Zompist Bboard Again

keenir wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 9:18 am...and meanwhile, everyone from twitter to CNN (and far more places in and out of the country) points out problems and contradictions in the Trump regime and MAGA plans.

Over the past few years under Musk, twitter has become dominated by right wingers with pretty much everyone left and center fleeing for alternatives. Meanwhile news channels and newspapers have been bending the knee to Trump left and right (or right and far right as the case may be). Journalists are increasingly terrified of getting in his crosshairs and getting sued for defamation or worse.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 9:27 am

keenir wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 9:18 am...and meanwhile, everyone from twitter to CNN (and far more places in and out of the country) points out problems and contradictions in the Trump regime and MAGA plans.

Over the past few years under Musk, twitter has become dominated by right wingers with pretty much everyone left and center fleeing for alternatives. Meanwhile news channels and newspapers have been bending the knee to Trump left and right (or right and far right as the case may be). Journalists are increasingly terrified of getting in his crosshairs and getting sued for defamation or worse.

and yet my statement isn't falsified by any of that, (i admit, replace twitter with normal equivilents)

The US is still very far from 1984. It's not even close to China.
As an amusing parallel: Grok will freely state Elon Musk is an asshole; DeepSeek refuses to talk about Tian An Men.

There's certainly no shortage of opinions critical of Trump. Not that US media, or in fact media in most countries isn't generally broken in many dangerous ways, but the situation is not totalitarian.

The MAGA wave might feel unstoppable right now; but it's often like that after an election. The winning side feels unstoppable and all powerful while the others looks hopelessly divided, bumbling and pathetic. It's probably best to check up on it after six months or so.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:14 am The MAGA wave might feel unstoppable right now; but it's often like that after an election. The winning side feels unstoppable and all powerful while the others looks hopelessly divided, bumbling and pathetic. It's probably best to check up on it after six months or so.

Of course the MAGA wave isn't unstoppable. Fascism has so many internal ideological contradictions that it is perpetually unstable and never lasts long. But the dude's trying to do in a week what took Hitler a few years. Like setting up special camps at Guantanamo Bay to put detainees in, out of the reach of journalistic oversight. Also trying to detain Native Americans. He's got ICE barging into schools too.

Though it doesn't help that the Democrats are spineless, pathetic, and even downright collaborationist at times.

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:25 amFascism has so many internal contradictions that it perpetually unstable and never lasts long.

Previous fascist regimes collapsed because they lost WWII against a massive coalition of superpowers. There is no guarantee that they would have collapsed on their own without the war. Plenty of dictatorships have lasted for decades and even generations with no signs of buckling. There is nothing to suggest that the dictatorships in China or Russia are losing power anytime soon after all. Currently there are no countries capable of defeating the US in war, let alone motivated to fight it.

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:29 am

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:25 amFascism has so many internal contradictions that it perpetually unstable and never lasts long.

Previous fascist regimes collapsed because they lost WWII against a massive coalition of superpowers. There is no guarantee that they would have collapsed on their own without the war. Plenty of dictatorships have lasted for decades and even generations with no signs of buckling.

Not all dictatorships are fascist, so they're not necessarily built on an unstable foundation.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:38 am

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:09 am A bill was just introduced that would add Trump's likeness to Mt Rushmore.

Classic supervillain move !

Quite literally, as it happens. The first thing that I thought of when I saw the news (other than disbelief that it was an actual proposal, and not a joke) was the 1990 comic book Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, which I probably read sometime in the mid to late '90s. The story is set in a then-near-future dystopia that includes an authoritarian U.S. President who has his face added to Mount Rushmore.

Ares Lande wrote:The important bit is that right-wing ideology on economics and more largely the way society ought to work is simply wrong. They're working with a broken ideological framework; so no matter how smart they may be, they just don't have the intellectual tools to understand that.

I suspect that there is quite a bit of truth to this. I think that many of these people and their supporters genuinely believe that they are the good guys, even if from outside the view looks very different. (As I heard somebody say once, everyone likes to think of themselves as part of the Rebel Alliance, not the Empire.)

Glenn wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:13 pm

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:38 am

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 3:09 am A bill was just introduced that would add Trump's likeness to Mt Rushmore.

Classic supervillain move !

Quite literally, as it happens. The first thing that I thought of when I saw the news (other than disbelief that it was an actual proposal, and not a joke) was the 1990 comic book Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, which I probably read sometime in the mid to late '90s. The story is set in a then-near-future dystopia that includes an authoritarian U.S. President who has his face added to Mount Rushmore.

Maybe he was inspired.

Ares Lande wrote:The important bit is that right-wing ideology on economics and more largely the way society ought to work is simply wrong. They're working with a broken ideological framework; so no matter how smart they may be, they just don't have the intellectual tools to understand that.

I suspect that there is quite a bit of truth to this. I think that many of these people and their supporters genuinely believe that they are the good guys, even if from outside the view looks very different. (As I heard somebody say once, everyone likes to think of themselves as part of the Rebel Alliance, not the Empire.)

Many of these people know they're evil and relish it. To them, the cruelty is the point.

Some people are just ontologically evil.

Yesterday, there was a crash between a plane and a military helicopter in Washington DC. Trump, without any evidence, has blamed the crash on lowered standards and DEI hires in the air traffic controlling industry:
- https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... onspiracy/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOTO1-ATCqU

Trump's been president for only 10 days, and I'm already exhausted and furious.