisingly based.
This one is just a hate song to america - 'president needs a rest, cardiac would be the best' lol - https://youtu.be/ueMJBNL9m-o
This one is all about storming the white house and shooting it up - https://youtu.be/7zEM_mptTkU
Democracy is when people are so alienated from any influence in the "democratic" process that they treat politics identically to a popularity contest. This is what people are defending when they go "Well at least America isnt a dictatorship".
Democracy is always a popularity contest.
The better questions to ask are "What's popular?" and "Why?
Its a difference between popular policy and popular personality, this is literally voting on who is your favourite wrestler and not voting on what that wrestler might do that you would like.
America and most of the west as a whole has beaten the people into accepting that they have no influence on popular policy because damn near every countrys political system is set up as two general sides each playing harm reduction politics to the other, which means you have two choices, either vote for the same side you always do and accept whatever they give you or individually lose confidence and stop voting. You cant even organize a collective non-voting movement cause guess what, harm reduction means you now want the nazis to win.
Its a difference between popular policy and popular personality
In politics, they routinely go hand-in-hand. Trump wasn't popular because he was Billionaire Famous Guy. He was popular because he was Billionaire Famous Guy Trade Protectionist and Xenophobe. Even then, there were layers to it. The bar in 2016 was far lower than in, say, 2000 or 2008, simply because the GOP had rarified itself to Own The Libs that much longer.
America and most of the west as a whole has beaten the people into accepting that they have no influence on popular policy
I don't know. I think that, in 2020 at least, it certainly felt that way simply because Trump ran totally uncontested and Biden just kinda drifted to victory on political inertia. But we're a nation that considers :vote: an ingrained instinct. Mass media constantly uses the idea of an election as a means of juicing enthusiasm. Political activism seems to constantly revolve around galvenizing people into electoralism, regardless of what they're actually saying they want to accomplish. Disenfranchisement and gerrymandering are considered BFDs, precisely because of the implicit value in :vote:.
If anything, Americans have an outsized expectation of their impact on national affairs. They throw hissy-fits when they don't get their way. They constantly surrender up their own money, labor, and political agency with the expectation that they can just "buy" their political outcomes - and we see this happen at every political level, often with comic results from people who should ostensibly know better (re: Jeb Bush and Michael Bloomberg).
This political narcassism often leads to powerful singular individuals and large groups of people into wasting time and energy on pointless vanity projects or obvious grifts. But this suggests all the participants think they do have agency. They simply deny the existence of the political inertia that inevitably shuts any kind of reform (or revolution) down.
You cant even organize a collective non-voting movement cause guess what, harm reduction means you now want the nazis to win.
You absolutely can and people routinely do. But we're often blind to it by omission or blinded by the national spectacle such that we forget these mutual aid organizations exist.
I think it was of all people, Seth McFarlane that made the surprisingly eloquent observation: celebrity presidential nominees are basically the death knell of American Democracy such as it is. It's already a huge slog for average politicians to actually get ahead in the race, now imagine if some poor shlub has to try and out compete, out spend and out-exposure themselves against say, Oprah. It'd be impossible, the reach and resources she possesses would outstrip non celebrity nominees.
I think Trump being elected quietly endorsed this possibility and we are seeing it here. Johnson may be a fine president for all we know but him being a nom strips away the illusion of fair and equal elections.
It's funny, I can recall being in grade school and learning about the constitution and presidency and the teachers explaining that if someone unqualified but popular was able to win the popular vote, well the wisely-designed Electoral College would put a stop to that!
I think Trump being elected quietly endorsed this possibility and we are seeing it here. Johnson may be a fine president for all we know but him being a nom strips away the illusion of fair and equal elections.
Why are you acting like Trump isn’t a celebrity lol?
But he is saying Trump is a celebrity. It's why, presumably, DeSantis or Don Jr won't work the same way - neither has 15-20 years of media exposure as the archetypal billionaire.
I am? I never said he wasn't
I think Trump being elected quietly endorsed this possibility
Means I think Trump being a celebrity has broken the seal, people are gonna be more into the idea now that it's happened.
celebrity presidential nominees are basically the death knell of American Democracy such as it is
All politicians are, at the end of the day, celebrities. There is no way to win a regional campaign if nobody knows who the fuck you are.
MacFarlane is doing the "Idiocracy" bit where he pretends past presidents have been experts and savants, but future "celebrity" presidents will be dumbies who look pretty. But there's nothing special about the current generation. Neither was there anything special about the prior generations. Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Obama - all did the celebrity thing. They all sucked.
They've always been celebrities. They've always sucked. Twitter hasn't changed that.
MacFarlane is doing the “Idiocracy” bit where he pretends past presidents have been experts and savants
No, he really isn't but go off. I for one see it pretty clearly as a complaint that the election can't become a literal popularity contest between literal celebrities who have more soft power and recognition than your average politician.
the election can’t become a literal popularity contest between literal celebrities
There is no other way to do a democracy, pretty much by construction.
If everything is the same, you might as well vote for a charismatic entertainer - at least you’ll get some cool quotes or some sick merch.
https://i.imgur.com/05VKM9P.jpg
I mean The Rock SOTU would have incredible ratings, I'll grant you that.
THis is what turning everything into consumable aesthetics leads to. But hell, he looks more competent than the last two US presidents.
TBF when you've conceded that society is not only already controlled by unelected technocrats but that that's a good thing; and democratic officials are just figureheads; then voting in entertainers is just an honest appraisal of the system
He's cutting in line. He is supposed to be governor of California first.
i don't think this poll is as bad as it looks. i think people realize washington is a corrupt cesspool, and they're desperate to find a candidate who can't be bought.
that's also probably part of the reason why a lot of folks voted for trump. they thought he was rich and brash and would steamroll the suits in washington. they don't know what that world is like.
i sympathize. a lot of folks are basically apolitical, or at best they have some talking points from fox or cnn and some vague tribal leaning. and like, the fact that folks are looking for candidates outside establishment politics is both a good and bad omen. like, they might be more receptive to fascism now than in the past, but they're probably also more receptive to socialism now than in the past.
they’re desperate to find a candidate who can’t be bought
Better elect the
Checks Notes
professional wrestler turned Hollywood guy. No way he's in it for the money.
It sounds silly, but let's admit it. It would probably be a slight improvement.
Man, in which reality makes that point sense? I hope and fear its not, that a PR intern wrote it.
