#centrist scum

[tvok]

Yugioh characters who lost a part of themselves without getting any say in the matter and it was probably for the best but now there will always be something missing no matter how hard they reach for it, dooming them to a life without closure or satisfaction:

Ryou Bakura

Yuya Sakaki

Jin Kusanagi

[shrack]

no you dont get it i cant be normal about disco elysium ever. you start the game and before you know your own name, before (depending on your build and your rolls) you even know what you look like, what you do, where you are—before any of that. before you even know kim's name you know that kim would die for you.

harry begins at his absolute lowest and he begins knowing that this man, whoever he is and whatever he wants, would die for him without any hesitation. is it because of his job? yeah, almost certainly. but at the end? he doesn't transfer to the 41st and break that decades-long feud between the 41st and the 57th for nothing.

in conclusion:

[arrows-bullshit]

Guys wanting to kill minorities because of them being minorities and wanting to people who want to kill all minorities because they’re minorities is the same thing!!! radicalism is bad!!!

people on this site will be like fascists are so awful! btw all of my political opponents are inhuman scum that deserve death

[ohello0]

Watching daytime television with my granny is so jarring because you can see how the industry keeps zionism going strong. Amy Schumer getting airtime despite being wild zionists is insane

Trust I understand the general public isn’t online and even those that are might not give as much of a shit, but surely someone who gets on insta and says all Arabs are rapists shouldn’t get a segment on a daytime talk show to discuss her new show???

[flocklings]

CENTRIST SCUM. NO ART IS APOLITICAL AND CERTAINLY NOT HORROR.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Corn at Mother Jones:

Every election is a Judgment Day, but this one more so than any other in the history of the nation. Never before has a major party run a nominee described by retired military leaders who worked with him as a “fascist” and a serious threat to American democracy. Never before has the electorate been provided the choice of a nominee who previously refused to accept vote tallies, falsely declared victory, covertly schemed to overturn an election, and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to stay in power, as well as one whose mismanagement of a pandemic caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Never before have Americans been asked to return to office a politician who waged a massive disinformation operation fueled by the most vicious vitriol to exploit hatred, racism, misogyny, and ignorance. Is America a nation that accepts and embraces all that? The answer is yes.

Despite Trump’s multiple offenses (criminal, political, and social), tens of millions voters—more than half of the electorate—said they want more of him and desire this felonious, misogynistic, racist, and seemingly cognitively challenged wannabe autocrat to lead the nation once again. Trumpism triumphed, and the godhead of this cult has become both the first fascist and the first convicted felon to win an American presidential election.

Facing a highly unconventional candidate whose main strategy was to whip up fear and anxiety, Vice President Kamala Harris, a latecomer to the race, ran a conventional campaign. She touted the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, presented a compelling personal story, offered a host of generally realistic policy proposals, and critiqued her opponent—doing all of this mostly accurately. Her last-minute elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket raised the question of whether the United States could elect a Black woman president. Counterpoised was another question: Can a criminal awaiting sentencing (found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to keep secret his supposed extramarital affair with a porn star) who has been indicted for other alleged crimes, and who has called for the termination of the Constitution (so he could be reinstalled as president), be elected commander in chief and the nation’s top defender of the Constitution?

There was nothing subtle about the 2024 election. It pit the political extremism Trump has embraced and fomented to drive his red-meat base to the polls against Harris’ effort to expand her pool of voters by forging an alliance of progressives and independents, centrists, and Republicans concerned about the danger Trump poses to democracy. More so than in his previous campaigns, Trump endeavored to demonize his opponents. He peddled the false claim that the United States has descended into a hellscape with an economy in a “depression” and gangs of criminal migrants armed with military-style weapons conquering towns and cities across the land. Looking to stoke grievance, resentment, and bigotry, he asserted that “evil” Democrats, assisted by a subversive media, have purposefully conspired to destroy the country. He essentially QAnonized American politics. He dismissed Harris as “low IQ” and not truly Black. He called her supporters “scum.”

Trump debased the national discourse further than he had in the years since he launched his first presidential bid in 2015. That included violent talk of retribution, which included suggesting deploying the US military against “radical left lunatics,” putting Liz Cheney on trial for treason before a military tribunal and placing her before a line of guns, and executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along. Harris campaigned not only to implement a host of left-leaning policies related to such fundamental matters as health care, women’s freedom, and middle-class economics, but to prevent a would-be autocrat from gaining control of the US government. That’s a heavy lift for any one candidate.

[...] American politics has always contained an us-versus-them element, and the battle can be fierce. But Trump turned this into asymmetrical warfare. More than any other major presidential candidate in modern history, he lied, he insulted, he appealed to the basest reflexes in people. He waged war on reality, seeking to lead millions into a cosmos of fakery and false narratives that boosts an ultra-Manichean view of the world. He saw his path to power as exacerbating the divisions within American society. He has been an accelerationist for tribalistic discord, explicitly threatening the norms and values of democratic governance. His answer to what ails the United States is strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior. Harris ran as a feisty Democrat who wants to work with Congress to tackle assorted problems.

These were profoundly different approaches to…well, to life. And in the 2024 election, Americans had to choose which camp they were in. Certainly, there were many issues beyond this monumental clash in values for voters to focus on: inflation, immigration, housing costs, trade, taxes, Ukraine, education, abortion, and so on. But ultimately, voters were forced to pick a side, to render a verdict on Trump’s war on truth, democracy, and decency and Harris’ traditional embrace of pluralism and established norms. At this fork in the road, Americans made a decision on what sort of country the United States will be. A judgment has been reached: This is a nation to be ruled by Trump’s politics of hate. It can happen here, and it has.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump, Satan’s handpicked choice, won the Presidential election and the evil Elephants flipped the Senate.

See Also:

Vox: Donald Trump has won — and American democracy is now in grave danger

Mother Jones: Why Did Trump Really Win? It’s Simple, Actually.

[crescent-coral-base]

Leftier-than-thou performative progressive in 2016:

Stop trying to scare me with who Trump will appoint to lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court. I don't give a fuck about the Supreme Court. The IMPORTANT THING is that we STOP KILLARY, you centrist neoliberal corporate shill. Besides, if vulnerable marginalized communities in America suffer great injustices, well 1.) they deserve it for being evil Americans, and 2.) that suffering will mobilize them and HASTEN THE REVOLUTION. BERN IT ALL DOWN!!!

Leftier-than-thou performative progressive in 2024:

Stop trying to scare me with who Trump will appoint to lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court during his second term. I STILL don't care about the Supreme Court DESPITE THE DAMAGE HE DID DURING HIS FIRST TERM. The MOST IMPORTANT thing is that we STOP "GENOCIDE JOE," you genocide-apologist, Jew-supporting, Zionist scum. If vulnerable marginalized American communities are still threatened by Trumpism during his second term, they STILL deserve it for still being evil Americans and for not acknowledging our genius and hastening our glorious Revolution during his first term. FREE PALESTINE!!! FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA!!!

[tiefling-queer]

i once again return to the question of how to effectively educate and deradicalize people in an ever right-leaning political landscape

because on the one hand, it is absolutely a matter of privilege to expect others to educate you. it is privileged behavior to expect comfort and attention in spaces that do not, and should not, predominantly center you.

on the other hand, the nature of privilege is such that expecting a privileged party to educate themselves is just... not practical. not realistic. not in tune with an understanding of how privilege works.

the nature of humans is to turn away from shame and towards praise. being incurious is a part of being part of a privileged class, and we inadvertently reinforce this by punishing curiosity and providing a hostile environment for the curious.

so often, what i see from ostensibly left-leaning groups is a sentiment of 'they'll figure it out or they deserve to die.' like, again and again and again, this sentiment that privileged classes of people will figure out on their own that the classes they occupy are fabricated and that their wellbeing as a person is best protected by the rhetoric used by groups of people that, very vocally, do not value them as people.

so much of the recruitment tactics of the right leans on getting an individual to identify with a class, and conflating their identity with that class (white, man, woman, etc)

the left has... no real recruitment tactics other than pontificating at one another and hoping some blank-slate centrist wanders in between us and gets radicalized by our leftism beams. online leftist communities often polarize when attempting to recruit by class, and after that recruitment, most white leftist spaces follow up by conflating identity with class the same way the right does, rather than examining, deconstructing, and recontextualizing class and promoting solidarity. (i will admit, this is mainly a critique of white queer and white working class spaces, which often rely on buckling down on the whole 'queer' and 'working class' thing, which leads to the same obsession with purity of the class that exists in alt-right spaces)

'but some spaces aren't educational! we need safe spaces! we need vent spaces! it's my god-given right to say that members of my oppressor class are scum and should die!'

the difference between the right and the left is that this distinction doesn't exist in the right. education is recruitment is community is reinforcement is education.

meanwhile, in the left, we have disparate spaces that can be considered 'recruitment' or 'education' and you're expected to go through them before you have entry into community. this is flawed. this is a bad way to do things. this is going to alienate allies and it's going to reinforce the right's recruitment.

the left has a reactionary problem, and where the right uses that to recruit, we use it to condemn and self-destruct our own communities.

[warsofasoiaf]

Are there any political parties that you like? Is there a model from outside the U.S. we should adopt?

I can't think of any I like. Political parties have one basic problem: their goal is primarily the perpetuation and expansion of the party's power, which incentivizes fundraising over effective legislation. I'd abolish them if I had a better system to replace it with, but alas, I do not.

Now, not all things are the fault of political parties. In any first-past-the-post voting system like the one that exists in the United States, it is mathematically advantageous to have a two-party system. That means even if the political parties were 100% incorruptible, they would steal be a barely-functional coalition of wildly divergent interests where centrist and heterodox thoughts find themselves on the outs. A parliamentary system with multiple parties does not necessarily ideal either - the collapse of political coalitions can lead to rapid government collapse and a real lack of staying power to get long-term legislation done. Alas, there simply is no long-term fix.

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is the obligation that political leadership has toward public opinion even if the policy idea itself is fairly shit. This isn't anything actually dealing with modern political thought, it actually came up in a discussion with a friend regarding Nevalle Chamberlain and the appeasement debate. Long-time readers will know that I am adamant in the idea that appeasement was a garbage policy idea (then and now - fuck dictatorial scum), but it's worth noting *how* popular it was with the British public. A fairly large cross-section of the British public supported appeasement largely out of trauma coming out of the Great War. So in what way are elected officials responsible for giving in to bad ideas because they're popular? Most of me says "not at all, the entire point of a representative democracy is that the public entrusts legislative officials because the average person has no understanding of how legislation works," but at the same time, there's a part of me that says "legislators that don't listen to their constituents is a big problem, especially in an era rife with misinformation."

Thanks for the question, Cle-Guy.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[sphaliro]

One way to avoid AI from stealing your art jobs is to make your art as varied, diverse, expressive as possible. If your art is formulaic & focuses on the same type of subject, AI can break that down to a science & duplicate it. People like SamDoesArts, who is a popular professional artist who draws beautiful girls, or people who only draw yassified, smouldering webtoon-style kpop hotties, have styles that fall heavy victim to AI takeover. That's not an insult, it's a fact.

No matter how good your art is, if all the faces, style, color, composition looks similar; you have an exploitable formula. If you make money on your art, this is a bad thing for you! It's not fair that AI is using your work without permission for no pay. But this is our modern world, & it won't go away.

All we can do is focus on the power of what makes us human. Expressiveness, diversity of subject, ages & race; story & character-driven pieces, always trying something new... So far, AI (aka, the hack-jobs stealing art to put in a formula for free without permission; this is the fault of greedy nerds, not cute robots!!) cannot duplicate things like that so easy. If you're a pro, please consider that.

If you want to protect your work from AI algorithms, there's also the revolutionary (free!) GLAZE tool, which when added to your art, will destroy all data AI-bros try to extrapolate from your work. (More info on GLAZE here!)

If you really care about making art "accessible" to everyone, you must accept that it's only ethical with permission from the creators you want to use.

Artists are not soulless billionaires or Hollywood money-machines who are robbing you of the psuedo-socialist 'right' to have an anime-you profile pic. We are real people, living paycheck to paycheck, disabled, raising families, mentally going through everything you've struggled through, & more. It's not ethical to rob us of our expression & livelihood... AI-bros, if you won't pay us for our labor, you have no right to it. Any side of the political spectrum, capitalist pig to centrist sissy to commie scum, should agree with that.

The philosophy of "it's our right to use it, just get a real job" is the very philosophy that separates you from actual artists.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Start acting worthy of that wonder. Don't be a Skynet pawn. They won't spare you just because you taught them how to generate yassified kpop elf girls.

[kaedeichinose]

im about halfway through diofield chronicles and unless it really falls apart in the back end i'm really enjoying it so far. its obviously made on a budget so keep that in mind but i think it knows how to stretch its budget to present some pretty great looking motion comic ass cutscenes while sprinkling in actual cutscenes when need be. music is good but not especially diverse so far but it hasnt bothered me or anything. i really like how everything is softly anachronistic and ornate while also feeling almost like plastic models or figures on a board game.

one thing i like about it is that your 4 leads are all total nutcases in their own unique ways. i dont wanna call it a deconstruction or anything but it really does feel like it sat down and went ok. how much of a sociopath does a strategy game protagonist need to be to actually pull off these war crimes and delivered in spades. your protagonist being an assassin seems like an interesting class choice until you get deeper in the game and hes just openly and blatantly manipulating a child soldier to join your mercenary company instead of the church but he's still in the right because the church is, in fact, totally fucked. your white mage healer girl is a total insane woman who loves necromancy. your knight in shining armor best friend is beloved by the people but also hates democracy and thinks monarchy is the absolute golden standard bc hes still a noble deathly loyal to a boy who isnt even still alive. iscarion is a spineless centrist who talks big but ultimately would prefer to disengage and be nonconfrontational about everything. its great.

the rest of the cast also have varied personalities so its not like everyone is total scum or anything, which is nice because it helps our leads feel more fleshed out too. the game is doing fine wit hthe interpersonal relationships so far but I do kind of wish there were supports or something in that vein just for a little extra. everyone has character episodes but they basically just revolve around the given character and the protagonist which is like Fine but still. they basically have a way tinier garreg mach just steal supports too.

gameplay is fine idk you know im not a gameplay head. even on easy i find it reasonably challenging but the maps dont seem particularly interesting for the most part, some offer multiple routes to go about it but nothing super crazy. the real strategy mostly comes from managing skill points between skirmishes

[icespyders]

i finished disco elysium today!!! & as someone who plays a lot of choice-based rpgs, the way the game acknowledged the way i played was particularly fun and rewarding (readmore for spoilers)

so obv at the end you're confronted by the cops from harry's precinct and kim can defend you (i assume if he hates you, he does not defend you, but i literally unlocked that Goodest Of The Good Cops achievement at the end of day 1, because i've been trained on bioware games to make every companion in every video game love me), and i got a real kick out of some of the dialogue i got during that finale sequence. particularly: one thing kim said to defend me was that i was unbelievably stubborn and thorough chasing down leads, no matter how vague or unrelated to the actual case they seemed to be, and that's 100% how i play rpgs lmao, i chase down every dumb random sidequest no matter how far it diverts me from the main plot. and in this game, some of my most joyful/interesting/thought-provoking/just plain nice moments were in these random sidequest diversions, so i loved how the game basically gives you a thumbs-up for that. and i was really unsure how to play it with evrart & joyce, who i give information to and why/when, and felt like i fucked up, and the game acknowledged that too, kim had some dialogue like, ok, yeah, maybe it wasn't a smart move, he ran his mouth a bit too much to the wrong people, but it was an ethical move and it maybe helped the whole situation, somehow, slightly. and i did okay in the tribunal sequence so kim noted that too, how i got in between the mercenaries and the union guys and put myself in harm's way and minimized the bloodshed. and! i didn't even realize the game would track my drinking/smoking, but the fact that i stayed sober and only smoked once (to light that graffiti on fire, lol, i did it for ART ONLY) was verbally mentioned by a couple characters and seemingly improved their opinion of me. OH OH and i was a very Sorry Cop and characters noted that in particular, kim was like ok yeah he apologizes for everything and it's kind of weird, but still, he's a good guy. and my actual partner is like YEAH YEAH i know you're sorry, you're always sorry, you fucking sad sack. & obviously my insane political views were noted (kim like "i know he's a communist, and also somehow a centrist, idk how he reconciles these things in his mind, but he's a good cop, i promise") (i never got to go back to my communist book club :(((( i read all the literature, i just didn't have time to go back, i ran directly into the plot too fast :(((((((( tragique)

and i was SO EXCITED to meet the phasmid...that was so nice...what a weird and lovely and odd game. it's just very rewarding, because like...i never felt like i was playing Perfectly, yknow? i started the game and was really intrigued by it, but felt a little overwhelmed as my Need To Play Perfectly habit crept in. so i put the game aside for like 9 months, worried i'd never get back to it or finish it, picked it up again 2 weeks ago and felt kinda stuck...and then i got to day 3 and i just cruised through to the end. i played pretty much blind, just looking up a sidequest or two when i was stuck, progression-wise, but i always have this bad habit in rpgs where i want to do things Right and get way too invested deep-diving on wikis trying to orchestrate the most perfect outcomes possible. i tried to kind of free myself of that habit for this game and play looser (though i am grievously guilty of save-scumming ahead of checks and doing dice rolls over and over again, but save-scumming is a sacred art to me, who the fuck doesn't do that in rpgs, if save-scumming is wrong i don't want to be right!!), so i wandered through the game, flailing around and fucking up and failing skill checks, always wondering if i could be Playing Better, but all of that second-guessing is worth it, because in the end i felt really rewarded by this sensation of acknowledgment i got from the game. this feeling that my failures and my successes were noted and catalogued and referenced directly as my companion character sticks up for me at the end. i'm always seeking that in rpgs, that acknowledgment, the sense that my choices mattered and were noted and made both subtle and obvious impacts. and disco elysium has so many variables that i REALLY didn't expect it to be as specific at the finale as it was! like, seriously, i can't get over it, the game scripted shit to acknowledge "you pursued so many fucking sidequests with a maddening and almost obsessive determination, good job," i feel so SEEN. and i got to hold hands with a big bug. what a game

[baronfulmen]

Oh cool we're doing the "no civilians are innocent" in that direction now. Great.

Listen motherfuckers, it is both morally bankrupt AND non-productive to just declare that there are no innocents in an entire fucking country. That's ridiculous and evil, stop it.

Also I love that it's in response to a tweet from Jewish Voice for Peace that says they want to "build a world that upholds the sanctity of life equally for everyone" and to get justice for "Palestinians and for all people". Great sentiment, sorry some prick replied to it with the idea that all Israelis are scum and deserve whatever happens to them. Ugh.

There are so many voices like this, eagerly cheering for the slaughter of innocents. I'm not doing the "enlightened centrist" bullshit and saying "well both sides are bad so I'll just stand over here and feel superior", but I'm still going to call out hypocrisy and evil when I see it. This shit where people are all "no it's okay that the side I support just blew up a bunch of kids because they were EVIL kids, and anyway the other side blew up kids too so it's totally fine" is supremely fucked up.

You can read the letter here.

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

Maybe I was being overly political minded with that last post. The real source of my fury, while still I guess political, is the insincerity. You know there's just, a lack of real meaning or feeling or anything in that. It's presented in a way like it's actually meaningful when it is not, it is not meaningful in the slightest it is shallow and vapid, and worse, obviously not aware of it because of the way the narrator (OP) speaks/writes about its straw dolls and their destined mistakes. It tries to present a moral message in that sentence about "spending their lives more lonely and isolated" but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny! It tries to take pot shots at an idea but completely misses because it's firing at the wrong angle, and with complete and utter insincerity that I must KILL. If it were a genuine critique, it would be sincere and understanding, but it self-admittedly does not understand!

ITS CATHARSIS NOT SUBVERSION. NOT IRONY. NOT HUMOR. ITS CATHARSIS. THEY ARE POLITICAL CARTOONS! WHERE GOOD GUY SHOOTS BAD GUY BECAUSE IT MAKES US FEEL GOOD. If you took a few seconds to understand the WHY, the complicated reasons for the creation of simple things, you could come to some meaningful critique out of the goodness of your ROTTEN HEART. But it would take genuine effort and emotional vulnerability with ones self to do that. Something that is innately foreign to LIBERAL CENTRIST SCUM!

GRRRRRRRJFJFKRKFKEOSMWLFWPDMWLDMWJDNWDIWNQJWHDKFKFKFKFKFKFFKEJFJFJEJDJDHEJDHDJDJKKKGGGHHDNCKDKDJDGK

theres more that i could say but i have to stop myself

[crushingdeath]

RACHEL LOVE + RED RED EYES

Thu 16th Nov @ The Blue Moon Doors 8pm, tickets £8 adv from here

Presented in association with Isolation Jams and DJ Centrist Dad

RACHEL LOVE

A rare local outing for Rachel Love, one third of the best Cambridge band in history - FACT. Dolly Mixture released a string of perfect pop records in the late seventies and early eighties which currently change hands for the cost of a week's shopping amongst record collector scum, while also proving highly influential on the indie pop and riot grrl scenes which followed in their wake. Recent reissues of the albums Demonstration Tapes and Other Music by Sealed Records have placed Dolly Mixture right in the Venn diagram's intersection of bands beloved equally by punks and indie types. Now based in Brighton, Rachel has more recently been putting out slices of pastoral pop, perhaps influenced by folks themselves in thrall to Dolly Mixture - folks like The Clientele, Stereolab and Young Marble Giants. Let's keep that cycle endlessly completing itself...

rachellove.bandcamp.com