People participating in mass protests do not have to DO anything violent to be perceived as a threat by the state because—from the perspective of the state—a unified mass presence IS the threat.

State violence in response is often disproportionate because it’s a reassertion of dominance and power.

For years the debate in front of me was "Democrats are feckless weak compromising losers without principles or imagination, interested only in their own paychecks and the donor class" versus "Democrats are the only thing between us and the abyss" and I am deeply concerned everyone was right.

this is where I'm at and let me tell you it's a bleak place to be

I have no faith in the Democratic party to hold the line that needs to be held and also they are the only realistic option to do so - there is no third party or alternative movement ready to step in and replace their infrastructure

Over in the other place, the billionaire owner is threatening to fund ‘moderate’ (rightwing) candidates in heavily Democratic districts too.

This is what oligarchy looks like. It’s the biggest threat to democracy today. Not ‘cancel culture.’ Not trans kids. Not college protesters.

Oligarchy.

wake up to the person bernie sanders always has been

BREAKING: During the final weeks of the presidential campaign Elon Musk, the right-wing MAGA billionaire, made $75 million in campaign contributions to his Trump-aligned America PAC — Musk has contributed a total of $238,523,078 million to America PAC, according records filed today with the FEC.

way too many people seem to be wanting to FAFO with regards to social order in a country where lethal weapon ownership is the highest in the world

Violent revolution almost never goes how proponents hope.

Even if began by idealists, it shifts or gets co-opted, usually by the most brutally violent and extreme.

Even if it ends up taking down a hated elite, it often results in a different elite, and hurts far more regular people along the way.

I have long had zero patience with Americans who furiously post about how cool and fun a bloody leftist revolution would be, because that is the stupid shit you say when you don’t know very much about how those revolutions tend to go for people who aren’t rich and powerful

I’ll crack a joke. I’ll throw poems your way and might even steal your man for the night if I get bored.

But I’ll never tell you a lie.

…

Our house is on fire. The doors are locked. The firefighters locked us inside just before they sped off.

Excusing their behavior will not save our lives.

One of the most dispiriting things about this timeline is the way dudes who lack any imagination for anything but appropriating others have tried to create the future they were fed as kids--conquering Mars and boxy silver cars. Basically, human LLMs run on Bitcoin miners & testosterone boosters.

I asked Fred Clarkson, a researcher who studies the confluence of religion and politics, why North Carolinians should worry about public funding of religious indoctrination through school vouchers.

His answer scared the living 💩 out of me. #ncpol #nced

not saying anything groundbreaking here, but I really think "politics as a form of content to be served up and consumed like all other forms of content" has been an enormous, underrated disaster in terms of giving folks the illusion of being informed while essentially being gamed like a drug addict

2016 / 2020 / 2024

Looking forward to learning how appointing an accused child-sex-trafficker as AG and a suspected Russian asset as DNI will lower the price of eggs