All’s well that ends well, but MAGA’s in a new hell.
“F you, Taylor Swift!” shouted Megyn Kelly, “and f all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off.”
For those not fluent in Republican crazy-speak, Kelly’s meltdown was triggered by Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris the night before, barely one hour after Trump all but face-planted on the debate stage. Kelly was especially triggered by Swift highlighting her appreciation for vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s support of LGBTQ+ rights.
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Other right-wing commentators, like Ben Shapiro, took another approach: making fun of Swifties. “Note: if you vote for a particular candidate because your favorite singer is doing so, please don’t vote. You are too stupid to vote,” wrote Shapiro on X. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, threatened to impregnate her.
The current Republican platform is largely based on stupid easily disproven lies. I'm convinced our fall to fascism is caused by stupidity as much as it is hatred.
"Doctors are cutting little boys dicks off because they like the color pink!"
"They're performing abortions after birth!"
"Haitians are eating all the cats and dogs!"
"They're putting litter boxes in the school bathrooms!"
There's really only two kinds of Republican: The evil ones who spread these lies intentionally, and the stupid ones who believe this dumb shit.
The current Republican platform is largely based on stupid easily disproven lies.
It's worth mentioning that this strategy is straight out of the trolling playbook. The overall idea is to get everyone to waste their time arguing nonsense, making it impossible to discuss anything of merit. While the following article applies to internet forums, it's not hard to see how any social media, TV, or radio, can spill over into our day-to-day discourse and have the same effect: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7573649/
In this case, the topic at hand meets multiple criteria for deliberate trolling. IMO, there's little room for doubt that we're being led by the nose and baited to waste valuable pre-election time:
Digression - Luring others into off-topic discussions by spamming, partaking in cascades or introducing tangential topics (e.g., as in [16]).
(Hypo)criticism - Excessive criticism of others, e.g. on their punctuation while possibly committing the same errors oneself.
Antipathy - Creation of a sensitive or antagonistic context through purposeful provocation, in order to manipulate others to produce emotional responses.
Endangering - Giving out poor advice under an innocent guise, and others are compelled to respond in order to protect others.
Shocking - Posting about taboos or sensitive subjects, such as religion, death or human rights.
Aggression - Deliberate and open aggressing of others into retaliating (e.g., by name-calling or foul language).
The litter box thing annoys me so much. Like, do you have any idea how quickly that shit would fucking go viral if it were true? Like, every damn kid would post about it online. It's so fucking stupid!
Actually, this name traces all the way back to the first cavewoman gynecologist. At the time, they named themselves based on their professions. Megyn is short for "me gynecologist".
Remember when NBC hired Kelly in 2017, she gave Putin a platform to spread his propaganda, she got demoted, and then eventually fired for racism? Who could have guessed that she was just another maga conspiracy nut?
“and f all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off.”
As someone living in a country whey we don't chop off the foreskin of little children, whereas conservative Americans love that chopping procedure, I find this statement slightly amusing.
No no no, you see, when the left does it, it's cancel culture and literally communism. When the right does it, it's voting with your dollar, literally capitalism. Not comparable at all!!
Which is hilarious since the main source of income for musicians ever since streaming took off is live shows and merch.. albums are a vehicle to drive attendance at concerts, for which Swift is pretty good at packing stadiums full of people. Even if she loses 30% of her listeners, she'll still sell out concerts and total revenue would likely be about the same because those seats will be taken up by other fans who would have otherwise missed out on the sold-out show.
Fuck Ben Shapiro, he's some combination of idiot and willing stooge, but voting only works when everyone gets to vote. Unlike these right-wing fuckwits, I'm not willing to disenfranchise voters just because I perceive them as being less intelligent than me.
EDIT: I am shocked that supporting a fair and equal democracy seems to be at least sort of controversial around here. If you genuinely believe a given category of people should be disallowed from voting, please reconsider your values.
Yes, because telling someone to practice what they preach is disenfranchising them.
C’mon, now.
Voting is his right, it his obligation. If he wanted to show he’s not a total fucking liar and hypocrite…. He should chose to not vote because he’s definitely stupider than the vast majority of swifties.
To be fair, most rocks have enough intelligence to be smarter than him… and they’re inanimate.
Shapiro is not an idiot, he's arrogant. He believes that when the fascists and alt-right freaks come for every other racial, sexual and religious minority, including his own, they will spare him because he was on their side and he is special
Once again, we see what the debate between Harris and Trump illustrated very clearly: The GOP in its current state is not pursuing any program whatsoever, but merely builds up imaginary enemy stereotypes that they blame for all their problems - without any even halfway factual reasons. Democratic processes are impossible with this tedious kindergarten approach because they are based on factual arguments, cooperation and the willingness to find common ground. I sincerely hope that there are some rational thinking conservatives left who will refuse to vote for this hateful orange moron and his ridiculous henchmen.
"The Department of Justice also indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state broadcaster, saying that they funneled $10 million to a U.S. media company that hired prominent right-wing influencers here in the U.S."
I hate that it'll be taboo to call them stupid in ten years. "Do you remember how stupid you were acting? What's to make me believe you aren't still that stupid"will be frowned upon. But seriously they're behaving, and voting, that fucking stupidly.
I hate their "children's body parts chopped off" bit. Most doctors won't do until they're 18 and even then the number of people who do it is miniscule compared to the overall population or the rest of the LGBT community. Imagine being so uncomfortable in your own skin that you decide that's your best option. Have some ducking compassion, Megyn.
These are the same people who, faced with an obviously intersex newborn, would 100% surgically mutilate the baby to fit in a binary ASAP without thinking twice.
It never is and never was about protecting children.
To add to other replies, it's also very difficult to find reliable information on the topic at this point since the search space has been so contaminated, and it's already not default public information, since medical privacy is a thing.
It's low to the point of hypotheticals, case by case basis ethical calls, and very nearly philosophical thought experiment levels of "but what if...".
As far as my research has informed me, pretty much nobody is getting Sexual Reassignment Surgery before they turn 18.
The only exceptions I have heard of are cases of self-mutilation where a vaginoplasty is a possible reconstructive route. This is in the single digits annually.
If they didn't want her to voice her opinion they shouldn't have spent a week making fake ai images of her endorsing Trump. They forced her hand; she could either allow her likeness to be appropriated for a political cause she doesn't agree with, or make her true opinion known.
I'm certain Dems did ask her for endorsement, there is no way they wouldn't have, right? But they didn't make weird AI images, did they? So it is wildly different and deserves blame and criticism, doesn't it?
Donald is like the stereotypical pathetic incel stalker pasting his face over a boyfriend in a photo to add to a weird little shrine. Just really fucking weird and creepy.
Leading up to the debate, a whole bunch of new propaganda got pushed. Haitians eating cats in Ohio, Post-birth-abortions, and forced transitions for children, prisoners, and illegal-aliens. Totally normal conspiracy theories based on absolutely nothing
They overheard "I'm coming over there to eat that pussy" and got confused because they have no concept of a man doing something for the benefit of a woman.
Post-birth-abortions
I think the cops are handing that, or at the very least making sure no parents go into the school to prevent it from happening.
I caught the cat eating thing, and the post-birth abortion thing. I must have been too distracted by the Venezuelan gangs that are supposed to have taken over my city to catch the other stuff.
Well, no one is forcing transitions, but we do and should continue to provide necessary medical care for prisoners. Arguably that care needs improvement in terms of accessibility for citizens and immigrants alike, which I think is where Trump pointed out Harris has truthfully put some work into.
That's what sucks about so many of these claims. Are they based on any truth?
I will say, it's at least a good exercise in critical thinking to have to go claim by claim, as exhausting as it is to so consistently find blatant lies, let alone half-truths.
One of the Republican talking points in this election is that parents are sending their kids to school in the morning and they are coming home with their dicks chopped off in the afternoon because Democrats are performing operations on them to turn them trans. Yes, it is very weird and completely untrue.
At the Minnesota State Fair, Republicans set up a booth where they claimed Tim Waltz did nothing while Minneapolis burned to the ground. Was even depicted on the sign they put on their booth. The Minnesota State Fair takes place in Minneapolis; they're literally in the city that supposedly burned down.
This is the level of cognitive dissonance we're dealing with.
I don’t think it’s about abortion. I think they decided allowing a transgender teen to exist is “dismembering children” even if surgery for trans teens barely ever happens IRL. If they were actually worried about gender affirming surgery for minors, they’d want to ban nose jobs and fake tits too. So, it’s just part of the general trans moral panic amongst conservatives and “Won’t someone please think of the children?” bullshit that always accompanies moral panics even if children aren’t involved.
I’m cis but my understanding is that even trans adults find getting access to gender affirming healthcare is a huge, expensive ordeal. Philosophy Tube had a good video on her experience in the UK and I sincerely doubt it’s any easier in America’s labyrinthian, absurdly expensive non-system. It’s definitely not like parents are swinging by the urgent care to get their 13 year-olds free bottom surgery.
That's essentially what I told my wife last night. If you're undecided and watched the debate and still are undecided, just admit you're a Trump voter.
Seems you don't even trust what your wife has to say, not sure why you'd 'source' her and expect everyone else to.
"The United States, the 59th* most free country in the world" doesn't really have a ring to it. FreedomHouse does a deep analysis every year. Finland, Sweden, and Norway are the places to be.
“F you, Taylor Swift!” shouted Megyn Kelly, “and f all of the people who want to see these children have body parts chopped off.”
You guys remember the time Donald Trump accused this same woman who is now hysterically defending him of "blood coming out of her wherever" because she had the audacity to ask him about his sexism?
This reminds me of a thought I've been kicking around. All these Republicans who knew beforehand what a monster trump is, and now spend all their time gobbling his stumpy mushroom? They're all examples of a weird variation on Stockholm syndrome. But instead of identifying with their captors on a personal level, they've identified their entire political party with him. They don't think it can exist without him now.
Once he kicks the bucket, psychologists are going to have a field day untangling this mental health mess.
You're confused because your values include truth and integrity. Theirs do not. They care only about white supremacist hierarchy as the foundation for society.
She simply used to think he would not get elected. Now she sees that he drives huge numbers of delusional bigots to vote.
The argument that "you shouldn't vote for someone just because your favorite celebrity endorses them" seemed like a much more credible argument before the 2016 election when the winning candidate essentially won by literally being a celebrity.
Prior to 2016, Trump was probably best known for being the host of a reality TV show, and being a "businessman". Taylor Swift is definitely better known, and you could also make a solid argument that she is a better "businessman" as well.
If you note, I put "businessman" in quotes for both of them because it isn't the correct term for either of them. It isn't the correct term for Taylor because it is the wrong pronoun, and it isn't the correct term for Trump because he seems incapable of running a successful business. It was an intentional construct for ironic parallelism, not an oversight.
I'm often astonished by just how odious and unlikable conservative commentators are and wonder how anyone can seriously watch the people on Fox and people like Trump, Charlie Kirk or Dan Bongino and think "yeah! I like and trust this person!"
I must admit that I don't get, why it's such a big deal, that Taylor Swift supports Harris. But seeing the meltdown of the right wing grifters does put a smile on my face.
She has 284 MILLION followers. And the Swifties are also like a cult. Granted a more sensible one. But people will support her through anything. And many of those supporters are gen z and just entered the voting pool. The GOP does not want a huge influx of voters.
I've seen some graphs / extrapolations where if young voters (18-24) voted at the same rate as older voters (55+), Harris would win by a pretty sizable margin.
That almost never happens, but Swift has a huge influence on young voter turnout.
I don't know how much more sensible of a cult they are, honestly. It's hard not to see the merit in Ben Shapiro's statement, even though I absolutely hate that little rat. Still, at least this cult of personality is actually good for democracy, and is against Trump.
I have a good friend that is a Swifty, they are basically another uber fandom with actual irl clout. Apparently she brought over a quarter million potential signups through this.
She used to be a Country Music darling, and a lot of right-wing Country people still feel like they own her like back when they had her as an underage sex symbol.
Her posting that link got something like 400k people to register to vote. That is not insignificant. I hate the news always discussing celebrity opinions on politics. However, this specific time, something happened that can actually have an impact. So we shall see.
Celebrities have every right to voice their opinion on national issues.
And, that is not a "zero risk" position.
A recent example is the formerly known: "Dixie Chicks". Research their dilemma.
And in the past, late 1940's, Hollywood had a "Blacklist" which was a very serious shit list which fucked over plenty of people.
Many American celebrities are also citizens with every right to voice their opinion the same as your lawn sign or bumper sticker. Yet, sometimes, it's a really good thing when those celebrities rally their groupies, Swifties, etc.
Like almost always, it boils down to others being jealous of the "power" of other people.
I read this morning that the Swift endorsement was not choreographed with the Harris/Walz champaign. They didn't know it would happen until it did. Yet, they turned out and advertised a campaign friendship braclet within an hour. That is excellent digital marketing work.
Edited to add. They also sold out of them in an hour
I saw the look on Tim's face as Rachael Maddow received a note on-air and read the tweet in total, live. Their absolute shit-eating grins showed total and genuine surprise. You could hear them internally screaming, "FUCKING JACKPOT!"
As to the bracelet, they knew she would endorse them at some point, I'm sure they had it ready for that eventuality.
Republicans would lose 2/3 off their voter base if they listened to Ben Shapiro. Like how many voters have become Republican because they listened to their favorite radio DJ or podcaster.
"The Department of Justice also indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state broadcaster, saying that they funneled $10 million to a U.S. media company that hired prominent right-wing influencers here in the U.S."
I would agree if she were a vapid pop star. But she's very clearly an intelligent business woman who also has musical talent. There are worse public figures to take cues from.
Unless you are yourself an intelligent billionaire business woman, why are you taking advice on who to vote for from her?
What I'm getting at is people shouldn't behave like sheep. Think for yourself and make your own voting decisions instead of listening to other people's decisions.
We model good decisions based on what people we respect tell us all the time. Maybe Taylor Swift isn't the ideal role model, but she's certainly not the worst one I can think of.
Politics is not something most normal people think a lot about or have coherent views about. I don't think it's all that crazy to think that an important role model could work as a heuristic for figuring out what their own values are.
I disagree. Celebrities are paid for movies, music, tv, ads, etc, and at any time, they can say they only did that one thing you didn't like because someone paid them money. They take a chance by endorsing a candidate because they could potentially lose lots of money, jobs, friends, or more. The type of people that do vote for candidates based on endorsements are also the type of people that don't generally follow politics, but when you talk to them, you'll find they are for the same issues as the candidate.
That endorsement could be the one that made some 18-21 year old go and look up the endorsed candidate. When they look up the candidate, they may not be really interested, but then they may find something that the candidate supports, and that makes them want to vote. They never would have voted if they didn't find that information, and they wouldn't have looked up the information without the endorsement.
Have you ever bought something that you saw an influencer endorse on social media? Have you ever gone to a new place because someone else recommended it? Have you ever found a new friend because one of your friends was friends with them? What about dropping thousands of dollars into a stock because someone said you should? All of these are just other forms of endorsements from people you pay attention and listen to. Maybe someone recommended a show on Netflix that you passed on previously but decided to watch because of the endorsement, and you really loved it?
Don't forget, Shapiro didn't just say you shouldn't base your vote off of an endorsement. He said that people who do should have their rights stripped. What does that mean? Does he want your Google searches to be checked to see when you started looking things up? He also wants to raise the voting age to 21. He wants voters to be tested to even qualify.
Look at what conservatives scream about during elections. Voters where their signature is slightly different, when their name matches a dead person, when purged voters try to vote because they haven't voted in awhile, illegals voting in mass, voting by mail, voting at the wrong location, etc. They're trying to stop people who most likely won't vote for them. They push wild conspiracies, but if you believe their conspiracies, they think you are good to vote. Problems exist on both sides, then again, if two cars caught fire in opposite sides of the same city on the same day and one of them was a Tesla, which one would be all over the news the next day?
The moral here is never let anyone tell you that your inspiration is wrong. Ordinary individuals are inspired to do extraordinary things every day, and all it takes is that spark of inspiration. Now, go out and do something cool or something!
I'm sure MAGAts are having to do mental jumping jacks from approving of a fake endorsement for Trump to now saying that her endorsement for Harris doesn't really matter and that she's a nobody. The whole thing is dumb either way, but if a pop star's endorsement is what it takes to hold off the fascists for at least 4 more years, then so be it.
I can't imagine living in such a weird celebrity country.
Very few people give a shit about celebrities here, let alone what they think, let alone what they think about politics. No one would care for who endorsed who, it very much means absolutely nothing.
Of course you don't list where "here" is. I'm willing to bet that not only do they care about celebrities about the same as Americans, but also that many of those celebrities they care about are Americans.
Go watch the pre-race and opening ceremonies to Formula 1 races and compare the spectacle of USA to any other nation. You'll find that "here" is basically "not USA". Celebrities do exist, but they aren't granted much status and often move to the USA to try garner that, as this seems to be the only place on the planet where popularity is a career path.
In battleground states the win/lose margin will quite possibly come down to a few thousand votes, particularly in PA. The endorsement might not change anyone's mind, but to her millions of fans it raises the elections' importance for anyone who doesn't "care about politics". It turns a civic issue into a social group issue, and people care more about the latter. It'll pull people reluctant to go to the polls to show up and vote.
And so help me god if she militarized her base the GOP is fucked. They're playing with fire. I don't think people understand the soft power TS has. These are voting age kids, or kids of people who are voting age.
In less than 24 hours nearly 400k Americans registered to vote using the specific link that she provided. That's the number that matters. If they actually go vote that is enormous.
But I'd suspect the number of Taylor Swift fans who weren't going to vote at all was a fair bit larger.
Granted, there's really no consensus on the impact of celebrity endorsements, but if anyone can affect how people vote, I'd wager that the biggest pop star in the country could be the one to do it
Look, just try and get it done. Go see what it takes, if it's really as easy as they keep telling you. Take your kid and see how far you can get in trying to surgically transition them. You can always back out at the last second. Don't just take the talking heads' word for it, go see for yourself how far you can get along that process before a medical professional tells you "no."
Any gender transition related healthcare - even just hormone therapy - is a long and involved process that requires multiple doctor and therapist visits, even for adults. And you have to be quite determined and strongly advocate for yourself the entire time, or the process will get derailed.
People who claim that gender transition healthcare is "easy" or "sudden" are just making shit up.
I know you LIBTARDS are going to say SOMETHING about School Shootings and Body Parts Falling Off so let me TELL you that she said CHOPPED OFF you Dumb Marxists! We ONLY care if they get CHOPPED off not SHOT off or MASSACRED off!
I love the implying the dems when they renew the office will do horrible things they have for some reason waited to do while they have office. Honestly it annoys me people take the what the canidate says they will do things with anything than a grain of salt when its clear the historical precidence has held. tax cuts for rich, deregulation, wars, outlaw abortion go republican. progressive taxes, corpo regulation and monopoly breakup, exiting wars, bodily autonomy go democrat. lambast fed to zero interest so stock market go burr republican, let fed set rates to keep a inflation at a low but not negative rate democrat. (for any repbulicans who don't understand fed rates obama had them up then trump pushed them down to his term which is why we had the inflation we had which cooled down due to biden allowing for extreme fed action which further makes things bad as you want fed adjustments to be small but that can't happen when a president spends his term pushing for them to be the opposite of where they should be.)
I doubt there was a big overlap of conservative Trump voters and Taylor fans, the ones complaining about her don't matter to her or her fortune in any way
I don't know, there have been Conservatives that gave up on Rage Against the Machine and Green Day for coming out as anti-Trump.
These people do not have logical or consistent world views. They only know they are on "Team MAGA", so they might have loved Taylor Swift and not noticed any inconsistency until another Trumpet tells them we have always been at war with Eureast Asia.
Man, I am interested in politics, but I don't care about pop culture. Now I have to google Taylor Swift (I know the name and I am sure, I'll also know some songs of her, I just don't know the cnnections inbetween).
You don't really need to know anything about her music to get more context for the politics. She's popular and endorsed the candidate that isn't a caricature of the worst aspects of humanity.
Let's say Taylor Swift endorsed the Green Party, and then 500k swifties register to vote. Assume all of them vote for the Green Party.
Adding that to the Greens' 2016 numbers, they would have gotten about 2M votes. In 2020, it'd be about 1M. Both are less than 2% of the total vote, so we're not even talking about reaching the 5% threshold for federal funding of the next campaign.
Swift is one of the few with a large and highly devoted fanbase that could even come close to these numbers.
OTOH, 500k swifties voting for Democrats (not all of them will, but they will in the vast majority of cases) can matter a lot. It takes Harris from a close race where she might win the popular vote while losing the electoral college, and turning into a race with a comfortable lead where we don't have to worry about that damn stupid technicality putting Trump in office.
I really doubt someone who takes a private jet multiple times a week is ever going to vote or endorse green. Anyway a bunch of celebrities like this endorsing third parties would probably be enough to break the narrative that third parties can't win and they would get millions of votes.
we don’t have to worry
You don't have to worry because you are not a kid living in gaza being bombed with US weapons
I'd hardly call them random. These are popular right wing commentators. It would make sense to see how they respond. And like it or not, twitter is still the place where people put out these public comments.
Lol, give me a break. No one gives a shit about the political opinions of pop stars. All of this shit is hyped up bullshit by media personalities. Absolutely no regular people are "losing it" because a pop star voiced her political opinion. These people in the media are trying to use it to push their own agendas, and if you buy into it, and it sways your opinion, I'm sorry, but you're a dumb ass.
I get what you're saying but you're being idealistic and factually wrong. There's a reason so many people signed up to vote that day with her referral link. It's because people do in fact give a shit.
You may be right that they're dumb but that's beside the point.
No one gives a shit about the political opinions of pop stars.
She gave people a custom link to go to vote.gov, and within 24 hours over 400,000 people hit it. In comparison, in the week leading up to the debate, vote.gov was only getting 30,000 visitors a day. That is, she boosted their traffic by more than 1300%.