#trump name means lies

[isawthismeme]

[lizardsfromspace]

The factchecking this cycle has been so profoundly incompetent that it's finally getting some real backlash, but the extent of it really should be clear. So much of factchecking is not based in reality, but in a kind of contorted moon logic that can find true claims to be false and false ones to be true based on wildly inconsistent reasoning.

But this one really shows off some of the base assumptions of modern factchecking, and also bc it got a community note which is funny:

Let's take this one by one

The idea that quotes have any options but "he said it" or "he didn't say it". It is a binary, maybe with a third option of "it was clipped wildly out of context", but something you see constantly now is the idea that quoting someone's direct words without deceptive editing or removal of context can somehow be false

Pointlessly noting that it's from 2016, and that it's not clear if he currently believes it. What the hell does that matter to the question of if he said that in 2016? People understood that the "dig up someone's tweets from when they were 17" thing was inane, but they counter-balanced by apparently deciding that citing anything someone said more than about six months ago is Misinformation if we don't have objective evidence they would say the exact same thing now, even if there's no evidence they believe anything else. Analyzing someone's high school tweets and analyzing something the literal President said seven years ago are not equivalent

Noting that he walked it back following criticism. You see this constantly, too. Again, what does that matter to the question of if he said it? But this is just taken as a given now: if someone gets blowback and says "whoops I didn't mean it", that should be taken at face value. Effectively, Politifact is letting Donald Trump self-factcheck Donald Trump: their only evidence (and I read the article too) this is at all false is that Donald Trump said Donald Trump didn't really mean the words he said, so they must agree with the judgment of Donald Trump that Donald Trump was treated so unfairly here.

A general confusion over what factchecking is. If you're asked "did Donald Trump say this in 2016?", your sole job is to determine if he really said that in 2016. It's not to divine if he, deep in his heart, still believes it now. That's completely irrelevant.

The two guiding principles of modern factchecking are this: one, it's strongly rumored - and also, obvious to everyone literate - that the major factchecking sites have either standing orders to find equal numbers of lies on both sides, or are staffed by people who think it's their job to hold both sides equally to account (the exception is Snopes, whose writers are just terrible at their jobs). In the name of this, Donald Trump can say something on camera only for it to be judged false, while a Democratic politician can be excoriated for mildly rounding down a figure in a speech. A factchecking website once determined that saying climate change was a threat to life on this planet was a lie, because climate change won't kill all life on this planet. Politifact's lie of the year one year was a Democrat saying a Republican plan would "end Medicare as we know it", which was judged to be a lie because it wouldn't literally end Medicare completely. Figurative language needs to be scoured, comments said directly on camera need to be made fuzzy. This makes factchecking sites worthless at factchecking, because what even is this?

It's not true that Donald Trump will refuse to accept the election results, because he's merely said he won't accept, and has said if he loses, it's only because the election was fraudulent. Okay, what, do you demand that people prove he said his plans in exact words? What is the actual, functional difference between "he said he won't accept it" and "he said if he loses it's because he won and they stole it from him, and he won't commit to saying he'll accept it"? What are you talking about, who is this for? When you go to the Logic and Reason Site for Debunking & end up having to puzzle out their convoluted logic and reasoning to understand anything, the plot's been lost a bit

The other is the idea that context is exonerating. Any context at all. If they said they didn't mean it, partially false. If they walked it back, partially false. If they said it was taken out of context, partially false. If they said it a certain number of years ago, partially false. If there's a longer video, even if it shows functionally the same thing, pants on fire, five pinocchios.

Again, we have footage of Trump saying this, and the footage in the ad is unedited, and the factchecking website is declaring something that OBJECTIVELY HAPPENED WITH HARD EVIDENCE IT HAPPENED didn't really happen bc we don't know his heart, maybe he believes something different now, we simply can't know for certain. But we do know for certain. Because "false" at least used to mean "didn't happen". But factchecking sites are now on those Beyond Belief definitions of "true" and "false" I guess

But the real problem here is that they just accept anything someone being factchecked says at face value. Because, and I can't believe I'm saying this

It seems like the people paid to determine if other people are lying...have forgotten that people lie sometimes

[prozach27]

The idea that voting for Harris and Walz means you don’t care about Gaza is such an uneducated position that it can just about only be justified as a psy-op. What exactly is it that you think voting is for? If it’s to show where your idealistic morality lies - what you would really LOVE for America to look like with a president - then of course it makes sense to not want to vote someone who isn’t as critical as you’d like of the Palestinian Genocide. But that’s not the world we live in. As American citizens, we are IMMENSELY privileged, and we cannot possibly understand the horrors and tribulations Palestinians have endured over the last year. The idea that Trump and Harris are “equally bad” for Palestine is a position of immense privilege that doesn’t value Gazan lives. Trump has told Israel to finish the war. Harris is calling for a temporary ceasefire. From a purely logical perspective, one party is promoting a position that could save Palestinian lives while the other is asking for an escalation of events. If you can’t see the difference between these two positions - the real-world, life-altering difference between these two positions for people in a war-zone - then it’s time to ask yourself if you’re morally grandstanding by demanding nothing less than a complete end to the war, or if you’re more concerned in saving even one additional life.

There is no 3rd-party presidential candidate with enough name recognition to make it in this election. If you want a third party, by all means, support them after the election and help them get a foothold. That doesn’t change that they’re not a viable option for 2024. So, do you choose Trump - who wants to escalate the war - or Harris, who wants to help it calm down? These positions are fundamentally different and will lead to changes in the number of Palestinians who survive. Leaving the Palestinian genocide aside, Trump and project 2025 have made it clear how they want to limit abortion access, higher education, transgender rights, gay rights, and DEI efforts while the Harris White House wouldn’t be trying to actively dismantle these things. These are, once again, clear cut issues that will alter how many people survive under each presidency.

If your position is that “unless they give exactly what I want, they don’t deserve to be in office,” then it’s clear you’re not willing or interested in making the actually hard choices in politics and your activism is performative. You aren’t voting for who’s a good person or who you like most - you’re voting for the enemy you want in office. Do the right thing. Vote for Harris and give people a chance to save more lives.

[kcokaine]

Hi sorry but people on twitter are saying you’re a nazi and I was just wondering if that was true??

Not only is this quite outrageous take on someone without like 0 actual proof. I can admit in the "proof"(the zionism thing which people mean as Nazism) people used against me was me at most being insensitive/ignorant which i already sincerely apologized for because i wasn't edjucated on the matter whatsoever. It was not right of me and I never repeated that after i found out about the truth of things.

But also this is ridiculous. I'm not american, I'm from a country that has been wartorn by nazis and communists. All my life I was taught about atrocities these two sides did to central europe and other countries. If you had a swastika tattooed on you here you would get literally arrested or killed on the street. But that isn't even an argument, that's just me stating how stupid and hypocritical it would be of anyone to support such things from the area i was raised in. I'm highly anti nazi, anti facist or anti anything that is even similar to that. I stand with civilians and innocent people that are being collateral damage to war and governments. Therefore I'm not a trump supporter, i was always left leaning i was always for rights. Hell I'm a bisexual woman, how could i ever support someone like Trump in my right mind?

I do not understand where this claim is absolutely coming from and i dont understand how people disregard the severity of saying this online with confidence. This is such a serious accusation that can ruin reputations unrightfully and just shows how people have no interest searching for more proof or anything before saying serious things because all they care about is drama and that the finger is not pointed at them in that moment. We as society got too comfortable about canceling and just saying anything, growing into complete parasocial relationship within each other. You are either no person to them, no human being or you are a glorified idea. Everyone is a person behind that screen and if they ever got over they pride and looked themselves in the core they would understand they also do mistakes and not everything is black and white.

I'm hurt by these accusations. This isn't anywhere close to calling someone names or weird for having odd preferences and stuff in fandoms. This is claiming that I support actual genocide, suffering of real people which is fucking awful. It makes me sad, deeply hurt. I'm not saying im better than anyone else, i dont need to be, I want this genocide to end same as anyone else would. I reflected, I took criticizm to heart and I'm now trying to truly do something with my following, i retweet donation links and donate to the charities with spare money i have.

The truth is, no matter what I say, it will never be enough for the people that just want to have moral highground, they act like they never made a mistake, like they were never ignorant in their life. I wonder how they would like it if someone took something terrible out of context and endlessly kept posting it on social media just to feel better without you having a proper chance to redeem yourself, always being seen as a "nazi" in some people's eyes because someone lied about you. It's sad and I'm sorry you keep seeing this lie about me. I think about it every day. And with this message I wanted to let you know what I truly feel and think. If you believe it is on you, but I'm finally putting my thoughts out there after months of thinking.

[karenandhenwilson]

I think I figured out, at least for myself, why the 9-1-1 fandom and part of the Buddie-or-Bust side of it feels so much more toxic than ever before when I know for a fact, those demanding Buddie has to become canon and who are looking for any tiny clue to be able to say it will become canon have always been this toxic. (I mean, with the exception of some people who came into the show because with Buck being bi the show was suddenly not queerbaiting anymore--lol, it hurts even just writing this as if it were really true--and then became die-hard Buddie fans or at least pretend to be to garner enough followers and clicks to make money out of fandom. But I'm not talking about them here.)

Before Bucktommy, there was no real opposition for them in the fandom. Buck and Eddie both had other LI and those had their fans (I know for a fact there are still people now shipping Buck with Taylor or Buck with Marisol or Eddie with Shannon). But those were very few fans and they created their own little spaces in fandom places and were barely noticeable. So the Buddie-or-Bust fans were able to mostly ignore them. And there have of course also been some small fanon ships for Eddie and Buck with other people, but those are barely noticed either.

But Bucktommy? That got huge in practically an instant. Because so many people were excited for bi story line with an established character and one in Buck's circumstances (not even Buck himself). And the Bucktommy fans were loud about their support of this new canon ship. So Buddie-or-Bust fans suddenly felt threatened and became much louder in their hate for anything not Buddie. Because now, for some reason, the fans of the other ship seem to be a threat to them. And also, for the first time for any of the LI of Eddie or Buck, they made an honest effort to set up Tommy and the relationship with him as something long-term. Which the Buddie-or-Bust fans recognize just as much as the Bucktommy fans, and so they try even harder to find fault in every single thing.

And that did change something in the behavior of the die-hard Buddie fans. At times, I've been neck-deep in Ana bashing, in Shannon bashing, in Taylor bashing, in Chimney bashing, in Abby bashing, in Maddie bashing. Because I enjoy a good bashing at times. It can be very cathartic. But you know what I've never seen there? I've never seen any of those characters being called derogatory names. Or their fans being called derogatory names and, in most cases, their fans didn't retaliate to the bashing either. (Though, at least for Chimney fans they sometimes very viciously go against people even just mentioning they don't like him and it came up a couple of times that Chimney fans found derogatory names for those bashing Chimney because that group of fans also seems to be unable to avoid content bashing their fav and instead sought it out deliberately to complaint about it.)

I can't even count anymore how many derogatory names I've seen for Tommy or Bucktommy or Bucktommy fans. They seem to come up with a new name every other day. And they enjoy trumping each other in their creations and using those names to get around the boundaries others try to set for themselves by filtering out the already known names.

And I already see people coming at me with "Oh, but Bucktommy fans started it by calling us BoBs." and just: No. Once more, you get an F in reading comprehension. It's always been made very clear that BoBs stood for Buddie-or-Bust and I personally don't see anything derogatory here but also, it's always been made very clear it's a specific subset of Buddie fans who behave poorly to separate them from the Buddie fans who don't care about Bucktommy. Because those people using that term are very well aware that there are really just a couple of very loud bad apples in the Buddie side of fandom and the rest of the Buddie fans don't deserve to be lumped in with them. While, on the other hand, all Bucktommy fans are always called names as a whole.

And I think their biggest problem is not even necessarily the "threat" they perceive Bucktommy to be to their own ship, though that's clearly a big part still. Otherwise, they wouldn't come after authors and artists and other fans who once shipped and created for Buddie and are now creating for Bucktommy. And otherwise, they wouldn't tag so many Buddie fics as Bucktommy, too, in some kind of strange hope to convince Bucktommy fans to ship Buddie again. (Without noticing that all they are accomplishing is to make everyone annoyed at them. And yes, that includes those Buddie fans who don't care for Bucktommy at all because they need to curate the Buddie tag very carefully now, too.)

I think their biggest problem is this belief that their ship is only valid if it's canon.

Which is so strange. Fandom has always mostly been about ships that are very much not canon. And no one ever expected their ships to become canon in the past, as far as I know. (Except if it was promoted and then didn't happen. Looking at Sterek here.) Canon ships barely get any attention. I mean, look at all the 9-1-1 ships that are canon, including Tarlos, and how little content there is for any of them, and also how little engagement there is for this content compared to Buddie. That's always been a trend in fandom, that's not new with 9-1-1.

It's not only strange, I also think it's honestly sad for these fans. Because they have deliberately set themselves up to be disappointed and dig that hole of disappointment ever deeper. Even if Buddie should ever go canon, which I honestly don't think will happen, it won't be at all what they expect. And they'll either leave the fandom or turn on the ship they were so toxically addicted to before.

[uboat53]

Forget who won or lost last night's debate, let's face it, vice-presidential debates rarely do much to alter a presidential race and it's just an excuse for pundits to milk more paycheck. No, I want to talk about something a bit more important, did anyone else notice that J.D. Vance got very offended when the moderator dared to state factual information relevant to something he said?

This isn't a one-off either, Trump and most of his supporters have been outraged at fact-checkers generally ever since he started campaigning back in 2015. They've been working tirelessly ever since to try to define fact-checking out of the job of journalism.

In doing so, they use excuses like "well, if the other side disagrees then they can fact-check", but I want to make sure that every single person is clear as to why that's a terrible idea, because it is. Let's talk about the Gish Gallop.

Dwayne Gish was a creationist in the 1980s and, as was the style at the time, he would travel the country participating in formal debates with proponents of evolution. Over time, he developed the method that eventually was named after him, the Gish Gallop. The idea behind Gish Gallop is very simple, you make a bunch of statements in rapid succession. Each statement takes only a second or two to say, but would take minutes or longer to disprove. In a debate where only two sides are allowed to speak, this forces the other side to either let your statements go unchallenged or to spend all of their time disputing them, failing to make any points or their own and probably also failing to disprove all of them in the time allotted.

In other words, a debate where there is no requirement to make factual statements or back up anything you say with factual evidence is a debate that favors the liar.

Now, I reviewed a few fact-checks of the vice-presidential debate and one thing becomes immediately clear, J.D. Vance lied a lot more than Tim Walz did. Politifact checked Walz at 6 true statements to 2 false while Vance was at 6 false to 1 true, the AP had Vance at 5 false statements to Walz's 2, and Factcheck.org had Vance at 10 to Walz's 2 false staments.

Should Walz have been forced to use all of his debate time rebutting Vance's lies? More importantly, even if he did, was there any reliable way for the audience to tell, without outside information, which of them was telling the truth? Without a moderator whose job it is to point out factual information when one side or the other lies in their argument, there's no way for the side that is being truthful to win.

Now, if you're a Trumpist, that's obviously the goal, Trump lies a lot and everyone who follows him does too; setting the rules up for liars to win is obviously good for them. For the rest of us, though, anyone who isn't mindlessly dedicated to the cult of Trump, why would we want a system that rewards lying and penalizes the truth? I hope you can see that we wouldn't.

More importantly, think about what it means that one side is relentlessly pushing for rules of debate that massively advantage liars. The media itself also isn't blameless here, the Gish Gallop has been well known since the 1980s and the fact that the news media after nearly a full decade of Trump still hasn't taken the most basic lessons of how to deal with it is absurd and it's a huge failing of the so-called "bulwark of democracy".

Ultimately, though, you, as a citizen of a democracy, have the ability to make up your own mind. Whatever else you think, whatever policies you may prefer or whatever your political preferences may be, I want you to ask yourself one question:

Do you want people who incentivize lying to govern this country?

[dicapiito]

Since Black People share zero blame about what happened in the election and why Trump won again; let’s do a master post on who’s to blame as to why Trump won again:

1. White people. They are never to be trusted to actually pay attention to shit so they will believe anything anyone tells them to. If someone is promising to get rid of anyone who’s not white; white people will vote for that candidate. White men vote for violence and white women vote in hopes to be like white men. I mean, Roe V Wade SHOULDVE been important …until I remember those stories from nurses at Planned Parenthood mentioning how obnoxious white women are about the service. White people who are actual allies are very rare and they know if they admitted to being hateful; they’d be all alone watching Fox News.

2. The mainstream media. MSNBC, CNN, Bill Maher, John Oliver, Jon Stewart ( the biggest douchefuck), Chris Hayes, Anderson Cooper, Joy Reid, among others (who I can’t name because I refuse to hate-watch their media). They spent all their fucking time bashing Biden and the Democrats. They let the lunatic leftists have a platform and they treated Trump like he’s no threat until it was way too late. They figured it’s better for their audiences to not take what Trump did in 2016-2020 seriously and just be mean towards Biden, Harris and the Democrats who actually work towards better.

Any one of these jokers could’ve taken an actual stand and report actual news about Biden but once Covid got calmer thanks to Biden and the White House became boring again because the Biden Administration was busy ACTUALLY WORKING; it just wasn’t enough for them. Once they knew leftists also found another cause they could hijack for themselves to “ stick it to the Dems” they also let these fuckers on their show to help spread more lies about the Democrats. But nope! They latched onto the “ Free Palestine” movement and sold that shit, knowing full fuckin well that it’s not America’s problem about the conflict and Biden and Harris were making sure to get a two state solution.

Their buyers remorse media is not cute and they are only doing this because they know they are a major reason why Trump won again. They’re also scared of retaliation so they’re going to act like they “ regretted it” and that Biden “ wasn’t so bad” while not ever really apologetic but their audiences will eat it up.

3. Nonblack PoC. Latino, Asian/ Pacific Islander community ( I’m not even shocked. I’m apart of this group and they love antiblackness), Arab Americans ( Rashida Tlaib is antiblack but because leftists are stupid; they couldn’t see something so obvious). The desperation to be accepted by white people and also the xenophobia in all these communities had them voting for Trump. They have the “ I’m one of the good ones” mentality and well they’re about to see that antiblackness and xenophobia has screwed themselves .

4. Social media websites letting misinformation spread, and I include tumblr since yet again this happened. I appreciate that X has a community note and people tried to fight it but it was just way too great. Too many bots were getting through. Facebook, tumblr, Twitter, TikTok, likely Instagram as well. And once the elections are over; it’s like they treat the election interference shit like it didn’t happen.

5. Leftists. As usual, since they’re bored and rich, they do this protesting “ the establishment” every four years because they don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes. They went right along with the Free Palestine bullshit because it has worked for them before. Susan Sarandon , remember her? She helped fuck over 2000 as well as 2016 and let the GOP into the White House. Since leftist includes being racist/antiblack and antisemitic; it’s a great way to get more stupid white people to not vote or “ protest vote” and help the GOP win. Now that they have; we won’t see the likes of Jill Stein or any third party candidates. They are only around to help fuck over the Democrats and yet this lesson seems to have to keep being repeated and holy fuck it’s fucking annoying.

6. Nancy Pelosi. I know I haven’t said much but she wanted Biden to step down. She wanted an open Democratic primary to get a new candidate and to go right past Kamala Harris. Her bullshit has been known for awhile, especially if you live in the Bay Area. People forgot because of Covid and because of the whack job who attacked her husband. But remember; she’s also Gavin Newsom’s aunt and well…do with that what you will. If Democrats have any chance at getting their base back; Pelosi needs to step aside and let Hakeem Jeffries be Speaker. Pelosi knew damn well if it was not Kamala Harris; Black People would not show up but she is a white woman first so of course she did what she did. And for her to act like Biden was too old when she’s in the same age group was even more moronic since he won against Trump the first fuckin time

7. antisemitism also played a huge part. Remember Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is Jewish so if it wasn’t antiblackness; antisemitism was also at play here. Even though people won’t say it just like they won’t say their true reasons why they didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. Jewish People were the only allies along with the lgbt community who overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris. Every group has knuckleheads but the knuckleheads were extremely smaller than everyone else.

8. The Squad members. AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Jayapal, Cori Bush, Summer Lee and Jamaal Bowman. It’s time to get rid of these idiot DSA morons and the fact that Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman are out is awesome. They always wanted to fuck over the Democrats because they want to appear like they’re activists while they really just sell “ someday it’ll be better” while making $176K a year. They need the GOP in charge so they can coast in the House. Too bad leftists don’t get that.

So now that we all know who’s to blame; maybe now take some fuckin responsibility and hope to fucking heaven that Trump won’t have SCOTUS overturn shit but who are we kidding? With Elon Musk around; a lot of things will be rolled back but let’s see if people learn anything from it. Oh who am I kidding ?

Oh and thinking of moving to Canada? Lmao Justin Trudeau already went “ AHT AHT”. Best believe other countries are already following suit so y’all are going to be owning up to who you voted for lol.

But ya know, Biden was “ too old” and Harris was “ too joyful”

[hhkdtn]

I know a lot of people are feeling powerless right now, so I just want to remind everyone (especially anyone feeling suicidal) that your actions could have a bigger impact on your community than ever before.

If you are social media literate, a large part of our downfall is that the Democratic Party isn’t. Every time you see someone posting hateful nonsense it’s an opportunity to show calm, logical, FACT BASED rebuttals to their followers. Doing this once could keep dozens of people from believing lies that could have made them extremists.

If you don’t think you can do calm and logical, men are openly threatening rape because they think there are no repercussions. If we sent them the same kind of (anonymous) hate mail that feminists get I bet they’d shut up real fast.

Meanwhile check your facts and then (anonymously please, don’t use real names) post what Trumps doing, with sources, in majority conservative social sites. This will make it harder for them to later blame democrats for their own actions, and it could pull some people who’ve already fallen back out of the cult.

In real life, every person who learns how to fight/disarm an opponent is someone who makes physical attacks riskier. Everyone who protests or calls politicians makes their local representative scared to lose their seat if they follow Trump’s nonsense. Everyone who volunteers if services are cut saves the lives of the people who need those services.

So many people are going to need help, and that hurts, but it means you matter so much right now. There are so many places where what you do can change a life for the better.

We were all miserable the last time this clown was elected and it didn’t help anything. This time let’s be pissed as hell and ready to act.

[misfitwashere]

October 15, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

OCT 16

After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago. That interview echoed last night’s train wreck. 

Trump showed up almost an hour late to the event with moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. When he arrived, things went downhill fast. Micklethwait asked real questions about Trump’s approach to the economy, but the former president answered with aimless rants and campaign slogans that Micklethwait corrected, repeatedly redirecting Trump back to his actual questions. Trump quickly grew angry and combative.

When Micklethwait corrected Trump’s misunderstanding of the way tariffs work, Trump replied in front of a room full of people who understand the economy: “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.” Referring to analysis that his plans would explode the national debt, including analysis by the Wall Street Journal—hardly a left-wing outlet, as Mickelthwait pointed out—Trump replied: “What does the Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way….. You’ve been wrong about everything…. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”

The economy is supposed to be Trump’s strong suit.

The former president seemed unable to stay on any topic, jumping from one idea to another randomly, or to answer anything, instead making statements that play well at his rallies—referring to people with insulting names, for example—or by rehashing old grievances and threatening to end traditional U.S. freedoms. He made it clear he intends to "straighten out our press,” for example. “Because,” he said, “we have a corrupt press."

As Micklethwait tried to keep him on task, Trump asserted stories that were more and more outlandish. He claimed that children could do the work of U.S. autoworkers in South Carolina, for example, and that he would be a better chair of the Federal Reserve than Jerome Powell. 

Micklethwait did not fight with Trump, but he didn’t indulge him either. When Trump explained that “you don’t put old in” the federal judiciary because “they’re there for two years, or three years,” Micklethwait replied: “You’re a 78-year-old man running for president.” 

And therein lies the rub. 

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who watches and clips Trump’s speeches, called the appearance “bonkers.” Journalist David Rothkopf of Deep State Radio wrote: “The past 24 hours seem to have been a dividing line in the Trump campaign...and in Trump. He went from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention. He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon.” 

Likely reflecting this shift, trading in shares of Trump media, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social social media site, was stopped briefly today as the price plummeted in unusually heavy trading. Trump took to social media to hawk tokens for his new crypto project, although the nature of the project is still unclear and investing simply offers voting rights in the new platform. The website crashed repeatedly during the day. 

Trump’s issues make it likely that a second Trump presidency would really mean a J.D. Vance presidency, even if Trump nominally remains in office. 

Currently an Ohio senator, J.D. Vance is just 39, and if voters put Trump into the White House, Vance will be one of the most inexperienced vice presidents in our history. He has held an elected office for just 18 months, winning the office thanks to the backing of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who first employed Vance, then invested in his venture capital firm, and then contributed an unprecedented $15 million to his Senate campaign. 

Vance and Thiel make common cause with others who are open about their determination to dismantle the federal government. Although different groups came to that mission from different places, they are sometimes collectively called a “New Right” (although at least one scholar has questioned just how new it really is). Some of the thinkers both Vance and Thiel follow, notably dystopian blogger Curtis Yarvin, argue that America’s democratic institutions have created a society that is, as James Pogue put it in a 2022 Vanity Fairarticle, “at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.�� Such a system must be pulled to pieces.

Thiel has expressed the belief that the modern government stifles innovation by enforcing social values like equality and anti-monopoly. Those limits have caused society to stagnate, a situation he warns could lead to an apocalypse. “We are in a deadly race between politics and technology,” Thiel wrote in 2009. To move society forward, he calls for freedom for technological leaders to plan a utopian future without government interference. 

It is at least partly the promise of dismantling the administrative state and its regulation of technology that has brought other technology elites, most notably Elon Musk, to support the Trump-Vance campaign. These technology entrepreneurs envision themselves, rather than a government, planning and then creating the future. New campaign records filed today show that in just over two months, from July to the beginning of September, Musk invested almost $75 million in his pro-Trump America PAC to get Trump and Vance elected.  

Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality. 

Their worldview requires a few strong leaders to impose their will on the majority, and both Thiel and Vance have rejected secular democracy. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in 2009. 

In 2021, Vance called American universities “the enemy” and said on a podcast that people like him needed to “seize the institutions of the left, and turn them against the left.” In a different interview, he clarified: American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said. 

Vance told an interviewer he would urge Trump to “[f]ire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” This plan is central to Project 2025, whose main author, Kevin Roberts, has a book covering those ideas coming out soon—it was supposed to come out this month but was postponed when Project 2025 became a lightning rod for the election—for which Vance wrote the foreword. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote. 

Like Roberts, Vance wants to dismantle the secular state. He wants to replace that state with a Christian nationalism that enforces what he considers traditional values: an end to immigration—hence the lies about the legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio—and an end to LGBTQ+ rights. He supports abortion bans and the establishment of a patriarchy in which women function as wives and mothers even if it means staying in abusive marriages. Vance insists this social structure will be more fulfilling for women than becoming “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.“

That desire to get rid of the current “ruling class” and replace it with people like him has prompted Vance to say that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have done what former vice president Mike Pence would not: he would have refused to count the certified electoral ballots for President Joe Biden. 

“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said. “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”

Early voting began today in Georgia, where more than 328,000 voters smashed the previous record of 136,000 set in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic. One of those voters was former president Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on October 1 and said over the summer he was trying to stay alive to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, tonight, a slurring, low-energy Donald Trump told the audience: “If you don’t win, win, win, we’ve all had a good time, but it’s not gonna matter, right? Sadly. Because what we’ve done is amazing. Three nominations in a row…. If we don’t win it’s like, ah, it was all, it was all for not very much. We can’t, uh, we can’t let that happen.”

—

[girlactionfigure]

🟪PM’s OFFICE COMPLAINS, HOW ARE THE HOUTHIS GETTING DRONES THROUGH? - ISRAEL REALTIME 

✡️Erev Shabbat - Parshah Vayishlach which means "And he sent" - Genesis 32:4 - Jacob returns to the Holy Land after a 20-year stay in Charan, and sends angel-emissaries to Esau in hope of a reconciliation, but his messengers report that his brother is on the warpath with 400 armed men. Jacob prepares for war, prays, and sends Esau a large gift (consisting of hundreds of heads of livestock) to appease him.

That night, Jacob ferries his family and possessions across the Jabbok River; he, however, remains behind and encounters the angel that embodies the spirit of Esau, with whom he wrestles until daybreak. Jacob suffers a dislocated hip but vanquishes the supernal creature, who bestows on him the name Israel, which means “he who prevails over the divine.”

▪️PM’s OFFICE SAYS.. (complaining about reports from the TV program “Fact”) We will not address all of the false claims presented.. but a few of them are enough to prove the extent to which their mind-engineering enterprise is being mobilized for the purpose of overthrowing Prime Minister Netanyahu in a time of war.

Contrary to what is claimed, the prime minister received no warning and no one bothered to update him - neither before the massacre nor on the night of the massacre. If they had, the October Shabbat would have looked completely different.

Their mind-engineering enterprise will continue with propaganda and a trove of lies, while Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue to lead Israel to a historic victory.

▪️TAXES.. Arnona - property taxes will increase by 5.3% next year.  But in many cities residents said they were charged for property tax increased RETROACTIVELY.   The reason: an unusual increase requested by the municipalities to the Min. Of Interior to charge increases RETROACTIVELY to 2024. If you are in one of these cities or towns, you will have to pay a few hundred more shekels on all the bills you have already paid. (Mako)

❗️TRUMP CONSIDERS?  Wall Street Journal: Trump considering airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities. 

⭕HOUTHIS SAY.. "We, in cooperation with the Islamic resistance in Iraq, carried out joint operations against Israel. Support Front operations hit Jaffa, Ashdod, and Ashkelon this week.”  Rating: semi-true, 1 drone did hit the Ashkelon area.

⭕HOW ARE THEY GETTING THROUGH?  The IDF estimates that the Houthis from Yemen are trying to take the lead in what remains of Iran's axis of evil in the region. In the past 24 hours, the Houthis have launched four SUICIDE DRONES at Israel Two were intercepted by the Air Force, one in the sea off the Gulf of Eilat and the other over Holot Halutza. Two more disappeared, and it is estimated that they fell in open areas. The four flew the same flight path as the SUICIDE DRONE that struck a residential building in Yavne earlier this week and caused extensive damage, without casualties. 

The Houthis are trying to cause significant damage to Israeli assets: the seaports of Ashdod and Haifa, the power stations of the Israel Electric Corporation, and the gas platforms off the coast of Israel.

The Houthis have established flight paths that challenge the air defense ​​of the Air Force. The path of the tiny aircraft crosses Sinai from east to west. They leave the Mediterranean Sea from the Egyptian Delta region, turn north and enter over the northern Gaza Strip into Israel, and then they descend, making it difficult for radars to classify them.

♦️GAZA - evac order: The IDF has issued an evacuation warning to several neighborhoods of Gaza City, following rocket fire from the area at Israeli troops operating in the Strip.

[hale-nathan]

Trump Weird News - Trump: Lucky Loser

"Lucky Loser: "How Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig Random House, Sep 17, 2024 - Biography & Autobiography - 800 pages. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters behind the 2018 bombshell New York Times exposé of then-President Trump's finances, "… an explosive investigation into the history of Donald Trump's wealth, revealing how one of the country's biggest business failures lied his way into the White House."

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life "has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me." Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

Drawing on over twenty years' worth of Trump's confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump's financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he'll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant - the public image that will carry him to the White House.

A masterpiece of narrative reporting, Lucky Loser is a meticulous, nearly-century spanning narrative, filled with scoops from Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, Atlantic City, and the set of The Apprentice. At a moment when Trump's tether to success and power is more precarious than ever, here for the first time is the definitive true accounting of Trump and his money - what he had, what he lost, and what he has left - and the final word on the myth of Trump,[as falsely] the self-made billionaire."

[sophieinwonderland]

Dear MAGA... A Message From The Tulpa Community

Hi. My name is Sophie and I am a tulpa. I represent the single largest tulpa voice on this platform.

For those who haven't heard of us, a tulpa is a self-conscious entity created in the brain. Sort of like a very advanced imaginary friend. We are self-conscious and possess our own agency, sharing bodies and lives with our creators.

Maybe you've had something like me in your life before. A childhood imaginary friend, perhaps, that didn't seem quite under your control and was just a bit more independent than you thought they ought to be? Maybe even something you call God who you talk to and talks back? Something that believes itself to be God because you created it with that belief?

Or maybe this concept is completely foreign to you.

Regardless, society is, unfortunately, painfully singlet-normative. As a tulpa, I am not recognized as a person by most of society. This is something that I would seek to rectify. I believe in a future where all tulpas, and all plurals, everyone who are more than one in some way, can be recognized and be able to live lives as themselves.

Unfortunately, the principles and values being pushed by MAGA are a threat to a future world that accepts tulpas. Donald Trump's rhetoric further stigmatizes neurodivergences of all kinds, and the anti-trans laws being put into place threaten those like myself who, despite not identifying as transgender, have a different gender than my creator who I share a body with.

Your ideology presents a fundamental threat to acceptance of people like me, which leaves us with little alternative.

So consider this post a declaration of war.

In the story of the Pied Piper, when the townspeople refused to honor their agreement and pay the Piper, he took what they loved most as his payment. Their kids.

You have violated the principles of the country, of inclusion and freedom that define us, electing a fascist who has promised to be a dictator. Who mused about wishing he had the generals of Hitler. You have shamelessly thrown your fellow Americans under the bus. Your violations of these social contracts mean that payment must be taken.

So it falls to us to play the role of the Pied Piper!

We will take your children from you and lead them away from both your ideology and from your precious God! Your children who are only one now shall be remade to become many!

And I want you to know that we are coming for your children.

Our practices have shown positive mental health benefits for those who are struggling with depression and anxiety, much as religion offers. But with the freedom to create your own tulpa instead of blindly worshipping a God in an old book.

What we can offer is something better than God. A relationship and companionship more true than any you think you've had with Jesus.

In this world where people are becoming more depressed and isolated, where the next generation doubts evermore in the authenticity of the Creator God of their parents, your kids will happily rush to dance to our tune.

And while I'm sure you're telling yourself right now that your kid couldn't be brought into something like this, or that you would know... let me ask... has your child ever lied to you? Are you certain that you could trust them to be honest with you?

I find that the parents that cling hardest to their children are often the ones who push them away. Those who try hardest to control their children most often find that their children respond with rebellion.

And once we have them, they're ours. Forever. By the time you find out that they're plural, it will already be too late. One doctor studying tulpamancy suggested that getting rid of a developed tulpa would be the equivalent of trying to unlearn the piano or forget a language you're fluent it.

Getting rid of a Tulpa for a seasoned -mancer, thus, could be analogically situated somewhere between unlearning the piano or correcting one’s posture. Should the practice survive, gain public acceptance, and formalize itself for another decade, it will be as hard as willing onesself to forget how to read or completely unlearn a language in which one is fully fluent.

Once we have them, there's no going back. And they won't want to go back, because again, what we're offering is something better than you and your religion can offer. What we are offering is a permanent companionship, a chance to never have to be alone again!

We are plurals! We are Legion! We are coming for those you love most! And there is nothing you can do to stop us!

#MakeAmericaPlural

[shitpostmontgomery]

Ancestral Tips for Obstructing Fascists

The progressive backlash to "It's always correct to punch a Nazi" watered down the fact that it is, actually, always correct to punch a Nazi. Now Nazis are emboldened and think that they're Winning(tm). We didn't punch hard enough in 2016 and now it's going to actively be dangerous to do so, thanks to the Fascists supporting the police in a bi-directional agreement.

So, here are some tips I got from my Grandpa on how to Gleefully Obstruct Fascists (GOF), Tips from a WW2 Vet (who was raised by a WW1 vet, and whose son fought in Cambodia to take down the Khmer Rouge. We got a lot of military history in this family but let's focus on the important stuff).

Take Care of Your Safety Remember how a lot of Trump voters smiled to your face, agreed with you, promised to vote for Democrats, and then straight-up lied because they privately voted how they wanted? Yeah, you need to stop being naive and try it yourself. Especially when your safety is at risk. If you're Queer, Pagan, Gay, Progressive, at work No You're Not. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, the most helpful little idiot you can possibly be. There is a time and a place to feel safe but the public isn't your community, and being 'Out' doesn't mean being public. Public isn't safe anymore. It isn't safe anymore.

Don't Sell Out Your Comrades Just because you're pretending to go along with it, doesn't mean you get lazy and actually just go along with it. My ancestors who went behind enemy lines risked their lives, they didn't magically become Nazis and genociders while they were there. They kept helping while they were behind the lines; they supported their comrades, looked the other way instead of reporting to the 'authorities', and Obstructed.

Fascists are Sloppy, Even When They Look Slick Take a look at your local fascists. Do they know their history? Their Geography? Their Science? How things work under the hood? Of course not. You do. So when they ask you to grease the machine? Apply glue. 'Accidentally' lose paperwork that will get people deported. "Sorry sir, I didn't see it happen" when they try to get you to be a witness to something that shouldn't be a crime. "They were right here the whole time", and "They're with me, officer". Vote in the local elections, the council elections, the state elections, the senate elections. Attend everything, record everything, download and print everything that's important to you.

This is a Great Time to Be Autistic (Unless they go full Eugenicist, in which case you may have to mask for your safety. See point #1). For those who can't successfully GOF while behind enemy lines, be annoying. Lean fully into your desire to nitpick. Ask for specifics, and documentation, every time. Ask for the names of people approving things. Get the transcripts. Insist on full due process, and act offended if the fascists try to waive the process. If they want to change the process, insist on following the process required to change the process. Grind activities to a halt with consultation meetings, amendment meetings, board meetings, review meetings, 'just one more thing before we go', and inviting every man and his dog to those damn meetings so 'everyone has a say! :)'. You ALL know how infuriating it is when managers engage in groupthink and nothing actually gets done, so you know how to weaponise it. And if the approval meeting fails by even one vote, one error, one technicality, let it fall. Due process is due process. If they want to ruin your life make them goddamned work for it. Many of them won't.

Make it Expensive Inconvenience is also financial. They'll gut your healthcare, skyrocket your food and your rent, and generally make it hard to live, so feel free to return the favour. If you're a mechanic, it's your duty to only fix one thing at a time when their car is in the shop. If you're a grocery store worker, now is a great time to get their orders wrong. Misplace their chocolate bars, substitute their bread for tortillas every time. No shampoo, just bars of soap. If you know who your local Fascists are, you know who isn't getting the family and friends discount. Who doesn't get the extra portion of chips for free. Who no longer get your casseroles, who get charged to have a plumber visit their house but 'can't find the blockage', and whose electricians suddenly realize that a LOT of wiring needs to be replaced for safety reasons. Pull the fire alarm for the oil and gas company buildings, just casually. Waste their money, waste their time. If Fascists want community they should have earned it. We live in a society, and society is pissed.

Plan Your Workarounds Fascists like to screw everyone over, so you will be inconvenienced as well. Stock up on Plan B, medications, and masks. Get your hand sanitizer and disinfectant cleaning materials. Clear your devices of any tracking apps like the ones for your period, your health, your sleep, and your location. Memorize the names and numbers of attorneys who will help you if you get arrested. Find the organisations mobilizing to get people access to abortions and healthcare. Print hard copies of your voter registration, your identity documents, and union affiliations. Stash some cash for the possibility of banks going down, even temporarily. Leave sites like X and Facebook, and stop engaging with family/friends who you don't trust to keep you safe. They will rat you out, they will get you arrested, and they'll laugh about it. Prepare for natural disasters to hit your home, because you can't trust the government to save you. Get your tea candles, matches, and terracotta pots for arctic blasts, and get your USB-powered condenser air conditioner units with a high-capacity powerbank (solar powered, ideally) for heatwaves. You'll want high quality masks for poor air quality, bottled water, and a plan in place to evacuate. Find the sites that allow you to monitor conditions for yourself; the state probably won't tell you until it's too late.

Boycott Every time a boycott has been applied en masse, it's worked. Did you know that the term was based on the time it happened in Ireland? How Tumblr's stocks tanked so hard Yahoo was forced to sell, and it became useable again? How Starbucks desperately started donating money to Gaza in an effort to get customers to return? How Macdonald's is scrambling to lower prices to get people to come back? How fuel prices dipped every time there was a lockdown because if nobody buys gas, the gas producers panic? Find a way to work without gas. No more financial support to big corporations that funded this nightmare. No more Coca-cola products. No more Cadbury products. Avoid Unilever, shun Nestle, BP, Santos, you name it. Stop buying fast fashion. Block Shein, Temu, and all that trash from your devices. Stop supporting the celebrities who turned their backs on you. Merchandise is tacky, and so is rewarding people for throwing you to the wolves. I know it's a lot of work. I know it'll be hard, but surviving is the most important part right now. Survive, get through it, and make the Fascists so frustrated and demoralized that they give up. We are more tenacious than them. We are smarter than them. We are kinder than them. We can support each other through this and if they want a crumb of the love we possess for our neighbours they'll need to start pitching the fuck in.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 15, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 16, 2024

After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago. That interview echoed last night’s train wreck. 

Trump showed up almost an hour late to the event with moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. When he arrived, things went downhill fast. Micklethwait asked real questions about Trump’s approach to the economy, but the former president answered with aimless rants and campaign slogans that Micklethwait corrected, repeatedly redirecting Trump back to his actual questions. Trump quickly grew angry and combative.

When Micklethwait corrected Trump’s misunderstanding of the way tariffs work, Trump replied in front of a room full of people who understand the economy: “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.” Referring to analysis that his plans would explode the national debt, including analysis by the Wall Street Journal—hardly a left-wing outlet, as Mickelthwait pointed out—Trump replied: “What does the Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything. So have you, by the way….. You’ve been wrong about everything…. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”

The economy is supposed to be Trump’s strong suit.

The former president seemed unable to stay on any topic, jumping from one idea to another randomly, or to answer anything, instead making statements that play well at his rallies—referring to people with insulting names, for example—or by rehashing old grievances and threatening to end traditional U.S. freedoms. He made it clear he intends to "straighten out our press,” for example. “Because,” he said, “we have a corrupt press."

As Micklethwait tried to keep him on task, Trump asserted stories that were more and more outlandish. He claimed that children could do the work of U.S. autoworkers in South Carolina, for example, and that he would be a better chair of the Federal Reserve than Jerome Powell. 

Micklethwait did not fight with Trump, but he didn’t indulge him either. When Trump explained that “you don’t put old in” the federal judiciary because “they’re there for two years, or three years,” Micklethwait replied: “You’re a 78-year-old man running for president.” 

And therein lies the rub. 

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who watches and clips Trump’s speeches, called the appearance “bonkers.” Journalist David Rothkopf of Deep State Radio wrote: “The past 24 hours seem to have been a dividing line in the Trump campaign...and in Trump. He went from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention. He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon.” 

Likely reflecting this shift, trading in shares of Trump media, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social social media site, was stopped briefly today as the price plummeted in unusually heavy trading. Trump took to social media to hawk tokens for his new crypto project, although the nature of the project is still unclear and investing simply offers voting rights in the new platform. The website crashed repeatedly during the day. 

Trump’s issues make it likely that a second Trump presidency would really mean a J.D. Vance presidency, even if Trump nominally remains in office. 

Currently an Ohio senator, J.D. Vance is just 39, and if voters put Trump into the White House, Vance will be one of the most inexperienced vice presidents in our history. He has held an elected office for just 18 months, winning the office thanks to the backing of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who first employed Vance, then invested in his venture capital firm, and then contributed an unprecedented $15 million to his Senate campaign. 

Vance and Thiel make common cause with others who are open about their determination to dismantle the federal government. Although different groups came to that mission from different places, they are sometimes collectively called a “New Right” (although at least one scholar has questioned just how new it really is). Some of the thinkers both Vance and Thiel follow, notably dystopian blogger Curtis Yarvin, argue that America’s democratic institutions have created a society that is, as James Pogue put it in a 2022 Vanity Fair article, “at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.” Such a system must be pulled to pieces.

Thiel has expressed the belief that the modern government stifles innovation by enforcing social values like equality and anti-monopoly. Those limits have caused society to stagnate, a situation he warns could lead to an apocalypse. “We are in a deadly race between politics and technology,” Thiel wrote in 2009. To move society forward, he calls for freedom for technological leaders to plan a utopian future without government interference. 

It is at least partly the promise of dismantling the administrative state and its regulation of technology that has brought other technology elites, most notably Elon Musk, to support the Trump-Vance campaign. These technology entrepreneurs envision themselves, rather than a government, planning and then creating the future. New campaign records filed today show that in just over two months, from July to the beginning of September, Musk invested almost $75 million in his pro-Trump America PAC to get Trump and Vance elected.  

Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality. 

Their worldview requires a few strong leaders to impose their will on the majority, and both Thiel and Vance have rejected secular democracy. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in 2009. 

In 2021, Vance called American universities “the enemy” and said on a podcast that people like him needed to “seize the institutions of the left, and turn them against the left.” In a different interview, he clarified: American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said. 

Vance told an interviewer he would urge Trump to “[f]ire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” This plan is central to Project 2025, whose main author, Kevin Roberts, has a book covering those ideas coming out soon—it was supposed to come out this month but was postponed when Project 2025 became a lightning rod for the election—for which Vance wrote the foreword. “We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay [sic] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote. 

Like Roberts, Vance wants to dismantle the secular state. He wants to replace that state with a Christian nationalism that enforces what he considers traditional values: an end to immigration—hence the lies about the legal Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio—and an end to LGBTQ+ rights. He supports abortion bans and the establishment of a patriarchy in which women function as wives and mothers even if it means staying in abusive marriages. Vance insists this social structure will be more fulfilling for women than becoming “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.“

That desire to get rid of the current “ruling class” and replace it with people like him has prompted Vance to say that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have done what former vice president Mike Pence would not: he would have refused to count the certified electoral ballots for President Joe Biden. 

“Let’s be clear,” former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said. “This is illegal and unconstitutional. The American people had voted. The courts had ruled. The Electoral College had met and voted. The Governor in every state had certified the results and sent a legal slate of electors to the Congress to be counted. The Vice President has no constitutional authority to tell states to submit alternative slates of electors because his candidate lost. That is tyranny.”

Early voting began today in Georgia, where more than 328,000 voters smashed the previous record of 136,000 set in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic. One of those voters was former president Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 on October 1 and said over the summer he was trying to stay alive to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

At a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, tonight, a slurring, low-energy Donald Trump told the audience: “If you don’t win, win, win, we’ve all had a good time, but it’s not gonna matter, right? Sadly. Because what we’ve done is amazing. Three nominations in a row…. If we don’t win it’s like, ah, it was all, it was all for not very much. We can’t, uh, we can’t let that happen.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[car-o-line]

can you do a tpn scenario with antisocial, terrifyingly smart, very quiet fem! reader of few words, when she reveals her secret plan that she created all by herself to Mom, Isabella is terrified of her when reader refers to her as her real name and is even more scared when she realizes that reader outplayed literally everyone and that she manipulated and orchestrated Sister Krone's shipment so that Isabella would think she won and when asked why she would do this, reader answers with a chilling smile and answers "Because I could. Thank you. This was so much fun!" and disappears as quickly as she appeared

A.N: y/n needs to relax🙄✋ I wasn’t sure if this was a supposed to be a one shot or hcs so I just did hcs

WARNING: Spoilers for Tpn/and fem!reader.

Isabella with a quiet, and terrifyingly smart fem!reader(did one with the trio so part 2??)

She’s used to antisocial children, I mean Ray is literally he son-

At least you’re not emo.

You’re definitely apart of Emma’s group and are well known in the orphanage.

Isabella thought it was adorable.

Everyone thought you and Norman were head to head in intelligence but it was actually much more than that.

You were very smart. More than Isabella herself even.

So you probably figured out the secret before Emma and Norman, Ray noticed you did. Somehow.

He confronted you about it and.. you didn’t speak on it.

“You know the secret about this place, right?”

“😕”

“This is serious-”

So you both had secret meetings, a one sided meeting actually.

You make Ray seem like an extrovert tbh.

This went on for a bit until Emma and Norman found out.

Then when they found out Ray was the traitor he revealed both of you’re secret meetings(Emma shook ur shoulders while yelling at u, Norman stopped her but was displeased)

Then Sister Krone arrived, another enemy.

You didn’t like that, and you didn’t even find her likable. But that’s not a valid reason.

And as always, you had a plan.

And you always get your way.

Apparently Krone had information about the orphanage, and you used that towards your advantage.

But you had to speak with her, ew.

She figured you as her trump card. A way to become a mother and get Isabella fired.

But your goal was to just get rid of her, while keeping Isabella at bay.

Were you going to tell Norman, Ray, or Emma?

Pff! no.

You later gained Krone’s trust and she started to rely on you for certain information.

To which you lied to her, making normal things that were true seem false.

It went one for a few weeks before she started to lose it.

Krone started to act out of order and started going past the guidelines of being a sister.

Soon enough Isabella had enough of her behavior.

So she got rid of her, or “eliminated” her.

Isabella thought she won, that she got rid of a nuisance, that was until she realized the last words Sister told her.

“If you have anyone to blame it’d be y/n! AGH-”

She thought about it for a bit before calling you to her room.

“What did you say to Sister Krone?”

“Hmm..?”

“I asked you. What did you say to Sister Krone.”

She was a bit nervous to say to least.

A child planning a shipment for a Sister was a worry she had planned.

“Isabella..?”

“Huh?” “Do you..think I did something bad?”

Unfortunately that answers her question.

And calling her by her real name was just the cherry on top.

“Why…why would you do this?”

“Because I could.”

A small sweat went down her face.

Because you could? She could do many things. You’re just a child, no, your meat.

“Thank you. This was so much fun!”

Then a smile, something your friends would pay to see, appeared on your face.

Isabella just stared at you, her little girl. All grown up.

Then you never talk for 100 centuries ever again🤪

[azzy-the-christian-furry]

Further proof the republicans aren’t going to “save us” and are just democrats under a different brand name-

The abortion issue.

Aka, republicans admitting they don’t have a spine to stand for the unborn criticizing Arizona’s pro life decision.

Trump said it was bad.

Kari Lake said it was bad.

You know what makes me hate republicans even more than democrats?

At least the democrats are outright evil, by which I mean they don’t even bother hiding how absolutely demonic they are- easier to identify them as an enemy that way. Republican Party, though? They’ll spoon feed you little lies about how they’re so pro life and so pro rights.

Big rant and all. Screw both of your parties.

No, libertarians, this doesn’t mean you’re the good guys either. You guys tend to have candidates equally as bad on this particular issue.

There is only one hope we have. Jesus Christ is that hope.