I think I got maybe two thirds of the way through the first Trump term before I realized I could no longer pretend that those who still supported the man were defensible in any way.

If I lived in America, I imagine a modest swath of my family would have voted for him this time around, and while I'm not going to freeze them out of my life for being stupid fuckheads, the idea that I can have any respect for these people ever again is pretty much shot.

It's not a grey area. Supporting this man, whether it is because you actually support him, or you just couldn't be bothered to figure out why you shouldn't, is and will be continue to be harmful to everyone on this planet for probably a very long time. Possibly the rest of our lives.

Fuck all of them. Fuck all of them.
 

I see where Splinter, the banally annoying news site, has the headline "Biden's Legacy Is the End of American and Democratic Institutional Legitimacy".  These are the same guys who thought it was a good idea to impeach Biden before the election, you know, to help Kamala win.  Like Cenk Uygur, they seem kind of enthusiastic about their defeatism.  In ten years, they'll be hanging with Tim Pool.

These are exactly the types of people who are unwilling or incapable of walking it off.

Beware this self-pity, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  These thumbsucking dipshits are not allies.
 

It's somehow less offensive that Elon Musk - richest man in the world are arguably most powerful in America - gave a rather unambiguous Nazi salute at our new president's inaugural rally than it is that there's a large segment of the right-wing not only trying to deny what we can all plainly see but are trying to act like they are the ones deeply offended by the mere suggestion that Musk is doing what it is he is clearly doing in the photo above, "lying eyes" be damned as dogs.  I mean, look at the schmuck.  He seems to be pretty emphatic about the gesture, biting lip n'all, like he was superdetermined that there would be no mystery about it.  He even repeated the gesture a second time just in case.  Even worse, some are accusing our foul spectacles of enabling ableism, because Musk is simply having an Asperger's moment, which is mighty woke of them.  "Oh, he's obviously just sending his heart out to the crowd."  It's a total coincidence that the official Nazi salute involves the right hand extended from over the heart to upstretched palm.




And perhaps my favorite excuse is that "Elon Musk can't be a Nazi because he loves Israel".  Unfortunately, antisemitism isn't always a necessary qualification for fascism, and we can definitely identify fascists among the Israeli settler-terrorists currently enjoying favor in Netanyahu's cabinet.  Maybe this is why the ADL has come to Musk's defense, not because they don't recognize what they clearly see, but that they don't wish to upset the imminent permission from the new administration to allow the continued violence from these settler-terrorists against the current inconvenient residents of 'Greater Israel'.

Of course none of that means that Musk isn't actually antisemitic anyway, but that, currently, his xenophobic focus happens to lie elsewhere,with the browner immigrants currently invading the porcelaine-pure climes of white civilization, openly giving support to neo-fascist groups in Germany (AfD) and Britain (the English Defense League), which have in common a rabid anti-immigrant position (specifically of the Muslim variety) and a pro-Putin stance.  You know, Putin?  That guy that Musk is frequently in contact with, that story which somehow did not become a scandal in the US news media despite Musk being Trump's primary political donor?

The authoritarian inclination, and specifially of the eugenics variety, has not been a silent aspect of the rising political dominance of the Big Tech billionaire class.  From Peter Thiel's anti-democratic technocracy to "Effective Altruism"'s eugenic futurism, it should be clear what the vision entails and that these superrich individuals have the power and influence to feel entitled to make it happen.  Elon Musk's purported "anti-wokism" is part and parcel of these same movements and sentiments.  And he now has a White House office to design its implementation with the full backing of a recently unleashed similarly authoriarian-bent President billionaire who shares these sentiments of genetic power.

American news media still seems willing to give a good faith presumption of innocence to the right-wing sophists trying to deny and distract from their agenda.  They also denied Project 2025, remember?, until they didn't.  Or denied that those Jan. 6 rioters convincted of felonious assault wouldn't be pardoned?  Unitl they were.  Who do we trust in these confusion times?  Maybe start with our eyes?
 

I also definitely know that the whole plot began with Elon wondering aloud: "You know what would be really badass...."

crumbsroom wrote:

It was 100% meant as a Nazi salute. And it was 100% always intended for him to deny that it was a Nazi salute, and have him gripe that Hitler comparisons are such a lazy response from the woke mob.

This is the kind of 3D chess Elon Musk is playing at.

Clearly billionaires need some fucking hobbies.
 

I think the guy from Blackberry who cashed out and fucked off forever had the right idea. I promise to do the same if I ever strike it rich.

Recently, no doubt inspired by Elon Musk's shenanigans and the denialism behind it, there's been a Jean-Paul Sartre quote which has been circulating regarding the "absurdity" of the sophism used by such deniers, and while it's perfectly appropriate to use the quote in this context of antisemitism, I find that it's also perfectly appropriate across the spectrum of fascist denialism and defensiveness, and really the entire 'post-truth' troll lexicon of logical deformities which are employed to abuse those who still dare to recognize logical and linguistic consistentcy.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

In MAGA America, truth is far less of a virtue than 'winning', and despite all of the ill-conceived post-election "post-mortems", the central misunderstanding is that anyone who voted for Trump is capable of being persuaded not to.  The fact is that they are not willing.  They do not care.  Caring, in fact, has become a liability.  Or, to paraphrase Trump's mentor Roy Cohn, it is an advantage not to care.  Fascism is inherently a sociopathic ideology, and as long as we continue to deny what fascism even means, we are unable to understand that "the time for argument is past".
 

Jinnistan wrote:

So I guess we're all sitting around waiting for anyone to ask the obvious question....

Does anyone seriously think that Elon Musk is too mature to dump the private banking information of his critics on a ring of Russian identity thieves?  Asking for a friend....
 

This Musk/Treasury situation is just so unbelievably horrifying I'm incapable of talking about it.

The rage over how this could even happen.

The horror of how far reaching it's implications  could be.

My complete acceptance of how this would be considered totally acceptable by the Republican Party.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

The rage over how this could even happen.

Of course, and unfortunately, a lot of the rage is directed at the non-existent resistence from the Democratic party.  I mean, we knew a lot of what was going to happen.  They wrote a 900-page book about it (Project 2025).  Democrats should have already had their lawyers standing ready on day one.  Like how the ACLU was able to shut down the birthright citizenship order in one day.  But Congress has the power of the purse, and congressional Dems should have filed suit last week to force an injunction against Musk, an unelected, unconfirmed "special" leader of a fake agency which Congress did not create.  Instead, it looks like the Dems - or at least the purported leadership - are taking the strategy of standing back and letting Trump embarrass himself....because that's worked before!  Look at this bitch Chuck Schumer (whom I'm inclined to remind is as much a tech oligarch stooge as Trump) trying to old man troll with this "stop the steal" bill for something which is already illegal.  These cunts still think this is a game.  Chuck's on X telling people "just wait until prices go up", instead of trying to do anything to stop all of that, because he wants to score "told you so" points.  You know how valuable "told you so" points are?  I'm currently sitting on a goddamn Fort Knox of "told you so" points from all of those folks who refused to vote for Kamala because she's complicit in genocide, and all I keep getting is stubbed toes.

Exactly.

The rage.
 

In case anyone (like me) remains reluctant to submit to the paywall for the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos, and therefore cannot access the WaPo article “Here are the words putting science in the crosshairs of Trump’s orders,” I’m posting some screenshots shared by clinical psychologist USC psych professor Darby Saxbe, listing words that can get a research grant flagged and cancelled, even ones that have already been approved:
...
Oh FOR FUCK'S SAKE it didn't work and this is why I don't post here more often. Computers stress me the fuck out anyway and this shit after going to the trouble to copy the images, send them to myself, download them onto my computer, log into imgbb, upload each one, then agonize over whether to copy/paste "viewer links" or "direct links" or "HTML image" or... Just here's the fucking link goddammit, at least I remember how to do that:
https://bsky.app/profile/darbysaxbe.bsky.social/post/3lhcvn4hxwk2o
As Saxbe rightly points out,
These keywords could show up in the text of ANY grant involving human participants. If you say you're going to study men and women, you get flagged. If you say you're going to control for socioeconomic status - totally standard practice - you get flagged. Disability? Flagged.

The word "systemic" is on the banned list, so if I study systemic inflammation & health, flagged. If I study political science, flagged. If I study trauma, flagged. Keep in mind that the largest mental health provider in the country is the Veteran's Administration, but we can't study trauma now?

…You can't design a study of humans without using at least one of the terms on the banned list, which means that biomedical, brain, social science research is now on ice in the USA.

...I can't remember how to put quotes in their own little fucking square either, so I just put Saxby's words in red. I'm sure I took note of all this code shit at some point but can't remember where I put the note. 1½ hrs of my time. Good night, America. I mean Canada, since we yanks are about to become the 11th—60th provinces. Yay, free health care! Maybe now we'll finally learn how to use the metric system. 

"you won't make it"

That's an old Rotten Tomatoes joke.

It's going to be four years, dude.  Relax.  Breathe.  Pace....

And check this out for some tips.