paulkienitz
paulkienitz's JournalUkraine war exposes lack of support for Trump's pro-Putin GOP wing
Source: Los Angeles Times
As wars have so often done, the Russian invasion of Ukraine — predicted for weeks, but still a shock — has quickly begun to clarify who stands where.
One result has been to highlight how little support Trump’s Russia-friendly attitudes have within his party.
...
In a rare bit of agreement, Republicans and Democrats had equally negative impressions of Russia, although Republicans were slightly less favorable than Democrats in their view of Ukraine, 66% versus 57%.
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2022-02-25/ukraine-trump-and-the-politics-of-war-essential-politics
The Tucker Carlsons and other pro-Putinists aren't selling it anymore.
Putin's empire-conquering mindset is no different from that of some Bronze Age king
who glorifies his statue of a god by trying to enslave as many neighbors as possible.
This is because their entire program consists of lies and doublethink.
They cannot articulate what their opponents stand for because they never articulate their own position, they only lie about it. Endless lies about libertarian ideals or christian traditions or economic prosperity, all to deny and deflect from the actual agenda of white male supremacism.
Fusion doesn't just have to become feasible, it has to become cheap to make any difference
Even if we were able to build a fully working mature sustainable fusion plant tomorrow, the power it produced would still be substantially more expensive than that from solar cells. Fusion will probably be the dominant source of power someday for future colonies among the moons of Jupiter or the asteroid belt, but I don't think it'll make economic sense here in our lifetimes.
Cameras incentivize very strong brand attachment
because you have to invest thousands of bucks into a system that locks you in with compatibility, and switching brands is very expensive. So all the fanboy toxicity you find anywhere else gets extra intense because people really don't want to admit they picked the wrong horse, because if they do it'll cost them a big wad of cash.
This also incentivizes the companies themselves to nurture and cater to loyal fans. Companies that treat everything as disposable, like Sony, fail at earning the decades-long loyalty that can be had.
It probably doesn't help that the whole camera industry is now shrinking and financially weak and many companies are in a frail state, because the cameras themselves improved so fast that they've run out of ways to make next year's model better than last year's, so most people aren't replacing the old cameras they've got. (Mine is from 2013.) So people are worried they may have bought into a brand that not only might turn out not as good, but might not even survive. All of this anxiety can help drive additional toxicity to compensate.
So I'm not surprised that cameras are where this comes out.
been saying that for a few years now
Trump didn't just reveal what the Republican party has now become since the era of Gingrich and Dubya, he revealed what had always underlain the popularity of figures like Reagan and Nixon. He revealed why the Republican party retains power even as its ability to make any kind of policy dwindles away as everything they try fails. They used to do a good job of covering it up with policy, but the core appeal of the party has been the nationalist culture war of "real americans" vs everybody else, even back before I was born. Trump's dog whistle is the same one that they've been tooting since the days of Harding and Hoover. The crackdown on the Bonus Army 90 years ago came from the same fascist impulse that January 6th did.
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