Large corporations only care about one thing profit.

Eh, I’d argue that they care about things other than profit (e.g. power). Look at Leon Musk for example…that guy makes decisions all of the time that aren’t for the benefit of his company’s profitability.

And here’s where everyone jumps all over me …… evaluate the car on its own merits.

One of the car’s merits (or not) is resale value. Musk’s bullshit is highly related to that merit. Another merit (or not) is reliability, and again Musk’s bullshit is highly related to that merit.

Like it or not, people will make purchasing decisions based upon these (and other) things.

Cars are as much a trendy fashion piece for many as they are an item you use to get to places. I mean the grade-school thinking of this dude had him spell out “S3XY” with his car models…so, Tesla and its board are aware of this and have benefited from it. But it’s a double-edged sword, if you’re buying a car as a fashion symbol, you stand a high risk of it becoming pretty worthless if it goes out of style.

Leon had the chance to be the Steve Jobs of EVs, and was for a while. But a cult of personality is also a double-edged sword, and he made the mistake of letting his innermost dumpster fire edgelord personality roam into the public sphere.

They’re Christian Nationalists who believe the bible must be taken literally!

Literalism is always a fraud because every written work of length contradicts itself and/or leaves room for interpretation. Language is imprecise and a lot of these works were also translated which allows even more opportunity for interpretation.

I class myself as a humanity!

It is always the people you most suspect.

Yes, and they do.

This is Twitter equivalent to fucking yourself down the bar skank ladder. I knew of Laura Loomer exclusively from Twitter when I was there and she was in a similar but less illustrious category as that guy who got caught pretending to be a black man, that weirdo whose profile pic looks like he bought a shirt too small in order to roid rage out of it, or that former Hercules idiot.

I think the step you’re missing is 4chan

Yeah, I too don’t understand why everyone around him is just OK with the idea of the guy being a completely responsibility-free empty vessel.

It seems that once again they want to absolve this…former president of all responsibilities, but him being responsible for what comes out of his donkey-brained mouth is the lowest possible bar of accountability before the bar clangs to the floor.

Try to enjoy them; if Trump wins, these will be remembered as the good times.

I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.

At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?

I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.

When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?

It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).

Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.

Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.

He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.

Once (I liked it so much I saw it twice…my apologies to Ted Lasso)

I don’t know if that fits the definition, but it’s an album being written within a movie which sounds like “media within media” to me.

I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil! You can’t fact check me! I WATCHED IT ON TV!

I’d love nothing more than for these two people to be irrelevant, but unfortunately I live in a world where their money causes them to have large amounts of influence.

Ah, I see. You can’t do basic math. That tracks.

Ah, gotcha, you need new underwear and a new stick of deodorant for the job. That makes total sense then, be sure to hold up traffic so you can back in to park. It’s essential.

Doing a lot of heavy duty crew cab needing work at the local target?

You hold up those people as well when you’re reversing in.

Backwards parking is often necessary for cars with shit turning circles.

Who told you to drive a parade float to the store?

Again, when you’re reversing out, someone can take your spot (the person who was held up by you leaving). When you reverse in, you’re holding others up just so you can take up a spot. They get to sit there and watch you fumble parking in reverse for absolutely zero benefit to them.