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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I'm talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.
Here's the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from "Hey, this game ain't so bad" to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.
That's where we're at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn't want to make it to level 3 because he knows he'll never beat level 3. He's looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.
But he can't. So he's essentially stopped playing the game. He's telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick's broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he's getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren't listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn't even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.
Wonderful metaphor. Although it's hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games. He strikes me as the type that'll buy an arcade but never set foot in it. And then remove all that is good about it and fill it with ticket games.
Have you played those old games? Usually, the first level is easy. Easy enough where you actively have to try to lose. I mean, you get 3 lives. That means you have to make not just bad decisions, but the worst possible decisions, over and over and.......oh.
Never mind. You're right.