Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

And now he's out at Breitbart, that shining beacon of ethical reporting.


I'm always skeptical of "I've known this guy for 20 years and he's a class act" type fluff pieces, but apparently McMaster is legit respected by both sides. Plus, he's a hell of a battlefield commander.

Well, looks like this is where the line is.

Alt-right/Conservatism loves racism, sexism, etc, but man, do they hate gay pedophilia more than they love those things.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2017 7:05am by Timelordwho

They don't love Russia. They love right wing authoritarianism. Russia is financing that right now, so...

Those comments are mostly An-Caps, not Alt-Reich. While they may occasionally look similar, they are about as close as lib dem and Stalinists.

Generally speaking, these are not people capable of finding age-appropriate female companionship via the traditional routes.

The ones who don't have money, at least.

Ross Douthat's column today did a decent job trying to define the Milo appeal. I think it's overbroad, especially as it relates to the traditional Religious Right, but it pretty accurately captures his appeal to the Return of Kings and Gamergate types of deplorables.

In simplest terms, the right just falls all over itself when it finds someone from a "liberal" demographic who espouses conservative views. A gay guy, a black guy, a young woman -- look, they're saying that bakers shouldn't have to make cakes for SSM cermonies, that reverse racism is real, that women should have to buy their own contraceptives! Where's your god now, liberals?! We must be right because out of umpity-million [demographic] people, we found one who agrees with us! Someday they'll find a pretty young photogenic black lesbian who is an avid Trump supporter and you'll think the Rapture is upon us.

Milo is something of a unique case in his championing of neckbeard causes (you can't get a date because of feminism, really!) but hardly a unique one.

I don't think the left is immune to this sort of thing but rather most major right-wing demographics already have enough representation on the left (working class, the wealthy, etc) that it's hard to make anyone a hero based on that criteria. Maybe the occasional religious type -- witness the leftward popularity of Pope Francis among people who ordinarily would dismiss his opinions as outdated religious babble. The Pontiff could probably get a book published, though. There's that one old liberal military guy who keeps finding his way into my Facebook feed. Without the military credentials I don't know that many people would care what he's saying.

Edit: Actually, an even more extreme example is the Left's tendency to get all jazzed up about any Republican politician who strays from conservative orthodoxy. "Hey, that guy said that maybe anthropogenic climate change is real! Boy, there's a Republican I could vote for!". Never mind that he voted to ban Planned Parenthood, visits a Whites Only golf course and wants people using food stamps to work 16 hours a week in the salt mines -- he said maybe we're partially responsible for something obvious so let's put that man on a stamp. That sort of nonsense tends to be fleeting though; they don't wind up in prominent positions in major partisan media outlets.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2017 11:18am by Jophiel

I always fill them up with cement before I dump them in the lake.

Oh, wait, we're not talking about ancaps anymore, nevermind.

So essentially their looking for a figurehead to validate the rejection of rigid identity politics (i.e. "if you're female, brown, poor or gay, you MUST vote for Democrats"). Why do they always have to pick complete cretins like Milo and David Clarke? Just for the sake of novelty, or is it the shock value of the completely bonkers things they say and support?

The pickings are slim among those demo groups who can also do public speaking/self promotion.

Beats me. I find it more amusing that the Clinton/Trump vote may be split 95/5 (or whatever, I'm too lazy to look) but that's still one guy in twenty out of a population of ~35 million. But people act like it's like finding a unicorn to say "This black guy says Trump is keen" and hang on to him throughout almost any nonsense. The importance they place on these people only amplifies the other stuff. Just go find a different black guy!