I read Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m pretty sure that’s not in there, but it might as well have been.

Absolutely bonkers novel.

If you’ve stepped outside the US, you’ve seen a very different picture

if you only count Democrat voters

Cuomocrats? Newsom Lovers? Rahm Emmanuel die-hards? That’s your ticket our of this mess?

If more congressional republicans would’ve went along with the fake electors, then yes maybe.

The problem with American democracy is that half of your allies are just in line for your job. Especially in the Senate.

They weren’t going along for the ride because they weren’t interested in the destination.

your mess?

My mess? I’m sure a serf working the land, sire. You need to speak to the Lord of the Manor about yonder grievance.

But careful what you say. My lord’s fiery temper has seen men hung for a triffle.

I’m cheering for the death of Americans

Well, joke’s on you. Most of those fucks have been on rotation so long they’ve forgotten what America looks like.

Still scary with how far/close it got.

I’m still not clear what would have happened if rioters had actually beaten Congressional Reps to the door.

Let’s say Mike Pence really did get lynched. And Nancy Pelosi had to watch her desk get crapped on. And then the capital building is surrounded by the DC police. And there’s a high profile hostage crisis, while whomever did get out reconvenes to decide what to do next.

Does anyone believe Joe Biden doesn’t still get sworn in?

This is the Presidency not a game of tag. Who is still going to take orders from a Trump admin on these terms? Everyone - Republicans included - wanted that asshole gone by the end of 2024.

Trump has practically giftwrapped oppo ads

When you’ve gerrymandered all the districts and you’re threatening to federalize state elections? When Silicon Valley owns all the venues those oppo ads would run? When your response to every defeat is to deny it is happening and double down on the military?

I just don’t think Scary Voice Ads during the Late Show With Not Steven Colbert Cause He’s Fired are going to make a huge difference.

Like, I’m not a doomer. I don’t think “Democracy is Over!” Because, if Trump had the means to make Democracy Go Away, he’d have done it during the 2025 gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. But it’s crazy to think Ad Buys are going to be what decide the next election cycle.

Most of us will probably not live to see the end.

There is no “end” to live to see.

things are about to get a whole hell of a lot worse

I get this line every fucking day on here. It really seems to deny the reality of the post-industrial era. One of shrinking poverty, enormous surpluses, and a backbone of infrastructure that benefits the entire planet.

Like Kromptkin recognized over a century ago, we have already won as a society and a species. We just need to recognize it and dole out the winnings equitably. What Westerners see as a terrifying decline arrives just as much of the Eastern Bloc and the Global South are finally cashing in. And much of what Westerners dread is this equanimity - this international muscle enjoyed by nations not in the privileged Early Adopter group taking a slice of the pie they thought was always going to be theirs.

And even then it isn’t really bad news for Westerners in the aggregate, because so much of that pie was going to an elite plutocracy in their own backyards.

What people in the US and the UK and Germany and Japan are coming to terms with is the dead-weight loss of their own monarchies. Whether they choose to carry this baggage into the 22nd century will determine how they end up living. But the days of colonial extraction are closing. The Free Lunches paid for with the surplus labor of East Asia and West Africa are coming to an end.

The fascists at least admit there are problems

When they’re out of power. Then they get into power and they sound just like the fucking neoliberals, plus or minus some white nationalist spin.

And the neoliberals are happy to admit problems exist, but only so long as we concede the solution to the problem is more neoliberal Technocrats in charge. And if you don’t agree, then you’re a fascist, too!

Take a look at the Starmer government in the UK right now, and what we’re witnessing is Trumpian fascism and British neoliberalism jerking one another off.

Capitalism is in crisis

It is the crisis. So much of our modern nightmarish policies are third and forth order consequences of the Profit Motive. Everything from our ecological decimation to our brutalization of migrant workers to our paranoid surveillance state traces its roots back to the need to extract an ever growing investment return from assets with diminishing yield.

“The Lesser Fascist Party is better than the Greater Fascist Party”

doesn’t roll off the tongue or fit well on a bumper sticker, but Dem consultants keep telling me its the best chance to win in 2026.

Idk, man. He’s very early into his administration and he already caved on keeping Jessica Tisch at NYPD.

The guy seems to have his heart in the right place. And he’s definitely got the wind at his back. But we have a long way to go until the book is written on Zohran’s legacy. He has plenty of opportunities to disappoint.

climate change and pollution are legitimately unfixable problems in my opinion

The Late Devonian mass extinction was likely caused by the evolution of oxygen producing plants. This fundamentally altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and kicked off the Hangenberg event which is estimated to have killed half of all life in the world’s oceans and around a quarter of all life on dry land.

Incidentally, the sudden and massive spread of plant-life during this period is responsible for the rapid accrual of fossilized carbon that has become the fuel we’re currently killing one another to secure.

Everything else could hypothetically be fixed

We can’t ever really go back. We can update our social responses to climate-wide events. But industrialization isn’t just going to stop happening even if we check our fossil fuel consumption habit. Humanity’s propensity for engineering our surroundings to meet our comfort needs is an unstoppable evolutionary tendency. That’s not something we can ever “fix”. Pandora’s Box was opened millions of years ago. We’re going to have to play this hand out until we hit another ecological balancing point.

Its a slow burn.

“The world is ending” is easier to accept than “The world has always been a hard place and also I’m not getting any younger”.

Easier to believe you’ll live to see the end of the world than that the world will keep spinning without you.

The ultimate victory is living well.

“Traditional” for these folks is just a dog-whistle for “Racist”.

With the US shoving a knife into Iran and waving another at Cuba, I cannot imagine a world in which North Korea comes out ahead.

I like Messiahs who aren’t dead.

One death is a tragedy.

14 million? A statistic.

I mean, I’m in favor of abolishing birthright citizenship. But only because I find citizenship to be an archaic relic of the colonial era.

Simple residency should be sufficient to convey all the rights of citizenship.