EnsignRedshirt [he/him]

Imagine how amazing the world would be if everyone stopped trying to compete with China and just let them build us the Star Trek future that they are very clearly succeeding in doing. It’s nice to know that for the rest of my life, China will keep on embarrassing every self-serious westerner who thinks that cargo cult neoliberalism is going to start working any day now.

Granted it’s unlikely we’ll ever see anyone like him again, but I think it’s worth noting that nothing has changed about the electoral system that would prevent someone taking a similarly unorthodox path. “Trump vibes” isn’t going to be a problem if someone is actually doing the Trump playbook properly. No one in the media or political establishment wanted Trump in the first place, and they all had to eat shit in 2016 when he single-handedly took over the GOP. Someone else could do it again if they were brazen enough.

Trump isn’t a genius, he just happened to stumble into a way to win the rock-paper-scissors game against the establishment civility and norms fetishists. They haven’t changed or learned anything in the last 8 years, and it’s unlikely they’ll smarten up this time around, especially if he loses again. The core vulnerability is still there. The game still depends on people following the rules, and if someone else comes along who doesn’t care about those rules, they’ll be able to do the same thing.

US electoralism is still a huge cargo cult joke that deserves no better than Trump, is what I’m saying.

Last night was really helpful for cleansing my twitter feed. General consensus was obviously that Trump ate shit, but you could tell from the comments who was watching the debate to hear what the candidates were saying vs who was there just to cheer on Harris and/or see Trump fail.

One of the minor but notable differences I’ve noticed between Canadian electoralism and American is that there’s very little room in American discourse for just being a hater. It seems like you have to pick a side, and if you say anything bad about one side then you must necessarily be supportive of the other side.

In Canada, we have the same two mainstream neoliberal parties that are the only ones who ever form government, but then there are several other parties and interest groups that have legitimate amounts of support and some representation in the legislature. If you say you hate Trudeau, there are too many possible angles you might be coming from for me to make any assumptions. You could be a conservative, an NDP/Green supporter, a Quebec nationalist, an indigenous person, anyone from BC or Alberta, the list goes on. It’s true of any Canadian politician, party, or interest group, so you can freely shit on anyone and everyone without people being able to assume your specific political leanings.

In Canada, someone like Hasan would be able to be like “Boy, that debate sure was a pile of dogshit” and proceed to roast each candidate on the merits, but in the US the algorithm needs you to declare or else it presumably shunts you into the unserious crank category.

lmao and there’s nothing they could do because he wouldn’t actually be revealing classified information. He’d be an absolute legend if he gave up on winning and just tried to do as much damage as he could on the way out. Come on, Teflon Don, let the spite take over. Go down swinging. You might not be president again, but you can make your enemies’ lives harder.

It’s amazing that they were still teaching cursive when I was in school in the 90s. They had elementary school kids who had never seen a fountain pen in their lives learning two different kinds of writing for no reason whatsoever. As a kid you’re just like “I guess we doing cursive now” but it had to be embarrassing to be a teacher, who has also never used a fountain pen, trying to explain why anyone would ever need or even want to write in cursive.

Pro-fracking, pro-genocide, pro-Ukrainian meat grinder, etc. Incredible that she’s supposed to be the 99% Hitler.

And the other one is Kamala Harris! Folks,

“Hamas. Hamas could end this tomorrow. Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done period.”

• President Joe Biden

At what point do you just put someone into hospice care?

Trump attended as many primary debates as Biden did. The difference is that the RNC actually held debates, because they were running a competitive process. The DNC just backed Biden as a matter of course. No consultation, no attempt to present options to voters, not even a token attempt at an open discussion. The primary was a procedural formality. That is what a coronation looks like. Trump, despite his many, many flaws, put himself forward and won the Republican primary. Not attending the debates was a dick move, but given his popularity with Republican voters, and his overwhelming victory at the end of the day, I find it unlikely that it would make a difference. Hell, there’s an argument that it might have hurt his chances.

I’m just saying that Walz’s position that the Democrats are a functioning party while the GOP is a cult rings a bit hollow. The DNC unwaveringly supported Biden as he was slurring his words and falling down stairs until he eventually quit due to not wanting to suffer an embarrassing loss. The GOP had their shit together while the Democrats were scrambling to replace their candidate. The fact that they seem to have avoided catastrophe doesn’t change the fact that they were the ones who steered themselves into catastrophe in the first place. A little humility wouldn’t be misplaced.

Only one party held a competitive primary, and it wasn’t yours, champ.

I would be more sympathetic if they hadn’t invited a literal Nazi to parliament to give him a standing ovation for fighting the Russians during WW2.

Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.

I’m assuming the union organizers know that their government would happily murder them and their families on a whim if it looked like they were getting in the way. The legality is irrelevant. The tribunal gave them a reason to quit, and they decided not to fight it. They might also be spineless cowards who were never that interested in pressing the issue in the first place, but it doesn’t surprise me that they made a fuss and then backed down the moment the state had an excuse to crack down on further disruption.

The US ambassador said the move would threaten Mexico’s democracy and the Canadian ambassador said the reform could threaten Canadian investments

Just yelling the quiet part through a bullhorn at anyone who will listen.

There’s also the role of Islamic banking. Sharia prohibits usury, which results in different banking standards. I don’t know if or how Islamic banking is any better or worse than western banking, in theory or in practice, but the fact that there’s a different standard at all has to be a problem for western powers-that-be.

Finance is arguably the most important tool in the western imperial domination toolbox, particularly because the west makes all the rules. They can’t just allow alternative modes to compete on an even playing field. If there’s a financial system that exists that doesn’t abide by their rules, it has to be challenged and mitigated, or else they’d lose control of the system.

Banking is just one example of the overall thing you’re describing. The existence of a system of organization that could challenge western hegemony in any way is a threat, and Islam has the potential to challenge it in multiple overlapping and self-reinforcing ways. Different interest groups within the western power structure probably see Islam as a threat in their own ways, but they can agree with one another that it’s a problem and work together to oppress it, regardless of whether they’re against it for ethnic, cultural, religious, political, financial, etc. grounds.

Trump seething like “how come he gets to do it?”

I feel bad that he has to keep doing his little army man cosplay. It was a good bit for the first few weeks when no one knew what was going on and they could softly imply he was in some sort of underground command center with bombs dropping above him, but it’s just sad now. His only job is to travel around begging for support to fight a war from the same people who won’t let him end said war. The fact that they make him do it while dressed like a guy who makes gun videos on YouTube is cruel. Let him put on a suit, it’s embarrassing to watch.

Weeks where days happen. Truly the darkest timeline.

I’ve seen a couple people on twitter giving up on even tacitly supporting Harris over this. I realize that the DNC is just taking orders from AIPAC, but it does seem like an own goal. What’s the point of supporting Democrats if they won’t even pretend? Pretending is all they have! They’ve somehow managed to outdo Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a kente cloth.