While the US is melting the fuck down around me...

Those in other countries, what is all this like to see?

I'm rather indifferent as the riots usually accomplish fuck all, just like peaceful protests, as they don't make higher-ups care at all, they're just annoying.

Absolute shit fest. Glad I don't live in the US.

I get it, you're pissed but think about what the fuck you're doing.

Edit: You is referring to the population of the US.

@olback Pretty much.

its antifa burning shit and cops smashing windows. both of who work hand in hand with the motherfucking fbi.

corruption fucking everywhere.

the modern fascists call themselves "antifascists".

Ah yes, curfew, how wonderful
I'm sympathetic to what the protests are trying to achieve, but I don't think this helps

I mean, we're at a point of total governmental deadlock. The riots and protests are just a symptom of the disease that is career bureaucrats who won't do anything except stay the course until something is on fire, at which point they band aid whatever is burning.

One way or the other, we've conditioned this behavior.

@M1sf3t friend of mine in LA just got a curfew notice on his phone so i'm guessing atl LA's going fucking mental

@M1sf3t
Seattle was isolated to downtown and some overflow onto I5

Relephantine

@M1sf3t
We had two groups arranging protests simultaneously. Downtown is where city hall is, so that's where it ended up.

I don't condone the riots, but I understand why they're happening. Killing someone who is already subdued and handcuffed is completely inacceptable no matter what he might have done before. That's homicide at the very least, and the amount of cruelty could even qualify it for murder.

@M1sf3t He was handcuffed and held down by three officers while he was pressed to death over roughly 10 minutes. The officers didn't care that he was begging for his life.

Karma is a bitch.

I do hope it doesn't end in another internal war tho.

...and to think I was thinking of moving to US next year... Guys, no need to start a war, ok? I'm not coming!

@M1sf3t maybe, but it's not rocket science, who happens to be a lot in that group you call "one percent".
Tho removing president Caligula is probably the fastest way to end the conflicts, but I guess y'all are about to learn a lesson about freedom.

@NoMad This is not with the president, because of federalism. The responsible people are the mayor of Minneapolis (Dem) and the police chief (black). Uh-oh, of course leftists don't drool over them.

@Fast-Nop keep up with the news old man. covid mismanagement and the neverending presidential drama was the first trigger.

@Fast-Nop not saying dems are doing a superb job, they are also fucked at this point beyond repair.

... You guys don't have another political party that's not fucked yet?

@NoMad Actually managing Covid-19 is with the states, not the president. Again, federalism. Putting infected people into nursing homes like in NY, killing the residents, was also not the president's decision.

And the general drama was caused by leftists who have never asked themselves why Clinton lost, and what the Dems should do differently for winning more voters in this election.

@Fast-Nop I take my hat out of this argument ring, but just think about this : if the horse rider doesn't do well, the horses are going to break a few legs which may not even be theirs.

@NoMad Though I think e.g. Merkel in Germany did it better than Trump. The epidemic protection laws here are also with the states so that she as federal chancellor has no say. What she did was assuming the role of an integrative mediator to get the heads of the states at one table and avoid having every state doing it differently.

However, given the bipartisan gridlock in the US, the US president would not be able to do that, no matter who it is is and which party he belongs to. That gridlock is a huge problem in the US.

@Fast-Nop don't think so. Here states did implement it differently. In north-east they made masks mandatory, south and west didn't. Take a look at active cases and you'd exactly see the difference:

https://zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/...

@NoMad Luckily, I'm in the north, and I even wear a full-face gas mask for the weekly shopping. ^^
But yeah, the initial consensus has indeed eroded afterwards.

@Fast-Nop Berlin or Hamburg? 😬

@NoMad Hamburg. I dislike everything about Berlin, including their German dialect.

@Fast-Nop ahahahaha

@M1sf3t It's also normal that Muricans freak out when the "wrong" candidate wins. Do you remember how rep voters panicked with Obama? All guns confiscated, and the alleged FEMA concentration camps? That was equally nuts.

@M1sf3t that's literally every president tho. They all get that treatment.

I have been laughing non-stop ever since this backwards ass country happily elected Trump.

The riots don't help at all. It is understandable that people are angry with the police and that's fine. But burning local businesses isn't going to achieve anything but re-inforce some sterotypes and makes matters worst in the whole "racial relations" in US.

It also seems like people have forgotten how the last time riots like this happened, innocent police officers were hunted down and killed. Where were the riots when that black police officer killed the Australian white woman in Minneapolis? The Media wasn't interested.

Of course, this is a presendential election year, so expect this to be dragged out for as long as possible and more similar instances will occur.

@Maer "orange man bad"

I predict people will shit on the next 200 presidents (if we have that many) if they're from the other party.

Because they will, because red vs blue is more important than getting our collective shit together.

@Parzi I think the main takeaway is that there are a lot of citizens who had no voice at all in the MSM, that's why they were so surprised at how the election went. The deplorables in the fly-over states for example.

Clinton's offer was basically "no change", and an increasing number of Americans are already with their back to the wall so that "no change" was not an option.

Both parties used to pursue a deal between capitalist and salary class that threw the worker class under the bus and then even ridiculed them, that's the underlying problem.

@Parzi C'mon man, whatever political side you're on, however credit you want to give the guy - he is a complete and total idiot. Don't even care about his agendas, just watch any if his interviews - it's ridiculous how anyone is even trying to rationalize this level of stupidity.

@Maer People can say stupid shit and potentially do a good job at whatever. These are not mutually exclusive.

He hasn't, but y'know.

you all keep talking about a bunch of problems.

but nothing can be fixed if the country is polarized into hating each others guts. no one is civil any more. what happens when the talking stops?

the CORE of all these fucking problems is just one industry, one group of people in the u.s.: the motherfucking media.

I promise you, this is the *singular* source of the inability of any of us to come together on any decision or topic. The media has us at each others throat while those fucking assholes gloat.

The rioters smashed up the cnn building. I hope they get all the left news stations. Then they can start on the right.

Fuck the police? Yes.

but also FUCK the media.

I want a total ban on television broadcast. And a ban on manual or algorithmic news promotion by platforms.

Total scorched earth. No more fucking agendas.

@Wisecrack it would help immensely if people could talk without shitting all over each other, but people tend to make shitty people. The media helps this issue grow, but it's just taking advantage of an issue.

@Parzi no, it is the driving pillar of this polarization.

it is not a coincidental or secondary thing.

how polarization works is first you divide people into echo chambers. they are then divided as finely as possible on as many issues as possible. a total atomization. then you begin the process of dehumanization. "trump supporters should be put in camps and sterilized. that would be karma seeing as they're nazis lol!", "the government should just dronestrike protesters. lol!"

at this point neither side is listening. at all. and in a group its even worse cuz even if you get one person listening there will be always ten others joining to ridicule or drive out those wjo disagree. best you can do is get people one on one to deescalate them and even thats a long shot. and thats not scalable.

the media and social tech are 100% behind this insanity.

the whole countrys been converted into a loaded gun. and that loaded gun is pointed square at the heart of the republic.

you know you're awake to the crisis when people on the left call you a "nazi POS" and people on the right call you a "communist".

countrys lost its collective god damn mind.

that is why calling for calm and peace and lecturing about how arson isnt constructive, wont work. you cant reason with the insane.

propaganda has killed this nation.

the media are all murderers.

when someone asks my political opinions my response now is "I think FUCK YOU!"
The person usually gets angry and assumes it must be "because you're on the other side!"

They cant concieve of the idea that people being hostile and refusing to answer are NOT on the otherside of the political fence. If you are not with them you are against them.

@M1sf3t the most dangerous thing anyone can do is underestimate an opponent.

in the civil war both sides thought it would be "over in an afternoon or maybe a month at most." to paraphrase someone else who was paraphrasing someone else. lol.

a scrawny punk can light a fire. a noodle armed child forced into isis can pull a pin on a suicide vest. a mob can kill.

people learn fast when they need to. humans in general, even the dimmest, are dangerous animals for a reason.

can't stop thinking "yeah, this is what happens when you spend 50 years indoctrinating your population into whiny marxist racism ideology"

and it's absurd, and kind of schadenfreude amusing to watch, but at the same time worrying, because if america goes down, the balance of power in the world will be greatly disturbed.

for example asshole china is already invading into indian territory, but nobody cares because reporting on whiny looters in usa much more important because it brings more views.

@Midnight-shcode

media doesnt genuinely care about views. it gets boatloads of money from government dark money.

I find the racism problem fucking surreal. While there probably is racism where I live, I've only noticed it a few times in my entire life.
And cops abusing their power in public is also something I've only seen once or twice!

@Wisecrack i'd assume even then, they're getting the money *for something*, where i'd assume that "something" to be propaganda and/or (mis)information, which is hard to do without at least some pageviews

@M1sf3t The reason to hold on to the second amendment is mainly psychological. Losing things, such as privileges is perceived *much more* strongly than gaining them. Afaik this effect is an established phenomenon in psychology.

It's the same as here in GER - people will go batshit crazy over introducing a maximum speed limit to the Autobahn. Even though I personally don't think anyone is justified going 200 mph when considering safety, I'd still fight to protect this right with hands and feet, because I can do that right now.

With regard to Trump, I have listened to some of his speeches in their entirety and it only underlined my thinking. This "he's not so bad" or "his intentions are well" to me are very much the rationalizations I was talking about.

Because he is rich and because he is famous and because he is president there must be something to him, right?

Well, no, I don't think so. Just no one wants to believe they voted in a complete and total idiot.

*shrug*

@M1sf3t Yeah, these are obviously assumptions. As usual there is likely a multitude of factors contributing to why people are hanging on to the 2nd amendment, though oersonally I am convinced the aforementioned effect is a major factor. Fwiw - the lack of max. speed limit is actually very much used here. Highest I personally went was 250 km/h though - this is where newer beamers are usually factory locked at.

With regard to preparation - yes, I expect anyone to be able to read a prepared statement, that is also vetted prior to a press conference. And even then he manages to come up with ridiculous twists and turns.

Ultimately we won't have to agree on what constitutes intelligence, what doesn't and whether Trump has any.

Even when votes realize they are wrong - they are likely to stick to their guns, because admitting past bad choices is hard. Also an established psychological effect btw.

To must of us over here the whole notion of Trump is absurd, even to most conservatives.

@M1sf3t I did not assume you were a supporter. (?)

Still, maybe this is where the difference in our opinions lies. I do believe he is as bad as he is made out to be and I do believe it is not the media, who is the major driver of the ridicule towards him, but rather he himself.

The trend these days is to blame media for everything. Politicians were never known to be trusted, but in recent years it became in to just question whatever is convenient that is published by bigger outlets and instead just look for smaller publishers who write what someone believes in anyway. This seems too simple to me.

Sure. It may be the media. It may be his political opponents. It may be some other organizations pushing against him. But can we please acknowledge that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that he himself is responsible for all the bad press and opinions about him?

Yes, maybe there is something to him, due to his success. But also maybe he is just a moron who had a huge financial headstart.

Just watched the latest press conference on job numbers, just to refresh my perception by viewing another conference without it having been filtered by some media outlet of polical direction X or Y.

Not even going to speak about the rest, even just the first 5 minutes:

Apparently you are doing great on everything, you seem to have had the greatest economy ever until COVID, you are doing great on tests, you are doing great on cures, there are four great cure-companies doing who-knows-what, but it's possibly six or one could say seven. He then drifts off to China and Sweden and before he drifts off to Minnesota and how he is also a hardcore environmentalist and then he babbles about god knows what.

This prepared conference is supposed to be on job numbers.

No. I'm sorry. Can't take any of this nonsense seriously. He babbles on like a child or a drug addict or whatnot. I can open a random page in the Library of Babel and it will yield a more coherent statement.

@Maer acknowledging he MAY be responsible for ALL his bad press is different from claiming he is.

I would say, as others have, like most presidents, he is responsible for some of it, and blamed for the rest.
this isnt a satisfying answer to most people, and thetimes i've given it I've always had people try to argue it , if only because many prefer tidy answers, but it cant be helped.

he gets fair criticism, and he gets unfair kind. sometimes it's politically motivated and other times it's just ratings.

everyones been pretty even keeled, unlike the open sewer known as twitter. im really surprised.

you and misfits posts had some effort put into them and deserve a better response but right now im on a phone with a shitty tiny virtual keyboard.