Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.

What’s changed recently is that the news media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. When I was a kid news was for nerds only, now it’s more like the national sport where everyone has their team. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.

I admit using somewhat ambiguous adjective placement, but I mean “top news” to also modify “social media” - specifically referring to X which despite being a shithole remains a common place for news reporters and influential political figures and entities to post and read news-related information.

Obama doesn’t have a yacht, he visited David Geffen’s yacht and the Maga media had a field day claiming Obama’s got a yacht. And don’t get me wrong, the ideal president would stay far away from all oligarchs and their yachts. But let’s not pretend Obama’s lack of enthusiasm for upending the status quo and Trump/Musk/Thiel’s wholehearted attempt to replace democracy with corporate feudalism are at all comparable.

This is the first part of that. The top news media in cable tv, podcasting, and social media are all run as maga propaganda and I think that’s a massively underrated reason for Trump’s winning. The easiest of these to take down is social media, but it requires all the other news-related celebrities to go somewhere else.

“We’re the party of anti-elites!” “Also we use maid-cleaned bathrooms for document storage, keeping them right under the chandelier.”

I don’t like cops, I’m just opposed to going around separating people into strict good and bad buckets based on snap judgments.

Because protests don’t do shit. There were mass protests over police brutality in 2020. Didn’t do shit and the right wing media reaction arguably helped kill off police reform legislation that was in progress before the protests.

The reason protests from the left don’t do shit is because the most popular media is controlled by Maga. The top social media network for news, the top podcast, and the top cable TV news are all outright maga propaganda. A narrative can arise without them, but they will determine what happens to it. So last time, the protests arose due to George Floyd, but the right wing media turned it into a narrative about lawless riots, using exaggeration and fake images.

See also Palestine protests.

Basically, the left is fucked in the US until something changes in the media so there’s no point in trying.

Because the app stores keep adding new requirements that you have to add code to deal with and it gets worse every year and seemingly every day.

Many theories:

• Trudeau has criticized Trump in the past so it’s just a revenge quest
• Trump wants to be emperor and trying to rule over neighbors is just what emperors do
• Just some delusionial Trump bullshit that demonstrates his mental decline
• (highly speculative) Influence from Elon, whose grandfather wanted to turn Canada into an NRx-style white supremacist corprate-fascist state 80 years ago and failed, hence the move to south africa. Conceivably Elon wants Trump to make him governor of Canada so he can finish the job. Generally I’m not in favor of wild intruguing speculation like this but it’s just too fun/horrifying to pass up.

It’s completely unrealistic in the short term, more so in the long term. This would require arresting millions of people - there simply isn’t enough jail space. They would have to execute people on sight, and that’s also not realistic because low level soldiers would refuse (there’s a reason the nazis needed to build a system instead of just executing jews on sight). Obviously if this were attempted it would result in extremely violent resistence which would destroy any economic, political, or other incentives for such an action.

Instead we can see what happened in Russia for a more realistic example - there was a slow elimination of dissent. Even today there are some Russians who vocally oppose Putin and don’t get arrested so long as they stay small enough. And that’s in a place where the society never had a culture of freedom to begin with, so here it will probably be much harder and obviously MAGA is much dumber than the Russians too. But regardless that’s why it’s very important to be vocal now and oppose any silencing of dissent, like the removal of pro-Palestine activists here on green cards or even the pardoning of pro-Trump people, as this combined with harsh punishments for others is effectively silencing of speech. It may not affect you now, but if they keep at it for a decade or two it’ll get to you eventually.

Having been on several bar trivia teams, I can say that at least 80% of Americans know virtually nothing about history. I could imagine someone with only a vague familiarity with a Nazi salute just assuming there’s no way a fortune 500 CEO would actually do one, not recognizing how spot on of a Hitler impression that was.

Don’t destroy Tesla cars, destroy the brand. Destroying Teslas means there’s fewer Teslas and that makes them more valuable/reduces the flooding of the market caused by people selling their cars. The goal is to annihilate Elon’s purchasing power to stop him from using it to implementing fascist governments around the world.

No, it’s better. Because they people who are doing it don’t suck.

No more DEI! (Dogs Eating & Ingesting)

Maybe it should. Why let Russia be the only country that gets to weigh in on foreign elections?

Interfere themselves. The US media landscape is dominated by right wingers, backed by Russia. Canada could help the other side.

So

1. this comment adds zero value to the discussion because you’re not even being specific about what your insults are referring to, it’s just insults with zero context
2. I’m pretty sure you misread what I said, but I’m not sure because ^
3. Yes, I do believe this and I think it’s a pretty obvious thing to believe at this point.

To be honest, Canada partly has itself to blame. They let Russia interfere in US elections for a decade at this point but didn’t lift a finger to interfere for the other side that respects them. That attitude needs to end.

Edit: People seem to be misreading this? I’m saying Canada should interfere in US elections. Everyone who hates democracy is already doing it and Canada/Europe is letting them win.

It’s interesting that no one in the media talks about how Fetterman was one of the most progressive politicians, then he had a stroke and started taking the maga side on a lot of things.

It tracks with a lot of other anecdotal evidence (e.g. Tila Tequila becoming a nazi after an aneurysm, some lady in a recent Channel 5 video said she became pro-Trump following a head injury in a car accident, a couple of people in my personal life, RFK Jr. obviously). I’m not saying all magas are brain damaged - there’s many different reasons I’m sure. But someone’s gotta at least start asking the question. There is at least this study which ties brain damage to religious fundamentalism, which isn’t exactly politics but it’s pretty darn close.

It’s bullshit to cover up for the fact that his corporate donors like Blackstone can’t handle any more stock market pain.