The problem is that there's a lot of adults running around these days that aren't grown up. They're still immature little shits who never learned that when you talk shit, you get hit.
We're going to feel isolated for a good little while. Already have family calling this a fake assassination attempt and looking for co-signers AND keeping score.
At first I thought back to the last nearly successful Presidential assassination attempt (Reagan), & then to the two women who tried to kill Ford within a couple of weeks of each other (Squeaky Fromme & Sarah Jane Moore). Then it occurred to me that the attempted assassination of George Wallace by Arthur Bremer might be a better comparison. It may yet be, but from what we know now, it’s not. Bremer was, first & foremost, a loser who wanted to get famous by killing somebody famous. Sarah Jane Moore might be the best comparison, with the caveat of “what we think we know now”.
"The covert elites"? Christ, Michael, please don't tell me (((who))) we're talking about.
Trump is absolutely beholden to a huge range of elite groups: Neo-Nazis, wacky creationists, vicious theocrats. They're way more dangerous than boring corporate elites.
When I talk about covert elites, I'm talking about the powerful people behind the visible people that everybody knows. For example. Before #MeToo, nobody knew who Harvey Weinstein was except for Hollywood insiders - but everybody knew about his company, . Just like nobody knows who are, say, the top talent agents. So we know everything Meryl Streep would say, but is she really powerful, and how many times would she speak about Weinstein? As another example, nobody in the public would know who is #2 behind Jamie Dimon, but there are probably 100 officers at JPMC who think exactly like him. Nobody knows who are the top 10 engineers at SpaceX.
Surely Neo-Nazis, wacky creationists and vicious theocrats are ideologically dangerous, but nobody has been even been talking about who signed whatever it is that people were freaking about Heritage's Project 2025. Heritage is an elite group. (Not that I pay attention) The Proud Boys are whackjob irregulars. But are they really dangerous, and do they really need Trump to do whatever it is they do? Speaking of boring elites, nobody ever tells me who is on the docket for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. If they haven't declawed actual Neo-Nazis, who is doing that job for Biden, the SPLC?
The Board of the Harvard Corporation would be the kind of covert elites I'm talking about. Where they have their parties at the Hamptons are the venues I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Rulers that the Geniuses dare not speak poorly of. No dimbulb creationist is a Genius. Remember Rick Warren of Saddleback Church. Did Obama actually tame those guys? Remember when everybody believed Obama was going to get shot.
Anyway. I'll get more into such matters. But I'm also talking about why people like Fauci are considered to blame if there's actually a deep bench at the CDC. Our public and political institutions need excellent leadership, but I think the Genius class are extraordinarily quiet for the most part, which is why we pay so much attention to media.
No one knew who Weinstein was? He was a famous producer who was at the Oscars. He wasn't a household name but he was hardly anonymous: Anyone who read tabloids and kept up on film trivia would easily know one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.
To be clear, your point about various power elites being powerful and largely quiet is actually true, you just chose an extremely poor example. The Waltons of Wal-Mart are probably a better choice: Famously pretty reclusive, immensely powerful. And even they have a family association with a massive personal mythology in the way other elites don't.
Yes, Michael, the Proud Boys are dangerous. At minimum they are dangerous to marginalized people. And the dangers go up when the federal government's leader has established a "tone at the top" that suggests that, say, hate crime and anti-right-wing-terror investigations won't be taken that seriously. So the *floor* we are discussing is that vicious people are emboldened while their ideological counterparts in the administration destroy lives by eliminating important social safety systems and thus imperiling millions of lives, while Trump's (completely in lock step with FOX conservatives) prevents us from dealing with climate change or ecological considerations. The ceiling is, indeed, Project 2025 attacks upon fundamental democratic systems to enshrine fascism.
Remember that, in the 1920s, the Nazis were just vicious thugs. We're not the Weimar Republic, but things can change very rapidly, and Trump's allies are far more organized than they were in 2016 or 2020.
Democratic fecklessness regarding the risk of these groups is a serious problem, but it's not even worth mentioning it in the discussion of Trump supposedly being some free thinker who doesn't march to elite orders. They at least don't delusionally pretend all the right wing atrocities are antifa false flags. If we wanted to take anti-right wing terror, a Biden (or, let's be honest, Harris) Presidency can be pushed that way. Trump can't.
So thank goodness you are indeed talking about actual elites... folks like Thiel and his ilk who love Trump. Your analysis has ignored that the fascists now include billionaires and politically powerful people. Trump is not a free thinker. He is just beholden to his own interests as an elite and much, *much* more dangerous people.
If we wanted to discuss elite politics, we could without needing them to talk much. Their decisions are clear in the public record. Details won't be available but the broad thrust won't be. The issue is not the relative opacity of their motives and availability, it's that liberal media are beholden to power institutions and so key agenda-dictating forces don't let us discuss elites in a reasonable context. But Sanders showed it could be done. We don't need to pretend Trump has any kind of sincere anti-elitist sentiment to get there.
I know too many people on the Right to be suckered by the idea that radicals are all that's making Trump more popular. Zeihan said it this morning. Hispanics and union workers have moved, because Democrats ignored them or took them for granted. I can remember how people were desperately afraid of Reagan Republicans. I was one of them who hooted when he was shot. I didn't know any Reagan Republicans - I literally was the DJ for Maxine Waters when she was elected to the State Assembly. I literally was introduced to Jesse Jackson several times. I was a kid.
I'm also not afraid of the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, nor Manhattan or Claremont. And I'm not buying any shrill paragraphs about Project 2025, false flag operations and narratives. There are and always have been things that people disagree about, especially left and right. But like I said, we're back to the 70s where Americans are so paranoid and frenzied that they only talk about the fringes because they fear and ignore the ordinary partisans.
Trump will win the center because the center doesn't see itself as 'minority'. Democrats can't get 'minority' out of their minds and so have alienated the center.
Here are two milbloggers I read. Probably Republicans - definitely Reaganites. Remember Reagan Democrats? I do.
The idiots out there are already at it. I'm going to bed.
The problem is that there's a lot of adults running around these days that aren't grown up. They're still immature little shits who never learned that when you talk shit, you get hit.
Well, there's at least one grown-up in the room. Let's hope you're simply one of many more leaders gathering together.
We're going to feel isolated for a good little while. Already have family calling this a fake assassination attempt and looking for co-signers AND keeping score.
I disagree with you about Trump, but I like what you wrote.
At first I thought back to the last nearly successful Presidential assassination attempt (Reagan), & then to the two women who tried to kill Ford within a couple of weeks of each other (Squeaky Fromme & Sarah Jane Moore). Then it occurred to me that the attempted assassination of George Wallace by Arthur Bremer might be a better comparison. It may yet be, but from what we know now, it’s not. Bremer was, first & foremost, a loser who wanted to get famous by killing somebody famous. Sarah Jane Moore might be the best comparison, with the caveat of “what we think we know now”.
"The covert elites"? Christ, Michael, please don't tell me (((who))) we're talking about.
Trump is absolutely beholden to a huge range of elite groups: Neo-Nazis, wacky creationists, vicious theocrats. They're way more dangerous than boring corporate elites.
When I talk about covert elites, I'm talking about the powerful people behind the visible people that everybody knows. For example. Before #MeToo, nobody knew who Harvey Weinstein was except for Hollywood insiders - but everybody knew about his company, . Just like nobody knows who are, say, the top talent agents. So we know everything Meryl Streep would say, but is she really powerful, and how many times would she speak about Weinstein? As another example, nobody in the public would know who is #2 behind Jamie Dimon, but there are probably 100 officers at JPMC who think exactly like him. Nobody knows who are the top 10 engineers at SpaceX.
Surely Neo-Nazis, wacky creationists and vicious theocrats are ideologically dangerous, but nobody has been even been talking about who signed whatever it is that people were freaking about Heritage's Project 2025. Heritage is an elite group. (Not that I pay attention) The Proud Boys are whackjob irregulars. But are they really dangerous, and do they really need Trump to do whatever it is they do? Speaking of boring elites, nobody ever tells me who is on the docket for the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. If they haven't declawed actual Neo-Nazis, who is doing that job for Biden, the SPLC?
The Board of the Harvard Corporation would be the kind of covert elites I'm talking about. Where they have their parties at the Hamptons are the venues I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Rulers that the Geniuses dare not speak poorly of. No dimbulb creationist is a Genius. Remember Rick Warren of Saddleback Church. Did Obama actually tame those guys? Remember when everybody believed Obama was going to get shot.
Anyway. I'll get more into such matters. But I'm also talking about why people like Fauci are considered to blame if there's actually a deep bench at the CDC. Our public and political institutions need excellent leadership, but I think the Genius class are extraordinarily quiet for the most part, which is why we pay so much attention to media.
No one knew who Weinstein was? He was a famous producer who was at the Oscars. He wasn't a household name but he was hardly anonymous: Anyone who read tabloids and kept up on film trivia would easily know one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.
To be clear, your point about various power elites being powerful and largely quiet is actually true, you just chose an extremely poor example. The Waltons of Wal-Mart are probably a better choice: Famously pretty reclusive, immensely powerful. And even they have a family association with a massive personal mythology in the way other elites don't.
Yes, Michael, the Proud Boys are dangerous. At minimum they are dangerous to marginalized people. And the dangers go up when the federal government's leader has established a "tone at the top" that suggests that, say, hate crime and anti-right-wing-terror investigations won't be taken that seriously. So the *floor* we are discussing is that vicious people are emboldened while their ideological counterparts in the administration destroy lives by eliminating important social safety systems and thus imperiling millions of lives, while Trump's (completely in lock step with FOX conservatives) prevents us from dealing with climate change or ecological considerations. The ceiling is, indeed, Project 2025 attacks upon fundamental democratic systems to enshrine fascism.
Remember that, in the 1920s, the Nazis were just vicious thugs. We're not the Weimar Republic, but things can change very rapidly, and Trump's allies are far more organized than they were in 2016 or 2020.
Democratic fecklessness regarding the risk of these groups is a serious problem, but it's not even worth mentioning it in the discussion of Trump supposedly being some free thinker who doesn't march to elite orders. They at least don't delusionally pretend all the right wing atrocities are antifa false flags. If we wanted to take anti-right wing terror, a Biden (or, let's be honest, Harris) Presidency can be pushed that way. Trump can't.
So thank goodness you are indeed talking about actual elites... folks like Thiel and his ilk who love Trump. Your analysis has ignored that the fascists now include billionaires and politically powerful people. Trump is not a free thinker. He is just beholden to his own interests as an elite and much, *much* more dangerous people.
If we wanted to discuss elite politics, we could without needing them to talk much. Their decisions are clear in the public record. Details won't be available but the broad thrust won't be. The issue is not the relative opacity of their motives and availability, it's that liberal media are beholden to power institutions and so key agenda-dictating forces don't let us discuss elites in a reasonable context. But Sanders showed it could be done. We don't need to pretend Trump has any kind of sincere anti-elitist sentiment to get there.
I know too many people on the Right to be suckered by the idea that radicals are all that's making Trump more popular. Zeihan said it this morning. Hispanics and union workers have moved, because Democrats ignored them or took them for granted. I can remember how people were desperately afraid of Reagan Republicans. I was one of them who hooted when he was shot. I didn't know any Reagan Republicans - I literally was the DJ for Maxine Waters when she was elected to the State Assembly. I literally was introduced to Jesse Jackson several times. I was a kid.
I'm also not afraid of the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, nor Manhattan or Claremont. And I'm not buying any shrill paragraphs about Project 2025, false flag operations and narratives. There are and always have been things that people disagree about, especially left and right. But like I said, we're back to the 70s where Americans are so paranoid and frenzied that they only talk about the fringes because they fear and ignore the ordinary partisans.
Trump will win the center because the center doesn't see itself as 'minority'. Democrats can't get 'minority' out of their minds and so have alienated the center.
Here are two milbloggers I read. Probably Republicans - definitely Reaganites. Remember Reagan Democrats? I do.
https://open.substack.com/pub/conservativewahoo/p/on-updating-a-will?r=7br8e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/cdrsalamander/p/063-moa-away-thats-it?r=7br8e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
That's the Right I know. And BTW, what's wrong with getting rid of Homeland Security?