I expected to be offended and/or astonished by a ridiculously transparent bit of sanewashing here, but you know… I think I actually might agree.

It does seem to be a valid point - Gaetz is a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant, but he’s also a buffoon, and that’s undoubtedly better than a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant who’s also a smart and devious and highly skilled politician.

Huh…

Speaker Johnson says, “Mmmm (slurp, slurp), oh yeah I love it daddy (slurp, slurp) mmm, give it to me (slurp, slurp, gulp).”

And the sanewashing predictably continues.

Yes - an outside group charged with coming up with ideas to cut government waste is a reasonably sound idea.

But such a group led by a toxically self-absorbed and brazenly dishonest billionaire whose emotional development never made it past adolescence under the administration of an overtly treasonous and delusional pathological narcissist whose emotional development never made it past childhood is very much not a sound idea.

This is fascism 101.

Fascism is at least as much an economic system as a political one, or more precisely, it’s more like an economic system hiding behind a political system.

And the way the economic system works is very simple - private ownership of the means of production combined with an overt and institutionalized revolving door between business and government, so that the end result is plutocratic oligarchy.

Basically, it’s taking the system that already existed in the US, by which the wealthy bought access to political power mostly surreptitiously and nominally illegally unless they followed specific restrictions, and legitimizes and formalizes and institutionalizes it and moves it right out into the open.

And behind all of the white supremacist and christian nationalist and reactionary conservative rhetoric, this was always the real goal.

Given the opportunity, no, he’s not going to prosecute his foes. He’s going to have them killed.

But until he can count on getting away with that, he’ll have to, and will, settle for just prosecuting them.

Exactly what he’s doing is pushing for them to protect the scumbags he intends to appoint from the scrutiny that’s sure to expose just how scummy they are.

Huh.

I’ve been sort of idly wondering who was going to be the first “enemy” politician the Trump regime was going to kill.

I’d say McConnell just became the odds-on favorite.

The question isn’t if the Trump administration will try to pull the US out of NATO, but simply when and by what excuse.

Mmm… sort of.

In some very broad sense, yes, it’s corruption.

In a narrower and more precise sense though, it isn’t really, since “corruption” implies a violation of higher standards, which is what we’ve had, to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much throughout our history.

The difference in the coming era is that there will be no higher standards to corrupt. The things that were previously violations of higher standards will become the new standards. Theft and graft and cronyism will no longer be crimes or even (meaningfully recognized) wrongs - they will be the institutional norms.

And I don’t mean this as mere pedantry - the point is that when what used to be corruption becomes the overt norms, things will get much, much worse than they ever were or could be when they were still corruption.

Fascism is, at heart, at least as much an economic system as it is a political one, and broadly, more so.

Fascism, alongside its political control of the populace, establishes economic control of the populace, and it does it very simply, by organizing the government to serve businesses and the wealthy few who control them, and by establishing a revolving door by which a relative few are allowed to freely move between control of the two.

This is the underlying point of Project 2025, and specifically the reason for the planned purge of civil servants. They are to be replaced by people who can be counted upon to serve the interests of the wealthy few and to deny the interests of the rest of the populace.

Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.

Those in power in those institutions, even if they don’t share the political goals of Trump and his coattail-riders, are driven by their own greed to at the very least not stand too much in the way, since they too expect to profit.

Yes, because Trump’s plan is to give his boss Putin whatever he wants.

I predict… a corporate ass-kissing establishment hack with a focus on appealing to suburban professionals.

Asking if “big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic party” will “learn any real lessons” or “understand the pain and political alienation” of millions of Americans, or have “any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much … power”, Sanders came to a mordant conclusion.

“Probably not.”

And then Harrison immediately jumped in to prove the point.

All I know is that Kagi triggered my scam alarms from the start, and moving into the browser market just made them ring even louder.

Gee whiz - who would’ve thought that creating moral hazard could have negative consequences?

What “us?”

I’m going to be right there alongside her, on my way to an execution too.

And so are you.

I wonder how she’s going to feel about this choice a few years down the line, when President-for-life Trump orders her execution.

Very much so (and there’s at least one patient gamers community around, because I’ve posted to one).

The only advantage I can see to playing a game on release is taking part in that first rush of interest, but I’m antisocial enough that that doesn’t appeal to me anyway, so I’m not missing anything there.

Beyond that, I think playing a game at least a year or so after release has all of the advantages. The initial flurry of absolute love vs. absolute hate has died down so it’s easier to get a broad view of the quality, the game is more stable, the price is better, dlc and expansions are out and generally packaged with the game, and best of all, in this current era, I can most likely buy it from GOG and actually have the full game, DRM-free, on my system.

And there are a bajillion good games out there, just waiting for me to discover them.

I haven’t read those yet, but I intend to. And I expect that, like every one I’ve read yet, they’ll be solid 7 or 8 out of 10 books.

That’s the thing that reminded me of Crichton. He has that same ability to start with some fascinating idea and run with it and deliver a solid, well-told and satisfying story, then move on to some completely different fascinating idea and run with it and deliver another solid, well-told and satisfying story. He’s not locked into any specific genre or any specific approach to telling a story - just whatever works for that idea, that’s what he does, and it just works.

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I’ve been on a bit of a Tchaikovsky binge lately. I read Children of Time years ago and enjoyed it, but for whatever reason, didn’t read anything else by him then. I had a copy of Made Things knocking around though, and I finally read it a few weeks ago and was so impressed I started reading him in earnest. This is the… let’s see… seventh book of his I’ve read lately.

He sort of reminds me of Michael Crichton. He’s not a particularly notable prose stylist - his writing is entirely competent and sufficient, but not in any way really remarkable. But he tells very imaginative stories very well, so he’s a satisfying read.

This one is a sort of political thriller wrapped around a mystery that plays out a bit like a science fiction update of a Lovecraftian eldritch abomination story, leavened a bit with Emily St. John Mandel style misfit spaceship crew slice of life. I’m enjoying it.