Any autocracy really. It’s not as if there aren’t any around right now.

Also social media algorithms supercharging confirmation bias.

Elect a monster. Get a freakshow.

Define criminals? Oh, you mean poor and non-white people.

Only one fifth of US-Americans can’t read! Lets make it at least a forth for the next “election”!

Yes, just complete insanity. I have never seen Sean Evans look so worried for a guest’s wellbeing. And in the middle of his skit Conan still found time to compliment Sean’s questions.

And then there’s Conan O’Brien, who’s just generally hilarious.

I mean, Camacho was also black, so definitely not a Republican president.

Literally the 1984 playbook.

“Run”? I think the headline dropped an “i” somewhere.

Idiocracy would be an upgrade, it has a president who listened to people smarter than himself.

Oh yeah, that’s way worse! But it doesn’t make me very optimistic about Germany’s future either, even without the Trump tragedy.

Our current government literally just collapsed today so… yeah.

Also social media sequestering people in cozy filter bubbles that distort reality.

Social media, or more precisely, algorithms designed to create ever growing engagement by feeding into confirmation bias and only showing you stuff you like, have destroyed the ability of critical thinking in a majority of people.

This doesn’t only apply to the right spectrum either, as evidenced by all the “hopium” articles here and on r/politics that were trying to construct a blue win or even a blue wave when all polls pointed to a Trump advantage. I had fallen into that trap myself. And everybody was also smugly making fun of the articles in r/conservative predicting the same thing for Trump. Well, turns out they were right.

German here. The Supreme Court has already given Trump all the power Hitler got by declaring a state of emergency. The Weimar Republic actually had better checks and balances then the US has now.

I agree that he probably won’t last the four years but even if he does he is already too senile to set any policy. He was also already more than happy for others to do the actual work of creating policy because he’s incredibly lazy last time.

So I think Vance (and Musk) will be the real rulers behind King Trump. I don’t think either is really that much interested in religion and racism but both are incredibly sexist and/or transphobic. So sadly a lot of horror and pain will be delivered to women and transgender people. (Which doesn’t mean immigrants are safe.)

Musk will also push for deregulation/privatization of technology so that he can become even richer. This will lead to more monopolization/enshittification and stifle innovation for years, maybe decades. Vance will go along with it due to the Thiel-connection.

Additionally, Putin has made sure that Musk will also champion his interests even if Trump is unable to due to senility. The US will become a de facto ally of Russia and a geopolitical enemy of Europe in a similar vein as China (meaning not openly).

The military-industrial complex will quickly warm to the new reality of an autocracy and the US will start a new war somewhere. Probably in the Middle East. Maybe not within the first four years though. It will be used to distract from a crashing economy and the very real climate catastrophe (mirroring Ruzzia).

I wish all of this were ideas for an alt-history book and not a possible scenario for our future.

As a German aware of my country’s history I can only shake my head in sad recognition and try not to feel utterly hopeless not only about the future of a once-great country but the entire world.

We’re in the endgame now.

So, we don’t have any place left in the party for Glorfindel. But he mainly knows how to slay Balrogs and what are the chances we’re going to meet one of those?

I just upgraded Alan Wake 2 to play the expansions, which are AWEsome. I played all expansions for Alan Wake and Control as well and enjoyed them a lot. Remedy is one of the few developers that I would play a game from on day one or even preorder. Bethesda, not so much. I can still remember being unable to play Skyrim for months on PS3.

That was a Doctor that grappled with the question whether he was a good man or not. Decidedly grumpier and more prone to violence too. Also Scottish.

There sociopaths, maybe even psychopaths. Other people are always just tools to reach their goals, to be discarded when they are not useful anymore. Their lifes are videogames in which they are the heroes and everybody else are NPCs.