It really isn't. The Dark Brandon joke was based on the contrast between Biden's public persona (bumbling old man) and the exaggerated cartoon version of Dark Brandon. This is intentional framing of themselves as villainous.
Also, the dark Brandon thing was a right wing meme that got co-opted. It's still the same dumb guys wanting a Snyder cut of everything, that specific instance just turned into a parody version.
The joke behind Dark Brandon was that the right wing was talking about him like he was an iron fisted Marxist when he was very obviously an old as shit grandpa. Stuff like this and the new Trump portrait isn’t ironic, they genuinely believe it
You're probably right on the money. Years ago they introduced "kayfabe" into politics from wrestling. It's since been flanderized, hyperbolized, and infiltrated by people who hold those ironic beliefs genuinely. We've seen the process happen to lots of groups before, especially online.
the bizarre thing is that no one talked about what he was actually saying! it was just the fucking ads. he was, like, "i will bathe in the blood of every FBI agent and eat the hearts of the Intelligence Committee," and the NYT would have something about his "occasionally dark rhetoric."
I watched The Apprentice (the biopic not the show) last night and something about seeing him humanized on screen made it click for me exactly how truly evil he really is. Not that I didn't know, but like, evil in a human sense is harder to gaze at than evil in an abstract one.
That film is honestly must-see for everyone wanting to make sense of our current moment—that scene where he and Ivana are standing in the unfinished Manhattan apartment highrise, his big enormous flagship building—that’s the whole enchilada. The man completes nothing.
It's been a striking feature of Trump's since the beginning. He never really tries to claim that he's, y'know, good? Virtuous? It's genuinely really weird!
being able to bring the dynamic of abusive relationships to the parasocial space and mass politics is some pretty cool social technology. Sorta like inventing an anti-gravity ray.
Right. Dubya is NOT a good person but it's important to him to think of himself as a good person. Hearing someone who just..... doesn't aspire to that, even a little, is mind-breaking
if anything his pitch is basically triumphant evil and "I'll be YOUR scummy crook, and you will be enriched by proxy by my corruption." No aspirations of virtue, just "American carnage" and the triumph of scams and rapacious predation.
They all have the cartoonishly grotesque look and character of the villains in a Frank Miller Sin City comic. Hell, just about every photo of RFK jr looks like a 90s era Miller drawing.
it's the same impulse that has cops with punisher decals on everything. they think they are dark antiheroes willing to Do The Things That Need To Be Done Because Weak Men Are Too Afraid.
Or at least they want you to think that. I'd hope most of them at least know it's just an excuse for corruption, but then again the mind is far too good at lying to itself.
Historically speaking, The shelf life of a Kennedy elected into position isn't very long. Problem is, how much damage can he do before he catches a case of the "back, and to the left" bug that seems to plague his bloodline.
My brother was writing about the dangers of RFK Jr. years ago, when tfg was randomly appearing on talk shows with this shit. Nobody listened because they thought the guy was a crazy crank. Then Covid.
They’re the sort of people who failed high school English and believe subtext doesn’t exist. Hence them uncritically clinging on to the surface level cool aesthetics of evil
For all intents and purposes this guy's biography points out he's an actual sadist, like a real life character from a de Sade novel, and he is in fact turning a whole country into a terrarium producing novel viruses and diseases. So, it fits.
Nah, he should be some kind of "living zombie", that widespread antivax conspiracy theories to make more people sick so they could become part of his undead army
They know they're basically the "evil crew taking over the wrestling federation" for a fun plotline before the good guys come back. The only difference is this isn't a fun plot and the good guys aren't coming back
Remember that NY Young Republicans Club video where they sampled Bane and ranted into the camera about total war? Our enemies are villains aping supervillains, losers posturing about strength and significance they can't even dream of knowing
the people staffing the current administration have a great deal more in common with 4chan mass shooters than with any of the people whose lives they're gleefully destroying
The people staffing the current administration are at most one step removed from Terrorgram Saints culture and have either unironically prayed or masturbated to spree killers
I posted on another thread that I was considering reaching out to Alcor to see if I could enter Cryosleep like now vs when I die of some preventable illness in the worst timeline ever. 100 years from now might be so bad unless I wake up in Gilead.
It was the best, most effective picture of Biden. It made Biden look strong, it was shared everywhere, especially by the right. Biden should've done more staging that made him look strong, pissed and in charge. Their faux outrage over something that projects strength is exactly what you want.
It's a simple confusion of evil and strong. Luckily for us, being evil has no relation to strong, which means we on the non-evil side still stand a chance. However, how many lives they will take is up to us, last time it was 75 million.
Vice Signaling has been the go-to for these freaks since at least GW. I really feel the era where the Hummer H3 was popular was the first real sign that many, many people in the country were openly fascist freaks.
I have made this point before, but, a number of the folks driving this administration grew up as "nerds," reading speculative & science fiction. They, unfortunately, gravitated toward sympathy for the "bullied" antagonists who sought to exert power over the protagonists👍 https://bsky.app/profile/jackscellphone.bsky.social/post/3lhzvfwo7622z
You look at the domestic propaganda of basically every 20th century totalitarian monster from Hitler/Stalin/Mao to the Kims etc etc and it’s almost all Shiny Happy People “kindly patriarch for the living nation and people” shit. But they weren’t Terminally Online Edgelords like these freaks.
Wasn't it Hugo Boss that designed uniforms for the SS?
Seems to me these guys' main weakness is taking everything too far, and they are really dialed in to the Hitler/Marcos/Pinochet Formula, whether they admit it or not. So expect all the fixins.
I believed this for a long time but it's not exactly true -- Hugo Boss wasn't a designer, he was just one of several clothing factory owners who made uniforms for the Nazi military according to their specifications. It was his son who turned it into a fashion company, after Hugo's death.
(This isn't excusing Hugo Boss at all, he was a Nazi who used slave labor. But the infamous SS uniform was designed by two SS members, as was most Nazi iconography.)
Well... Brands that serve the Rich here and now, are they shrinking away from lucrative government contracts because T47 might turn out to be another Hitler?
If they are, they are quiet about it.
Thank you for straightening that out! I had heard, and as you say there is a sort of connection, but it's a long way from him designing those uniforms.
Honestly, I think the adoption of stereotypical cinematic aesthetic of evil is a combination of their inherent ignorance - they don't understand imagery or metaphor - plus immaturity. When I taught junior high, kids LOVED the aesthetics of evil, could not get enough of it, but didn't understand it.
I see now that you basically said the same thing already with the hilarious and upsetting Peter Thiel "why can't we be elves?" quote, which means Thiel at least is actually MUCH WORSE in this regard than I realized, and I had very low expectations already
Imagine if (mostly the white) American dads taught boys how to be men.
This fully ignorant pseudo-masculinity that’s defining about four living generations of (mostly white) men is just gross and the result is America is now a rogue state.
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https://i.pinimg.com/originals/80/22/08/8022084e6b9f699e4f4ec02ddb21166d.jpg
Once you have no middle ground. Then it's war.
Destroying your enemy is the end goal. "Owing the libs"
I’m pretty sure that’s actually the mentality at play here. They legit think this shit makes them look cool and tough.
Dude is a walking advertisement for why vaccines are important.
To borrow a line from the Geto Boys, “Real gangstas don't flex nuts, cause real gangstas know they got em”.
Absolutely no pretense of like, "here's our vision for the common good of the country." It's extremely weird!
not new stuff, but it is cultural where this stuff was not tolerated well around the taboo
( makes me feel like pulling at my skin )
It's immensely fucked up
Hair-splitting, I know, but I feel like it matters that no one actually voted for this fucking guy.
Because I don't want to imagine Batman gargling vinegar for years.
But atleast he has the same amount of family still talking to him
You might be right re: de Sade. Maybe killing things is the only way he can cum. Approaching the only logical explanation.
Picture: next edition of Saw
Yeah, it sounds crazy but then again, there's tons of crazy going on. Plenty enough for several universes, at least.
They just think money will insulate them from consequences. It won’t.
Just because it was thought up by von Clausewitz, who was German, doesn’t make it a Nazi concept.
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/white-nationalists-other-republicans-brace-total-war/
I also remember the time Ted Cruz tried to explain Luke Skywalker's motivation to *checks notes* Mark Hamill.
But since their guys are actually evil, it just comes across as deeply weird
https://bsky.app/profile/jackscellphone.bsky.social/post/3lhzvfwo7622z
Fiction has to be believable.
Seems to me these guys' main weakness is taking everything too far, and they are really dialed in to the Hitler/Marcos/Pinochet Formula, whether they admit it or not. So expect all the fixins.
If they are, they are quiet about it.
This fully ignorant pseudo-masculinity that’s defining about four living generations of (mostly white) men is just gross and the result is America is now a rogue state.
Little boys, all of them.