Comment on Just to get this straight. If I stand outside a voting center and give each person 500 bucks to vote for me. That is illegal? But if I am a Dipshit In Chief and offer 5k that is 100 percent legal?

• Steve@communick.news ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Believe it truly literally? No

  It’s a concept known as Kayfabe. A special kind of pretending, where both performer and audience act as if something is real, when both know it isn’t. It started with American professional wrestling. Wrestlers would greet fans after the show and sign autographs as their characters, not as themselves.

  So no, even his MAGA supporters don’t literally believe he’ll give them $5k, they just accept is as a promise that he and the republican will do good things for them generally. They like the sound of it, even though they know it’s not real.

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  • MarieMarion@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The way my kid kept pretending to believe in Santa for two years. I saw her point then. Thank you.

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• Murse@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I think they know Trump is full of shit, they just don’t care so long as he’s ‘hurting the right people’.

  They’d let Trump shit in their mouth if it meant a ‘librul’ would have to smell it.

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  • MarieMarion@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Yeah. Well. Thanks. It’s so absurd my mind reels thinking about it.

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    • Murse@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      my mind reels thinking about it.

      You might have seen people say “the cruelty is the point” when talking about republicans / right wingers. This is what they’re addressing. So many of the actions taken by that side of the aisle are so jaw-droppingly stupid or hypocritical or self-defeating, that trying to make sense of it just leaves anyone capable of critical thinking stuck in a “wtf” loop.

      But, the cruelty is the point. You might wonder why they care so much about bathroom security: they don’t. They just want to hurt trans people. You might wonder why they care so much about abortion: they don’t. They just want to hurt women. You might wonder why they care so much about border security: they don’t, they just want to hurt brown people. …etc.

      Any of those you can approach logically and try to explain the reality of how each action they take doesn’t accomplish their stated goal… requiring trans men to use their birth gender’s restroom will increase the number of men in womens’ restrooms; abortion isn’t actually against their religion (it’s mentioned twice in scripture - once as an accidental result of an assault on a pregnant women, for which the assailant owed her a fine; and once as a fucking how-to guide… the bible does not fuck about abortion); how the majority of immigrants aren’t here to break a bunch of laws, but just want to work and are indeed critically important to our economy. The team shoots itself in the foot constantly, which leaves you wondering why the fuck they would do that: it’s the cruelty. They don’t care about the foot they’re shooting, they care about the out-group on the other side of that foot. If they need to harm themselves in order to harm someone else even more, they will.

      Start looking at their words and actions through this lens, and suddenly they’re a lot less baffling. They make sense, and are predictable… in the worst possible way.

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