I think Trump winning is still the funniest short-term outcome. The Biden camp basically declared victory the moment Trump was convicted, and now literally a month later we’re talking about whether or not Biden should run at all. I never would have thought that a debate, of all things, would ever make any difference to this campaign, but here we are.

Long-term, though, I agree with you. We have no idea what kind of absurdity a second Biden term would bring. The immediate aftermath would be very funny, but that might just be the start. It’s no longer a joke/insult/cope to say that Biden is a doddering, incoherent old man. He is very clearly unable to perform the job at a sufficient level, and that will not change, yet he could very easily win and be the president for another four years! It was surreal when Trump was president, but he was still fully capable of being a public figure. If Biden wins, it’s going to be a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency start to finish.

The upside of this election is that no matter what happens, it’s not going to be good for American hegemony. Everyone top to bottom is going to look like a fucking moron in literally any scenario.

My framing is obviously biased against Trudeau, but even the most charitable reading of the facts looks really bad. The Trudeau campaign promised, verbatim, that the election would be “the last held under first past the post.” It was that explicit. The Liberals were then elected to a (somewhat unexpected) majority, meaning they had full authority to make changes to the system, or at the very least to put the question to a referendum. They assembled an all-party committee (including the minuscule Green Party) to form a recommendation on what system to use, and, after a perfectly reasonable and fulsome consultation process, they eventually came back with some version of mixed-member proportional representation. Trudeau then claimed there wasn’t enough consensus and abandoned the issue.

The “lack of consensus” was ostensibly about the exact type of proportional system to use, but an overwhelming majority of all stakeholders involved (party representatives, citizens, experts asked to advise, etc.) preferred some version of proportional representation. If we lived in a democracy, it would already be policy by now.

At the time I was Big Mad about that because I thought that proportional representation would have given a better chance of leftist policy being enacted. Since then I’ve kind of calmed down on it because I don’t think it would have made any material difference. The problem is liberal democracy itself, not the specific configuration thereof, and so at the end of the day it’s just one more example of the failure of liberal democracy, rather than a truly substantial missed opportunity.

Trudeau’s government did deliver on properly legalizing recreational cannabis, though. That’s something.

It’s worth mentioning that the reason Trudeau went back on the promise to change the system is because while the multiparty committee they struck to suggest a new system suggested actual proportional representation, system the Liberals wanted was a ranked ballot FPTP, which would have led to even more lopsided false majorities like this one.

These systems are all bullshit, but it bears repeating that Trudeau had no intention of switching to a more sane system, only to switching to a system that would be even more favorable to his own party as the milquetoast “center-left” option. The moment he found out that the committee made the recommendation to switch to a genuinely more representative system, he just went “lol no” and kept on governing because it turns out that campaign promises still don’t matter.

What they should do is put sunglasses on the president so that no one can tell if his eyes are open or not. Then, you have a couple of aides carry him around and move his arms and legs for him. Someone could talk to people as the president, but only from the other room or around a corner, maybe while he’s facing away from them sitting on a couch, that way they can’t see his lips and won’t know it’s not really him talking. Just spitballing here.

Biden-brain Rogan sitting across from Brendan Schaub while Jamie plays Cocomelon videos for them

Biden, and it’s not close. He’s had brain surgery, multiple COVID infections, obvious age-related cognitive decline, has been getting dosed with performance enhancing drugs for the last few years to keep him from shitting his pants in front of a crowd of people, etc. His brain is Swiss cheese.

Rogan doesn’t have any serious brain damage, he’s just a dumb guy who never had any reason to be smarter. If Biden had Rogan’s brain, he’d be doing fine. If Rogan had Biden’s brain, he wouldn’t even be able to do his podcast.

The sons debate! That’s a deep cut. Get the UFC to do it as a PPV event, Joe Rogan could be the moderator.

It’s so funny to read this stuff knowing that Hexbear existed for years as a separate community before any of these people knew what lemmy was. It’s such a classic stupid person move to assume that everything came into existence the moment you became aware of it, always reacting as if your personal experience represents the natural status quo.

“I didn’t ask what kind of Chinese you are, just answer the question.”

0 calls for genocide

Then what were they rallying for?

Nelson Mandela is a good historical figure to bring up in this context. Liberals love him for his rehabilitated image as a peace negotiator, but he didn’t go to prison for writing letters to the editor.

I think it's worth noting that, prior to the war, the default position was "There are definitely Nazis in Ukraine and we should be concerned about that." The position changed to "There are no Nazis in Ukraine" on the day the invasion started and people have been flailing around since trying to figure out how to reconcile that against years of generally accepted reporting on the rise of the Ukrainian far-right.