The Former Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Volume XI: The Crypt Keeper Years

Carnac

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@BestOf

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Where’s the CPAC shit going?

I think GOP insanity containment would be most appropriate, but I’ve seen it all over the place.

The Golden Trump statue is one of those situations where conservatives are actually a lot more savvy about their messaging than the left. It’s supposed to be an obviously ridiculous troll. The people on twitter trying to “own” Republicans by invoking the Ten Commandments and pointing out the hypocrisy are missing the basic message. The hypocrisy is the point. They are openly operating in bad faith and celebrating their bad faith You’re kind of swinging at air if you’re trying to call them out on their hypocrisy.

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10 posts were merged into an existing topic: COVID-19: Chapter 7 - The south will rise, again.

It’s kind of scary that, in retrospect, it was not remotely idiotic enough

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This is also surprisingly accurate

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I’d love to read something by an expert on how this sort of thing happens. Does history show this kind of progression from very subtle to less and less subtle dog whistles? This seems like the most blatant example yet. Very hard to see how this is anything but on purpose.

It’s possible that there is some Steve Miller type behind the scenes being cheeky but I think the most likely explanation still is that the rune resemblance is a coincidence.

cf.

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Lol, writers really bringing their a-game for the sequel.

At first I was like “that star next to the ‘c’ doesn’t like the odal ruin, gtfo.” And then I was like “Holy Shit.”

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Today while discussing religion with my daughter, I told her that different religions have different names for god. Christians call him Jesus, Hindus call him Brahman, Jews call him Yahweh, and Republicans call him Trump.

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It’s absolutely intentional. I’ve been a part of a stage crew. Everything is micromanaged and planned out in advanced.

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There is a difference between planned out and intentionally displaying an obscure rune.

Just because it’s obscure to us, it doesn’t mean it’s obscure to them.

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I think Matty is right. The people who do the design work on these things spend hours and hours staring at their own work, which then gets tons of scrutiny from lots of other people as well. Unintentional references are much less common than you might think.

Considering the relative obscurity of that rune, the audience, and how awkward the layout is for a stage, it was almost certainly intentional. Regarding your library desk picture I’d guess the shape was at least noticed by somebody as well. There probably wasn’t an actual neo-Nazi doing the design, but somewhere along the way somebody probably said, “lol it’s a swastika”.

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But haven’t the last four years shown that no one competent helps the GOP do anything. I mean we could have said that the people who plan press conferences painstakingly go over every detail, but then we got Four Seasons Landscaping.

Above notwithstanding, I’m in the maybe camp.

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What percentage of the population recognizes a swastika? What percentage recognizes an odal rune?

I’d guess the percentage of people who do stage design for CPAC is pretty damn high.

Why else would it be that shape? I done a fair bit of design and layout work in my life. Things don’t happen by accident. Somebody spent a lot of time and effort making sure it looked like that for a reason, but the shape doesn’t make sense for a stage. It’s very awkward and impractical, so it came from somewhere else.

You’re asking me to believe that the person responsible for designing a stage for a far-right conference full of people who openly embrace authoritarian, nationalist and fascist symbolism came up with a very unusual and illogical layout that is pretty awful as a stage but just so happens to be in the exact shape of a rune adopted by the Nazis and that’s purely coincidence? Yeah no, I don’t think so.

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