Uh....is Trump dying?

 So....the rumors about Trump's health never seem to stop, and honestly, I'm starting to get convinced something is off with the guy. Kyle Kulinski covered some new evidence today, as well as other content creators and my opinion is shifting a bit on it. I'm starting to suspect the guy is dealing with some serious cardiovascular issues, and may even be having strokes. I dont think the guy is dead, but uh...is the reason he hasnt been easily visible because they're covering up a stroke? it's possible. I mean, if you watch the videos and look at evidence presented, combined with what we do know, it is painting a picture. 

Again, I dont trust the white house to tell us anything to the contrary. Again, we're at "Kim Jong Un doesn't crap" levels of propaganda around dear leader's health. And I don't trust them to be straight with us under such circumstances. heck, even Biden's administration was clearly covering up how much the president was obviously sundowning and crap, and they're STILL more trustworthy than the trump admin. That's how untrustworthy the trump admin is.

Anyway, they're keeping him away from people. He's on new medicines, which in and of itself dont mean much but it really does seem like they're trying to prevent the guy from having a major heart attack or stroke. It's been suspected he's been having mini strokes for a while. He might have had a worse one this week, we don't know. It's possible his "chronic venous insufficiency" is actually indicative of a serious heart issue, or alternatively a a side effect of the meds he's on...again, to prevent a major cardiovascular event that could severely disable or kill him. Some suspect his hand bruising is due to those meds thinning his blood, again, to prevent clots from forming. Alternatively he could be getting an IV of something.

And yeah, I don't know. it's possible this is just a weird internet rabbit hole of the online left, and everything is fine, or it could be a sign that something is wrong with the guy. We don't know. Time will tell if this is legitimate or not. I don't normally peddle in these sorts of rumors, but given this is getting more solid evidence and given we've been dealing with all of this secrecy regarding his health anyway, you can't help but wonder. 

Anyway, some wonder if we'd be better off with Vance or Trump, and...I really don't know. Trump is bad, he's very unstable, but that might be a good thing. It brings more attention to what his administration is doing. It's kinda like if youre being kidnapped in public and you scream and put up a fight instead of going along with them, the commotion might actually bring it to peoples' attention, which will give you a fighting chance to stop it. People think Vance might be better because he's more sane...but you gotta keep in mind, he's a more sane fascist. Vance is a true believer in these creepy ideologies that are making up Trump's policies. Never forget, Trump himself is an idiot. He's useless by himself. His second term is so dangerous because he has a bunch of people behind him and infrastructure that are going along and executing all of the crazy crap he pushes for. Those guys won't just go away if Trump dies or is incapacitated. This naziesque takeover of democracy can still happen, and given Vance can give us a sense of normalcy that Trump doesn't, uh....that might be worse, because they'll be more likely to get away with it. On the flip side, Vance has zero charisma at all and it might be that if Trump dies, his approval will tank through the floor and his movement will fragment. Although it's unclear. Keep in mind, realigning figures in American politics appear once in a generation, and the coalition they bring together can persist for long after that original figure's exit from politics. FDR's coalition lasted until the 1960s. Reagan's lasted until at least 2008, and Trump is arguably a continuation of that. It's very well possible Trump's coalition could be with us until around the 2050s. We don't know. Or, given it is basically Reagan's coalition, maybe it will implode starting in 2028. Who knows? Again. Time will tell. Either way, don't expect things to get any better if Trump does happen to "expire". The people behind trump actually scare me more than trump himself. It's just that trump is a lightning rod of controversy which has advantages as well as disadvantages. 

Anyway, once again, we'll see.  

Discussing PBD on Jubilee

 So, Jubilee put out a new debate, this time with it being one capitalist vs 20 anti-capitalists, with Patrick Bet David being the capitalist. And...not gonna lie, it was cringe. Some of it was PBD as I literally CANT STAND that person, but part of it was also the fact that the contrast being leftists who seemed very unskilled at debate didn't help. 

Anyway, PBD, for those who don't know, is this podcaster who is quite popular in right wing circles. He's an entrepreneur, a "job creator", and proud of it. And honestly, this guy eats, drinks, and sleeps capitalism. Like everything in his mind is how to make more money, it's considered inspirational because he encourages this maximalist mindset where everyone spends their whole lives working and making money, and ugh...yeah, given MY views? I HATE this guy. But then again, I also think a lot of socialists are kinda braindead themselves, as they seem to hate the idea of having logistics to figure out hard questions, and even though I'm a reluctant capitalist, I'm still a capitalist in some ways because of pure functionalism. 

Like one of my anti capitalist friends tonight was shocked that I said it's okay is some level of inequality exists as a motivator and he was shocked to hear me say that. But...we do need a motivator to get people to do the work necessary for the functioning of society, and think capitalism still has the best system for that. I just disagree with the extent to which such an incentive structure is necessary.

Which brings me to the debate's first claim:

Claim #1: Incentive is the engine of capitalism, remove it and the system fails

I would actually agree with this claim, at least in theory. If we have pure capitalism where all property is dictated by who works for it in a market system, and "communism", putting that in air quotes because we all know it's more nuanced than that, a system where everyone gets paid equally regardless of who works, I do believe that capitalism is a more functional system than 'communism." I dont want a communistic society where the government controls everyone and there's no incentive structure. It's a big criticism I have of communism. Even more so, because material conditions mean we do need people to work, market incentives end up being replaced with the raw application of force, which is why I'd argue that most communist states end up becoming dictatorships. You can't remove the incentive structure of capitalism without the economic system collapsing. 

HOWEVER, I really hate how absolutist this debate is. After all, we live in an era where we have great wealth, and the biggest barriers to solving poverty is capitalism itself. And this incentive structure. It's led to a situation where we end up talking about the endless creation of jobs, because we just dont believe in giving people "something for nothing." Meanwhile, I adopt a hybrid approach. Give people a UBI and meet their basic needs through government programs, and THEN leave the rest to the market and incentivize people to do more. Nothing in my ideal system removes all incentives. it lessens them, and lessens the rewards and extremes of the current system, but does not eliminate them. 

And that's the real question: how much do we need? I'd argue it's a balance. It's not one extreme or the other. And that's where this debate disappointed, because PBD is a capitalist die hard who believes in the one extreme, arguing against a bunch of 20somethings who have no idea what they're talking about going on about how people would still work even without financial incentives.

my own take based on the evidence? Eh, i think the socialists have a point that some would work regardless of financial incentives, but it really depends on the person and kind of work. Many would probably avoid doing the hard, unpleasant jobs without stacks of cash tied to them. And quite frankly, my own interests are more in removing the crushing "incentive" to work that poverty and associated systemic violence that coerces, rather than removing ALL incentives. I do believe we can have a balance, and even a UBI and associated taxes won't be enough to completely remove all incentive to work. It might lead to some mild work reductions, but I'm okay with that, the economy exists for humans, not humans the economy after all. 

One aspect of this whole debate overlooked is the idea that in the grand scheme of things, we shouldnt wanna work at all and we should automate as much necessary work as possible to liberate humanity from NEEDING to work. Instead we keep people artificially on this treadmill of work and production, and creating jobs just to justify giving people a paycheck. I dont think that people should have to work for rich people in order to survive, I really don't. And PBD seems to not understand this core concept. Neither do the socialists, given socialism quite frankly misses this too, but yeah. 

 Claim #2: Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system

 Once again, the debate is going to be unnuanced here. It's technically true. Capitalism is the first economic system that has created an economic surplus, and that surplus is responsible for the great wealth that people have. However, capitalism also produces systemic poverty. Despite this guy's obsession with job creation (and yeah he lays it on thick here, I'll get to that later), capitalism systemically doesn't produce enough jobs, the jobs dont pay well enough, and we trust the well being of the rest of the society to the whims of the wealthy "job creators" who wanna extract as much wealth out of people as possible, while paying them back the least money as possible. I dont deny this engine is necessary to some extent, but once again, it's a matter of degree, and these debates dont allow for a nuanced discussion, it's just PBD laying on the point so thick that he comes off as insufferable and the leftists arguing against it just come off as bad. 

Capitalism is a system that is a great wealth creator, but a horrible wealth distributor. Destroying capitalism is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, but let's just say those eggs arent well distributed in the first place. Most of them to go the top with the vast majority of the population being kept artificially poor and dependent on employers, who extract as much wealth from them as possible.

Which brings me to the job creator thing. This guy is just...insufferable. Like, people talk about not finding a job, this guy offers people a job, and when people question aspects of the job like what they'll do and how much they're getting paid, he says they're bring choosey and need to lower their standards. No, dude, no, people shouldnt WANNA work 80 hours a week, FOR YOU, I'm sorry, they shouldn't, and the fact that you seem to expect people to grovel to you and to kiss your ### just to get employment sickens me to my core. 

Like he really thinks he's doing so much for others by being a "job creator." I dont deny that the stuff that many employers produce is useful for society, not sure I'd say that of PBD since he seems to be in insurance and stuff and idk, there was some discussion on it and it seems kinda shady the way it was framed in the debate (one person even called his business like an MLM scheme that relies more on making money off of employing people than selling product), but yeah. Keep in mind what I said, great wealth creator, horrible distributor, and we need to break this culture of acting like an employer is doing you a favor by creating jobs. They're not. They're doing THEMSELVES a favor. You're just coerced to work for them in effect by the system.

Which brings me to another criticism of the guy. He keeps acting like employment is voluntary and people can quit, but he seems very uninformed on how the market is set up to ensure that true full employment can't exist, and for all his talk of workers quitting and going somewhere else, the system is set up to ensure that workers are desperate and that they dont quit, and that they dont have better options. Basically, the system is set up to ensure the "work force" is submissive and compliant to demands. Rather than workers and employers coming together and negotiating as equals, PBD just seems to expect people to kiss up to him when he throws his jobs in their faces (and yes, he did this several times with several people in this debate). And he seems to dislike people being choosey at all. HE can be choosey with who he hires, but if workers are choosey with their work, well that's just a fault of their work ethic and they should just bend over backwards more. Typical right wing capitalist mindset, really. It's why I find him so slimy and disgusting. 

 Claim #3: If all of the money in the world were divided equally, it would return to the same pockets in five years

 PBD seemed to be pushing this narrative to push the argument that some are more worthy of money than others, and to basically make an implicit argument against the poor that they dont know how to control their finances.

 He has this mindset in general that your whole life should be spent working and trying to bootstrap your way into a better position in capitalism. And he kinda has the implicit attitude that those who are poor are bad with their finances and if all wealth was divided the same way, the same people who are rich now would become rich again because they are just better with money than the poor and have this entrepreneurial mindset and the poor don't.

 I dont deny that this might be the case to some extent. Some of it is work ethic and financial literacy as PBD says, but some of it is also just...the system. Not everyone can be wealthy under capitalism. Some people need to do the grunt work. And there would inevitably be a new class of entrepreneurs who spend their lives working to get more wealth while others don't as much. But that's the thing. It's besides the point. Not everyone should have to do that to survive. Some people want to, and that's fine, and they should get financially rewarded for it to some degree. I once again just disagree on extremes.

I mean, under my humanistic capitalism, the economy exists to serve humans, not humans the economy. While financial incentives make people want to work and improve and without those incentives the system would collapse.  

 And again, Im not opposed to capitalism to some degree, but as someone who does advocate for wealth redistribution, yes, the rich should be taxed, the poor should get some money, and yeah, they might spend it, and that's fine. I dont see a problem. Because Im not a poor shaming ###hole who has indoctrinated all of these hardcore capitalist attitudes. 

And beyond that, well, it's not even all merit either. Some people are just more financially literate due to having more opportunities. I could see some currently rich people losing their wealth if it were all redistributed (see: donald trump), but I could also see some hard workers at the bottom working their way up. Either way, yeah, we would see inequality reemerge over time. Which is why im not for a one time redistribution of the WHOLE economy, but a regular redistribution of a part of it over and over again. I dont expect the poor to be all PBD bros who read self help books and figure out ways to make money in their sleep. I think that mindset is kind of unhealthy. But again, that's why PBD drives me nuts. He IS that guy and he's idolized by the right for it. 

 Claim #4: The US is more socialist that capitalist today, if you hate the system you're anti socialist

 Okay so PBD went full idiot on this one. His core argument is because the US spends 68% of its budget on "entitlements", that that's socialism. First of all, we spend around $7 trillion a year as of 2025, and the entire country's GDP is around $29-30 trillion last I looked. So that's 1/4 of the entire economy. Second, yes, we spend a lot on social security, medicare, and medicaid. We spend around $400 billion on "welfare" excluding medicaid and I know this since I just recalculated my UBI plan for that book I'm trying to write. Most of it is healthcare spending, medicaid goes to the poor, medicare to the elderly. Social security goes to the elderly, what, should we just not give checks to the old people? Should they have to work until they die? Or are you gonna shame them for lacking financial literacy. Wait, dont answer that, this guy did debate social security later on in the video in the last section and HOO boy, this guy is a ghoul. He seems to think that welfare creates a victim mentality in the poor and he has a lot of really REALLY bad mindsets here.

On social security, someone pointed out to him that if we left it to the stock market that people would go broke if a recession hits, and given my family lives on social security at this point, I can honestly say that this is what happened to us. My dad did have a retirement fund, but then 2008 happened...and it's gone. And yeah, now good old social security came in and did its thing. But apparently my dad should have to still work in his 70s with a bad back because PBD says so...so...yay?

Honestly, F this guy. 

But I digress. To go back to the matter at hand, no, it's not more socialist. he just hates welfare and social programs and has this bootstraps everyone should work 80 hours a week and figure out how to monetize their lives in their sleep mentality. And that's just not healthy.  

Honestly, if we wanna have a discussion, we're only 25% "socialist" if we count that by government spending and I'd prefer we be like 50-50. he has this idea anything more than 30% is bad, and that's what the top marginal tax rate should be and he has this mentality that "you dont get to tell me what to do" when it comes to taking his money and spending it. Yeah, we the people should have that right, and I would have PBD paying 70% in taxes, with a lot of that going toward UBI and universal healthcare. I would have the federal budget be closer to 50% of the nation's economy. And if we wanna define capitalism and socialism in terms of government spending, yeah I'm for a mixed economy.

Of course, I define socialism as workers owning the means of production. Ironically, I find PBD strangely socialist since he says he offers all of his employees stock in his company. And that's kind of based, it's the one good thing I'll say about him, but yeah, honestly? I think the US should be more socialist in terms of government spending and think the problem is we're too capitalist. Again, I want balance.

Of course, I dont really think it's about the size of the government, but how you spend the money. Even if a lot of money goes through the government, that doesnt mean much if in my case a lot of it is going back out in UBI checks. Im just redistributing who has the money. I still consider the system predominantly capitalist. 

 Claim #5 (initiated by an anti capitalist): America has never been a meritocracy

 So this discussion got kinda weird and veered into various topics, but yeah, I dont believe capitalism is a true meritocracy. It has the pretense of one, and some elements of one, but as was discussed in it, it kind of has a lot of luck involved. And to make a socialist argument, the pretense of meritocracy is primarily there to justify the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor. it's so people like PBD can go around saying they earned it while everyone else is just lazy and has to work harder. I aint saying PBD didnt work hard. He did. But that doesnt mean no one else does either. And I would dispute how much of a role work ethic should play in one's economic situation anyway. To go back to point 1, yes, we need some motivation, but we dont need the extremes we currently have, and I believe the goal should be to automate as much labor in the long term as possible so we dont need as much merit going forward. 

And yeah. PBD kind of framed the debate like this, 40% of people will agree with him no matter what, 40% will agree with the other side, and it's on the 20% in the middle. Nationally, I'll agree, although it's a bit more simplistic. But that's what kinda pisses me off about PBD. He pushes himself as a rags to riches story, but let's be frank about statistics.  PBD makes millions of dollars a year. The median income in the US on an individual level is $50,200 and on the household level it's $80,020. The top 1% of income earners is $430,000 for individuals and $631,500 for households. PBD is in the top 1% of income earners, and even more so, he's probably WAY up there. 0.3% of people on an individual level make $1 million or more, and based on a quick google search, he makes AT LEAST 10 million.

He acts like anyone can be him if only they believe in themselves and work hard enough. No, they can't. He's like the winner at a casino telling everyone else who lost their life savings that they just have to git gud and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, acting like anyone can do what he did, if only they work hard enough. They can't. That's just the mathematical reality of the system. For people to be that rich, everyone else has to be that poor. Someone has to do the grunt work and be these wealthy peoples' employees. And again, our system doesnt guarantee a job, cant guarantee them a job, and poverty is systemic. Even if everyone works hard, just as many people are going to be poor, as are poor today because the problem is the system.

And to go back to the 40-40-20 thing on changing peoples' minds. Why should anyone try to follow the guy who is basically in like the 0.1% or less of the country? Americans need to stop seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and yes, they should see themselves as victims. To go back to the above, if we implemented UBI and policies like that, it would benefit roughly 71% of individual income earners, and I estimate around 78-84% of families, depending on whether we go by the median or average household size. Let's say around 80% benefit from my policies.

This guy who is in the top 1% tells you to work harder to be like him. I tell you if we redistribute wealth more and have more "socialism", that roughly 80% of you, give or take, would be better off. And we would still have enough income inequality to have enough of a meritocracy to motivate people to work.

Yes, we gotta keep some semblance of meritocracy going, warts and all. Im not advocating for full communism, or anything. But neither will I argue for all capitalism either. I argue for a middle ground, a hybrid position. I dont deny that PBD has a few points, and I have to admit, arguing a bunch of uneducated socialists isnt the best thing for the left wing cause as many of the people he was arguing against...werent that smart compared to me in my own estimation. But....let's not glorify PBD either. Dude's die hard capitalism is cringey and even if he's right, omg i hate him i hate him i hate him. 

I just wish we could have more nuanced debates and that all debates on capitalism vs socialism didnt devolve into tribalism as the loudest and most extreme voices on both sides dominate the debates. Which is what happened here. The answer is in the middle, not in the extremes.  

Discussing the Chorus thing

 So...yeah, apparently some dark money program to buy off "independent media" content creators came out and has been blowing up in the online left space. Vaush has provided the best coverage of this, so I'll post his stuff for a citation. 

So, the summary is that the democrats are pushing this dark money project to turn "independent" left content creators into DNC shills. I dont consume content from most of these guys, but david pakman has been cited to be on the list, and I do listen to him. Brian Tyler Cohen has been the person in charge of this effort. 

And...let's start with the defensive line pushed by Brian and David. Basically, they argue that we need to organize the online left the way the right has in order to push a progressive viewpoint to counter the dark money of the right going to creators like, say, Joe Rogan and Asmongold. However, let's be blunt here. What makes the independent left great...is their independence. And while they frame this idea of giving these creators $8000 a month and giving them classes on how to do social media...let's face it, this program takes away their independence. Their creative control is handed over to this group, who tells them what to say, and they end up just shilling for the DNC and establishment dem candidates. 

And thats a problem. Because, as an independent content creator who DOESNT get paid for what I post on this blog, it destroys the authenticity of the online left. The importance of the online left comes from just that: their independence. It's their authenticity. It's telling it like it is, and not being managed by this hostile organization that controls what they say.

Look, the reason democrats suck in recent years is because no one likes them. No one likes their message. As the Bible would say, they're neither cold nor hot, they're as lukewarm as it gets, and people spit them out of their mouths. They push this artificial inside the beltway line where any criticism of the democratic party is verboten, and they just astroturf the internet and try to do hostile takeovers of online spaces (like reddit, a subject im quite vocal about) in order to push an echo chamber. They end up pissing off the genuine and authentic posters who actually care, and banning them from their platforms, and then they get replaced with shills and bots where no one can speak ill of "dear leader." Ive encountered this behavior before. And it sickens me. My own radicalization and opposition to the DNC is specifically BECAUSE of these efforts. Because they're pushing a brand of politics that no one actually likes and cant win elections. And we lose because these guys won't just F off and get out of the way.

If the dems just organically allowed support behind sanders to grow, we would not be in this timeline. Instead they artificially forced a consensus around clinton....and then clinton went on to lose. They did it with biden, and biden won since it was during COVID and trump was in office, but despite what should have been a landslide victory for democrat, what we got instead was a blue trickle instead of a wave. And then the dems governed in all of their milquetoast glory, public opinion sank, and hello fascism! 

The democrats need to change, and that means they need to get out of their own way. Allow a next generation to take over with GENUINE voices who have GENUINE things to say. And on this topic, I'll tell you what we need. We need GENUINE independence. We need to call out money in politics and try to get money out of politics. We need independent movements closer to like, what Cenk Uygur is trying to do, although tbqh I think he's cringey at times with his genuflection to maga. But at least that dude SEEMS independent. And he is salf made and built an independent network. And I aint saying TYT network is perfect. It's not. We've seen internal divisions over things like unions, and late payments, and the trans community, and that whole bitchuation room thing (I forget her name, but that was the name of the show that got booted). TYT is actually quite controversial. But we got justice democrats out of them. Content creators like kyle kulinski. And i aint saying that they're perfect, but they're right in the sense that we need money out of politics and they've genuinely tried to do the tea party of the left thing. Theyre responsible for people like AOC rising to prominence. 

And to go into my own ideological perspective, let's link this to basic income because why not. When you accept money from someone else, you end up becoming subservient to them. Content creators being financially dependent on groups like chorus, or even TYT network, is actually kind of bad. Because you end up toeing the line of whomever is paying your bills. This is why we need a universal basic income. To give people TRUE independence. Everyone gets a check, no stipulations are put in checks, and while some would argue that government money makes people dependent on the government, if the check is framed as a RIGHT and is UNCONDITIONAL, then I would argue these criticisms dont apply. We can actually instill civic virtues and independence into people by breaking the stranglehold money has on people. Because our society as it is, is what? Rich people paying the checks of poor people? Poor people being financially dependent on rich people to survive? I think employment, for all of the respect it commands in society, enslaves them to the wealthy. And this chorus program DEFINITELY enslaves people to the wealthy. The democrats do what the donor arm wants, not what the people want. The shills who take money from them do the will of whomever pays their check. And vaush pointed out in the aforementioned videos that the people who are called out and got their hands caught in the cookie jars, ya know, like David Pakman and some other lady, are all saying the same things, almost word for word, kinda like those corporate media stations owned by the same parent company do. So they're bought. Anyone on that list should be treated as bought.

Since I do listen to David Pakman sometimes, I will say this. It's been obvious he's been establishment for a while. I've had a love hate relationship with the guy's content over the years. He was pro clinton in 2016, and was as blue no matter who as it gets ever since. And yeah he's been pro biden to a sickening degree too. I know I defended Biden in 2024, but again, I was trying to prevent fascism here. That and the left wasn't really hitting the right notes either, and didnt even have a decent candidate tbqh. And let's face it, I think Jill Stein is getting paychecks from a certain hostile nationstate too and the dems are right on that one. But let's face it, I knew something was up with Pakman in a serious way when I saw him have pictures of meeting Biden a few months ago. You dont get to meet the president unless youre kissing some serious party butt and youre in the club. Ya know? Not sayng the guy doesnt make decent content sometimes, but he should probably be treated as bought. 

Anyway, that's all I really have to say. Yes, the left needs something done to improve themselves. But for me the best thing that could happen is if the democrats who currently run the party, their ideology, their donors, etc., just screwed off and never returned. Get out of politics. Retire. Hand things over to a new generation. Let the party actually serve the needs of the people it serves. We dont need more corporate money and pushing artificial talking points that no one likes. What the dems have to realize is that their problem isnt primarily strategic in nature, it's ideological and moral. They stand for nothing. Their brand sucks. And the last thing we need are some paid influencers going around going "OMG DAE LOVE ELISSA SLOTKIN?" No. No real person outside of a small minority of people, actually likes Elissa Slotkin. She's a corporate democrat. She used to be a republican, and unlike me, she hasnt had an existential crisis that radically changed her entire political ideology, like I have. No one likes her. That weird conservative brand of politics I had in the late 2000s is dead. Republicans dont want it, and progressives dont either. The dems need to stop catering to those people, because that ideological position is untenable in the long term and stands for nothing. It's why the GOP abandoned it, and it's why I became left of the democrats. Because I dont just want...conservatism lite, I want an actual answer to conservatism, an actual ideology that FIGHTs the conservatives. Not compromises with them. 

This Chorus program sucks, and you should never trust any content creator who took money from them. Btw, this article lists some prominent creators in this program, for your own information. 

The recent divisions over Battlefield 6 represents a generational difference in gaming between millennials and zoomers

 Okay, so, this is another gaming culture war kind of topic. And....I feel like commenting on this. I've been mixed on the BF community in recent years, ya know, with the BF boomers haing dumb opinions about how we should go back to 2005 era game design. I'm not okay with that. I think multiplayer games in 2005 were pretty primitive by modern standards and just dont hold up at all.

....but what about 2015? Now that's more my speed. I have been vocal in saying I feel like gaming peaked around 2016 and it's all downhill since then. Of course, when I rate the years of gaming we can find even I can find newer years with solid games and solid game play, but yeah for multiplayer, I'd say 2007ish to 2016ish is the peak of all gaming multiplayer wise. 

And what was my favorite franchise of all? Well, it's battlefield. Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Hardline, and Battlefield 1 represents the peak of multiplayer gaming from that era. What happened after 2017? PUBG. The rise of streamer culture. Everything being hyper competitive. And...honestly? That culture war has come to BF6.

Some old time BF veterans didnt like the movement of BF6 because during the beta because a lot of people were slide cancelling around all over the place. The streamer types LOVE that stuff. Look at BO6. Everyone slides all over the place and it's cancer. I hate that stuff. but then I get told to "git gud." 

Well, the streamers basically got told no, and they aint happy. Again, this is another issue I've had with modern gaming. Ever since the rise of streamer culture, you got these hardcore esports bros coming into every other game and demanding it change for them. And every other game has tries to appeal to them, including the battlefield franchise. 

A lot of these streamers not only want sweaty game play, they want a battle royale. But...part of the reason that BF5 and BF2042 were mixed was BECAUSE they tried chasing trends and appealing to these people. it's why the BF boomers exist in the first place. BF5 kinda tried to rebrand the franchise with the "woke" trailer with some amputee woman in the trailer that....didnt feel like world war 2. it felt like FORTNITE. And that's why people hated it. Not because a woman was in it, although they made it about that, it was because people wanted a gritty WWII game to follow the gritty WWI game...and we got....hypersaturated colors and cartoon characters. 

And with BF2042, what did we get? More cartoon characters with the specialist system, more battle royale (hazard zone), more recoil on the guns, and more trend chasing. Like, that's what the BF boomers are REALLY fighting against. Because they're an older generation of gamers who resents the trend chasing these old franchises are doing. Now, they approach this poorly, claiming "classes make battlefield battlefield" and going on deranged rambling about call of duty. But...do they have a point when the issue is framed the way I specifically frame it here? Yes. 

Because here's the thing. I too hate the rise of streamer culture and battle royales. IMO, that stuff is the downfall of gaming for me from its 2016 peak. Because you had these counter strike elitists start coming into every other franchise's games and demanding it cater TO THEM. And most of them have bent the knee. 

Now, dont get me wrong, this isnt always bad. COD is considered endemic of this cancer, and yet, I think that franchise is in the best state it's been ever. Of course, given where it was throughout gen 8 it had nowhere to go but up. MW19 and Warzone revived the franchise and made it the best it's ever been, even eclipsing the 360 good old days that made the series popular. 

BUT...not every game has to be that. And honestly, we've lost a lot in this transition. Some of us miss titanfall for example. Post titanfall 2 we had apex legends, and now titanfall doesn't exist any more. 

I mean...that's where I resent these trends. I have nothing against battle royales, but when every game has to have one and it eclipses the old modes, those old modes suffer. When gun mechanics change to become more like counter strike or arma or pubg, i resent that. Hell, I remember loving pubg at launch and in the pre alpha in 2017 but then the balancing changes in 2018 on made it worse and worse. because it had to cater to these esports pros and their preferences. 

Now, today, theactman had a video reacting to streamers reacting to BF6, and a lot of them werent happy. But it did put this "culture war" dead center in terms I could finally articulate my malaise with modern gaming and why I AM a battlefield fan. 

And yeah, hes basically going on for 45 minutes about these streamers who just demand everyone just caters to them. Battlefield is going in the "wrong" direction for them....because it's doing everything right in my book. Oh, the movement is too sweaty? Well let's tone it down. People now complain it's gonna be just like BF3/4 now...WE WANT THAT, WE LIKE THAT. THAT WAS THE GOLDEN ERA OF GAMING FOR ME. Mechanics were new enough to be competent but it was pre streamer rot. It wasnt sweaty, and the sweats HATE it. And the video is right. These people are elitists. They think their content creator status and their skills makes them know better than everyone else. But, what did I say previously? Games shouldnt be made catering to the top 0.1% of the player base, they should appeal to the median. But that makes for boring content if youre a pro gamer who makes money streaming, so they dont like that. And they just have this entitlement attitude that everything caters to them. It HAS to have sweaty movement and recoil mechanics so they can just wreck normal gamers who cant even fricking shoot their gun full auto without looking at the sky at some point. It HAS to have a battle royale.

And...to be honest, Im over battle royales. Dont get me wrong, there was a point in time I loved BRs, wanted more BRs, but let's face it, i wanted more BRs because in 2017 we had pubg which gotten taken over by these same try hards and pushed me out of the game, and we fortnite, which was cartoony. So yeah, we needed new BRs. And BF had a BR with BF5, it failed. Titanfall had a BR, it was successful and filled that niche. And COD released warzone. So we've had BRs. We dont need more BRs. Theyre established, the franchises that were successful had them, and quite frankly, I'm over BRs. It's an interesting idea. Ive gotten my full. It was fun in 2017, it was fun in even 2019-2020, after that, I stopped caring. THe franchises got established, the skill ceiling went WAY up, i didnt like dropping in and dedicating up to 45 minutes for a single game and if you die at any time, you gotta start all over again. I wanna go back to deathmatch. I wanna go back to battlefield conquest. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE TO PLAY. This modern crap burns me out. And I got other priorities than grinding one game all day. 

I understand for streamers that's their JOB, but for the 99.9% of us who arent streamers, we just wanna play for a couple hours here and there. I dont wanna dedicate my life to playing one game. Gaming enhances life. Life isn't gaming. For the majority of us, we play for fun. THese guys sweat 12 hours a day every day and they find these games boring. Most games arent designed to be played 12 hours a day and the fact the modern games are is a BAD thing. A lot of older gamers my age feel like gaming is becoming a job. because for the top 0.1% of them....it IS their job. And we are just fodder for their "skills" so they can entertain a young audience of zoomers who like that sort of thing. 

So yeah. I really like BF6. And I like what it stands for. Theyre trying to appeal to the old faithful BF fans, without catering too hard too either the regressive battlefield boomer mindset that misdiagnoses the problems, or the streamer mindset that creates more of them. It's appealing to those like me who actually think the peak of multiplayer gaming was around 2010-2016. And it's great. I love that this game exists, I love that they moved on from their failures with 5 and 2042, and I love that i finally have new content that I enjoy. Ya know? A huge problem as I get older is a lot of games arent aimed at me any more. And the ones that are are often older franchises that are fewer and fewer in number. Because again, everything has to appeal to the streamers, the sweats, the try hards, the zoomers and even arguably gen alpha kids at this point, and I feel like my relatively casual preferences have been pushed out of gaming over the past decade. 

Well, battlefield is back, baby, and I'm here for it. Im not saying BF6 is gonna be perfect, but it's gonna be the best battlefield game in at least 9 years now, and possibly the best ever, depending on post launch support. And if streamers dont like it, well, they can go farm content elsewhere. Go back to COD. Hell, I'll go back further, go back to fricking counter strike and stay there. God I miss the days where esports sweats were limited to a handful of games they spent 29482282 hours playing while looking down on us casuals and never interacting with our games because theyre "too boring." Wanna know whats boring? Dust 2. Over and over again. Memorizing recoil patterns where you know where to aim at someone's foot to get a fricking headshot. Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer. And yeah, that's my attitude on this one. 

Discussing the cracker barrel thing

 So, I wasn't planning on discussing this. I mean, i tend to think this sorta stuff is too low brow for me, and i dont care about the sort of culture war nonsense that the right is trying to turn this into, but as it turns out, when I think about it, I actually do have a larger point to make here, so here it goes.

 When I first heard about the changes, I was like "gee, its like they basically eliminating any point in even going there." I mean that old country aesthetic was the point of the experience. The food isn't good. It hasn't been good in years. I havent stepped foot into a cracker barrel in 4 years because the last few times I went...the food SUCKED. But I have occasionally gone to them on vacation over the years, and there was even a stint back in the late 90s/early 2000s where we actively went there on holidays because the food was good. 

It just seemed like, to me, redoing the insides and making the logo simplistic was just peak 2020s corporate encrapification of everything. And that's what the real problem is. The right likes to frame this as a culture war, like the woke are declaring war on their cracker barrel (which itself is kind of emblematic of maga and conservatism these days), and let's face it, I'll be blunt. No one on the left cares about cracker barrel. At worst it's kind of a meme these days since the presence of cracker barrel is correlated with conservatism the way a whole foods is emblematic of liberalism. But otherwise, we don't care. We aren't pushing to remove the guy off the logo, we dont care. But conservatives are acting like its a woke war on conservatism so there was backlash, and yeah they eventually conceded and changed it back. If anything, this is a weird moment where I'm....kind of on MAGA's side, but not for the reasons they are. But let's really talk about corporate encrapification here.

Corporate encrapification is what it sounds like, it's corporations just making everything crappier and worse in their never ending quest for more profits. ANd there's been a discussion about A LOT of different restaurant brands that are just soulless husks of their former self. It's not just cracker barrel, it's EVERYTHING. 

It's McDonalds. McDonalds used to be emblematic of a lot of things. For a lot of us millennials, it was a sign of good times. The food was cheap, you got toys with the food, you had the play area with the ballpit and the tubes, and we loved mcdonalds as kids. But nowadays, what is mcdonalds? Well, there are enough pictures online that basically sum up the difference and they come up in facebook feeds and memes. What once was a nice colorful flavorful experience has been replaced by this repressive brutalist architecture. You go to mcdonalds and what do you see? A grey blob. It's a grey, brown, and black block with a generic logo on it. It sells overpriced food that has far outpaced the rate of inflation overall, and let's face it, the whole point was that it was cheap, and it was kid friendly. but McDonalds isn't what it once was. Was it woke that killed it? No. It was corporate entities that slowly stripped the entire experience out of it, and just turned it into a soulless money making machine without even the pretense of the fun kid friendly experience it used to be. 

 Or take Pizza hut. Same thing. Back in the 90s, it had character. I never really ate inside, but they had the pizza buffet and it was a great experience a lot of my generation is fond of. We also had a thing there if you read enough books in school, you got a free pizza. I would always get the free pizzas because i used to read a lot until college sucked that love of reading out of me (having to read 120 pages every 2 days will do that to a MFer). But yeah. Same thing. Bland. Soulless. Simple logo, brutalist architecture.

 Or take IHOP. Like, I used to like to eat there once in a while. I'd get the strawberry crepes. We used to be able to put as much syrup as we wanted on stuff, and had every flavor. Post COVID, they stopped doing that to save money. Now you gotta ask for syrup and i dont think they even offer the flavors it did. And the service got worse too. 

Heck lets talk COVID. COVID changed the fast food and restaurant landscape a lot. I can understand temporary disruptions in 2021 as safety precautions or "No OnE WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!!11!", but let's face it, that isn't the problem in 2025. Since then, these corporations, looking to squeeze every dollar they can out of people, have massively raised their prices, cut back the quality of their services, and sucked the experience out of things.

Now, let's go back to cracker barrel. You used to go there, get good food, you had the nice country aesthetic. You would play the little peg game waiting for the food if you werent packing hardware (as in, gaming hardware, I'd bring my game boys over the years). I'd get the steak, which has declined in quality over the years, hence why i hate eating there now. You'd get the AW root beer out of the bottle, which was a unique experience here. You'd get the country store, which my mom loved, and she used to spend like an hour after eating shopping in it. And me, I'd go out to the front porch where you can sit in the rocking chairs. And they had a giant checkers game with a rug board and oversized pieces, and yeah, everything about it screamed a unique experience. The food over the years has gotten progressively worse. But at least they kept that aesthetic. And the aesthetic is memorable. It's as memorable as going to mcdonalds in the 90s and getting a little sonic the hedgehog toy and playing in the play pen. Or going to burger king and getting those pokemon toys back when they sold the gold cards (I still have the complete set of those somewhere). Or going to pizza hut because you got a free pizza for being a good boy and reading lots of books. 

But you know what? over the years, those experiences are gone, and the world we used to live in is gone too. Corporations have decided, in their never ending quest for profits, to get rid of those aesthetics, to go in this bland direction of simplified corporate logos and almost soviet brutalist architecture, and to massively overcharge for worse and worse food. 

It's like, for many of these places, the whole point of them existing is just gone. And yet, somehow they carry on, like lifeless zombies. I dont go to mcdonalds any more. The food sucks and it aint even cheap any more. Taco bell still has good food but people keep mentioning a $0.89 burrito in the 90s now costs $6 even though the consumer price index in 1995 was 152 and now it's only 322 (meaning the dollar is worth only slightly less than half and such a burrito should cost $2). But yeah, same corporate remodeling, black buildings and bland soulless architecture. Pizza hut doesnt even exist in my area any more, but same black buildings with simplified logos. And yeah, basically, cracker barrel was getting "the makeover." Ya know, the one where they take anything with any....character out of it and replace it with just the same old 2020s corporate blandness.

That is the real problem with the cracker barrel thing. It isn't wokeness or whatever the right wingers are on about, it's corporations just remodeling their businesses to be as bland and soulless as possible to extract as much money as possible. But in this era of universal sameness, we lost something. We lost the experience. We lost our roots. We have memories of how things used to be 10, 20, 30 years ago, and now that's all gone, replaced by soulless money making machines that eliminate all pretense of "an experience." It's just...give us your money and get out.

So...look. To the rightoids. Relax, we're not coming for your cracker barrels. If anything...you guys are right for once. Like a broken clock moment. Like always, you seem to be right for the wrong reasons, I mean, it's not "wokeness" that's doing this. It's corporations doing corporate things. Here's the thing. To give you an experience with aesthetics, and flavor, that costs money. What costs the least money possible? Grey soviet esque cubes of restaurants, with bland booths and tables, and bland aesthetics, etc. They wanna make money. Corporations hate spending money and they like getting money. So for them, they think, hey, we strip the experience out of the experience, and we replace it with bland nothingness, and stocks go up. Except, MAGA doesn't like it when you mess with their crap and they perceived this as a war on woke, so they went full throttle on ripping cracker barrel to shreds for doing this, because let's face it, it's alienating whatever customer base that place still has left (seriously, even with the aesthetics, the food is awful, don't eat there).

Like really, stuff like cracker barrel is the kind of american culture we should be preserving. Because cracker barrel is a cultural experience, for better or for worse. It's not for everyone, but it doesnt have to be. It beats bland nothingness.

Really, as I get older I'm full on the 2020s suck, and the world was better pre 2016 or something. Maybe pre 2020 with restaurants. I think what made restaurants bad in recent years is the post COVID quest for never ending profits sucking the fun out of everything. COVID was the tipping point there, and now the experience sucks. We really should "make america great again" by making our brands have character again. I actually would agree with the right to some extent on that. I hate how soulless this decade is. Every decade has its own character and aesthetics and this one is the decade of COVID, inflation, the corporate encrapification of everything, and now fascism. We are not in good times. Quite frankly, i think society peaked a while ago and now everything...kinda sucks. Gaming, politics, restaurants. it's all related. Just...everything is getting worse it seems. The america I grew up in is dead and dying and I dont like what's replacing it.  

Trump makes America great again...by seizing the means of production?

So...as part of the deal to bail intel out and give them government money, Trump just took 10% of intel's financial stake. In other words, Intel is now a partially US government owned entity. In other words, Trump just seized the means of production.

I mean, I'm left, but not even I'm THIS far left. What trump is doing to tantamount to a soft form of communism here, if we call socialism/communism government seizing control of the means of production. But that's what trump does, and that's what his "America first" and deals are. It's just "what's in it for me", raw self interest, and he just takes what he wants. Ya know, like a dictator does. He thinks this is winning, I think it's massive government overreach. 

Still, I do wanna discuss the intel thing and why it's important. Intel is falling on hard times. They're one of the two major X86 competitors in the CPU industry, and given I'm a PC gamer im passionate about that industry and have strong opinions myself. I will say, it's BS that "X86" is copyrighted where they're the only two companies legally allowed to work on that format of computing given how crucial that industry is. Windows is an X86 operating system. PCs run on it. Sure, alternatives exist, like linux, android, which is why other companies are more active in other parts of the industry, but for X86, only intel and AMD are legally allowed to work on it.

If intel goes under, then guess what? AMD has a monopoly, and to repeat the mantra of every AMD fanboy ever, "competition is good." And it is. Neither intel nor AMD should be allowed to go under here. 

I've seen a lot of AMD fanboy types cheering on intel's destruction in recent years. They love to defend AMD when they're down and paint intel as an evil monopoly who kept us at 4 cores or whatever, but now they seem fine with saying intel is down and they deserve it and AMD is t3h b357. (the best, for those who dont understand leet speak). 

Me, honestly, I dont think intel really is doing that bad outside of finances. Basically, they invested tons of money in stuff they didnt work out as we reach the limits of moores law with computing, and their latest products didnt pass muster. I dont even think they're doing that bad in raw competitive terms. yes, they've had missteps. They couldnt get to 10nm products well. They tend to run their own foundaries, rather than just running everything through TSMC like everyone else does (they practically have a monopoly on the stuff used to make processors). That's expensive. They were gonna build more here in America to try to offset TSMC's dominance, which does give us a national stake in the process. I mean, we dont want all microchips made in taiwan do we? What happens if china invades? It's good to have our supply. Anyway, intel has been throwing all this money around investing in this and that, working with the US government, and their latest products have kinda crapped the bed. Raptor lake had the self degradation problem where they pushed the chips too hard to be competitive with AMD and then they started self destructing. And then arrow lake has a new architecture but introduced tons of latency. Meanwhile, after AMD's failures with bulldozer, they came up with a new CPU architecture from scratch, they improved it rapidly through multiple generations of improvements, and now they're beating intel. Outside of gaming, I still think intel is fairly competitive, I dont think they're doing as bad as they were during bulldozer where FX 8 cores struggled against fricking $100 dual core i3s, and X3D stuff isnt present on all CPUs yet on the AMD side, it's super premium and only available in the $350+ price range. So anything below that, intel still gets the job done mostly. They arent the best, and I think AMD is getting to the point they're better, but intel is still good enough where I saw fit to buy a discounted 12900k a couple years ago and run it in my main PC. If anything over the years I've had better experiences with intel than AMD overall, although I admit AMD really took off in the past 5 years in particular. 

But yeah, that's the thing. Intel was ahead from like 2006 through 2020, then their dominance started being challenged with zen 3, rocket lake was a misstep. Alder lake was good, X3D and zen 4 were also good, raptor lake was just trying to push things too far and backfired, and now arrow lake is just....what it is. Kinda like a bulldozer moment for intel, but not as bad.

Still, its problems the past 2-3 years in particular are catching up, they're losing market share, and given their extremely high operating costs (their biggest problem), they're just imploding now. 

 But yeah, to bail them out, trump took stake in the company, an extremely socialistic move, strangely socialistic for a free market republican, and yeah. 

I mean, I dont think the answer was to let intel go out of business. I know a lot of free marketeers on fox business and whatever think they should've just taken intel behind the barn like kristi noem and her dog, but uh...if we did that, AMD has a monopoly, and that's bad. Even worse, don't we WANT foundaries made in america? I mean, it fits the maga motif of doing things here, and let's think just beyond jobs. Do we want TSMC and taiwan to control the entire world's supply of microchips? Seems like a problem waiting to happen given we're in a de facto cold war with china with AI and computing technology being a major front for that. I mean, we want a strong intel with foundaries in america where if war ever broke out, we got our own reserve of microchips. Ya know? 

So...yeah. Keep intel alive. Bail them out. Do the chips act stuff. I dont think that stuff really makes much sense to individuals outside of the beltway in a sense because they're focused on their own economic situations, but if we want to be competitive in a 21st century cold war with china, yeah, we want our own stuff made here, we dont wanna rely on this tiny island off of china's coast that they might invade some day. We want that stuff here. 

So...yeah. Intel should be bailed out. I just dont like this straight up nationalization crap. Like, this is too communistic for me, and im to the left of both parties. of course, as vaush pointed out today, its not really communistic in the sense that he's nationalizing it for the people or whatever, nah, trump is more like a king who just takes what he wants. And he just wants part of intel. So he's taking it. It's dumb. Like, I hate this guy. We need to enforce checks and balances against his bad behavior. But until then, yeah, this is basically just....trump being the mad king taking what he wants because he can. 

And yeah, that's how I see it.  

My thoughts on the Gavin Newsom stuff

 So...the online left is divided over Gavin Newsom as of late. The guy has been really stepping up his meme game in fighting Trump, and on the one hand i LOVE it, I mean, this is the kind of trolling dems need to do to fight trump. 

However, the left is also right in that Gavin seems almost...astorturfed. Like he's getting the Kamala Harris 2019 treatment. Like he's already "the guy" for 2028, and honestly...I'm not so sure.

Dont get me wrong. We need someone who stands up to Trump. And while I haven't yet made a metric to judge 2028 candidates on and won't be developing something like that until after the midterms, I will say I think "being able to fight trump" is going to be a significant part of my metric. BUT...it's not gonna be all of it. Policy is important, vision is important, and being able to actually push a long standing alternative to trump is important, and I'm just not sure gavin is the guy. 

In 2024, he polled really really badly, like INSANELY badly, to the point I struggle to see him winning for one. And for two, ideally, I'd like to see a progressive champion and I think if he runs he's gonna be another Kamala harris, which, lets face it, is another Joe Biden, and another Hillary Clinton. 

He's not terrible looking at how i rated him in 2024, but he also was in that category of low key progressives who have some chops but might just shift right to be "electable." We'll have to see. We need a bold ideological vision to oppose trump with, not just memes. 

 If Gavin is the nominee, I'll probably vote for him. At this point I'd sadly vote for George W. Bush to stop Trump, that's how bad the situation we're in, and Newsom is at least significantly better than that. But yeah. He's...not my ideal candidate. 

We'll see. Ideally I'd like to see AOC be the nominee, or Yang if he actually gets some sense and doesnt do the cringey enlightened centrist crap. As I said, we'll see.