Simple argument usually wins regardless of validity. There’s a reason for the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Noam Chomsky has a great take on this idea— he talks about how (at the time) short attention span television privileges conventional wisdom because conventional wisdom, by its very nature, only takes a few seconds to convey: “the troops are heroes”, “America stands for freedom”, “terrorists fear our democracy” and so…

Yeah, it’s the issue of taking a lot of time to get sources and accurately report...vs. taking very little time to throw something together that either (a) is detached from reality or (b) is true at its core, but so lazily done that it might as well be detached from reality.

I think also, unfortunately, it’s just a microcosm of the uphill battle Democrats always face against Republicans. It’s incredibly easy to NOT make the government work, or to make it seem untrustworthy. It’s incredibly easy to promise lower taxes and the removal of regulations when you can assume those actions have no…

Great blog, Albert, and perhaps an unintentional meta example of why we’re all so royally fucked.

THIS is an excellent story. Great journalism that susses out what’s really going on and explains it — pulls all the threads together.

He’s not even sworn in yet and has already had a number of instances of referring to any remotely hostile or adversarial coverage as fake and completely dismissing every single poll that says he isn’t beloved among the public by pointing to the fact that he won (with three million fewer votes than his opponent). Gonna…

They’d find them so much easier to accept, if we could just find a burning bush to deliver them…

I knew there had to be a sliver lining

“Government getting smaller is objectively good!” they believe, not realizing that the overwhelming majority of “government” consists of hard-working, middle-class, 5-figure earners who legitimately work hard at their jobs and do good things for the country. 

no, facts surprise the shit out of them. they are usually unaware of their existence.

She... doesn’t look pregnant at all? THAT’s considered pregnant? I... want to get off this planet.

You’ll get a star even though your whole response has a stream of consciousness vibe. It leaves me warm at first, then chilled.

Never got that attitude. I’m on a pretty OK track professionally, but I can’t imagine being well-off enough that being widely perceived as a monster/swamp scum wouldn’t at least cause me a moment of “shit, am I being a dick? I don’t want to be a dick.”

oh, but ask them about their kids and they won’t shut the fuck up about him picking the apples for his own applesauce at his Montessori school.

Right. Up until this election I always felt that everyone running was working on behalf of what they felt would truly help the country as a whole. I may have disagreed with them, but I never thought that they had some true, evil purpose undermining what they were say.

Politics shapes views of people, obviously, but I always did genuinely believe W was a good person who did what he thought was best for the country. He may have made nearly every important decision on doing that wrong but I never looked at him and his family as bad people but rather good people who “fell in with the…

I think Trump is the logical conclusion to this obsession with Reality TV. We have allowed our lives to be made into reality tv; from dating competitions, weddings, divorce court, plastic surgery makeovers, botched plastic surgery un-make-overs, weight loss competitions, etc. Virtually every aspect of our real lives…

It was more of an io9 joke.

Just you. “Cock” always seemed weird to me. “Cock” seems strictly porn-y whereas “dick” is like an everyman name for it. And me and my friends never called each other a cockhead.