So true. It do be exactly like that

Neoliberals don’t need an excuse. They’re bad faith actors, you can use them when it’s politically convenient, but their problem with this situation is that they’re being cut out from the decision making

No… Do you think Mexicans are ashamed of Chihuahuas? Or sombreros? Putting the two together? They love that, it’s their culture and they love to share it. That’s not even a generalization, it’s part of their culture

Or do you think they’d be offended by a joke about ICE doing nonsensical deportations?

Don’t give up in advance. All they did is write on a piece of paper “I’m allowed to go after my political enemies”

Yes, it’s very worrying, but they were doing this already!

It’s not over until they get the military on board (and they are not at all on board currently), and even then it’s not over until they stabilize their rule

We shame them. Greedy people should feel panic at the thought of someone noticing their greediness

Granted that would take a couple generations to instill, but it would help if we started with food

Free food, take as much as you want, but it’s all unprocessed. Lots of stuff would last a while, but greedy people would just make a ton of work for themselves

We produce so much this is an actual option

Oh, no no no… It’s so much worse than even that

See, farming massive fields is pretty easy with technology, and with petrochemical fertilizer you can grow in depleted soil. So is keeping livestock, more so if you keep them in cruel conditions

So there’s a problem there… And I don’t mean the environmental issues. It’s too cheap. Farmers would have to sell at a loss

We produce so much food that the farms would all go out of business without intervention.

But the government can’t set quotas or control access to the market… That’s socialism or something

Instead, the government pays farmers to burn portion of their crop, we put ethanol in gasoline (even though it’s a bad idea), the government siezes some of the crop to stockpile and maybe sell (and give you whatever cut they like), we used to ship tons of food overseas through USAID, and so much more

Industrial farming does not play nice with capitalism.

I don’t think it’s kayfabe so much as a bunch of consultant brained fucktards desperately grasping at power, but also having no idea why they’re doing this anymore

But Mumdani has shown us that the people really are desperate for leftism. They want what we want, they just need crisp and simple messaging

It was always for farmers… Capitalism is really bad at sustaining farm output

The label we’re gathering under is progressives, it’s mostly leftists but you leave the praxis at home and recognize that no one is going to read a pamphlet

Turns out, when you have good messaging, most people are on board with the practical changes we could make today. Mumdani is a rockstar at it

There’s one saving grace… The sheer fucking incompetence

How long do you think this will remain stable? We’re in a free fall by every metric. The dollar is down, the stocks are down (except for the ai bubble… That’s going to be a big pop), the housing market is crashing, insurance is falling apart, federal workers are getting mass fired by email, job numbers are shrinking…

How long until something important breaks? If we’re lucky, we can keep the shutdown going long enough for ICE to drain whatever funds they can misappropriate and see what happens to brown shirts when they aren’t getting paid

Bad shit is going to happen. China is going to get Taiwan, hopefully after chip factories are set up elsewhere. The people in Gaza are fucked. Immigrants and minorities are getting terrorized. Ukraine can go either way, Russia is in a bad way and Ukraine is feeling war fatigue.

The Internet is dying, cyber attacks are ramping up, deep fakes are getting very good, palantir is setting up surveillance everywhere, AI is going to do some future crime bullshit

But despite all that, life will go on.

Maybe the military steps in to force elections - at least they so far refuse to even menace the people, if they decide they have to act to save the Constitution as per their oaths nothing could stop them

Trump is actively dying, and Vance doesn’t have the juice to keep everyone in line - there will be a power struggle

Trump’s end goal is to live out his remaining days in an imaginary kingdom where his legacy will live on forever.

Vance’s goal is to go on never ending extravagant vacations

Peter Tiel thinks if society collapses billionaires will be able to step in and make technocratic kingdoms… But again, the military has plans to feed the entire country for extended periods and restore order in every imaginable collapse scenario

This just is not a stable state of affairs, it has to end, but no one is properly preparing for what comes next.

Maybe the country is fucked, but what about your state? Your city? Maybe things only get better locally for a while, and the federal government becomes less relevant

Maybe the military does step in but decides they don’t want to organize new elections…a military junta isn’t ideal, but it would be more restrained and orderly than this

Maybe lots of people die from starvation and sickness and those that survive have to rebuild

As for how to keep going? I look for the cracks. Watch Trump’s speeches - he probably just had another stroke, and he’s noticably more incoherent than even this summer. The leaks never stop. They’re rehiring a lot of cut workers. Abrego Garcia is still in the country. Candidates like Mumdani are coming out of the woodwork. Learn about economic indicators and watch them plummet. Learn about what happens historically in similar situations.

It’ll be painfully slow, but eventually we’ll hit rock bottom. And then we can build something new

The difference is liberals believe in a system of laws that can be tweaked and perfected for the greatest good but never fundamentally changed, leftists believe in change

Of course you’re over there arguing over less hours or not, we’re over here arguing if we should still have science

We don’t have a functioning system to tweak

Uh…I don’t think you’ve done a check up on where the centrists are lately. Centrists split the difference between the parties, they’re over there going “well, healthcare is good, but who’s going to pay for it? I don’t like what ice is doing, they’re hurting too many people while they look for the criminals”

The abundance liberals also claim they want to do the first one, but they seem like a fresh wave of neolibs

It seems like progrssives are the only ones serious about the first one, and they’re largely on board with the second one

Only if you’re incredibly insecure about yourself.

Bullshit. This is hardwired into our brains. False accusations hurt, but only when you can’t imagine yourself doing what you’re accused of.

If someone doesn’t bristle at being treated like a wild animal, that’s a huge red flag. They’re not confident, either they’re manipulative or they could see themselves warranting the protection. They’re probably not an immediate threat, but that is what a future abuser looks like

And what good is having a friend next to you as opposed to nearby? That’s not safer… What, do you think they’re going to grab someone out of the coffee shop and run?

There’s lots of normal reasons to have someone you know nearby. You can get dropped off and picked up, have a friend in the area doing things. If you have bad vibes, stay in the damn coffee shop and have your friend come in and get a drink.

You can go somewhere you know a worker. You can get to know a place and spend time with the staff so you have a safe ground.

I’ve had someone introduce me to their co-workers before walking to a cafe a few doors down, that was a positive experience, because it was very friendly and I could feel I just passed a bunch of vibe checks… I didn’t even consider that there was a handful of people who saw my face and had eyes on the car I drove up in nearby until much later

That’s about as safe as you could ever be, and it wasn’t offensive at all, because it was natural and affirmative. It feels good when people notice I’m a good person, and I think having a community is cool.

At the end of the day, no one is ever truly safe, but having community around is how you make yourself safer.

And I really do mean the manipulator thing, if someone doesn’t react at all to an implication like that, that’s a red flag… Honest people get angry at accusations, guilty ones get calm, manipulators use that information

Because it’s the only growth area. Speculators need to speculate. There’s money to be made on a bubble on the way up, and tons on the way down, as long as you time it right

Sure, the danger is real and that people need to protect themselves

It’s also incredibly offensive to do it directly.

The polite thing to do is make being safe a matter of course. It’s very normal to meet in public, it’s normal to do checkup texts, it’s fine to do a group activity if it’s a group activity. We’ve spent decades normalizing subtle ways to do this

There’s a degree of social hygiene necessary, or society falls apart.

Centrists are people who hear “both sides”, and then do a mental shortcut instead of being informed

I had to explain to my friend the other day how ICE works. He heard one side say they’re going after criminals, the other side said they’re going after illegal immigrants, and so his interpretation was that innocent people are getting wrapped up as they go after criminals

Which is obviously not the case, because who goes after criminals? The fucking police. Obviously. Then when the police are done with someone without citizenship, they ask ICE if they want them

That made him think, and he realized his position didn’t make any sense. He knew he was being lied to and tried to adjust for that, but there’s no underlying truth to be found.

And they’re mostly like that. Lots of people talk about needing to balance the far left and the far right to bring people together. When I drill people on what it means, who’s in the far left, they don’t know. Because there is no far left

Centrists aren’t usually bad people, they’re people bad at information gathering. It’s why it’s so unforgivable for Democrats to be so weak and adopt the framing of Republicans… They confirm the lies by giving ground

I don’t know about you, but when someone even implies I might be a terrible person I get extremely offended

Vance can’t even get over the couch allegations.

There’s no way he gets people to risk their future backing him the way Trump does. He’s way more evil and literate, but he’s not charismatic or competent

He’s way more coherent, but honestly that’s probably a weakness

That you have to have a heart. You have to believe in things, and see right from wrong

We’re losing that as a species. Laws aren’t a replacement for morality, but they’re treated like it

There’s no set of laws that could save us from global warming or bring the local community together. But these are very necessary things

I wish my parents had answers for me. I wish anyone did

People call me smart all the time, but they’re wrong. I’m wise. I’m just a little smarter than average, I’m just really good at cutting through details to see things clearly

But I spent the last month carefully avoiding thinking about what I was doing, because it was twisty and twirly and burns out my brain. It was only about 4 days of actual work, the rest was very literal headaches because I thought about it too hard

I’m an idiot. But I’m surrounded by fools who can’t see the world around them