The interfaces are relatively modern too, with VGA and a PS/2 keyboard.

OH LOOK

Here are the main points covered in the transcript:

• Elliott County, Kentucky has unusual voting patterns, having voted for Democrats in every presidential election for 144 years straight until 2016.
• In 2016, Elliott County had the largest swing from Obama to Trump of any county in the US.
• Despite voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Elliott County voted for Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in recent elections.
• The county is rural, 99% white, with limited economic opportunities and a median household income that has barely changed in over 30 years.
• Historically, Democrats were seen as the party for working class and poor people, associated with unions and FDR’s New Deal programs.
• Over time, the Democratic Party shifted focus away from rural blue-collar voters towards white-collar suburban voters.
• Many residents express frustration with both parties and feel abandoned by politicians.
• Economic concerns, including stagnant wages and lack of local opportunities, are major issues for residents.
• Immigration and border security have become top concerns for some voters, despite the county’s distance from the southern border.
• Governor Andy Beshear won in Elliott County by focusing on local economic issues and distancing himself from the national Democratic brand.
• Some residents recognize they have more in common with working-class immigrants than with wealthy politicians.
• There’s a desire for working-class unity across political lines, but also a sense of grasping at any potential solution to local economic struggles.
• The influence of money in politics and the growing wealth of billionaires are seen as problems by some residents.
• Trump’s outsider status and promise to “drain the swamp” appealed to voters frustrated with traditional politicians.

This summary captures the key points about Elliott County’s unique political situation, the economic challenges facing its residents, and the complex factors influencing their voting patterns.

Emphasis is mine

I actually think the forgotten-ness of rural voters and their jobs and ability to make a living, by both sides of the aisle, is a hugely important story that almost no one in Washington understands, and specifically vis-a-vis why Trump got so much support. I don’t fully disagree with the thesis of the video and especially as it applied to Washington 8 years ago.

However

I like to talk about this explosive growth of working class wages over the last 4 years (nowhere near enough but also something worth giving credit to Biden for). I wondered if that applied also to Elliot County – I still don’t really know the answer, but I found this, and if you click back to 2020 the bars only go up to $60k and in 2022 they were going up to $95k so that tells you some level of something.

It’s also notable that I was able to predict what the piece would say without anything to go on other than educated guessing about what it might cover.

I would be curious to see something actually diving into how things have worked out (specifically taking Elliot County as an example) for the last few years, where that $95k actually came from, how common it is, how things worked out in 2023 and why, etc etc. Basically a real unbiased version of what this video is a somewhat blinkered form of, would be fuckin fascinating.

This isn’t it though

Here’s my prediction about “More Perfect Union”, just based on the channel name and the downvotes:

• Weirdly high production values
• Reasons why people don’t support Harris / Democrats and you shouldn’t either
• General leftist vibe but no particular leftist plans other than DEFINITELY NOT VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS
• No particular affiliation with any existing leftist organization or personality, just arrived from nowhere

I could be totally off base. That’s just my guessing prediction based on a learned level of suspicion that at this point verges on furious unfair cynical prejudice

Brb

Imagine how embarrassing it would have been if some of these executives who’ve been so aggressive about the importance of maintaining a good public image had their spouses or children die in a totally preventable inferno, or suffocate to death. Or have a long uncontrolled descent back to hit the ocean, dying on impact, knowing the whole way down what was about to happen. Like the Challenger crew. Or, if one of these Boeing executives had had their child on one of the 737MAXes that flew itself inexorably towards the ground and no survivors because of a minor sensor failure.

Super embarrassing, it would have been. Fuck em, the lot. Hope they have trouble with their careers.

It’s never aliens 😢

Also, export your DBs first, and snapshot the export instead of the raw DB files

borg

A lot of the best communities to be in have a barrier to entry

The community of pilots, the people who work in medicine or on floor X, the people who are proud of what they can accomplish and recognize automatically that the value of the interactions they have are not worthless.

Idk how you bring that to the online space. But it is missing, yes. I like this essay.

TIL that Strom Thurmond’s son was a US attorney

Look how happy

You need to read again the thing that was described, more carefully. Imagine for example that by “a page,” the person means a page called /juicy-content or something.

I know this because i wrote a page that IP bans anything that visits it, and l also put it as a not allowed spot in the robots.txt file.

This is fuckin GENIUS

Happy to see Perfect Dark so well represented - it was a hell of a hidden gem; it got sorta overshadowed by Goldeneye in the collective memory but it was one of those rare and shining examples of a sequel that perfectly added great and innovative next steps to the winning formula of the good first game without mucking up the core mechanics any.

Have fun with your propaganda, okay? I hope your disinformation videos go really, really well.

You almost sold me on the value of reading the whole transcript over, and seeing what I thought of it, to see if there’s something to what you were saying. I mean, that’s not at all what a “Gish Gallop” is, but you’re not wholly off base on it being maybe off base for me to read the bullet point transcript and assume that GPT got the whole thing perfectly right.

So, I read the first paragraph of the real transcript.

Way 2024 is an election year, and unfortunately for Biden, his approval rating is in the toilet. I won’t go through his whole track record, but just to refresh your memory, Biden promised a $15 minimum wage and didn’t deliver. He promised to enshrine the federal right to abortion and didn’t do that either. He promised to cancel about $10,000 of student debt per person and ultimately came in way under that number. And then, of course, you have the recent stuff with the southern border where Biden’s being far more xenophobic and draconian than most Republicans, even after calling Trump out for the same thing and promising to put a stop to the border wall, which he also didn’t do. You get the picture. But politicians never keep their promises, so no one’s really surprised. Even now, as we’re hearing the Biden campaign make basically the same promises, it’s because, trust me, this time is going to be totally different. They just needed more time. Now that he’s on the campaign trail, Biden is mostly pinning the blame for this sort of stuff on Republicans. It’s time to rally every last Democratic voter behind him, and with a solidly Republican House and a sort of blue Senate at the moment, the reason things like that border bill didn’t get through was because it was blocked by a strong Republican opposition. So it makes sense that Biden is really keen on making them look like obstructionists. But that really doesn’t explain all the broken promises.

I think we’re done here.

If you want, you could ask Linkerbaan what country they’re from and why they have so much specific interest in US politics. I sort of get why they interpret it as an attack, but it doesn’t really have to be – it’s more of just a curiosity question, and you can also sort of get, presumably, why someone might be interested in the answer to the question.

I really feel like you replied without watching the video

That is accurate yes. I’ve watched Second Thought videos before, and I’m familiar.

because none of that is from the video

The fuck it isn’t. I decided it was probably unfair for me to get into too much of a back and forth about the video without having any idea what’s in it, even though I am highly confident that it’s shit. So, I grabbed the transcript quickly and asked ChatGPT to summarize the whole thing in bullet points. That way I can still switch away quickly and hurt it with the algorithm.

Here’s what it came up with:

1. Introduction to Second Thought: The channel is 100% viewer-funded, encouraging support through Patreon.
2. 2024 Election and Biden’s Approval Rating: Biden’s approval rating is very low, and his failure to fulfill several key promises like the $15 minimum wage, federal right to abortion, and significant student debt cancellation is highlighted.
3. Broken Promises and Blame on Republicans: Despite having a Democratic majority for two years, Biden blames Republican obstruction for his unfulfilled promises.
4. Democratic Control and Disappointments: Even with control of the presidency, Senate, and House in 2021, Democrats failed to deliver on progressive promises, leading to disappointment among voters.

Bullshit. The student debt cancellation in particular is transparently false to blame on Biden since he tried to do much more than the rest of the system (the Supreme Court in particular) allowed him to do.

I listed some key accomplishments above. I actually am fairly content with how accurately I guessed what kind of transparent bullshit and Biden-blaming and failing to recognize important stuff he actually did accomplish, was in this video.

Now it gets interesting:

5. Obstructionist Democrats: The video mentions the recurring issue of Democratic senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema obstructing progressive legislation, drawing parallels with past figures like Joe Lieberman.
6. Lobbying Influence: Lobbying and corporate donations are identified as major influences on conservative Democrats, who often block progressive policies due to financial incentives.
7. Revolving Door and Career Incentives: The potential for lucrative lobbying jobs post-politics motivates some Democrats to obstruct progressive legislation to stay in the good graces of corporate donors.

If this was the core of the video, it’d be grand. “How do we get rid of the Manchins of the world” sounds great. “How do we blame Biden for anything and make sure we don’t vote for Democrats” is guaranteed to make things worse. Like I say, I’m actually fairly happy with how well I was able to determine what was in the video just from the thumbnail, title, and what channel it’s from.

8. No Labels Organization: Founded in 2010, No Labels aims to bring together centrists and moderates, often funded by Republican donors, to undermine progressive candidates.
9. Democratic Leadership’s Role: Democratic leadership actively supports centrist candidates who obstruct progressive policies, revealing a strategy to maintain corporate support while appearing progressive.
10. Managed Democracy Concept: The thesis borrows from Sheldon Wolin’s “Democracy Inc.”, arguing that gridlock and obstruction are intentional to prevent majority rule and maintain corporate influence.

Yeah. More good stuff. It’s a big problem. Let me guess - the solution is not to vote for Biden Harris.

11. Systemic Gridlock: The design of the American political system, with its gridlocked Congress, ensures that corporate interests are prioritized over majority rule.
12. Democrats’ Dual Strategy: To remain in power, Democrats need to appear progressive while catering to corporate interests, resulting in a strategy of controlled obstruction by a few key figures.
13. Electoral Politics and Voter Demobilization: Elections focus on mobilizing voters with progressive rhetoric, but post-election, corporate interests take precedence, leading to voter disillusionment.

Yeah. All of this stuff is pretty bad.

Honestly? If this video was being made in 1995 or 2004, it’d be great. Since then we’ve moved on to an actually progressive Democrat in the White House, against all fuckin odds, and the Republicans have moved on to actually wanting to shoot all the Democrats, let alone what they want to do to the socialists.

14. Long-term Implications: The video concludes that radical change in the US will not come from the Democratic Party but from organized mass movements, as the party is too entrenched in corporate interests.

Accurate yes

15. Support and Community Engagement: The video ends by promoting its Patreon and Discord community, emphasizing the importance of viewer support for independent, principled socialist content

Yawn

Because it is propaganda shit

Promoting socialism is fine. “Promoting” socialism by kneecapping Democrats, airing “pro socialism” content which will have as its sole and only impact in the actual real world, to give aid and comfort to people who are actually trying to destroy socialism (like, very literally, in the sense of shooting socialists with real bullets), and cloaking in it this veneer of “oh yeah it makes perfect sense because the opponents of the socialism-shooters aren’t doing ENOUGH and so it makes total sense to focus energy on damaging them, instead of on, idk, promoting socialism and socialist outcomes,” is less fine.

Hope this helps explain the difference

Totally normal.

If I went into a Brazilian political forum and was super enthusiastic about telling the Brazilians who they should be voting for, and then after I made it sort of a part time job for a while, someone realized that I don’t speak Portuguese and asked hey what’s up with that, where are you from, and I said not, oh my wife is from Brazil so I’m into it, or yeah I moved here I’m living in Rio for the year for work but I haven’t learned, or none of your business why but yes it’s of interest to me, but HOW DARE YOU AD HOMINEM ME and receive it as an attack… yeah that would be super normal. Totally ordinary stuff.

Don’t forget getting CIA assets killed by the dozens and regularly shitting on himself

Tell you what, set me up so I can talk to the authors; they can raise their “debunkings” and I can respond in detail, and they’re okay publishing that alongside their misinformation. If having your world views challenged can be a two way street, then I’m so down.

If it is just me being required to give views to what I am highly confident is a bunch of bullshit trying to ruin the democracy in a country I care about, then no, I think I will not.

You’re not from the US, correct? I didn’t see you answer the guy who asked who it was that taught you to write decimal points to separate thousands groupings when writing a dollar amount.