this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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To be fair, we have a former actor and comedian as the president. The difference is he isn't a fascist piece of human garbage, not so much in the career paths.
There's a timeline where Jon Stewart is POTUS and he and Zelensky have already put Putin where he belongs in the Hague.
From what I've read, Zelensky as comedian made intelligent political and anti corruption criticism. Making jokes about the bad things in life, highlighting them, setting the stage for something being done about those problems. Broader than his on screen personality, he had middle class beginnings and on the back of his comedy work, he build a successful career as TV producer/executive. You probably know more about this than I do.
Trump as TV personality looked more like the most clueless person in the room, while all the actual work was done by others behind the scenes. No intelligence, no social commentary. Before his role in the apprentice, Trump had started his business career as a Nepo baby, and as a businessman he had failed every venture that he had tried, each time leaving a bloodbath of unpaid bills behind, a reverse Midas. And once his face was known from TV, he started with large scale scams like Trump University.
Those are 2 very different career paths.
Yeah it's the difference between John Stewart and Steve Harvey
Man, I fucking hate Steve Harvey. He's such a piece of shit.
I ponder that sometimes. I wonder if a comedian has made such a solid leader because a comedian's role to society is to speak truths that go unheard, and to make unbearable times bearable. I find myself questioning if every leader shouldn't be a comedian
Al Franken was an amazing senator and I would abso-fucking-loutely support him running for president. On the other hand, Joe Rogan is also considered a comedian 🤮
Reminds me of this character in Watchmen. Calls himself the Comedian, but never makes "jokes" in a classical sense. He is cruel, overly patriotic, violent against protesters, seems to enjoy massacres in Vietnam. Only one other person understands that he is actually against these things and tries to show them this hyperbolic mirror of their own totalitarian views. But everybody else doesn't understand it, they take it face value and admire his "patriotism". He never breaks role until the last moment (or even then just in the movie?).
"But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream?"
"It came true. You're lookin' at it.”
as i recall the characters who get "the joke" are the comedian, rorschach, ozymandias, and dr manhatten, each of whom respond to the trauma of getting the joke entirely differently. the comedian embraces it, laughs at it, lets it consume him. basically decides "the world is fucked up, i might as well personally have fun." i don't recall him ever showing any sympathy towards the world. his terrible actions are ultimately justified by that he is the stand-in for captain america: his violence is government backed. the crucial difference between captain america and the comedian is that captain america represents what america could and should be, a future for us to work towards, whereas the comedian represents what america is, a present for us to move away from. i think that aspect is a very clever piece of writing by alan moore as the time when he was creating the watchmen was very politically different from when jack kirby was creating captain america. i've been thinking a lot lately about how incredible jack kirby's explorations of fascism, militarism, and jewish identity are all through his career. i think alan moore did jack kirby justice in taking a lot of captain america's tropes and superimposing them onto a fascist. i think jack kirby did an incredible job of showing us the lunacy of nazis in his super villains (something i didn't give him enough credit for until this year when i saw how these freaks operate when the mask of respectability is removed), but by alan moore's time, the value of an aspirational symbol for what america could be was diminished as america turned more and more fascist, making super imposing captain america's tropes onto a fascist felt uncomfortable and upsetting. but also, having now seen trump voters up close and personal, it's incredibly accurate to the mindset. both jack kirdy and alan moore did an incredible job depicting fascism in the hopes we the people would see their work and grow and change.
unfortunately not enough of us did
Holy shit. I'm wasting my time on YouTubers' analyses of media.. and apparently also on reading Watchmen 3x and watching every film and show and trying to understand it. You're brilliant.
i have the advantage over a lot of these media analysts that: i'm old. i was there for the comics industry bubble. i was there before comic book movies were respected. i was there before we got tired of every movie and tv show being part of the mcu.
i'm also a gigantic nerd. i've been posting online since the 90s. i joined twitter when it was an experiment to see what would happen if people could post to the internet without an internet connected device. i was using linux in 2002.
as such, a deep dive into these comic book artists, what they thought, and what their backgrounds were has given me some insights about how the development of comic books as an artistic medium has a lot of parallels to other countercultural movements, like hip hop. comic books are a community. the artists who make them are all in a conversation with eachother about what right and wrong is as they try to influence us, the readers. it's no coincidence that the origins of both DC and Marvel are deeply rooted in the production of military propaganda. these were all people who knew about propaganda, media, and message dissemination who wanted to use those skills to influence the public.
Entirely Unironically:
AOC for Pres, Jon Stewart for Vice Pres, 2028.
This campaign would stand a chance at actually winning.
AOC and Stewart are both well known, basically celebrities.
AOC is actually capable of recreating the mix of genuine charisma combined with well articulated, meaningful actual policy points that Obama did in 07.
Jon Stewart is obviously no stranger to politics, and is possibly the literally ideal 'attack dog' that the VP usually plays in a campaign, for an anti corporate / billionaire campaign.
Let AOC be as principled and erudite as JFK and Stewart be as cutting and 'no bullshit' as Lyndon Jonhson.
...
Are either of them perfect?
No.
Are they basically the best possible options?
Well, Bernie is awesome, but he's too old.
Absolutely utilize him as much as possible during the campaign, be at every rally, fucking have him be the head of a leftist version of what Elon is, god knows by the time 2028 rolls around, the executive will have formally and informally assumed way too much power.
Put Bernie in charge of purging the Trump/Elon pukes, directing the revokation or countermanding of everyone of Trump's executive orders, undoing Citizens United, and reassembling the checks and balances.
...
Other than that... are any other democrats or leftists anywhere near as well known and widely, generally liked by non fascists? Who aren't bought and paid for by corpos?
Some surveys seem to support that this direction could have worked. As a German, I supported the course of the Democrats to go with a presidential candidate and policies that democratic conservatives could get behind. About half of the voters in the US want less democracy, more totalitarianism. For a chance to stop Trump, it seemed reasonable just get all supporters of freedom and democracy behind a single candidate. But maybe I was wrong.
I have my doubts that there will be an election in 2028.
Apparently a recent poll said 71% of Trump voters are against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (food benefits for very poor Americans).
So... that would mean more than 2/3 of Trump voters are astonishingly stupid, ignorant, easily swayed into a cult, as these cuts were very obviously the intent of Trump, and outright stated goals of Project 2025, which was created almost entirely by former Trump administration staff.
... But, that makes sense, as the average adult American literacy level is that of a 5th grader (10yo to 11yo), and 21% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, with literacy skills at or below a 2nd grade level (7yo to 8yo).
As do I.
Krasnov 2028?
Asteroid YR4 2028.
Redirect! Rebuild!
rofl
Ya know, this sounds downright plausible. More so than any other ticket I can imagine anyway, middle-of-the-road corporate democrats sure are played out, but hey, from what I understand the Dems literally argued after the election about whether they didn't go left enough or didn't go "center" enough, so.
I think it might be part that and part the fact that the war happened in the first place. Like, before the full scale invasion, he really wasn't that remarkable. But I guess sometimes hard times do actually make strong men.
Yeah but plenty of leaders have been absolute shit under pressure is kind of my point
The last supposedly Ukrainian person I talked to here was very anti Zelenskyy and wanted him to just lay down arms. What's your opinion on the matter? Do you want your country to keep fighting? Do you qualify for the draft yourself?
Those seem to be quite loaded questions.
I myself would be neither for nor against Zelenskyy, if it was peace time. Normally, there would have been elections last year, so there would be a non zero chance we would have had a different president already, if not for the war. But, since that's legally not possible right now, here we are, and I'm not about to go protest in the streets demanding to have elections as soon as possible.
That said, I am very much against being occupied and invaded. While also not willing to be drafted myself, since I know I would be quite useless on the battlefield. So the best I can do right now (to help in the war, that is) is to keep donating money for the equipment for our army.
I recognize I'm being hypocritical, since I wish to be protected without having the resolve to enlist myself. But I also recognize that, were I to enlist, my value in actually protecting Ukrainian lives would be very low.
Given the current state of Ukraine as a going concern, I can't imagine anyone seriously bragging about their vote for Zelenskyy.
Gave us a good hard look at what the Jon Stewart Presidency would have looked like.
Three successful years of holding their own against everything Russia can throw at them? I'd say that's freakin' amazing and a ringing endorsement of Zelenskyy's leadership!
Is that what the Russian/Ukraine front looks like to you? Seems like they've been feeding their young men into a meat grinder so they can lose hundreds of miles of territory on a basket of false promises from DC. They aren't holding their own, they're being slaughtered at the speed of Russian artillery.
Tom Massie: Washington purposely blacking out Ukraine casualty data
...
They still have national sovereignty, a society, a culture, and representation in government. Damn right they are succeeding!
They don't. They're overdue for elections. Their borders are blown. Their population is a diaspora when it isn't being press ganged onto the front lines. Their territory is being auctioned off to the lowest bidder.
Zelenskyy's refused to stand for reelection in no small part because he knows how wildly unpopular he has become.
You're picking out negative things (and frankly making up others) but overlooking the most obvious and important positive. There's no russian lapdog running the government of Ukraine and the people are still Ukrainian. The people of Ukraine kicked out the last Putin lap dog and they have no desire for another and their actions to-date are still in effect. If the people of Ukraine wanted to be russian, they could be in a a fraction of a second.
They continue to choose NOT to be and have done so for more than 3 years now. That is proof positive of continued success.
Ah yes, because clearly Zelenskyy is solely to blame for the current state of Ukraine. I guess he's mind controlling half of the world leaders simultaneously and playing 5D chess with everyone.
One would think you're his biggest fan the way you're giving him credit for everything that's happening in the world.
Idk about blame, he does seem to do the best job I have ever seen though, and also he seems to have morals and empathy, something I have never seen in any politician in a long time
Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan. Obviously, nobody is responsible for Ukraine except the villainous ork monster Vladimir Putin and his tribe of savages.
Zelenskyy certainly didn't commit to an escalation in the conflict that his country couldn't handle or trust a bunch of NATO state department officials who were more interested in using Ukraine for weapons testing than inclusion in a European commons. And how could any conscript forced up to the front lines because he couldn't bribe his commanding officer have anything to complain about in how Zelenskyy's military leadership has run the war.
Is there any tyrant I haven't loved? Muammar Gaddafi? Saddam Hussein? Ruhollah Khomeini? Daniel Ortega? Jacobo Árbenz?
You'd almost think I'm against these horrifying pointless military conflicts on principle.
Seeing as you're against military conflicts (all of which are pointless and horrifying, on that I agree), maybe that anger should be directed against the person who actually started the full scale invasion. Unless you're implying that Zelenskyy "escalated" the war by not immediately surrendering to Putin.
To what end? To further justify another three years of slaughter?
Zelenskyy fucked up by escalating the border conflict with Russia. Putin fucked up by charging into a quagmire. Western Europe piled in to squander billions on slaughter. Ukraine took its pound of flesh through 2022 and had an opportunity to sue for peace, end the conflict, and secure its sovereignty, but backed down when Blinken scuttled the deal. And then we spent the next two years accomplishing nothing but nightmare after nightmare.
At every point, every state actor involved decided the best response to the situation was to double-down. And what did it win them? Americans lost their civil government. Ukraine lost the Donbas and its soveriengty. Russia lost hundreds of thousands of its young people. Germany lost its cheap energy and may lose its liberal governance.
"Maybe blame the guy who started it!" gets you nothing. Its just another excuse to extend the conflict. To double down. To insist we need another year of butchery in Eastern Europe.
End the fucking war. You don't have to like the guy on the other side of the table to do the right thing.
So... let's appease the aggressor, yeah? By that logic, every war ever should have ended instantly by the defending side surrendering.
Yes, I'm "blaming the guy who started it" because he's also the guy who can end it. Putin can literally end the war with one order. But he will not, because he's not looking for a peace deal. He's looking for annihilation, and that has been the case since before 2022.
Your victim blaming logic must have required some astonishing mental gymnastics to pull through. It must be quite comforting to live in the world where you can stop wars by just asking the people who are launching missiles at your cities to pretty please stop.
Where would we be if the Germans, the Brits, and the Russians hadn't stood their ground in 1914? I'm so glad nobody surrendered until 17 million people had been slaughtered. And without that glorious cacophony of violence, who would have so resented their defeat as to kick off WW2 two decades later?
Christ, can you even imagine what kind of hellscape we'd be living in if the 30 Years War had only lasted two weeks? Or the Seven Years War hadn't burned down half of French Canada? Or the French had bowed out of Vietnam gracefully rather than handing the baton to the Japanese and then the Americans over the next fifty years? What kind of nightmare would we live in if the KMT and the Imperial Japanese hadn't torn Korea to shreds?
You're so fucking right. What we need is more wars! Qatar and Saudi Arabia should start bombing each other. Iran and Israel need to open fire. How long can the good people along the US/Mexico border endure this agonizing peace?
Its so incredibly simple to say "Stop killing people". Sue for peace at the first opportunity. End the violence as soon as possible. Quit building all these fucking war machines to begin with, while you're at it. The logic is so straightforward and crystal clear. Go back to 2021 and negotiate a ceasefire on day one. The peace dividends alone will pay for whatever wrongs you feel one side or the other have inflicted.
Coming from a "Poland and the Soviet Union should have just surrendered! 😭" Nazi sympathizer, lmao.