I used to periodically imagine that it would be funny when talking with one of these people to just out of nowhere tackle them and take their wallet

I never did it and I don’t think I would even if the situation somehow presented itself, but I do think it would be wonderful if someone would. Like bro… you just said that this was okay. How can you possibly be upset about this outcome.

Isn’t this what GPT has been doing (with a somewhat limited level of success) for quite a while?

I feel like scitechdaily.com is mostly an exercise in repackaging very surface-level stories to harvest clicks, not really all that deep or informative. Just MO on it. I looked at the story, and it’s a little more sophisticated than what GPT has already been doing for a while, so maybe that’s unfair, but it still seems like a weirdly notable omission to make it sound more breakthrough-y than it is.

I don’t know why this is so predictive as a general rule, but it seems like most militaries that make it their business to kill women and children and generally attack the innocent, are absolute dogshit when it comes to engaging with even moderately capable armed opponents.

That the I”D”F is this totally fucking useless and disorganized when faced with the task which is supposedly its mission kinda throws it into sharp relief what is its actual mission

This part doesn’t seem totally crazy to me. Actually, Ralph Nader, who has quite a history of getting good outcomes to pop out of the pig’s ear (to put it pretty fuckin charitably) that is Washington, expressed his anger and frustration with people who were seeing injustices like Gaza and not doing anything to threaten the Democrats into better behavior about it. Like I say, not totally crazy.

I feel like the needed additional part for that, though, is some concrete action to induce the change you are aiming for from the Democrats. That’s the part that the civil rights movements had. If you’re just saying “not good enough yet” as a general thing, and encouraging others to do the same, then I think that ramps up the unlikeliness of it producing any good policies, and also ramps up significantly the likeliness of it producing death camps instead.

Not saying you’re doing that; I haven’t gone back and taken any kind of deep dive. But I’ve been conversing with you and I haven’t happened to run across anything that stuck out that looked like “I don’t want to vote for the Democrats unless X Y Z and you shouldn’t either.”

Oh right. My mistake.

So you know that Trump has plans to start shooting protestors on purpose with live ammunition, but you also think that whether you vote or not isn’t important? Not just “accidentally” crush some eyes or testicles or skulls from time to time, but just outright gun people down en masse, and you’re okay with not doing anything to stop that escalation until the Democrats clear your bar for goodness?

(Actually, more accurately, he has plans to remove the things that stopped the order from getting carried out, when last time he said he wanted them to shoot protestors with live ammunition.)

I’m not trying to be rude about it or harp on this one thing when we seem like we should be allies, but your viewpoint on that sounds shockingly naive. You also didn’t answer my question. If you (or I) are one of the people getting shot, a year from now, because you want to organize for a better world, will you in your words deserve to face those consequences?

🎶🎶🎶

🔫

🎶

* kick at your front door
how you gonna come
wi’ your hands on your head

FTFY

For the unfamiliar

Why is this not sedition?

That too, yes. But my main point is that Trump is such a disorganized moron that I think it’s possible that having him at the helm will undo a lot of the potential effectiveness of Project 2025. Having almost anyone else in charge of its implementation will amp up the terrifyingness level by quite a bit, and it already wasn’t small.

Whether you vote or not isn’t important to me as long as whoever gets elected, you continue to fight for a better world via direct action.

If Trump gets elected, you may start getting shot for fighting for a better world via direct action. Or for many other things.

The Democrats created this situation,

100% true

and they deserve to face consequences for it.

Along with millions or potentially billions of others, who didn’t do anything wrong?

They didn’t say Biden had any part in the genocide, they said:

There is a very real chance that Biden’s unquestioning support of Israel will lead to WW3.

Bibi knows whatever happens, Biden will always have his back. He can’t get that loyalty from any other US president

Those are two dubious statements followed by a third that is explicitly and laughably objectively false. Every US president has had Israel’s back. The idea that Biden is somehow exceptional is the part that is Republican propaganda, not the idea that he has any part. He clearly has quite a large part in it, I think. I would stop short of saying he’s “responsible” for it at this point, although I guess that one is debatable by people of good faith.

But saying he’s a departure from the norm for US presidents because of his nearly-total support for Israel is explicitly false, and is being used quite effectively as propaganda against him in this election, yes. When was there a US president who didn’t support Israel?

Also, I want to get clear on this, too: Are you saying people should be unable to say that this is Republican propaganda? Like not allowed to say that, something is wrong with the forum if they’re allowed to make that claim about you? Or no?

This is exactly why Trump is the best case scenario for all this ugly shit coming to its battle. Think about if they went to all this trouble of laying the groundwork and rigging the media coverage so everyone spends the whole time talking about how Biden’s old and jerrymandering and overriding vote totals with the state legislature and killing the post office and intimidating voters and running multi billion dollar explicitly seditionist media networks and whatever else and what the hell, it works, and he gets a second term.

And then he says, fuck that, we hate Project 2025 now, if I do that then people won’t like me

It’s the same reason some spy agencies put a kibosh on the idea of killing Hitler… like actually, we looked at it, and this guy’s a seriously mentally ill stimulant-addicted megalomaniac in addition to a stone cold moron who refuses to listen to anyone smarter than him, I think we actually want him to be the one in charge of the whole operation.

I think the pure length of it introduces enough delay before encountering the really terrifying parts and might interfere with the punch of the message. I might try to do a modified version with some bold text and larger sections so some of the strong full impact comes across right away, without trying to reduce the detail or the scope

Also, I think it is relevant to repeat the founders’ feeling on it. The “government” doesn’t “let” you do anything. Everyone’s just born into the earth into this wild and semiorganized place, as weird social beings that are half monkeys and half made up of something a lot more inspirational. And from time to time, they want to set up a system they all agree on so they can have clean water and roadways and courts and someone centrally in charge of the economy, things like that. But, sometimes like a few thousand people put temporarily in charge of all that start to look around at all the guns and money in their command and get confused and think they have the right to tell 400 million other people “hey check it out you have to do what I say, I DGAF what you think or of it’s right, that’s just what’s up.” And then when that happens it is the job of the 400 million to re educate them on what’s up.

And you could say that if they don’t, they deserve what happens. But honestly it’s not even a statement of deserves or not, or right and wrong. It is simply a statement of the reality of what happens. Most of things like the bill of rights is understood today as like, what the government is “allowed” to restrict and not, but the founders’ view of it was a lot more akin to, these are some examples of what people will do as inherent parts of their nature and God help you if you try to tell them they can’t, and they become alert and organized.

Nature is a cold hearted bitch. Worse than any person you have ever encountered.

Starvation, hunger, exhaustion, untreated injuries, fear, pain, and death.

Humanity is what we bring to the table. This whole fiction you and I get to inhabit where everything’s warm, everything’s clean, the store is full of food, someone comes to help you and take care of you if you’re sick or injured, humans made all that shit up, piece by piece.

Keep it going. Wild place is wild place. Human place is human place, and it’s pretty fuckin far from perfect so far. It’s good enough now that if you’re from the lucky countries you can see the heartless inhumanity in the natural world by way of contrast. But it’s for damn sure not done yet.

What, exactly, are you saying happened in this comment thread you’re linking to? And then why it was wrong? I just want to have it straight before I address it.

He didn’t actually say stay off the internet; that was my oversimplified retelling. A little more complete but still oversimplified version would be: Be careful and don’t share more than what you think is safe to share, and try to focus on the real world as much as you can. The real world doesn’t have mass surveillance in quite such a prepackaged and straightforward fashion, and it is where all the real outcomes good or bad will eventually take place anyway, so prioritize it as much as you can.

“On Tyranny” has some great guidance on this, as well as some guidance on how to do what you can to help put the brakes on it happening.

TL;DR there’s quite a lot more, but stay off the internet, get used to making small talk, making eye contact. Know who’s in your community physically and who has your back. Renew your passport, make friends in other countries if you can. Make friends. Stay off the internet.

I suspect that all the “don’t tread on me” “Obama is shredding the constitution” “1776” iconography is deliberately chosen by the propaganda designers, to mentally inoculate the followers against someone pointing out later on that they are treading all over a whole bunch of people and shredding the constitution.

Yeah or a protestor at Columbia or a teacher in Oklahoma or working for the CDC or New York Times or fuck me what the fuck is happening

(I mean it is clear that Florida and Oklahoma and the administration at Columbia are rebelling against the American system. I think their tendencies are universal which includes American governing bodies too. I think part of the good sense of the American system is recognizing that people of every nationality and supposed-allegiance have certain tendencies when you put them in charge, and it isn’t at all a bad thing for them to get scared that if they act on them, someone might carry them out of the building and throw them in the harbor and find someone else to put in charge instead.)