It’s interesting to note how vital lying is to authoritarianism.

People often worry over the dark appeal of fascism. But if it’s really so enticing, why does every dictator have to, say, lie about being anti-gang while empowering them, or pretend to be pro-america while destroying the country on behalf of it’s enemies?

Since russia took over the government, we the population of the US are the foreign adversaries. And boy howdy are we being treated like it.

start thinking about a general strike

How many months of food and rent money do you have saved up?

A general strike isn’t only a massive challenge of will and solidarity - it’s also picking a resource fight with capital itself. All the determination in the world crumbles in the face of hunger and deprivation. A general strike requires months or years of planning and hoarding.

Thousands of Oregonians on Saturday joined nationwide protests

There were easily 10k+ at the waterfront in downtown Portland, combined with the single digit thousands at other spots in the greater metro and the numbers from other spots around the state, it’s much more accurate to say ten of thousands.

A more effective version of BLM would’ve called a general strike.

You can’t just call a general strike like it’s an I Win power in a video game.

How is BLM going to feed and pay rent for millions of strikers in this general strike? A general strike is a massive, resource intensive feat of logistics with many possible fail points that takes a long time planning to have any hope of success.

Especially since we’ve not had a general strike in over a generation, there’s a good chance it would fail and sour the prospects of doing a general strike in the future.

Also, BLM was a diffuse multi-regional movement with local goals and concrete demands. Defund police departments and end qualified immunity were consistent national goals.

Yeah it’s laughable to suggest that russia has a plan that benefits the US in any way. Help us destroy the country and you can loot the ruins is the plan.

Sure, it’s definitely making headlines. But it doesn’t seem… purposeful I guess? Who is the target audience for this message? How does it possibly further bannon’s interests?

I can’t imagine any of musk’s support being eroded because bannon thinks he’s racist, and no one left of mussolini is gonna join team bannon.

The H1B visa blow-up is the plutocrat wing championed by musk getting their way over the more strict white supremacists represented by bannon.

So why did bannon call musk racist - which counts as complement for their base - rather than a race-traitor, which their supporters would agree is bad?

Does he think non-magaites will only now realize musk is massively racist and jump on team bannon? I truly do not understand.

Russia is wasting no time here. They’re already starting to pull apart the US military while the tariffs plan strikes at the core of the US’s most important alliances. And their regime hasn’t even taken power yet.

I haven’t seen any opinion polls on abolishing heirarchy yet.

Almost every poll that I’ve seen for ~20 years which asks about policies shows that most left wing positions have at least 50-60% support.

There was a great study years back from princeton looking at the difference between policy outcomes and public preferences at the time. They concluded the US has been an oligarchy since at least the 70s, since no major policy outcome has matched public opinion.

The farthest right faction of our elites are currently pulling so far to the right of the population that the flimsy theatre of representation we have now is actually proving a barrier. Republicans wouldn’t be supressing votes if people wanted their ideas.

Nations. As in centralized hierarchical states. Brutal killing machines all. It’s been what maybe 4-8k years of their bullshit and I for one am fucking sick of it.

We have a strongly right leaning elite and a government that was never designed to represent the will of the majority is how I would put it.

I really don’t have a problem with this. She’s a center right candidate from a center right party - of course she’ll make an appeal to center right voters.

Sure, I wish we had a left wing candidate or a left wing party. But you can’t vote in the election you want, you vote in the election you’ve got.

I think you’re meeting him well more than half way in your interpretation. He didn’t condemn making racist jokes, he just acknowledged that people don’t like them anymore. That’s just not “he thought about it and came around”.

“You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill.”

He’s explicitly looking at this as a necessity of his profession, not a change of heart.

I don’t think he’s doubling down. Just officially taking back his comments with a bunch of meaningless apology waffle that makes it clear this is not a change of heart, only a change in his official position.

I’m glad that he felt he had to officially change his position, but I think it’s incorrect to frame this as “he thought about it and came around”.

Your quote is just as clear about that as mine. They both have the official position stated clearly: “I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy… It’s not true.”, "I don’t think, as I said, the ‘extreme left’ has done anything to inhibit the art of comedy.”

But the remaining apology waffle makes no sense:

“You can’t say certain words about groups. So what? The accuracy of your observation has to be 100 times finer than that just to be a comedian” What does it mean that comedians have to be 100 times more accurate than a racial slur? “things that I use to say that [I can’t because] people are always moving [the gate]? Yes, but that’s the biggest and easiest target” Target for what? By whom? This sentence still implies that he wants to make the jokes that he used to but can’t anymore.

sounds to me like he thought about it and came around

That’s not what it sounds like to me. He’s just that a slightly different kind of absolute nonsense starting coming out of his face:

“I said that the ‘extreme left’ has suppressed the art of comedy… It’s not true. If you’re a champion skier, you can put the gates anywhere you want on the mountain and you’re going to make the gate. That’s comedy. Whatever the culture is, we make the gate. You don’t make the gate, you’re out of the game. The game is where is the gate and how do I make the gate to get down the hill.”

Even you generously interpret that as coherent thought, he’s still saying that the left changed comedy and you can’t make same jokes anymore. No awareness that risky and ‘offensive’ comedy is fine and everywhere, no awareness that there’s a difference between offensive comedy and racism on a stage, no awareness of the social context of his comments amidst the rise of fascism.

He just repeated his comments, but less coherently and with the strongly negative words taken out.

When I was an undergraduate, a friend of mine wrote a book review of the bible for the student newspaper.

The opening sentence was: “Not since Naked Lunch has such a boring book been saved by the constant barrage of sadomasochistic homosexual pornography.”

The sookie stackhouse books that got turned into true blood have such a fun premise but are appallingly written. A friend and I used to play the audiobooks at parties for laughs.

That sounds like depression, executive dysfunction or some other brain dopamine issue. No amount of lists or “trying harder” (😂🙄) is going to help. Speak to a doctor about it.