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John Carter's avatar

Counterpoint: it could be that Liz' delusion is genuine, that she really thinks she has a shot. The play would be to present herself as the great centrist uniter of a divided America. The Democrats don't have a strong candidate for the race. The incumbent is as popular as a wet fart in a crowded elevator. Cheney might imagine that she can appeal to the left (she's a woman! She hates Trump!) while peeling off enough of the right to put together a sufficiently large coalition to have a shot. In a pure popularity contest she'd get pasted, and she might even realize that; but assuming 2020 levels of electoral corruption, the thumbs on the scale could make up the difference.

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Tell's avatar

Right on point about the humilitation ritual. That is also why we have the constant changing of words, from fireman to fire fighter, etc. Homosexual to "gay" - a word consciously stolen with the media's help - to "members of the LGBTQ community".

(Though the changing of words for homosexuals and Gypsies ("roma"), Blacks, etc, is also because they sully their real names with their actions. Make it long and difficult and no one can get a feeling for the word. "the African-American community". Also change it from a noun to an adjective, so that they are less removed from the audience. "He's a black" means he's removed from you, but "a black person" is a person like you. "Jews" becomes "Jewish people". Note that the media will always say "a blonde" to remove blond people from you.)

Humiliation rituals were a tool used in every town and village by the Maoists, forcing people to confess their sins in public. The Stalin-admiring, raving mental case Cesar Chavez (even got himself a Stalin mustache) used the same humiliation ritual for people living at the large ranch he bought for union members' money. He forced them to tell him before the others how they had failed to be good socialists and how they would obey him even more in the future. (Some idiots think he's a hero for "opposing immigration". He already had enough Latinos to use and didn't want outsiders not under his control.)

It goes back all the way to the Catholic Church using the "confession booth," which of course doesn't exist in the Bible. Line up and you have declared to the world that you are a dirty sinner who can only have some value again through the priest's decision, after you've submitted and publicly humiliated yourself.

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