I’m sure that’s not an accident but I doubt it was the point. She had (and likely still has) greater ambitions than that.

I suspect that this is why Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned - because Trump is petty and vindictive, and was sure to do everything he could - and everything he could cajole his rich cronies into doing - to destroy the Republicans who dared to try to make an issue of the fact that he’s a statutory rapist.

This is fucking creepy no matter what.

If it’s true, it’s creepy.

I don’t think it’s true though, which in a way is even creepier.

The basic problem here is that this whole western fascist, white-supremacist technofeudalism thing is entirely divorced from reality. There’s no logic, no morality, no philosophy - nothing but emotive gibberish slaved to the shallow self-interest of lunatics. So they just spew whatever lunatic garbage they spew, because their brains are broken and they can’t do anything else, and their followers just sop it up, because their brains are also broken and they can’t do anything else either.

There’s much to criticize about past ideologies and religions (which IMO are just two variations on the same basic theme). They did a lot of harm and included a lot of stupidity and lunacy, but at least they made an effort to have some sort of moral and/or logical underpinnings - to have something solid around which they were built.

This one though? There’s nothing at all there. There’s no central philosophy - no underlying morality - nothing. There’s just gibberish and poison and junk and sludge. And the broken-brained assholes spewing it and the broken-brained assholes sopping it up.

And the rest of us, unable to even wrap our heads around the sheer scale of the lunacy, scrolling day after day in a constant state of “What the fucking fuck?!”

This is a perfect moment to note:

Unlike socialism or capitalism, fascism does not stipulate a specific economic system. However, there are some qualities that are consistently found under fascist systems, chief among which are a sort of “revolving door” between government and business, such that leaders in one field exert influence or even hold positions in the other as well, the (not coincidental) broad concept that what’s good for business is automatically good for the country, and the socialization of investment, risk and loss, while keeping profits entirely private.

Or in other words, exactly what’s happening here.

Another day, another tantrum from the Toddler-in-Chief.

He really should actually be a great big baby in a saggy diaper, sitting in a high chair with a big sippy cup of Diet Coke and a bunch of blocks to make ballrooms and arches out of, alternately stuffing hamburgers in his face, wailing and crying and saying things like, “But I want Greenland!” and “Stephen Colbert is a big fat meanie!” pooping in his already stinky diaper and randomly falling asleep.

So pretty much exactly like he is now, just without the suit.

And certainly you can trust the word of a grossly unqualified sycophant.

Thanks I guess for providing an example of one of the ways in which humanity needs to grow the fuck up - reach a point at which we generally actually think about things that people actually say rather than just being bitter slaves to our preconceptions and prejudices.

Hopefully your kids will do a better job of it. Or maybe their kids.

This neatly illustrates why I’m an anarchist - because institutionalized authority has made it such that the United States - a nation of 340 million people - is engaged in overtly destructive and internationally criminal violence and brutality not because the people have demanded it or even desired it, but because a handful of fucking psychopathic pieces of shit have managed to fight and claw and wheedle and lie their ways into positions from which they have the authority to make it so.

And that is, by any reasonable measure, insane.

Any system that allows for such a thing rather obviously should not exist. And that the United States, with its intricate system of checks and balances and its guaranteed freedoms and its strictly mandated adherence to the rule of law could reach this point clearly demonstrates that the problem is not how authority is institutionalized but merely if it is. If it is, then it can be, and sooner or later will be, abused for the questionable benefit of a few and to the detriment of all the rest of the world.

So it quite simply cannot be institutionalized. That’s the only sane approach.

So all that’s left is to wait for humanity to grow the fuck up - to evolve psychologically, sociologically and philosophically to the point that they no longer have or feel a need to have some institutional mommy and daddy to tell them how to and how not to behave.

Maybe in another few centuries…

When IDF soldiers were accused of gang-raping Palestinian prisoners, people staged protests and politicians gave speeches in support of the soldiers. And not with the position that the soldiers didn’t do it, but that the soldiers acted within their rights when they did.

That says everything anyone needs to know about the Israeli attitude toward the sexual assault of non-Israelis.

Funny how the Republicans, after four years of posing as the conscience of government, have gone completely silent on the subject of corruption.

Think it might be because their Republican president is already far and away the most corrupt president in US history, and likely at least in the running for the most corrupt national leader in human history?

IMO literally took his place.

My theory is that the DNC and the Dem establishment, in order to ensure that they can mouth leftist platitudes without the risk of actually advancing leftist interests and thereby alienating their big money donors, always have at least one or two ringers - people who, for one reason or another (most likely because they’re bribeable and bribed or extortable and extorted) can be counted on to, when necessary, cast the vote(s) that ensure that the Republicans don’t quite lose.

So Fetterman, just like Manchin (and Sinema) before him, is doing exactly what he’s supposed to do.

Tyrants don’t come to power by mandating submission. They come to power by criminalizing dissent.

Quite seriously, as someone caring for a parent with dementia, that’s entirely typical behavior.

Well… you know… except the scale is a bit different for someone who isn’t the fucking president.

That’s part of why I’ve generally been putting quotation marks around the word “corporation.”

It’s not meaningless though, because the underlying structure will likely remain essentially the same as it was when it was merely a corporation. And the relationship between the “government” and its “citizens” will have evolved from a relationship between a business and its customers/clients, and will undoubtedly retain some aspects of that. Most notably, the whole concept of public servants will vanish. Instead, the “government” will offer some specific services to potential citizens-as-customers, who can take them or leave them. Or, additionally or possibly even alternatively, the “government” will demand specific things of citizens-as-employees who will have the “choice” of following their demands or seeking employment-as-citizenship elsewhere.

In either event (or any other - this can’t possibly be an exhaustive list), the basic dynamic between “government” and “citizen” will be notably different from any of the ones we’ve seen before (though likely broadly most similar to feudalism).

Maintaining a large private army would be expensive and time consuming.

So is maintaining a large workforce and infrastructure, but they do that as a matter of course. And already, there are corporations with operating budgets larger than some countries. That’s only going to become more the case with time.

What stops another corporation with a private army from coming in and robbing them of everything they have?

The same things that generally stop countries from doing it to each other - insufficient forces and/or unacceptable losses and/or a preference for stability and/or established alliances and/or any of countless other considerations.

This isn’t rocket science. Realpolitik is a fairly straightforward thing.

Where is the corporation getting their funding from?

From the sale of goods and/or services.

Duh.

Someone’s got to be paying them.

Yes. Consumers of whatever goods and/or services they provide.

Duh.

So, they are using a sovereign currency created by a government using a central banking system chartered with the government.

Or more likely not.

Here’s just one quick idea - accept local currency with a handling fee sufficient to cover any potential losses on exchange (which are unlikely, since at that point their currency will likely be harder than about any government’s), and advertise a discount for the use of their private currency, accompanied by the offer of free and automatic currency exchange with an account at the corporate bank.

So you promote your currency, avoid the hassle of dealing with competing currencies and gain new bank accounts, all at the same time.

And that’s just one idea, off the top of my head.

Whoever wants in on it really.

Primarily I presume it’d be the corporations themselves, but banking is certain to change to accommodate the growing independence of the “corporations,” and I expect that to some notable degree, the two will merge - that the largest “corporations” will have their own banking sibsidiaries and will handle most everything internally.

There’s a broad point underlying all of this - all that’s really necessary is that enough executives/owners at enough institutions have a desire to divest themselves of associations with governments and establish their own “states.” Once the will is there and they possess enough wealth and power to enforce their will, the rest is just details. They have entire staffs who are employed to figure out how to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish, and they will figure it out.

So?

In the first place, a “corporation” could set up a legal system easily - draft some laws, build some facilities and appoint some officials, and done.

But they wouldn’t even need to do that. They likely would, because an impartial system wins voluntary compliance and thus promotes stability, but the only really necessary part of a legal system is sufficient power to enforce its dictates, and with enough armed professionals, that’s relatively easy, at least within secured borders.

Yes.

And specifically one of the things that impressed me about Snow Crash’s predictions was the idea that federal governments didn’t get overthrown or cease to exist - they were simply irrelevant. The “corporations” had amassed enough wealth and power that they could, and did, simply ignore the governments.

Sure.

They could even do it today simply by paying in Bitcoin.

I expect though that the future will see private currencies backed by the-entities-formerly-known-as-corporations.

Governments don’t monopolize currencies because nobody else wants to issue one, but because it’s in their interests to monopolize them, and they have sufficient power (for the time being) to enforce their monopolies.

No and yes…

A business entity that is proactively protected from liability could not exist without government charter.

However, a business entity could employ its own paramilitary and/or hire mercenaries and effectively make itself immune to liability, which works out to the same thing pretty much.

And I’m reasonably certain that that’s the future - that corporations will continue to acknowledge and submit to governments only as long as it’s to their advantage to do so, and that when the costs outstrip the benefits, they’ll simply stop, and instead manage their properties as essentially states unto themselves. And at that point, whether or not they have an official declaration of their corporate identity will be irrelevant.