"Hi. You may think things were better in the '80s or '90s – when things weren't so gosh darned political – but what you're forgetting is that you were 12. Nostalgia, while fine in small doses, is also readily used as propaganda for fascists."

---

Fuck you, Cody. Vic Fontaine was one of the best things about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

And... almost literally halfway into the video, the political stuff started. Fucking Ben Shapiro is on my computer screen now, or was before I switched tabs to write this paragraph and also add the "middle-finger-worthy" tag to this post. I am already nostalgic for the first half of this video where Cody was talking about Star Trek and Star Wars and in which Ben Shapiro was not involved in any way whatsoever. I'm guessing that Cody will probably also make a joke at the end of this video about being nostalgic for the beginning of this video. We'll see.

(Pre-post edit, about twenty minutes later) And, there it is, the joke about being nostalgic for the earlier parts of the video. It wasn't quite at the end, but more like three-quarters of the way through. I will never be nostalgic for Warmbo, though. Thankfully, Warmbo wasn't really in this video, except as a brief reference to the movie (in which, as Cody pointed out, the puppet was there, but it wasn't being called Warmbo yet, i.e. one of the beforetimes for which I am nostalgic). (/pre-post edit) (Pre-post edit 2) And again, at the very ass-end of the video, in the after-credits part, when Cody picked up the inert puppet and made a nightmare-inducing noise with his mouth. (/pre-post edit 2)

Okay, so I'm not necessarily nostalgic for 2014 or anything, but I will say that the era before Dumbshit Jackass Trump came down that golden escalator was literally, objectively better than the era we live in now. Pretty much all I have been doing for the past decade or so now is looking forward to the era to come, after Dumbfuck Jizzstain Trump is finally dead and gone, which will probably start in, like, 2027 or something, hopefully, if not sooner, even more hopefully. It won't be better than what we had pre-2015, but it will be... maybe, probably... less horrendous than what we have now, at the very least.

(EDIT) And yes, as someone in the comments under the video mentioned, what MAGAts are experiencing is not nostalgia, but a uniquely United Statesian form of the Welsh hiraeth, which, roughly translated, means "homesickness for a place that never was." MAGA wants to return to "good old days" that were never actually good. Hiraeth is somewhat similar to the German Weltschmerz, which is a sort of depression or apathy that comes about as a result of trying to compare what the world actually is to what the world could have been (e.g. "can you imagine how much better the world would be right now if Trump had never come down that goddamned golden escalator and entered presidential politics?") (/EDIT) (EDIT 2) Apparently, the English equivalent of hiraeth is anemoia, which was made up in 2012 by some American guy who seems to have never heard the word hiraeth, considering that said American guy's project "aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words." Or fauxstalgia. You know what? I'm going to stick with hiraeth, thanks. (/EDIT 2)

A post on The Daily Cartoonist.

That Lisa Benson has to be one of the most consistently RWNJ, consistently crackpot political cartoonists that I've seen, and I wouldn't be seeing her work at all if not for The Daily Cartoonist, because why would I? The commentary from Mike Peterson underneath them, which typically fully counters and debunks the crackpottery, is the only reason they're even remotely palatable in this context.

"We talk about those who cry 'The sky is falling' but how many of us know how the fable ends? In the story, the sky is not falling, but the fox takes advantage of the panicked, gullible poultry to lure them to their own destruction.

"You don't have to like and admire the fox, but he's not the one to blame.

"Without the willing cooperation of pliable fools, he'd have gone hungry."

In the case of the United States, I believe that both the fox and the poultry are to blame and that there are some pigs in the middle facilitating the interactions between the fox and the poultry.

I feel the need to post this again, too, which is just as relevant now as it was when I first wrote it back in January 2017, if not even more so. "Inverse Hanlon's Razor" should be applied to all three branches of federal government now, not to mention far too many state and local governments.

"Never dismiss as mere stupidity that which is indeed actively malicious."

Because of fucking course they did.

For each one extremely rare instance of them deigning to do their fucking jobs and actually uphold the Constitution, there are dozens of instances like this where they're bowled over backwards by the force of Trump's sharts in their faces, falling all over themselves to do his bidding in their Trump-shart induced euphoria.

A post on The Daily Cartoonist.

First, some sportsball stuff I don't care about. Second, that asinine Mike Johnson apologia for Trump concerning the Epstein shit and why said apologia is bullshit, all of which I wish I didn't care about and didn't have to care about. Third, a bunch of stuff about how Trump is a shitty president who is alienating the rest of the world (in this case, specifically, the nations of the leaders who attended that recent thing in China).

And honestly, I don't blame the rest of the world. I, as a citizen of the United States, feel alienated by Trump, too. And I am a cishet white guy. Imagine how it is for US citizens who are not that. But then, one doesn't really have to imagine it. All one has to do is turn on any flavor of the news for five minutes.

"Observers get tired of saying, 'What if you saw it happening in another country?'

"And 'What goes around comes around.'"

"Hi. CNN anchor Kate Bolduan joins Cody and Jonathan to talk about the state of the news media, how she tries to get real answers, and how to combat alternative facts with actual facts. After that-- Katy, Cody, and Jonathan discuss the Epstein survivors' news conference and Florida's decision to end all vaccine requirements."

---

Hmm, Stephen Miller is on my screen. Time to pause the video and add the "middle-finger-worthy" tag to this post.

For the interview as a whole, the gist was basically "shit's fucked, and I do the best I can." It would be interesting if she actually asks the questions that Cody and Jonathan asked her to ask if she ever talks to Ted Cruz or JD Vance or whoever. I'll never know, because I don't watch CNN (and I recently blocked them in my Google News reader, because when I tried to read on of their articles the other day, they had a full screen, non-dismissable pop up about creating a free account or some shit, which is almost as bad as the paywall shit), but still, interesting interview, I guess. *shrug*

(EDIT) People in the comments are far less charitable about this interview than I was. I didn't particularly care for it, but I didn't hate it as much as everyone else seems to. That said, I'm not going to suddenly start watching CNN now because of that interview, either. (/EDIT)

Back to the news.

---

Hmm, who do I believe? Trump? Or Trump's/Epstein's victims? Gee, that's a toughie. *eye roll*

Jonathan: "Like Trump was out there, and they asked him about it today. Uh, because he's alive, by the way."

Katy: "What a bummer that was, right?"

Jonathan: "Yeah. He's just fine. He's normal. Whatever. *blows raspberry*"

Cody, making air quotes: "Oh, he's fine and normal. Yeah."

And then Trump's disgusting face took up half my screen and I just couldn't not throw up the middle finger again.

It should be clear now. Anything that even potentially implies that Trump is a criminal or a bad person or a pedophile rapist or whatever, even if those things were not actually outright said at the thing but merely somewhat implied, then said thing is just a "Democrat Hoax." Doesn't matter what it is. If it says something bad about Trump, then it's merely "fake news" by the Lügenpresse. If Trump doesn't like it, then it's not real. It's magic, he ain't gotta explain shit.

Meanwhile, in the real world, all that does is just make him look guilty as hell, and the more he doubles down on spewing the word "hoax" from his too moist face anus, the guiltier he looks.

As for Marjorie Taylor Greene being involved in this... yeah, I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, she's a stupid moron like every other Trumpanzee politician, but on the other hand, if she's helping to expose Trump (intentionally or otherwise), then great, let her keep doing that. If nothing else, it distracts her from all of her other raging dumbfuckery. And, as Jonathan says, if Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, were to be one to finally stand up and full on rebel against Trump over this, then that "would really be something." No breath holding from me, either.

Also Florida is refusing to be a slave to preventing easily preventable diseases. Whodathunkit? *eye roll+smdh+weary sigh*

And yeah, we did used to (and still do) laugh at anti-vaxers the same way we laugh at Flat Earthers and Young Earth Creationists and whoever, but people (typically) won't literally die if some dipshit in a position of power loudly brays that the Earth really is flat or really is only 6000 years old or whatever.

When was the last time that Rob Schneider was relevant? *shrug* I'unno.

Man, Jonathan is right. No vaccines required in Florida plus Disney World (and Universal Studios Florida and SeaWorld and so on and so forth) is a recipe for disaster stew. A whole hell of a lot of children are going to die, for no fucking good reason, and that goddamn sucks.

A post on The Daily Cartoonist.

It's basically a continuation of the theme of the previous post, as stated in the first paragraph of the new post, though with a bit of focus on RFK Jr. than just on Trump himself this time.

The comparison of RFK Jr. to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho of Idiocracy is a grievous insult to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho of Idiocracy. At least Camacho actually picked the guy who did, in fact, fix the problem at hand, rather than explicitly making things worse by being an assbackwards know-nothing hack like RFK Jr. is.

And via the comments, this plop of absurd bullshit. The gist of Mike Johnson's incredibly dumbshit claim: Trump was an informant for the FBI who helped to bring down Epstein. In actual reality, though, Trump is not the enemy to pedophile rapists that this goofy claim makes him out to be (because Donald J. Trump is almost certainly a pedophile rapist himself). In any case, it's as ridiculous and full of shit and completely made up as QAnon.

On the one hand, it doesn't matter what RFK Jr. says about autism, because most sane people already know that he's a goddamned crackpot and to disregard anything he says. We already knew he was determined to find something to scapegoat as a "cAuSe FoR aUtIsM," which, of course, he has done (or will do, whatever), because that's what he fucking said he would do, months ago, and his self-imposed deadline of September is here.

On the other hand, it absolutely matters what RFK Jr. says about any topic, considering what role he holds (for which he is grossly unqualified), because far, far too many (as in more than zero) gullible fucking morons will take (and already are taking) his dumbshit word as gospel truth. It is baffling and frustrating and enraging.

In conclusion, to hell forever with RFK Jr., along with the dumbfuck asshole who put him into a position of power, as usual.

"Hi. Big tech companies are now so powerful and integrated with our government that it's not very surprising that they're embracing, or at least okay with, fascist authoritarianism. You know what will help us analyze this? Amazon's new 'War of the Worlds' movie."

---

Yeah, it's that movie again.

Or... maybe they were just always shit, from the start. (You know, like Facebook was.)

Honestly, I'm starting to feel sorry for ghouls, due to the repeated use of the word "ghouls" to describe these gormless, amoral, shitty tech bros. (And, really, it's unfair to actual feces to call them "shitty," too.)

Remember all those dystopian novels, movies, TV shows, and video games from the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s (or, you know, 1899), in which corporations were basically nation states? Yeah, those don't seem so far-fetched anymore, do they?

A post, by John Scalzi, about two other posts, also by John Scalzi.