Strangely, I think this article gives Musk too much credit for good intentions. It assumes he honestly wanted to make government more efficient and fucked it up.

I think he wanted to, one, eliminate the dozens of DOJ investigations into his companies and delete the evidence they’d collected; two, sabotage every government agency that might possibly interfere with his companies in future, doing so much damage that it would be decades before they could return to even their pathetic Biden-era level of effectiveness; and three, collect all the US government’s information about us in one place so he could steal it for his surveillance machines.

Musk accomplished all of that brilliantly, and then fucked off to enjoy his trillion-dollar victory lap.

There were no primaries in 2024…

That’s the fucking point.

Don’t tell me I can fight the billionaire masters of the Democratic Party in the primaries when those billionaire masters canceled the primaries just last year.

We need a new progressive movement, not just to outcompete the failed Democrats, but to move this country away from a broken system of electoral politics that lets us “choose” between two oligarchs from the Epstein caste and calls it democracy. We don’t need progressives banging their heads against a billionaire funded wall and lending credibility to a rigged primary process through their participation.

And before that, Obama, Kerry, and if I remember right even fucking Gore were all accused of being the most radical left Presidential candidates in American history.

Funny how the Democratic Party keeps running more and more progressive candidates - both the Republicans and Democrats say they’re doing it, so it must be true - and yet the Democratic Party keeps moving more and more to the right.

Remember Democrats, if he’s the Democrat option come election time it’s TOO LATE TO bitch!!

And that’s why I’m not a Democrat.

Jesus Christ, if you think Presidential primaries matter, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. If the Democratic primaries weren’t rigged to hell and back Bernie would have finished his second term last January. And if Democrats had been allowed to have a primary in 2024 Newsom would probably be president now.

If you want us to believe that your primaries are an opportunity for actual choice, maybe you shouldn’t have appointed a 2024 Presidential candidate who never, in her entire life, won a single fucking primary.

To be fair, it’s strongly suspected that Trump had extensive ties to the New York Mafia.

I mean, Jesus Christ, he was a real estate developer in New York in the '70s and '80s. There’s no possible way he wasn’t in bed with the mob.

Say what you will about Trump, he’s probably closer to gangster than like 99% of us.

One of the freedoms the American military purportedly protects is the freedom to talk shit about the American military.

At least the newly unemployed soldiers will have a nice well-paying paramilitary to join, so they can keep supporting their wives and their wives’ boyfriends.

…it’s a joke.

It’s literally a joke.

No rational person would believe they’re calling themselves terrorists literally.

The message here is “liberals will think the worst of us no matter what we do, so why not just call ourselves terrorists, lol”. And by taking it seriously you prove them right.

And after the barrage of cringe tone deaf “humor” about a fucking political assassination I think my side doesn’t have room to criticize other people’s jokes.

The Trump administration is going mask off in so many ways that have nothing to do with racism. Though that too.

This is connected to all the formal groveling sessions where Trump’s minions or big tech CEOs take turns thanking Trump for existing and for being the incredible awesome masculine big-handed alpha male America needs. And this is banana republic dictator shit, sure. But it’s also how billionaires act towards their employees and subordinates.

All of them.

What Donald Trump is doing in public is no different from what Zuck and Musk and Bezos and all their ilk do in private with their lower caste servants and sycophants.

Demand flattery, hold court and let their courtiers line up to praise them, because they don’t understand the difference between flattery and respect. Reward obedience and punish disobedience, because they don’t know the difference between obedience and loyalty. And wield your power blatantly and without subtlety, suck up to your superiors and bully your inferiors into obedience, because they don’t know the difference between strength and authority.

Trump does this shit in public because he doesn’t believe Americans care about equality anymore. He thinks Americans want to be led by a powerful alpha male leader who demands public displays of submission and gets them. He thinks America doesn’t want a President, first among equals, but a King, who stands above his subjects. And, unfortunately, I don’t think he’s wrong.

And the King is pleased - pleased - when their subordinates come to literal physical blows over access to the King. Because such men confuse aggression with strength, just as they confuse flattery with respect.

Two of Trump’s courtiers were so desperate for his approval that they almost came to blows over it. These are two men so manly that they are willing to physically fight other men who disrespect them - which makes them two alpha males, as conservative minds see it - and these two alpha males respect Trump so much that they’re willing to physically fight for Trump’s attention.

In the mind of Trump and those like him, this is one of the greatest compliments he can receive.

Newsom isn’t a good choice but he’s the only one whose shown any effective strategy against Trump.

Effective how? Has Gavin kept a single innocent person out of jail, funded a single defunded program, protected a single city from Guard occupation?

What has Gavin created except ChatGPT imitations of Trump tweets and AI image slop? What has Gavin done except promote himself?

Gavin’s not effective opposition. He just paid TikTok enough money to promote his meme shit that he looks viral. And his bullshit is going to last just about as long as “Kamala is brat” or Walz calling people “weird” did.

Mamdani has shown us an effective strategy, too. Stand for the people. Actually run on the fucking left. Don’t just talk shit about Trump - actually oppose his policies. And convince working class Americans you really do stand with them, so they don’t turn to right wing populist scumbags out of sheer desperation to be heard.

But that’s not going to happen. Because the dirty Democrat secret is that the DNC leadership agrees with most of Trump’s positions. They just want to implement them more politely.

This is Trump’s strategy too. Make a brutal enough example of a few universities, or law firms, or immigrants, or other countries’ economies, and the rest will comply in advance. Like Trump said in his West Point commencement speech recently: "As much as you wanna fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight. I just wanna look at them and have them fold.”

Reminder: Ender Wiggin is not a fucking hero.

And when Kamala had the entire DNC establishment behind her, what was stopping her from distancing herself from Biden? What was she afraid of?

My guess? The entire DNC establishment wasn’t behind Harris. They were behind Biden, and supported Harris as Biden’s successor rather than on her own (nonexistent) merits. She hadn’t earned their support, and knew it.

Exactly. And the Democrats made it even worse for themselves by claiming there was no economic crisis - that Biden had beaten inflation, beaten unemployment, and claims of a bad economy were just Republican propaganda. The American people looked at their paychecks and grocery bills and called bullshit. Harris was right that Trump would govern as a fascist dictator with Project 2025 as the roadmap - but the Democrats lied to America’s face about the economy and that made everything else they said sound untrustworthy too.

If the Dems had taken America’s economic struggles seriously, Harris would be President now. But Biden refused to admit his economy was bad and Harris didn’t have the guts to contradict Biden. And here we are.

Unfortunately not. She’s already moving to run for governor of California in 2026, as a platform for another 2028 Presidential run.

Was it really an imaginary rule? I think it was Original Sin that talked about how Biden made his support for Harris contingent on “protecting his legacy” - ie, no criticizing Biden, no claiming she would do things different than Biden.

Edit: the claim comes from “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”:

But the day of the debate Biden called to give Harris an unusual kind of pep talk — and another reminder about the loyalty he demanded. No longer able to defend his own record, he expected Harris to protect his legacy.

Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so. He needed just three words to convey how much all of that mattered to him.

“No daylight, kid,” Biden said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5191087-harris-trump-biden-harris/

Yes. Exactly. Harris lost, and it is her fault, and her responsibility.

The average American is not a political expert. (Duh.) They rely on information, and persuasion, from the actual political experts, to decide whose policies fit their values and who their best choices as political representatives are.

If a political party has the best policies, but fails to make the case for those policies to the American people, the fault is not with the American people, but with the party that failed to make its case.

In this case, Trump waged a vicious propaganda campaign based on blatant fucking lies. And the Harris campaign was too incompetent or cowardly to effectively call out those blatant fucking lies - partially because Trump was so much better at social media than Harris, and partially because Harris was afraid to stand up for the trans people and immigrants and other marginalized groups Trump was attacking.

(Biden shit the bed so badly nobody in his administration could have won by running on his record, of course, but that doesn’t absolve Harris for her own failures.)

Any political party that starts blaming voters for not agreeing with it, instead of accepting its own responsibility to convince voters, is headed to permanent minority party status. And as happy as I’d be to see the Democrats permanently marginalize themselves and make room for an actual progressive party, right now they’re the only roadblock in Congress against Project 2025.

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