chapotraphouse

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founded 4 years ago
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chomsky-yes-honey

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title (hexbear.net)
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On behalf of the admin & mod teams, I’d like to announce Hexbear’s Gaza Donations Drive. For the next 24-48 hours, this will be the only pinned post on the site to give this visibility (links to the mega threads at the bottom of this post).

Our friend and comrade @[email protected] has brought several of his friends in Gaza who need help to Hexbear. Below are links to their fundraising sites. Please donate as and if you are able. Further, I (@[email protected] ) will match the first $500 in donations. Just DM me the amount you donated and who you donated to. If anyone else wants to get in on matching let me know and I will add your info in this post.

Mahmoud – Help me build my future and build my family home

Aya Mohamed - Support Mohamed’s family to reach safety outside Gaza

Yamen Nashwan - Help Yamen Evacuate his Family from Gaza and Save Their Life

Ibrahim hema - Getting food for my brothers

Lubna & Munir (from [email protected]) - Direct to Lubna Family Relief and Support

Mahmoud - Help Mahmoud Find Hope Amid Crisis in North Gaza

While donating to organizations like PCRF, MAP, and UNRWA are good things to do in normal times, the reality is that these organization are currently challenged in their ability to help due to the ongoing US/Israeli genocide. Giving directly to individuals in Gaza is, at the moment, the most effective way to help.

Love and solidarity to you all heart-sickle

Edit #1: Our comrade @[email protected] would also like to match the first $500. So for every $1 you donate, you'll actually be sending $3 to the recipient! Triple combo! Also, we're already past $200 in total donated in just 2 hours.

Edit #2: WE ALREADY HIT $500 NOT EVEN 3 HOURS IN! I'm not able to match any more at the moment but I'm gonna see what other money I can scrounge around, and whatever I can put together I will update here and let you know if I can match more.

Edit #3: @[email protected] has agreed to match the next $500, so please send me your donation information and I will pass it on to stink. So we're back to double matching!

Edit #4: I have to sign off for the night. By my reckoning we currently stand at about $2,235 donated including matches. Thank you everyone so far! See you on the flip side.

Edit #5: As of now (~14:30 PST on Tuesday) we've maxed out the matching, but still please give as you are able. If anyone else offers to match giving I will make another update.

Edit #6 (Nov. 10): Added the sixth donation link and removed the mega thread links.

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😢

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STUART — With election day just three days away, a teenager and apparent supporter of former President Donald Trump was arrested here Saturday at a rally in support of Vice President Kamala Harris and charged with punching a 70-year-old woman in the stomach.

A 17-year-old boy — wearing a T-shirt featuring an image of Trump raising his middle finger in front of an American flag background — punched the Harris supporter, knocking her off her feet, according to police and the woman, Stuart resident Kathleen Tomasko.

The 17-year-old was arrested once police, hired by the event organizers, arrived on the scene at the north end of the Roosevelt Bridge on U.S. 1. He was charged with battery on a person 65 years of age or over, according to Stuart Police Department spokesperson Brian Bossio.

"Several people pointed out a male who was walking away from the area as someone who battered or struck a woman. I was able to go get the guy, walk him over to the car and detain him," Bossio said.

According to witnesses, Bossio said, the 17-year-old was walking away from a separate altercation with a male Harris supporter when he struck Tomasko and knocked her to the ground.

Tomasko said she did nothing to provoke the 17-year-old and she did not hear him say anything to her. In fact, she didn't even see him coming, she said.

"I'm standing there and people are moving and this kid just turned around and he punched me. I don't know where he came from," Tomasko said. "He punched me in the gut and knocked me on the ground, and I fell back and hit the ground. Thank goodness the two ladies were behind me so I didn't hit my head."

While Tomasko initially declined to go to the hospital, she said Saturday afternoon that she may need to because of her hip hitting the ground when she fell.

The boy who punched her was one of four that Tomasko saw earlier during the rally.

"There were these four boys that were, you know, Trumpers, and it's a Harris rally," Tomasko said. "So they were going back and forth and antagonizing people, and our people were antagonizing them, I guess."

The rally, called by supporters "Rally on the Bridge," was part of the nationwide Women's March, and was specifically in support of Harris and Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would put protections for abortion rights in Florida's state constitution.

Tomasko said she has been attending political events for decades, but has never experienced anything like this.

"My girlfriend called me from Massachusetts and said 'Kathy, I can't believe, we've done rallies like this for how many years and nothing like this ever happens,'" Tomasko said.

There were no other arrests or incidents of violence reported at the event, Bossio said.

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Not that I don't enjoy a good takedown video, but it's just so incredibly obvious

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why aren't you doing your part?

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crossposted from: https://hexbear.net/post/142449


The original:

Marx places a paternal hand on your shoulder...

You walk out onto the street. People are milling around happily. Buildings are no longer designed with imposing security features. Violence has all but disappeared thanks to sudden material abundance. People are no longer forced to purchase a beverage just to sit down and talk in public spaces. The architecture has been redesigned to be more accommodating for pedestrians. Seating areas seem widely available. People sit and talk among themselves. Even strangers seem capable of breaking into conversation easily.

You feel as if you’ve wandered into a massive public museum, or some other noncommercial public space, but even that analogy doesn’t feel quite right. You realize that you’ve never been to a place quite like this.

You decide to take the train to your old home, but you’re confused as you reach the train station, and find the turnstiles have disappeared. You walk in unobstructed. The screen indicates that your train will arrive shortly. You assume that you’ve arrived just on time, but then you realize that the track has been expanded massively. Automated maglev trains glide silently in and out of the station every thirty seconds. No advertisements are pasted on the station’s walls - these have been replaced with noticeboards informing commuters of gatherings or work opportunities.

Commuters occupy themselves with tablet-style devices, but unlike in the capitalist era, they do not seem to be distracting themselves with facebook or games. Some seem to be reading complex scientific and philosophical treatises. Unburdened by the mind-numbing hours of work, they have the time and energy to expand their minds. Others seem to be watching live-feeds of independently produced entertainment. Total automation has apparently allowed people to spend their time more creatively.

You ask a fellow commuter about recent events. You ask about unemployment. You ask about financial collapse, austerity, the wars in the Middle East, and the possibility of inter-imperial conflict. He smiles wisely, and says, “Those are all things of the past now, comrade.” He speaks with a thick German accent. His snowy-white beard makes him look like a professional Santa Claus. His fashion sense seems anachronistic in this future era. It is then that you realize who he is.

It’s Marx.

You begin to sob as you feel a burden lift from your body. A weight disappears that you didn’t even know was there. Marx places a paternal hand on your shoulder, and as he draws you into a loving embrace, he says, “I told you it was inevitable, comrade.”


The continuation:

You feel his embrace grounding you, as if a rush of all the questions you’ve held for so long has finally met their answer. He pulls back and looks at you with a gentle curiosity, his eyes filled with both intelligence and warmth.

“We’ve done it, then?” you ask, almost whispering, as if afraid that speaking the words too loudly might shatter this vision.

“We have,” he replies with a slight, approving nod. “Not without struggle, and certainly not without sacrifice. But the end of scarcity and the full flowering of human potential were within our grasp. People just needed to reach out.”

You glance around the station again, seeing it now through Marx’s eyes. No longer just a transit hub, it seems more like a crossroads for people seeking knowledge, conversation, and shared experience. You notice a few groups engaged in animated discussions, one of them laughing together in a way that feels more genuine and free than anything you’ve ever seen. There’s a new life here, an energy that seems to flow between people and animate the air.

“But how?” you finally manage, your voice filled with awe. “How did we overcome everything? The resistance, the greed?”

Marx’s gaze turns serious. “It wasn’t easy, comrade. We had to dismantle old systems piece by piece, replace coercion with cooperation, build up trust where division had reigned. The accumulation of knowledge, technology, and most of all, human solidarity, was what allowed us to take the leap.”

He gestures around the station, his hand sweeping over the sleek, quiet trains and the people moving without rush or anxiety. “Automation and abundance were only tools; they didn’t change humanity on their own. What truly transformed society was the realization that every person has worth beyond their productivity, that leisure and creativity were rights, not privileges.”

For a moment, he grows quiet, and his expression softens. “People had to embrace the freedom they’d been denied for so long. Many had never even known it was possible.” He takes a deep breath, and a glint of pride appears in his eyes. “Yet they did, and look at what they’ve built.”

As he speaks, you notice a glimmer of hesitation in his eyes. This realization that the utopia has been achieved doesn’t seem to dull his passion; if anything, it only strengthens it. You can tell he’s proud of what people have achieved but also determined to see it safeguarded.

He looks back at you, and you feel as though he’s seeing into the depths of your own convictions. “Now, comrade, tell me: how will you live in this world?”

The question catches you off-guard. You’d dreamed of a world like this, one where people no longer had to toil merely to survive, but now, faced with the reality, you feel a strange apprehension. Without the old structures of labor and survival, who would you be? What would you do?

“I... I don’t know,” you admit. “All my life, I’ve only known struggle, just... keeping my head above water.”

Marx chuckles warmly. “That’s true for so many, even now. The old world’s echoes still linger in people’s hearts. But now, without the struggle to survive, you can pursue your true passions, your curiosities. You have the freedom to learn, to connect, to create.”

He steps back, gesturing down the platform where new generations of people are waiting for the next train. “Look around. Some are artists, some are thinkers, others work to solve what remains of human suffering. You might find yourself in any of these roles, or in something completely new.”

The train arrives, and as you step inside, you glance back at Marx, his familiar face softened by a smile of encouragement. “Go on, comrade. The future is yours now. Use it wisely.”

As the train begins to move, you feel a strange thrill—not just at what lies ahead, but at the sheer sense of possibility. There are no longer limits on what you can achieve, or how you can contribute. And as you watch Marx disappear into the bustling station, you realize that the journey you’ve just begun is a new chapter, one that will let you discover who you really are and who you can become in this world without scarcity or strife.

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I know no one reads these responses

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Friends have been bugging me to get Insta and I finally caved.

Damn dawg you live like this?

TikTok is bad enough but Insta is soooo much more shitty advertising, grifters and AI generated BS on Instagram. Maybe it's the algorithm that's worse? I've had insta for a month now and it's still feeding me the worst shit.

Let's just say I was never given manosphere videos on TikTok. Instagram seems to be sending them to me by the boatload. Tons of videos "sponsored" places called "Mandvise" or some shit featuring a grizzled old white dude saying shit like "When a woman says she just wants to be friends what she really means is...." And "Women be acting on fickle emotional whims."

Like dude how many of these videos do I have to report before the algorithm gets the message!?

And don't get me started on people who sell shit on Instagram. What a shitty way to run a business, just sell your shit on an actual website FFS.

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long-corbyn

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i recently learned about the buddhist concent of dependent origination, which states that all phenomena arise in dependence with other phenomena. this was surprisingly similar to my idea of dialectical materialism, and it got me thinking about how buddhism could be reconciled/combined with a marxist world view. has anybody here read books or articles on this topic?

obviously not everything buddhists believe (reincarnation is an obvious example) is going to jive with marxism but that doesn't mean it's worthless to try to analyze one in terms of the other

Death to America

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I've been getting at least three phone calls a day from them, begging me to vote for Texan democrats. My answer is always the same: "I will not vote for a party that is responsible for genocide against Palestine. I will not vote for a party that fully endorses Israeli crimes."

In previous years they would try arguing me if I said something like I don't vote for imperialists, or that democrats have horrible records on issues like homelessness or healthcare. They would talk with me and try to get at the crux of the issue, usually just resorting to telling me that Republicans are even worse, which is usually fair I guess, but at least they'd argue a little, you know?

This year it's nothing. I say that I'm with the people of Palestine and it's like I said the secret word. Immediately it's "Ok, thank you." and they hang up. What is up with this? Did they do some kind of internal polling to decide it's not even worth arguing about? If you're gonna call me at 10:14 am on a Saturday to be a lib at least let me dunk on you a little

phoenix-evidence

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Full text

‘Sopranos’ Star Drea de Matteo on Joining OnlyFans, Coming Out as a MAGA Supporter and Why She Believes ‘Half of Hollywood Is Voting for Trump’

Drea de Matteo never was particularly political. Her only partisan statement came via a 2010 music video she directed for Shooter Jenning’s “Summer of Rage” — a not-so-subtle jab at the Bush-Cheney administration’s ever-churning war machine. In 2020, she voted for the first time in her life in the presidential election, casting her ballot for Joe Biden in his bid to replace Donald Trump in the White House. Then, as the COVID pandemic entered its second year, everything came crashing down for “The Sopranos” actress whose Adriana La Cerva provided the sole conscience in a sea of moral removed.

“I’m a hippie. I didn’t want to get the vaccine. I wanted to wait it out to see what the outcome was,” she says.

Her family shunned her for being anti-vax. She became persona non grata among the Hollywood set. And her agent, who she considered a friend, dropped her.

“Without a phone call or an email. Just told me through my manager, and that was that. I couldn’t work anymore,” she adds. “To be demonized over a medical choice when they keep screaming, ‘Pro choice,’ I’m like, ‘Do you guys hear yourselves?’”

Facing financial ruin, the single mother of two launched an OnlyFans page “just to save my home” and began to reevaluate her politics, or lack thereof. “I was by myself. And then I started to make new friends who felt the same way,” she continues. Thus began a metamorphosis that now finds de Matteo among a small group of Hollywood’s vocal Trump supporters — a faction that includes Dennis Quaid, Rob Schneider and Zachary Levi. And she isn’t the only Emmy-winning actresses to back the polarizing 45th president, with Rosanne Barr also being proudly MAGA.

On this fall afternoon, on eve of a presidential election that is too close to call, the Queens native is bracing for civil unrest regardless of the outcome.

“I have people coming to measure my house for gates. For the apocalypse,” she explains as she rocks back and forth back in a swivel chair in her Laurel Canyon home. She’s wearing jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a machine gun from her Ultrafree streetwear line, which she launched earlier this year with boyfriend Robby Staebler, drummer for UVWAYS (formerly All Them Witches). She adjusts a pair of oversized rose-tinted glasses and prepares to go scorched earth with Hollywood’s Trump-is-a-fascist crowd.

“I’m sorry, but is Sean Penn a CIA asset at this point?” she asks, noting the actor’s eyebrow-raising interview with El Chapo for a 2016 Rolling Stone article that was followed by the Mexican drug lord’s capture days later. “I am so disappointed in him. I don’t even know that I can watch him as an actor anymore. When he brought that Oscar to [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in Ukraine, I was mortified. Zelenskyy is aligned with the Azov Battalion, and everyone’s crying about racism and this and that. It’s like, ‘Wake up America.’” (The Azov Brigade has drawn criticism for its neo-Nazi ideology and use of controversial symbols linked to Nazism.)

She’s just warming up as she moves on to Hollywood’s Kamala Harris supporters who represent both ends of the age spectrum.

“You have like Billie Eilish saying, ‘I feel safer with Kamala as president.’ But why? Because you have six security guards around you every day when you walk down the street,” she scoffs. “My daughter has nobody walking around with her when she walks down the street in New York City. Because I see what’s going on. Or even here in California, my kids are not allowed to go anywhere because of how bad crime is right now.”

Then she moves on to one of the entertainment industry’s most reliable Democratic Party voices.

“I’m looking at Bette Midler talking about reproductive rights ad nauseam,” she says. “They’re worried about this issue. When we’re on the brink of world war, you want to talk about your daughters? What about the boys? What about our sons that are going to have to go off to war at some point. And they want to take your daughters, too.”

Despite her support for a president who appointed three Supreme Court justices that helped overturn Roe v. Wade, de Matteo says she is pro-choice.

“My great-grandmother was the only abortionist in 1950s Harlem. I’m someone who’s had two abortions. I’m still pro-choice,” she notes. “But things have gone so far in the pro-choice direction that it became sort of an aberration of the rights that women have fought for, where those rights no longer even seem like human rights. It seems like an agenda and an ideology that doesn’t work in anybody’s favor.”

If de Matteo’s politics are confusing, she is quick to point out that so are the views of her Hollywood brethren who once reviled Dick Cheney. The former vice president endorsed Harris in September, prompting the Democratic candidate to say she was “honored” to get Cheney’s backing.

“Every time a celebrity endorses her, I reiterate that they stand with Dick Cheney,” she notes.

De Matteo knows that voicing these views is an act of self-immolation when it comes to her future film and TV prospects. Men may get a pass. After all, Mel Gibson and Jon Voight still work plenty. Quaid probably will continue to find himself in demand. There’s not as clear a path for return for MAGA women. But de Matteo doesn’t care.

Even before COVID, she was pulling away from the industry. After working on arguably the greatest TV series of all time, de Matteo couldn’t top that experience. And though she continued to work on such shows as “Sons of Anarchy” and “Desperate Housewives,” she became more selective, especially if a project meant she would have to leave home for extended periods.

“I was offered some Marvel thing, and I turned that down because my son was crying every time I’d go to Canada to just guest star on something,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’m not gonna do it. I have enough money to get us through the winter.’ I don’t want to be this Hermes-toting, Gucci shoe-wearing person. I just didn’t give a shit. I mean, I wear sweatpants and T-shirts all day.”

Her fall from grace in Hollywood coincides with a new career path in fashion. She started Ultrafree to promote free speech and take a swipe at a status quo she loathes. The T-shirts feature phrases like “War Machine” and “thank you for remembering the intimate details of my locations and conversations big tech.” She’s also founded a jewelry collection called Tombstone that leans into the mob wife aesthetic that she pioneered on “The Sopranos.” Either way, she’s making enough money to afford a savvy publicist and is willing to be seen at the Trump rally in Coachella (she applauds the Republican candidate’s “anti-establishment” strain) or the Rescue the Republic gathering in Washington, D.C., where two of her favorites — Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — took the stage. And like Penn, who went on Fox News to make his Ukraine case on Sean Hannity’s show, de Matteo sparked headlines when she joined “Jesse Waters Primetime” to come out as pro-Trump.

“I tried not to be outspoken. I tried to be under the radar. But I joined OnlyFans to save my fucking house. And it was kind of, in a weird way, a political statement. Like a big ‘fuck it.’ Get comfortable being uncomfortable. That was my statement,” she says.

And in a surprise twist, her family has come around, at least on the subject of her OnlyFans foray (she remains on the subscription service where content creators can reap big paydays for sexy or explicit content).

“[During the pandemic], my brother was like, ‘You know, you’re risking everyone in your home’s life right now [by not being vaccinated].’ And then years later, when I ended up having to open up an OnlyFans page just to save my home, because nobody would help me at that time because I didn’t ‘do the right thing,’ he was like, ‘Your body, your choice. I’m with you all the way,’” she says and rolls her eyes.

As her appointment with the gate installation team nears, she stresses one final point: Even in a solid blue industry like Hollywood, she insists that she is not an outlier because of her views. She is an outlier because she will express them out loud.

“The people I’m around, a lot of liberals are voting for Trump. I think half of Hollywood is actually voting for Trump,” she says. “I know that I’ve gotten plenty of messages in my Inbox: ‘Thank you for saying things I can’t say.’”

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It is truly astounding how quickly, holistically, and voluntarily Ronald DeSantis transformer-ed himself from the seemingly-inevitable President Damien (what up, Omen III fans) of democratic nightmares to Principal Puddingfingers, smearing his shitty evil custard all over the educational system and uncontrollably red-faced screaming at random kids for wearing outfits he doesn’t like and holding hands in the hallways while waging a war against fun, love, and happiness.

I don’t mean to downplay the horror that lives inside of that sodden manatee-turd of a man, or the horror he is slowly releasing from the fucking lich-seal he calls a heart into poor Florida, who, despite just fully being Florida all the time, didn’t deserve this.

But this was the guy.

This was The Guy.

This guy:

Ronald DeSantis was supposed to be the fascist messiah. The great Ur-Alpha Male. The one long foretold who would come at last in the end of days, when the hopes of far-right extra-white authoritarian fundamentalist theocracy were at their lowest, to bring aid and succor and the satisfaction of all their most tortured dreams of…well, basically just torture.

Ronald was supposed to be that great man of myth and legend, the darkest fear of the left and deepest dream of the right: the Competent Fascist. The Smart Trump. The one who deeply understood the system and thus could manipulate it to his liking. The one who really and truly did play 5D chess while the rest of us dinked around with checkers. The one so seemingly sensible and normal he could trick moderates and independents into waking up one day and saying “You know what, I’m feeling so good today I think I WILL vote for death and mayhem on an unimaginable scale! I just like that guy so dang much Imma let him brutalize my family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors!” He went to Harvard Law! He came from a middle-class family! He’s young and allegedly handsome! It’s all coming together for the good old down-home three-dog garage American Nazi!

But he’s not. He’s really not. He never was. And he never could have been—because there’s just no such thing as a smart fascist. Not emotionally, not intellectually, not strategically or philosophically or practically. The ideology itself is about as clever and complex as a rock to the face: me best + them bad + you do what me say or else you them.

Before I say anything else I want to make it clear as a new day in bloody America: just because he’s not smart doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous, because he is. It doesn’t mean he can’t win, because he has and he can. It doesn’t mean he isn’t actively hurting people with malice aforethought right the fuck now, because any idle TV will show this man feasting on human misery with relish, wiping his chin, and ordering more. It doesn’t mean he’s not to be taken seriously, pudding and all.

There’s no such thing as a smart fascist, but dumb wins A LOT of the time.

American fascists have always fallen all over themselves the second anyone even slightly young, symmetrically-faced, and able to use sub-clauses fails upward into office on their side of the aisle, let alone the occasional celebrity. Look, look! We have a likable competent among us! Now you MUST love us and obey! Bow down to him! Sometimes they even pull it off for awhile before the new Chosen Boy inevitably crams both fingers up one nostril on camera and calls it a brave stance against the liberal agenda. Every couple of years we get a new one. Paul Ryan was supposed to be this amazing economic wunderkind. Ted Cruz a constitutional law whiz-kid. Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton were for a time treated as Gilead’s own 4H Club Presidents-in-Waiting (and may still be). Elon Musk was literally worshipped, even by geeks who should know better, as the savior of all mankind and lord of Mars, and has turned out to be so blindingly bug-dumb it’s shocking he knows how to put on his own clothes and I’m not completely sure I believe he can. And of course ol’ Ronaldo DS. Even Mitch McConnell was praised as this historic master of Senatorial strategy for years—and to some extent still is.

But none of them are smart or capable or gifted with understanding and foresight. That’s not the great talent of fascists. They don’t need—or want—to be those things or have those talents. They only need one. And when I say 60% of the time, it works every time, you should not hear that as amusing reference, but as a pretty terrifyingly accurate number.

Fascists, and their larval form, conservatives, simply do not give one single lonely fuck for rules or conventions or the system in which they flourish.

Like spoiled toddlers, they cannot mentally model the possibility of experiencing any consequences, no matter how small, so they blow through all those rules and conventions and traditions like a maniacal Stay-Puft Kool Aid Man and stomp in the faces of anyone or any law standing in their way.

And then this really frightening but so sadly human thing happens: normal people’s minds just close around the fascists’ actions, patching up the wall, because the wall was built through their whole childhoods and lived experience and reliance upon it to function, through every moment of their most basic comprehension of how life on this planet works and their methodologies for attempting to get along with among other human beings. Non-fascist minds just can’t absorb everything they’ve always believed were the unyielding guardrails of their own behavior and lives not mattering at all until it’s too late and every convention of decency and fair play has been shot in the goddamned back while running down a fucking school hallway.

Trump says he’ll end birthright citizenship; the dutiful nodding media notes that’s completely unconstitutional, we here in our living rooms nod along because of course it is, Trump himself is the son of a migrant, what an absurd idea that such a thing could actually happen. And we put it out of our thoughts because it’s so obviously impossible to actually accomplish, and then Roe is gone and kindergarten teachers are fired for having a wife and everyone somehow is still saying things are impossible just because established law and precedent say they are.

They can’t do that. It’s unconstitutional. It’s not how things work. It’s illegal. It’s wrong. People won’t stand for it. There’s no way they’ll get away with this one, it’s too far over the line. Someone will stop them. Not me, but someone. They’ve been exposed; sunshine is the best disinfectant. They won’t get elected again. People will turn against them. Corporations won’t tolerate it. They have to change, the young generations won’t be fooled. It’s against precedent. It’s against the rules. It can’t happen here.

And on and on and on. And all that mental work to shore up the world against those who hate it, all that thought and reasoning and labor to get to a place where we can believe it’ll all be ok, that isn’t being done by the big sloshing chaos-jug of red liquid smashing through the brick wall of decency, it’s being done by us, by the normal people of the world who consider both sides of issues and try to imagine the downstream effects of our choices, who just want to live and get by and occasionally have a nice meal and a vague familial feeling every once in awhile.

Fascists know very well their loyalists and die-hards can never have the numbers to make it all happen for them. They absolutely must get everyday normal fucking people on board with slaughter and the the normalization of utter misery, either by lulling them to sleep or by dressing it up with enough marketing to make them think they’re voting for something else entirely. They know that even those normal everyday people have a little ugliness in them, everyone does, and if you can push them hard enough or dress up genocide pretty or crazy enough, that ugliness will come out. Or at least, they’ll look the other way as long as it’s not their demographic against the wall and their wallet isn’t too battered up.

That’s why early-stage fascists even bother to try making it all vaguely legal.

Because for a lot of “normal everyday” people, legal is a synonym for right. And there goes their minds, slowly, determinedly, loyally patching up the ruined wall, brick by brick by charred fragment of human suffering.

But none of that takes a mind that shines like a light in a dark chasm. It just takes being willing to bet that rules are just paper, and paper, eventually, inevitably, burns.

There is no genius to evil. Only brute force. Brute force and a closed fist, a closed heart, a closed mind and legions upon legions of closed eyes.

McConnell never had to have a strategy. He just had to not give a fuck. Denying Obama a Supreme Court nominee and then shoving every blogger with a reasonable facsimile of a law degree onto the bench wasn’t strategy. It was just not giving a fuck about the rules, sitting on his hands like a smug little frog-goblin, and saying no. McCarthy is doing the same thing, risking the entire world’s stability because it makes the zombie hyena brigade laugh. Just sticking out that pugnacious Mussolini-chin and donkey-barking: no no no.

That’s it. There’s no clever handling of the system, no scrying out of loopholes, no incisive interpretation of the law. There’s just ignoring it and daring someone to do something about it. SCOTUS’s new motto is basically Lol What Are You Gonna Do About It? in Latin. We all know precedent, standing, ethics and arguments mean nothing anymore. Six of them are just going to chortle and preen and smoke each other’s farts in the finest of pipes and pull the big novelty rope for whatever hurts people the most for the foreseeable future. The whole much-vaunted concept of the unitary executive Nixon’s pet boys slowly pushed through Washington until it became the status quo is nothing more ethically and logically grounded than get fucked I do what I want. Yelling RIGGED is a child’s emotional response to losing, not a tactic. Trump acted almost solely through Executive Order because me say, you do! is as far as any fascist political maneuvering has ever evolved. It’s not a strategy, it’s just a monstrous parent bellowing BECAUSE I SAY SO, YOU LITTLE SHITS in lieu of governance.

And it’s all Ronnie DS has ever done. He has an entirely captive and compliant legislature that just says yep yep yep like the Martians from the Muppets to whatever sadistic fever dream Ronald Wii had the night before with no debate or negotiation. Almost all of it is wildly unconstitutional, and not only do they not care, half of Ron 64’s AI-generated clone-stamped state legislature probably doesn’t even know it’s illegal (but wouldn’t care if they did). That can look like success, or ability, or strategy, or an unstoppable force, but it isn’t. It’s just cosseted children blindly nodding yes daddy when they don’t understand the barest thing about adult life in this world. Ronaldo GameCube’s signature legislative win is getting a law passed against object fucking permanence: if no one SAYS gay, it will stop existing.

What a towering achievement of deft political acumen.

It’s not even truly ideological. They don’t even care THAT much about their own stated goals. It’s so common for conservatives to get abortions, do a bunch of drugs, have a ton of sex outside marriage or gay sex or kinky sex or paid-for sex or ethically horrendous sex, gamble, cheat, steal, embezzle, blithely start wars that slaughter thousands, watch absolute vats of porn (we all see you, Utah), beat their kids and lie with every breath no one is even the least surprised when every single day another one is caught doing one or all of those—and those are just the things their alleged religion says are sins. They also deeply believe in welfare, social safety nets, universal healthcare, loan forgiveness, bodily autonomy, freedom to marry, worship, and live as they please without interference, public education, economic stability, social mobility, and uncensored speech—as long as no one the least bit different from them can access those things, but corporations can.

Hell, Trump suggested confiscating all their guns, on camera, and they pretty much just shrugged.

It’s not a coherent belief system, it’s just government by narcissistic personality disorder. A narcissist is never wrong, never a hypocrite, never at fault. A narcissist changes reality around them and bulldozes others into agreeing with it to save their sanity and their skin and then turns around and changes that reality on a whim to avoid ever having to feel anything at all, least of all the dreaded responsibility. There’s no such thing as a smart fascist because smart people, by definition, think about things and fascism is terrified of letting anyone think about what’s happening for more than a second. Just throw up some new pain porn on the captive media and give it bright colors until people are so angry they can’t think, not even about what they’re angry about.

But the thing is? It’s always been this way. The Nazis weren’t smart, either. They just didn’t care. About anything. Hannah Arendt tried to tell everyone all about this and somehow we all just forgot because soulless all-powerful impossibly smart villains play better in the movies. Serial killers aren’t sophisticated hyper-geniuses outwitting everyone left and right, Hannibal Lecter is, and he is pretend. The willingness to do evil is just that, a willingness, an absence of restraint, not a talent.

The Nazis were a bunch of angry incel failsons out of their minds on original recipe meth who couldn’t make the model trains in their childhood bedrooms run on time, let alone smoothly operate a government. Almost everything you’ve been told they did well is a lie or an exaggeration or only done in the first place to murder more people more quickly. (And if you want to go in the comments, I came with receipts, and we can debate it until you start asking yourself why you so deeply need to believe they did anything good at all.) Even Eichmann, the logistics man who made the numbers work, straight-up flunked out of school and failed through his whole life until being an absolute pig-ignorant sadistic shit-fountain became the only qualification for a government job.

And yet, there’s been such an astonishingly effective PR campaign, ongoing through multiple generations, striving to convince you that there was and can be true human genius and vast ability behind the industrialized evil perpetrated by Nazis, their historical forefathers, and their infinitely damned present-day children. That fascism is a legitimate system that can be turned to in order to solve problems. We even have this fancy Roman word for it so that we can endlessly debate whether it’s really technically fascism or just sparkling authoritarianism instead of doing anything about it. So that we can talk about what 30% of human beings dream about without vomiting into the depths of despair forever.

We call it fascism because me and my friends get to be murderkings kind of gives the game away.

What fascism even is has gotten so muddled—at least in the center on down through the left. The right know exactly what it is which is why they start crying and moaning and bloviating when anyone uses that word. We’ve minimized it in everyday speech so much it’s become a joke. You are not a grammar Nazi unless you are murdering grammar for disagreeing with you. A woman who wants to live as something other than a sex slave is not a removed (which of course they stopped using as soon as it was safe to admit they rather like Nazis but still hate women). This is part of why the everyday average charity-donor on the street gets caught sleeping every time. Fascist marketing says we’re just sticklers for the rules, that’s all. Aren’t you? If you don’t break the rules, what are you so worried about? Never mentioning that one of the rules is don’t be born the way you were born, be born the way your Masters were born, or at least pretend they were. So when the supremacists blow through all every convention and safeguard everyone who spent the last decade tut-tutting oh well, rules are good, I guess, what’s wrong with following the rules, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear and she/he/they probably deserved it because they weren’t following rules are just standing there with broken bricks shoved in their ears to soften the sounds of unending human pain while the Sith lord Kool Aid Main smiles and smiles.

But if you take nothing else from this, take the fact that you do not ever listen to what fascists say about themselves. It’s ALL bullshit. Either a premeditated lie or natural ignorance.

They aren’t rule-followers, they’re rule-eaters.

2074
 
 

Actually what the fuck is going on in the west

2075
 
 

Being told im AGP (A Ground up Paste) by him after he smashes my skull into the ground

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