I'm getting paranoid, I hesitate to articulate this because I feel like the forces of distraction read the opposition and utilize their insights. I can console myself with the fact that few people reads this blog.
The war is epistemology now. They can send up incomplete information on a side you agree with, and undermine your confidence in a narrative. Trump has threatened to do a lot of things and mostly he doesn't follow through, though he does follow through too. Say 3 true obvious things and then one false thing is a kind of pattern, and overwhelming are the tactics. We need to remain laser focused in this moment.
He floats the idea that he's powerful enough to rig the election, that Elon was. Creating suspicion about the American democracy. It's not untouchable, but is there any evidence?
Did he stages a weirdly bogus assassination attempt where a few people die, including the Trump supporting kid, who got cut from the shooting team because he was a bad shot, a weird way to find out there are high school shooting teams in PA. Incompetent worshipers is his pattern.
Who is this Palestinian with a green card who's been detained for expressions about Palestine in America? Mahmoud Khalil (two, wikipedia): His American wife is 8 months pregnant and he has a green card which can't be revoked without due process. He vigorously promotes Palestinian causes in America. He went to Columbia for a masters degree. I'm not sure whether he is worth defending, but on the face of it, it seems kind of spooky that he's been detained with no charges. Why would a professor who wrote 5 books do a masters degree? I know professors are always educating themselves, that's not a problem. We need freedom of expression in America. Not just right wing fascism on X and the information you like. There are limits. Harmful expressions shouldn't happen, and you can't cry fire in a crowded theater. In my opinion, far right wing expression is often harmful, lying and needs to be curbed. Musk ruined twitter, and I'm on Bluesky now, and it's pretty cool, but of this world and not perfect, and I'm drawing my ideas from there.
Are bots and trolls and half truthers cutting into Reddit and Bluesky? I've seen a huge uptick in people complaining about Reddit, swearing it off, etc. I look at the post history and they look like real people. I never really figured out why people would denounce a platform on the platform. Just walk away. Illogical doesn't mean someone is a bot.
There are narratives I can't support:
AI is somehow dangerous. It could be of course, but you have to understand science fiction, it's out to warn and it could be a problem, but we're not there yet.. AI is advanced enough to actually be useful? I like it when they underline misspelled words. I learned how to spell with that direct feedback.
The democrats could never in a million years predicted the election results and whatever nit picking you do about the democrats undermines the fact that Harris would be totally different than Trump, in a good way. The Palestinian woman who campaigned against Harris is weird to me, but just because she's against Harris isn't a problem, and Palestinian and Muslim isn't a problem to me. Of course people are not beyond criticism, but you have to examine the critiques critically. The right would really attack Harris as president, and could maybe create the idea that she's bad, like they did with Carter, but honestly. Like Biden and gas prices, that's gone away. Trump was going to lower egg prices but he hasn't, and that's only a problem on the left, the right doesn't actually care. I want boring, sane government, not wildly radical right wing experimentation, massive cuts to government, to give the rich tax breaks. You're messing with the fabric of society.
Calling Trump gay for Putin might play well in some circles, but I'm not down with calling people gay as an insult.
This Trumpcession isn't natural or growing pains, or something that will be easily reversed.
Just because Europe is taking greater ownership of defending Ukraine, doesn't mean what Trump did was right about Ukraine, and aligning with Russia is weird. I don't care if Reagan is upset in his grave, he was a monster too. The spin from the 80's isn't solid ground for me. The right wing chooses their own narratives, they don't get it from our critiques. Understand political bias.
Musk has substance abuse issues and autism. Maybe why he's so willingly able to harm people, but those conditions don't necessarily enable him, his money and our worship of money are enabling him. He has trillions to lose, he doesn't care.
Vance and Trump haven't given Ukarine anything, indeed side with Russia, so why thank him? And there are videos of him thanking America multiple times, thanking the Americans who supported the defense of democracy over oligarchy and authoritarianism.
Boycotts, ostracizing, woke and expertise are all capitalism and American. Tolerance has limits, just like free speech. Don't let the trolls get you confused.
To me the ends never justify the means, the means are the ends. How you do things is really important. Therefore I'm not for the assassination of Trump, or violent protests. Destruction of property isn't that horrible when it's Elon's products, cutting into his profits, but honestly I don't think you have the right to destroy others property. You may feel desperate, that the times justify the means, but I think that's the far right's mistake, and I don't want to repeat that.
Some hypocrisy is OK, I like to deadname twitter because Musk deadnames his own children. Anyway, it's like using the word kleenex, instead of tissue, the brand became the thing. Or xerox instead of copy. I don't capitalize because it's not a corporate logo, it's the common parlance, which is loose and not exact like print.
Not a lot of silver linings when people are dying, but clarifying one's values is a silver lining.
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