I think they’re saying they also feel threatened by this administration, despite not ticking any of the boxes that would make them “undesirable” to the regime. And they have good reason to feel this way. Nobody’s really safe in fascism except for the people doing the fascism.
Obligatory Sartre quote:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Only the good actions. It’s how they justify keeping all the profits. The bad actions are never their fault though.
Truuuuue
They’re still in denial and complaining about crazy lefties who are after Elon, poor guy!
I’d also add the fact that his donors might have not liked the idea of a government shutdown causing further turbulence to the stock market.
Internalizing the “your vote only matters in purple states” will turn it into a self fulfilling prophecy.
Previously blue states have turned purple, previously purple states have turned red. Nothing is set in stone, although resting on your laurels (if your state is blue) or giving up (if your state is red) will all but guarantee that the changes will only happen in one direction: the bad one.
In 2020, Texas would have gone blue were it not for Ken Paxton purging mail-in votes, by Paxton’s own admission.
Nothing is set in stone, so you need fight for every inch.
Honestly, “malicious” doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s more like demonic at this point.
Hey now, don’t you know that the biggest sin is agreeing with liberals? There’s practically no difference between liberals and fascists because I read somewhere that “if you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds” and my takeaway from that was that liberals and fascists are literally identical and both sides are the same. I am very smart. (/s)
Yep. It’s my go-to video explainer for “freedom cities” aka network states.
First off, this video is obligatory watching on the topic. Go watch it now if you haven’t.
Ok, back to Próspera. From the Wikipedia article:
The company is financed by several investors and venture capital firms, including Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, through the venture capital company Pronomos Capital.
It’s literally the same guys, and they’re trying it in the US too btw.
That Balaji guy in particular is the one who came up with the idea of “freedom cities”, which he calls network states. He’s also a follower of Curtis Yarvin, obviously, and just like him he’s a two bit fascist crank who thinks he’s of superior IQ.
Yesterday for me too.
Also, seeing the post just now, I knew I recognized the picture but I couldn’t remember why :)
Yep, pretty much — thanks for that! Much clearer than my morning-brained pre-coffee rants, haha.
There’s two kinds of people in this regard:
The “I escaped the alt-right pipeline” types, i.e. people realizing there’s a cult and leaving it, and getting to understand more about where they’ve been and how they’ve been manipulated by an entire media ecosystem. They stop hating trans people, abortion, etc., practically changing their whole worldview as if leaving a religion. These I believe are legit because they make an effort to comprehend wtf happened so that it doesn’t happen again, and they likely attempt to pull others out as well.
The casual types you described who will dodge a bullet here and there because a candidate rubs them the wrong way but they’re still fundamentally the same: concerned only with incoherent grievance politics, and therefore deeply susceptible to the same manipulation tactics.
Stages of grief
Exactly. It doesn’t only apply to grief — any major change of beliefs will need to go through this process… unfortunately.
There’s a saying in my country: don’t get drunk on cold water. Meaning don’t gaslight yourself into wishful thinking, because hope can be a hell of a drug.
A third party win won’t happen overnight. The only way you can realistically get it is with ranked choice voting. Otherwise you’re stuck replacing Democrats (and why not, Republicans — in smaller races you can absolutely run a Bernie style progressive who keeps the focus on economics!) one by one because the institutions are already in place, and they’re really powerful! Also, remember they’re just institutions: parties don’t have ideologies, people do.
And before you think to vote for people like Jill Stein or whoever else while hoping that maybe this year the miracle will happen (i.e. getting drunk on cold water), remember that there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be done by that candidate for them to be viable, and it essentially boils down to this: the whole country needs to know about that person and recognize them on the street come election year — if that’s not the case, then they’re either delusional, underfunded, or most likely an opportunist (possibly even an intentional spoiler paid by the opposition, like RFK was in the Dem primary).
Source: me. I’ve been on the third party hope train back in 2020, emboldened by “leftists” such as Jimmy Dore, BJG, Richard Medhurst, etc.
That’s kind of true: you can’t get them to see reason, only spite.
I wrote another reply to the person who posted but I don’t like repeating myself, so I’ll just give the cliff notes:
Trump’s “America has been treated very unfairly” rhetoric is more likely just an extension of his own persecution complex, which in turn is just standard fascist rhetoric about how “we were once great, but we’ve allowed ourselves to be humiliated by our adversaries… but now we’ll be great again and take our revenge on all of them”. It’s nothing new. And while I have a high opinion of Yanis, I think he’s just wrong here, and I think that’s exactly why UnHerd (a sussy “alt-left” pro-TERF publication) was happy to publish his article.
It’s not legally binding though. You could absolutely shout from the rooftops how you got Elon’s money and now you’re voting Dem, and encourage people to do the same. If enough people brag openly about doing it, it would be terribly humiliating for Elon.