Read on Twitter
Once you filter out the obligatory pep rally posts ("SCOTUS is *guaranteed* to save us, etc.,) the remaining righty discussion of a probable Biden Presidency is extremely grim, but not histrionic.
Mostly because it's mostly "bad things we're already dealing with but moreso."
Mostly because it's mostly "bad things we're already dealing with but moreso."
Trump gave everyone a blunt lesson in just how much the Presidency's executive power has grown, but even with that, the most he could do without Congressional GOP support to pass legislation was to blunt the machine that's been eating the middle class alive for twenty years.
Something built over decades can't be undone in four years - Trump could end the critical race theory brainwashing sessions made mandatory for Federal employment but it'd take decades to purge the system of its true believers and adherents, for just one example.
Ultimately, we're still facing a government more defined by class loyalty to each other than service to their supposed constituents; a government that services corporate interests (and thus weakens our strategic position vis a vis china, as COVID aptly demonstrated,) -
- corporate interests that mutually reinforce their position by utilizing their incredible power to spy on, censor, silence and outright punish any citizen who disobeys the dogma; a privately-implemented "Social Credit Score," as we just saw Jake Tapper threatening us with.
Trump offered some real hope as an end-run, but success there always hinged on building popular momentum with his tangible policy successes to start evicting the GOP establishment with people actually representing the electorate, one by one.
That's not looking likely, now.
That's not looking likely, now.
The only new thing I've noticed people saying, over and over, is what scares me: "voting doesn't matter." If they can steal a Presidential race, a Senate or House race is piss-easy. Hell, they could shoulder into a primary in states with open primaries, even! What's the point?
"Voting doesn't matter" is the first step down a logical path that leads to some shit nobody wants to see. Political disenfranchisement is *dangerous.*
This is a big reason Trump received such messianic treatment from some - he was the *only* one truly in their corner.
This is a big reason Trump received such messianic treatment from some - he was the *only* one truly in their corner.
Trump did accomplish many things; it can't be understated how significant it is that those policies got a field test, a chance not only to prove themselves, but to prove how utterly hollow the establishment's lies have been. Or what he exposed of our government and how it works.
But if people come to see Trump's tenure as chiefly proof that the power structures he revealed having too strong a grip on the levers of power to ever be dislodged, then his ultimate legacy won't even be one of "delaying the inevitable."
It'll just be as a catalyst.
It'll just be as a catalyst.
Addendum: What if there was no fraud at all? The situation is significantly better... relatively... but objectively still bad. Because even Trump's more tepid supporters believe he accomplished some significant and great things.
What does it say that he still lost the margin?
What does it say that he still lost the margin?
It says that America is increasingly bifurcated. yesteryear's middle class has split. The lower middle class is sinking steadily into poverty thanks to stagnant wages, destruction of the rust belt, and the millennial generation's catastrophe; useless degrees and Uber "jobs."
The upper middle class is tech bros in the urban core; raking in massive amounts of money earned by paradigm-upsetting new information technologies. Said technologies manage this by being natural monopolies; which also means that sector supports far fewer total people...
... esp. as the pay scales nonlinearly in favor of smarter workers in a way it doesn't for most blue collar jobs. They're still mostly defined by grunt laborers; Java coders who live in literal pods due to insane costs of living and other consequences of blue-state stupidity-
- but they live in an industry defined by the best and brightest in a way no blue-collar job is; and their IQ has to be at least lukewarm as the true scutwork is farmed out to H1B visas from India (wokeness > admitting what wage suppression is.)
In sum, even the people at the bottom of this world, paying $1K rents for refrigerator-box living space, view themselves as intellectually superior to the blue collar working class; they're masters of the future, building the tools of the future; simply out-competing the Old Ways
An awful lot of Rensin's observations in his seismic "Smug Style" essay - https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
- can be found in effect among these people. His well-made point here is that these people don't simply feel superior to the blue-collar class.
They hold them in active contempt.
- can be found in effect among these people. His well-made point here is that these people don't simply feel superior to the blue-collar class.
They hold them in active contempt.
Google "buggy whips" and see what kind of shit you turn up - hell, search Twitter. They view the blue-collar working class as inevitably dated and worthless in a *practical* sense, which neatly dovetails with their social justice narratives on them being *morally* obsolete.
Like the 1980s defense boom before it, this corporate culture has naturally pursued connections with the Washington bureaucracy (aka ruling class, beltway class, etc.) Unlike the defense boom culture, their business model isn't based entirely around "blowing up Commies."
Moreover, the gateway to technical employment is always universities, and they've become more radical, and in turn radicalized their students, since the 80s. They gatekeep access to government jobs as well; which is why Biden just promised student debt relief (free $$ for Uni's.)
Therefore, the natural drive of corporations to court the government to gain competitive advantages has dovetailed with both the bureaucracy and the corporation's leading lights being literal graduates of the same ideological indoctrination course.
This is painfully obvious to pretty much everyone, even if they don't phrase it as neatly as I do. They get the essential points:
This class is wealthy, enormously powerful, and controls most every significant power structure.
This class hates their goddamned guts.
This class is wealthy, enormously powerful, and controls most every significant power structure. This class hates their goddamned guts.
We like to say that nobody's on Twitter - but Twitter DOES matter. It's disproportionately favored by journalists, tech and government types. The bile they spew has a *point;* it's messaging to the underlings. (Remember how leadership works for collectivists!)
Collectivists project onto conservatives ("THAT'S A DOGWHISTLE TO SUMMON YOUR RACIST MILITA ARMY) due to simple confirmation bias - most of them can't fundamentally grasp the differences in mental paradigms.
Conservatives are no better, however.
Conservatives are no better, however.
It's a human problem and so all humans display it, which is why you still have some neoliberal never-Trumpers who still cannot grasp that the nation is bifurcated by deep geographic, class and *ideological* divisions, all of which self-reinforce each other.
However, the rise of social media has allowed the exchange of social information at literal lightspeed, and boomers are OVERWHELMINGLY on Facebook. And media gets cross-posted a lot as screenshots.
In short, once you've seen enough hot takes from a Twitter checkmark start circulating around BoomerBook *nigh fucking verbatim,* you start to clue in on how it works.
And you start to understand that your neighbor actually does hate your fucking guts.
And you start to understand that your neighbor actually does hate your fucking guts.
Not ~really~ of course, not ~you~ or the ~real you~ but given that we interact more on Facebook than face-to-face these days - enforced by law for an entire election year thanks to COVID, no less - it's very easy for the conjured image to supplant the real person entirely.
So.
Even if every investigation falls as flat as "Russiagate" and the election is totally legitimized, you've got a downtrodden, ignored, insulted class of people with a TRUCKLOAD of grievances...
Even if every investigation falls as flat as "Russiagate" and the election is totally legitimized, you've got a downtrodden, ignored, insulted class of people with a TRUCKLOAD of grievances...
... who've just had their Last, Best Hope For Peace, their Donald Five, blasted into smithereens by the people who've been stomping on their faces and calling them bastards, who've spent four years justifying rioting, looting, and outright fucking murder because Orange Man Bad.
And that is why the media's inability to reign in their sadistic glee for even five seconds staggers me so.
Because ANY ASSHOLE WITH WORKING EYES can see everything I just said. And yet the corporate-globalist cabal is doing celebratory Russian stepdance ATOP THE BURDENED CAMEL
Because ANY ASSHOLE WITH WORKING EYES can see everything I just said. And yet the corporate-globalist cabal is doing celebratory Russian stepdance ATOP THE BURDENED CAMEL
In sum - if recreational target shooting is your hobby, I'm afraid a reloading press is no longer optional, because ammo prices are going to stay sky-high for the foreseeable future.
Cheap booze, however, is still available in quantity.
Have fun!
Cheap booze, however, is still available in quantity.
Have fun!
