Just the opposite. I’m the one who goes off to do something else at family gatherings because they just talk and talk and talk.

Though it’s not so much that they talk so much as that it’s just the same stuff over and over - alternately, my brother slavishly regurgitating right-wing techbro quasi-libertarian bullshit and my mom reciting in excruciating detail some anecdote that’s maybe vaguely related to the topic at hand and that she’s told countless times already, because it’s her go-to every time something in that vicinity comes up.

And what I wouldn’t give to know them less well…

“Effective! Oooh know what I mean? Know what I mean? Nudge nudge! Know what I mean? Say no more!”

COINTELPRO?

Yes

Who cares if the people know the system is corrupt if there’s nothing they can do about it.

Because for the moment, there’s not “nothing they can do about it.”

Most notably, the dictatorial power they established for Trump’s benefit is not yet in Trump’s hands - it’s in Biden’s. And particularly in light of the fact that he’s withdrawing from the race, he’s entirely free to do whatever he pleases. Like, for instance, haveTrump and every single other person who’s a part of this planned coup executed. Or, for instance, pardon any and all private citizens who might take it upon themselves to do the same.

The fascists aren’t going to be safe until that power is in their hands. And that won’t be until after the election.

The strategy you’ve outlined relies too heavily on their winning the election fairly.

Not at all

The only difference I see between him winning fairly and him losing is whether the act that will mark the moment at which the autocrats fully and publicly play their hand is the attempt to get him into office in spite of his loss or whatever they put the highest priority on after his win.

In either event, the time for them to play their hand is later - not now.

I actually hope that you’re right, because that would mean that the cabal that intends to overthrow democracy in the US is much more stupid than I had thought.

In the first place, the whole idea that a candidate might be prohibited from dropping out and/or that the party would in that event be prohibited from choosing a replacement is farcical on its face. Beyond that, the SC explicitly ruled after the 2016 race that the DNC is essentially entirely free to do whatever the fuck they want. Additionally, they recently ruled regarding Trump’s removal from ballots that states are not free to do whatever the fuck they want.

What that means is that in order to rule in such a way as to deny a replacement would reveal the complete and utter corruption of the system almost four months before the election, which would be an exceedingly stupid thing to do.

The far better strategy would be to just bide their time, let the democrats do whatever they choose to do, then implement the coup after the election (and preferably as close to the inauguration as possible) so they can accomplish it all at once, then hide behind the president’s newly granted dictatorial powers.

It’s not a coincidence that I call the government this coup is clearly intended to establish a “plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.”

I have no doubt that many in the Heritage Foundation are sincere in their christofascism, but I also have no doubt that the corporations and billionaires who are bankrolling the whole thing (not just the HF, but Trump, the corrupt supreme court, the complicit media and so on) care little to nothing about all of that. They understand both the popular appeal of religious fundamentalism and the avenues of control it provides, but their goal is much simpler - to gain as much authority as possible so that they’ll be free to rob and plunder without the risk of facing an empowered and angry electorate.

The christofascists are definitely a threat, but in the wider scheme of things, they’re just tools.

I’m an American, so yes - in a heartbeat.

Broadly, I wouldnt much care where it was, just so long as it was somewhere that was not being actively transfomed into a plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.

And in fact, there’s virtually nothing that I want more at this point in time than to get the hell out while I can. I fully expect that if I don’t, I’m going to end up in prison or dead, just like so many other vocal dissidents under so many other authoritarian regimes.

I’m often reminded of a cartoon I saw years ago, with a stereotypical Einsteinish physicist standing in front of a chalkboard, looking at this enormously complex formula with a big blank space in the middle of it. Then he gets a “eureka” expression and starts writing in the blank space. Then he steps back, and you can see that he’s filled the blank space with “and then something happens”.

Well…

You’re absolutely right, and that was very well-written to boot. But it’s not the part that perplexes me. I likely just did a poor job of explaining myself.

I fully expect his intellectually and/or psychologically compromised supporters to fail or refuse to recognize his glaringly obvious insanity. As you note, he affirms their prejudices and tells them that the condemnation they so deservedly receive is actually some sort of evil conspiracy, and they grovel at his feet, lapping it up.

But that just accounts for a portion of his supporters and none of his opponents, and it’s that remainder I wonder about - all of the people who are certainly rational enough to recognize his glaringly obvious derangement for what it is, but somehow just don’t, or won’t.

I have this recurring experience in which I read an essay or article from some more or less neutral site or even an oppositional site in which someone relates something that Trump said, then parses and analyzes it, as if it’s a legitimate statement of supposed fact rather than the deranged ranting of someone who’s painfully obviously profoundly mentally ill, and I can’t even see how they managed to make it that far - how they didn’t just stop halfway through relating whatever it was he said and throw their hands up and say, “This guy is a fucking lunatic!” Because he so blatantly obviously is.

That’s what I don’t get.

…a perfect, brilliant, beautiful statement that I make…

Doesn’t anyone else notice how often he makes these cringily exaggerated statements, and more to the point, recognize how clearly they illustrate the staggering depths of his delusions?

That’s still the thing I most notably don’t get about Trump - the man is obviously profoundly mentally ill, so why and how is he even taken seriously? How in the world is it even possible for such a painfully obvious gibbering lunatic to not only run for public office, but quite possibly win?

No - I don’t agree that they’re completely different.

“Made by AI” would be completely different.

“Made with AI” actually means pretty much the exact same thing as “AI was used in this image” - it’s just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.

I can certainly see how “photographers” who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can’t handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can’t manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.

In a somewhat metaphorical but nonetheless very real sense - most politics is effectively snake oil.

There’s a set of people who exhibit a particular combination of mental illness and natural charisma, such that they feel an irrational urge to impose their wills on others, a lack of the necessary empathy to recognize the harm they do and the personal appeal necessary to convince others to let them do it.

There’s another set of people who feel an irrational sense of helplessness - who want to turn control of their lives and their decisions over to others, so they can just go along with a preordained set of values and beliefs and choices rather expending effort on, and taking the risk of, making their own.

And just as in any more standard “snake oil” dynamic, the first group, exclusively for its own benefit, preys upon the weakness and hope of the second. Just as in any other such dynamic, the people of the first group make promises they have no intention of keeping ultimately just so that they can benefit, and the people of the second group continue, irratiomally, to believe those promises, even as all of the available evidence demonstrates that the promises are empty.

Candidates for public office should be required to undergo a mental health assessment as part of the process of getting on the ballot, and those who score beyond (above or below, as may be relevant) particular thresholds are barred from seeking office.

I sincerely believe that there’s no single thing we could do that would provide more benefit to the world than to get sociopaths and narcissists and megalomaniacs out of positions of power. Each and every one of the most notable and contentious politicians in the world today is, if you just take a step back and look at them honestly, blatantly profoundly mentally ill. Enough is enough.

In all seriousness, I sort of pity conservatives.

They’re sort of like the one kid in kindergarten who could never manage to figure out which plastic peg went in which hole and would just get frustrated and throw things. Except that they never grew out of it. Here they are, twenty or thirty or sixty years later, still unable to grasp the simple fact that the world just is what it is and the round peg isn’t going to go in the square hole no matter how much you pound on it, and still angry over it, as if it’s some sort of vast conspiracy rather than just the fact that they’re fucking morons.

That has to be an unpleasant way to live.

Of course, they’re such vile and loathsome and destructive assholes that my pity is short-lived, but still…

Just another step toward making used-to-be-Twitter a safe space for cowardly fascists.

“People’s Army” = the violent thugs in the employ of the new state, to replace the violent thugs in the employ of the old one.

“Support of the Proletariat” = the alternating oppression and indoctrination of the people will continue, under new management.

And all in support of:

“Vanguard Party” = the new ruling class.

Israel has been trying to provoke Lebanon into a war for decades now. They’re not going to stop.

That’s no surprise, and entirely irrelevant.

The US political system is broken. It doesn’t legislate according to what is thought to be best for the country or its people - it legislates according to what will bring the most money from wealthy individuals, corporations and interest groups.

Fossil fuel corporations and industry groups have very deep pockets and have well-established channels by which to funnel that money into the hands of politicians, party officials, and assorted powermongers, so the government is going to generally legislate in their favor, entirely regardless of any other considerations.

This is actually true.

Most notably to me, the ability to sift through and collate enormous amounts of data has led to surprising things like diagnosing diabetes through retinal scans.

But those sorts of things, beneficial and impressive though they might be, remain at the fringe of AI research for the simple reason that those sorts of uses are too niche to provide the revenue stream that all of the bubble-building corporate parasites demand. Their focus is on the AI-as-a-substitute-for-real-intelligence aspect (and increasingly “AI” as just a meaningless marketing buzzword), since that’s where the money is. And unfortunately but not coincidentally, that’s where most of the public attention is too.