This is basically a teaser for a campaign book, where all the below-the-line guys get one last chance to spin and self-mythologize and reveal all the good ideas they didn’t get to use. But in return you get some pretty interesting stuff. Of note:
Trump was strategically jerkish to Jeb, incl. the “Bush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife” tweet, because two decade-old debate footage showed he was at his weakest performing “confrontational”
On being hired Corey Lewandowski put Trump’s chances at 5%, Trump put them at 10%.
This quote on the resonance between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump: “Steve just likes to f–k with people,” a top Trump adviser told me
around the time Bannon was hired. “Trump loves to do that too. …
Besides, Trump only really listens to rich guys.”
Also, in the ah “editorial” judgement here seems to be a take that seems popular as a folk take but this is the first time I’ve seen credentialed media running it, that Trump won not despite but because of “being Trump”, that beefing with Khan and going on the offensive after the Access Hollywood tape and never apologizing for anything were effectively positives, credibly signaling outsider status.
And so, thanks to Trump’s unexpected electoral victory,
there is now a massive, unprecedented content graveyard of
articles celebrating or analyzing Hillary Clinton’s would-be historic
victory… . Most of that
content won’t be read by anyone. But here is a small sampling. This
collection is a tiny glimpse of what the internet would have looked like
on November 9 if Clinton beat Trump, as so many pundits forecast.
Hillary Clinton’s problem was “I am tepid neoliberal pudding Hillary Clinton” and her solution was “I will draw my opponent as far to the right as I can and put the entire postwar order on the table”
like I pride myself on kontext and any given quarter of this election was pretty well precedented just papered over in history but all at once? that shit happens in myth
everyone who saw this coming even close was an intuitionist. they ignored polls and studies and numbers and listened to taxi drivers and anonymous commenters and nowhere randoms
Jeb is a third-year at Grand Old Academy, and many consider him the most likely to win this year’s debate tournament. Jeb is one of the co-RAs of Sunshine Dorm, along with Marco, his protegee. Everyone at the Academy thinks Jeb and Marco’s senpai/kohai relationship is the strongest they’ve seen.
Jeb is cheerful and optimistic, and wears his heart on his sleeve. This comes across as endearingly earnest to some, but to others, it’s just pathetic. It also makes him an easy target for bullies. Especially one bully in particular:
In addition to the relentless bullying he faces from Donald, Jeb has his own internal demons. His father and brother were star students at Grand Old Academy, both winning the debate tournament during their time at the school. Jeb feels pressure to live up to their legacy of greatness. He sometimes even worries that Marco is his only true friend, with everyone else only pretending to like him because of his family connections.
But despite his troubles (or maybe because of them), America can’t help but feel some sympathy towards Jeb. He’s like a sad puppy that just needs some love. Or maybe he’s more like a sea turtle (Jeb’s favorite animal): he has a soft, vulnerable underbelly and a defensive emotional shell, but a warm heart inside.
Will America try to find love with Jeb? And if she does, will he open himself up enough to trust her after being hurt by so many of the people he thought were his friends? There’s only one way to find out.
But despite his troubles (or maybe because of them), America can’t help but feel some sympathy towards Jeb. He’s like a sad puppy that just needs some love. Or maybe he’s more like a sea turtle (Jeb’s favorite animal): he has a soft, vulnerable underbelly and a defensive emotional shell, but a warm heart inside.
thank you to the 374 people who have tagged me in this
“This is the news of the millennium!” said the story
on WorldPoliticus.com. Citing unnamed FBI sources, it claimed Hillary
Clinton will be indicted in 2017 for crimes related to her email
scandal.
“Your Prayers Have Been Answered,” declared the headline.
For
Trump supporters, that certainly seemed to be the case. They helped the
baseless story generate over 140,000 shares, reactions, and comments on
Facebook.
Meanwhile, roughly 6,000 miles away in a small
Macedonian town, a young man watched as money began trickling into his
Google AdSense account.
Over the past year, the central Macedonian
town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush
as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites. These sites have
American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticUS.com,
TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and
USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump
content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US.
The
young Macedonians who run these sites don’t care about Donald Trump.
They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: as Facebook
regularly reveals in earnings reports,
a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The
fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of U.S. display advertising — a declining
market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several
teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they
learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics
stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on
Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that
caters to Trump supporters.
Trump’s just being a big baby, but it’s interesting how absolutely blasphemous not accepting an election result is in ‘mainstream’ opinion, it’s like the hallowed unquestionable ‘ground of all being’ of western liberal democracy
personally I’ve never accepted an election result in my life
“[Peter] Kim said audiences have gotten more abusive in the past year and has heard people use the ‘f’ word, alluding to a slur against gays.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was a man was sitting next to a Hispanic couple,” Kim said. “We asked a question to another lady, completely different lady, we said, ‘Hey, ma’am, what is something small that pisses you off, like getting stuck in traffic.‘”
The man, unsolicited, screamed out, ‘Sitting too close to a Mexican,’ while sitting next to a Hispanic couple.“
“In 44 years of this work, I’ve never seen anything like it. The audience seems to feel like they have license in very unpleasant ways,” he added. “Ninety-nine percent of people are cool. But the jerk who used to keep his mouth shut now feels like he has the right to say something.”
Second City’s longtime owner Andrew Alexander said he has noticed a
spike in inappropriate audience behavior in the last six or seven
months, which was not common before now. He said he “absolutely” blames
such a rise in racist attitudes to the recent political climate that
encourages “certain demographics on the Trump side” to voice their
opinions.
So under the influence of Donald Trump the comedy world is getting cruder, with more aggression and racial humor, driving out SJWs.
Right now he’s indoctrinating people that sexual assault is a joke charge that unworthy women - who should be mocked and punished - use to take down great men.
I’ll be damned, but dude’s actually delivering on the shitlord issues.
It’s impressive how we’re in the middle of a surreal morality fable that organically rises from and didactically critiques the state of our culture, strikes at exactly the right points to threaten the imminent collapse of the social order, and still manages to be completely absurd.
You find yourself with thoughts that start bad enough then halfway through turn into the weirdest shit, like “I’m worried there’ll be a push for mass purges that turn sexual assault into a politicized folk crime just when the police are alienated but frats are still fielding armed clown-hunting squads”
