Ocelot II
Ocelot II's JournalThat's not the answer, though. What I'm really asking
is a very old philosophical/moral question, which is basically, Why the hell are so many people so shitty to each other? I read about all the crap Trump and his minions are doing, which isn't that far removed from Nazi Germany, which isn't that far removed from all the other shitty behavior of humans toward each other throughout history. Animals kill to eat and they fight for territory and mates, but they aren't mean just for the hell of it. People, some of them, anyhow, are mean because they like it. What happy little tickle did Kristi Noem get from cosplaying as an ICE agent and parading her botoxed self and her $60K watch in front of that sorry bunch of degraded prisoners in El Salvador? Why does Stephen Miller get a woody when he talks about eliminating habeas corpus so he can send anybody at all to foreign gulags without any kind of hearing? What the actual platinum-plated fuck is wrong with these people - or is this just the way people are, and we'd all turn mean if the circumstances allowed it?
Right now I wish I could live in a hut in the woods and never see another human again.
Yes. I seem to be in a permanent state of WTAF?
Sometimes I just sit back and watch, kind of like an anthropologist studying the strange ways of a newly-discovered tribe whose behavior is deeply puzzling and disturbing. I have some theories about how we got here, although it's hard to evaluate any situation when you're in the middle of it and it's messing up your head. But my theories are drawing uncomfortable parallels to Nazi Germany. Germany got its ass kicked badly in WWI and its economy was in bad shape. Then along comes this guy who has a talent for long-winded speeches and who promises to Make Germany Great Again, and he blames a convenient scapegoat, the Jews, for all Germany's troubles (anti-Semitism already being a thing, just not yet official government policy). You'd think a country like Germany, which had been a prosperous First World center of European culture and arts and education and science for ages, wouldn't fall for blatant demagoguery, but you'd be wrong; it did. And eventually so did we, the biggest and richest and best at everything, but we can't even blame an ass-kicking in a war for it. So I still can't answer my own question.
*Somebody* had to kill Jesus or there's no point to his whole story.
He was supposed to have suffered and died for our sins (I'm not sure how that really works, but that's what the doctrine says), and he was then resurrected (did God change his mind?).
That said, the bit about the Jews killing him is, of course, false; it was the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who was responsible; Jesus was executed for sedition against Rome. But if the GOPers are so concerned about anti-Semitism, why are they making an exception for the lie that the Jews killed Jesus, which is the very foundation of anti-Semitism, dating from the Middle Ages? Christians wouldn't have been hating and persecuting Jews since medieval times but for that very lie. If you sincerely want to do something about anti-Semitism in all forms you can't very well object to advocating support for Palestine and/or opposing Zionism on one hand (positions often espoused by leftish college students) while permitting others (some evangelical Christians) to preach the seminal lie that Jews killed Jesus. Seems pretty hypocritical to me.
There's a thing called confirmation bias and everyone is susceptible to it.
We want to see confirmation from other sources of what we already believe. So something pops up on social media, which is a cesspool of stuff that's true or satirical or dubious or just plain made-up, and it's consistent with our own belief about how somebody or something is either wonderful or horrible, and we pounce on it and forward it because we want everybody else to see and confirm it. This is just human nature - so we just have to be careful, recognize that something we think ought to be true might not be, and look for verification elsewhere. We have to think of ourselves as in effect honest, unbiased journalists and not just a bunch of randos on an internet message board - otherwise we're proliferating fake news, too.
So here's a thing I don't understand about tariffs - or at least Trump's theory of tariffs.
At least on Earth I, tariffs are imposed in order to make a particular imported product more expensive than the home-made equivalent. People either buy the domestic product or pay extra for the imported one, with the tariff being paid to the Treasury. Trump claims (A.) that American businesses will build lots and lots factories to produce the products that are now being imported, creating lots and lots of jobs (at least this is his sales pitch to MAGA), and (B) that tariffs can make income tax unnecessary. But here's the fallacy: If (A) is successful, (B) won't work. That is, if the factories start making all the things in the US that no longer have to be imported, tariffs can't be collected on those things. And without the income tax, now there's no revenue at all. Now what? How does he sell the abolition of the income tax if there aren't any tariffs to make up for it? There has to be some money in the Treasury for Trump and Musk to grift. Am I missing something?
Trump is back in defilade while he pretends to be leading the charge.
The rest of the world has told him to fuck right off, so he "suspended" the tariffs on everybody but China for 90 days. Of course he raised the China tariffs to avoid losing face (although why he wouldn't want to lose that ugly orange face is beyond me), but China is unlikely to budge, since it doesn't want to lose face either, and Xi doesn't have to worry about midterms. Fact is, though, he blinked, no matter how he and Baghdad Barbie try to spin it.
Found this on Facebook. Yeah, I know. But this is really good.
And sure, the evidence pointing in that direction? Compelling. Chilling, even. But let’s not confuse “possible” with “inevitable,” and let’s certainly not confuse “dangerous” with “invincible.” This is not some fucking Marvel movie where the villain has a flawless plan. No, this is a clown car of egomaniacal sycophants with the strategic acumen of a toddler playing Risk while hopped up on Pixy Stix. They’re busy gutting their own institutions, firing people with triple-digit IQs, and turning the Pentagon into a goddamn golf club for grifters. This is not the Death Star. It’s a flaming dumpster strapped to a roller coaster with no brakes.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not saying it won’t be chaos. It will be. Hell on Earth with a Wi-Fi connection. But let’s not pretend this bloated, crumbling regime has the organizational prowess or ideological unity to maintain a long-term crackdown on 330 million people, many of whom are smart, pissed-off, and crazy enough to throw sand in the gears.
But here’s the meat of it—I’m not here to play Nostradamus in a dive bar. I don’t give a damn about “predicting” what flavor of fascism they’ll try to bottle next. What I am here for is to speak directly to those of you who see the bullshit, who smell the sulfur in the air, who feel the psychic tremor of something sick pulsing beneath the surface—and are asking: What the hell can we do?
Here’s my answer: Don’t. Fucking. Comply.
You want to know what non-compliance looks like? It looks like whatever the hell you want it to look like. It’s not about heroism or martyrdom. It’s about being a magnificent, ungovernable pain in the ass. It’s about weaponizing inconvenience, absurdity, and joy against a system that demands fear and obedience.
Throw a wrench in the works—everywhere, all the time. Go limp when they try to arrest you. Laugh like a lunatic in the face of their solemn tyranny. Fill their inboxes with existential poetry or pictures of your morning post-coffee porcelain bowl masterpieces. Tape absurd messages in public places: “Authoritarianism gives you hemorrhoids.” Get petty. Get weird. Flush their toilet paper. Release crickets in inconvenient places. Spoil their scripts, trip their rhythm, yank the narrative from their hands.
Join a general strike. Practice the black cat sabotage—cut their supply chains not with violence but with broken protocol and creative disorder. Don’t show up. Don’t respond. Don’t cooperate. Don’t validate their authority with your silence. If you’re going to get arrested, make it for being a glorious bastard who refuses to play their game. Make a mockery of it.
Because here’s the ugly truth they don’t want you to hear: authoritarianism only works when the people allow it to work. It’s a performance, a bluff, a collective hypnosis. Break the spell. Break the frame. Mock it. Undermine it. Set it on fire (proverbially) with your refusal to kneel.
But here’s the thing—this has to be everywhere. Everyone. If you sit back, clutch your pearls, and hope someone else will jump first—you’re part of the problem. This isn’t Putin’s Russia (yet). We don’t need a handful of martyrs; we need a flood. A tsunami of “nope.” A wildfire of “fuck you.” We need resistance so widespread, so creatively chaotic, so utterly unmanageable, that the regime cracks under the weight of its own overreach.
History is watching. But more importantly, your children are watching. And if you let a pack of psychotic Bible-thumping oligarchs jackboot over your rights while you nervously refresh Twitter and do nothing—then don’t be surprised when the future looks back and calls you exactly what you were: a coward.
Choose better. Be bold. Be clever. Be feral.
And above all—DO NOT COMPLY.
And let me be crystal clear here: NO violence. None. Not a shred. That gives them the excuse they’re desperately craving to justify tyranny. What we need is coordinated, irritating, clever-as-hell, petty-as-fuck, infuriating noncompliance. Be a stone in their shoe. Be sand in their eyes. Be a bureaucratic migraine. Drive them nuts—but never give them the moral high ground. This is about outsmarting them, not becoming them.
Pic related—those at the top are not well oiled dictators with a grand plan. They are selfish buffoons. Potentially dangerous, but in a child with a chainsaw way.
Posted by Oliver Kornetzke https://www.facebook.com/oliverkornetzke
He really is a sorry specimen, isn't he?
I could almost feel sorry for him if he weren't so destructive. Like you, I live quietly and obscurely and without a great deal of money - enough to get by on in my old age (I hope, considering), but definitely not enough to decorate my place with gold trinkets - not that I want any. I've got some family left, and a few good friends, and some simple pleasures; as far as I know, nobody hates me and a few people might even love me. I've never needed to be famous or adored or flattered, and I'd much rather be me than him. He has nothing and you and I have everything. He's an empty black hole of need and rage; he's never been happy and he never will be. If he ever experiences anything like joy it's just the satisfaction he gets from hurting or humiliating someone else.
I don't know why people like him exist and I don't know why so many other people follow people like him. But the sooner he's gone the better.
Trump's latest tame doctor will pronounce him to be in perfect condition.
Maybe he'll bring back "Dr." Ronny Jackson to do the exam, which will consist mainly of Ronny feeling his biceps and gasping in awe. Ronny will then show him drawings of several animals, and even though Trump will identify the zebra as a big dog and the hippopotamus as a pig, Ronny will pronounce him as having the mental acuity of all the scientists in the world put together, and that he has the physique of a 25-year-old body builder. He will be described as a perfect specimen of immortal manly manhood, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and with a dick the size of a fully-ripened zucchini, gonads the size of baseballs, and hands bigger than catchers' mitts. His farts smell like roses; his turds like freshly-baked bread. He's 6'9" tall and weighs nothing at all because he's God.
The government still functioned under Bush, though not always in ways we liked,
because he didn't go out of his way to destroy it. The federal agencies and the civil servants who kept them going continued to work; people didn't worry about whether they'd get their Social Security checks; national parks stayed open; the Kennedy Center produced whatever performances it wanted; law firms weren't retaliated against for representing clients who opposed the government. Some very bad things happened viz. Iraq, but the federal government still chugged along, competently managing the day-to-day issues affecting most people. But Trump is not merely stupid; he's much worse than that. He's at the center of a Venn diagram of stupid, crazy and evil. A government can still function if it's not intentionally sabotaged. Ours was basically stable and functioned pretty well under the good presidents and the stupid ones and the bad ones - until now.
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