As evidenced by the fact that you described your girlfriend as a leftist? Seems like an incredibly small sample size to make that judgment on, but you do you, boo boo.

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It certainly would put a novel wrinkle into things.

Yeah, so was second world because of Russia or because of communism?

Err… yes. It was essentially a capitalist vs communist thing, but really it was more “US-aligned” versus “USSR-aligned”, since the US and USSR were the two big superpowers with guns and nukes pointed at each other. First world meant “the US, and people who like the US”, second world meant “The USSR and the people who like the USSR”, and third world was everybody who wasn’t aligned politically with either major player. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the phrase “second world” pretty much fell entirely out of use. I’m not sure why “first world” and “third world” ended up sticking around in the lexicon, but their meanings morphed to “rich countries” and “poor / developing countries”, respectively.

My guess (and this is pure speculation) is that the terms stuck around because they were related to foreign policy. Because the foreign policy wonks were primed to think of the world in terms of blocs of allies or as spheres of influence from decades of the cold war, it’s probable that they had gotten used to referring to their allies as “other first world nations”, and to the countries they sought to influence as “third world nations”. The Vietnam war, for example, was a proxy war fought against the USSR, where half of Vietnam was second-world-aligned, and the other half was first-world-aligned. Prior to those lines being drawn in the sand, it was a third world country. The same could also be said about Korea. Also, pretty much the entire continent of Africa was an ideological battleground between the US and the USSR, as both vied to woo, coerce, and force individual countries into their respective spheres of influence. Because the terms “first world” and “third world” were so frequently used as a matter of policy, it’s easy to see how the use of those terms could persist even after the original definitions became obsolete.

As for why a numbering scheme was initially employed… it’s unimportant; simply an easy way of distinguishing between teams. If the USSR had originated the concept, chances are they’d have put themselves as first world, with the US & affiliated nations as second world. Or they might have used letter designations instead of numbers. Or color coding. It doesn’t really matter in the end.

You know? I didn’t even really consider that, due to the fact that the original definitions pretty much lost their meanings with the fall of the USSR. However, since Putin’s basically working to recreate it now, it seems like those definitions are relevant once again, so yeah - you’re absolutely right.

Technically, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland are all 3rd world nations. At least, according to the original definition.

Edit: this isn’t meant to counter the point made by the comic. I just think it’s interesting.

When there were three TV stations, did any of them highlight police brutality? Overincarceration? The military industrial complex?

This is a very fair point. True, having very limited news options didn’t allow for a lot of deviation in agreement on observable reality, but to your point, it could also easily paper over a lot of very ugly parts of the actual reality. Chomsky writes quite a lot about this in his book “Manufacturing Consent”, which basically is a dive into how media organizations can be used as the propaganda arm of the government. Everything from choosing what you show to choosing how you talk about things goes towards bolstering an underlying narrative that you want to project.

I’m not sure what a solution would look like, if one is even possible. But solution or no, the narrative divergence in this country has primed us to detest each other, which is the first crucial step towards mass violence.

I’m less worried about that, not because there aren’t evil people among the Democrats, but because the Democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-fascist party at the moment. Starting up a fascist movement of their own at the moment would be bad business.

Long term, though? 100% agree. Can’t trust none of these fucks. Hopefully, the Interstate Popular Vote Compact kicks off before that happens, and we can do away with the EC. Won’t completely solve the problem, but it will help.

True, but have you looked at the “intelligentsia” of the Republican party? They’ve got nobody. Just grifters and sycophants. It’s one more small mercy. Obviously, this situation can’t be counted on to continue indefinitely, but once Trump is gone, the only thing ready to take his place is Trump-based nostalgia, and people looking to profit off same.

I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we’ve been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.

We don’t have that now. It’s like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn’t real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn’t real, and also it’s a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhan at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don’t work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.

We don’t share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they’re waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they’re also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it’s far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.

And it’s not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you’d ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That’s to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:

The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined

So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it’s lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don’t think he’d be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat’s office… but he ain’t built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along… hoo boy.

Well that’s not true. You’re very pro-genocide, as long as it’s against Palestinians. That’s pretty political.

It could also be interpreted as a criticism of Libertarianism. The first two pigs didn’t go by any building codes, and instead decided that they wanted to build their shelters out of inferior materials with substandard protections against high winds. The third pig made sure that his dwelling met hurricane standards, and was saved. The story doesn’t go into the reasons why pigs #1 and #2 chose inferior building materials, so it could be interpreted in a number of different ways. It doesn’t HAVE to be about economics. It could just be that pigs #1 and #2 were big fans of Ayn Rand and reaped the whirlwind as a result.

God, imagine living in a retirement community that has a Hot Topic.

Yup. I’m old enough to remember when the selling point of cable TV was that it was ad-free. Then, of course, they started adding ads. And then they sold us premium channels that didn’t have ads. Now those have ads, too. You just can’t get away from them.

I find it fascinating how media companies evolved their usage of ads over time. Used to be that the purpose of showing someone an ad was to get them to buy your product. Now, though, the companies who make the ads are paying to have them put on media networks who use the ads to annoy you into paying for a premium membership so you don’t have to see them. It’s double dipping.

Not sure how I would feel if I made an ad, and YouTube was saying to their users: “Yeah, you like that fucking ad? Super annoying, isn’t it? If you don’t pay me more money, I’m going to cram that annoying bullshit down your throat every time you want to watch a video. I’m going to put ads at the beginning of videos. I’m going to sprinkle them throughout the middle. Hell, I’m even going to make you watch ads after the video ends! You like that, you little bitch??”

I think you’ve got some very mistaken ideas about who Democrats are if you think that a supermajority of them would be totally up for implementing a slew of progressive policies. They’re way more progressive than the Republican party is, for sure. But that’s such an incredibly low bar that it’s laughable. Democrats will do things like make Cesar Chavez day a holiday, or fly BLM and LGBTQI flags, but expecting them to actually pass legislation that addresses the root inequities in a meaningful way is an uphill battle.

Yay! I love copaganda! Show me some pictures of cops playing basketball with a group of “urban”-looking youths!