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kleinbl00

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kleinbl00  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

No, fuck you, too. You don't fucking quibble over specifics, you ignore everything I fucking say so you can find some corner that allows you to be crazy. Here's what I fucking said to you THREE FUCKING YEARS AGO

    You've got some decisions to make, my friend. Because between the way the politics are going and the way the environment is going, you're in Taliban country.

    And I don't see a mechanism by which things get better.

I believe what I say and I say what I mean and you know what? What I've been saying is pretty consistent. I can look back on my wild-eyed bullshit ideas from ten years ago and go "mmmyeah, pretty much" about 98% of the time. So it's not fucking optimism - it's a studied assessment of the situation at hand as I see it and understand it, and I share that.

And 99% of the time it fuckin' whooshes right the fuck over your head because you're too busy trying to find some reason to freak out.

Spiritedness is fine but when you fucking put words into my mouth for fucking jollies it's fucking over.

I'm fucking sick of this shit and I don't fucking deserve it.

kleinbl00  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

how the fuck is that my fault

It's possible

That maybe I feel this more than you

It's possible

That maybe this is what I've been screaming from the rafters for forty fucking years

It's possible

That much of your outrage of the Supreme Court you learned from me

But that didn't fuckin' stop you from needin' a hit of that Outrage Juice that keeps your blood pumping. It didn't stop you from taking a swing at me, the guy who has always been careful to address what you're saying, not who you are. The guy who drops whatever you've got going on minute by minute, hour by hour, life by life, to address the thing you wanna bring up. Naaah. You decided you wanted a fucking fight and the way you were gonna get it was by ridiculing me.

This is one thing where nobody can come up with an upside and here I am, trying to get through my fucking day, and you decided that you know what? The Internet has decided it's cool to piss on "centrists" so here you are, knowing I'm always good for a laugh. I'll humor your bullshit no matter how tangential. I'll come back with something, anything to try and turn your mood around and what did you fucking do with that?

You made up an opinion for me and decided I should defend it.

FUCK YOU.

kleinbl00  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Once more with feeling: fuck you.

kleinbl00  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Fuck you.

I've been pretty clear about what a catastrophe the Supreme Court is since Day Fucking One.

You've got this bullshit idea that "well ackshully" I'm just an apologist for whatever it is you don't like but let me say it again - fuck you.

Some of us have had the attention span to piss and moan about this shit since the MUTHERFUCKING EIGHTIES and if you wanna try and score points off me fucking come correct.

It's not my fault you don't have the attention span to be mad at something other than the cause du jour. But it is your fault that you'd rather piss on this strawman you have of me than actually hold a reasonable facsimile of me in your head.

I deserve better and you know it.

kleinbl00  ·  13 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Palestine and the power of language

Fuckin'... do you even realize how much your snark interferes with your happiness?

a deeply involved process involving constant diplomacy combined with a wearying Israeli electorate has resulted in a change in the legitimacy and acceptability of Israeli reprisals and you're out here going "see? I told you we should have stood in front of the stampede in the first place, they would have never dared to run us over!"

kleinbl00  ·  14 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vinyl is too mainstream

What's really going to bake your noodle is in my circles it's still considered cool to release on cassette so "let's crunk an MP3 down to fit on 1.44MB" is so fucking hipster that not even the Witch House people bother

kleinbl00  ·  14 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vinyl is too mainstream

This shit is easier than most people think.

There's a motion control company that makes their servos play tunes at IMTS for 20 plus years.

kleinbl00  ·  14 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024

THAT'S IN LIKE SEVEN HOURS

y'all better come

kleinbl00  ·  17 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Interview With The Oompa Loompa

The original event mostly caught fire because of the blatant use of AI.

Reality was quite different. It's the cause du jour of the Very Online.

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Operation Downfall called for SIXTEEN atomic bombs. Basically nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, up to Tokyo. And if they had to keep going after that well, the US will have had time to make more bombs.

People forget that the B-29 was more expensive and more of a strategic priority than the Manhattan Project. People also forget that Germany spent more on the V-2 than the US spent on the Atomic Bomb. "Big boom" is the horror weapon we all freak out about now but the WWII mentality was "the way we win this is by indiscriminate unguided bombing at scale from an extreme distance."

We've created this false narrative around "should the US have used a horrific weapon like the atomic bomb" when the real dilemma, acknowledged by both the United States and Japan, was "will the Japanese be made extinct as an ethnicity before hostilities are over." The truth of the situation is the Emperor of Japan saw Hiroshima, went "stop this madness", was nearly murdered by a military junta, and enough loyalists regained control for the Emperor to declare unconditional surrender after Nagasaki. Anyone who wants to waffle around the absolute and total genocide anticipated by both sides of the conflict is a simp. We were gonna turn Japan into Carthage and the Japanese were all in on it.

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

sigh

what might my conclusion possibly fucking be

You don't NEED to make this so exhausting

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

So there's "your faith" and there's "where things go."

If there's any one nugget I want you to keep in mind it's this: Joe Biden's career was destroyed 27 years ago. Pulled out of the presidential race in shame. Chaos reigned, articles about how everyone who was anyone knew he was a cheating fucktard who needed to burn in flames.

Then Lee Atwater died.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - Biden - and the Democrats who grew up with him - have been battle-tested by the meanest mutherfucker ever to grace the campaign stage. They were fucking flayed. You wanna talk straight antichrist it's Lee Fucking Atwater and everything that has come after has been comic opera in comparison.

The heinous political environment we inhabit now was built, brick by brick, by a dude so evil his own brain killed him for the betterment of all mankind. Every skirmish since then has been in the ashes of his conflagration - ain't no Contract With America without Morning in America, ain't no Tea Party without Contract with America, ain't no Make America Great Again without Tea Party.

But you can't say "maybe they're more clever than we give them credit for" without some wag bringing up "3d chess" like somehow being smart is worthy of snark in and of itself.

I think impeachment was a foregone fucking conclusion until Lee Atwater led the party to a place of antibellum evil. Now? I mean just fuckin' ask Moscow Mitch.

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

    There are also lazy, incompetent ideologues who are perfectly happy to go "myeah, let's just toss Roe because we fucking feel like it."
kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

I haven't seen any discussion on it. pretty much any discussion of the supreme court gets howls of "COURT PACKING!!!!!!1111one" so I'd probably play it close to my chest, too. If you look at actions, you see Biden appointing women and minorities nearly as fast as Trump appointed lickspittles. Meanwhile the conservatives are really mad about the idea that there has historically been one supreme court justice per circuit, which would put the number at 13.

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

All you need to know about the Supreme Court is in their 2000 Bush V. Gore decision, whereby they say "we're giving this to Bush because we fucking well feel like it, it will never set any sort of precedent, except we know damn well it will, eat it libs."

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

The Supreme Court has not surprised me since June 2012, when Roberts ruled "mmmyeah, healthcare gets to stand because of interstate commerce laws." We were coming back from Vandenberg, having shot a video of the Delta IV Heavy with the last KH11 go up, specifically to spy on bin Laden. Listening to NPR for some reason and lo and behold, Obamacare.

It's abundantly clear that Roberts' politics are to the right of mine but it's also clear he values his job over his ideology. That's what's saved the court in the past - pragmatism. They have no enforcement arm. They rely on reasonable agreement between the branches or it all falls apart. The "switch in time that saved nine" was a conservative court not wanting the New Deal so badly they were willing to become 17 justices.

There are pragmatists on the court. There are also lazy, incompetent ideologues who are perfectly happy to go "myeah, let's just toss Roe because we fucking feel like it." The more ideological the court becomes, the more they depend on their ideology being in office to not get circumvented. Lost in all this shirt rending is the undeniable reality that the Republicans have the positions they do because of parliamentary procedure, not popularity; they acknowledged back in Tom DeLay's time that they were going to be a permanent minority and the only way to preserve power was through gerrymandering and packing the court.

And it either goes full fascism or it snaps back. Period.

kleinbl00  ·  18 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024

I'll drop it Monday

kleinbl00  ·  19 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024

I just...

had a huge get land in my lap as a DJ. It's weird. It's like being the bar owner when Garth Brooks shows up for a secret show like he did back in the '90s except the show isn't for four days and you can't tell anyone. Like, we're putting out press releases under embargo so that nobody knows what crazy shit is gonna happen at midnight on a Sunday.

And it looks like a letter I wrote a couple-three weeks ago is going to make about 50 hard-working women about $30m a year. Which is CRAZY but a couple people i know who between them have been the head of benefits for like six giant corporations you've heard of said "normally this would be commissioned by inside counsel to get drafted by outside counsel by the company you're sending it to, not the other way around, and they honestly couldn't have written something this good. They're going to have to pay it and if they don't the insurance commissioner is going to have their hides."

kleinbl00  ·  19 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

It's February.

kleinbl00  ·  19 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

Nothing the Biden camp says now will make anyone vote for them in November and everything the Biden camp says now will be hopelessly parsed and regurgitated and recontextualized and recut like the Dean Scream until it's all butter emails butter emails butter emails butter emails.

When your enemy is making a mistake, do not interrupt him. - Napoleon Bonaparte

The correct move is to let Donald Trump hold the spotlight for everything that is about to happen to him until it stops happening to him. And it's not going to stop happening him for the foreseeable future.

kleinbl00  ·  19 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New "Over the Top" Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024

You're so close to getting it.

Donald Trump is a carnival barker. So was Hugo Chavez, so was Huey Long, So was Benito Mussolini. Historically, carnival barkers have ended up in the church because a pastor who can deliver a rousing message to reassure his flock is a valuable thing indeed. It's a symbiotic relationship - he makes them feel batter about their lives, they puff him up and make him important, everybody wins. I mean that sincerely. A good charismatic leader who values the well-being of his followers? That's how history is made, the good kind.

It goes wrong when the carnival barker is venal. When the barking matters more than who is listening it can take off on its own. I know Rulon Jeffs was a good carnival barker because he absolutely inspired a lot of craziness among people who weren't getting their best shake and they just took it. I know Warren Jeffs wasn't because shit fell apart on his watch.

Note that Warren Jeffs never would have built his own flock. He's too venal. He does not tend to the organization, he makes sure the organization tends to him. That's an important factor, too - the shitty ones usually toil in ignominy because they don't have the makeup to create a self-perpetuating organization. Joseph Smith? Never met the man but you can't deny he started something big. Hell, William Wilson made something that lasts. But for every Hugo Chavez there's a Nick Maduro, for every Rulon there's a Warren.

You know what I'm reading right now? Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto. I keep meaning to read The Condition of the Working Class in England because fundamentally, the basis of Communism was the British being horrible but I needed something audible and the library had The Communist Manifesto. It's puerile. It's accelerationist. It uses the word "highfalutin" which is hilarious. But it is also a deeply unserious work. You know what's an interesting book? 1917: Lenin, Wilson and the Birth of the New World.

'cuz here's the thing. Neither Marx nor Lenin thought Russia was a good spot to debut Communism but the opportunity arose. Neither Marx nor Lenin had any respect for Russia or Russians and it shows. They really figured America was the perfect place for Communism to take root and fundamentally, 1917 is a book about how wretchedly, hopelessly full of shit they were.

Communism took root in Russia because it was a weakly-run hinterland with ridiculous wealth concentration and a history of warlord rule. It was a weak power structure where a weak insurgency could overthrow an unpopular monarchy and consolidate power because once you decapitate a monarchy you're the new king. Lenin Stalin Khruschev Brezhnev Andropov Chernenko Gorbachev Yeltsin Putin Medvedev Putin 110 years right there and really, we shouldn't count Lenin, Chernenko or Medvedev. Stalin ruled almost as long as Katherine the Great.

It did not take root in America because Americans went "huh, the proletariat is restless, let's make their lives suck less lest we find ourselves guillotined." 1917 is fundamentally a book about how structures respond to stress.

_______________________________________

Shah Reza Pahlavi was a weak man. Mossadegh was also a weak man, but he was stronger than the Shah... until that was inconvenient to our purposes at which point we gave him the strength he needed. Tsar Nicholas was a weak man. Lenin was also a weak man but he was useful to the Germans and he was useful to Stalin.

Donald Trump is not a builder, no matter how much he thinks it will make the ghost of his daddy love him. He's an oaf eating sticks of butter like they were Snickers bars, the perfect face of a greedy power structure that has long stopped trying to make anything. The system had to be weak for Trump to happen and, once Trump happened, things could have collapsed.

But they didn't.

________________________________________

This is me calling you out:

    but I think you have to concede that if I'd asked you two or three years ago if Trump would be the GOP's guy again in 2024, you'd have said no, right?

It has been patently obvious since January 7th 2021 that the Republican candidate for president in 2024 would be Donald Trump. The Republican Party is in a doom loop. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows it. They sold their soul for this and they were never more than one demagogue away from it happening. I'm old enough that I remember when we thought it would be Pat Buchanan! But no, they needed someone trashier who had been introduced into more living rooms as a virile and successful man-about-town.

But it has been equally obvious that you can't step in the same river twice.

What do you know about Reconstruction? I knew fuckall because there's a lot of hand-waving and coughing and hastily moving on in every history class in the United States so I read WEB Dubois' history and I was shamed. I was moved. I was cowed. Because the 60 years after the Civil War were all about doing anything not to have to fight it again, no matter the costs to Black people, no matter the gains by Southern racists, because oh holy fuck if the British had gotten ahold of the South the rest of us would be a suburb of Canada.

Woodrow Wilson advised Truman a lot, believe it or not. And after VE Day Wilson told Truman that he could have vengeance or he could have peace but he couldn't have both.

And that's the New World Order right there -letting the guys who got all the gold keep it so that the Communists don't try something. I say " Everything else has been a contentious free-for-all to figure out how the fuck to move on" and you go "f we had moved on, the prosecutions would be over, Trump wouldn't still be lying about it, and the GOP wouldn't be helping him do it. "

Yes. You're right. IF we had moved on, yes. Or maybe things would be even shittier, like Reconstruction. But we HAVEN'T moved on. We're all trying to negotiate a way to be friends with the uncles who cheered on someone taking a shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. We're trying to figure out how to live with the Hang Mike Pence crew. Because you have to win the peace, too.

Winning the peace doesn't mean spooling up fever dreams about JD Vance successfully launching a presidential run. I mean are you fucking serious. The only contenders in the race that even thought about criticizing Trump dropped out early because of course an appalling percentage of the country wants nothing more than to own the libs. That's never going to change. What's going to change is their ability to hurt the rest of us.

Trends of history aligned in 2016 to express a worldwide backlash against neoliberalism. That backlash took the form of fascism, some more some less. Those trends have not been arrested but they have been slowed. And yeah, it fucking sucks. And it's fucking uncomfortable. And it's scary - the Democrats are all in. They're betting on a Republican collapse. They're betting that if they can keep enough people from getting swept up in the vortex they'll be able to make a government again and there's no precedent for this in living memory.

But there is historical precedence. Hitler arose in a shattered economy ruled by venal elites. So did Marcos, so did Pol Pot, so did Lenin. The closest we ever got here was Huey Long and he got sidelined when FDR said "hey those are some good policies how 'bout I just take most of them." Trump?

Trump is the effect, not the cause. If he had more sense he would have stayed out of it. But he was the right person at the right time with the right amount of vanity and the right amount of stupidity and here we are, four years later and the pied piper is still piping.

But there will be no one after Warren Jeffs.