I didn't expect an elven Q reference here.

I'm actually a little curious about what kinda stuff the EAnon conspiracy has going on in this world.

Random_Fanguy said:

I'm actually a little curious about what kinda stuff the EAnon conspiracy has going on in this world.

See post #4017993

The fairy speaks the truth.

bunkhead said:

The fairy speaks the truth.

I don't quite agree with the fairy. Sometimes it's benificial that a population strongly support a particular political figure, or engage in a movement that identifies and opposes certain agendas or conspiracies, theoretical or proven.

AlsoSprachOdin said:

I don't quite agree with the fairy. Sometimes it's benificial that a population strongly support a particular political figure, or engage in a movement that identifies and opposes certain agendas or conspiracies, theoretical or proven.

There's a difference between supporting a political figure or movement, and being so obsessed with it that you become utterly inconsolable because you define your entire existence around being "a republican/democrat"

People should not choose to be more one dimensional than that annoying minor character that you hate because they never shut up about that one single irrevelant topic.

blindVigil said:
There's a difference between supporting a political figure or movement, and being so obsessed with it that you become utterly inconsolable because you define your entire existence around being "a republican/democrat"

But we're talking about politics here, with sometimes rather harsh consequences. Imagine if an election were to decide if your country imposes lockdowns for several more years, and this would completely destroy your livelyhood, force you to sell your home, etc... Politics are often enough pretty fucking tragic, sometimes worth crying over.
It's just an example, I don't think the election this picture is a metaphor for is worth crying over. But I also don't think a lot of Trump voters are crying like the picture depicts; seems more of an anti-Trump thing.

AlsoSprachOdin said:

But we're talking about politics here, with sometimes rather harsh consequences. Imagine if an election were to decide if your country imposes lockdowns for several more years, and this would completely destroy your livelyhood, force you to sell your home, etc... Politics are often enough pretty fucking tragic, sometimes worth crying over.

If the United States is going to spend years in lockdowns, it will be because of bickering between states and between them and the federal government preventing a consistent response to the Coronavirus, not because of one election.

AlsoSprachOdin said:

It's just an example, I don't think the election this picture is a metaphor for is worth crying over. But I also don't think a lot of Trump voters are crying like the picture depicts; seems more of an anti-Trump thing.

Oh they were very upset. There were several news articles about it, a lot of talk on twitter about it. Trump supporters were devastated over the loss, even though it hadn't even been confirmed yet that Biden had won. Some were angry, some were crying, everyone was upset, to the point that whether or not Trump supporters should be shown compassion was a hot debate.

AlsoSprachOdin said:

But we're talking about politics here, with sometimes rather harsh consequences. Imagine if an election were to decide if your country imposes lockdowns for several more years, and this would completely destroy your livelyhood, force you to sell your home, etc... Politics are often enough pretty fucking tragic, sometimes worth crying over.

The problem with this example though is that the lockdowns are a response to out of control spread of the disease. People don't want to do the minimum or take personal responsibility to try and control the disease from running rampant, as such heavy handed lock downs become essential. In the end though their livelihood is in essence destroyed frequently by their own actions (or inactions), but instead of taking responsibility for it they will ignore what they've done and turn to the people who will tell them "you did nothing wrong, it's everyone else whose wrong".

The thing is though, people are too frequently short sighted and only focused on personal self interest that they end up more often than not destroying themselves in the long run. Lets take a comparable concept, fishery management. The objective of good fishery management is to maintain the resource that is the livelihood of all the fishermen. The problem of course is to the average fishermen all they see is that some bureaucrat is restricting their livelihood, because all they can see is how much they can fish out today and how that impacts the money they will have today. For the fishermen they're going to vote for the guy who says they can fish as much as they want, no restrictions, even if that means they'll end up overfishing and wiping out their own livelihood down the road. Once the fishery collapses though and major restrictions put in place to try and save what is left, the fishermen will have lost their livelihood. Of course the depressing thing will be that many will blame the new heavy restrictions destroying their livelihood, not their own actions and the depleted fishery.

Lets take an actual real example of this short sightedness, the coal industry. The coal industry in the US read the tea leaves and foresaw that things were dire, instead of trying to figure out how save themselves longer term they instead choose to "drill baby drill" and extract as much coal as possible and flood the market. The logic of course being they don't have a future, so sell as much today even though it would kill themselves faster in the longer term. To the business owners they'll be able to find ways out for themselves, but to mine workers they'll be left high and dry without a job. To the average mine worker and small mine operators all they see is the immediate decline and of course too easily some politician or businessman will blame regulations or perhaps foreigners for destroying their industry, but what they don't see or choose to ignore is the longer term changes that have brought them to this point in time, things that the big businessmen easily know about. For example the success of fracking and the flood of cheaper and relatively cleaner natural gas. Now cleaner might seem like a simple regulatory thing, but the fact is that a dirtier system will require more maintenance and thus is more costly than a cleaner system (if complexity is about the same), so of course energy companies would turn to something that is cheaper for their own businesses. Similarly the steel industry has been changing, many of the mills that produced fresh steel from raw materials have been shut down and in their place smaller mills that recycle already processed steels have taken their place. These smaller mills use a lot less coal in creating steel from the recycled steel than the older mills, but these mills also cost less to maintain and operate so from a business perspective it is good for the steel company's own bottom line. The average coal miner though doesn't see this, and too frequently they don't care. All they'll see is that they've lost their livelihood and they'll do anything to try and keep it going and so easily fall prey to corporate efforts to prolong their operations to try and pocket as much before they go belly up. That's why the businessmen spent millions in PR programs like "clean coal", despite the fact that the carbon capture power plant project only ever produced a test plant and it was deemed too costly vs a natural gas plant and so was converted over. Of course these people could have ended this long term sufferer if they had been willing to take a shorter term pain, but we can see what they themselves choose during the failure of the Obama administration's training programs to train mine workers for other industries. Too few people wanted to do it, because they kept believing that coal will somehow make a comeback.

AlsoSprachOdin said:

But we're talking about politics here, with sometimes rather harsh consequences. Imagine if an election were to decide if your country imposes lockdowns for several more years, and this would completely destroy your livelyhood, force you to sell your home, etc... Politics are often enough pretty fucking tragic, sometimes worth crying over.
It's just an example, I don't think the election this picture is a metaphor for is worth crying over. But I also don't think a lot of Trump voters are crying like the picture depicts; seems more of an anti-Trump thing.

Four years ago the anti-Trump people were definitely making a fuss, but this time around? Definitely the Trump voters who are crying and bitching.

Honestly the position of the anti-Trump people this time around is a mix between laughter and horror. Laughter at Trump's attempts to overturn the results and horror at the fact that such a large amount of people seem willing to follow Trump down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and anti-democratic sentiment.

Having looked at Trump's twitter what I can say is that Trump voters often TRY to portray the other side as crying but it doesn't really work and is a very transparent attempt at maintaining the illusion that everything is fine and it's the opposition which is in trouble.

Man I am glad Trump lost.