Huh. I woke up this morning to do as I usually do, browsing the news and commenting on it, and I just can’t. Nope. Nothing inspires me today.
My mistake might have been first reading about RFK jr’s policies.
Death is the policy
I can’t expand on that. The man is a walking catastrophe, an incompetent buffoon who has been shielded from the consequences of his actions by wealth and privilege, and now he’s inflicting his uninformed, insane opinions on everyone else. He’s a madman, given control of HHS and NIH and dictating policy on everything from autism to infectious disease, while we sit around gawping at the spectacle. Our elected representatives are doing nothing to stop the disaster, and in fact rubber-stamped his appointment. What am I supposed to do?
I have to wonder how such a pathetic creature could acquire so much power. Naomi Klein explains that we must blame the rich.
What they want is absolutely everything
Klein recently co-authored an essay for The Guardian, sounding alarm about the dark worldview of politically insurgent tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Klein views these men — who are guiding Donald Trump’s presidency — as abandoning any positive vision for our collective future, and instead retrenching in preparation for a dark, nearly end times-level social collapse, from which they and other elites emerge unscathed, and all powerful. “The governing ideology of the far-right in our age of escalating disasters,” she writes, “has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.”
So the guys with billions of dollars are telling people like me, who is facing existential uncertainty about personal issues like retirement and health with virtually no financial backup, that we don’t matter, that there is nothing we can do, that we might as well die and get it over with. I’d be happy to do so if I weren’t so full of rage and frustration. Unfortunately, writing on the internet does not relieve my anger. We need to literally destroy these monsters of greed.
A few of our elected Democratic party representatives are trying to stop this disaster.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Governor Pritzker of Illinois, Senator Patty Murray, Cory Booker, and quite a few others.
It’s not enough though.
Good question.
We are all facing that exact same question.
.1. Resist any way you can.
We are the majority.
If we fight the fascists, we may well win, although we can also lose.
If we don’t fight the fascists, we are guaranteed to lose.
The choice here is obvious.
.2. Flee, Move, Become a refugee somewhere.
A few people will be able to do this.
Most of us can’t for various reasons.
I own a home. I have an old cat. All my friends and family are here.
It’s not easy to move at my Boomer age.
If I was in my twenties and free, it would be a lot easier.
.3. Don’t have children right now.
You really want them to grow up in the current failing, dystopian USA?
I recognize that his is a personal decision and this is just my opinion. I am however, taking my advice and not having any more children. Then again, at my age, I wasn’t going to anyway.
PZ said: We need to literally destroy these monsters of greed.
When it comes to conflict (war), I’m a complete believer in the General Sherman’s “March to the Sea” strategy. (scorched earth or total war). Always kick the enemy when they are down, if they try to get up kick them again and again until they stop trying to get up. That way they won’t get back up and hurt you. See The Biden Administration failure to go after Trump for J6 immediately after he was elected. Waited and Trump got back up, we know the rest.
So basically, it’ll be like “Into the Badlands.”
One of the phrases of the day: “Soft eugenics.”
My wife and I have been toying with the idea of moving overseas. We’re not poor, we have enough in the bank and in stocks to survive quite comfortably in many nations. We also have no criminal records or DUIs. I did some research and found to my surprise that Canada will refuse entry to anyone with a DUI. That’s considered a felony up there. Other desirable nations have similarly restrictive laws. But the thought of not hearing about Trump every waking minute of every day makes me perk up. Is that really a possibility, or is it a fantasy? On the other hand, leaving at this time feels like running away. It smacks of cowardice. If America is no longer a safe haven for free thinkers and the marginalized, what nation is? The mere fact that we’re seriously considering leaving our own country because we’re afraid of what comes next is sobering and depressing.
In other good news, Dr. Casey Means who holds an MD from Stanford, but never completed her residency and has let her medical license expire, and who is known as a “wellness influencer” aka QUACK, has been nominated for Surgeon General. Means, who has no public health experience, never practiced medicine and is known for selling “teas and creams” only claim to fame seems to be appearing on Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan and being a cheerleader for RFKJr. A vaccine skeptic, Means is not known to have had a brain worm nor nefarious relations with a dead whale.
What we do have in this country is an epidemic of stupidity that will be come an infectious epidemic of stupidity as preventable diseases take hold over the next 5-10 years. USA, we’re Number One!!!
Addendum:
Every Democratic politician that says “you are exaggerating” needs to go, comes primaries season. The same for the heritage Democrats who have shown an unimpressive record in defending the country from MAGA.
When the panzers are already moving towards you, Nevil Chamberlein wannabees should be met by the same cries as NC himself:
“Go! In God’s name, go!”
Are these rich bros all Ayn Rand cultists, who are trying to re-create the conditions of one of her books (Atlas Shrugged?)
John Watts @#5
It’s a fantasy, unless you avoid the internet and any other source of news you’ll hear about Trump in any of the places you might want to live. It might not be every mimute, but it will be more than several times a day and just as relentless, although the news media are more likely to be critical if that helps. But you could get off the internet or use foreign media for your news at home with a lot less disruption.
I personally think we are in the calm before the storm. There will be shortages and price spikes coming in the next weeks to months and even a return to pre-Trump tariffs will not stop this at this point. This tariff/immigration game that Trump is playing is upsetting the global supply chain and our ability to function. It takes time to have the full effects take hold. There will be shortages (partly from hording and partly from true shortage). Then there will be an increase in layoffs and then we will see what the people do. This year will be bad. Next year will be worse. After that no one knows and our ‘vaunted’ democratic institutions are not there at the moment to help. One prediction: Trump’s approval will never dip below 30%. The core MAGAts are there till they die.
This is my home. I have no plans of leaving. And unfortunately, our self imposed immolation will toast some other countries with a subset also catching fire.
The Democrats cannot get by with pithy slogans. They need to embark on a full-scale voter education program. What are the problems the nation (and world) face, what needs to be done about them on an abstract level (Idealism!) and on a practical level. (write – in public – the legislation that you will try to pass if you retake the House, if you retake the House and Senate, if you retake the House, Senate, and Presidency, and involve ‘the populace’ in writing that legislation as much as physics allows.) All in long-form video presentation (there are plenty of talented ‘academic youtubers’ who can put together multiple engaging explanatory videos) with almost no fund-raising solicitations (one short sentence at the end of the video) and well-moderated discussion pages. All done on a scale that makes a statement that “we don’t know what the Democrats will do” an obvious admission of willful ignorance. Flood the zone with good information and good clear planning (with well-articulated contingencies).
#8 The richbro’s seem to read dystopian novels and ask the wrong questions. Most folks read them and ask: How we can avoid this outcome. The rich seem to see them as a roadmap and ask: How can we make this happen?
The evidence is in the names for the businesses from Meta to Palantir. These are not good things within the context of the books they are from.
7 – birgerjohansson Every Democratic politician that says “you are exaggerating” needs to go, comes primaries season. The same for the heritage Democrats who have shown an unimpressive record in defending the country from MAGA.
THIS!
I would love to see Jasmine Crockett involved more with a new Democrat movement.
The problem is not Trump. The problem is the millions of people whose moral compass was so out of kilter that they voted for Trump because he scratched their ears and told them what they wanted to hear. Trump has probably been waiting to happen for a long time and the perfect storm finally came together.
I am not entirely sold on the “lizard brain” hypothesis, but it does explain a lot. Maybe we just haven’t evolved as far as we’d like to think. Maybe this really is the best we can do.
The band McCarthy had it right back in the 80’s.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WxWb9FAN078
They calculate how much it takes to starve a rat
And send it out to me
Sleeping in the trap
Begrudging everything
They’re keen to deal with me
So yesterday early
This lad informs me
These are debtor days
They’ve stopped your money
There’s no more money
We’ve heard that you paint
You’re making money
I said you’re joking
The rich are out to get to me
They want to see me hung drawn and quartered
You bastards give me heat
And I will paint you drunk
It’s not much to do
It’s all I can do
But one day soon
The poor will deal with you
Make your will out, mate
They know your names and they know your faces
Make your will out, mate
They know your names and they know your faces
They will deal with you
They’ll really deal with you
Good news from The Scathing Atheist!
( The Proud Boy-Cott edition )
We can take away half the economy from terrible people running terrible companies that support MAGA and other awful regressive things.
.
While it is difficult for the isolated individual to know which companies to boycott, regressive people have helpfully put together a list of good (meaning bad) companies : “Public Square”
.
We cannot as yet cheer as Trump is led away in handcuffs, but we CAN withdraw our custom from businesses that support him.
This may not be as spectacular as demonstrating while the cops are shooting bullets at peceful protesters but it works.
And it is a way to escape the paralysing depression of feeling helpless.
I will personally get a warm feeling every time I choose to bypass a pro-oligarchy product for an alternative product.
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken
I was amused when I heard about Thiel’s apocalypse bunker in New Zealand. Does he think Skynet will give him enough of a heads up to drive through LA traffic in time to get to the airport before the bombs start dropping?
Honestly, the kleptocrats should be more worried about the Luigi Mangiones of the world. When you steal bread from someone’s table, or their life saving from their pensions people get pissed and desperate. If some of those people are cops or security guards, they might just look the other way when the tumbrels start rolling
Trump, Musk and Theil live in a bubble of money where they never see the consequences of their actions. If reality punctures that bubble they’d probably be shocked by how much the rest of society hates them.
Three words: progressive income tax.
Two words: worth threshold.
birgerjohansson @16
Now I need a MAGA themed accessory in case I ever meet Eli Bosnik in person (10:15) in the latest Scathing atheist podcast. It will be hard to find one here in Canada.
there is a clear pattern of Trump appointing total incompetents to head these agencies so that they will not be likely to challenge him personally and they will run down those agencies so they are no longer centers of excellence and power that could be a threat to him. All that remains is to get rid of the judges. Congress he can ignore as it is impeachably unwilling to fulfill its sworn constitutional duty.
one of the biggest problems that the democrats have is for far too long they have been focused on not alienating the middle voter, the swing voter, the moderate republican until they sound like phony’s with ulterior motives. which is true in a real sense because they just want the votes. All of the politicians the right, left and center have for years spent most of their time focused on getting money to campaign with. It is past time to campaign on ideals and policies and principles no matter what stop worrying about the f’n swing voters or the moderate republicans . If the left wins without supporting those ideals policies and principles with truth and passion it will make no difference we will still be in the same mess we are in today
Progressive income tax is part 1.
Part 2 is to make a fraction of business and real estate assets current market value as if it were taxable income.
The tax brakets should be based around the real, lowest income mode in the nation, and the poverty line.