I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
Oh, I’m the cult of personalityI exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three
Oh, I’m the cult of personalityDeep cut.
It’s a great song. I recently learned that they’re still performing. Would buy a ticket if they played here.
Great song and so damned relevant
He speaks to their “truths.” He feeds their hopes. He bolsters their fear of a diminishing relevance. He says things they want to hear in a way that they understand.
He’s the only one who holds a branch out to them and they clutch on to it like the trumpanzees they are.
Except it’s not a branch. It’s a clutching hand seeking their wallet, but they’re too fucking stupid to see it.
A fool and their money are soon parted.
It seems that the importance of…ahem, “telling it like it is” cannot be overstated. i.e., racism is an extremely powerful effect.
“telling it like it is” is just coded language to say “he says the shitty things that I think are true, so it makes me feel less shitty and empty inside”
“He’s making it so that I can say the shitty things I have always just thought.”
it is pretty powerful having your beliefs be broadcasted and repeated ad nauseum by a figure you consider of authority. like discovering the idea you thought you had originally being already out there said by someone you hold in respect. for trump followers him just being the nominee of their party of blind choice is already worthy of praise and admiration.
trump just loves their endless money pit, and will say just about anything to get it. they love that they have a former president with attention from the media to propagate their delusions.
“Instead of taking the time to reflect on why people call me an idiot I’ll try to get someone like me in power!”
“He hates those n-words just as much as I do!”
When you have nothing left but fear and hate…
you forgot stupidity
One could argue that stupidity is just a lack of intelligence, so it’s not really something you have.
No, that’s ignorance, which is not a moral failing. These people are stupid. Willfully-ignorant, head in the sand, turn their heads, keep others from bettering themselves, stupid.
Ignorance is not having knowledge, you can be both stupid and knowledgable or intelligent and ignorant. Not knowing how to wash your clothes is being ignorant, not being able to figure out how to wash your clothes is being stupid.
EDIT: Not to mention that someone can be stupid in one area and insanely intelligent in another. It’s not a direct personality trait, although people will probably categorize other people based on the categories in which they are one or the other.
if you weaponize lack of intelligence, you have stupidity
Nothing left but fear, hate… and also, if polls hold, the senate, the house, the presidency, and they already have scotus, state-level politics, and huge tranches of circuit courts.
Yes, they’re going to be crying so hard after they read all these dank, critical memes. That’ll show 'em!
You forgot stupidity
You can say that again…
You forgot stupidity
The racists want an idol to say it’s okay to be racist
The problem with democracy is that most people are ignorant …
edit: changed retarded to ignorant, I apologize to anyone who felt offended by my use of the term.
Chapeau! That is in fact the video I had in mind when I wrote my original comment. However, I was informed that the choice of words is considered offensive nowadays, so I changed it because it was not my intention to hurt anybody’s feeling.
It drives me nuts that people just casually toss out that slur.
English has so many other words you can use without insulting a whole group of innocent people and using this slur is just lazy.
Apologies, I am not a native speaker, what adjective would you propose instead?
Ignorant or stupid is what I’m assuming you’re going for but it’s your comment so I’m not sure.
Aren’t ‘stupid’ and ‘idiot’ just even older versions of ‘retarded’ and all describe people with developmental and/or learning disabilities?
Yep, also “dumb”, " lame " etc. These are words for disabilities which then entered common parlance as slurs.
“retarded” is actually the other way round in that it just means “slowed” - but has historically been used as an insult directed towards people with mental disabilities.
Personally I think that what’s offensive is scolding people for using the word in the correct context which prevents society from losing the association with the disabled and instead continues perpetuating that meaning even though that’s the opposite of what they claim to be trying to do
“Retarded” definitely didn’t start out as an insult. There was a time when “mentally retarded” was what people with developmental disabilities were called by the medical establishment. My Boomer mother still uses it without malice (and is scolded by my Gen Z kids) to refer to those with cognitive disabilities because it wasn’t an insult when she was a kid. It was fully an insult when my Gen X self was growing up.
I think there may be too much white knighting for a word that no one seriously uses any more. “You can’t use that word because in the past it was a designation for the cognitively disabled.” But really “retarded” has lost any meaning other than as an insult to mean supremely stupid. It often doesn’t even refer to a person but could be an object or a situation.
You’ve pointed out the whole problem. Only two generations ago the word “retarded” was used without malice to refer to individuals who had a developmental disability. To use it as an insult, now, makes it all the more demeaning to those individuals with developmental disabilities.
It’s different from “dumb” or “lame,” which I’ve never heard used as an innocent way to describe a speech or physically impaired person, firsthand. Those words fit your description, better, of those that have been so far removed from their original meaning that they are no longer offensive by today’s standards.
Completely agree, by “other way round” in my comment I meant it didn’t originally mean disabled not that it started as an insult
You’re really more offended by a person taking issue with a word that, for at least the last thirty years, has been used to insult individuals by comparing them to disabled people, as if the latter were somehow less-than? You’re more offended by a person having some level of compassion toward disabled people, than by a person who speaks of them as if they’re without dignity?
Pretty low if you ask me. If keeping the meaning of the insult “retarded” has higher societal importance to you than having respect for disabled people you just might be a huge piece of shit.
Literally all this dude above is asking is for people to not invoke disabled individuals when insulting another person, and people in this thread are bending over backwards to justify doing just that. Pretty fucking gross.
You didn’t seem to take offense to them using “idiot.” Why are you comfortable insulting “idiots”? Do you think that mentally deficient people choose to be mentally deficient? That’s just how they’re born. Why would you endorse insulting someone for something they have no choice about?
Being mentally deficient is a disability. “Idiot” is no better than the other words used here. Just stop being so insulting. Seriously, wow.
Idiot is not. It comes from a Greek word for someone who doesn’t pay attention to politics.
A little bit of both, apparently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot
If this is correct, then it started out as a word for private citizen and then evolved in Greek to mean ignorant.
Then in the 19th Century was coined as a medical term.
Edit (after I thought about it some more): I think ignorant would be best to use here, because stupid is also a slur that offends people for an inherent property, no real difference to retarded. I will edit my initial comment accordingly. Thank you for the heads up.
I just noticed your username and it made me feel so extremely disgusted that I am going to block you, just to never have to read it again, nothing personal though. Also, with such a username you are not in a particularly good position to criticize others for their choice of words imo.
You: Insult a group of people that had no power over their condition
Them: Insults no one, has a ridiculous username
Your reaction: You’re disgusting! I’ll block you!
Calling a username disgusting is not the same as calling a person disgusting. I even wrote “nothing personal”.
That’s not what they mean, they mean that the person had a valid point and just had a clearly silly and exaggerated name but you decide to engage with that rather than their response to your question.
Yeah so I guess there’s no point trying here…
Even not being a native speaker you should know the difference here.
I fucking love the internet
It drives me nuts
Arrr…
insulting a whole group of innocent people
What innocent people are being insulted? The euphemism treadmill has ensured nobody is being legitimately described this way anymore, it is just an insult. Btw, idiot and stupid both used to be the correct medical terms for unusually slow mental development, it’s just a matter of how much time has passed.
How retarded.
That because you retarded too
I wAnT a CrooK fOR PrSedEnt bC a CRoOk KnoW HoW cRooKs OpeRaTe And WiLL shUT thEm Down!
“You’re not the problem, it’s those other guys” is a very appealing and hence powerful message that people want to believe (in fact, the worse things are, the more they want to believe it) so it easilly bypasses rationality.
You might have noticed that in America it’s not just Trump using it or even just his party.
Well, that is what advertising and propaganda is.
Eh… At this point it’s more of a religion. People just believe what they want to believe. And that is the underdog who is the second coming of Jesus and will fix all problems that were created by immigrants.
At this point you have entire media silos filled with privatized propaganda, which is just ripe for this shit to happen. And this model is cropping up around the world.
We need to react to this somehow or we’ll be toast. If we can’t reclaim the media landscape for professional journalism for it’s own sake, we’re headed down a dark road indeed.
For a conspiracy or a cover up to be real in this day and age it needs to be small, otherwise it just involves too many people to stay secret.
Trump and his “believers” are a different story. They know it’s not real, instead they’ve all silently (and not so silently) agreed to reject reality and substitute in their false god’s reality.
I think the lumpenproletariat who support him so fervently are true believers. Granted, on that side of the political cube lies and honesty all get muddled together into mush.
It feels logical, clever and safe to say that, but it’s not remotely true.
It’s a lot easier to be dismissive than actually think about the topic, i know.
Oh the irony…
sad the fucker believes national governments can’t keep a secret, it’s too hard, despite all evidence to the contrary, like when they release the files thirty years later and it turns out they were and the crazy people, were not.
How sad for them? I think @christophorious is projecting: how sad for the rest of us.
Insecure people want simple lies over complex truth.
Also worth mentioning this problem is decades in the making and it’s not just America. In Canada we have systematically destroyed our healthcare and education systems to the point where people and trusting them less and less. People, myself included, are not right wing and are checking out of a system that is not doing anything to protect me and mine.
I am NOT voting conservative but I can see the allure. People latch onto rhetoric when Maslow’s hierarchy of needs isn’t met. When you feel threatened your options disappear regardless of if they’re there or not. Stress impacts your ability to think properly.
As stated elsewhere we are heading down a dark path and few of us have flashlights and are scared AF at where the mob is going to lead us.
History is repeating itself because we stopped following history and the ones we used to trust we don’t anymore.
Never forget this “man” was convicted of sexual assault & bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.
Is that why his face is orange? Is he Bizzaro Trump? Did the Bizzaro universe steal our Trump and replace him with theirs???
Edit: if he is not Bizzaro Trump can you imagine how decent of a person Bizzaro Trump would be?
Well there are plenty of “journalists” over at fox that are dedicated to deceiving people.
