WatDabney

joined 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 81 points 20 hours ago

This is fascism 101.

Fascism is at least as much an economic system as a political one, or more precisely, it's more like an economic system hiding behind a political system.

And the way the economic system works is very simple - private ownership of the means of production combined with an overt and institutionalized revolving door between business and government, so that the end result is plutocratic oligarchy.

Basically, it's taking the system that already existed in the US, by which the wealthy bought access to political power mostly surreptitiously and nominally illegally unless they followed specific restrictions, and legitimizes and formalizes and institutionalizes it and moves it right out into the open.

And behind all of the white supremacist and christian nationalist and reactionary conservative rhetoric, this was always the real goal.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 days ago (4 children)

Given the opportunity, no, he's not going to prosecute his foes. He's going to have them killed.

But until he can count on getting away with that, he'll have to, and will, settle for just prosecuting them.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 days ago

Exactly what he's doing is pushing for them to protect the scumbags he intends to appoint from the scrutiny that's sure to expose just how scummy they are.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Huh.

I've been sort of idly wondering who was going to be the first "enemy" politician the Trump regime was going to kill.

I'd say McConnell just became the odds-on favorite.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Mmm... sort of.

In some very broad sense, yes, it's corruption.

In a narrower and more precise sense though, it isn't really, since "corruption" implies a violation of higher standards, which is what we've had, to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much throughout our history.

The difference in the coming era is that there will be no higher standards to corrupt. The things that were previously violations of higher standards will become the new standards. Theft and graft and cronyism will no longer be crimes or even (meaningfully recognized) wrongs - they will be the institutional norms.

And I don't mean this as mere pedantry - the point is that when what used to be corruption becomes the overt norms, things will get much, much worse than they ever were or could be when they were still corruption.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Fascism is, at heart, at least as much an economic system as it is a political one, and broadly, more so.

Fascism, alongside its political control of the populace, establishes economic control of the populace, and it does it very simply, by organizing the government to serve businesses and the wealthy few who control them, and by establishing a revolving door by which a relative few are allowed to freely move between control of the two.

This is the underlying point of Project 2025, and specifically the reason for the planned purge of civil servants. They are to be replaced by people who can be counted upon to serve the interests of the wealthy few and to deny the interests of the rest of the populace.

Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.

Those in power in those institutions, even if they don't share the political goals of Trump and his coattail-riders, are driven by their own greed to at the very least not stand too much in the way, since they too expect to profit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

I predict.... a corporate ass-kissing establishment hack with a focus on appealing to suburban professionals.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

All I know is that Kagi triggered my scam alarms from the start, and moving into the browser market just made them ring even louder.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

What "us?"

I'm going to be right there alongside her, on my way to an execution too.

And so are you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I wonder how she's going to feel about this choice a few years down the line, when President-for-life Trump orders her execution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Very much so (and there's at least one patient gamers community around, because I've posted to one).

The only advantage I can see to playing a game on release is taking part in that first rush of interest, but I'm antisocial enough that that doesn't appeal to me anyway, so I'm not missing anything there.

Beyond that, I think playing a game at least a year or so after release has all of the advantages. The initial flurry of absolute love vs. absolute hate has died down so it's easier to get a broad view of the quality, the game is more stable, the price is better, dlc and expansions are out and generally packaged with the game, and best of all, in this current era, I can most likely buy it from GOG and actually have the full game, DRM-free, on my system.

And there are a bajillion good games out there, just waiting for me to discover them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I haven't read those yet, but I intend to. And I expect that, like every one I've read yet, they'll be solid 7 or 8 out of 10 books.

That's the thing that reminded me of Crichton. He has that same ability to start with some fascinating idea and run with it and deliver a solid, well-told and satisfying story, then move on to some completely different fascinating idea and run with it and deliver another solid, well-told and satisfying story. He's not locked into any specific genre or any specific approach to telling a story - just whatever works for that idea, that's what he does, and it just works.

 

I've made no secret of the fact that I think that Biden is and always has been (including in 2020) a weak candidate, and that now is not the time to gamble on a weak candidate, especially after the debate just made him appear that much weaker.

But it just struck me that in the unique and bizarre situation in which we find ourselves - running against a brazen criminal with a stated goal of being a dictator fronting for a group of christofascists who already have a playbook for destroying American democracy - Biden has a built-in advantage as the incumbent.

I don't mean the advantage that incumbents are generally presumed to have (he notably does not have that), but a much simpler and more immediate one.

It's disturbingly likely that if/when Trump loses, his christofascist coattail-riders and his legions of angry, hateful and generally heavily-armed chucklefucks are going to literally go to war. They could well end up making Jan. 6 look like the peaceful protest they insist it was, at least in comparison to the violence and bloodshed they'll potentially unleash should their fuhrer lose.

And at that point, it's going to be much better to not have to deal with a transfer of power - to have a president already in place with a full set of aides and well-established communication channels, and to keep that president in office for as long as it takes to withstand the fascists.

As I said, that just struck me, and I haven't fully analyzed it, but I think it has some merit.

And never in my life did I think that things might reach the point, at least in my lifetime, at which I'd be considering the best strategy to combat an impending bloody fascist coup in the US...

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