You can get an idea of the mental state of Europeans during the Dark Ages by thinking what life would be like if only the most superstitious and ignorant people survived another world war to live on among the ruins of our cities, dams, all our proud structures. Another way of visualizing it would be to imagine what people would be like if the cultured continue to have smaller and smaller families while the hopelessly ignorant, the morons, the heredity-tainted, the people most ridden with inherited diseases and most prone to crime, continue to have large families and finally almost supplant the healthier stock. Unless legislation is passed to support rather than suppress birth control and we apply eugenics to mankind, we are headed straight for dark ages for intellect darker than were the so-called Dark Ages.

The "Dark Ages" were like the movie Idiocracy. At least according to the article "What Made the Dark Ages Dark?" in the July 10 1933 issue of Unity, a Unitarian periodical.

"smarmy asshole about everything"

I just assumed you Americans love that character and that's why he's the protagonist in all your comedies.

My perception is that it's simply not possible to negotiate with the current US administration. Sign a deal and six months later Trump will tear it up claiming that it was a "terrible deal" and that whoever signed it was an "idiot".

The Columbine massacre was on this date in 1999. Instead of energizing our country to get gun violence under control, it kicked off a new normal. One of the best explanations ever of journalism's destructive impact on mass shootings came from Roger Ebert in his review of Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant.”

Both concepts fit well with apocalypticism, which maintains that the world is a battleground between cosmic forces of Good and Evil and their human followers. Evil is currently winning but soon there will be a major turnaround and Good will triumph. QAnon combines all three ideas.

There's a strong similarity between conspiracism and populism. The former is the idea that a small group of evil elites are secretly conspiring to cause harm. The latter employs rhetoric that distinguishes between an evil elite and a good "The People". It's almost the same idea.

Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.

“I used to enjoy Christianity before it became woke.”

Frankly, if the immiseration caused by capitalism wasn't making *anyone* happy, not even billionaires, you'd have to start seriously questioning the point of it all.

"Whatever we think of: if we think of J Edgar Hoover, J Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us, okay? So empty your heads. Empty your heads, don’t think of anything."

Haven't they all now thought of J Edgar Hoover, thanks to Venkman's example?

That goes to show how good he is at crime. Unlike Trump he’s never been caught.

mark my words: they are going to do this for Trump (and if anything, doing it for Trump will be an easier task for any LLM) as a means of granting him eternal life as a simulacrum and they will have it ready roll out before the bastard’s body is cold

By "centrist" I think Rogan means "believes all conspiracy theories, both left and right wing."

Rare Homer win.

Boston Globe mock front page from April 9, 2016. Date says April 9, 2017, with giant headline “DEPORTATIONS TO BEGIN” and “Markets sink as trade war looms.”

Ten years ago today, in April 2016, the Boston Globe printed a satirical front page imagining a future Trump administration. The page was called "alarmist," "hyperbolic," "dystopian." But we’ve put up with so much since then it now looks like . . . a slow Thursday?

As the British politician Ernest Bevin said of the atomic bomb in 1946, "We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it."

(watching a movie where a character announces that he will destroy a city if they don't meet his specific demands by a certain deadline)

oh that's probably the good guy in this movie

"Orange man bad" remains the single most useful rule of politics in the last ten years.

We know that Trump's easily manipulated. Such diverse figures as Zohran Mamdani, Vladimir Putin, and Laura Loomer have proven capable of it. So it's perfectly plausible that Netanyahu could also do so.

We don't really have the same celebrity-to-leader pipeline in the UK as you do in the US.

The closest example is probably Katie Hopkins. She got her start as a contestant on the UK version of The Apprentice and after that made a career as a far right troll.

To repulse them so much they'll never want to invade us.

Human resources meme. Handsome man: Lo now your Grace shall see what a juggler can doo, if he be his craftes maister Unattractive man: Fair is foul, and foul is fair; / Hover through the fog and filthy air.

What woondering and admiration was there at Brandon the juggler, who painted on a wall the picture of a dove, and seeing a pigeon sitting on the top of a house, said to the king ; Lo now your Grace shall see what a juggler can doo, if he be his craftes maister ; and then pricked the picture with a knife so hard and so often, and with so effectuall words, as the pigeon fell downe from the top of the house starke dead. I need not write anie further circumstance to shew how the matter was taken, what woondering was thereat, how he was prohibited to use that feat anie further, least he should emploie it in anie other kind of murther ; as though he, whose picture so ever he had pricked, must needs have died, and so the life of all men in the hands of a juggler : as is now supposed to be in the hands and willes of witches. This storie is, untill the dale of the writing hereof, in fresh remembrance, & of the most part beleeved as canonicall, as are all the fables of witches : but when you

are taught the feate or sleight (the secrecie and sorcerie of the matter being bewraied, and discovered) you will thinke it a mockerie, and a simple illusion. To interpret unto you the revelation of this mysterie ; so it is, that the poore pigeon was before in the hands of the juggler,/ into whome he had thrust a dramme of Nux vomica., or some other such poison, which to the nature of the bird was so extreame a venome, as after the receipt thereof it could not live above the space of halfe an houre, and being let lose after the medicine ministred, she alwaies resorted to the top of the next house : which she will the rather doo, if there be anie pigeons alreadie sitting there, and (as it is alreadie said) after a short space falleth downe, either Starke dead, or greatlie astonnied. But in the meane time the juggler useth words of art, partlie to protract the time, and partlie to gaine credit and admiration of the beholders. If this or the like feate should be done by an old woman, everie bodie would crie out for fier and faggot to burne the witch./

“One of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World” is carnival barker shit. As you say, that’s a role Trump has always performed.

The plot of the new Supergirl movie will probably be based on this issue.

The far right are sincerely concerned about birth rates and marriage. They want to increase the number of whites relative to non-whites. Their mechanism for achieving this is to turn white women into baby factories. Marriage coerces women into this role. The sexism and racism are interconnected.

He's a boil on the arse of the body politic.

I've been feeling that way for a long time. So sick of the sight and sound of him.

It's a very strong juxtaposition. I think a lot of people are feeling the same way.

I blame REH, for giving Conan radar sense.

"Conan could see in the dark no better than she, but he possessed a sort of instinct that made his course unerring." - Red Nails

"The Cimmerian, with the unerring instinct of the barbarian, had killed his man in the darkness" - The Tower of the Elephant

It's a difficult transition to make. Prior to Trump, "President of the US says X" was a legitimate news story. Now it isn't because Trump's words carry no weight whatsoever.