Castle Magus

"Hi. Today we're looking at U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that Donald Trump is using to do his Mass Deportations Now. We look at where they came from, why they're allowed to wear masks, and the movement to stop them from taking over American cities."

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A few choice quotes:

"The only gang causing trouble is ICE."

"Kids, the thing you gotta know about post-9/11 America is that almost everyone lost their entire goddamn minds. According to polls, a slim majority of Americans thought it was necessary for some civil liberties to be ceded in order to defeat terrorists. Xenophobia and racism skyrocketed, specifically on the Right. So, we did a Patriot Act, which allowed law enforcement to collect our records and search our homes without notification, so long as they could prove that they 'thought' we were doing a terrorism. Which, at the time, simply meant that you looked Arab or Asian."

"What is ICE? It's just America, bro. It's the institutions we've given unchecked power to over the decades, the end result of the Patriot Act and our broken law enforcement system."

"It seems pretty bad if the system we're all used to is built on the gradual dismantling to civil liberties, because that's the thing: we're used to it. If Trump has any positive talents, it's his ability to make evident that which was already there. He is so grotesque and loud in his terrible goals that, in pushing the limits of his power, he's exposing the seams that everyone ignored. He's the guy who makes the mall security guards realize that, technically, there's no rule against skinny-dipping in the fountain. This is all to say that Trump and ICE are quite horrifyingly working in tandem with a system that most Americans consider functional."

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I honestly had never heard of ICE, even though it had existed since the time of Dubya, before Trump started using it as his own personal Gestapo, back during his first """""administration,""""" and I wish I had never heard of it at all (by that I mean I wish it didn't exist at all) now that he's quadrupling down on that Gestapo shit. Oh, and good on Tim Walz, the guy who should be Vice President right now, for saying pretty much the same thing. I didn't know about that until I did a certain Google search just now. He's not wrong, and he's not the only one saying it. ICE == Gestapo. And if the Department of Homeland Security find the comparison "sickening," then fuck them, too. DHS can go piss up a rope.

Anyway, in conclusion, to hell forever with Donald Trump, as usual, and to hell with that Todd asshole, too.

I don't have a "joe rogan" tag... hmm... not sure if even this 1:18:01 episode of Some More News that is explicitly about Joe Rogan is enough for me to bother creating a "joe rogan" tag. I mean, sure I could just plop "joe rogan" down there in the tags list and then have a "joe rogan" tag for the future, in the unlikely off-chance that I ever mention him again, but he's absolutely not worth the effort of finding and back-tagging the very rare few posts from the past in which I may have mentioned the asshat. Eh... okay, I guess I'll throw a new "joe rogan" tag on this post, for what tiny bit that is worth (even just to me, let alone anyone else).

Also, disclaimer: I have never seen anything of Joe Rogan's show myself, other than a few short clips here and there over the years of him saying stupid shit.

Anyway, on with watching the video at 2x playback speed...

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...all right, not even five minutes in, and there's some transphobia. Off to a good start.

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Side bar: "Walmart fires 6'4" cisgender woman threatened by man who thought she was trans"

Wow. So, basically, a man came into a women's bathroom at a Walmart to harass and threaten a cisgender woman, who worked at that Walmart, because he wrongly, stupidly thought she was transgender merely because she happened to be tall, and then the woman was fired from her job at that Walmart after she reported the incident. (Ostensibly because she rEpOrTeD iT tO tHe WrOnG tYpE oF mAnAgEr... what the actual fuck ...so, then, why was the manager she did report it to not also fired for not reporting it up the chain to the, supposedly, "correct" type of manager? Probably because said manager wasn't a tall woman who "looked trans.")

And, of course, this fucking happened in goddamned Florida. That tracks.

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And now, onto the COVID disinformation part of the show...

Ah, and there's the racism... hmm, turns out Joe Rogan apparently had very different views back in 2019 or whenever, compared to now...? Gee, I wonder why? Oh, right, it's because of the Trump stuff.

And here comes the Trump-specific stuff (though that's really been an undercurrent of the entire video all along)... Joe Rogan before: "The morons had a king." Joe Rogan now: "He's real." Also, it does indeed seem really weird that Joe Rogan, who apparently hates everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, had Donald Trump, someone who really appears to have been a close, personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as a guest on his show, and apparently never once mentioned Jeffrey Epstein. Go figure.

Joe Rogan didn't like Tim Walz, because Tim Walz was, supposedly, "a liar." Therefore, all in for Trump I guess????? The guy who has spouted literally multiple tens of thousands of documented lies over the past decade????? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Elon Musk? A genius? The smartest person alive? Okay, Joe Rogan. Okay.

Trump is "an outsider" and "anti-establishment" in the same way that GamerGate was "actually about ethics in video game journalism." Joe Rogan, by supporting Trump, is also no longer "anti-establishment," because Trump, like it or not, is the fucking, goddamned "establishment" now. Thanks, in part, to Joe Rogan, specifically.

Ah, and there comes the anti-abortion sentiment and the homophobia, too. Keep 'em comin', Joe. They're all just beach ball issues with no actual substance or value, amirite? *eye roll*

I'm on the tail end of Gen X, having been born in 1979 (Google/Wikipedia says Gen X was from "1965 to 1980"), and believe you me, I have absolutely not undergone a "right-wing turn." Maybe I'm just an aberration, though. *shrug*

Oh, and we're even getting just a smidge of antisemitism up in here (along with some Nazi propaganda/Hitler apologia), too. The hits just keep on comin', Joe.

So, in conclusion, while Joe Rogan isn't the absolutely worst grifter/con-man/right wing dumbshit that Some More News has done a video about, he's also obviously not the greatest dude in the world, either. I don't know... maybe Joe Rogan could be one of the rare few Trumpanzees that potentially could be shamed into changing his ways by being called a hypocrite, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. In any case, this video has not convinced me to suddenly start watching the 6000+ hours of The Joe Rogan Experience or whatever the fuck.

(They didn't manage to get through this video without at least some dumb skits involving Katy and Warmbo. Short as they were, they were still present. *sigh*)

Two things.

First, I got my new glasses today. They'd called a week ago Wednesday, Oct. 9, actually, saying that they were ready to be picked up, but because my phone A) didn't inform me that I had new voice mail waiting (which is "normal" for this phone, because it never alerts me when I have voicemail), and B) didn't inform me at all that I'd missed a call from the eye doctor (which is not normal for this phone, so what the fuck, asshole phone), I didn't find out about it until today, when I just randomly decided to check my voicemail after getting a spam call.

In any case, I have new glasses, for the first time since 2020. (I thought it had been longer, but apparently not.)

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Second, I early voted today. Took about 30 minutes or so. The line was wrapped all the way around the library lobby, and I thought it was going to take forever, but it moved pretty quickly. As per usual, I voted D for every race that had a D running in it (including, of course, Harris for President) and left entirely blank the several races that only had an R (or even two or three R candidates, but still no D or "other" candidates, in some cases).

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I also voted against a NC Constitutional Amendment referendum that purported to "clarify" things. Basically, whoever put this shit on the ballot wants to change the wording of a certain section.

The current wording is "Every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized, 18 years of age, and possessing the qualifications set out in this Article, shall be entitled to vote at any election by the people of the State, except as herein otherwise provided."

The amendment referendum on the ballot is worded like this: "Constitutional amendment to provide that only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age and otherwise possessing the qualifications for voting shall be entitled to vote at any election in this State."

Basically, they want to remove "every other person who has been naturalized," particularly the "naturalized" part. It doesn't actually affect who can and cannot vote, at all, mind you. Naturalized citizens can still vote, even if this passes. It just wants to change the wording to introduce unnecessary uncertainty and fear, and to perhaps persuade "naturalized citizens" to stay home and not vote, for fear of "breaking the law," even though they're still fully eligible to vote. Essentially just more extremely petty racist Republican voter suppression horseshit, in other words. *weary sigh*

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One thing that really annoyed me when I went to vote today, though, was that there was some bitch standing outside the library, "helpfully" handing out little yellow "voter guide" pamphlets... which only had the fucking Republican candidates on it. I glanced at it and handed it back to her, refraining from saying anything, but I was stewing on the inside, like so:

"Galactic Mermaid - The Mermaid Sisters"

On the other hand, Elon Musk is a white supremacist/Nazi-"adjacent" puddle of fetid diarrhea, so who gives a flying fuck what he has to say, aside from fellow white supremacists and Nazis and those already predisposed to give a shit about what white supremacists and Nazis have to say? Go figure.

Anyway, to hell with Elon Musk and to hell with Donald Trump, as per usual.

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While out and about today, I actually saw a couple Harris/Walz signs, which was just as much of shock this time around as the Biden/Harris signs were last time, given how deeply Trumpanzee this goddamned shithole of a state is otherwise.

With that said, however, as also mentioned in that post there, that same asshat with the huge LED board has the fucking thing out in his yard on the side of the road again, this time flashing back and forth between messages of "Please Vote!" and "Trump Must Win!" *eye roll + deeply weary sigh + shaking my fucking head in second-hand embarrassment*

A post over there on John Scalzi's webblog thing.

Mr. Scalzi's mention of the Supreme Court deciding the 2000 election, though... heavens forbid it reaches that point with this one, given the current broken, busted, corrupt-as-fuck, Trump-stacked Supreme Court, because that would absolutely mean only one thing: SCROTUS IMPOTUS Trump II being crowned on January 20, 2025.

Also, because of this post, I just had to look up "JD Vance ordering donuts." It's disappointing and unimpressive and awkward, just as I hoped it would be.

"Did Donald Trump just say he shouldn’t be allowed to vote?"

Trump and the Trumpanzees (worst band name ever): *blasts Kamala Harris for picking a VP candidate who implemented a policy allowing convicted felons to vote*

Also Trump: *is a convicted felon*

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JD Vance certainly had opinions about Harris's VP pick, too, which I won't bother to link to here, because fuck JD Vance. All I have to say in response to Vance, though, is that Harris certainly did a better job of picking a VP than Trump did.