Add in Missouri while you’re at it.

Trump literally said last time he was President take the guns first, due process second. maga crowd still gargling.

We’re going to take the firearms first and then go to court, because that’s another system. Because a lot of times by the time you go to court … it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures. I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida; he had a lot of fires [and] they saw everything. To go to court would have taken a long time, so you could do exactly what you’re saying but take the guns first, go through due process second.

-President Donald J Trump

I mean… that’s a good fucking sell still.

I don’t have any illusions he doesn’t want to get higher up. I don’t have any illusions that he’d motorboat a few billionaires to get richer. But right now any step in the right direction is a far better situation than we’re in right now.

FWIW this is why I think it’s so important to keep the farmers and union workers on our side.

WHELP

Hell, we imported a few of them from Germany.

I stopped trusting that from 2020. I thought there was hope for people then they turned around and voted again.

I don’t expect much, but to keep an idea I keep wandering over to the conservative areas.

The Epstein Files are the only thing I’ve seen he’s not been able to shake off from his cult.

I read it somewhere that anyone talking rule of law or the Constitution anymore is starting to sound like sovereign citizens, waving a document around like it’s a magic shield that in reality does absolutely nothing.

I would like to disagree with this thought process, but I can’t.

The millennials were robbed of their chance on the world stage by the boomers.

Gen X over there like “What the fuck!?!” (I’m a millennial, I get the plight.)

I’ll be cantankerous… yes.

I live in a red state. My jobs are me the rare left in the entire crowd. I have to learn how to talk, chat, joke with these people. And last Trump administration I kept talking with them. Things I learned. Since I wasn’t willing to immediately extol the good of Trump, I must be against him (not even talking politics, just me keeping my mouth shut.) That they’re against many of the things on helping people.

But hell, years of working with one crew, I was getting them over, realizing that the wealthy were fucking us over, that the insurance that was fucking everyone over was why we needed better. That many of the “sullied” republicans were against it. Hell I think one thing that got them listening was they said something good about Biden, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and made a snark about Trump and when I was told “I said something good about your guy” I outright tore into them to never say that Biden was “my guy”, I may look at lesser of evils but it wasn’t some fucking football game.

But I saw chances… I saw hope that maybe… maybe they could learn. But the second Trump started running again, it was the same parroted stuff, even from a soybean ventures guy who was watching to see if his prices would ever go back up because he was losing money on it.

So no… I don’t trust them. I think there are some who need to be out there to welcome the people when they’re willing to join sides, yes… but there also needs to be those to remind that these are not friends, and they are very likely to stab us in the back unless they actually show that they’re willing to put the work in to make change.

Andrew Johnson. The guy kneecapped Reconstruction, basically was a friend of the confederates and didn’t finish cutting out a rot that would destroy the nation a century later.

Oh all his people he loves keeps having elections. They just run unopposed, and win no matter what.

He WANTS the elections… it’s a popularity contest, you think Trump would get rid of that?

Actual fair elections on the other hand…

I don’t disagree with that, but more to the point I was putting is there’s going to be a fast refugee crisis for the blue states for those of us that see the writing on the wall if the states fracture.

I’ll be honest… I HOPE I’m wrong… god I fucking hope I am… but I’m not seeing a “United States” being the case much longer after this administration. Partly being one living in this area… I do not see how we come back… there is no middle ground left.

I was gonna say, I’m of the demographic and they’d still find a way to take my vote because of living in a blue city.

Fuck man, I’m in the middle of all that fucking bible belt out. you’ll have a lot of us trying to get the hell out.

Honestly, we still are now.

While I agree, the cult has fractured a few times. It’s the irritating part of Trump that he’s just smart enough to back off when he knows he’s losing his cult.

The vaccine thing is one of them. Early on there was a speech where he’s talking about how good it was, and that he has it and that his people should have it. His crowd booed him. That moment he went full anti-vax in his rhetoric. Trump is in the lead and pouring gasoline on the fire, but he doesn’t have control over his own cult if it goes a way he doesn’t want it to go. Unfortunately he’s just smart enough to keep them happy knowing they’ll tear him apart if he steps in their way.

HE WAS THE ONE THAT PUSHED OPERATION WARP SPEED! The literal thing that created the shots! The method of them being “developed too fast” was Trump!

We were always at war with Eastasia.

Mitch McConnell could be argued to be the man who killed the US with how much damage he did to it. Right now Trump is the evil that’s at the top because he got control of the party, but the house wouldn’t be falling apart around had the termite infestation of Moscow Mitch not put holes through the entire thing.

You’re completely right. Identifying as a republican doesn’t matter if you voted Trump or not, Republicans ARE the problem.

So honestly the shortcut of “evil species” of enemies is so that you can have throngs of sentient beings that you can kill without having to deal with morality in games. It’s just a shortcut for “Those are the bad guys.” and frankly been going since Tolkien who used it interchangeably with goblins which in folklore goblins were throughout Europe in one form or another which and are typically evil and mischievous for the most part. Weirdly in our RPGs, Hobgoblins seems to be the bigger, nastier goblin but in lore they’re typically friendly, just gonna play tricks. This creating “peoples of evil” is a tale as old as our mythologies.

On one hand, I get it, it’s an easy part instead of trying to be JRR Martin and build a political machine with all the workings and the easy button of “And then the orcs invaded.” I mean, Tolkien did it, I need batches of enemies… uh… “Uruk-hai!” And partially too, unlike “Real Life” us gamers/readers/movie watchers want our bad guys to have motivations that make sense, and complain when someone “acts out of character”… yet we see daily people who get to in charge positions do things that screw themselves up for… reasons? But many people don’t have that issue of “Well, why are they invading? Why can’t we talk them out of it? They should be more logical!” (that last one being frustrating "no, there are some jerks out there you can’t just talk out of a violent situation) when you have them as orcs. This is the “Look, I just REALLY want to have a swashbuckling tale and don’t want to have to think about geopolitics because real life has way too much going on with exactly that.” It’s not a wrong way to play, just a way.

On the flipside… I agree with you that it isn’t interesting in beyond “I need a mook machine” and far more interesting, especially in the right GMs hands, that gives them a whole society. Hell Shadowrun covers that when the goblinization came, SUDDENLY Trolls and Orks everywhere in modern day society, and the age old hatreds of these species can go off… when that Ork over there might have just been a dude who suddenly bulked up, got lower fangs and pointy ears after April 2021. They’re just people, and especially not being long lived and “not a pretty race” to humans, they get treated roughly. Ork social circles are trying to bring back the old ork language from the era last orks existed… it’s fun to have an ork rocker screaming in Or’zet as a yell against the system. This is exactly what you’re talking about, lots of nuance and people are just people.

The third, which I think my group runs into the most is the “evil races” might be used by the GM, but often ignored by everyone, including the GM. Everything from your standard “We found this goblin and he’s our mascot now!” to trying to change a faction to the side of good, to one time because we were playing a one-shot and I was doing a silly bit, my elf was so long lived she was once a BBEG, and the GM rolled with my recognizing a Kobold as a former hired minion, scolded him out of a fight, got his friends together to unionize against his dragon and work for the tavernkeep because she pays better.

Reality of this wall of post is me bringing a discussion to a meme lol, I really hold no opinions about what Charlatans of the Shore doing anything as I’ve wandered off of D&D a few years ago. People are gonna people and if they need a “Light side” and a “Dark side” alignment in their story without a lot of deep discussion of politics/ethics/and philosophy, then having a species of “this thing is bad” removes a lot of complication. Sometimes I want that story the same way I sometimes want junk food, but sometimes I want the dramatic, sweeping plots and the Orc lands are their own tribe of people and the fight is a massive cultural misunderstanding between sides.