#Conservative Party Defeat
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Labour Party Triumphs 2024 General Election
The United Kingdom has witnessed a seismic shift in its political landscape as the Labour Party achieved a landslide victory in the 2024 general election. With an impressive 412 seats, Labour has secured a majority of 174, marking a significant transformation in British politics.
A Devastating Blow for the Conservatives
The results are nothing short of catastrophic for the Conservative Party, which has seen its worst performance in terms of seats in history. Reduced to just 121 seats, this dramatic fall from grace highlights a significant disconnect between the party and the electorate. The decline is stark when compared to their 2019 landslide victory under Boris Johnson. Many argue that under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the party has lost its Conservative identity and, consequently, its voter base.
The Liberal Democrats' Resurgence
The Liberal Democrats have emerged as significant players, capturing 72 seats—their highest tally since 1923. This resurgence indicates a growing appetite among voters for a centrist alternative, possibly reflecting disenchantment with both Labour and Conservative policies.
Other Parties and Their Gains
SNP: Holding steady with nine seats, the Scottish National Party continues to be a force in Scotland.
Reform UK: As a supporter of Reform UK, I'm pleased to see them securing five seats. This marks a breakthrough and suggests potential for future growth.
Plaid Cymru and the Green Party: Both parties have made modest gains, with four seats each, indicating a continued presence in the political arena.
Reflecting on the Conservative Collapse
As someone who voted for Reform UK, it's frustrating to see the Conservatives squandering their opportunity. Under Rishi Sunak, the party seemed to drift away from traditional conservative values. Instead of capitalising on the momentum built in 2019, there was a sense of complacency and lack of clear direction. It's almost as if they were resigned to losing, a sentiment shared by many former Conservative voters.
The Road Ahead for Labour
With Sir Keir Starmer at the helm, Labour now faces the daunting task of governing with such a commanding majority. While many of their supporters celebrate, the true test lies ahead. Can Labour deliver on their promises and address the myriad challenges facing the UK? Only time will tell.
Reform UK's Promising Future
In my honest opinion, the results for Reform UK are just the beginning. With a foothold in Parliament, they have the potential to grow significantly over the next few years. I predict that within 12 months, Labour's honeymoon period will end, and the realities of governance will set in. Disillusionment is likely, and when it happens, Reform UK will be poised to capitalise on the shift.
A Time of Change
The 2024 general election has undeniably set the stage for a period of significant change in the UK. The political landscape has been reshaped, and the next few years will be crucial in determining the country's direction. Whether Labour can maintain their support, or if other parties, including Reform UK, rise to the occasion, remains to be seen. One thing is certain: change is coming. Mark my words!
#UK Politics#General Election 2024#Labour Party Victory#Conservative Party Defeat#Rishi Sunak#Keir Starmer#Reform UK#Liberal Democrats#SNP#Political Shift#Election Results#British Politics#Voter Disenchantment#Conservative Identity#Political Landscape#Election Analysis#Future of Reform UK#Political Change#UK Parliament#Political Predictions#today on tumblr#new blog
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#politics#donald trump#potus#trump#democrats#republicans#democracy#joe biden#scotus#heritage foundation#traitor trump#fuck trump#trump 2024#president trump#election#republican#fox news#trump is a coward#defeat trump#conservatives#right wing#conservatism#we the people#democratic party#usa news#usa#usa politics#united states#vote kamala#kamala harris
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NFL news, injury updates: Jalen Hurts knocked out of Week 16 loss with concussion, Josh Allen loses feeling in throwing hand
See more....
#politics#donald trump#potus#trump#democrats#republicans#democracy#joe biden#scotus#heritage foundation#traitor trump#fuck trump#trump 2024#president trump#election#republican#fox news#trump is a coward#defeat trump#conservatives#right wing#conservatism#we the people#democratic party#usa news#usa#usa politics#united states#vote kamala#kamala harris
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In France [July 7, 2024], a crowd reacts to election results showing a defeat for the hard-right political party that was expected to win big until the French people voted in greater numbers for leftists and centrists instead. This follows the complete rout suffered by the right-wing Conservative party in Great Britain just three days prior, on July 4th.
🇫🇷
[Via]
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HEY remember when Trump held a rally in Tulsa in 2020 and tons of people on tiktok trolled him by requesting tickets and then not showing up? CAN WE DO THAT AGAIN PLEASE FOR THE RALLY IN MY TOWN ON SATURDAY? It would be super fun and awesome for him to expect a million people and have a fraction actually attend <3
#trump#donald trump#us politics#politics#potus#democrats#republicans#democracy#joe biden#scotus#heritage foundation#traitor trump#fuck trump#trump 2024#president trump#election#republican#fox news#trump is a coward#defeat trump#conservatives#right wing#conservatism#we the people#democratic party#usa news#usa#usa politics#united states#vote kamala
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tonights debate will be absolutely cathartic
#USA#Politics#kamala harris#vote harris#Defeat trump#Body slam the shithead with words#Kick the shit out of that weird man's ego#democratic party#Destruction of the Conservatives#Lgbtq#Trans#Aroace#Hell yeah
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the best part is conservative losers in twitter replies are celebrating bc they structured so much of their politics these last four years around hating joe biden that they can't see how this strengthens the democratic position and reclaims a huge swath of voters who weren't going to show up for dems at the polls otherwise
#yes they're going to rally around a new target in increasingly disgusting ways#but this isn't the win for conservatives that they think it is#and im sure the actual party knows this#but not the losers in my town with lgb/fjb stickers on their pickup trucks#they think the evil has been defeated
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On Kamala Harris’s defeat
Democrats’ strategy of courting conservative suburban voters failed….as it has done over and over again.
Despite Trump’s platform, Latino voters have swung drastically right, continuing the trend we saw in 2020. It’s like the turkey voting for Thanksgiving.
There’s a dangerous theme among Gen Z men becoming radically right-wing. The Trump Campaign capitalized on this.
I’m not surprised the outdated Democratic Party failed…again. They play a game meant for two decades ago. Fantastic ground game doesn’t matter. Conservative pundits run the airways. Social media is a conservative hellscape. People like Joe Rogan hold significant sway and there is no progressive, or even liberal, counterbalance.
This country has moved right and it’s incredibly concerning. While we had some wins this election, we saw decent progressives ousted in their primaries and status quo politics fail in the general.
The problem is bigger than Kamala. The entire Democratic Party establishment must be dismantled. This has been the case since at least 2015. Liberalism at large is failing and the Democratic Party is incentivized to keep doing business as usual to appease donors (hint: this doesn’t mean you!). We need a true populist left movement if we are ever going to get out of this conservative hole.
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Aslı Aydıntaşbaş for Politico Magazine:
American democracy is about to undergo a serious stress test. I know how it feels, in part because I lived through the slow and steady march of state capture as a journalist working in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. Over a decade as a high-profile journalist, I covered Turkey’s descent into illiberalism, having to engage in the daily push and pull with the government. I know how self-censorship starts in small ways but then creeps into operations on a daily basis. I am familiar with the rhythms of the battle to reshape the media, state institutions and the judiciary. Having lived through it, and having gathered some lessons in hindsight, I believe that there are strategies that can help Democrats and Trump critics not only survive the coming four years, but come out stronger. Here are six of them.
1. Don’t Panic — Autocracy Takes Time
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power is unnerving but, as I have argued previously, America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight — or in four years. Even the most determined strongmen face internal hurdles, from the bureaucracy to the media and the courts. It took Erdoğan well over a decade to fully consolidate his power. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party needed years to erode democratic norms and fortify their grip on state institutions.
I am not suggesting that the United States is immune to these patterns, but it’s important to remember that its decentralized system of governance — the network of state and local governments — offers enormous resilience. Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, states and governors have specific powers separate from those granted federally, there are local legislatures, and the media has the First Amendment as a shield, reinforced by over a century of legal precedents. Sure, there are dangers, including by a Supreme Court that might grant great deference to the president. But in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him. The bottom line is that the U.S. is too decentralized in its governance system for a complete takeover. The Orbánization of America is not an imminent threat.
2. Don’t Disengage — Stay Connected
[...]
Nothing is more meaningful than being part of a struggle for democracy. That’s why millions of Turks turned out to the polls and gave the opposition a historic victory in local governments across Turkey earlier this year. That’s how the Poles organized a winning coalition to vote out the conservative Law and Justice Party last year. It can happen here, too. The answer to political defeat is not to disconnect, but to organize. You can take a couple of days or weeks off, commiserate with friends and mute Elon Musk on X — or erase the app altogether. But in the end, the best way to develop emotional resilience is greater engagement.
[...]
4. Charismatic Leadership Is a Non-Negotiable
One lesson from Turkey and Hungary is clear: You will lose if you don’t find a captivating leader, as was the case in 2023 general elections in Turkey and in 2022 in Hungary. Coalition-building or economic messaging is necessary and good. But it is not enough. You need charisma to mobilize social dissent. [...]
Last year’s elections in Poland and Turkey showcased how populist incumbents can be defeated (or not defeated, as in general elections in Turkey in 2023) depending on the opposition’s ability to unite around compelling candidates who resonate with voters. Voters seek authenticity and a connection — give it to them.
5. Skip the Protests and Identity Politics
Soon, Trump opponents will shake off the doldrums and start organizing an opposition campaign. But how they do it matters. For the longest time in Turkey, the opposition made the mistake of relying too much on holding street demonstrations and promoting secularism, Turkey’s version of identity politics, which speaks to the urban professional and middle class but not beyond. [...]
6. Have Hope
Nothing lasts forever and the U.S. is not the only part of the world that faces threats to democracy — and Americans are no different than the French, the Turks or Hungarians when it comes to the appeal of the far right. But in a country with a strong, decentralized system of government and with a long-standing tradition of free speech, the rule of law should be far more resilient than anywhere in the world. Trump’s return to power certainly poses challenges to U.S. democracy. But he will make mistakes and overplay his hand — at home and abroad. America will survive the next four years if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.
Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, who had first-hand experience with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarianism in her native Turkey as a journalist, wrote in Politico Magazine on how to effectively fight Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses.
#Donald Trump#Viktor Orbán#Recep Tayyip Erdoğan#Trumpism#Right Wing Populism#Authoritarianism#Aslı Aydıntaşbaş#Politico Magazine#Politico
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Donald Trump is on the verge of becoming the GOP nominee for the presidency for the third straight election. What might have seemed like a historical blip in 2016 that was remedied by Trump’s general election defeat in 2020 is now an eternal black mark on the Republican Party. Hijacked by Trump, purged of its traditional middle-of-the-road corporate conservatives, and transformed into a cult of personality, the Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party of Lincoln. Gone are the Bushes, Cheneys, and Romneys. In are the worst group of scoundrels, hacks, hangers-on, and would-be authoritarians this nation has ever seen. Whatever quaint and out-dated notions remained that Iowa’s Midwestern conservatism and its rural and highly educated populace would serve as an important early filter in the nominating process can be put to rest. A majority of Iowa Republican caucus-goers went for Trump after the travesties of the Trump presidency: the failed response to the COVID pandemic, the indignity of losing to Joe Biden, and the insurrection at the Capitol, among so many others.
Iowa GOP Embraces Insurrectionist For POTUS
Racist losers choose racist loser to represent the party of racist losers.
Also, just to keep some perspective: Shitler “won” by getting about 44,000 people in one state, known for its high concentration of white supremacist christians.
Don’t be fooled by media that this is some kind of meaningful comeback for him. He’s still a criminal, he’s still a liar and a conman. He’s still going to prison for the rest of his life. This is not his political comeback. This is forty thousand pieces of shit in a nation of around 340 million people who overwhelmingly despise him.
Stay vigilant. Get out the vote. Don’t get complacent, but don’t be fooled by a “comeback” narrative that horserace-driven media needs to sell advertising.
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Something I just noticed and really enjoy about Campaign 1 is how often their story involves becoming incredibly powerful and accomplishing so much and yet still not being able to do what's truly important to them. It's not only the gutpunch of the final episode, it's a thematic underpinning throughout the campaign.
Way back in their prestream adventures, the party was strong enough to defeat the Dread Emperor and save all the kidnapped children from Tal'Dorei—except one, a child Keyleth killed by accident, an act which haunts her through at least much of the early campaign. The party defeats the Briarwoods and reclaims Whitestone, but Ripley still escapes and 19 still misses, and the Chroma Conclave raze half the continent. Percy has great intellect and access to a powerful magical amplifier and forced out a demon through sheer force of will, but his carelessness still killed Vex and he only rolls a 6 to try to save her. The party has slain a dragon and is armed with four Vestiges of Divergence, but they couldn't save Tiberius and can't even give him the proper burial they want to. They brutally slaughter Ripley, but not before she gets the revenge she wants; she kills Percy, sending him to Orthax, and spreads guns throughout Exandria. The Conclave is slain, the whole party made it out alive, but Scanlan is forever scarred by the experience and leaves, tearing the party down as he goes. Even Vilya, prior to the campaign's beginning, was at the very end of her Aramente, likely a level 16-17 druid like Keyleth was, and still failed the trial of the Water Plane and was gone for almost 40 years.
And of course, Vox Machina became some of the most powerful people in the world, slayers of a god, legends to be immortalized for centuries...and none of their power could save their brother.
Percy points out to Bell's Hells, thirty years later, that fate isn't always kind and not everyone gets a second chance, and to me that's underscored by what we don't see. Elaina is still dead. Juniper is still dead. Percy's parents and five siblings are all still dead.
I mean, if any or all of their bodies are intact, it wouldn't even require True Resurrection to bring them back—not that Keyleth or Percy are averse to a little heresy, but hey, conserve your resources. If there are bodies, all they'd need is 7th-level Resurrection; none of those people have been dead for over a century, and if they need to find the bodies, well, Vex has Locate Object and Pike gets a Divine Intervention freebie once a week, right? Even if they did need True Resurrection, it's a heftier cost but probably not something too difficult to pay over time for one of the wealthiest families in the world.
But none of them have ever done that, nor do we get an indication that they've pursued it. Vox Machina is, probably more than any other CR party, defined by grief—how individual PCs respond to their own profound losses; how they succeed and fail to shoulder each others' burdens; and at the end of their story, how they deal with one of the most painful losses imaginable, and how they move forward and find peace in spite of it. Campaign 1 is just as much about how to deal with what you couldn't do as it is about what you now can do.
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Scientific American endorses Harris
TONIGHT (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.
If Trump's norm-breaking is a threat to democracy (and it is), what should Democrats do? Will breaking norms to defeat norms only accelerate the collapse of norms, or do we fight fire with fire, breaking norms to resist the slide into tyranny?
Writing for The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein writes how "every time the forces of democracy broke a reactionary deadlock, they did it by breaking some norm that stood in the way":
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-23-science-is-political/
Take the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Reconstruction period that followed it. As Jefferson Cowie discusses, the 13th only passed because the slave states were excluded from its ratification, and even then, it barely squeaked over the line. The Congress that passed reconstruction laws that "radically reconstructed [slave states] via military subjugation" first ejected all the representatives of those states:
https://newrepublic.com/article/182383/defend-liberalism-lets-fight-democracy-first
The New Deal only exists because FDR was on the verge of packing the Supreme Court, and, under this threat, SCOTUS stopped ruling against FDR's plans:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court
The passage of progressive laws – "the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid" – are all thanks to JFK's gambit of packing the House Rules Committee, ending the obstructionist GOP members' use of the committee to kill anything that would protect or expand America's already fragile social safety net.
As Perlstein writes, "A willingness to judiciously break norms in a civic emergency can be a sign of a healthy and valorous democratic resistance."
And yet…the Democratic establishment remains violently allergic to norm-breaking. Perlstein recalls the 2018 book How Democracies Die, much beloved of party elites and Obama himself, which argued that norms are the bedrock of democracy, and so the pro-democratic forces undermine their own causes when they fight reactionary norm-breaking with their own.
The tactic of bringing a norm to a gun-fight has been a disaster for democracy. Trump wasn't the first norm-shattering Republican – think of GWB and his pals stealing the 2000 election, or Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat for Gorsuch – but Trump's assault on norms is constant, brazen and unapologetic. Progressives need to do more than weep on the sidelines and demand that Republicans play fair.
The Democratic establishment's response is to toe every line, seeking to attract "moderate conservatives" who love institutions more than they love tax giveaways to billionaires. This is a very small constituency, nowhere near big enough to deliver the legislative majorities, let alone the White House. As Perlstein says, Obama very publicly rejected calls to be "too liberal" and tiptoed around anti-racist policy, in a bid to prevent a "racist backlash" (Obama discussed race in public less than any other president since the 1950s). This was a hopeless, ridiculous own-goal: Perlstein points out that even before Obama was inaugurated, there were more than 100 Facebook groups calling for his impeachment. The racist backlash was inevitable had nothing to do with Obama's policies. The racist backlash was driven by Obama's race.
Luckily, some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy. Scientific American the 179 year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vote-for-kamala-harris-to-support-science-health-and-the-environment/
Predictably, this has provoked howls of outrage from Republicans and a debate within the scientific community. Science is supposed to be apolitical, right?
Wrong. The conservative viewpoint, grounded in discomfort with ambiguity ("there are only two genders," etc) is antithetical to the scientific viewpoint. Remember the early stages of the covid pandemic, when science's understanding of the virus changed from moment to moment? Major, urgent recommendations (not masking, disinfecting groceries) were swiftly overturned. This is how science is supposed to work: a hypothesis can only be grounded in the evidence you have in hand, and as new evidence comes in that changes the picture, you should also change your mind.
Conservatives hated this. They claimed that scientists were "flip-flopping" and therefore "didn't know anything." Many concluded that the whole covid thing was a stitch-up, a bid to control us by keeping us off-balance with ever-changing advice and therefore afraid and vulnerable. This never ended: just look at all the weirdos in the comments of this video of my talk at last summer's Def Con who are absolutely freaking out about the fact that I wore a mask in an enclosed space with 5,000 people from all over the world in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8
This intolerance for following the evidence is a fixture in conservative science denialism. How many times have you heard your racist Facebook uncle grouse about how "scientists used to say the world was getting colder, now they say it's getting hotter, what the hell do they know?"
Perlstein points to other examples of this. For example, in the 1980s, conservatives insisted that the answer to the AIDS crisis was to "just stop having 'illicit sex,'" a prescription that was grounded in a denial of AIDS science, because scientists used to say that it was a gay disease, then they said you could get it from IV drug use, or tainted blood, or from straight sex. How could you trust scientists when they can't even make up their minds?
https://www.newspapers.com/image/379364219/?terms=babies&match=1
There certainly are conservative scientists. But the right has a "fundamentally therapeutic discourse…conservatism never fails, it is only failed." That puts science and conservativism in a very awkward dance with one another.
Sometimes, science wins. Continuing in his history of the AIDS crisis, Perlstein talks about the transformation of Reagan's Surgeon General, C Everett Koop. Koop was an arch-conservative's arch-conservative. He was a hard-right evangelical who had "once suggested homosexuals were sedulously recruiting boys into their cult to help them take over America once they came of voting age." He'd also called abortion "the slide to Auschwitz" – which was weird, because he'd also opined that the "Jews had it coming for refusing to accept Jesus Christ."
You'd expect Koop to have continued the Reagan administration's de facto AIDS policy ("queers deserve to die"), but that's not what happened. After considering the evidence, Koop mailed a leaflet to every home in the USA advocating for condom use.
Koop was already getting started. His harm-reduction advocacy made him a national hero, so Reagan couldn't fire him. A Reagan advisor named Gary Bauer teamed up with Dinesh D'Souza on a mission to get Koop back on track. They got him a new assignment: investigate the supposed psychological harms of abortion, which should be a slam-dunk for old Doc Auschwitz. Instead, Koop published official findings – from the Reagan White House – that there was no evidence for these harms, and which advised women with an AIDS diagnosis to consider abortion.
So sometimes, science can triumph over conservativism. But it's far more common for conservativism to trump science. The most common form of this is "eisegesis," where someone looks at a "pile of data in order to find confirmation in it of what they already 'know' to be true." Think of those anti-mask weirdos who cling to three studies that "prove" masks don't work. Or the climate deniers who have 350 studies "proving" climate change isn't real. Eisegesis proves ivermectin works, that vaccinations are linked to autism, and that water fluoridation is a Communist plot. So long as you confine yourself to considering evidence that confirms your beliefs, you can prove anything.
Respecting norms is a good rule of thumb, but it's a lousy rule. The politicization of science starts with the right's intolerance for ambiguity – not Scientific American's Harris endorsement.
Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/22/eisegesis/#norm-breaking
#pluralistic#scientific american#science#sciam#rick perlstein#the reactionary mind#conservativism#norm-breaking#slavery#13th amendment#new deal#pack the court#house rules committee#how democracies die
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#politics#donald trump#democrats#joe biden#potus#democracy#trump#republicans#scotus#heritage foundation#defeat trump#fuck trump#trump 2024#president trump#biden#maga#jd vance#maga 2024#gop#trump is a coward#republican#conservatives#vote democrat#democratic party#elections
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now that you finished inquisition, what did you think of it? like favorite things, least favorite, etc?
oh man okay
things i love about dragon age inquisition:
capturing the specific feeling of bonding with a group of people you have absolutely nothing in common with because u all had to go through something long and specific together
the maps can be so pretty and in places really calming and lovely to spend time in. it does make me want to explore and i have no explorer’s instinct
i love the war table and judgements i think those are really fun features
i like that approval for many major decisions applies to everyone regardless of who you bring to specific events/quests. it feels a lot less like you have to manage that really hard, as you sometimes do in the other games and also really noticeably to me in something like baldur’s gate 3. it’s irritating when i have to plan ahead and can’t take who i want to hear from
i like how attached you can get to little npcs who wander around
i loveeeee fighting dragons and how beautiful they all are
little puzzles <3
the collectibles are also mostly fine by me i am a magpie by nature. as long as i can find them, obviously, bc if i can’t they suck and this whole game sucks
the templar specialisation is fun and i enjoyed that part of combat a lot. wrath of heaven/spell purge combo is a power trip
i thought my character was pretty :) i defeated u in the end dai character creator. may you be as merciful when we meet in battle once more
i’m not a huge crafter but being able to tint things is rlly nice
blackwall’s romance is good
vivienne is there
they let me briefly tame a dragon at the end there
things i don’t love about dragon age inquisition:
some genuine cruelty in writing the dalish in a way that feels shockingly callous to the real world cultures the writers took inspiration from
never giving the dalish or the rebel mages any kind of voice of their own and making the player do all that work if they care, which i also feel limits my roleplaying creativity
refusing to let you challenge any of the often overwhelmingly conservative views expressed by other characters without receiving only derision and disapproval. inquisition is a game that punishes you at every turn for having your own opinions, in a way that could be interesting if it was willing to truly let you develop complex or antagonistic relationships with those characters, but ends up mostly just feeling mocking when nobody ever even tries to see your side, while simply agreeing with these people always rewards you with content. origins was capable of letting you engage in discussion, and da2 let you form rivalries that mattered; inquisition, despite starring some of the most intentionally controversial characters, does neither
the game engineering conflicts against groups like the freemen of the dales or the avvar that mean nothing to the player and range from vaguely to seriously upsetting in their assumptions about who it’s normal to just start killing en masse. it’s both boring and distressing
odd, for lack of a better word “casting choices”, like having the fantasy impoverished racial minority all be white within the party while the wealthiest and most privileged are characters of colour, or for a more in-world example having the elves express the most distaste towards elves and the mages express the most caution about mages. i don’t know that i quite have the vocabulary to fully discuss why these weird me out, but it all feels... disingenuous? and chosen to forestall criticism based on real world comparisons in a game series that i wish had the nerve to openly confront what it’s talking about if it’s going to try to make any of its conflicts feel relevant
most of the companions, and indeed most of the quests and time spent playing the game, feel disconnected from the main plot. it’s hard to feel any pressure when the game tells you we need to deal with the main plot “right now!” and “get there before corypheus!” when the bulk of the game is doing other things while you’re supposed to be doing that. the majority of companions could be cut without changing anything. and when you finally want to deal with the main plot you just click to start it. it’s not engaging
the game fails to fully expand dialogue for the player character options it provided, particularly notable with its confusing chantry focus when you’ve said for the dozenth time you’re not andrastian
the 2-handed weapon whirlwind ability sound effect is an exercise in creating the worst and most grating sound effect for someone to constantly hear
they didn’t let me romance vivienne
they killed my dragon :(
#sorry the dislikes are bulky it just takes more words to explain when u dislike something#long post#these r messy sorry if the criticisms are not worded well its late :(
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« A better kind of Republicanism is not possible as long as most of the party genuflects to Trump. This means the victory of the odd moderate conservative here or there will not change things. A little hardball in pursuit of the power needed to defeat Trumpism is not hypocrisy. It’s a necessity. »
— E.J. Dionne, Jr. on the Democratic strategy of encouraging the nomination of unelectable MAGA extremist Republicans to make it easier for moderate Democrats to defeat them in the general election. At the Washington Post.
The Republican Party of old is dead. This ain't your grandmother's GOP but instead is a totalitarian cult centered on a blathering con man. It is more interested in conducting an eternal culture war than in effective governance.
Every GOP office holder is a pillar holding up Trump. Many of them won't even admit that Trump lost because to do so would defy the cult. They have willingly relinquished the power of rational thought. A party like that has no business in a democracy.
#donald trump#republicans#the gop#the trump cult#maga#e.j. dionne#trump lost#election 2024#vote blue no matter who
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Lefty political parties across the world are now more unpopular than any time since the Cold War, a staggering analysis of recent elections shows.
The Left suffered a record-low average of just 45% of votes in dozens of ballots held globally last year, according to the analysis of 73 democratic elections, conducted by the Telegraph.
In the United States and Western Europe, progressives were even more unpopular — with the left-leaning parties securing only 42% of their respective votes.
The Right, meanwhile, won 57% of the average votes — representing the widest gap since 1990, the analysis found.
The global demise of the political left comes off the back of President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide election win.
Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, secured the popular vote with 77 million votes compared to the 75 million his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, raked in.
The Left’s declining popularity is only expected to continue, too, experts say.
In the wake of Harris’ defeat, leftist parties in Canada, Australia, and Germany are already predicted to suffer similar losses in upcoming ballots.
“The trend is up. There is no real reason to expect that it will stop anytime soon,” Prof. Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist from the University of Amsterdam, told the outlet.
In Canada, polls are already showing that its firebrand Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is the favorite to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the lefty leader’s abrupt resignation earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Australia’s conservative party has also inched ahead of its ruling progressive government prior to a planned election later this year, polls show.
Experts have pinned the right’s rising popularity, in part, on hardline immigration policies in the US and parts of Europe.
Jeremy Cliffe, of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said three trends were also tied to the boost.
“The globalization-driven decline of organized labor, rising identity politics harnessed more successfully by the Right than the Left, and a general tendency among Leftist forces to fragment rather than unite,” he said.
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