They have private armies. Literally. They're basically untouchable. You can't really solve political problems with violence. Not anymore anyway.

I'm also as a Democrat incredibly furious because they did absolutely fuck all about voter suppression. It was like watching a slow moving train wreck. I knew the disaster was coming and I could see the people who are in charge and I expected them to do I don't know something and they did absolutely fucking nothing.

I think a few of them filed some paperwork that didn't go anywhere.

Democrats are obsessed with propriety and being correct. So they don't know how to respond when the other side are openly criminal. The correct response is what LBJ did. You go in there and you fuck shit up like you're a fucking mob boss. You wield power.

I don't think it has sunk in with people that the Republican party is actively implementing fascism. I think that's just too much for most people to take in. It's the classic it can't happen here problem.

I don't think anyone's going to believe it until their third or fourth week in the camps. Some of them might think that they're actually going to get showers...

You know we have a Navy right?

The Republicans are deeply deeply underwater for the midterms and as much as they will cheat using common county level voter suppression tactics there are limits to what they can get away with even in deep red Texas.

So short-term they're going to back off at least until after the midterms because America is still nominally a democracy.

If we get another term of the Republicans in the white house though I don't think it's going to matter anymore and you're going to find out what it's like to have one party rule. They're not going to give a fucking rat's ass whether you have electricity and water..

Trump said and did absolutely batshit in the same things all throughout the 2024 campaign and he also if you were paying any attention to politics made it crystal clear that his brain is mush and that he is actively senile. We pretty much have confirmation that he is on Alzheimer's medication. That's why he keeps having to go to Walter Reed and why he has those bruises on his hands that's how they deliver the medications they're using to try and keep his brain just functional enough that he can get through a speech.

The news media is 90% billionaire owned and they cover it all of that up. Meanwhile every time Joe Biden stuttered we got eight weeks of non-stop coverage. It was so common that it's created a new term in politics called sane washing which is the idea of taking a batshit crazy politician and covering up how insane they are.

If you're a low information voter who doesn't pay attention to politics then what you came away from in the last election is that Kamala Harris was going to help you get an abortion and Donald Trump was going to lower the price of eggs. Yeah that's absolutely fucking insane but that's what happens when so many people are so low information and our news media no longer even tries to inform them. Anyone who did last cycle got fired.

I watched as a couple dozen well respected journalists got fired from their jobs for reporting things Trump said and did.

If your hobby is sports and sports video games then I don't know what to tell you. I feel really bad for those folks. If that's what takes the edge off from your daily life it's about to get a lot shittier and it was already pretty shitty.

They don't 20 billion dollars of leveraged buyout debt on them. If you think EA sucks now you haven't seen anything yet. They have to get out from under that debt and the only way they can think of to do that is to abuse their employees and their customers. They are already abusing the employees pretty much as much as a legally can.

I expect they will start outsourcing things to foreign countries with cheap labor that they frankly can't really do because it's going to create weird cultural problems to do so. On top of that they have already started trying to add even nastier microtransactions in. And this is EA we are talking about.

I feel bad for anyone who's into their sports games because they're going to basically collapse but because of monopolies you're still going to be stuck with them. So if that was your hobby then it's basically going to go to shit and there's nothing you can do about it.

Once again this is one of those cases where antitrust law enforcement would have protected your hobby. People sometimes complain because I'm bringing politics into a hobbyist discussion but whether you like it or not politics is going to intrude on your life you don't get to stick your head in the sand anymore...

If we fall to fascism completely we will start invading other countries. That is what failing empires do. The incompetent buffoons running the empire empty their coffers with corruption and they need to engage in conquest so they can loot other countries and refill the coffers.

We will take Canada and Mexico first and then the rest of South America and once we have that we will use those resources and the slaves we get from there to launch attacks into Greenland and use that as a launching base to take Europe. Or at least that will be the plan.

The people doing all this will be incompetent morons so it will probably come crashing down after a few hundred million people have died. That's the best case. It's also possible that we will launch nuclear weapons and end the entire human race. We firmly believe that God will protect us so we aren't afraid of other countries nuclear arsenals.

The world needs to wake up and realize just how fucking insane us Americans are. Literally 35% of us believe that causing Armageddon is a good thing. And that 35% is currently in charge of the country.

The SEC is run by Trump, it's just as corrupt as he is. They won't touch his bribe buddies. This doesn't stop until he's out of office.

They don't ignore him. They react in a confused and chaotic manner.

And the president openly selling access is not ok. I get that we're used to corruption but this? JFC. Why aren't we freaking the fuck out right now?

Creeping up in my hobbyist forums every now and then. It's the low effort spam I hate.

Politics is a part of life and effects my hobbies. I hate when we are trained to ignore it

Through India and Vietnam. This is probably more another solicitation for a bribe. Either that or trying to get a cold war going with China since Russia's a bust

Oh snap how can I possibly respond to such a witty reprisal?!

By Jove but got it! I'm rubber and you're glue what bounces off me sticks to you!

Enforce antitrust law. It does mean though you're going to have to change how you vote. You're going to have to change what you prioritize. Maybe not you personally but the majority of people reading this comment I would wager

And the answer as usual is AI slop.

This has been going on for ages and used for spam and cybercrime and they didn't care.

The reason it's a problem now is AI companies are buying access to your TV so they can use your clean IP address to go scraping data from websites that are blocking them.

Don't get me wrong it's still a good thing that these are getting banned but they have been around apparently for quite some time and none of the TV manufacturers gave a shit. Probably because the problem wasn't big enough until the AI swap bots got involved.