収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Catch-up post part three of… five? It feels like a month and a half but it’s only been a week and a half to catch up on and I’ve already done two updates, and on top of that it’s so hard to try to organise all this into anything coherent. But. Would-Be Warlords. Let’s go.

Let’s lead off with something that got a nod in another section: Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America. Let me add to that, “again.” They’re falling for all the same old fundamentalist (and now fascist) ginned-up fake-science, they’re treating authoritarianism and fascism vs. an actual republic as just another horse race, it’s all about the game and that is not what we fucking need right now, holy shit. If there were any lessons learned from 2016 and 2020, they’ve been forgot.

Let’s talk as little as possible about Vivek Ramaswamy, the guy who wants to be Trump’s VP candidate. Let’s talk about him being sued by former employees who say he pressured them into violating securities laws. I mean, that won’t affect Republicans, since laws are for other people, but it’s good to know. What else is good to know? That he acquired his fortune entirely through fraud. Seriously. Pump-and-dump fraud. Again, Republicans won’t give a fuck because “having money” means “good” and they don’t care how they got it. But if anyone not in the cult says he’s smart, show them how he made his money.

And maybe show them this:

Ramaswamy is employing the same kind of cold calculation that Ivy league careerists like him have long used to climb corporate ladders and amass large fortunes. But his ultimate goal is to become the leader of a nascent fascist movement.

David R. Lurie, Public Notice

He knows damn well what he’s doing, and he’s evil, but he’s clever about it. Being Hindu will most likely doom him, but don’t count on that. When it came to Trump or Christianity for power, they chose Trump. (And still do, even over their own families.) If they decide he’s the route to absolute power, they’ll take him too.

(I’m wondering, at least a bit, if he’s a member of this American businessman’s secretive far-right men’s network of would-be warlords. Yeah, you read that right. They wouldn’t let him into Ziklag – a group of very wealthy men devoted to fundamentalist Christian dominance over all American culture and also the government – because of the Christianity requirement. But the warlords might.)

We may as well stick to presidential campaigns. “Ron DeSantis Is Afraid of Questions From a 15-Year-Old” is pretty sad, and amusing, but also shows DeSantis’s hatred of any kind of question or challenge – the usual authoritarian reaction.

Trump vows – again – to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House. Again, Republicans – well, no. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that it’s what they actively want. But use this with so-called moderates and independents.

Public Notice explains how Judge Aileen Cannon, the most publicly Trumpian of Trump’s judges, is working to sabotage the government’s case in the illegal retention of government documents.

He’s not a president, or a presidential candidate, but let’s throw in a couple of other Muskovite stories. First: he’s as much on Putin’s side as he can get away with, including sabotaging Ukrainian attempts to retake territory. He likes Russia, because of the authoritarianism, racism, and misogyny.

Also, remember his lie about saying he’d pay to defend anyone who got in trouble for their ‘free speech’ on Twitter? He hasn’t stepped in to defend the Saudi man who has been sentenced to death for his criticism of the Saudi government on his social media. Given that the account had 10 followers and was anonymous, everyone’s wondering how the Saudi government got his identity – but given that Musk owes an absolute shit-ton of money to his Saudi co-investors, I think we can figure out how.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.