#Third Party Tribune

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to:

Institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!)

Give a greenlight to Project 2025

Use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies

Institute military tribunals for his political enemies (and allies!)

Gun down “enemies from within”

Support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map

Use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies

Has gotten total immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? Whatever his Schedule F appointed judges choose of course.)

Already took away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take ages to list them all in this post

and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With the above listed ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter. Supreme Court Justices are for LIFE, and we’ve already seen the potentially irreparable damage this far-right activist court has done to the fabric of democracy.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT. Anyone that says they won’t is either a liar or already drank the Kool-Aid. Isn’t it interesting that every politician that supports it, including his vice president, wants Trump to win?

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Dems reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. Even Palestinians themselves want the Democrat candidate over Trump. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Am I a democratic socialist? Yes. Am I a realist? Also yes. In every single down-ballot race, and through my activism, I will fight for the rights of the oppressed and working-class. But the Presidency isn’t fucking winnable right now, and probably won’t be for decades. Pro-corporatist/anti-worker sentiment is baked into the fucking bones of this country and its people. A majority of eligible voters wouldn’t vote for Bernie, and he’s barely center-left. Voting for anything other than one of the two big parties is a useless feel-good gesture at the moment. Or you’re a dumbass accelerationist, and if you are, honestly go fuck yourself.

Let’s say you want a socialist revolution, full-tilt government takeover. I want that too, in my wildest dreams! We’re on the same page there. So how are you going to do it. How? HOW? What pro-worker activist groups are you working with? Are you encouraging your workplace to form a union? Volunteering for/donating to your local farmers’ co-op? Canvassing for pro-worker legislation? Hell, even something as small as distributing free copies of high-school/college textbooks, so that those of poorer means have a better chance at affording advanced education? Are you doing anything to help? Any praxis at all, rather than typing wishful thoughts of revolution alongside insults to people who aren’t as “correct” as you on the internet?

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while millions of Democrats and third-partyists care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[simply-ivanka]

A Minnesotan Sizes Up Tim Walz

During his tenure, student achievement has slipped, crime has surged, and state residents have fled.

By Scott W. Johnson - Wall Street Journal

St. Paul, Minn.

Tim Walz has such a bad record as Minnesota’s governor that I was astonished when he landed on Vice President Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential shortlist. As Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has documented, under Mr. Walz Minnesota has become a high-crime state. Student achievement has tumbled as spending on schools has skyrocketed. Per capita gross domestic product has fallen below the national average. Minnesotans have joined residents of New York, California and Illinois in fleeing their home state.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—also on Ms. Harris’s shortlist—made sense to me. Pennsylvania is a key state. Mr. Shapiro seems to be a man of substance and would give liberal Jews a reason to vote for Ms. Harris without a guilty conscience. As a Jewish supporter of Israel, I worried that Mr. Shapiro would give the animus throbbing in the heart of the Democratic Party cover. Indeed, that animus drove a nasty intraparty campaign against him.

But Tim Walz? I’m a conservative Republican. I don’t completely understand Democrats’ ways. As an observer of Minnesota politics, however, I understand how Mr. Walz became governor. Having served six terms in Congress from a rural district, he challenged the endorsed DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate—a liberal metro-area state senator, Erin Murphy—in the 2018 DFL primary. Ms. Murphy was also challenged by another metro-area liberal, Lori Swanson, then state attorney general. With Ms. Murphy and Ms. Swanson dividing the liberal urban vote, Mr. Walz and his far-left running mate, former state Rep. Peggy Flanagan, won the primary with 41%.

On taking office in 2019, Gov. Walz was restrained by a one-seat Republican majority in the state Senate—until Covid hit in the spring of 2020. He declared a state of emergency on March 25, 2020, and ruled by decree for 15 months. He proclaimed the emergency on the basis of an allegedly sophisticated Minnesota Model projection of the virus’s course in the state. In fact, the projection reflected a weekend’s work by graduate students at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Relying on their research, Mr. Walz presented a scenario in which an estimated 74,000 Minnesotans would perish from the virus. The following week the Star Tribune reported that with the lockdown Mr. Walz ordered, 50,000 would die. Maybe it would have been preferable to address the virus through democratic means.

Having destroyed jobs and impeded life routines, including family get-togethers and church attendance, Mr. Walz finally let his one-man rule lapse on July 1, 2021. When the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped counting in March 2023, the deaths of 14,870 Minnesotans were attributed to the virus. (In 2020 I successfully sued the administration for excluding me from Health Department press briefings on Covid.)

During the state of emergency, protests broke out in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020 following the death of George Floyd. That Thursday, rioters burned Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station to the ground. Mr. Walz didn’t deploy the National Guard until the weekend. Riots, arson and looting throughout the Twin Cities caused about $500 million in damage.

Minnesota leads the nation in Covid fraud. Under the auspices of the Feeding Our Future nonprofit, its founder, Aimee Bock, allegedly recruited mostly young Somali men to seek reimbursement for millions of meals supposedly served to poor students and families. According to indictments handed up by a grand jury to U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, Ms. Bock and others allegedly defrauded the state and federal government of $250 million. Ms. Bock has pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges.

Among the 70 defendants charged to date, 18 have pleaded guilty. In April the first of the cases to go to trial had seven defendants; five were convicted. The remaining cases have yet to be tried. In all, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the payout of $250 million to reimburse fictitious meals. The nature and scale of the fraud are staggering. Mr. Walz tried to blame state district court judge John Guthmann, who in April 2021 handled a case regarding the department’s processing of applications for reimbursements. According to Mr. Walz, Judge Guthmann ordered the state to continue payouts to the alleged perpetrators of the fraud even after the state Education Department discovered it.

In September 2022, Judge Guthmann authorized a news release titled “Correcting media reports and statements by Gov. Tim Walz concerning orders issued by the court.” The release concluded: “As the public court record and Judge Guthmann’s orders make plain, Judge Guthmann never issued an order requiring the MN Department of Education to resume food reimbursement payments to FOF. The Department of Education voluntarily resumed payments and informed the court that FOF resolved the ‘serious deficiencies’ that prompted it to suspend payments temporarily. All of the MN Department of Education food reimbursement payments to FOF were made voluntarily, without any court order.”

In November 2022 Mr. Walz was elected to a second term, and the DFL won majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. In the preceding two years the state had accumulated an $18 billion budget surplus. With the DFL in full control, Mr. Walz and the Legislature have spent the $18 billion surplus on infrastructure, education and other programs that will burden the state for years. They have also raised taxes.

Mr. Walz and his DFL colleagues have backed measures establishing Minnesota as a mecca for abortion and a “trans refuge.” The legislation prohibits enforcing out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people from other states who seek treatment that is legal in Minnesota. It also bars complying with court orders issued in other states to remove children from their parents’ custody for authorizing hormone treatment or surgery to alter sex characteristics.

Like so many Democrats who have kept up with the demands of the progressive agenda, Mr. Walz has “grown” in office. In his second term, he has been the most left-wing Minnesota governor since the socialist Floyd B. Olson (1931-36). I doubt that Mr. Walz could be elected to Congress in his old district, which is now represented by a Republican. The idea that he can appeal to voters who don’t already support Ms. Harris seems far-fetched.

Mr. Johnson is a retired Minneapolis attorney and contributor to the site Power Line.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When parties fail, movements step up

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Does anyone like the American two party system? The parties are opaque, private organizations, weak institutions that are prone to capture and corruption, and gerrymandering's "safe seats" means that the real election often takes place in the party's smoke-filled rooms, when a sure-thing candidate is selected:

https://doctorow.medium.com/weak-institutions-a26a20927b27

But there doesn't seem to be any way to fix it. For one thing, the two parties are in charge of any reform, and they're in no hurry to put themselves out of business. It's effectively impossible for a third party to gain any serious power in the USA, and that's by design. After the leftist Populists party came within a spitting distance of power in the 1890s, the Dems and Repubs got together and cooked the system, banning fusion voting and erecting other structural barriers.

The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It's how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.

But that's not cause for surrender – it's a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements:

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/ordinary-people-by-the-millions

It's been done before. The parties are routinely transformed by power-shifts within their internal coalitions: since 1970, corporate Dems have consistently pushed the party to the right, making it the power of white-collar professionals and relying on working people showing up and marking their ballots with a D because they have "nowhere else to go."

Bill Clinton was the most successful of these corporate raiders, delivering the parts of the Reagan Revolution that Reagan himself could never have managed: dismantling tariffs and bank regulations, passing the crime bill and welfare "reform." He came within a whisper of (partially) privatizing Social Security.

This set in motion the forces that made Trumpism possible: when Dems told deindustrialized workers to "learn to code" and blamed them for the destruction of their communities, it opened a space for Make America Great Again, the (empty) workerist rhetoric of the GOP. The Dems' plan of putting "really smart people" in charge and letting them run things was a (predictable) disaster. "Really smart" isn't the same as "infallible" and really smart people can be spooked or bulled into doing the wrong thing – like Obama "foaming the runways" for the banks with the houses of mortgage holders, and leaving the bankers responsible for the Great Financial Crisis unscathed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

"Really smart people" can't get us out of this mess. Instead, we need the kind of muscular political action – the "whirlwind" – that characterized FDR's New Deal: "complete reformation of the banking industry.. just about every other industry as well. Regulation. Social Security. Public works. Antitrust. Soil conservation."

FDR got there by alienating his former classmates and refusing the go-slow entreaties of his cronies. He got there because there was a mass social movement that made him do it ("I want to do it, now make me do it"):

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/i-agree-with-you-i-want-to-do-it-now-make-me-do-it/

Every time in US history where one of the political party duopoly listened to its base, it was because of a mass social movement: the farmers' movement (1890s), labor (1930s), civil rights and antiwar (1960s). As Frank says:

Social movements succeed. They build and they change the intellectual climate and then, when the crisis comes, they make possible things like agrarian reform or the New Deal or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.

Today, we see the seeds of those social movements: the new union movement. Black Lives Matter. Neobrandeisians with their "hipster antitrust." These are the movements that are creating "ideas lying around": ideas that, in time of crisis, can move from the fringe to the center in an eyeblink:

https://doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-around-33a28901a7ae

They are setting in motion another transformation of the Democratic Party, from its top-down, "really smart people" model to a bottom-up, people-powered one, kept in check by movements, not party bosses. As Frank says, "They require the mass participation of ordinary people. Without that, I am afraid that nothing is possible."

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/17/popular-front-of-judea/#speaking-frankly

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Keeley at NCRM:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to sue two large, Democratic-leaning counties should they proceed with their plan to mail voter registration forms to eligible voters who are currently unregistered. Bexar and Harris counties have proposed using third-party vendors to mail the forms. Though the plan is to only send them to people who are eligible to be registered, Paxton said that the forms could fall in the hands of those who are ineligible to vote, which would “encourage” them to register illegally, according to KSAT-TV. “At worst, it may induce the commission of a crime by encourage individuals who are ineligible to vote to provide false information on the form,” Paxton said, according to KENS-TV. “Either way, it is illegal, and if you move forward with this proposal, I will use all available legal means to stop you.”

Bexar and Harris counties both have high Latino populations, with nearly 20% of all Texan Latinos living in Harris County, according to The Hill. Paxton has faced accusations of specifically trying to suppress the Latino vote. Following raids on the homes of Latino voting activists, the League of United Latin American Citizens called for an inquiry into alleged civil rights violations, according to USA Today. At least six LULAC volunteers had their homes raided by police, and had voter registration materials seized, along with phones, computers and other electronic devices, USA Today reported. Paxton said the search warrants were “part of an ongoing election integrity investigation” into “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” LULAC says one of the people raided was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old member of the organization. On August 20, her home was raided, and she was interrogated for hours, according to LULAC. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Texas or elsewhere in the United States. Paxton’s most recent probe, despite the raids, has led to no charges thus far, according to the Texas Tribune.

Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) is a jackboot fascist disgrace to the Lone Star State and America.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Rowling in the Morning

Megan Phelps-Roper: hey you’re listening to the witch trials of jk rowling, W KZFM in the morning with Megan Phelps-Roper and the weasel [air horn sound effect] Phelps-Roper: we are here with the main boss lady herself, Jk R-r-r-rowling! Rowling: good to be here Phelps-Roper: now its time for our 10 am challenge [‘Oh Yeah’ plays] Phelps-Roper: JK Rowling, will you Phelps-Roper: live Phelps-Roper: on air Phelps-Roper: eat a bug? Rowling: Rowling: wave it around ssso it looks like it’s alive

Rowling: hey weren’t you in the westboro Baptist church Phelps-Roper: oh yeah haha everyone remembers that Phelps-Roper: yeah, picketing funerals, yelling slurs at grieving parents Phelps-Roper: those were good times Phelps-Roper: but I’m really concentrating more on self-care these days

Phelps-Roper: yeah I know everyone likes to worry about all those gays and jews I used to harass Phelps-Roper: but their pain was necessary for my journey of discovery Phelps-Roper: the important thing Phelps-Roper: is that I am SUCH a good person now Rowling: yessss of courssse

Rowling: look a lot of people have been ssssaying to cancel harry potter Rowling: and I jussst think that we should consssider the other perspective Rowling: what about Rowling: inssstead of cancelling harry potter Rowling: you just continued to give large amounts of money to me, its creator? Phelps-Roper: wow, never thought of it that way before! Rowling: I ssssay thisss as a disinterested third party, of course

Rowling: people keep asking Rowling: ‘jk rowling, why don’t you condemn thesssse nazisss who keep showing up at your ralliesss’ Rowling: I’m jussst like wow Rowling: I guess I’m just not close-minded like some people Phelps-Roper: wow wow good point

Rowling: look, it’s not for me to judge other people Rowling: that’sss for a special wizengamot-appointed tribunal with special genital measuring calipers Rowling: we’re going to have the Kriegsloks leave from platform 5 ¾ Rowling: honestly I think you’re going to find this whole genocide we’re planning just really charming

Phelps-Roper: how do you respond to allegations that you’re allied with nazis? Rowling: [chuckling] oh megan I’d be lying if I said we weren’t allied with nazis! Phelps-Roper: Phelps-Roper: well, touche

[ffcrazy15]

To the folks out there who are thinking about voting for Jill Stein or another third party candidate — look I get it, I don't like the Democrats either.

But Donald Trump back in July called for Liz Cheney to be tried for treason in a "televised military tribunal." And J.D. Vance has just signed on with it.

Trump's accusation of "treason" comes from Cheney allegedly communicating with a witness set to testify for the Jan. 6 committee, on which Cheney is the vice-chair. We need to be clear here: an ethics breach like that, while bad, is not "treason" nor cause for a military tribunal.

Military tribunals are the type of trials used with war criminals and suspected terrorists, and doing so for an American citizen like Liz Cheney would strip her of her right to due process.

I really need people to understand this. One of two candidates for president is demanding a "televised military tribunal" for "treason" against someone who is investigating him for inciting an insurrection, on the basis of claims of her allegedly doing witness tampering, which again, while bad if true, is not treason.

Televised military tribunals.

Televised military tribunals.

[factcheckandchill]

Outside popular framing: why would Hamas do this?

Hamas has launched an invasion of Southern Israel overnight.

Biden and other members of the "international community" have already shown support for Israel, and condemned Hamas.

Hamas has taken hostages after years of dealing with an oppressive Israel. Some of the actions of Hamas are inexcusable and reprehensible.

But, we forget that most of the actions taken by Hamas in the past day have already been committed by Israel on a much larger scale. and now, civilians are bearing the brunt of the retaliation.

The coverage of this is much more heightened than the Pogroms that occurred this year against Palestinians. Israeli hostages are allegedly being taken to Gaza. with many calling that a war crime. But when Palestinian children are taken into Israel to be tried in military tribunals, that's fine and not considered a war crime by the international community.

At the moment, P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that the Gaza Strip will experience something they haven't before. Which while feasible, is a nightmare to imagine.

While the focus will be on Hamas "provoking a war" no attention is going to the apartheid and inhumane conditions that Palestinians are forced to live under.

https://x.com/Blue_flamingo__/status/1710813928891048261?s=20

The recent focus of Israel on the West Bank has also probably given Hamas an opportunity to launch. Israel became so obsessed with simply harassing and making life difficult in the West Bank that it allowed both the emotional and material opportunities for Hamas to do this.

Lack of access to freedom of movement, trade, and lack of dignity, as well as Palestinians living under apartheid, have all contributed to this issue.

Many anticipated the scale of this episode to be more violent than the 2nd Intifada which started for similar reasons.

In 2005, a policy of disengagement from Israel was implemented in Gaza, although a lockdown on borders and travel rights of Palestinians has been implemented. Up to 2007, when tensions with official leadership, Hamas took control of Gaza by force. Since then, things have become worse for Palestinians.

Since then, the flow of goods has been heavily restricted.

Mainly due to Hamas's aggressive methods of retaliation. However, if it was Fatah or a third party, violence would occur as it is natural in these conditions to feel defensive. Especially because people feel like they have no other recourse or future outside of this open-air prison and the indignities of living under violent apartheid.

When people wonder why Palestinians are angry and attacking and committing these 'inexcusable crimes', they should remember that Israel's actions towards Palestinians are the root cause of this retaliatory effort.

Vox said it well when it wrote: "The angrier Palestinians are at Israel, the greater Hamas’s political incentives for violence."

Resistance to occupation is not terrorism.

The path to peace lies in truth-telling, recognition of inequality and injustice, and work to remedy the situation and provide people with rights and access to hope.

Hamas here are opportunists, but we can't forget the other side of this and what made this violence possible.

Palestinians weren't born violent. They are forced to resort to violence.

My thoughts are with the innocent people on either side of the wall.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

 The real choice isn’t “pragmatism” or “idealism.” It’s either allowing these trends to worsen – destroying what’s left of our democracy and turning our economy into even more of a playground for big corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires – or reversing them. And the only pragmatic way of reversing them is through a “political revolution” that mobilizes millions of Americans. 

Robert Reich (via azspot)

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 2, 2024

On February 25, 1901, financier J. P. Morgan’s men filed the paperwork to incorporate a new iron and steel trust, and over the weekend, businessmen waited to see what was coming. Five days later, on March 2, the announcement came: J. P. Morgan was overseeing the combination of companies that produced two thirds of the nation’s steel into the United States Steel Corporation. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion, which at the time was almost three times more than the federal government’s annual budget.  

While the stock market was abuzz with news of the nation’s first billion-dollar corporation, Vice President–elect Theodore Roosevelt was on his way from New York to Washington, D.C., where he and his family arrived at 5:00 in the evening. The train was an hour behind schedule because the crowds coming to see the upcoming inauguration, scheduled for Monday, March 4, 1901, had slowed travel into Washington. 

Two days later, President William McKinley took the oath of office for the second time, and Roosevelt became vice president.

McKinley was a champion of big business and believed the role of government was to support industry, dismissing growing demands from workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs for the government to level the economic playing field that had tilted so extraordinarily toward a few industry leaders. McKinley had won the hard-fought election of 1896 handily, but by 1900, Republicans were so concerned about the growing demand for reform that party leaders put Roosevelt, who had won a reputation for standing up to business interests, on the ticket, at least in part because they hoped to silence him there.

Roosevelt hoped he could promote reform from the vice presidency, but he quickly discovered that he couldn’t accomplish much of anything. His only official duty was to preside over the Senate, which would not convene until December. He was so bored he asked the chief justice of the Supreme Court if it would be unseemly for him to enroll in law school to finish his degree. (Horrified, the justice offered to supervise Roosevelt’s studies himself.)

But then, in September, an unemployed steelworker assassinated McKinley, and Roosevelt became president. “I told McKinley it was a mistake to nominate that wild man at Philadelphia,” one of McKinley’s aides said. “I told him what would happen if he should die. Now look. That damned cowboy is president of the United States.” 

Two months later, on November 13, J. P. Morgan and railroad magnates brought together the nation’s main railroad interests, which had been warring with each other, into a new conglomerate called the Northern Securities Company. Even the staunchly big business Chicago Tribune was taken aback: “Never have interests so enormous been brought under one management,” its editor wrote. 

Midwestern governors, whose constituents depended on the railroads to get their crops to market, suggested that their legislatures would find a way to prohibit such a powerful combination. Northern Securities Company officials retorted that they would simply keep all business transactions and operations secret. When Roosevelt gave his first message to Congress in December, industrialists watched to see what the “damned cowboy” would say about their power over the government. 

They were relieved. Roosevelt said the government should start cleaning up factories and limiting the working hours of women and children, and that it should reserve natural resources for everyone rather than allow them to be exploited by greedy businessmen. 

But Roosevelt did not oppose the new huge combinations. He simply wanted the government to supervise and control corporate combinations, preventing criminality in the business world as it did in the streets. He asked businessmen only for transparency. Once the government actually knew what businesses were up to, he said, it could consider regulation or taxation to protect the public interest. 

Senators and businessmen who had worried that the cowboy president would slash at the trusts breathed a sigh of relief that all he wanted was “transparency.” According to the Chicago Tribune, the “grave and reverend and somewhat plutocratic Senators immediately admitted in the most delighted fashion that the young and supposedly impetuous President had discussed the trust question with rare discrimination.” 

But they were wrong to think Roosevelt did not intend to reduce the power of big business. In early January 1902, Minnesota sued to stop the Northern Securities Company from organizing on the grounds that such a combination violated Minnesota law. While the Supreme Court dithered over whether or not it could rule on the case, the Roosevelt administration put the federal government out in front of the issue. In February, Roosevelt’s attorney general told newspapers that the administration believed the formation of the Northern Securities Company violated the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and that he would be filing a suit to keep it from organizing.

Businessmen were aghast, not only because Roosevelt was going after a business combination but also because he had acted without consulting Wall Street. When J. P. Morgan complained that he had not been informed, Roosevelt coolly told him that that was the whole point. “If we have done anything wrong,” said the astonished Morgan, “send your man [the attorney general] to my man [one of his lawyers] and they can fix it up.” The president declined. “We don’t want to fix it up,” explained the attorney general. “We want to stop it.” 

“Criticism of President Roosevelt’s action was heard on every side,” reported the Boston Globe. “Some of the principal financiers said he had dealt a serious blow to the financial securities of the country.” For his part, Roosevelt was unconcerned by the criticism. “If the law has not been violated,” he announced, “no harm can come from the proposed legal action.”  

In late February, the Supreme Court decided it would not hear the Minnesota case; on March 10, the United States sued to stop the organization of the Northern Securities Company.

In August 1902, Roosevelt toured New England and the Midwest to rally support for his attack on the Northern Securities Company. He told audiences that he was not trying to destroy corporations but rather wanted to make them act in the public interest. He demanded a “square deal” for everyone. As the Boston Globe put it: “‘Justice for all alike—a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor,’ is the Roosevelt ideal to be attained by the framing and the administration of the law. And he would tell you that that means Mr Morgan and Mr Rockefeller [sic] as well as the poor fellow who cannot pay his rent.” 

In 1904 the Supreme Court ruled that the Northern Securities Company was an illegal monopoly and that it must be dissolved, and by 1912, Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong federal government was the only way for citizens to maintain control over corporations, which he saw as the inevitable outcome of the industrial economy. He had no patience for those who hoped to stop such combinations by passing laws against them. Instead, he believed the American people must create a strong federal government that could exert public control over corporations.

In a famous speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1912, he called for a “new nationalism.”

“The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being,” he said. He warned that “[t]here can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains…. We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know…whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public.”

Roosevelt had come to believe that a strong government must regulate business. “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power,” he said. 

After all, he said, “[t]he object of government is the welfare of the people.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Alice Weidel likes to talk about Germany’s past — but she’s talked less about that of her own family.

As co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Weidel has urged her country to move on from what her party calls a “cult of shame” over its Nazi-era atrocities. Yet, despite her calls for Germany to look forward, her own family’s history has remained in the shadows.

An investigation by Welt am Sonntag, drawing on extensive documents from German and Polish archives, reveals that Weidel’s grandfather Hans Weidel was a prominent Nazi judge, appointed directly by Adolf Hitler, responsible for sentencing opponents of the Third Reich.

While the Weidels’ history is not unique in a country where the Nazi past touches nearly every family, these revelations are relevant given the AfD’s positions on Germany’s efforts to atone for the actions of previous generations.

In 2018, the party’s co-leader Alexander Gauland shocked the country when he minimized the Nazi period as “just bird shit” in a millennium of glorious history. The previous year, Björn Höcke, one of the party’s more extreme figures, described a Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame” and called for a 180-degree reversal to the country’s approach to remembrance.

Despite its overt radicalism and warnings by authorities that it is an extremist organization, the AfD has surged in popularity. In September, it achieved the most significant electoral win for the far right since WWII, capturing its first regional election victory. Now, with Alice Weidel as its top candidate, the AfD is preparing to push its nationalist agenda in the upcoming federal election.

Military judge

It’s not that Weidel is completely opposed to talking about her family history. She has recounted how it was expelled from what used to be Silesia, now Poland — but she’s remained silent on her grandfather’s prominent role in the Nazi regime.

Through a spokesperson, Weidel said she had no knowledge of her grandfather’s Nazi past. “Due to family discord, there was no contact with the grandfather, who died in 1985, nor was he a topic of conversation in the family,” the spokesperson said. 

Weidel was six years old when her grandfather Hans died. Her grandmother, also a member of the Nazi party, passed away two years later.

The elder Weidel was nearly 40 when he became a military judge at the Warsaw commandant’s office in July 1941, joining about 3,000 Wehrmacht judges in enforcing Hitler’s military rule. 

His superiors praised him for “carrying out his work with great interest and understanding,” the documents showed.

Three years into the job, Hans Weidel was appointed Chief Staff Judge. His appointment passed through the Führer’s headquarters, according to an official document from Oct. 12, 1944 that reads: “Der Führer, signed Adolf Hitler.”

Before his steep rise in the Nazi system, Hans Weidel had studied law in Munich and Breslau. He was a member of the Nazi party since 1932, joining before Hitler’s rise to power and serving in the Waffen-SS from 1933 as a legal advisor. “Even before the September 1930 election, I voted National Socialist and actively campaigned in the movement’s election propaganda,” he wrote in a document preserved in German archives.

Hans Weidel would later tell investigators that he had no knowledge of the Nazi’s treatment of Jews. He lived in a small town, he said : “I didn’t hear anything there other than what was in the newspapers or on the radio.” 

“I must stress, however, that I never heard anything about the SS’s crimes,” he added. 

The aftermath

After Germany’s defeat and its division into four occupied zones, the victorious powers set about cleansing the country from the Nazis. Supporters of the dictatorship were not to hold important positions in the new state. To this end, tribunals were set up by the military governments of the allied powers.

In Nov. 1948, a tribunal in Bielefeld, part of the British-occupied zone, opened a case against him for “membership of a criminal organization.” But the case was closed within a month, with prosecutors citing a lack of evidence, the investigation file in the federal archives showed.

That decision, while not an outright acquittal, spared him from being disbarred. He went on to open a law firm in the Western city of Gütersloh, where he became active in an association of displaced persons and sought compensation for his lost property in Upper Silesia.

Two decades later, his Nazi past caught up with him again. In the late 1970s, police in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg reopened investigations into his wartime role. Requests for documents were sent to East Germany, then under communist rule. However, both attempts to prosecute him failed. In the Federal Republic, not a single military judge was brought to justice for imposing arbitrary death sentences.

The revelations are unlikely to damage Alice Weidel’s standing with her base as she prepares to lead her party in the election next year.

However, as the AfD struggles to shake off accusations of Nazi sympathy, how she chooses to confront her grandfather’s prominent role in the regime could influence how voters see the party’s commitment to moving beyond its past. 

[zvaigzdelasas]

Two days before Guatemala’s presidential runoff election, the Supreme Court of Justice granted a permanent injunction Friday to the party of progressive candidate Bernardo Arévalo, blocking a lower court’s order suspending the party’s legal status. Court spokesman Rudy Esquivel said it ordered the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to disregard the lower court’s ruling, which came last month at the request of prosecutors who said they were investigating how the party had gathered the necessary signatures to register years earlier. The high court had earlier blocked the suspension with a temporary injunction at the request of Arévalo’s Seed Movement.[...]

Prosecutors allege that some of the signatures submitted by the party were fictitious or belonged to dead people. Arévalo has dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and aimed at keeping him out of the competition. Recent opinion polls have given him a wide lead over the conservative Torres, who is making her third bid for the presidency.

18 Aug 23

[catilinas]

Can you recommend any non-fiction books about roman history for someone looking to get a little bit deeper into it?

yeah! do also check my book rec tag because ive probably answered something similar to this at Some point. also bear in mind this is specific to the roman republic (and tbh mostly the late republic) because i just do not care. like rome kept happening but who Give a shit. look at it. it's got emperors. anyway

a companion to the roman republic ed. nathan rosenstein and robert morstein-marx and the cambridge companion to the roman republic ed. harriet i. flower are both absolutely massive and full of v good introductions to a variety of topics! get basic understanding of a thing! nice!

some specific Books I Like on individual topics: the rise of rome: from the iron age to the punic wars by kathryn lomas covers the earliest roman Anything up to the third century And grounds that history in the context of what was going on in the rest of italy at the time. roman republics by harriet i. flower is about different ways of periodising the history of the republic(s?) and in doing so gives a good overview of major changes to the political system. party politics in the age of caesar by lily ross taylor is Quite Old but imo still holds up as an introduction at least.

you could also consider Picking A Guy and reading a biography. love it when a life is put into the context of wider history while also existing as a more coherent narrative on which to pin that history. some that are fun are sulla: the last republican by arthur keaveney, the patrician tribune by w. jeffrey tatum about clodius pulcher (the introduction is also suchhhhhh a good summary of 'party' politics and why that's not a great way to think about it!), clodia metelli: the tribune's sister by marilyn b. skinner about clodius' sister who was maybe also lesbia from catullus' poetry, cato the younger: life and death at the end of the republic by fred k. drogula, fulvia: playing for power at the end of the roman republic by celia e. schultz (i have been meaning to read this one lol), and brutus: the noble conspirator by kathryn tempest.

my anti-recommendation is rubicon by tom holland No i have not read it Yes i think it sucks. L + i have been shown excerpts of the bad prose + the republic had fallen apart way before caesar crossed the rubicon + the author has a whole bunch of bad takes + read attis (1996) instead

[wellthebardsdead]

The loved & the forgotten pt27

Part 26 here

———

Voryn: *silently puffing from his pipe as he twirls his fingers through nerevars hair, his ears fixated on the chimers soft steady breathing as he rests against his chest, and the gradually dying revelry outside of the councillors estate as everyone winds down from the party* …hm?… *slowly opens his third eye and glances at a curtain shifting without a breeze* speak. What did you find?

Tong Assassin: *suddenly appears kneeling beside the bed* Praise to the house of shadow, lord dagoth. The rogue agents have been dealt with in their entirety, we found no further evidence beyond the tampering from stragglers of house Hlaalu.

Voryn: *holds out his hand taking the report as it’s given to him before taking another long drag of his pipe* hm… these names have connections to other great houses… tch. Of course house Dres would be involved… any chance to gain a foothold… no matter. What of those following us? What of their allegiance?

Tong Assassin: … *looks down nervously before suddenly pulling the mask and blade of almalexia from his bag immediately making voryn shield nerevar* cultists of the tribunal my lord… We tracked them to their hideaway. It was unmistakably a shrine to the false gods turned saints. A statue of Almalexia stood the height of the chamber leading further into the structure… but…

Voryn: …What is it?…

Tong Assassin: there were several beds. 50 in total. All of them recently used. But only 40 of the heretics were accounted for.

Voryn: there’s still 10 on the loose then…

Tong Assassin: yes my lord. Half of our numbers have remained at the shrine in case of their return. My other men are guarding the manor of Vive- *falls silent as voryns pipe suddenly meets his throat. The mouthpiece sharp as a blade and thin enough to pierce*

Voryn: What. Was. That?

Tong Assassin: v-vivienne my lord. Vivienne. Forgive me- p-please- it was a mistake-

Voryn: … *pulls away and resumes smoking* You’re forgiven. Return if you find anything of interest… don’t. Let them get to Vivienne.

Tong Assassin: *bows and backs away* yes sir- yes my lord. Thank you. *disappears in the blink of an eye*

Voryn: *sighs and looks down, blowing a small puff of smoke onto nerevars face*

Nerevar: *sneezes and opens his eyes with a pout* how did you know I was awake?

Voryn: I felt your breath change. *strokes his hair gently* How much did you hear?

Nerevar: *pouts* am I not allowed to know what potential threat we’re facing?

Voryn: *rolls his eyes* Our poets brattiness is rubbing off on you. No. I ask so I know what I need to fill you in on. *gently lifts his chin to look at him* is that a problem?

Nerevar: *face flushing bright pink as he bites his lip* no~

Voryn: *smirks meaning in and giving him a kiss* good… *sighs* What did you hear?…

*meanwhile*

Vivienne: *a little drunk and tongue deep in Kaidans lips as Taliesin kisses his neck and tries to navigate opening the door while refusing to take his hands off his husbands, the three of them somehow managing to get inside the bedroom at last after navigating the hall and the walls they pinned one another to* mmn- *pulls away catching his breath* gods- *whines sweetly as Taliesin takes his chance to steal a kiss as well while Kaidan begins undressing himself and then his sun and moon skinned lover*

Taliesin: *smiles into the kiss helping Kaidan get Vivienne’s clothes on the floor before stripping himself of his shirt and boots* what do you want us to do darling?…

Kaidan: *pulls Taliesin in close by the waist wedging the dunmer between them* anything you want, just tell us sweetheart? *leans in whispering into his ear before biting it playfully* we’re all yours to command~

Vivienne: *moans and arches his back a little into Taliesin and grips onto Kaidans shoulders, wanting to please them both so badly but ultimately wanting one thing far more greater* c-can we just- cuddle for a bit?… h-hold each other?

Kaidan: … *looks at him then at Taliesin and smiles warmly*

Taliesin: *nods and smiles back*

Kaidan: …Dibs on carrying him to bed! *yoinks the dunmer into his arms*

Taliesin: Oh no you don’t I will be having that pleasure thank you very much! *goes to grab him only to get yoinked over Kaidans shoulder* KAIDAAAN!!!

Kaidan: *snickers carrying them both to the bed and tossing them into the blankets and pillows before pouncing on them both* I said I called dibs~ *leans down smothering them both in kisses making Taliesin laugh and vivienne squeal*

Vivienne: *giggling and squirming helplessly* K-Kaidan! Kaidaaaan! That tickles!!

Taliesin: it does? Kaidan move over let me at him!

Vivienne: *flails as he’s smothered in kisses* NOOOOO!!!!

*meanwhile*

Mannimarco: *laying in his bed beside miraak, unable to sleep on his own soundly without constantly looking over his shoulder or waking from nightmares imagining he’s back in cold harbour*

*soft thudding above his head & the crunching of dried scathecraw*

Mannimarco: *blearily opens his eyes identifying the sound as footsteps easily* … *gently nudges miraak trying to wake the atmoran but receiving no response beyond his continued snoring* … *sits up slowly and raises his hands, nervously trying to focus his magic into his palms after being unable to use it for so long* c-come- on- just- *winces and recoils at the spark that flies off his nails, giving himself casters burn as he successfully summons a simple skeleton* gods im very out of practice… *sighs and covers one of his eyes making the hollow in the skeletons empty socket glow a soft purple* go investigate… P-please…

The skeleton: *turns and obeys his order, shuffling out of the room, stopping for just a moment to stare at geldis slipping out of seros room* …

Geldis: … *walks back into seros room closing the door*

The skeleton: *continues up the stairs and out of the house before shuffling around through the ash and bumping into something with its foot* ??? *looks down revealing the body of a dead morag tong agent* … *looks up in time to see a blade coming towards its skull*

Mannimarco: *snaps out of the vision and screams falling back onto miraak finally waking him up*

Miraak: *jumps and nearly flings him off the bed in fright* What is it?! What-

Mannimarco: *suddenly gripping onto him and trying to pull him upright* danger! Outside!!! I s-saw a dead body!!

Miraak: *thinking he simply suffered another nightmare* shhh, youre alright friend, just- *pauses hearing the front door creek open and someone coming inside… the skeleton never closed the door* …stay here. *picks up his sword and staff before creeping slowly from the bed and out of the room, immediately spotting several figures dressed like redoran watchmen making their way down the steps and into the hall* Ah. guests… *raises his staff summoning his seekers*

*a few minutes later*

Captain Veleth: *helping his men clean up after the party* Well apart from the mess id say the celebration was a success. No drunken brawls, no unruly revellers, and no destruction of propert- *goes quiet watching as a dunmer suddenly flies past him and ends up embedded into a wall* what th- *looks back towards Vivienne’s manor to see a lurker and several seekers fighting off several dunmer dressed in redoran watchmen apparel* what in the-

Miraak: *literally just in his night robes, spots him and his guards as he summons more backup while running a cultist through* HELP ME GODS DAMN IT!!!! FUS- RO DAH!!!!

[antis-hero]

"Mrs. George to Address Anti-Suffragists Here"

Article in Star Tribune, October 11, 1914.

Mrs. George is Mrs. Alice N. George, one of the more prominent anti-suffragists of her time. She argued against woman's suffrage to federal and state legislatures and would write an essay titled "Suffrage Fallacies" for the 1915 Massachusetts anti-suffrage campaign, which was collected as a part of the Anti-Suffrage Essays by Massachusetts Women (1916).

A list explaining the anti-suffrage position is included by the Minneapolis anti-suffrage association, which is reproduced below:

Reasons For Opposing Suffrage.

The Minneapolis association has issued a pamphlet containing in concise form the reasons why the organized anti-suffragists are opposed to the suffrage movement. In this view St. Paul association also joins. The pamphlet is:

"The great advance of women in the last century—moral, intellectual and economic—has been made without the vote. Therefore, we believe the vote is not needed for their further advancement."

"In the large sense, women now stand outside of politics and are therefore free to appeal to any party in matters of municipal and state welfare, including charity and reform, in a non-partisan spirit. However, women have the privilege of voting for the school board and the library board. Last year, these two boards received from taxes and bond issues the sum of $2,993,962.27, or about one-third of the city appropriation. As only about 6 per cent of the women voted on the administration of these funds, why give them further representation?"

"The basis of government is force, its ability rests upon its power to enforce its laws. Therefore it is inexpedient to grant the vote to women who can not so enforce the laws they may enact."

“Voting is only a small part of government. The need of America is not an increased quantity but an improved quality of the vote. We consider the interests of the community to be more important than those of the individual.”

"The vote is not a natural right, nor is it a right bestowed upon taxpayers. It is not a question of right, but of expediency for the public welfare."

"Woman's suffrage is the demand of a minority of women. The majority of women are not asking for it. According to the last U. S. census report obtainable, there are 24,555,754 women of voting age in the United States and the Suffrage Party claim three to four million of this number. Should the minority rule the majority?"

"Woman's vote is not a factor in the prohibition movement, because out of their eleven suffrage states, Kansas is the only one which has prohibition and that state had prohibition many years before Women had the vote. Eight non-suffrage states are prohibition states."

"Wages depend upon the markets, upon labor competition, upon skill and permanency, upon quality of output; wages are determined by supply and demand, not by the ballot."

"Suffrage states do not show better laws governing prostitution than non-suffrage states. The enforcement of these laws shows no improvement in suffrage states."

"Public opinion is the real remedial agent. Women banded together, as disinterested and non-partisan workers for the public good, can mould public opinion better than voting women divided by party politics; just as men have organized non-partisan clubs and commissions for purposes of improvement and reform."

"Please take the trouble to look up the laws of Minnesota governing child labor, hours and protection, for woman's labor, high saloon license, restrict- ed saloon districts, factory laws, health laws, mothers' pensions, juvenile court, equal guardianship laws, property right and inheritance laws. You will find them in most instances superior to those in suffrage states and in no instances discrimminating [sic] against women."

"We do therefore, respectfully, protest against the granting of votes for women in our state. We believe that political equality will deprive woman of special privileges hitherto accorded to her by law, and would be a menace. to American womanhood and to American government."

"Our association has been formed for the purpose of conducting a purely educational campaign. If you are in sympathy with this aim and believe as we do in our cause, will you not become a member of our association?"

[bluemooncove]

Since I've got a bit more time to myself for the next week, how about we stop and take a moment to meet some of the side character members of the guild and see if any of them are interesting.

"Fourth generation Beauty, Merchant! My apprenticeship was with The honorable Miss Secretary. I've since become one of the most respected in the fourth generation, being the latest to be added to the admission's council."

"Landsknecht, Meister Seneschal of the the Finance Council. Captain of the First Squadron. My apprentice, Armor Knight, seems to have eclipsed me in popularity but I'm still as strong as I was back then."

"Footman, third generation and the lieutenant of the second Squadron.

"Hey Sass, ain't red hair meant to be rare? Feels like a wildfire in the guild hall today."

"Guardian, of the Second Generation. Once Captain of the Second Squadron but I now primarily shift from party to party."

"Illusionist, second generation Beauty. Along with my partner, the Meister Justice, I handle the legal affairs of the guild. Additionally, I provide defense when any guild member is called before council or tribunal."

"Duelist, third generation ... and Duelist, fourth generation. It's for the best you that you don't ask."

"Is it guild tradition to stand around and interest yourselves like this?"

[broadcastarchive-umd]

#PBS “A Third Choice,” a one-hour special exploring the colorful history of third parties in American politics, was first broadcast in January 1996. A revised and updated version was broadcast in August 2000.

“A Third Choice” covered more than 200 years of America’s most influential third-party movements, drawing on interviews with leading historians, a rich collection of campaign memorabilia, rare archival footage, artwork, political cartoons, and campaign songs.

“The one-hour program, part of public television’s ongoing Democracy Project, is a vibrant, telling look at history’s odd men out.” – Chicago Tribune, 2/26/1996

The program was produced by Ben Wattenberg (who acted as narrator) and the creators of the weekly public affairs program Think Tank (PBS, 1994 to 2010).

Above photo: Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, whose slogan was “Pass Prosperity Around,” issued receipts for party contributions.

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

Absolute Brain raaaaawwwwwttttt

Klassje is like Harry's Virgil, his Shadow The Hedgehog, Jetstream Sam. In a gameplay sense, she's the rival character. The one always just a step ahead of you until your big confrontation. In that "Not really a villain" category of antagonist. Like there are certain characters that while morally complicated, still fill the villain role in terms of stories and games. Joyce, Evrart, Dros, The Krenel Mercenaries, they're the closest things DE has to traditional villains and do fill that role. Observing the story and characters from that lens, Klassje is the rival antagonist. Almost a villain but too much like you, too friendly with you and vulnerable to you. They're someone on your level, and a test of your skills, quite literally in fact.

Klassje as a character puts to the test what kind of cop you are by giving you the option to arrest her or let her go, arresting her may lead to her being caught and killed, and letting her go gives post-Tribunal changes that are beneficial. She's also a foil for Harry, like she's an attractive skinny young white blonde woman who smokes, like Dora right? But she's also a self described "Disco Holdover" and is using a fake name, getting pilled up to avoid her worries, she's like Harry. She knows it to, knows it better than Harry does just how similar they are even though they find themselves on such different sides. She's the rival character! The foil to the main character and mid-game test of your skills and priorities. She's also one third of the murder case. The other third is the hanged man, which I'd also say kind of fits the role of rival character in that, Harry obviously sees himself in the hanged man. Not in Lely, not in the person who was once alive, but the bloated corpse of that person, the victim, and it's also an early game obstacle you have to deal with, combat in a way.

Of course the writing is more complicated than "Here's our party with the Leader, Tank, Emotional Support, Lancer, and our Main Character Mirror Rival Character" it's much more in depth and complex than that, but also interwoven so no character is entirely really their own character, they're pieces of everyone else's life and everyone is caught up in their stories. They're all the main character because they're written like their own characters that their own story revolves around. Hell you can feel more of a side character in the lives of all these complicated people even as the player. The Working Class Woman, Billie Méjean, is a perfect example of that because she's like the archetypal video game NPC side-side-side-character who you harass with your main character shenanigans, and she gives you 2 quests, the Spirit Bird quest and the Missing Husband case, the Missing Husband case in particularly is incredibly humbling because it goes from making her a side-character/quest giver into just an average, complicated and living person. Puts you and Harry in a kind of awkward and very real position where you only have bad news to offer.

Disco Elysium isn't just an awesome game, it's a loving subversion of RPG tropes, of power fantasy and of players and non-player characters, and it uses the set up of a game and those expected tropes to constantly subvert you because it reminds you both simultaneously "This is practically a living breathing world" and also "This is a game and a written story" without compromising either, by making them part of each other. It does this by disguising video game elements in people and set pieces. Jean Luc is a wall you have multiple ways of getting around, Evrart Claire and his chair is a boss fight, the Insulindian Phasmid is the final boss, and the final boss is just talking to a bug but it is the final boss and Dros is its first phase.

Disco Elysium is several books, literally several books in a game, but it is also an incredible game because it uses the roots of RPG's and infuses them into something completely different from any RPG you may be deeply familiar with. The dragons and castles and princesses and knights that inspired the genre have been spun into abstract forms and then into grounded realistic depictions of people and concepts. It isn't just a book disguised as a game, it's gaming taken full circle. Books used to be games, and now the game is a book games inspired by gamebooks that inspired by books.

It kind of reminds me of Undertale but in a much less obvious way. Undertale is as the youtuber would title it "A Subversive Masterpiece" because it is. It's a subversive commentary on our relationships with games and the stories in them. We all know monster kind are the victims now, but did we expect that going in? Because it's presented in the prologue very apolitically, deceptively apolitically, and uses your biases set from other games to expect the monsters to be straightforward enemies, not genocide victims! It's subversions all the way, by ramping everything up to be super gamey and then twisting it around. It takes every chance to fuck with your expectations without breaking your investment. It's all about you to, you're the star of the show and that makes you kind of uncomfortable. Even though you're the star though, your player character is almost characterless, almost. Whereas in DE the world is almost painfully indifferent to you, every character is all fleshed out and has a lot going on with them and you don't even know your name. It slowly takes you out of your place as "The main character" and breaks down your main character syndrome by making the main character just a character and every other character just as complicated and interesting, not more or less so. It subverts you too, without even really trying just by being so unique, and when it really starts to feel like the world is cold and indifferent to you you realize you have a friend and you hear the very spirit of the world you're in say I love you and it's beautiful because you don't expect it, you don't expect such heart touching things from such an otherwise cold and gross experience. You're made not to expect it!

Disco Elysium and Undertale are Opposite But The Same games to me, they're games about games and games about life in opposite ways to each other. They're great games, story games, art games. The most a game can be, and still not even yet the pinnacle, proof of concepts! Disco Elysium may never get its Deltarune though...

All in all, Disco Elysium is a great game.