Reality

[H2O Man]

"I realized we were not operating on the same level of reality.” – John Trudell


Like every good and decent person in this country, I am sad to read the news about Rob Reiner and his wife. Like everyone who has had relatives murdered, I am sad for the surviving family members. While thinking about the harsh reality of the situation, my phone rang for the first of a number of calls.

“He's hit the bottom of the barrel,” my cousin said. “Actually, he is digging a hole beneath the bottom of the barrel,” I said.

As fucking gross as the felon's statement is, I consider it to be a good thing. It helps to put into focus what a pathetic excuse for a human being he is. There are three things I keep in mind. First, there is not a single citizen in the country who was “undecided” about the felon who is now convinced they should support him. More importantly, it will offend even some of those who supported him in the past. And third, it helps secure republican politicians in a hot seat, as their options are limited to agreeing with him, disagreeing, or attempting to avoid comment.

[Silent Type]

1. Want to believe that, but half of voters were OK with trump mocking a journalist with cerebral palsy. But, yeah, they

can't deny trump is a vile, heartless POS. They just didn't care.

[H2O Man]

2. Right.

A lot of people voted for him, despite knowing he is a terrible human being. Yet as he declines, mentally and physically, his splatterings of hatred and dismal second term record is taking away support. And those numbers do not need to be huge to make the difference in the upcoming mid-terms.

[slightlv]

3. They voted for him BECAUSE he's a terrible human being... mirroring themselves. n/t

[H2O Man]

5. Many did.

All of the maga cult did. Of them, many believed Q-anon, and the felon's campaign promises to release the Epstein scandal files. One thinks of Marjorie Taylor Greene as an example. It also included republicans that vote for their candidates as a matter of routine, including those who just were not comfortable with a woman president -- because they are convinced females are an inferior species.

But exactly as you note, for the vast majority of those who voted for him, it was because he expressed their hatreds.

[BurnDoubt]

6. He's running interference for Hate.

He has emboldened the worst of us to spread their hatred.
Hell will become even more Hellish when he goes there.
He can’t expire soon enough.

[H2O Man]

10. He is hate.

Often, as one reaches old age, the essence of their personality becomes so concentrated it becomes their entire being. Thus his goal is to make the United States both hate and hated.

[jfz9580m]

4. I think media play a big role H20 Man

Nothing I am saying is wildly original. But still, given your aptly titled post, it’s worth pointing out.
Many tech critics from Nicholas Carr, Shoshana Zuboff, Tim Wu, Evgeny Morozov to Ed Zitron and my personal favorite Yasha Levine have pointed out how the media that define so much of our politics, communications and information absorption/transfer, warp and distort reality.

You are an educator and post about the importance of education so you would appreciate the point. They worsen attention and memory wrt normal academics. I don’t like the word “addiction” as I prefer non-pathologizing terms that don’t subtly blame the victim ( especially given the predatory nature of the companies and their CEOs pushing this stuff on us). But certainly they grab our most precious assets-time and attention, which in turn affect one’s income earning potential and quality of life. On that head, Ruth Cain wrote my favorite piece in The Conversation on mental health in this neoliberal hellscape. That piece is 5-10 years old and the nuisance has only grown.

I have reason to know first hand as an early victim of some technologies like AI I suspect, how subtly manipulative or mind numbing it is.

And the shills in the pay of the accelerationists pushing more and more of this stuff, gate-keep discussions on the topic propounding their (largely) non existent merits and blaming users for lack of self control. All while legitimizing every new intrusion with mockery of the notion that somehow these things are different from the humble printing press.

The pooh poohing of all valid criticism as “just those old fuddy duddies and Luddites who were always around in every generation with these predictions of doom ”.

It’s some sort of inability to comprehend scale. Endless, mindless, bullish, dead-eyed “optimism”. It’s like saying that because 100, 1000 and 10,000 or 100,000 are all multiples of 10, something with a 100x nuisance factor and one with a 100,000x nuisance factor are no different.

A noxious little twit (my apologies-you are very civilized :-/..I am less so these days) called Nir Eyal is a typical example.

In this environment Trump is very much a man of the times and a symptom of all these societal diseases. His only real claim to fame is reality tv, a style of entertainment, which unlike Reiner’s scripted films, was known for lowering the bar of decency from the start.

And with all the negative real world effects from doxing, mobbing to misinformation/desensitization characterizing this era, his or Musk’s indecent and bullying style are very much in the spirit of the times. And why everything is falling apart. Musk is truly a mad billionaire worthy of this obscene period.

EarlG’s post after the election addressed a similar point. We are battling an algorithmic nuisance which is potent though dully trashy rather than like a glamorously evil Skynet (I have never seen the movie, but I assume Skynet is more glamorous than these bots and other virtual junk heaps).

I am not 100% anti-tech. Even I get some utility out of it after all. DU for instance is an old school message board and a valuable resource. I am myself drafting a post for Activist HQ, to leave an anon digital trace in a part of the political web I trust.

But I could never abide by these sites like Facebook/Twitter where you drop your rights to your status as a private person. It makes no sense when you are not in media, politics or a similar public facing role and have the right to privacy/anonymity that say a politician who affects a lot of people does not to the same extent.

It is all getting worse with AI and other technologies the general public/lay people like me have a poor understanding of. I scoff at gate-kept, lightweight “studies” by people in bed with the worst offenders that keep confirming that these technologies suck, gobbling up what little research funding exists, without any serious fixes.
Someone like Yasha Levine addresses it most honestly.

But to get back to your post and title, wouldn’t you say that Trump is what is expected even? Now Kim Kardashian is treated like a serious person because she makes some politically appropriate and repellantly hollow and trite noises about justice reform, but she like most other “influencers” was a reality show star ridiculed for being famous for being famous. The net is killing a lot of decent professions and labors and causing a proliferation of this type of junk economy. My term for it is junk capitalism. And such persons are ignorant conspiracy mongers who are obscenely wealthy, while many DUers post about struggling to make ends meet.

And all while the public sector and education and healthcare, publicly funded science, public television etc are under attack like never before with the technofascists installing Trump and making Project 2025 a reality.

Sorry…these rants get away from me constantly now as my stream of consciousness gets more overwrought :-/…

[H2O Man]

7. Beautifully said!

Thank you so much for this! Since I already know what I think and how I view things, I so much appreciate OP/threads where I get a feel of other people's thinking. It helps me overcome feelings of, "Don't others see this shit for exactly what it is?"

Cows moo. Lawn mowers mow lawns. Corporations seek profits. That's not to suggest that all corporations are bad, or evil in the non-religious sense. Corporate news is generally bad, misleading, and report too much misinformation for me to watch. The current "opinion journalism" of our era has elements of good and bad per CNN and MSNOW, with Fox being evil.

The human brain is a curious thing. Repeated exposure to lies changes the way people process information, with a reduction in rational thinking and an increase in emotional response. I am often reminded of Rubin telling me in 1974 that "a lie twice repeated becomes accepted fact in prison." Then add the power of the internet, and the human brain tends to get overwhelmed ..... and the person resorts to the dangerous shortcuts to thinking that has become so common these days. It continues to puzzle me why some of the people I have known since grade school, who seemed to be normal, decent people, think that as fans of the felon, that he cares about them, and would be buddies should they ever meet him.

It would seem to me that we need to define the current Project 2025 offenses as economic warfare. Put it in terms of the prices of groceries. That's simple enough that anyone who does grocery shopping understands. There are, of course, some who would recommend not going there. They are the wealthy, who even if they have not actively participated in it, have become wealthier. Economic warfare has been waged upon the American public -- Democrats, republicans, and independents -- for a heck of a long time. It's time we fight back.

[jfz9580m]

8. Thanks

Last edited Tue Dec 16, 2025, 03:51 AM - Edit history (1)

You yourself are a treasure this board is lucky to have H20 Man..setting it apart from the various FBs and similar…
I think the difference lies in a place not gate-kept by a handful of powerful new media corporations.

(Capcha: you no longer have an icon H20 man but it used to be Muhammad Ali? ..with all this talk of AI and bots..simple enough and may help EarlG).

[H2O Man]

9. Thank you!

I really appreciate that! I try to add some value here, and am comfortable doing that because of what you said about it not being gate-kept. (One of my favorite things was years ago, a forum member insisting she had proof that I was Patrick Buchanan, hoping to get me removed. Shortly thereafter, she was removed. Though I can't offer any proof, I think she was Stephen Miller! Ha!)

[KS Toronado]

13. Never heard of "Activist HQ" before

After a www search it's one more new site I'll be paying attention to to help kill the R party at the ballot box.

[jfz9580m]

14. lol..

No I just meant DU’s Activist HQ
Is that Asterix with guns in your icon? From that Viking comic book? That’s cute…

[KS Toronado]

15. Guess again

FYI, there is a group called Activist HQ, looked up their fakebook page, not very active.

[jfz9580m]

17. Ha I have never watched enough Looney Tunes

Last edited Tue Dec 16, 2025, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)

To know who. . A Looney Tunes Sheriff?
I am rethinking the post for activist HQ here.

I have left a bunch of posts all over DU. Well, they are an incoherent mess and an insult to the role of information in society .

But I thought I would instead try to sound normal again. And go offline mostly and focus on science in my field. Every second of effort stolen from your time in your field is kind of an affront as it indicates that much more time from your own field they sucked away.

It doesn’t require extreme self-regulation. I have an axe to grind with some really annoying stuff.
What is it - Dec 16? I was supposed to have restarted work on this paper I am writing, instead I have been here all month. And one just sounds “off” when one rambles and explodes. I can see that as a scientist. But well, Trump 2.0 seems like a time to take down these tech creeps a peg. I am pretty NIMBY. It’s now or never. Or at least it accelerates as a nuisance if entirely unchecked.

My best bet is to focus on my field and dial down net-centric behaviors.
Net-centric engagement with reality usually means you fall into one of these categories: bot; influencer adjacent; adhd; spook; gamer/gameified; sleuth; creep (hey get a life you..yes you 🫵 ; one of the various internet based creepy cottage industries that get my goat; retirees (timewise, people like my dad or many posters here are the only people online if being online isn’t your part of your profession - it isn’t mine ).

That last I get..but ;-/. I’ll take my activism into real life now, except when I am goaded enough to post online.
Complainant! Yeah that’s the other category of activist.

That’s the thing, it’s not money or politics, maybe zealotry as James Buchanan would put it..it’s about what’s right or wrong in any intellectually honest way. Sucks away one time and attention and then blames one.
But the real world is the place for that..

It was just that the noise pollution levels were exceptionally high where I live in the last month, and they rake up an old conflict with a lousy former employer and I waste time.
I must go work. I have been trying as usual to focus on my attention and memory and July-Dec 2025, the noise levels on my street have seemed extra high and that always ruffles me.

[Martin Eden]

11. Reality is, this too shall pass

I mean that as a double entendre.

The Felon's latest outrage will be replaced by the next, another in a long string. Will it pass without making a difference? Time may tell.

And this hideous episode in our history must also pass. Time will tell if the damage is long-lasting, or it sparks the next leap forward in bending the long arc of the moral universe towards justice.

Reality is, it is up to us to make that happen.

[H2O Man]

12. Right!

The little media I've seen has indicated that some republicans in DC have said his insulting Reiner was in bad taste. One might question where they have been the literally hundreds of times he has resorted to vile insults. Hopefully more will do so as he continues to do offensive things ..... and not just what he says, but the damage he is inflicting upon the United States.

The route our country is on should not be mistaken for a hamster wheel, as this will indeed come to an end, and things will be very different. It really is up to us which direction our society goes in. It will not be easy, but can be accomplished.

[malaise]

16. There is no bottom for this monster

That is all

[H2O Man]

18. He will get worse.

That might not seem possible, but it will come to be. Things will get worse. But then they will get better in the second-half of 2026.

[malaise]

19. He and his goons are losing big time

Can’t wait for impeachment three

[H2O Man]

20. Right.

The chances of his completing this full term are decreasing.