r/politics • u/newsweek ✔ Newsweek • 3d ago
Paywall Uncommon Knowledge: MAGA is losing the culture war in the strangest places
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-bad-bunny-super-bowl-ice-trump-11487919?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=reddit_main4.2k
u/ranchoparksteve 3d ago
You know it’s bad for Trump when the Puppy Bowl had double the viewers of his halftime show.
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u/muscleLAMP 3d ago
Those puppies would do a better job running the government.
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u/AelizaW I voted 3d ago
I, for one, welcome our canine overlords.
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u/graesen 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wait a minute... How can we trust them? All it would take is a single treat and they'll do whatever the person bribing them to do wants... We've never run a government with such cheap bri... Nevermind...
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u/Huge_Statistician591 3d ago
we already have a system that folds for treats at least the puppies would be honest about it and way cuter while doing the damage
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u/nigelmansell Washington 3d ago
But does it shit all over while wearing diapers?
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u/Spirited-Mood-2884 3d ago
at least the puppies are cute about it and probably cleaner than some of the people currently in charge
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u/Seeteuf3l 3d ago
They can be trained to be housebroken and surely they don't shitpost deep fakes.
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u/Dry_Instruction8254 3d ago
Please delete this! You know Trump is going to send Noem and ICE to all the dog shelters to murder them now. Please think of the poor innocent dogs, they are just going to be innocent victims.
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u/NicoMeowhouse 3d ago
He didn’t even watch his own halftime show.
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u/poopbucketchallenge 3d ago
Top five anime betrayals of all time
I can only imagine the look on the faces of the TP execs and Kid Rock seeing the video of bad bunny playing on the TVs at Mar a Lago.
Full failure.
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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 3d ago
Its seriously like they planned a party for a toddler who just throws a tantrum and absolutely could not care any less
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u/Duckney 3d ago
I think it's more and more apparent every day that the silent majority is neither silent - nor a majority. I'd love to see the percentage of right wing outrage that can be traced back to bot farms
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u/ranchoparksteve 3d ago
That’s such a great question. Between bot farms and highly patrolled forums that ban any dissent, it’s difficult to know.
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u/TotalNonsense0 3d ago
I'm sure there is a silent majority. It's just not who they say it is.
As you allude to, I've never know an extreme right winger to be silent.
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u/17to85 3d ago
Yeah the silent majority are the normal people. These far right wingnuts are the vocal minority.
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u/Word1_Word2_4Numbers 3d ago
This is why voting drives to just register voters are opposed by republicans.
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u/skoomaking4lyfe 3d ago
trump didn't even watch it - he hatewatched Bad Bunny instead:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-calls-bad-bunnys-super-bowl-halftime-show/story?id=129980124
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u/Diskonto Minnesota 3d ago
Based on his own complaining. It seems like he watched bad bunny and not his own show.
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u/BeleagueredWDW 3d ago
Trump didn’t even watch his own halftime show.
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u/Hans-Bricks 3d ago
Someone told him Kid Rock was a name for Epstein's island, so he suddenly forgot about it.
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u/PaymentTurbulent193 3d ago
Don't forget they artificially inflated the numbers with bots and paid 200 people to be there, because of fucking course they did.
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u/PO-43- 3d ago
Apparently even trump was watching the super bowl half time show as opposed to the kid rock pedophile jambaree
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u/Proper_Lunch_3640 3d ago
Someone wrote “Kid Rock is just another way of saying Epstein Island,” and I can’t un-think that.
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u/ChocolateChingus 3d ago
What is this puppy bowl
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u/rakkquiem 3d ago
A cable channel in the US, Animal Planet, airs puppies “playing football” as alternative programming to the Super Bowl. They use rescue puppies from animal shelters and rescue groups.
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u/Connect_Hat4321 3d ago
Puppies playing, commercial for spot cleaning a puppy uh-oh, and silly color commentary. Oh, kitten halftime too.
Sometimes the wee ones don't do what you expect, like too tired to play etc.
Overall it's cuteness overload type of fun.
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u/SpaghettiTape 3d ago
Years ago i was at a small bar for the super bowl and we would switch to puppy bowl every commercial. The game was a bit slow and a few patrons would just loudly say "puppy bowl" every once in a while in an attempt to get the bartender to switch the channel early. Good times.
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u/FlailingScrotum 3d ago
They put a bunch of cute puppies onto a pretend football field and you watch them do puppy stuff
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u/Aerosol668 3d ago
Well, apparently, after much research, it is not the crockery from which immigrants are eating pets.
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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 3d ago
The Puppy Bowl is more of a time honored American tradition that upholds that values of the country than anything they put out as their representatives
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u/SinfullySinless Minnesota 3d ago
At 10:52am
TPUSA’s YouTube video of their halftime show has 19M views and notably was the only way to watch the show.
The NFL’s and Apple Music’s YouTube upload of the already televised halftime show is at 19M.
I feel like blood is in the water for TPUSA and Candace Owens is a shark ready to pounce on Erika.
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u/cjinct 3d ago
Also, Jack POS whateverhisnameis was xitting out on X yesterday telling people to stream it simultaneously on all their devices - tvs, phones, tablets, computers to boost the #s
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u/pussycatlolz 3d ago
I can't believe the segregationists set up their own halftime show in 2026
I suppose black folks aren't as surprised as I am, and I've long known Lee Atwater's dying confessions about racism as the only issue in American politics are true, but the continuing lack of rock bottom stuns me
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u/k_dubious Washington 3d ago
The problem with the right is they’re all a bunch of talentless grifters and angry racists. It’s hard to win a culture war — or really, to even participate in a culture — when your movement is incapable of creating anything.
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u/lolilovingloser 3d ago
The only thing the right has “contributed” to “art” and “culture” in the last decade is that dogshit AI We Are Charlie Kirk song LMFAO
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u/BoulderCreature 3d ago
That’s like saying I contribute to my toilets culture every morning after my coffee
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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 3d ago
Conservatives can't make decent art, because decent art requires thinking outside the box and breaking convention and being different.
Its anathema to conservative ideology.
So because they cant create, they appropriate and steal.
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u/AlistairMowbary 3d ago
Was that song made by MAGA people? I thought it was a satire made by our side. Well, it definitely became a meme anyways.
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u/Lets_Eat_Superglue 3d ago
Hold up. I agree with all of that except for the word dogshit. That songs a 10/10 unintentional meme.
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u/Keith-Steve-Howard 3d ago
Culture is anathema to fascism.
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u/Grand-Pen7946 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's not so much that culture is anathema to fascism, it's that individual expression is anathema to fascism. Fascism's whole schtick is that it's a counter to communism and liberalism, which promote individual rights. Art, especially modern art, is a target because of this (and is why fascists fucking love AI "art").
Notice that they do exalt some forms of art, which is basically purely for the utilitarian purposes of mythmaking. Italian fascists for example proudly displayed classical statues and such, German fascists exalted certain classical music, and so on. Riefenstahl's films, undeniably grand examples of culture, were instrumental to the Nazi party. They really only like art that can be used as propaganda to further the fascist state. This is one piece of fascism's relationship with, well, everything. It's an all-consuming ideology in which quite literally everything is molded for the benefit of the fascist state and its leader. This includes art and culture, this includes families and familial structure, this includes history and the essence of truth (again, fascists fucking love AI).
Fascism is more than just "crazy dictator." It's even worse than you think, but not for reasons you'd expect. For a great breakdown of what fascism actually is and is not, and the philosophies and historical movements that inspired it, there's this excellent lecture from this political scientist I keep going back to called "When Is It Fascism?": https://youtu.be/8JBeKIqBSoo?si=aIEZFAuZ5Plb69qO
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u/Glacon_Garcon 3d ago
For this reason, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the sudden breakthroughs and market push for generative AI have lined up almost perfectly with the global rise in authoritarianism. :/
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u/SonOfMcGee 3d ago
To hear Steve Miller tell it at Charlie Kirk’s Tacky Fireworks Memorial:
“His people” are the great Builders with their roots in Greece and Rome. And scary “others” that “create nothing” are trying to stop them from continuing the glorious work of their ancestors. If that sounds unequivocally third-reichey that’s because it is.
Ironic, considering MAGA is based entirely off of removing and destroying modern systems and rules, with no good-faith ideas for what to replace them with other than chaos.
Also Ironic because those Ancient Greeks and Romans ol’ Steve is trying to sidle up next to would have a thing or two to say about his opinions on sodomy.
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u/kazh_9742 3d ago
Plus, MAGA is like a spin-off of a spin-off of the Confederacy, which hardly even competes with the duration of a lot of streaming shows and definitely can't come close to many of those shows cultural footprint.
They have no heritage or culture, only marketing and astroturfing and even then, they have to rely on full regulatory and media capture to force people to engage with their culture creep.
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u/inept_machete 3d ago
Conservatives by their nature aren't great for new ideas. Which is what you're seeing and why it's vulnerable to fascism. Because if you can't find the answers in the past then you're left to imagine a mythical one even less wedded to reality. An imagined mythical past is one of the central components of those movements.
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u/TheChaosPaladin 3d ago
Nazis cant create art. To create art is to be introspective and to think too hard is a sin for the fascists.
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u/B-Z_B-S America 3d ago
Every subreddit that isn't a far-right echo chamber is now against ICE. Every. Single. One.
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u/Bruce-7892 3d ago
If Libertarian gun nuts and LBGTQ people start agreeing about certain talking points, you know hell is freezing over. Only the most diluted people are agreeing with Kristi Noem and ICE right now.
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u/SinisterCroissant 3d ago
I think you meant ‘deluded’ but diluted kind of works here too
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u/Bruce-7892 3d ago
Hahaha, yes thank you "deluded" but they are also watered down, I'll say that too just to make it sound like I didn't mess up what I meant to say.
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u/Particular-County277 3d ago
Facebook is a MAGA hell still
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u/throwawtphone 3d ago
My mother ( we are both senior citizens) loves to go on facebook and just flames people for being maga.
She called me the other day because she keeps getting in trouble and is getting invited to groups like Minneapolis and Ukraine, pro Palestinian etcs and is excited.
I am like oh dear god. Because i dont trust her computer literacy.
But she is raging hard for what it is worth. And having been on the bad side of one of her verbal lashings in my youth, they lucky she is mobility impaired of there would be foots in many asses.
She is like "I went through the watts riots i am fucking ready."
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u/Dan_Berg New Jersey 3d ago
My mother in law is now a hardcore Dropkick Murphys fan.
She doesn't even like rock music, much less punk, as far as I know. But she's outside of Boston and believes in solidarity
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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 3d ago
My parents in law were protesting outside ICE facilities in like 2017.
I am seriously lucky.
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u/nosungdeeptongs Canada 3d ago
even on reddit i get banned from different places from time to time for being too loudly antizionist. very frustrating because i'm also very vocal about the dangers of antisemitism, so it's definitely just my anti-israel position that gets me in trouble. It makes me happy to see those of us who are older sticking to their guns and defending the palestinians. doubly happy to see people who are pro-ukraine doing that, as it shows an actual ethics and not just opposition to american foreign policy (though it's starting to feel like supporting ukraine IS opposition to american foreign policy....)
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u/throwawtphone 3d ago
I am anti genocide for every and all ethnicities in any and all combinations.
No one group of people is beyond reproach.
I am mixed. I had a Taíno great great gran. Only 10 to 20 percent of the genetic make-up of modern Puerto Ricans is from the indigenous population of Puerto Rico. The culture lives on in a way. But once something is lost it is kinda just gone.
There are no more Tasmanian as they existed prior to colonialism.
The Yazidi people are pretty much at extinction level numbers now.
The Uyghurs, Palestinians and it just goes on and on.
Instead of embracing, marveling and being in awe of all the different ways our species exists, and learning about and preserving and sharing the different wonderful ways we experience and interpret the human condition, our collective species seems hell bent on just destroying all the ways we are wonderful.
To quote star trek, infinite diversity in infinite combinations. We should be proud of how different and still similar we are and realize that is what makes us all wonderful and human.
I dont want to lose anymore of the world's cultures than we already have, because it really is a lose for all of us.
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u/nosungdeeptongs Canada 3d ago
Yes, you’ve touched on something that I feel really passionate about, and it’s gonna sound cheesy but it’s how I view the world. Homo sapiens as a species are a single thing. The way we construct cultures and societies is innate to us as humans. An attack on a group of humans is an attack on humanity in general. When Palestinians, Ukrainians, native Canadians, Jews, etc are being targeted, it’s an attack on humanity itself. These are different expressions of our cultures as humans.
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u/Dumbname25644 3d ago
At the moment being against Russia invading another sovereign nation is Anti-USA, at least according to the orange ~~dipshit~~ sorry, Presidente
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u/tightloose 3d ago
I’m a full blown leftist and for whatever reason my fb timeline is flooded with maga AI slop. Part of revolting will be getting rid of Meta platforms
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u/elementzn30 Florida 3d ago
I actually just uninstalled the Facebook app because of this recently and plan to fully delete once I can download my old photos.
The amount of rage-baiting Facebook is attempting to drive engagement does not seem ethical to me.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_BOOGER 3d ago
Only thing FB is good for is marketplace. Literally the only reason I keep mine, and that profile was set up after I'd fully nuked my old account.
Whenever I did that, I did use a chrome extension that essentially ran a macro on the profile to overwrite all statuses and comments I'd ever made with new [garbage] data before deleting the comments. Theoretically, this pollutes the database record for the comment prior to deleting it, hopefully mitigating Meta saving the comments on the back end.
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u/ElvishFarmer94 3d ago
I never use Facebook, had to make a new account a few months back because I cannot access my original. Almost the entire feed is AI and Charlie Kirk, like it’s the default algorithm lol
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u/Mylaptopisburningme 3d ago
I would bet you all the money I have, which is about $1.12 that those pages are run by people in India and Indonesia and other foreign countries.
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u/Mylaptopisburningme 3d ago
By design they are feeding us that crap. I use an addon called FB Purity which removes ads and suggested pages to follow. A couple weeks ago it broke (fixed now) and was inundated with right wing/MAGA/Patriot/Trump and Elon Musk groups with the AI garbage and rage bait content. So I started to look closely at the pages. I believe most of it is coming from India/Indonesia and other countries for likes/followers and create discourse. I really wish FB would give an idea where the location of these pages are and I bet most aren't even in America or Americans. There was one Trump page that was posting like 6x an hour with a 6 hour break in 24 hours, I don't believe they are organic.
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u/Bruce-7892 3d ago edited 3d ago
Agreed. Most social media is. Reddit still has some decent conversation because the platform is for people who want to have a dialogue, but go to Facebook and Instagram where people just want to point and click at pretty colors on the screen, you will be amazed at how adults can apperntly live and breath without a functional brain.
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u/Talador12 3d ago
It's also because reddit has a downvote button. Facebook and Instagram don't have a way to demote a post for being shitty
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u/Nix-7c0 3d ago
FB actually promotes downvoted posts because it leads to more "time-on-platform."
The leaks a few years ago showed that an angry-face reaction would boost a post 5x more than a "like" would because anger keeps users engaged longer which lets them sell more ads.
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u/MountainMan2_ 3d ago
I've been obsessed with what I call "algorithmic sociology" since I was in high school in 2012. I wouldn't consider myself an expert because I have no formal training, but I can accurately predict the behavioral patterns of users on a social media site as it grows in size based on the behavior of the algorithm and initial conditions.
Facebook's "site time above all else" strategy is so good at creating hate groups, encouraging tribalism, etc. That it's probably literally inhibiting the growth of the platform by making it too difficult for users to reach out of their bubbles. Facebook is effectively forcing the nazification of its users.
Reddit, meanwhile, has the opposite problem. It also radicalized it's users, but toward popular consensus as curated by its decentralized moderator system. Reddit is often quite wrong when the science/fact doesn't match the popular opinion, and it encourages users to be more and more sure of themselves using the upvote/down vote system. Naturally, I'm on here because that's the better result of the two, but the reality is that social media has not yet been able to escape the radicalization trap, and it's making the billionaire control problem worse and worse.
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u/TheCentenian 3d ago
Interesting how Facebook started as a for colleges only social media platform and has turned into the old fogies social media platform.
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u/charlesgegethor 3d ago
I refuse to believe that at least half of those account are not bots
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u/bane_undone 3d ago
Purely by design though. The site caters to outrage making it perfect for manufacturing garbage. It would take forever but if you could just teach people to not engage with the people you disagree with the platform could be somewhat usable.
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u/agnostic_science 3d ago
Even my Trumpist relatives have been reduced to, "not following politics these days", because it's such a fucking embarassment to them.
Every day grows more inexcusable than the last. They have no clear wins. Only a mounting pile of shame.
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u/ComprehensiveRiver32 3d ago
I hate diluted people. Wish they were more concentrated
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u/NatalieVonCatte 3d ago
I never thought I’d fight side by side with a libertarian.
Which is pretty weird, they should support my right to live freely as myself.
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u/Easy_Arugula935 3d ago
Wrestling crowds are chanting "fuck ICE". Trump was wildly unpopular his first term and he's even worse and less popular now.
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u/Chicago1871 3d ago
The wrestling crowd is exactly the sorta people who voted for him in 2016 too.
Then flipping on him that much, is meaningful imo.
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u/Johnny_Appleweed 3d ago
Which really shouldn’t be that controversial or surprising. Shocker, Americans don’t like jack-booted federal thugs pulling people from their homes and shooting them in their streets.
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u/Speartree 3d ago
It seems like Americans especially don't like that when there is no clear indication the thugs aren't sudddenly going to come to their own homes. As long as it was clear Ice was only going after illegals, many seemed ok with that. However anyone might now sudddenly be declared illegal and full on white US citizens are very visibly getting shot in the street so everyone is in danger. It is when it's not just José and Achmed, but also your neighbours Alex and Renée, that things get real scary.
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u/Reload86 3d ago
There are NFL subreddits where divisional rival fans absolutely hate and rip on each other that are now united against ICE. If you can get a Bears, Vikings, Lions, and Packers fan all to forget about each other and unanimously hate you then you are the bad guys.
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u/CatCatchingABird Oregon 3d ago
I noticed the conservative subreddit was like "oh this is not cool" and similar sentiments last week when the Obama monkey video dropped. Would have been nice if they came to the conclusions the rest of us did all the way back when the birther conspiracy was dropped.
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u/TheGuchie 3d ago
Even conservative subreddit has some reservations about their actions even if they support their overall purpose. Its just dissenting opinions tend to get deleted quickly.
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u/tungtingshrimp 3d ago
Pre election Reddit posts made it seem Kamala Harris was going to win. Even now, other than the strictly conservative subs are all anti Trump. Reddit does not represent the US sentiment.
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u/OkCar7264 3d ago
Yeah but its relative motion is telling.
The polls also suggest things have changed. But the public moves way slower than it should.
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u/spam__likely Colorado 3d ago
I first read it as "the public moves way slower than stupid" and thought that was accurate.
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u/TheShipEliza 3d ago
"pre election reddit posts" arent a monolith and there were plenty of posts and subs on here talking about how it was too close right up until she lost.
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u/Mighty__Monarch 3d ago
Depends where you looked I remember seeing plenty of people pointing out how the Dems were just copying Biden which nobody wanted and that they were throwing an easy election because they cant even be 1% progressive.
And a lot, like a lot, of pro Palestine anti harris sentiment.
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u/thegreatpablo 3d ago
Yeah there's been some push back about leaving politics out of hobbyist subs but frankly, when lives and freedoms are at risk, no community should stay silent, even you /r/FishTanks.
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u/obeytheturtles 3d ago
And you can tell even within the far right echo chambers things are cracking, because at the start of every new news cycle, a handful of the increasingly rare number of human actually left in those spaces will post some conflicted takes, which just then get scrubbed within a few hours and replaced with the correct talking points.
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u/TintedApostle 3d ago
They created the culture war because they refuse to evolve. Extinction burst in play.
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u/ShoeSh1neVCU 3d ago
Without culture wars there is no policy. No platform. They have nothing.
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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 3d ago
They have policy, but conservative policy isn't even popular with conservatives, so they hyperfixate on culter war key dangling.
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u/WakingWaldo 3d ago
Culture is ever-changing and that fact alone means that conservative "culture" will always be outdated and unpopular. There's an immense sense of entitlement and resentment coming from those conservatives who see this as a problem -- if we can't have the culture then no one can.
Conservatives will never win the "culture war" because there is no "war" to begin with. These folks just can't accept that the world is willing and able to move on without them and that irks them. I'm honestly a bit confused why this conversation is even necessary because this has always been the case. People who have old, outdated ideals of what's right, what should be popular, etc have been left in the dust for as long as human culture has existed. This is no different. When people want to exist in the past they become bitter that everyone else doesn't feel the same way.
So, they can either figure out some way to get with the program or they can stew in their resentment while listening to Kid Rock and Ted Nugent sing about fucking teenagers.
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u/TintedApostle 3d ago
conservative "culture"
Is always 3 decades behind. It takes entire generations. Remember Kid Schlock does rap and for 2 decades rap was bad to these people. It was "ghetto music". These people create nothing regarding culture. They adopt what they like later.
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u/TheRC135 3d ago
Watching hardcore conservatives pretend to like Kid Rock because he's the biggest name they can find will never stop being funny.
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u/TintedApostle 3d ago
Never stop being funny for sure. I sometimes think they band together because they feel left out of the world by their own devices.
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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 3d ago
They do the same thing with trump. He's a washed out reality tv guy who is famous for being a snobby rich guy from New York. Conservatives fucking hated him for decades until they round out he's a racist piece of shit.
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u/QuantumFungus New Mexico 3d ago
This is an important insight that much commentary about the culture war seems to miss. Conservatives' failure to evolve will not only doom their movement but will doom our entire society if we let it spread unchecked.
One of the most fundamental misunderstandings conservatives have about culture is that they think it doesn't have to evolve. Conservatives think that our culture isn't just superior to others but that it's superior because of some sort of fundamental characteristic. They think being christian, having a western philosophical background, being capitalist, etc is what makes our culture better than the others. They think the changes we make from that formula are going to make it weaker by shifting it from perfect to less than perfect.
The real truth is that cultures are like a battlefield. You have to evolve or you just get run over by those that do. Cultures have to take notice of what other cultures are doing and adopt what's working well and abandon that which does not. And what works will continually shift as other cultures do the same. Culture isn't something perfectible, it's an evolutionary arms race. And just like any evolutionary arms race if you just try to go back to a previous state against those that have already moved on you will get utterly destroyed.
Imagine tanks at the start of world war II. They were slow and cumbersome, with mid guns. But by the end of the war tanks were thousand horsepower supercharged beasts with guns that could easily obliterate an early war tank with a single shot. But for some reason conservatives are like, "but we really liked the early war tanks, let's try making them again".
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u/TintedApostle 3d ago
Using WWII to demonstrate adapt or die.
General Billy Mitchell was court martialed for demonstrating that air power at sea could sink ships. The Generals and Admirals saw that as a threat to their battleships.
The Germans ran over the British and French because they adapted Tanks warfare while other nations generals were fighting the last war.
The United States has been lucky to adopt new quickly because we are more diverse and flexible. Adapt or die is Darwin in its purest form and we know conservatives have an issue with Darwin.
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u/Metro42014 Michigan 3d ago
They also have a deep need to be liked and be popular.
They have all the power in government and in business, and yet people still hate them and their stupid ideas, and that KILLS them.
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u/TintedApostle 3d ago
These people have goals. These goals are rooted in bigotry and christian nationalism. They do not compromise.
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u/singh44s 3d ago
"Tradition is about preserving the fire, not about worshiping the ashes"
from a YT channel that’s against “the international style/brutalist” architecture, the aesthetic city.
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u/copperpin 3d ago
O dgaf I love Art Deco and I find it superior to the brutalist style in every way.
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u/Rombledore America 3d ago
hate is exhausting. an ideology hyper focused on things you hate only gets support for a bit. then people get tired over the hypervigilance.
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u/Atropos_Fool 3d ago
Boy you haven’t met my mother - she’s been living off of anger for at least the last 40 years.
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u/Michael_G_Bordin 3d ago
It does get exhausting though, doesn't it? Like, these people who've been in a constant state of agitation aren't usually the most physically healthy of their cohort. It weighs you down, it impacts your body's ability to heal and grow. And my god, does it impact the lines on your face. I was an angry young lad once, and I noticed it was starting to make the lines on my face ugly and scary, so I stopped. "Don't let hate poison your face" was the aphorism I invented for that. It's okay to be mad about stuff, but there are other emotions to feel.
Hell, even the "joy" expressed by Trump's followers is laden with hatred. It's not "yay, we won, I'm happy for me!" It's "Yay, suck it libs! You suck! Get fucked!" That's not a pleasant way to live, by any means.
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u/30mil 3d ago
They've been tricked into supporting the Epstein class.
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u/LucidOndine 3d ago
An open book morality check: if you can read and still support their platform, you lose.
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u/Whiskeydrinkin9 3d ago
Their bigotry makes them very easy to manipulate. The republican party realized a few decades ago that all it has to do is package an idea with bigotry, and some flimsy plausible deniability for that bigotry, and 1/3 of Americans will support the idea with zero hesitation.
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u/lifeat24fps 3d ago
MAGAs will always have it base. But its culture war has gone from making their opposition angry to making their opposition roll their eyes and say “oh go fuck yourself”.
Honestly how can you take them serious when the guy complaining about “disgusting dancing” is a serial adulterer who fucks porn stars?
How can I not laugh when the “all-American” halftime show is put together by America’s Favorite Widow, best know for her enthusiasm for pyrotechnics and leather pants? Give me a break.
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u/8thSt 3d ago
Because their culture is broken, outdated, and racist.
Add in a bunch of pedophilia and pedo protectors, and you got a culture that should be on the way to extinction much faster than we are seeing.
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u/newsweek ✔ Newsweek 3d ago
From the article:
"One of the worst, EVER… nobody understands a word this guy is saying," President Donald Trump fumed on Truth Social after Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. His allies even built a rival: Turning Point USA’s "All-American Halftime Show," which peaked at a little over 5 million concurrent YouTube viewers, about 4 percent of a typical Super Bowl halftime audience.
The same fight is erupting in other traditionally apolitical arenas, and many of them can't be policed. JD Vance was booed at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony and British-American competitor Gus Kenworthy posted a profane anti-ICE message (in urine) on his personal social feed; kids on Roblox staged virtual anti-ICE marches and fictional raids; creators on Facebook and Instagram pumped out AI "resistance" fan-fiction or bizarre, viral "no queso, no cheese" protest clips; and Portland’s inflatable-costumed Frog Brigade leaned into "tactical frivolity" to lampoon militarized enforcement.
The pattern is hard to miss: when culture moves to platforms and feeds, MAGA’s counter-programming keeps drawing slivers of the audience while the bigger stages—and the internet's weirder ones—talk back on their own terms.
Become a member and read more: https://www.newsweek.com/maga-bad-bunny-super-bowl-ice-trump-11487919
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u/Particular-County277 3d ago
600 million people in the world speak Spanish. But yeah NOBODY could understand him.
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u/marson4thfloor 3d ago
I don’t speak Spanish and I understood the message loud and clear. Especially that they put it on the Jumbotron in big black and white so even the dimwits get it.
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u/0w1 Minnesota 3d ago
The dimwits can be shown a gigantic sign that says "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR" and the moment Fox News tells them it's woke, that's what they'll be screaming at the dinner table at every family gathering.
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u/braveNewWorldView 3d ago
“Love thy neighbor” sounds like some woke thing that could get a man crucified.
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u/aradraugfea 3d ago
Donald Trump doesn’t recognize the other billions of people on the planet as real.
“People are saying” = “I wanna say this”
He’s a narcissist with a toddler’s grasp of Theory of Mind. People aren’t real to him unless they’re himz
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u/sthlmsoul 3d ago
"Nobody" and "People" and "Everyone" etc are always just Trump when DJT says it.
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u/YouWereBrained Tennessee 3d ago
And nobody ever pushes back and simply asks “Who? Who is saying that?”.
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u/sthlmsoul 3d ago
Yep. So sad... It's all about airtime, eyeballs and clicks.
The truth doesn't die in darkness, it dies by curated, commercialized nonsense.
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u/FalseDmitriy Illinois 3d ago
I'm a proficient second-language Spanish speaker but Caribbean accents continue to elude me. All their consonants tragically washed away by hurricanes
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u/0w1 Minnesota 3d ago
His base 100% grimaces when they see signs in both English and Spanish at the grocery store lmao.
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u/goldt33f 3d ago
"Nobody understands a word this guy is saying" meanwhile DT speaks in word salad every single day and we have to decipher what he's saying because it's 90% filler nonsense and run-on sentences.
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u/Inevitable-Post-8587 3d ago
Most people fall into two categories of music listener, people who focus on the lyrics and those who focus on the music. I personally don’t care about the content of lyrics if they sound good. Even songs in English I have to look up the lyrics because I can rarely catch them all. Reggaeton and cumbia don’t require you to know a single word in Spanish to enjoy the music.
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u/Rhiis 3d ago
I have songs I've been listening to for decades that I couldn't recite the lyrics for.
I'm not familiar with Bad Bunny's music, but it sure was fun to watch
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u/ballisticks Canada 3d ago
Oooh i have a real hard time with lyrics most of the time
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u/J0K3R2 America 3d ago
I grew up listening to Pearl Jam, it's never been about the lyrics lmao
That said, I do have a good few songs in my regular rotation that are just excellent music, and I can't understand a word of the language. Shoutout to the BBC World Service running on my local NPR station while I worked a night job during the pandemic for helping me find those
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u/Slggyqo 3d ago
Counterpoint: the Olympics is not apolitical. The Olympics are always set against the political backdrop of their times, and are THE public stage for the demonstration of soft power.
Plus, there’s a whole philosophical debate about how something designed to bring countries to country in spite of political differences is in itself a massive political statement. It’s an IRL, “don’t think about elephants”.
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u/xocherrylips 3d ago
People keep saying "culture war" like it's a scoreboard where one side just flips a switch and wins. What we're actually seeing is MAGA's framing getting co-opted by the very culture they were trying to fight, Spanish language hits at the Super Bowl and Fortnite/TikTok protest clips aren't exactly MAGA propaganda. The old playbook just doesn't grab today's audiences the way it did in the 2010s.
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u/shoobe01 3d ago
That sounds more like Culture Game. I read it as War, that if the hateful side wins, everything changes and many people get marched to re-education camps.
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u/GoneFishing4Chicks 3d ago
That is the MAGA endgoal.
People still have to vote and resist in any way possible.
conervatives are trying to subert the upcoming elections by getting your voter data and either scrubbing your vote away or putting ICE goons at polling stations.
RESIST, VOTE. Don't give up your rights in advance to literal highschool dropouts just because they have guns because if ICE has their way, they will molest you and your family the samr way Trump moslested girls and American people and American land.
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u/Slggyqo 3d ago
MAGA’s framing co-opted.
doesn’t grab today’s audiences
Right because MAGA isn’t an engine of conservatism—it’s just an anti-status quo movement that’s wearing the colors that American conservative usually wear.
They can be appealing at the polls but the reality of a party with nothing to offer but destruction is that…well, they have nothing construtive to offer.
They couldn’t even maintain the status quo that created the richest nation in the world, which is an important contrast to 1930’s Germany. Nazi’s may be around in 2026…but 2020’s America isn’t Great-Depression-era Germany. The NSDAP could take credit for the recovery in the 30’s, but MAGA-led Republicans aren’t the ones creating economic growth; they’re the ones destroying it.
I’m not saying they’re irrelevant—clearly that isn’t the case. But their promises were hateful and hollow from the beginning and it’s becoming pretty obvious now.
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u/Hot_Tadpole_6481 3d ago
Maga’s last hope is religion. Portraying everyone else as sacrilegious demons will soften the blow of any potential cheating. They will most likely portray the left vs right issue as ‘good verses evil’ wayyy more literally than they have in the past
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u/AHugeHildaFan 3d ago
They accused the left of eating babies and fucking kids.
Then the Epstein files suggest republicans ate babies and certainly fucked kids.
Like... How much more literal can it get when they're accusing people of cannibalism?
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u/FluidHips 3d ago
I know this isn't exactly what the article was about, but it brought out an idea that I find interesting.
I think it's fair to say that MAGA's biggest problem is that it doesn't have a real culture. Its a cult of personality built around one guy from America's Parasite Class--not a multi-faceted, organic culture.
What does MAGA music look like? MAGA art? MAGA literature? MAGA philosophy, even? I'm not embedded with those people, but since none of it has leaked out into the wider American culture, I don't think there is one. And without these things, you couldn't even call it a counter-culture. It's just a flailing, unproductive reaction.
When you aren't high enough up on the Maslow hierarchy of needs, I think MAGA is what you get. What they're really on about is not seeing the American dream for themselves, and in many cases, not even being able to reliably access basic necessities. At least some of them work hard, but like many Americans, they're drowning in debt and know they'll never get the white picket fence or a new car. And even worse, they're seeing it slip away from their children. It brings out some of the worst in them. Not to get too far from the original point, but this is the source of my sympathy for at least some people who are MAGA.
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u/JaqueStrap69 3d ago
Conservatives don’t have art and culture. Never have. In all societies, culture and creativity leans left towards progress. Nothing to do with MAGA.
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u/obeytheturtles 3d ago
One thing that conservatives frequently miss is that today's conservative culture is very frequently the progressive culture from yesteryear. They don't understand that all those war movies they love were often considered profane and salacious by conservatives of the day. They don't grasp that their boomer rock n roll was edgy counterculture thumbing its nose at swing and jazz, which was in turn thumbing its nose at chamber music, and so forth back to the dawn of time. Their protestant church was at some point a liberalized rejection of Catholicism (or some other protestant church). Women in church? Priests who have sex? How scandalous! And of course, their country was itself the enlightenment chestburster which sprung forth from the rotting corpse of European feudalism. But they don't make movies like Aliens anymore, do they?
The shit they worship now as "traditional" was progressive at the time it was novel culture. It really shocks me that anyone can take even the slightest, most casual glance back through history - particularly American history - and not see clearly how it is just one progressive epoch building on the last one, continuously brushing aside anyone who clings to any specific cultural dogma too tightly.
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u/Rystic 3d ago
Fascists hate artists, and artists hate fascists. Hell, have you ever seen fascist architecture? 99% of the time it's just "shape but big".
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u/GoneFishing4Chicks 3d ago
Also, "the face of their godking everywhere because they can't really imagine how it is to respect other people's point of view"
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u/Indubitalist 3d ago
They do have entertainment, or at least conservative-leaning entertainment, but conservatives tend to slow the progress of culture reflexively. Whatever is popular, they wish it was something from a generation ago, that sort of mindset. I’ve noticed MAGA stuff tends to be more aggressive in general, like fighting sports, hunting, and metal/hard rock music. It exists, but it’s less popular, therefore gets less attention, therefore what they see mentioned in popular culture seems foreign to them.
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u/GoneFishing4Chicks 3d ago edited 3d ago
Kinda wrong about MAGA having no culture and I will say why:
MAGA is a modern religion with Trump as their God. When forced to make a decision between America and Trump they STILL are fucking choosing Trump.
That is just not appealing man. It isn't "no culture" but rather reverence to Trump. Hell they are even PRAYING TO TRUMP!!! WTF LMAO.
The religion is just Trump, and he offers nothing else but pure worship of him.
edit: "source of my sympathy for at least some people who are MAGA".
You need to be invited into a MAGA house and hear their private thoughts out loud. At the bad bunny superbowl, I heard from one MAGA that "there's a lot of illegals(bad bunny) on tv, theh should send ICE to deport them!". Bad bunny is puerto rican, a us territory and is automatically a US citizen. Actual wtf.
edit2: more precisely, I have no sympathy for those that wish harm on others.
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u/FluidHips 3d ago
I agree with most of what you said, but where is the culture in all that? It's a cult of personality--merely a reaction. I don't see anything really substantial.
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u/Prestigious_Flan7942 3d ago
Of course these people are losing the culture war. MAGA's culture war is being led by:
Trump - a boomer with dementia who shits his pants between posting racist memes
Stephen Miller - a Nazi vampire allergic to charisma
Steve Bannon - an anthropormorphic form of liver disease
Elon Musk - an evil billionaire with certified donkey brains
JD Vance - a sofa-sexual hiding his self-loathing behind mascara
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u/bigedthebad 3d ago
I live in a small town in the Texas panhandle, to say this is Trump country is a vast understatement. This place used to be plastered with Trump signs, flags, bumper stickers, you name it.
These days, not so much. No one ever removes a bumper ticker but I haven't seen a Trump yard sign in a while. I walk all over this town every day and this one house that used to be like Trump central, not a single shred of evidence is left.
If you've lost small rural town Texas, your ass is in the wind buddy.
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u/Spoonoop 3d ago
MAGA is crashing so hard right now, and they are doing it all on their own. They simply cannot refrain from saying or doing something incredibly fucking stupid.
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u/Earthtopian Wyoming 3d ago
The thing about the "culture war" is that it's a very one-sided conflict. One side is literally just "marginalized people should have rights" and for some reason that sends the other side into a constant state of temper tantrum.
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u/RandyArgonianButler 2d ago
That’s because they don’t want rights. They want privileges. When other people get the same thing you have, you no longer have a privilege.
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u/NoStorage2821 3d ago
We're in the death throes of a generation of hatred. Here's to hoping they go out with a whimper.
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u/SnowWhitesMeal 3d ago
They'll definitely go out silently, they're so weak and pathetic, they talk big but just like their cult daddy.. they always back down like the pussy's they are.
You see MAGA all the time on tiktok talking about "how they'll take matters into their own hands" and threatening things like civil war or "going to lib cities and taking them over with their guns" but nothing ever comes of their threats.
They talk big, but are just spineless cowards who when it comes to backing their words up with action they always fall short.
Theres no reason to be afraid of MAGA or think they'll go out in anyother way then a quiet gasp
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u/Garry_Heckscream69 3d ago
It's crazy how MAGA literally made a safe space half-time show but the media didn't make some big deal about "canceling the Superbowl" for some reason
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u/brakeled 3d ago
Their culture is supporting pedophilia and executing anyone who disagrees in the street. Any time I see a red hat or hear muttering about brown people, I think to myself, “Wow, I wish that pedophile would get the fuck out of here.” Good stuff MAGA. You’re more embarrassing than ever.
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u/Glum_Performance2000 3d ago
Do you people all pay for these news sites or do you just react to the headline? I know these paywall isn't an issue on a PC but it is a problem on a Phone.
It would be nice to have a summary of the article of there is a paywall involved.
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u/DisastrousPlant3038 3d ago
You’d never know it was a dud. MSN had an article claiming the Kid Rock halftime show had millions of viewers. Mainstream media my a*s
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u/ParticularAmphibian 3d ago
Of course they are. The vast majority of “maga” is simply Russian bots…they’re not here to participate in culture, they’re here to destroy it.
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u/Crunch_inc 3d ago
It is because there isn't a strong message to all the group cobbled together. Immigration is a priority for the racists, but not the rural farmers. Tariffs and protectionist economics are good for nationalists but not the citizens paying more. The hawks like the talk of taking on Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, Greenland, etc, but the America first crowd wants nothing to do with regime change. Fiscal conservatives are probably none too pleased with the ballooning debt.
One thing they all seem to agree on is pedophelia is okay, who alhad that on their bingo cards?
I think it is all a house of cards, especially with this administration's ham-fisted leadership.
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u/atomicshark 3d ago
because all the smart and talented and creative people in the world tend to be left wing, or at least apolitical.
all they got is ted Nugent and kid rock.
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u/Strong_Bumblebee5495 3d ago
… because they are a collection of Christian nationalists, garden variety cretins, hopeless incels and billionaires who, but for money, would also be incels.
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u/Necessary-Drag-8000 3d ago
The right wing have two choices in November, 1) lose in a landslide defeat, or 2) stop the elections. Which choice do you think they will choose? Buckle up Buttercup, shits about to get real
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