I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be an American food store in Paris called "Thanksgiving." I don't know that I'd have found the cranberries otherwise.

That WOULD be larping.

Much younger me: You’re not gonna believe this, but that’s the best part.

“Wait why are you putting bread in that bird”

I have a clear idea of what I want and need for the rest of my life, and I definitely wouldn’t need all of that. I suspect being rich enough to command attention is where money starts being counterproductive for happiness.

You’ve invented what X is trying to be.

I know why they’re doing it, but why are you?

If the Old Kingdom collapses, it loses an organized system of exploitation.

If our society collapses, it loses a halfway decent representative democracy.

“Collapse” is much too big a framework.

Thanks!

Still strongly suspect I’m missing something

Apparently I’m lacking some context

Some but not all libertarians tolerated gay people, and only at some institutions. Being openly LGBT in that space meant that your every media appearance or event was likely to catch homophobic emails, or worse, from your nominal supporters.

The feds under Trump are doing "Black Helicopter" shit at a rate that exceeds the wildest fever dreams of the paranoid right wingers of the Tea Party era. We've got dozens of Ruby Ridges every day, and the body count will likely soon approach Waco. And most of Trump's victims did no crimes.

Was this man on an absolute boatload of hard drugs, or was he just like that?

This is just like they were. The bad spelling, the bizarre sentence structure, the insights that they clearly thought were profound.

Don’t demand “better” enforcement. Don’t demand a humane system for migrant removal. It can’t be done humanely.

Call for fixing the unjust laws, and for peacefully resisting them in the meantime. Demand easier immigration and citizenship.

But that kind of highlights a problem with immigration. There the law is still functionally racist. But as racists know, you’ll never sound like a racist if you just blandly ask for the laws to be enforced.

“Enforce the laws” is a trap for centrists. It caught the Democratic Party in 2024.