I have a soft spot for their songs about history. I was always slightly disappointed that while we got Here Comes Science out of their kids album era, that we never got a Here Comes History.

The Mesopotamians loosely fits this theme, as well.

Also, I was thinking of fat Presidents and this came to mind.

But we looked cool as hell while having those migraines.

I mean, I guess it is about the right time for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

I need to be blacked out to infinity.

“Move beyond the sins of your parents… Get out there and do some sin of your own, yeah-yuh!”

Yeah this has been online a while now and I’ve seen no attempts at providing evidence from theconcernedbird other than linking to the github that shows examples of how it can be used.

Persona Management software has been around for a long time, so it’s not even like the idea is even new, it’s just a new way of doing the old thing that’s been going down on the US internet since about 2010-2012ish.

We need actually evidence it’s being used for specifically this, not just an example of how it could be detailed in the github. The entire Republican establishment and corporate establishment function almost exclusively on the idea of “plausible deniability” it’s all about what can be proven in court, and now these groups have such massive coffers or money that almost nothing can be definitively proved in court. It’s why Musk wears his cheating and his alts and his nazi salute like medals of honor because “nyeah nyeah you can’t prove it.”

And part of the reason they act that way is because US courts have fecklessly surrendered “the justice system” to the corporate class for fifty fucking years or more, if they ever weren’t being bought by corporations. They’re legally shielded by our idiot ass broken fucking system and now they’re literally rubbing our faces in it.

Honestly, having said we need hard evidence, I’m not even 100% sure that hard evidence of this even matters anymore. It feels like the Iraq War torture leaks, and the Snowden disclosure… What changes? Nothing changes. The government was always just gonna keep doing what it did, and now Trump has taken steps to take quick control of all of that and twist it into his own dark ends.

I don’t know, China is kind of closed off. On the other hand, there are Indians all over the planet, they go and become successful in every country on earth. They could easily achieve a Cultural Dominance Victory a la Civilization simply due to the breadth of how far their culture could expand at this point. Bollywood is way bigger across the world than Chinese cinema. I can see it happening for India, even if the country itself doesn’t develop like you think it will (which it sounds like you’re much more familiar with than I, of course, being from there it sounds like). Cultural dominance is part of what allowed Britain to dominate half the planet for a good long time, I can see Indian culture achieving a similar cultural dominance.

You’re welcome. There’s lots of other real efforts, too. There’s been various successes at people preventing ICE from getting at people. I know a lot of people in /r/Seattle were doing the legwork of communications to help people avoid getting snared by ICE. The West coast will be a hold out. A school in Chicago also successfully repelled ICE agents from entering the school. Look for the helpers, they won’t be from the government anymore, they will be people like you and me.

I don’t think he’s clever enough to understand that. He didn’t understand that Hitler’s own Generals had plotted against him. He’s genuinely a dumb fucking prick. He just thinks “I’m a strongman and this is what strongmen do, MARTIAL LAW!” He’s like Captain fucking Murphy declaring “Martian Law.” He only barely understands these concepts.

According to Goldberg’s account of Baker and Glasser’s reporting, Kelly responded by explaining to Trump that the German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off,” but Trump reportedly was not swayed by the correction.

“No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” Trump said, according to Goldberg’s telling of Baker and Glasser’s reporting.

It’s so sad that cult deprogramming works so much like cult programming, just in reverse. The cult isolates you inside the cult community, and the only way to break it is to isolate a person from the cult community. It’s not really the same thing, because once they’re separated from the cult they should otherwise be allowed to freely associate with anyone, but it operates on the same principles.

Actually, that’s part of what he is aiming for. He wants mass protests so he can enact Martial Law. That was literally part of the plan on January 6th, 2020, to enact a State of Emergency. He’s just looking for excuses to put the hammer down on American citizens.

Not to say that’s a reason to not stir shit. They’re looking for excuses to ramp up the violence anyway, even if you try to keep your head down. Keeping our heads down won’t save us from it, so stir away.

I wrote the first sentence, then remembered the poems Tolkein wrote about Tom Bombadil.

Tom Bombadil was a merry old fellow

his jacket was blue and hit boots were yellow

(not verbatim, from memory)

Well, I’m talking about Sam and he’s a hobbit, he doesn’t even wear boots. It was mostly just weird silly connections in my head after writing down the first sentence fairly seriously. I had just happened to end the sentence with “fellow” and then couldn’t help myself.

You are experiencing what they want you to experience in this situation: A state of shock.

This is “Shock and Awe.” It’s a blitz to make the enemy feel like the task to fight back is insurmountable and to give up before trying.

Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight

This is not a military battle, but it is clear that Trump is practicing rapid dominance. He is using the Project 2025 pre-written Executive Orders to execute rapid dominance over the US government and make us feel shocked, confused, and desperate.

Naomi Klein wrote The Shock Doctrine in response to the Iraq War, and this is the Shock Doctrine being used on the US citizenry to whip them into submission.

We must resist this shock. The feeling you have, that it is hopeless, that no one is pushing back, is exactly how they want you to feel.

Get involved in Mutual Aid. Give back to your local community. Check out of national politics, we can’t affect it anymore. Focus on building parallel systems (food banks, community gardens, community mesh-networks, community first aid) for people to rely on since we can no longer rely on the systems that Trump is actively trying to dismantle or twist to harm the American populace.

Losing hope right now means losing the long-term battle against this. Losing hope is what they intend to force you into, broken, submissive, no hope. Do not go silent into that good night.

If you’re asking for someone to push back with effectiveness, you can be one of the first by giving your skills to your community.

In Klein’s own words:

Trump is a rolling shock machine, which a recipe for keeping us scattered and reactive to the latest shocking news. There will be moments when we need to react forcefully and meaningfully to protect one another.

EDIT: This also seems relevant right now:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

-Fred “Mister” Rogers

Oh yeah, the violence will come. After they’ve sufficiently shocked everyone into submission. The violence is to perpetuate the submission since shock wears off.

AP has a new poll out which asked whether people think it’s a good or bad thing that the President “relies on billionaires for advice about government policy.” When I first saw the results of this poll as “good” coming in at “+12” I thought they meant ‘net’ 12% and I thought, ‘eeeesh, the honeymoon phase is more intense than I thought!’ But no, 12%: as in, 12% of the public think it’s a good thing. 60% think it’s not. That’s US adults. The only outliers are Republicans, 20% of whom think this is a good thing. But even that is pretty feeble. To put it simply, these are terrible numbers.

In a strange way, this is reassuring. I’ve said a lot of times the most frustrating thing about all of this isn’t that the conservatives are too stupid to see the forest for the trees. No, they see a lot of the same shit we do, but their dedication to hierarchy is what undoes them every time. They could technically agree with me about an issue, but I’m not a person they consider an Authority Figure, and the only people they do respect as Authority Figures are, to put it fucking mildly, abusive bullies.

It’s also that misinformation has succeeded. What I assume is due to primarily a lack of quality education, but they seem incapable of understanding nuance. So they see that, say, the New York Times may not be trustworthy when discussing certain issues, just like I do. However, unlike myself, instead of reading it anyway with a skeptical eye while also digesting other sources about the same issue, they instead write off all mainstream media sources and then believe crazy shit online. They don’t know who to trust anymore, so they trust the most wild charlatans that exist. That’s not their fault, to be fair, our mainstream media has been failing us for decades. I worked in local news during the Iraq War and I remember how much the media juiced the war for the Bush Administration while asking few questions and the NYT even sat on the NSA wiretapping story for over a year to help Bush.

They’re not wrong to not entirely trust legacy media, but they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In the end, they also see how letting the most obscenely wealthy run the show isn’t such a hot idea. Which is strangely reassuring, as I said. They know something stinks, but they lack the education and tools to properly identify it, as well as their inability to break out from hierarchical thinking.

He’s rapidly destroying the regulatory infrastructure and sending his brown shirts out to sow fear and confusion.

It’s literally the playbook from Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign turned on US citizens (minus the indiscriminate bombing). It amounts to the same thing, though. It’s a blitz, do so much so fast it sets everybody off balance and puts them in a state of shock.

Shock and awe (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight.

Project 2025 wants to shock people into obedience. The flurry of Executive Orders are part of this shock treatment, as are the deportations, and roadblocks suddenly thrown up in front of government agencies. They intend to shock us and cripple our ability to respond via governance.

EDIT: Turns out, Klein agrees.

Trump is a rolling shock machine, which a recipe for keeping us scattered and reactive to the latest shocking news. There will be moments when we need to react forcefully and meaningfully to protect one another.

Based.

The good, kind, and compassionate will be the first against the wall.

Du.

Du hasst.

Du hasst meine Theorien.

Indifference is worse than cruelty and hate.

The universe is indifferent to our suffering, because it has no cognition.