This is frighteningly bizarre..

How freaking loopy are these Trump voters, everything now makes perfect sense. Baron Cohen has them practising, we've got one guy dressed up as a 15year old girl presumably wearing his imitation VJ, they've got rohypnol in the guacamole and they are rarin' to catch those illegals.

These are genuine normal Trump followers. These are the people whom Trump thinks are his audience.

faffi wrote on 08/09/18 at 04:39:44:


Thank you for your objective common sense faffi. It is interesting that Eau proposes rules because everyone on the right is so ugly, while he post the most ridiculous things to simply insult the other.

@Faffi,

But you miss the point entirely, of course there are stupid people everywhere, no tribe is immune from this, but that's not what I'm talking about here. This is not just stupid, or dumbass or embarrassing, we are talking about so called normal US citizens. We are not talking about people who do not have English as a second language, we are not talking about people who are in some way retarded, we are talking about people who would pass as regular everyday, racists much like you'd see on this forum.

What these people were convinced was reasonable action is so far into the world of flying spaghetti monsters as to be terrifying. No these Trumpanistas, thought that they seriously were going to dress up as 15 year old girls, with imitation guns, while wearing fake female genitalia and breast and drug Mexican with rohypnol thinking that the lure of raping young girls would be irresistible.

No this is not your run of the mill stupidity and in all these sorts of pranks that are so far off the edge of insanity only seem to  able to fool Republicans or blue collar trump supporters. Go figger!

Faffi, you should download the episode and judge for yourself. it was ep 3 btw. I'll clip the scene and upload it if you like.

[color=#Eegore wrote on 08/09/18 at 18:02:02:

 The problem with videos like this is that they do not show how much footage they have of uneventful people.

 This is essentially propaganda as the footage is edited to show a pre-selected personality type.  Cohen is not conducting a study here, he is creating entertainment.

 I would be more interested in video interviews, unedited, of 1000 randomly selected people at an event answering the same questions.

To call it 'propaganda, is to not understand the meaning of the word.

That's like trying to mitigate the atrocities of Nazis by pointing to the ordinary people, as is starving torturing then killing tens of thousands of people at a time, was pretty ordinary stuff.

Again you miss the point, it's not about how common this idiocy is, it's about the particular level of idiocy and whether you'd ever see this sort of out and out lunacy in any other than the far right racists.

Eegore wrote on 08/09/18 at 18:12:21:


Well that's a fair question. Why not just apply it to yourself. Think about what level of prank you could possibly be tricked into. Think of your political affiliations that you'd be most aligned with and think about to what degree would you not be able to be pranked because what was being suggested was so patently absurd. There will be a limit, but not for everyone, and this group of people who do fall outside of this norm, appear to be exclusively Trump supporters. Like infowars allegation that Sandy Hook parents' dead children were actors. Would you ever believe that?

For example, let's imagine for the sake of the argument that you have legitimate fears about terrorists and homosexuals, a reasonable person with these fears might be able to be tricked into perhaps handing out some outrageous pamphlets, but on an earlier episode of Who Is America, Baron Cohen got a US currently serving politician with these very fears to believe that pulling his trousers down and backing his arse into a would be Isis terrorist with a Kalashnikov and shouting USA USA would genuinely make the said terrorist believe that he would drop his weapon in fear of becoming an homosexual if the senators arse touched him.

This really happened. I know it's subjective but I would say that crosses the line into lunacy.

@ I would be interested in how many attempts it takes to get a Clinton supporter to do a similar task in comparison to how many attempts it takes a Trump supporter, in identical search protocols.  

Again, that is a very fair ask. As far as I can tell Baron Cohen is not going after republicans or the loony right exclusively, he's going after anyone. He's has a couple of democrats on and he has attempted to make fools of them but they just do not bite. I think he had Bernie Sanders on who just walked out. To be fair he had Roy Moore on who also just walked out. He's had a neutral art gallery proprietor on who did stretch ones credibility. But over all it seems that only the looney right are prepared to bite at the most idiotic propositions. Cohen is more interested in showing hypocrisy and idiocy rather than making a political point because in the end he's a comedian not a political commentator.

In fact being jewish has enabled him to better mock both arab and Israeli stereotypes equally, he has made fun of and been able to show the hypocrisy of the  jewish lobby, and he's ready to use a ridiculous Israeli stereotype to make some of his points.

It can look like he's targeting those extremophiles who support Trump but the fact is that the supporters of his policies just happen to generally be more fearful and easily compromised. I'm sure there are many democrats who would be happy with Trump's immigration policies, but would they be so heartlessly easy to convince that traumatising children is OK.

@JoG, regarding rules of not only civility and respect but also the norms of proper dialectic.

When I first came on this forum my default position is playing with a straight bat and being respectful. Instantly I was bombarded with gratuitous ad hominem attacks. Therefore as far as I'm concerned the gloves are off and that's the accepted behaviour.

After seeing where this was going, I proposed at first to just remove this forum to howls of outrage. Then I proposed that we all agree that it would be much better if we all behaved with respect whether we respected anyone or not. No that was unacceptable to you, and your mates.

So I'm OK with that, you can hurl as much ad hominem bullsh!t at me as you like, doesn't bother me at all. I'm just going to respond to the substance, unfortunately there is very little if any substance at all to your posts. It's basically just a rehash of anything that Trump tweets. I mainly use 'colourful' language not to insult but as intensifiers, it's a normal Australian colloquial way. However if you take it the wrong way, I don't particularly care. Dish it out and take it, fine by me.