The consequences: Never before has a former president who is as flawed a candidate as Trump — an individual some have called cognitively challenged and psychologically unstable and who believes in nothing other than himself, his appetites, his instincts and his autocratic ambitions — evidenced, according to major polls, a 50% chance of reelection.
Never before has such an individual commandeered a major American political party, garnered the loyalty of its most radical and/or opportunistic power-players, and forced its moderates to choose between cowardly silence or the termination of their political careers.
Never before could such an individual, if reelected, stand so thoroughly empowered to reject experienced advisors who are faithful to the Constitution — reject “the adults in the room” who might rein in his most authoritarian impulses — and instead appoint loyalists who will do his bidding. In addition those loyalists will enact the fusion of executive-branch dominance, faux-libertarianism and Christian nationalism mapped out in Project 2025.
Never before would such an individual, if reelected, be so thoroughly insulated against criminal indictment and prosecution — all due to the wide-ranging and much criticized presidential-immunity decision rendered by six conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
For those of you who like to use the bad faith argument that Democrats fear monger every 4 years. THIS IS NOT NORMAL AND HAS NEVER HAPPENED IN OUR COUNTRY.
VOTE! Our lives literally depend on it!
Yep. I’ve been saying it for almost a decade, since I saw what appeared to be focused data-science-driven PsyOps campaigns across SM and reddit — emanating from the conservative cinematic universe — well before scandals like the Cambridge Analytica one aired.
I believe MAGA is an intentional, concerted, malicious effort by the corporate shadow-plutocracy to formally overthrow American democracy, utilizing the pre-existing religious indoctrination and psychological weaknesses instilled in the population via decades of intentionally poor education and anti-intellectualism. They already achieved a functional takeover long ago, by simply funding 90+% of state and federal politicians, and ensuring the candidates most likely to win on every ballot are in their pockets… but the democratic systems are still in place, and candidates who can’t be bought like Bernie and AOC represent a significant risk to their future control and profits.
You want evidence? Literally everything that has happened the last decade… Why is Trump not serving life in prison? Why has he slipped through everything all the while being guilty as sin? Why is he a week away from potentially seizing control of the gov he tried to overthrow? Why did all the insurrectionists get a slap on the wrist? Why was the capitol so poorly and incompetently guarded after MAGA had spent weeks blanketing SM with their plans to storm the capitol? Why have most corporations and wealthy donors continuously funded Trump, MAGA, and Republican candidates right through tearing off the mask and going full-fascism? Why is it a week away from the election, and the richest man in the world — a foreign national — is allowed to openly campaign for the traitor and donate millions of dollars to him, after being offered a job regulating his own businesses? NONE of this is freedom. It’s blatant corruption by a plutocracy who possess zero morals or ethics, and want to rule you like a king. A system by the rich, for the rich. They feel zero need to hide any of it anymore, because they’re banking on the mentally ill, indoctrinated cult they’ve been crafting; if it fails, there’s always next election. They’re confident they will never face any consequences, because they are the system; they are the rule of law.
Tech bros, health bros, hydro homies, Peterson bros, Rogan bros, crypto bros, proud bros, apostolics and evangelicals (NAR and 7MM), etc. And especially libertarians.
All finely targeted avenues that arrive at the same destination.
The destination they almost arrived at in 1933.
Which is about where we are in the rhyming scheme of history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
Wtf do hydro homies have to do with this?
What do video games have to do with fascism?
Directly, nothing.
But things like gamergate and the like evolve in these communities.
Often a group or figurehead or a narrative emerges. It isn’t accidental.
The individual pipelines to fascism are narrow and focused, the pool is wide.
Homies nowadays may not be the best example. Granted.
It’s not the homies themselves, (as in many other communities) but malicious actors exist to guide people who seek the belonging of groups.
PS. Hydrohomies started as r/waternwords (The original name of the sub is an auto removed here so I’ve changed it)
BTW, I drink water, and I don’t use Arch.
Fascists co-opt other groups and movements constantly because fascists don’t create, they only take and destroy. But hydro homies is well past it’s incredibly edgy start and is now just the liquids equivalent of Linux users - never shutting up about how superior they are for doing a minor thing.
Fascists definitely love the in group-ness of it, but there’s no “only soda” group that’s fighting them and therefore no one to point to as an “other” to forward fascist ideals. Hydro homies is extremely low on the priority for the fascist pipeline. They are incredibly obnoxious when they leak out though.
Also, I vote the potential only sodas group to be called the “soda jerks”
Hydro homies? The people that like water a lot?
Combine that with Jesus camp. And here we are.
Edit: https://watchdocumentaries.com/jesus-camp/
Bruh, that’s called fascism. Somebody has to pay to bus the proud boys around. That somebody is the same 1% that own everything. They’re, like they’ve always done, hedging their bets so that they stay on the top if or when comes regime change.
A descent into techno-fuedalism, or modern fascism, then is a descent that they think they can control. Or it’s a safer bet for them than rolling the dice on another French revolution - because they’ve hoarded too much, and change is coming, like it or not. It’s entirely explained by survivalist dynamics.
There’s a certain amount of delulu to the bougie class. They’ve accepted prosperity gospel as unalienable. Further, the mental gymnastics necessary to justify their existence are, in reality, the only work they need to do, so they’re Olympians at this shit by now. They feel they’re better, smarter, genetically (which explains away hereditary. Simple answers are better than legal explanations after all. Truthiness vs facts. Emotional facts vs objective analysis), culturally, fundamentally, than us. We are trogs to them, not to be concerned with, not to let our plights stain the purity of their thoughts. We are sheep to be corralled and controlled, who’s labor is to be exploited and value extracted.
Wealth, inequality, necessitates dehumanization. Brain scans have shown that the prefrontal cortex, responsible for higher complex thinking (or the part of the brain aware of itself), is used less amongst the rich. And life follows a basic rule - use it or lose it. So we see brain devolution, it atrophies, rusts. The problem with this, is that pro-social, empathic emotion and behaviour - the very things that allowed humanity to grow past the savannah into civilization, and then ti hild civilization together - are all found rooted, not in our lizard brain, but in our prefrontal.
Wealth, I mean this literally, causes mental retardation. The cold capitalist - Ebenezer Scrooge or whomever - is obviously far removed from the messiah’s we’ve exalted throughout the ages.
Has wealth allowed Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon fuckface or Android Zuckerberg to become more like Christ, Buddha, prophet whomever? No. Obviously. It’s antithetical spiritual, emotional growth. Toxic to it. Famously, Buddha fled from his wealth to live as an aesthete, embracing poverty. Even Christ commanded wealth be given away as conditional to admittance to heaven - soukdnt you know it, that part of the Bible is generally glossed over and ignored , just like the holy instructions to induce miscarriage, also known as, abortion.
The arrogance of the parasitic class is such that they believe they can manipulate outcomes of an induced civil war. Almost never, they all of history, has an internal conflict been won by any of the starting agitators, or defenders. It is, in other words, impossible to predict who will come out on top at the beginning, because by the end, there will be a whole different skate if players. The rich think their money will insolate them from the “troubles”, which is delulu².
When the substation has been bombed for the 3rd time and powers out, and transformers are a decade out to replace (they’re 1-2 years out NOW), so powers NOT coming back - the community on the hill running generators is now the only target. The useful idiots aren’t going to defend. The security guards - with family out in the dark - are as likely to turn as defend, and surrounded and under fire - a quick bullhorn “keep half of what you kill” would unleash the covetous towards cannibalism. Greed will always be it’s own downfall.
If society is so ill that things need to heat up, that it needs a fever to kill the infection we either remember that we are all in this together (as our innate internal sense of fairness and justice exemplify) or we will simply be setting up the next act to replay the same story as we’re currently fighting. There’s no alternative. We will continue to build up and destroy ourselves until we’re extinct or until we learn the lesson. Same on the macro as it is on the micro.
I just want to highlight how important it is to have an incredibly weak and feckless opposition party for the above strategy you outlined to work.
Literally all of this is solvable if the Democratic party had a spine or some cajones. But decorum, tradition, and “norms” mean more to the Democratic Party than they do anything else. The DNC is all about maintaining their entrenched power at the cost of all else. And its exactly why the MAGA movement was able to take hold. The DNC are blatantly corrupt, and completely disinterested in the will of their voters.
And incapable of understanding that most votes for trump are less an endorsement of him than they are a rebuking of the Dems. My entire life I’ve heard “GDP growth, best stock market ever” etc etc, propaganda machine go brrrrrrr, but all I’ve witnessed is everyone getting poorer and life becoming unsustainable. To the point that people who want children aren’t having them because they can’t provide the basic humdrum existence their parents provided - with two working people paychecks. I know a couple, the guy is the head honcho of a small casino - he is the boss, only answerable to the owner, and the gal is head of nursing at their local prison, not jail, prison. They each bring in a healthy 6 figures on their own, and they can’t buy a house. They needed a new van cuz their kids were getting older and moving everyone blah blah. Bought in full, cash, didn’t even blink at it. Didn’t even feel the expense. They can’t provide what their parents provided.
I empathize and understand the accelerationist attitude even tho I don’t share it. Liberals will happily put on all the airs progressivism and fairness, working class/social order grit and determination, but what they say and what they do don’t jjve. They are corporate controlled, fiscally conservative (defenders of neoliberalism), socially conciliatory (they won’t change anything until it means keeping the peace - and them in power) fascists who’ve mastered propaganda. Everything is double speak. The department of defense instead of the department of war. When was the last time we were defending? Department of “energy”, instead of, idk, Advocates for Fighting Climate Change with Nuclear Winter. Idk. Invent NASA and tell them to get off their hienies. And make a better department name with a snappy acronym. Scientists love doing that shit.