Discussing Groypers and why the right is falling into fascism

 So....there's been a lot of discussion about the whole Groyper phenomenon since Nick Fuentes went on Tucker Carlson's show the other day, and we can very obviously see that Nick Fuentes is one of the sources of the growing fascism in the republican party. The "Groypers" are his followers, and those guys seem to be leading the charge with the expression of fascist and even nazi sentiment within the GOP. And quite frankly, this scares me. I used to be a republican, and even a bit of what became "Christian nationalism" for a while, but outright nazi sentiment was basically not discussed, even in private. We hated the nazis. Of course, we called them atheists and socialists, and we kinda still believed in the limited government stuff back then, but in the 2020s, I'm seeing the rise of these open fascist types, especially among younger people, and again, this scares the crap out of me. As such, I wanted to discuss this a bit and why we're seeing this now. 

1) Growing GOP extremism

The growing extremism in the GOP is NOT a new problem. It's been a problem since the 1980s. The Reagan revolution happened, heralding in an era of ascendant conservatism. And...by the end of the 1980s, the fairness doctrine was shot down, and we started seeing the rise of Rush Limbaugh and then Fox News in the 1990s. The GOP began retreating from the shared reality that we all live in, and began building alternative media structures. Politically, we saw these shifts manifest electorally, with the contract with America in 1994 where the GOP started being more politically hostile and aggressive. Through the 90s and 2000s this growing extremism continued, which is what initially shaped my political values as a teenager. However, in the later 2000s and early 2010s, I distanced myself from that over time while the extremism continued. Even the 2011 era Tea party got too extreme for me, causing me to have a hard look at myself and my values, which in turn caused me to reject those values and become a progressive instead. I got out BACK THEN. They were getting too extreme BACK THEN. And I understood that it wasn't just their implementation of ideas that was bad, it was the ideas. Fast forward to 2016, we got Trump, Trump started pushing us toward fascism. We had charlottesville. We had the big lie when Trump won in 2020. January 6th. And now in 2025, we got the GOP pushing project 2025 and we are literally descending into fascism. 

2) The post truth world

This polarization in American politics has led to the GOP living in their own world. This isn't new. I mean, I was taught creationism and biblical literalism in high school. But yeah, that's why I keep saying it. The battle for American politics is a battle over WORLDVIEW, and the GOP has been distorting reality for the American people for a while. And at this point, half the country isnt living in reality. THis not only is the source of conservative politics becoming so scary, but in recent years it's getting so bad we're questioning basic facts like the efficacy of vaccines, and even the holocaust. Holocaust denialism is on the rise, especially among younger generations too. People can't agree on facts any more. And to make it worse...

3) The loss of the greatest generation and the holocaust survivors

I've been thinking about this for a while lately, and it's not really surprising, when one thinks about it, why this stuff is happening now. It's been 80 years since WWII. The people who remember it and fascism are now dead. And quite frankly, we didn't do a good enough job teaching people (at least in America) about the root causes of it. We just learned "it happened, it was bad", but we don't really teach people WHY it happened and what triggered people psychologically to accept it. And it is complicated but part of it is authoritarianism. We learned this with the milgram experiment and the stanford prison experiment, which taught us that a lot of the population has a predisposition to authoritarianism, and Germany isn't really unique in this sense, and it can happen here. 

 A lot of it is also racism and xenophobia taken to unthinkable extremes. Like the term "final solution" came from the "Jewish question" of "what should Christian European societies do with the Jewish people?" And there was a lot of anti semitism at the same, and debates and for some, the answer was "extermination", hence, the "FINAL solution." 

 We have our own analogues to this in America. What do we do with the massive black population that used to be freed? What do we do with the growing latino population coming here through immigration? What do we do with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here? And...a lot of the current answers are chillingly looking like what the nazis did. You see they didnt start with the gas chambers. They started with deportations. They deported immigrants to poland, etc., and then when they expanded their empire through military action and got into WWII, then they started thinking darker. They never START with the gas chambers. They build up to that. 

And...quite frankly, we never properly dealt with the latent racism that was underlying American politics. We had the civil war, the south lost, and reconstruction never really purged that sentiment. Jim crow existed for another hundred years until the federal government said "no more" to that too. And then the stuff went under the surface, where quite frankly, I was never really introduced to the full brunt of it, being a northerner, but that stuff RUNS DEEP with these people. So I kinda didnt see the dog whistle until I was older and realize holy crap these people still exist, but yeah, they still exist. They were just kinda pushed out of the spotlight. To be fair, a lot of nations in Europe are seeing a surge in this stuff too due to immigration. To some extent, I think that some level of racism and xenophobia probably is natural among humans and it really does take a lot of philosophical spring cleaning to throw that stuff out entirely. But yeah. The point is, it's kinda reaching that fever pitch again.  And that radicalization isn't good.

There are other concerns but I would like to address those separately.

4) The 2016 social split and the loss of shame

 While freedom of speech is a cornerstone of American politics, shaming has often been an effective informal measure of social control and keeping people from extremist opinions. You're not going to be arrested if you have extreme opinions, but people may also not want to associate with you either. Unfortunately, America has lost that as a measure of social control in the modern political era.

It all goes back to Trevor's Axiom, trolling, and SJW culture.  In 2016, our politics functionally realigned along the stupidest of battle lines. The left embraced this brand of milquetoast corporate centrism, and the right started embracing "alt right" politics, which was just repackaged fascism. For the right, this was just a continuation of their downward spiral since the 1980s. THere had been this dynamic in American politics before. The left would always been seen as too sensitive and politically correct and the right would be like F YOUR FEELINGS and developed an "own the libs" mentality. Owning the libs is seen as a form of virtue signalling itself, or anti virtue signalling. I've seen a lot of terms for it recently, "based signalling", vice signalling, etc. Basically, the whole point is to piss the libs off. So when the libs get offended and say you can't say that, they'll double down and say it. Because F your feelings lib. On the left, we have forms of this too, and I use them. For example, I can be quite blasphemous toward Christianity and I do tend to reject a lot of right wing ideas, openly. But the way things unfolded in 2016, we got the democrats go all in with wokeness, offense toward anything even remotely "racist" or controversial, and cancel culture, which is basically trying to ruin the life of people expressing sentiments they disapprove of. Meanwhile, the right would be all "what about free speech?" and start doubling down on the offense. They'd say increasingly offensive things to own the libs, and as the libs kept screaming "fascist" back in 2016, 2017, 2018, etc., if anything the overplaying of the mechanisms of shame and social unacceptability to the point that they lost all power. And the right just got emboldened to dial up the offense. 

Well, you can see where this is going. A decade of this and now you got people like Nick Fuentes and his Groypers being like YOUR BODY MY CHOICE, advocating for women to be back in the kitchen, arguing for like tradcath autocracy a la Mussolini or Franco, or flat out saying things like "Hitler was based" and joking about the holocaust. Heck, due to the loss of the WWII generation and the increasingly post truth world, the right is just starting to dispute the holocaust and act like "well maybe it wasn't that bad" or "maybe it didn't happen", believing it all to be an elaborate hoax. And because the people who lived it are now dead, no one can really dispute that as well, despite the mountains of historical evidence in that regard. 

Also add into the fact that young people are particularly immature. So this offense culture is especially funny to them, and they end up getting sucked up into this whole "own the libs" "based signalling" thing. Hence why the young republicans these days are full of people making holocaust jokes. But they are just jokes, right, right?

Well...I'm not sure. The fact is, I do think people are being attracted to genuinely authoritarian and autocratic ideologies, and that the whole JUST KIDDING thing is giving cover for the actual authoritarians to influence the population, gain power. While pre 2016, these people literally werent allowed in polite society, now they're climbing the ranks of the republican party, and it's unclear how much of this fascism stuff they endorse is an elaborate joke to piss off liberals and leftists, and how much they're serious about. 

5) Political implications of the modern era

The 2016 realignment (which may still be undergoing, it's hard to say) has had, and will continue to have long term political implications as it continues to evolve. 

a) Economic

The economy doesn't work for people any more. That was what drove a lot of the 2016 changes in the first place. Originally, Trump and Sanders arose as a political revolution by the people as a backlash against the status quo. The most healthy resolution of this push for change would have been the democratic party moving left economically and embracing a progressive platform aimed at addressing the root causes of these problems. 

However, instead, they embraced wokeism and centrist establishment politics that actually ended up being very unpopular. They fumbled the ball they got in 2008 with Obama, and gave it back to the republicans. And the republicans RAN with it. They don't offer anything new, but they at least have the aesthetics of populism, which the dems don't even have. The dems have "the economy is fine actually and if you're suffering that's on you", which is what you'd expect from republicans. When people demand change, the democrats tell them no relief will come and they better vote for them anyway. And when they DO offer change, its often incrementalism around the edges and not anything that amounts to actual useful changes for the public. 

This has caused a generation of young people to become distrustful of the democratic party, where many will vote for republicans instead. Even among those who see through Trump's grift, they've become so hopeless at ever living a normal life and having the things previous generations have had that they've developed a "burn it all down" mentality. I see this a lot among young people and you see this with the likes of asmongold too. It's sad because I can sympathize with their plight, but rather than get out that frustration in useful ways, they end up voting for these fascist types instead. 

Honestly, this does have historical parallels to the 1930s. When the great depression hit, people were attracted to the fascism of the far right at the time. All this talk of democracy goes out the window when the political parties don't seem to give a crap about you anyway, and you can't afford to eat. Desperate times creates desperate people, and desperate people act more like Scar's hyenas from the Lion King than upstanding citizens. 

 b) Social

 Things aren't working for people socially either, especially among younger people. Remember, young voters were born in the 2000s these days. They were born around the time that I became an adult myself. An 18 year old was born in 2007. A 21 year old was born in 2004. A 25 year old was a Y2K baby. Now you probably feel old. But yeah. We're just as far from the 2000s now as we were from the 1980s in the 2000s. And uh...these younger people aren't all right. They inherited the same economic crapshow that I was calling out for relief from 10-15 years ago, for one, but instead, we got wokeness. And what does wokeness do? It divides people. Girls and women since then have become far more left wing, feminist, etc., while men are disgruntled and sucked into the alt right ecosystem. While porn is omnipresent, many are pushing back against it, believing womens' liberation was a mistake and women are sluts because of egirls and only fans and crap, while simultaneously wondering why they themselves can't get a girlfriend. Just as they're disaffected economically, they're also disaffected socially. THe lack of jobs and economic stability puts demands on them they can't meet with dating because let's face it, most changes have been one sided. Women have gotten more demanding with partners, and men just fail to meet their standards. Some of this is the traditional dream of a steady job and a spouse. No job, no spouse. You need economic success to attract women since that traditional aspect of gender has never changed (and I, quite frankly, represent a more radical progressive response of abandoning traditional expectations in the first place). However, most people arne't me and instead long for the past, and wishing to go back to the 1950s when men just did what they wanted, women were kept barefoot, pregnant, and economically dependent, and yeah. They've become traditionalist. So a lot of them find relief in religion, believing the loss of traditional values and gender roles was a mistake, and wanting to enforce those in society. Even though they weren't that great. But yeah. That's where a lot of the weird tradcath authoritarianism a la fuentes is coming from. Fascism is the highest form of social conservatism, ie, the most extreme form, and a lot of people are embracing views that just reject all modernity and believe the answer is to go back to the past. This is also why conservative men keep harping on the democrats and claiming they never have an answer for men on stuff. Because these young men aren't just longing for economic relief any more, like I was, they want this full monte of going back to traditional gender roles and traditional expectations of what makes men men. And this is why the dems struggle, even as they now sometimes try to offer the progressive economics I wanted a decade ago. They don't just want success, they want meaning, and they want a society that affirms them as men within the confines of all this traditionalist crap. 

As such, the boys are not okay. Combine that political polarization between the genders with COVID screwing up their teenage years (an 18 year old today was 13 when COVID hit, a 23 year old today was 18 when COVID hit) and yeah, a lot of these are coming out into this world and they aren't exactly well adjusted. We got basically a generation of incels, and they're all embracing incel ideology and radicalizing that way. It's actually really scary. 

Conclusion

Our society is kinda screwed. We still dont know what the full implications of all of this is, as history regarding it is being written. We dont know if fascism is the future, or just a temporary manifestation brought by the rot of woke neoliberalism and the ineffectiveness of the left to offer real solutions, but it seems clear that a lot of historical forces are coming together, giving rise to increasing fascist ideologies, among younger people. This COULD be THE realignment into the 7th party system. Surprise! It's fascism! We're screwed! It could also be an awkward end game manifestation of the 6th party system and its flaws that we need to purge from our society to fully go into a 7th yet to come. Remember, the transition between party systems isn't really clean sometimes. For example, we saw the fall of the new deal coalition in 1968, but we didn't see reagan fully replace it until 1980. We did start seeing outlines of the direction the GOP was going with nixon though. 

Likewise, we don't know where THIS is going yet. Maybe 2024 is the 1980 moment, or maybe it's more like a 1976 moment that needs to happen so the left can REALLY have its 1980 moment. Either way, I will say this. I really do not believe that things had to go this way. I believe, in an alternate timeline, that bernie could have won 2016, and none of this nightmare would have happened. People debate what about Hillary winning, but eh...I have mixed thoughts on that. I honestly believe clinton would have realigned the country along its current lines as well, and while her beating trump in 2016 might have served as a temporary respite from the trends we've seen since then, I believe that some iteration of the conservatives coming back in the 2020s was inevitable. Just as, in a way, Biden being a temporary respite, leading to the rise of more open fascism in 2024 was a thing. The point is, the centrist democrats did not have the ideas, or ideology, or solutions to our problems that were needed to actually get us to a more positive realignment. The right would have come back anyway. Still, would things have looked differently if we had a Clinton -> someone else timeline? maybe. It's hard to know how though. Point is, I believe some iteration of this trend would have happened regardless. It might have even been Trump again in 2020. He would've done his big lie stuff anyway if he lost in 2016 and wouldnt have taken no for an answer. It just isnt in his nature to do so. 

So...idk. As long as the same forces were present, weak and feckless democrats and increasingly extreme republicans, I believe the end result of this realignment was going to be the same. If anything, maybe the repeated losses of democrats will give rise to a more aggressively progressive left who will actually fight for things in 2028. Maybe this is the only way to have the good outcome happen. Or maybe im just an old bernie bro who is still trying to do wishful thinking for "this is how bernie can still win". Who knows? Either way, the left needs to get their crap together fast, or democracy is done. Unless the left can pull off a stunning upset that reverses everything that happened, and FAST, fascism is the future of the GOP, and the democrats will be powerless to stop it.  

Update on AMD drivers

 So, as it turns out, AMD has partially walked back their statement on drivers for RDNA1/2 cards. So, what does this mean? Time will tell, but this is my understanding of the situation. 

There are multiple levels of driver support. You got general support for cards to ensure they work properly, and then you got more specific driver optimizations aimed for new games. Historically, driver optimizations for specific games are only supported on the newer architectures, and then for older ones, whatever the performance is. 

Now, this, is why AMD users typicially make "fine wine" arguments. While Nvidia provides general support for longer, supporting cards as long as 8-10 years these days at times, and AMD supporting theirs for say, 6-8, game optimizations are different. Nvidia only seems to support architectures specifically for the newest ones. And AMD, at least relatively recently, would support game optimizations for longer. In the GCN architecture days, AMD would keep building on the same architecture leading to more unified game drivers for longer. So you'd have 8 year old GPUs like the HD 7000 series getting game optimizations well past their expiration date. Meanwhile, nvidia stopped supporting their kepler architecture (600/700) in this way when maxwell came out. Maxwell and pascal (900/1000) would get the same axe when the 2000 series dropped, and idk what nvidia is doing with their 2000 series onward with game specific optimizations but as we can see, nvidia tends to prioritize their newest 1-2 generations of cards while their older ones start to perform worse. Meanwhile, AMD cards would often age better because AMD would be providing game specific optimizations even on older cards, as long as the card was supported, it was supported. This is where the idea of "AMD finewine" came from. While pre HD 7000 series, AMD cards truly did age like milk since AMD likes to drop driver support on like 3-5 year old cards half the time, after that, AMD improved significantly, not just supporting older cards but giving them game specific optimizations, which caused them to outperform equivalent nvidia cards that they often competed against.

So when AMD is dropping specific optimizations targetted at specific older architectures, they're NOT abandoning the cards, and they'll probably run. We just aren't getting "finewine" any more. I can accept this compromise, as I primarily care about running games, and nvidia doesnt give "finewine" to their cards like AT ALL. Even if you got driver support spanning a decade, past the first 2 years, youre not getting the full optimized experience. It's just industry practice. Finewine is a bonus for AMD cards, but it's not really "expected", it's kind of a plus. And honestly, I can understand that RNDA isnt like GCN in that they arent iterating on the same thing 5 times here. Rather, RDNA versions diverge significantly from each other. RDNA1 is so old it cant even run modern games as it has no mesh shaders, DX12 ultimate support, or RT capabilities. RDNA2 is more modern, but I know there's a lot of AI stuff built into RDNA3 and onward where they're trying to catch up to Nvidia, and need AI acceleration to do that. So RDNA2 doesnt necessarily have the capabilities that RDNA3 and 4 have, and require different driver branches as a result. Different driver branches mean that they're not gonna give specific game optimizations to older cards. It's too much work and takes too much effort to do that. THat's why nvidia never did it. Every generation they're revolutionizing their GPU designs, whereas AMD was merely iterating on 2012 era designs until around 2019. And now RDNA1 is radically different than RDNA2, which is radically different than RDNA3, which is a whole different beast from RDNA4. 

As it stands, looking at modern benchmarks for RX 6000 series (RDNA2) cards, I could honestly see that RDNA2 performance was lagging behind RDNA3/4 cards and even nvidia cards like the 3060/4060. So honestly, Im not surprised theyre dropping it. It is older now by PC standards. And honestly, the new tech AMD is working on probably wont work with RDNA2. I know there was talk of a version of FSR4 for example which was tested on RDNA2 and leaked out, and it kinda sucked. Like it barely provided a performance uplift and was scratched as a result. So..old tech is old, old tech doesnt have ALL of the modern tech that AMD is working on. So they split the driver branches and older tech isnt getting the fine wine stuff but should still run games.

How do I feel about this? Well, Im ambivalent. The internet is still freaking out and acting like AMD is abandoning the 6000 series, despite them being sold along side 7000 series for most of their lifespans. I dont think thats the case, and I think my technical explanation for what happened sums up what's actually happened. I'm just glad to continue getting general driver support, which does ensure games WORK on modern games. Like, 6000 series isnt being abandoned. It's not gonna be like the old days where my last HD 5850 driver was the windows 10 driver and then any game past 2015 was a crapshoot and sometimes wouldnt work because there wasnt a driver for them. You'll get drivers to ensure games work. THey just arent gonna optimize for an older architecture incapable of supporting the modern features they're working on and they wanna focus on FSR4 and crap. Ideally, I would like to get game optimizations too, but I'm not really gonna expect it at this point if its impractical for AMD to provide it, as long as the games RUN acceptably, ya know? Still, I would've ideally liked to have seen support until 2027. Either way, no GPU ive owned has had extended finewine like people are expecting. I know AMD did provide it for a while for those GCN series cards, but RDNA has always been a different beast and I can see why they'd separate stuff into different branches similar to nvidia. 

Andrew Yang has lost the plot entirely

 So I just came across this gem on facebook from Andrew Yang:

I can’t ####ing believe they’re letting this shutdown go into the weekend given what’s at stake. Truly awful on BOTH sides.

Food stamps for tens of millions lapse this weekend. That doesn’t matter to these ###holes.

(censorship added by me)

 

This is where I will unapologetically break from Yang on everything and go full scorched earth (metaphorically speaking of course). 

 

Look, I get it, you don't like the democrats. I don't blame you. They're fricking worthless. They don't support UBI, they don't support medicare for all, they BARELY support a public option and dropped that idea the second it was politically convenient for them. They are a bunch of weak necked wimps. I get why you initially turned on them. They are scummy and they oppose good things. But...that doesn't mean we should be enlightened centrist here. The problem is that both parties suck, but let's contextualize that suckiness. At the absolute core, my ideology is very similar to what you proported in your 2020 campaign. Basic income, medicare for all (and yeah I did downgrade that to a public option for pragmatic reasons), and human centered capitalism. That's my jam. That's my thing. And my problem with the democrats is they don't support this crap. because too often they wanna compromise with the republicans and sell out left wing progressive principles to the right, who is, in my own mind, EVIL.

As someone who is arguably one of the original creators of human centered capitalism (I still mostly believe he got the idea from Scott Santens, and Scott Santens may have been influenced by me via reddit in this regard), let me be frank. The point of human centered capitalism was never to do this enlightened centrist both sides nonsense. The problem with the two party system is such. The right is evil, and because the left concedes the moral argument to the right, they become half evil. I know that basic income is "not left or right but forward", but let's contextualize that. That quote ALSO came from Scott Santens, who came up with it to demonstrate how basic income has had a unique ideological umbrella of supporters over the years ranging from Martin Luther King Jr and George McGovern on the left, and Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon on the right. However, let's be frank, this ideologically centrist tradition is contextualized in tbe shadow of the New Deal movement, where the left was for greater levels of government action, but often proposed such ideas in highly inefficient and piecemeal ways, and the right ended up reflecting those values, compromising with the left, and saying "well if we're gonna do this let's do it right", leading to them to back ideas like UBI as an alternative to the traditional welfare state.

In the modern political context from 1980 onward, the consensus has changed. The right has gone all in with trickle down economics, work ethic, and social darwinism, and now the left operates in the RIGHT'S shadow and compromises with them half way on everything. And in this context, basic income is no longer this ideologically centrist idea, it's a radically left wing one. Because that's how much the dialogue has changed since around 1970! And when I come at the ideas of UBI, medicare for all (or a public option), and human centered capitalism, I come at these ideas FROM THE LEFT. Andrew, in 2020, you were debatably as progressive as BERNIE SANDERS. You said once in your own book that you actually thought you were to the left of Sanders in a way because not even he would touch UBI. I understand the left/right continuum is more complicated than that, and we could debate in circles all day about whether a UBI centric human centered capitalist vision or a democratic socialist/new deal liberal vision is more "left" or more "progressive" (left wing infighting coming), but the point is, WE ARE THE LEFT. In the modern environment, politics is like driving a car. A really crappy car, but a car nevertheless. You go D if you wanna go forward, you go R if you wanna go backward. And yeah, the car sucks, it goes 15 miles an hour like its in a school zone even on the interstate, and yeah it's not going forward fast enough. And it won't even try. Because it still lives in that shadow of the right.

 

Human centered capitalism, at least how I designed it, was intended to be a secular humanist progressive alternative to the christian nationalist conservatism of the right. I believe that 2016 marked the start of a party realignment, one that the left should have very easily won, but is now losing because it cant get its crap together and wont fight the right. And the rejection of progressives, like you, and Bernie Sanders, were part of that. We are in this situation because the democrats shot themselves in the face MULTIPLE TIMES (metaphorically, of course) pushing lukewarm candidates like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris who weren't up to the task of clearly advocating for effective solutions to the country's socioeconomic problems, and instead proposed a bunch of band aid fixes they failed to even really pass AT BEST. 

Quite frankly, if we want to get out way out of this mess, we need the democrats to take the fight to the republicans. And the one time they do that, YOU'RE BASHING THEM FOR IT! Let's recontextualize this shutdown. It happened because the republicans decided to gut healthcare, throwing tens of millions off of medicaid and letting ACA subsidies expire which could QUADRUPLE HEALTHCARE PRICES! Democrats said this is unacceptable, and the government shut down came from that. And then the GOP decided to weaponize hunger and food in order to force the dems to capitulate. The shutdown amounts to "if you dont let us take away your healthcare, we'll take away your food too." They are EVIL, EVIL GHOULS. 

 

And let's be frank, universal basic income, universal healthcare, and human centered capitalism are an ANATHEMA to them. They are fundamentally and morally opposed to such things. They will NEVER support UBI. Because they believe people should work to earn every penny they get, while all income and wealth redistribution through social programs is unacceptable to them. They want to take us back to the gilded age. I get it, our current safety nets aren't perfect, but wasn't UBI and universal healthcare intended to MAKE THINGS BETTER? To improve on what we have? 

 

With that said, let's not "both sides" this crap. We need to rally around the democrats and support them through this shutdown, even if it is painful in the short term. Because in the long term, if we don't stop these guys, we'll lose anyway. They'll eventually gut SNAP anyway too. They WANT to do that. They dont WANT poor people to eat. They want them to suffer. I mean, the GOP is literally talking about CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR HOMELESS PEOPLE. And you wanna both sides this crap, Andrew? Get the heck out of here. 

Really, Yang needs to figure out what side he's actually on, and to actually take a side here, because this enlightened centrism is just cringe and a capitulation of all values that he built his original political career around. This is not a both sides issue. Democrats suck for not being progressive (ie, "forward") enough. They dont suck when they do things. When they do things, we should rally around them and defend them. Only yang can get so cringe with the enlightened centrist crap he makes me turn around and actually defend the democrats. 

AMD screws over RDNA2 users

So....AMD has announced that they are no longer going to be supporting RDNA1/2 (RX 5000/6000 series) GPUs with game ready drivers, which a lot of techtubers are treating as a slap in the face to consumers. As someone with an RX 6000 series GPU (6650 XT), I'm not really sure what the full implications of this are, but I ain't really happy. 

AMD has always had kind of a bad history with supporting drivers. I remember I got burned early on with the HD 5850 and HD 6520g laptop IGP before. Back in the day, AMD would only support drivers for their GPUs for like 4-6 years before moving on to the next thing, while nvidia supported their cards for around 6-8. 

In the modern era, both brands were supported for longer. The HD 7000 series was supported for like 7-8 years for example. Nvidia started supporting their cards for 8-10. This is acceptable, given GPUs last longer these days. 

I know the RX 400/500 series got crap when AMD discontinued support around 2023, although in all fairness, that's around when those cards struggled to run games. I could also see justification for stopping support for the ill fated RDNA1 cards these days, but RDNA2? Really?

RDNA1 isnt really capable of running modern games. It has the same features as Nvidia 1000 series cards, which have been discontinued too. Ya know? they dont have ANY ray tracing abilities, DX12 ultimate, or mesh shaders, which are essential for modern games. But RDNA2 has ALL of those things. And not much has really happened since then in GPU development on the AMD side other than AI bullcrap. And all that AI is good for, to my knowledge, is better upscaling. We got FSR 2/3 on the 6000 series, we don't really NEED better upscaling. I mean it's nice to have, but it shouldnt be NECESSARY. if we wanna use a more dated form of FSR, let us. I'll take slightly blurrier graphics over not being able to run a game at all. As such, there's no NEED for this.  

What's even more of a slap in the face was RDNA2 cards have mostly been sold until very recently. I literally recommended the RX 6600 around $200ish until like 3-6 months ago or something when we got 1) The RTX 5050 for $250, 2) the RX 9060 XT 8 GB for $270, and 3) the RTX 5060 for $300. In the face of those, the RX 6600 for $220 started looking like a bad value. Especially as the stock finally ran out recently where now those cards aren't even cheap when available at all. 

I literally bought a RX 6650 XT 3 years ago, and I went AMD over nvidia explicitly due to price. Nvidia wanted like $340 for a fricking 3060, which was a joke, and AMD wanted $230 for a 6650 XT. It was a no brainer. And given people spent a lot more on cards, say, $350 for a RX 6700 XT, $450 for a RX 6800, $600 for a 6850 XT, etc., those guys got BURNED. People upgraded to those thinking they'd get years of driver support and VRAM would help them and now AMD is cutting driver support THIS early?

Even for me, I still planned to use my RX 6650 XT for like 2 more years. I planned an upgrade in 2027 when the RTX 6000 and RX 10000 series card would be out. I sure as heck dont wanna upgrade NOW over some BS software crap when sub $300 cards are only 50% better and still have 8 GB VRAM. And I aint buying more than a $300 card, I just ain't. So...AMD, get your crap together. This is ridiculous. I dont care if I get some fancy version of FSR4 or whatever on my RDNA2 GPU, but FFS at least support your software. The RDNA2 series is only FOUR YEARS OLD. It released in 2021. Those cards are still viable for gaming, they still support the latest APIs and have all the necessary features to run stuff. Again, I don't give a flying frick about stupid AI powered FSR4. If my experience is a little blurrier then so be it. I literally don't care. I just wanna run games, man. When a GPU gets in the second half of its expected life span, I stop caring what they look like as long as they run fluidly. 

So, yeah, don't burn us AMD. Really. I bought AMD because I wanted to make a statement about nvidia and their price gouging, they have like 90% of the GPU market and don't care about gamers and small time consumers any more. But, this is reminding me why I have such a bias against AMD products. Because they don't support their crap, they do age like milk, and I end up regretting it when I do purchase them. Really, what you're telling me at this point is to buy nvidia next time. They might be an evil monopoly, but at least they support their products. And let's face it, it's not 2022 any more. We're no longer at a point where it's $230 for a RX 6650 XT vs $340 for a RTX 3060. We're at a point where it's $270 for a RX 9060 XT vs $300 for a RTX 5060. If I had to buy now, I'd be going 5060 after hearing this. No question. 4 years of support is unacceptable. Especially when those were "current generation" for half that time, and still regularly sold until recently. Seriously, I know they slowly phased out the higher end 6000 series cards in like 2024 (so last year), but the 6600 was available until THIS YEAR. Heck, even my 2.9 year old 6650 XT is still under warranty for another month, that's how new it is. What the actual hell, AMD? 

Again, if you wanted to do this in like 2028 or whatever, fine, I kinda get it. Tech eventually moves on, but my card that's still technically under warranty no longer gets driver updates? What the actual fudge?  

EDIT: It's even worse when you realize just how much AMD was still selling 6000 series cards along side 7000 series cards, and until the 9000 series which launched this past summer, there was no shift in value from late 2022 on when I bought, meaning, if you wanted to spend $200-300ish on a GPU, your options were stuff like the RX 6600, the 6650 XT, or the 7600. The 7600 eventually replaced the 6650 XT, and by eventually, I mean, they were still sold next to each other for like a $20 difference until late in the 7000 series' life cycle.

The market only shifted to provide better value for those in the sub $300 segment like....3-5 months ago. And even then, for a while, the 6700 XT offered a niche between the 7600 ($250) and the 7700 XT ($400+) which was never truly filled.  The RX 6800 was offered along side the 7700 XT for like $400 for a while, etc. Really, all of these RX 6000 cards were literally offered along side their next gen counterparts for only a few dollars difference in price/performance. As such, it is disgraceful for AMD to then be like "we got your money, BYE!" I mean, if you go on steam hardware survey, more people got 6000 series cards than 7000 series cards, because they were LITERALLY better value for the most part. The 7600 was kinda awkwardly priced vs cards like the RX 6600, 6650 XT, and the RTX 3060/4060. The 7700 XT was awkward because it was like $400-450 and offered 6800 level performance with LESS VRAM. Again, they just never had a replacement for the $300-350ish 6700 XT unless you wanted a 7600 XT, which was just a 7600 with more VRAM. Really, it was a joke. The 7000 series was never really compelling vs the 6000 series. And it was sold along side the 6000 series for most of its lifespan. 

So yeah, it really seems REALLY DUMB and REALLY SCUMMY to cut off 6000 series NOW. If this is a scam to get me to upgrade to the 9000 series, uh, screw you AMD, I'd buy a 5060 first. And I dont exactly want to buy a 5060. That in itself isn't an amazing value. Only 50% more performance and STILL 8 GB RAM for $300?! Screw this market. 

I'm honestly getting to the point of just giving up on new gaming and becoming a retro gamer. This crap is ridiculous. I'm being priced out of gaming over here. Cant even buy a steam deck because GUESS WHAT, THAT WAS RDNA2 TOO! 

"How much are folks like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi to blame for pushing Democrats to adopt unpopular identity politics that hurt us electorally?"

 I saw this question online and wanted to answer it here, as it is relevant to what got us to where we are.

Generally speaking, no, those activists are NOT responsible for the failures of the democratic party. The democratic party is responsible for the failures of the democratic party.

These were just weird hare brained activist sentiments until someone inside the democrats decided to mainstream them. And the person who is responsible is Hillary Clinton. It was HRC and her campaign that led to the rise of "woke" politics within the democratic party. The democrats elevated it because it offered a compelling counter narrative to Bernie Sanders and his democratic socialism. by arguing that Bernie and his voter base was "too white" and "too male", and "too privileged", the democrats found a way to attack him and his voters and unite a coalition of black activists, feminists, and LGBTQ+ people behind the democratic party. The democratic party itself didn't want to focus on economics. They wanted to discuss anything BUT the economic issues that plague us. So they elevated "woke" as a cudgel to browbeat people into line behind her. Keep in mind, in 2016, I was a "bernie bro", a college educated white male who actually understood actual ideas about how the economy worked and that made me bad or out of touch. And apparently I was "racist", "sexist", "privileged" and had to give up my core concerns on the altar of white male guilt and so called "electability" to endorse a centrist candidate who I had zero interest in and who didn't represent my politics. And that candidate lost to Donald Trump. 

  I noticed as early as Trump's first inauguration that "woke" was here to stay. It wasnt just a fad for the election. People were radicalized by it and were acting as if 2017 era Trump was as much of a threat as 2025 Trump is, claiming to be "anti fascist" and pushing their paradox of tolerance nonsense. The threat wasnt even apparent back then. Trump governed like a normal republican in his first term. Yeah, he was always this crazy in a way, BUT, he had an army of advisors who actually kept him in check. It wasn't until Trump lost in 2020 that he went off the rails and turned into the fascist he is today. Ever since then he got more authoritarian, dangerous, and started aligning himself with some very dark people. BUT...if we look at the rise of woke culture in the democratic party, it wasnt in response to trump's actual fascist shift. They were treating him as if he were a fascist back in 2017, and even back in 2015, when he came off as a relatively normal, if not rambunctious politician. 

From there, those guys just rose to prominence because of the zeitgeist that Clinton started. New atheism died, and "woke" replaced it. And everything became an insufferable hugbox on the left about race, gender, and sexuality and privilege, with BLM rising to prominance in 2020, and so much of the 2020 election cycle being dominated by race and gender. It was because of 2016. Clinton enabled those factions who were largely a bunch of terminally online weirdos before then, and by 2020, you couldnt NOT be woke in the democratic party and get anywhere. Bernie bent the knee. Yang didn't appeal to wokeism and was mostly ignored. And yeah. That's where this came from.

And while by 2024, the democrats started to distance themselves from this monster they created and just embrace full centrism, the stink of "woke" followed them, and this did contribute to the dems' loss.

Because let's face it, while this stuff played well within the democratic primary, it was deeply unpopular outside of it, and the core demographics it was intended to appeal to. Straight white male types were turned off massively by it, and if anything, many of them were driven to Trump, with some younger zoomers embracing a form of conservatism I would outright say is basically fascism or even nazism. Because 2016 created a contrast between Trump's brand of political incorrectness, and wokeness, with wokeness helping radicalize some to fascism. And now we DO got open fascists going around, who view "woke" as an existential enemy, and they're winning. We are losing...because of this stuff.

Basically the dems pushed a culture war they they couldnt win, because that brand of politics was inherently divisive and unpopular. I mean, sure, you gain an advantage with women, minorities, and LGBT, but then you lose support among whites, men, and straight people. And then you fail to even win over all of your target demographics consistently because eventually they realize all this crap is performative and the democrats dont actually do anything to make their lives better. And that's how we lost. The democrats couldnt even reliably turn out their own core demographics this strategy relied on, because they werent feeling the dems either. So this stuff appealed to no one.

But really, to go back to the question, is it Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X Kendi  responsible for this situation? No. They were nobodies until the democrats decided to elevate those ideologies and sentiments to win elections around them. Just like they ignored bernie, they ignored yang, etc. they could have ignored those kinds of people. The democrats CHOSE to elevate them. As such, they're the ones truly responsible for it. You can be a thought leader behind ideas but if no one takes you seriously, you arent gonna get anywhere. Just like I dont get anywhere because no one takes human centered capitalism and UBI seriously except for literally like 2% of the democratic party. If the people in power wanted to elevate those ideas, or elevate bernie and AOC and their ideas tomorrow, they would suddenly win elections based on them. But instead, they chose to ignore them.

You know, I didnt write an article about this because I was too tired at the time, but I saw an article someone else wrote not long ago arguing that wokeness was basically a psy op created to distract the left from more traditional left wing ideas. This "new left" was actually a creature of the 1960s, and it was designed as an "anti communist" program, which drew people away from labor activism and class politics and toward social justice. And we kind of saw it in play in 2016. If anything, the combination of wokeness combined with accusations that everyone else was a russian plant was that playbook at work. Because that's what this stuff was originally designed to do. People feared that the Soviets would influence American politics and push some machurian candidate to destroy America from within, and that this threat would come from the left, since, obviously, the far left aligns with communism. And Clinton used that playbook to attack both Trump and Jill Stein in her election campaign, which was why the democrats were obsessed with Russia.

Sadly, in a sense, Clinton was right, the russians did play the dissatisfaction on the left, while elevating trump in their own way to try to destabilize the US, because let's face it, the understood that trump was stupid and erratic. Still, can you see where this stuff was coming from? "Wokeness" was a tool used by the democrats to beat back the more traditional progressive economic left in order to distract people with a bunch of culture war nonsense. We shouldnt blame the activists who came up with these ideas, we should blame the democrats for giving these guys so much of a platform that that ideology became so dominant within the party. Things didn't have to go that way. They were artificially pushed that way by the democrats to avoid giving the progressive economic left their much deserved time in the sun.  

So yeah, that's my stance on that. The dems elevated wokeism to pull people away from a more productive economic left, and everything that's happened since is basically "blowback", to use a CIA term.  

Can Kamala Harris please go away forever?

 So, with a recent interview she did, Kamala Harris is hinting at possibly running for president again. I've also been listening to 107 days, and she honestly doesn't seem to have a clue about why she lost. if anything, she sounds like Hillary Clinton again. 

Can she just...please go away? She lost, she should be a pariah at this point, but it seems like Joe Biden is the scapegoat that got the party into that mess. it's not like the entire democratic party or its brand are unpopular and out of step with the American people or anything, it's that Harris didn't have enough time to make up for Joe Biden's problems. 

*sigh*, do I have to trot this out again?

 These are my election predictions. Harris did a lot better than Biden did, but let's face it, she didn't pull it off. Why? Well, in retrospect, it's because she didn't offer anything different than Biden. She had all of this initial energy, but after it became clear we were just getting Joe Biden except as a black lady, people soured on her and Trump won. Harris deserved her own defeat. I don't deny that she did good all things considered, but I think what people really wanted was something that wasn't Joe Biden. Harris was basically Joe Biden, but offering to put republicans in her administration. 

Harris was actually more moderate and tasteless than Joe Biden. Her awesome healthcare plan from 2020? Gone. She didn't even support Joe Biden's public option. She had no real vision. She had an "opportunity economy" which just sounds like rebranded trickle down economics. She had band aid proposals. She didn't offer anything. She was just Joe Biden minus the cognitive decline. 

Since the election, it's become clear to me that actual left wing ideas aren't unpopular. Zohran Mamdani is an outright socialist who has darned near a 100% chance of becoming the next mayor of NYC (he's ahead by 17 points, which is well beyond the 99.9% threshold). People LOVE the guy. Bernie Sanders is still filling stadiums on his "stop oligarchy" tour and is passing the torch to AOC as his ideological successor. People LOVE bernie and AOC. LOVE. If anyone should be the 2028 nominee, it's probably AOC. I would like someone more aligned with my own ideology, but let's face it, AOC is the next best thing. Graham Platner is popular in Maine, even as he faces accusations of being both a communist and a Nazi. The thing is, people are tired of the status quo. That's why Clinton lost, that's why Harris lost. They are tired of choosing between neoliberal democrats who will do F all to make their lives better, and right wing populists who promise to make their lives better but fail. 

People voted for Trump in 2016 because he promised to bring back the jobs. They voted for him in 2024 because he promised to fix inflation. I'm not saying Trump can do those things. Trump himself is a demagogue and I do not believe that he has any satisfying answers for fixing the economy. In order to do that, you must go left. Either you must go to democratic socialism, which is just a rebrand of FDR's new deal liberalism, or you must go with something akin to my human centered capitalism. And sadly, my own ideology never got off the ground, so new deal liberalism it is, it seems. 

As such, I guess AOC 2028 is where I stand. I don't want Harris. Oh god no, don't give us Harris again. She's done. She should go away. I dont really want Gavin Newsom either. I like the anti trump energy he brings to the fight. He is pretty much a made for TV president and his trolling of trump, is, well, it's REALLY FRICKING FUNNY. But...substance wise? I think he's just another centrist democrat. He's not compelling to me.  And oh god no, please no Pete Buttigieg. He's about as interesting as dry wall. We need actual left populist solutions to our economic problems, or this cycle will just continue. The population will lose faith in the democrats again, and then we'll elect another psycho fascist guy. No more psycho fascists, no more centrist losers. Lets just please get a progressive for a change. 

Again, unless a better option presents themselves who is more aligned with my politics, I'm all in on AOC 2028. She's the new Bernie. She is the idea person. She is "it" for me. You'll need to run a UBI centric human centered capitalist to beat her in my mind. Otherwise, yeah, give me AOC. 

And yeah, that's where I stand on 2028. Of course, given the general election, I will just vote for whomever the dems put up. Again, as much as I'd like to be picky and protest vote, well...I ain't doing that with democracy under assault like it is. If we were dealing with more normal republicans who weren't an existential threat to democracy, I'd consider it. I mean, I dont like centrist dems. BUT....yeah....if we're dealing with literal fascists on the republican ticket and they arent screwing around, well...yeah. I'll vote for whomever. Even if it is kamala harris or pete buttigieg. Still. I believe that very few people actually want that, like that, and that such candidates don't have staying power. Even if they win, our country will still be under threat from a future republican fascist like JD Vance or any member of Trump's circus of horrors. As such, I believe the democrats need to do better. 

Am I out of touch on tbe Beasley thing?

 So I'm looking at how people are responding to it and a lot of people are just calling the boomers stupid while thinking that Beasley was super intelligent or whatever. Beasley was intelligent, but his understanding of things seemed puddle deep and he was just going by rote learning tbqh. He could cite stats but had little...well...wisdom or understanding.

 I admit the MAGA voters werent the smartest, but I could actually tolerate a lot of them. I mean, given we've been dealing with outright fascists as of late, these guys felt refreshingly like normal people. Sure they arent that intelligent, but that's where America is. Your typical voter is about as smart at politics as I was as like, a 16-18 year old. And Im serious on that. I feel like I could at least talk to these people and have a productive discussion assuming it didnt involve screaming over each other. Then again, i talk to my dad a lot who is in that age range, and he's rather intelligent. Arguably I talked my parents out of being trump supporters over the years. And while they dont fully agree with me on topics, ya know, I feel like I could at least have a convo with these people and find at least a little common ground. 

Again, if anything I dislike the charlie kirks and the luke beasleys of the world. Even if i agree with beasley on facts, i dont like that annoying pushy mentality. It seems like the goal of such people is to just talk over the other side and make them look stupid. And just because beasley is on "my side" doesnt mean that I liked him. I found him as obnoxious as charlie kirk. Just from a biden bro perspective instead of a conservative. 

Honestly, maybe it's the fact that I do talk to my parents but I find talking with older people easier than talking with younger people. yeah boomers can get arrogant and think they know everything, but the youngest of zoomers do too. And they seem to lack any and all life experience in doing so. Boomers might not be the most...informed people, but I could at least kinda get them. I mean, I feel like if you had someone who talked a bit slower and more honestly, maybe we could get a productive dialogue going there.

Then again, I'm a millennial who is kinda in between these two in a way. I have the college education so i understand beasley's perspective, but i also kinda understand the boomers somewhat. And it is a disconnect, again, feels vs reals to some degree. These guys lack a college education and formal training in a lot of topics and just go by emotions I get it. But at the same time, beasley just seemed to be some kid who could cite stats but didnt actually understand things. Idk. I just feel like a lot of the commentators are kinda harsh. I dont think beasley was that intelligent tbqh, and as I said, I would rather deal with THESE boomers than, say, some gen Z fascist who went down the alt right rabbit hole. Really, what I find scary are gen Zers who are like somehow 10x worse than the boomers because they intellectualized their racism, sexism, and fascist tendencies. Yeah the boomers are kinda ignorant at times, but this kind of ignorance can arguably be fixed if you talk to them for long enough. Ya know? Either way, I dont think this is just a boomer thing, i think that the median american voter sounds like these guys. Kinda stupid, but they perceive problems, some legitimate, some not so legitimate, and they are operating off of the intelligence level i had as a teenager on politics. I mean, at least these guys are just stupid, but brainwashed or insane, ya know? Those are the trumpers i find truly scary. Those are the ones i wont be able to find ANY common ground with and I could debate with until im blue in the face. Because those guys just have a fundamentally different moral view than me and that moral view is fricking evil.

Again, if I had a choice to go up against either these guys or the literal fascists medhi hassan was dealing with, I'd take 20 normie boomers over 20 psycho far rightists. Ya know? I feel like I could at least talk to SOME of these people.  

Discussing the newest Jubilee crapshow (1 liberal zoomer vs 20 trump supporting boomers)

 So, Jubilee had another debate, and this one was...well...a crapshow. It was like the Charlie Kirk one I discussed but in reverse. Luke Beasley is a fast talking zoomer who much like Kirk kept talking over his opponents, and his opponents were older Trump voters. It was a mess, and I'm starting to hate these. It had a similar dynamic to Kirk beating up on college kids, except it was this young guy beating up on a bunch of older people. 

Claim #1: MAGAnomics is terrible for the economy

So, we see the charlie kirk effect with this Beasley kid right out of the gate. I agree with the premise by the way, MAGAnomics is terrible for the economy. It's adding inflation and driving us into a recession for no fricking reason, but the first guy seemed fairly articulate and this kid just wouldn't let him talk! He was a business owner who seemed to understand international finance and was trying to talk about how China is screwing us and this guy just kept pushing leading questions and not letting the guy get his point in edge wise. And yeah, I actually agree with Beasley on paper here. I mean, I aint a fan of MAGA or their economic policies, but this guy seems like the biggest Biden bro ever where he's just citing economic statistics about jobs with little context. The boomers were old, but they do have economic experience and some seemed like genuinely intelligent people. I just would have liked to have seen some actual discussion that didn't turn into a crapshow here.

Claim #2: Trump is an authoritarian threat to democracy

 As we know, I agree with this one too. He is. Between January 6th, the erosion of voting rights, attempts to concentrate power in the executive branch, invading American cities to flex his might, and attempts to run again and possibly overturn the next election, Trump is dangerous. But these guys just didn't see it. 

One thing that irked me where the people who bought Trump's line about how "talking like this is why he's acting like that" and stuff like that. Again, my stance, if you dont wanna be treated like a fascist, dont do fascist things. I wasnt out here talking about Bush like this when he was in office. And the dems have been screaming about the radical left and antifa my entire life and have always dialed up the rhetoric. I wouldnt agree with the alarmism if I didnt believe it was legit.

Still, this is where Beasley did get castigated for talking over people and how we need to have a more civil discourse where we talk to each other, not over each other. I kind of agree. I certainly dont like Beasley's style of just talking over his opponents. TO be fair, Charlie Kirk, who is heralded as this standard of civil debate did literally that, and I discussed that just a week ago. 

 Anyway, on January 6th, I could understand why people wouldnt be on board with acting like that was an insurrection...if they didnt watch the congressional hearings. You can go back to 2021 in this blog and I was very skeptical initially of going after Trump for his speech. But after the prosecution actually made a case and presented it before congress and more facts came out, I warmed up to it. But that's kind of a disconnect. It's kinda like that "if those kids could read they'd be very upset" meme. A lot of trumpers just dont....follow data and facts. And they just dont see the threat. They kept talking about civil discourse and blah blah blah, but they just dont have very informed perspectives. Sorry, not sorry. Beasley was right, even if I didnt agree with his debate style.

 Claim #3: Trump supporters are not patriotic

 This is a claim I'm leery to back. I believe a lot of right wingers are patriotic in their own heads. And I saw that here. I believe a lot of the trump supporters who talked are very patriotic people in their own minds. And a lot of them tend to buy into the very nationalist idea of patriotism. They asked Beasley why he never joined the military, although when COVID came up, I really think we should've had a discussion about Trumpers refusing to mask up or get vaxxed for the good of the country. And that did come up. On that front, yes, Trump did operation warp speed and the vaccine wouldve released in 2021 regardless. Trump didnt wanna force it like Biden, but given this was a matter of public health, maybe he should have? I mean, I call myself a libertarian myself and my idea of freedom is you can swing your fist but if it ends at someone else's nose that's a problem. Likewise, if you cough on others and spread disease, that's also a problem. Sometimes patriotism is doing the right thing for the country. Right wingers talk a big game about the military, but again, they seem afraid of needles. Even though you get vaccinated in the military too. My dad has an interesting story about how he lost his shot card once and had to get ALL of his vaccines over again, including this massive needle that injected jelly into him and was super painful. But hey, as a civvie? Afraid of getting one tiny needle? Give me a break. And i dont even buy into the aesthetics of patriotism either, but COME ON.

Beyond that, there was discussion of the constitution, and blah blah blah. Beasley talked about how Trump was never in the military and he wasn't. A lot of trumpers had this cult of personality like he got shot for his country. He didnt get shot for his country. Someone took a shot at him while running for office, and yeah he had that bad### moment where he got up and pumped his fist up, but let's not glamorize it. Dude seemed scared crapless after that. 

And yeah, IIRC more talk of january 6th, and trumpers believed the protesters to be patriotic. I dont, I see them as criminals and as borderline traitors. They mightve thought they did what was right in their heads, but they were misled, by Trump. Like, sometimes these guys just seem in their own alternative realities and buy into a cult of personality around Trump. 

 Claim #4: Kamala Harris would have been a much better president

 She would have. And I'm not saying she'd be great, just adequate, but adequate, as in, 5/10 is better than terrible, or 1/10. And this is where I found the debate between both sides to be cringe. Beasley spoke a lot of numbers and facts like jobs and inflation, and he was right, but that stuff is very underwhelming. I believe we live in a second gilded age. Let;s talk about where the term gilded age comes from. It's like "golden age", ya know, where everything is wonderful, except instead of golden it's gilded. Basically, everything is right on the surface, but it's all rotten on the inside. Like it's actually crap, but it seems nice on the outside. When Beasley cites states, he's talking about the gilded parts, but ignoring the problems underneath. At the same time, the Trumpers are the opposite. They feel something is wrong, but they're feels over reals. They blamed Biden for crime, immigration, inflation, ya know, all the problems that were top voter priorities but honestly, it was feels over reals. Like, they talked about crime on the way to the studio where this was shot in California. Beasley pointed out crime was down statistically, but trumpers dont care about stats, they care about feels. He pointed out how illegal immigration didnt go up and the trumpers were like "but what about the 11 million people already here?" As a UBI supporter who counts illegal immigrants to know how many people to exclude from my UBI numbers, illegal immigrants in the US has remained rather flat for years and those guys were there back during the Obama administration when I first started counting. The numbers havent really changed. We dont have a massive crisis of illegals coming in. And when they do come, they're turned away. Again, feels over reals with these people. 

On economics. yes, inflation was up under biden. We recovered from COVID after all, btw, these guys were blaming Biden for shutting down the country when Trump was in office in 2020. Again, feels over reals. And yeah, i would agree that the stats arent convincing since, as weve been talking about on here, we're dealing with a situation where the middle class is in perpetual decline it seems. It's been declining since the 1970s, that's the real problem. We've seen the hollowing out of American living standards through the 80s onward, with 2008 being what I consider the breaking point for a lot of people. And now COVID is causing an inflationary surge and yeah. It sucks. Of course, these people are blaming Biden and acting like Trump brought prices down. He didnt. Biden did at the end of his term and now the tariffs are making things worse again and were seeing both higher prices and increased unemployment again. And yeah, I do admit Beasley's stats arent convincing. And quoting those stats at people didnt win people over in 2024. Because people know something is wrong, they don't know what. Which brings us to the counter claim from the Trumpers

Claim #5: The reason the left lost the election is because they dont understand the American people

 And yeah, I would concede this to the Trump voter. I mean, I dont like the left as it exists. I dont believe the left really cares what the American voter thinks. They are in an insular echo chamber and cite statistics and get lecturey and condescending, but they dont actually understand. They dont understand that just because the numbers are good doesnt mean people are doing well. And Beasley just missed that IMO.

At the same time, I cant agree with the Trumper either. Because she's a bit too feels over reals. She was going on about how we need a business person like Trump who understand what it's like to be president and buying into this cult of personality and no...no...

Here's the thing. You dont want a businessman as president. A businessman knows business, yes, but we need class consciousness here. We really do. A business owner's perspective is a bourgeois perspective. It's the perspective that focuses on increasing capital and increasing wealth for themselves. We have this idea in our society that if the wealthy do well, we do well, because the wealthy want to create jobs and the wealth will trickle down. The wealth doesnt trickle down, and it hasnt been trickling down, and I'll go even further, Trumpers might understand something is wrong with the economy, but they dont understand what. They dont understand that maybe a society in which we give all of the wealth to the already wealthy and expect them to "create jobs" and make the wealth "trickle down" is a terrible idea. Because it doesn't. I've been mentioning Fordism a lot, the idea that we need to have employees paid enough to buy the products that they make. We dont have that any more. Most consumption is done by the top 10% of income earners. And that's the common trend that unites the post 2008 recession economy and the post COVID economy. It's the K shaped recoveries. The wealthy come off better than ever, no one else does. 

But to solve this, we need PROGRESSIVE economics. I dont mean bidenomics. Bidenomics, obamanomics, clintonomics, those are all modified trickle down. Trickle down with a moderate keynesian bend. They too relied on the wealthy to "create jobs" and while liberal politics are arguably a bit better, the whole paradigm is fricking broken. Because instead of trickle down, we need trickle up. We need to give money to those at the bottom, the consumption creates the demand, the demand creates jobs, and then the jobs make the stuff. That's what we need. We need businesses to respond to consumer demand, not a top down trickle down system. But for a left wing system to work, we need to go MUCH FURTHER LEFT than we've been doing. We either need a Bernie Sanders approach, which goes back to FDR and his New Deal, with higher minimum wages, and universal healthcare, and free college/student debt forgiveness, and jobs guarantees, OR, we need a UBI and some of those things. Traditional liberals/leftists are more in the Bernie vein, my own politics are closer to yang and a bit newer, but I still believe that it's a viable model that has some advantages (and possibly some disadvantages) over the bernie approach. The bernie approach is more growth and jobs oriented, but my approach would solve poverty and put value in things other than work and the economy. They have tradeoffs, my own philosophy and the new deal liberal types can debate all day which is better, BUT, we need ONE OF THOSE TWO APPROACHES to the economy in order to make it work.

The problem with modern politics is BOTH SIDES are broken. The republicans have this populist thing going on where they act like Trump cares about them and he's a patriot and he sacrifices for his country, and beasley as this cool and calm headed "quant head" thing going on where you got some intelligent guy who cites random statistics, but those statistics dont necessarily tell the full story. 

Again, the entire paradigm of modern politics is broken, both sides talk around each other, and both just dont get it. They miss the point. I will agree Beasley's side is more right on facts, but that side also does miss that a lot of the people are suffering, and democrats dont seem to care. And that's why they keep losing to Donald Trump. 

Conclusion

Honestly, this debate had potential. I actually think at least some trumpers were quite intelligent, and quite human, and i think that this is where the population is. If you wonder where the median voter is with things, I think these guys did give some insight into the sauce that got Trump elected, while Beasley kinda did come off as out of touch. Now, to be fair, Beasley was right on most stuff. And the trump voters were more feels over reals and I really dont think they understand that yeah, trump's economics are actually terrible, and yeah, he is a danger to society, all that stuff is true and these guys dont see it. But at the same time, beasley just didnt see that maybe there's more to life than citing random stats at people and that being convincing. 

Part of the problem with america is we have an education problem and voters arent well informed. We see that here. Part of the problem is the democrats are just out of touch. We see that here too. And part of the problem is debates like this just lead to people trying to talk over each other, yeah, that's a problem too. But at the same time, part of the problem isnt just talking over each other and refusing to have civil discourse. We do have fascists within the trump movement. We saw them in the medhi hassan debate, which is why i started watching these. And those guys scare the crap out of me. These guys, far more normie vibe, not as scary, but they really just dont see how danferous and terrible trump is. I can admit, my own side sucks, harris and biden were out of line with the american people and their priorities. Sometimes those priorities were bunk. Like crime and immigration, lots of fear mongering whipped up by trump, not a lot of reality there. On the economy though, I do think there's far more wrong with the economy than the mainstream center left would admit, and the trumpers kinda are tapping into that. But at the same time, I think the trumpers are kinda stupid and arent articulating their concerns super well because well, they are kinda stupid.

And people dont like being called stupid, which is why the left has a problem reaching out to people, but idk how else to put it. They dont understand things properly. They lack education. They have dunning kruger syndrome. They're just flat out WRONG on stuff. And I get that maybe not everything to life boils down to stats, but stats are still better than just anecdotes. Still, you admittedly should have both. And that's what i try to offer here. I kinda try to bridge that gap. Ya know? Sometimes those feelings are legit. I live in a city with a lot of crime and i dont feel safe after all. I understand why some are worried about crime. Of course, the criminologist in me also understands such crime is also linked to poverty and that people just complain about crime endlessly even when stats change. The mind is a powerful thing though and people will sometimes believe the feels over reals though. 

Same with stats. Yeah, if you actually buy into the paradigm of economic growth and job creation and inflation and blah blah blah, yeah, Biden was the best conventional president you could have on the economy If you love trickle down economics, ie, economics where we give the money to the wealthy and expect it to trickle down, yeah, biden was solid in conventional terms. And much better than Trump, whose tariffs are screwing things up. But, and here's where those feels are valuable, the american people are struggling with the way the economy is, and there's good reasons for it. Stuff is getting more expensive, people feel like their living standards are declining...again....and they kind of are, but again, to fix it, you need a paradigm shift. Heck, even to RECOGNIZE THE PROBLEM and bring it into focus, you need a paradigm shift. And the trumpers...they operate in this conventional paradigm, but understand something isnt working, so they just go feels over reals. In reality, you need to reject the paradigm, and that involves moving LEFT. And not just to where the dems are, but TWICE as left as that. Because mainstream dems are just republican lites on economics. You need to get on board with the likes of bernie sanders, or andrew yang, and ya know, those kinds of ideas. You need big ideas to fix the economy, paradigm changing ideas. You aint gonna get that for trump. With trump, you get trickle down with tariffs, which is worse than Biden. And yeah, that's where I'm at with that.  

Discussing a revelation about the next gen Xbox I find interesting

 So...Microsoft won't stop shooting themselves in the foot lately. And I did want to discuss the $1200 rumor a bit more. It comes from the idea that Microsoft said their next gen console will be a "very premium, very high end curated experience." They also hinted that their thinking comes from their $1000 Xbox Rog Ally. *ugh*

So...I really have to ask, who wants this? Not many people who I know of. I kinda hate the current push of PC handhelds. They're all WAAAAAY too premium for me. The only one even remotely close to my price range is the steam deck (or the OG rog ally Z1 on sale, I saw that for $350 before), and even then, I went for a $200 razer edge over either of them because $200-250ish is...what I'm willing to pay for a handheld. It's what I can comfortably afford, while still buying actual GAMES I want. I can blow all my money on hardware, but if I do that, I can't buy games to play said hardware on. But I digress. 

Honestly, I hate these PC handhelds beyond that too. They remind me of the game gear. The game boy beat the game gear back in the day. Why? because while the game gear was also a "very premium very high end curated experience" for its time (COLOR AND GRAPHICS), the game boy outsold it. Why? Because it was a lot cheaper for one. And a lot more flexible for two. It was smaller, used less battery, had a better library arguably. It was the better handheld, despite being worse on paper. 

I think we're gonna have to relearn the lesson of the 80s and 90s that the equivalent of a $300+ handheld or a $1000+ console is NOT okay.  We did this back then in the experimental days of gaming. And the cheaper options won out every time. 

Even these premium handhelds, they've only sold like 6 million of them, which is like..nothing. And 4 million of those were steam decks. Why is the steam deck winning? because it's $400, not $800. That's why. It's simple supply and demand.

And, as we know from the other day and act man's video, game sales are lagging too. Most gamers only buy 1-2 games a year, in part because it's all we can afford. Most spending is driven by a small number of big spenders. And that's actually kind of the point. It's where the market is going, as hardware becomes more expensive, and more and more people are being pushed out of the market. 

But what if Microsoft's strategy is to adjust to this reality? What if they see the writing on the wall, know the middle class is dead, and they're trying to appeal specifically to that 4% of gamers doing the vast majority of the spending? Many of those guys are wealthy, arguably, not very price sensitive, and they'll spend TONS of money for a "premium experience", even if the masses won't. What if the gaming industry is abandoning us? And by us, I mean the middle class, the ACTUAL middle class. 

Many people discussing microsoft's strategy seem to be pointing to the so called "K shaped recovery", where the wealthy make up the vast majority of consumer spending, and the not wealthy....don't. It's a sign of the times. We've seen most of the wealth and income over the past 50 years go to the top 20% where the bottom 80% stagnated for the most part. Despite this idea that growth is a tide that raises all boats, much like a trump rally, the big boats are sinking the small ones. And a lot of that is concentrated not just in the top 20%, but the top 10%, 5%, even 1%. Now the top 10% make up half of all consumer spending. To be fair, the economy has always been skewed toward the top, but now it's even more so, and given I'm in, idk, either the 20-40% quintile or maybe the 40-60% one, well, let's face it, corporations don't give a flying FUDGE about someone like me. Oh, you're gonna spend $250 on a GPU? That's nice, this rich fricker wants to spend $2000 on an RTX 5090 to do RaY tRaCiNg!!!11! on our brand new $70 $80 game. Your dollars just aren't good enough any more! Screw you, have a nice life. Enjoy having nothing. 

...and this is why the American people are pissed. In 2016, people were pissed over the loss of status and jobs as their middle class factory jobs disappeared and were replaced by low wage service jobs. This is why Trump won. In 2024, even though the jobs were there, people were pissed as the price of everything went up, and people are facing even more setbacks as their living standards keep declining. It doesn't matter what side of the phillips curve you're on, the economy isn't working. Because all of the wealth and income is going to the top, while the bottom and middle are getting less and less. We've seen the mass erosion of relative living standards from the 1970s on, and every economic crisis since has made it worse. The wealthy come out better than ever. The stock market is up, unemployment is down, but at the end of the day, the masses are struggling more and more. Either our jobs aren't paying what they used to, but inflation is low, or inflation is high and jobs pay more but it's not keeping up with inflation. Either way, we're being crushed.  

And maybe microsoft, being the for profit business that they are, are looking at this and going "hey, let's raise prices to appeal to the premium segment who do most of the spending anyway." And because most people don't pay up anyway, well, screw them, we don't need them, we ONLY need the rich people.

Fordism is truly dead. The middle class was built on the idea of paying your workers enough money to consume with, you need to pay your workers so they can buy your cars, and now our system is the masses work to produce stuff that only the wealthy can afford to buy anyway. Rather than being participants in the economy who both work and consume, we just work and don't consume as much. The "American Dream" is dying. Younger generations don't believe in it any more. It never worked for us, and unless we have a paradigm shift, it never will. And given we shot ourselves in the foot by putting trump back into office, and he seems intent on becoming a dictator and turning us into one party rule, things may never get better. This might just be life now, and we might have screwed ourselves.  

How RFK Jr's run was a perfect example of an effective third party run

 So...I've been thinking about this, especially as I've been thinking of the states of the democrats and them hating on third partiers so much. part of this is coming up again because there's rumors of Kamala Harris being the nominee again and people being like OH GOD WHY. I mean, I've been listening to her book recently and she is insular AF and doesn't get it. She said, for example, in response to the free palestine protesters, she was just thinking "it's me or trump, do they want trump to win?" And I see that entitlement as part of the problem.

 Of course, when third parties come up, this is the dems' attitude. Shut up, vote for us, do you want republicans to win and say that third party runs never accomplish anything. Except, the left tends to misunderstand what third party runs are intended to accomplish. Most of them arent geared toward winning, sure. But they are geared toward bringing up grievances with the two options available. Most are centered around issues the mainstream parties are ignoring, as a way to bring awareness of those issues, and pressure the parties into acting on them. The ideal goal of them is actually to pressure the party closer to you into supporting your platform. Sure, they might not win, but if the issue goes on to be addressed by the two parties, the candidate in question can drop out and endorse them. As for whether the parties in question listen is up to them. The democrats have a mentality of generally being hostile to third parties, trying to ignore them, and attacking their supporters for not supporting them. But this is the wrong approach. Democracy is beholden to the voters, the politicians are supposed to make the voters happy, and when democrats refuse to budge on those issues, people shouldn't be surprised when those voters dont support them. Which is what happens, and why they keep losing. Harris in 2024 lost specifically because she lost around 6 million voters that Joe Biden had in 2020. While some of these guys may have gone over to Trump, Trump only gained 3 million over his 2020 vote count. Many of these voters stayed home or voted third party, because they didn't like the options.  

But...third parties aren't a threat only to the democrats, they can threaten republicans too. Libertarians are a constant thorn in the republican party's side, and RFK Jr.'s run took votes from both parties in theory. RFK Jr ran as a centrist populist who had some left views, some right views, but what really seemed to unite his audience were the fact that many of them were kinda cray cray. They didnt seem to have a coherent policy platform, but they did have some unique views. Like being anti vax, and kinda anti modern medicine in general. They bought into his cringey autism narratives, and yeah, he was a lightning rod for those kinds of people. And what did Trump do? Well, he probably offered him a cabinet position as secretary of health, and basically give him whatever he wanted to get him on his side. And now, Trump has that kind of crazy in his administration. 

I'm not saying this is a good thing mind you, but politically, it was a smart move by Trump. He was able to give RFK and his supporters what they wanted, integrating him into his own campaign, and integrating his supporters into his coalition. And yeah, that's how we got the guy who sounds like a ghoul and doesn't know what he's doing as secretary of health. 

The point of me bringing this up is to point out that, yes, third party runs can be effective. The whole point is to pressure one of the two parties into caring about your issues.  The democrats treat these guys with open hostility and have lost 2 of the previous 3 elections in part because of this (and won't shut the heck up about it despite doing F all to address the problem). The republicans saw RFK as a threat to their 2024 run so worked to bring him on board and win over his supporters. And arguably, this could be a factor that swung the election in his direction. It's hard to say. RFK kinda had both left and right wing supporters, both progressives and conservatives. But...either way, the republicans moved to remove the threat by giving it what it wanted, and the democrats are just like "but you BETTER vote for me", then act surprised when they lose.

Why am I dunking on dems again even though I admit that progressives probably should have bit the bullet on this one? Again, it's because I'm listening to harris's book, and honestly, she is NOT coming off well to me here. She literally had the same entitlement attitude that's often a problem, and I really do think that the contrast with trump kind of showed how the two approaches to third parties can shift elections. Trump worked to bring RFK on board, and Harris and the dems just screamed that voters should support them, even when they clearly hate them. 

And I really cant help but believe, even in this moment, with democracy literally under threat, that us being here is the dems' own fault. They played chicken with the voters too many times, pushing cringey unlikable candidates on people and acting entitled to their votes. Biden was insular himself. He genuinely believed he was doing a good job and refused to believe the american people hated him. And Harris, while she at least seemed somewhat aware of the problem, she did very little to address it. Part of it was the pressures of her own position, she couldnt run as an outsider AT ALL, and the people wanted an outsider. But part of it seemed to be that, yeah, because she was an insider, her position was molded by being on the inside, and her political instincts genuinely suck. 

Anyway, this is also relevant in the face of graham platner's popularity since a lot of centrist democrats seem genuinely horrified their attacks against him arent working, and that people aren't turned off because he used language that's unacceptable now but was acceptable 20 years ago, or that he had that nasty tattoo, or called himself a communist. If anything, some of those things seem to actually be endearing him to the voters. They dont WANT an insider. They dont WANT a corporate cookie cutter "safe" politician. They want an outsider who talks crude and has a perspective more in line with them. This whole experiment the dems have had over the past decade of shoving wokeism and this brand of bland corporate centrism down peoples' throats has backfired immensely. And we're kind of starting to see the facade of corporate centrism fade, as progressives are rising up and gaining power. The narratives that once dominated no longer do, and the peoples' expectations are shifting significantly. I'm not sure if democracy will survive to 2028, but if it does, that could be the earthquake realigning election we've been wanting, if the right candidate appears, with the right platform, and is capable not just of challenging trump, but the corporate establishment. We'll see what happens, but yeah. Either way, the democrats need to change if they wanna be relevant going forward. 

Discussing Bernie's comments about immigration

 So...Bernie has returned to the center on immigration. He's praised Trump on the topic, while saying Biden didn't get the job done. Now, I have mixed thoughts on this one too. First, I've never been "woke" on immigration. I also believe we are a nation with borders, the borders should be enforced, but I'm not gonna lie, Biden basically did secure the border. The republicans just kept acting like it was an issue because THEY wanted to be the ones to do it, and now they're doing psycho crap that reminds me of early nazi germany. And...for me, that's where I stand. I've never been a far left progressive on the border. I've always been a moderate, a centrist on this issue. And I did support Sanders in 2016 when he wasn't "woke" like clinton was. But let's be blunt. The right tried triangulating. Biden did keep the border secured mostly. He actually gave the republicans most of what they wanted. For me, the issue isn't whether to enforce our borders, it's HOW. Trump is all optics. He plays the tough guy like "I'm going to build a wall and make mexico pay for it" (even though his wall is nothing but a monument to racism and solves nothing, and mexico didn't pay for it), and now he's just rounding up people without due process. It's insane. We shouldnt praise trump or act like he did a better job than Biden on this.

Why is bernie saying this? because I think he understands the current zeitgeist that "woke" is dead, the dems dragged him through the mud in 2016 and 2020, forcing him left on social justice issues, and now that that stuff has been unquestionably unpopular, he's shifting back to the right and kinda agreeing with trump. Bold move cotton, let's see how this pays off.

 While I'd normally expect shrill cries from the social justice left over this, he isn't getting as much criticism as I would normally expect I think. Maybe woke really is dead. Good riddance. Either way, I'm ambivalent on these comments. Just because I ain't woke doesn't mean I'm a right winger on immigration. And I'm gonna keep it real, Biden gave the GOP like 85% of what they wanted and it STILL wasn't enough. Again, because Trump had to do it himself. HE had to be the one to solve the border crisis, not the democrats. Maybe Sanders simply recognizes that and is conceding the issue to Trump so he could focus on other stuff. It's smart, but I can't say I approve of that. My honest, objective opinion was Biden was adequate (even if not perceived so), Trump is a psychopath, and I'd rather not give into right wing framing more than we have to. And I say this as someone who has blasted the woke left all along for being too soft on the issue, and even got my fair share of criticism over the decade for not being on board with their ideas. 

 The left should concede the border issue somewhat to the right, it's just a debate of how much. I do believe the left should offer contrast with the right, especially in this age where what Trump is doing on the issue seems Hitleresque. We SHOULD be pushing back on Trump here. He's NOT doing a good job. He's a fricking psychopath and should be recognized as such. Even if we believe in strong borders and the like, the difference is the democrats try to do things more humanely and legally. Trump isn't, and that's the problem. And that's basically the difference between just being right wing on the issue and being a fascist. I can respect a right wing position on immigration, even if I dont fully agree with it. I can't agree with fascism. 

Discussing Graham Platner's military service

 So....Vaush mentioned some comments about Platner's military service on a live stream, and uh, yikes. Yeah, I was giving this guy a pass, but I kinda got issues with this. Okay, so the guy was asked before what american wars he would have volunteered to fight in, and he chose a lot of these really easy one sided imperialistic wars, many of which have aged badly because they were exactly the kinds of wars we didnt need to fight. Now, I dont really find him not wanting to fight in a hard war with mass death unjustifiable, I wouldnt wanna fight in the more brutal wars either. But come on, basically, he finds being what amounts to an occupier and not having to deal with a population that fights back "enjoyable?" Jesus. Like, if I were asked, I'd probably not wanna fight at all. And that's a fair perspective. I wouldnt wanna fight the big wars because they were meat grinders, and the small occupying wars still have a non zero chance of death, and many of them are dubious morally. 

Just...wtf? idk, he comes off as sociopathic here. Now, he's probably evolved a lot since those days if he ends up as a reddit communist going all ACAB on people, but yeah no, this doesn't endear me to him at all. He's still the "best" option given the alternatives are a republican and a neolib, but man, I wish we could have a better candidate than this. Still, even with these scandals, his polling is pretty good in the primary. I just wish we had someone who didnt have all of this crazy baggage.  

Discussing "Why Aren't People Buying Games Any More?"

 So, the Act Man came out with yet another banger of a video that sums up a lot of what I've been feeling lately about the video game industry. I've been kinda going full throttle here myself on this, ripping the industry for becoming increasingly apocalyptically expensive, and yeah, this video hits the spot so hard.

So, we've discussed my own consumption habits recently. I spend $200 a year on games. 9 games a year, on average, $22-23 a game, with widely variable costs per game, ranging from as low as like $2.50 on the low end, to maybe $52.50 (or 25% off a $70 game) on the high end. And apparently, this is a lot. Most gamers only buy 1-2 games a year on average, and apparently most spending is driven by a small number of hobbyists. Apparently I'm way above average here. And of course, hardware costs are high, despite this. And uh...I didnt think that the picture was this dire, but holy crap. 

Yeah. With me, my own spending is inversely proportional with how much I have to spend on hardware. If you make me buy new GPUs and stuff every few years just to game, that's less money Im spending on games. And nvidia is getting greedy AF and their making GPUs insanely expensive is gonna affect that. If you want people to pay for software, maybe dont make them pay a lot for hardware. Seriously, I'd rather game devs at this point NOT push graphics, but instead make games playable on like 10 year old systems, so I can just spend more on games. Again, it's not like games are progressing like they did in the past. At this point we're well past "peak gaming" as I call it where we're just putting insane financial constraints on people for no real tangible benefit. 

But beyond that, yeah, the economy is horrible. Even though it's great on paper, people can't afford to live. Everything is expensive. The new switch is $450, $500 with mariokart. The next gen PS6 might be as high as $800, the next gen xbox might be as high as $1200. Games cost $70, some wanna push that to $80, jobs pay $15 an hour while rent costs like $2000 a month, and then people are like, "gee, why arent people consuming?"

And yeah i guess with games, older games are an option, f2p is an option, and that does flesh out our options for games, meaning we spend more time on either cheap/free games, or buy 1-2 games a year and spend most of our time on those. Or we just enjoy our back catalogs and crap. 

But yeah. None of this is working for people. These corporate stooges are trying to suck as much money out of people while giving them nothing back. People forget that to have a functioning consumerist economy, people need money to consume. You need to pay people, so they can buy products. But with everyone squeezing people for everything they're worth, while paying them as little as possible, nothing is working. And a lot of people just check out of the consumerist cycle where they end up playing decade old games still being updated, or f2p games, and yeah, they stop consuming. Even the switch 2's sales might be driven by this wealthy minority who can afford everything, because let's face it, our economy has 20% of people making 50% of the income, so they're living the dream at least on paper (dont ask them about how many hours they spend at the office or how little time they actually have for gaming), but for the rest of us, we're struggling to keep up. And that's where I keep saying gaming is going at this rate. After it becoming increasingly accessible from the 80s through the 2010s, now they're squeezing us and going on about how we should be willing to pay because that's what stuff cost in the 90s. Except...that's how the 90s were for most of us. We didnt buy tons of games. Consoles were cheapish, much cheaper than today tbqh, and games were prohibitively expensive. We bought like 4-6 games a year if we were lucky, and rarely at full price. Thankfully prices dropped fast back then. They dont now. Another decision fuelled by corporate greed. Companies dont like to lower prices ever, so they stay high longer. 

And yeah. I just wanted to post this because I feel vindicated if anything by these statistics. Sometimes i wonder if I'm the one who is out of touch here, but then I remember basic economics and see stats like this and it's like "no, I'm just on the curve here." Game developers, and well, the owners of capitalism, are gonna have to realize, if they want this system to work and they want us to consume, they gotta make stuff affordable. $1200 xboxes and $80 games are a no go. That's economic suicide. And while yes, a small portion of people will pay it, the vast majority won't. PS, redditors, you're that minority. You know who you are, the ones who spend thousands on your PC, and then buy every $70 game when it comes out, and then dunk on everyone else for being poor? You're not the rule, you're the exception. I'm closer to the median than you guys are.