The year America finally went bonkers
andyt @ Sat Dec 26, 2015 12:26 pm
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... nt-bonkers
$1:
Ted Cruz, an eccentric evangelical Christian, claims the United Nations wants to abolish paved roads. Marco Rubio is anything big-money donors want him to be, including the son of plucky Cuban freedom lovers who escaped Fidel Castro’s tyranny in Cuba, which he is not. Ben Carson wants to replace the tax system with tithing, like in the Bible. He also claims that Iran’s Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Palestinian Authority supremo Mahmoud Abbas went to the same school together in Moscow.
Donald Trump is a contender for one reason only. It is because he is a “celebrity.” He is famous for being an obscenely rich, comically stupid and exceedingly bigoted “reality television” impresario who put his daddy-derived wealth to use as a real estate chiseler, golf-course owner and builder of big buildings he names after himself. That is it. That and his circus-act haircut constitute the sum total of his worthiness to be the president of the nation that gave the world baseball, jazz, popular representative democracy and the moon landing.
Donald Trump is a contender for one reason only. It is because he is a “celebrity.” He is famous for being an obscenely rich, comically stupid and exceedingly bigoted “reality television” impresario who put his daddy-derived wealth to use as a real estate chiseler, golf-course owner and builder of big buildings he names after himself. That is it. That and his circus-act haircut constitute the sum total of his worthiness to be the president of the nation that gave the world baseball, jazz, popular representative democracy and the moon landing.
Delwin @ Sat Dec 26, 2015 12:56 pm
I agree, we always knew Americans were crazy, but it has never been on as full display as it is now. Donald Trump has really pulled open the curtain and showed us the man pulling the levers in a paranoid, hateful creature who blames the world around him for all of his problems. I blame most of this attitude on the ease with which affluence came in the past. Unlike most struggling nations, Americans have always had the benefit of gunboat diplomacy in international affairs to leverage their position in economic agreements and insure an unfair advantage at home. As we watch this leverage fade, it really unveils a huge part of the nation whom are deluded into believing that their economic achievements were anything other than the result of playing with a stacked deck for all of these years.
And now, like a spoiled child whom hasn't gotten their way, the first impulse is to lash out at those whom are different, instead of placing the blame for their economic woes where it belongs, corporate greed, market deregulation, out of control governments spending on endless wars. It's a lot easier to blame the world round them then it is to look into the mirror. Their defense for this attitude seems to be one of an undiagnosed affluenza on a national scale.
andyt @ Sat Dec 26, 2015 1:06 pm
Yeah, but what can you expect when the deluded progs elect a black Muslim as president. That's just going to cause all kinds of trouble. Time for a good ole white man to set things back on an even keel, and people knew their place. That includes the rest of the world, what's the point of having all those nukes if you're going to just let those ungrateful bastards, after all America did for them, run riot and damage the worlds', ie America's, interests.
Public_Domain @ Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:21 pm
Jin-Gitaxias @ Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:46 pm
The yanks just need to listen to Hitchens and Sam Harris to make the place better.
Jabberwalker @ Sun Dec 27, 2015 7:49 pm
No, America will have become officially bonkers next year when Donald Trump moves into the White House.
herbie @ Sun Dec 27, 2015 10:12 pm
Well my 2c goes to this year's "Advertising to Appeal to the Inner Asshole" of consumers.
Like that mop thing that a one armed guy finds not so hard... well I guess, unless you strap a regular mop to your arm, you ain't gonna be able to put any weight on it to make it work, are you? Same outfit with the Swiffah Waya Jaya that makes life so much easier for those who can't even say three letter words.
Mocking the handicapped and black people to sell me your goods? One might think so if you'd ever heard anyone talk like that except on TV (in a really stupid American sitcom) or met a one armed man trying to prove his helplessness (like those shameless dicks who pass out cards "I'm a poor deaf guy, give me money"}
Next are the number of "Use TWO TIMES LESS" ads. Addle the mathematically deficient... let's rent a lab and see how one uses twice as less asswipe... or detergent. Oh wait, I'm too stupid to understand words like TWICE and HALF....
Yep... I'm an ignurnt arsehole - here's my wallet!
Remember what happened last time? Remember what happened last time?
AAAGGGHHHHH!!!! I can taste this hamburger AAGGHH it tastes vaguely like something - it has flavour AGGGHHH spray me with a firehose!!!!
Jabberwalker @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 9:41 am
I'm a 110% in agreement with that.
BartSimpson @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 11:30 am
Just to be clear, neither Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders would be doing so well if this country were not already bonkers.
Both of them are a reaction to the insanity. Because you can't solve radical problems with the same ideas that created them.
Thanos @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:23 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Just to be clear, neither Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders would be doing so well if this country were not already bonkers.
Both of them are a reaction to the insanity. Because you can't solve radical problems with the same ideas that created them.
Both of them are a reaction to the insanity. Because you can't solve radical problems with the same ideas that created them.
Alternative idea is to no longer participate at all.
$1:
Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says, "They suck". But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. No, they come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and they're elected by American voters. This is the best we can do, folks. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.
....I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain", but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created. That I didn't have anything to do with. So when you're having one of those swell elections that you like so much...on that day I will be doing essentially the same as you...the only difference is when I get done masturbating I'll have a little something to show for it.
- George Carlin
....I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain", but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created. That I didn't have anything to do with. So when you're having one of those swell elections that you like so much...on that day I will be doing essentially the same as you...the only difference is when I get done masturbating I'll have a little something to show for it.
- George Carlin
He might have been the only prophet that came along that was ever worth listening to.
BartSimpson @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:37 pm
I can't find it in me to ignore it all. I wish I could.
pineywoodslim @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:42 pm
Yes, the US learned gunboat diplomacy well from its practitioners in the British Empire and its colonial puppets.
N_Fiddledog @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:43 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Just to be clear, neither Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders would be doing so well if this country were not already bonkers.
Both of them are a reaction to the insanity. Because you can't solve radical problems with the same ideas that created them.
Both of them are a reaction to the insanity. Because you can't solve radical problems with the same ideas that created them.
Do you mean like the Left can look Right and display what looks to them to be nuts. Like the obvious lefty from the National Post just did.
On the hand looking Right to Left it can also look nuts. Maybe nuttier.
Is that what you mean?
Thanos @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:49 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
I can't find it in me to ignore it all. I wish I could.
I actually agree with you on that. I don't think I'm smarter than most other people, and it's sort of been proven by my life essentially being destroyed by others because I was too stupid and oblivious to shock-proof my career/finances/whatever from the antics of malicious outsiders. I find my curse to be that of awareness, in that I'm prone to observe too much and get involved too much in the minutiae of ridiculous things like politics. I contend now that I would have been much happier if I'd been more of a simpleton, gotten a braindead job at a braindead place like the post office, and become something like a well-meaning pothead/weekend drunk.
The world is not worth worrying about anymore. It has it's own destiny as much as each and every individual is condemned by fate to whatever it is will happen to them in their lifetimes. The malice that controlled and directed our awful specie a hundred thousand years ago is the same malice that still controls and directs it today, and also rewards it's select few that benefit the most from the systems that inherently evil. It too huge to fight and it always has been. By default the very worst among us will always receive the greatest rewards and the delights of being allowed to do whatever they want to the rest of us without any obstacles ever being put in front of their evil and sadism. Best to, aside from the basics of self-preservation, opt out of everything altogether because nothing anyone does anywhere is ever going to change things. That's why democracy is inherently the cruelest system of them all, because it deliberately encourages false dreams that change will come and improvement is inevitable. It won't, and everything out there simply is what it is.
I don't think I'll ever bother voting again. I'd like to say that it's because I no longer wish to participate in the lies anymore. But it's really just because I'm exhausted. The old fire is pretty much all gone and I don't want it come back anyway. Didn't lead me to anywhere better so there's no reason for me to keep tossing fuel on to it anymore.
BartSimpson @ Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:52 pm
Sweet video.
And Bruce Jenner is a guy in a dress. He's also not a hero.