I have a new naming convention for a few of the top players here. Chaos Agent 1 is Putin. I believe that he is the richest man in the world though his billions can't be accounted for. Chaos Agent 2 is Musk, the second richest man in the world and the one who is fomenting a lot of right wing nuttery and whispering in the ear of Chaos Agent 3, Trump. CA3 has the world's ear with his bonkers and really dangerous rhetoric about Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada. He is obviously rattling sabers to gin up terror among NATO/regular folks and bloodlust for his base. What could go wrong? I just saw a freshman GOP rep on CNN calling CA3's upcoming term as the new Manifest Destiny. Make America great again indeed.
This gives the lie to the constant refrain that he is not a warmonger and neocons in the parties are. I always though this one was most suspect. A war covers a lot of problems for Donald, I'm sure he'll take that route in 2nd term. After all when given a choice, he picked Option Z and blew up that Iranian general, nearly getting our soldiers in Iraqi bases fried.
I hear you, Julie. The post WWII order is over. But a lot of folks -- even people ostensibly aware of politics -- refuse to see it. An example was a guy in the comments yesterday talking about how your strategy meant that the "GOP has no good ideas" and "What are independents to do? Pick a side?"
Dude, we exited the "marketplace of ideas" a long time ago. The time to "pick a side" was after January 6, 2021. And the sides are a democratic republic or a Trumpian dictatorship,
I'm skeptical that Congress will stand up to DT. All DT needs to do is reinstate the draft and he'll find out how quickly his MAGA blowhards aren't all that loyal after all. I haven't forgotten massive protests of the 60s and early 70s. He's delusional enough to think all he has to do is snap his fingers and his base will be willing to go to war for him. Choice and student loan forgiveness didn't motivate youth to vote. He'll find out how the threat of war speaks directly to youth's self interest and will finally motivate them to take political action.
It is worrisome. Also the move by that robot Zuckerberg. And the sophomoric moves by Musk in Europe, which I suspect might backfire on him, if people could stop taking him so seriously..
So, yes, it's really worrisome. But as I have posted often on my Sustack and elsewhere: Trump needs to make noise to attract attention. So does Musk. These are really empty men (re Musk, he's good in business, but the super-rich often have zero scruples).
We are powerless to intervene, and the legacy media with their endless panels and overpaid anchors caterwauling about each new outrage are merely feeding the man's ego. What we can do, however, is take copious notes. We have to, so later, no one can say: "We didn't know." Understand, too, that inflated egos can do a lot of damage, but often the gesticulation is merely an absence of coherence. And by all means remain rational, good-humored, and amoral in our expressions.
Re: Musk being good in business. He had success after buying out Tesla, though his real money came from that Paypal deal. Twitter/X has been a disaster, and the very people who might buy Teslas / used Twitter a lot are the ones he is alienating more day by day. None of that is good business. Space X I have more sympathy for, though it's hardly going to make him lots of money. The UK should remove all official accounts from Twitter, more importantly stop journalists quoting from it without a visible health warning, and let him scream into the void.
You are right, and Tesla is why Musk HAD to help Donald. The only thing he could show investors is proximity to the White House. If Harris won, and he had to live off the actual Tesla company, investors would see through it. The Trump win has given Tesla (which makes his money not X and SpaceX) a doubling of value, coming off that a bit but still up. Investors expect a payoff in the next admin, it's priced into the market.
Silencing Twitter is a double-edged sword... The far-right (let's call them that for the moment) has this "free speech " culture war, in which they seem to believe that free speech means that a lie carries the same weight as a fact. I don't want to get into deep epistemic discussions at this point... but the problem is that the lie travels faster, that is not a cliché. It does and for good reason.
February may be America’s watershed month. We’ll either see Congress and the courts act to reverse any anti-Constitutional actions the Trump administration may take or we can kiss Democracy goodbye for at least several generations, if not forever.
I am and optimist, but as Harold Wilson (British PM) once said: "I always take my umbrella with me."
Things will have to get a lot worse to wake people up. This whole Greenland/Canada/Panama stuff is once again Trump playacting the fascist. The man is a combination of ignorant, dumb, and not very original. AFter all, his idol Putin is dreaming of the old Czarist Russia, while stupidly comparing himself to Peter the great, who was a rather pro-European Czar, Xi wants the old China back including Formosa (now known as Taiwan), Erdogan is hallucinating about the old Ottoman empire... So Trump, mentally drooling, is feeding that base some sort of Gross-USA image...
Meanwhile, I wake up, check whats happening, and right on cue the legacy media are wasting everyone's time rambling on about this garbage with highly paid panelists...
I have a new naming convention for a few of the top players here. Chaos Agent 1 is Putin. I believe that he is the richest man in the world though his billions can't be accounted for. Chaos Agent 2 is Musk, the second richest man in the world and the one who is fomenting a lot of right wing nuttery and whispering in the ear of Chaos Agent 3, Trump. CA3 has the world's ear with his bonkers and really dangerous rhetoric about Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada. He is obviously rattling sabers to gin up terror among NATO/regular folks and bloodlust for his base. What could go wrong? I just saw a freshman GOP rep on CNN calling CA3's upcoming term as the new Manifest Destiny. Make America great again indeed.
This gives the lie to the constant refrain that he is not a warmonger and neocons in the parties are. I always though this one was most suspect. A war covers a lot of problems for Donald, I'm sure he'll take that route in 2nd term. After all when given a choice, he picked Option Z and blew up that Iranian general, nearly getting our soldiers in Iraqi bases fried.
I hear you, Julie. The post WWII order is over. But a lot of folks -- even people ostensibly aware of politics -- refuse to see it. An example was a guy in the comments yesterday talking about how your strategy meant that the "GOP has no good ideas" and "What are independents to do? Pick a side?"
Dude, we exited the "marketplace of ideas" a long time ago. The time to "pick a side" was after January 6, 2021. And the sides are a democratic republic or a Trumpian dictatorship,
I'm skeptical that Congress will stand up to DT. All DT needs to do is reinstate the draft and he'll find out how quickly his MAGA blowhards aren't all that loyal after all. I haven't forgotten massive protests of the 60s and early 70s. He's delusional enough to think all he has to do is snap his fingers and his base will be willing to go to war for him. Choice and student loan forgiveness didn't motivate youth to vote. He'll find out how the threat of war speaks directly to youth's self interest and will finally motivate them to take political action.
Yes now we know what Trump asked of Zuck. No fact checking. He and JD don’t do so well with that.
It is worrisome. Also the move by that robot Zuckerberg. And the sophomoric moves by Musk in Europe, which I suspect might backfire on him, if people could stop taking him so seriously..
So, yes, it's really worrisome. But as I have posted often on my Sustack and elsewhere: Trump needs to make noise to attract attention. So does Musk. These are really empty men (re Musk, he's good in business, but the super-rich often have zero scruples).
We are powerless to intervene, and the legacy media with their endless panels and overpaid anchors caterwauling about each new outrage are merely feeding the man's ego. What we can do, however, is take copious notes. We have to, so later, no one can say: "We didn't know." Understand, too, that inflated egos can do a lot of damage, but often the gesticulation is merely an absence of coherence. And by all means remain rational, good-humored, and amoral in our expressions.
Written almost 7 years ago, and still accurate.
https://www.journos-blotter.com/2018/01/27/the-revolution-is-permanent-noise/
Re: Musk being good in business. He had success after buying out Tesla, though his real money came from that Paypal deal. Twitter/X has been a disaster, and the very people who might buy Teslas / used Twitter a lot are the ones he is alienating more day by day. None of that is good business. Space X I have more sympathy for, though it's hardly going to make him lots of money. The UK should remove all official accounts from Twitter, more importantly stop journalists quoting from it without a visible health warning, and let him scream into the void.
You are right, and Tesla is why Musk HAD to help Donald. The only thing he could show investors is proximity to the White House. If Harris won, and he had to live off the actual Tesla company, investors would see through it. The Trump win has given Tesla (which makes his money not X and SpaceX) a doubling of value, coming off that a bit but still up. Investors expect a payoff in the next admin, it's priced into the market.
Silencing Twitter is a double-edged sword... The far-right (let's call them that for the moment) has this "free speech " culture war, in which they seem to believe that free speech means that a lie carries the same weight as a fact. I don't want to get into deep epistemic discussions at this point... but the problem is that the lie travels faster, that is not a cliché. It does and for good reason.
But no one is asking the question: What is free speech, or freedom of expression... I connected with a gentleman named Phillip Sandmann who did finally address this issue and he mentions the excellent, condensed quote by Timothy Snyder about separating free speech and freedom of speech: https://philippsandmann.substack.com/p/everybody-hates-free-speech/comment/84892621?utm_source=activity_item#comment-85009801?utm_source=activity_item
February may be America’s watershed month. We’ll either see Congress and the courts act to reverse any anti-Constitutional actions the Trump administration may take or we can kiss Democracy goodbye for at least several generations, if not forever.
I am and optimist, but as Harold Wilson (British PM) once said: "I always take my umbrella with me."
Things will have to get a lot worse to wake people up. This whole Greenland/Canada/Panama stuff is once again Trump playacting the fascist. The man is a combination of ignorant, dumb, and not very original. AFter all, his idol Putin is dreaming of the old Czarist Russia, while stupidly comparing himself to Peter the great, who was a rather pro-European Czar, Xi wants the old China back including Formosa (now known as Taiwan), Erdogan is hallucinating about the old Ottoman empire... So Trump, mentally drooling, is feeding that base some sort of Gross-USA image...
Meanwhile, I wake up, check whats happening, and right on cue the legacy media are wasting everyone's time rambling on about this garbage with highly paid panelists...