politics

    This is the literal definition of #fascist #propaganda, or even more specifically, #agitpro, also known as agitation propaganda, which is designed to stir up shit. #uspol #TFG #bullshit #bullying daringfireball.net/linked/20…

    Open your eyes and look. It’s critical for you to see what is happening. #TFG & Co. are going after so-called “#Entitlements” because billions are funneled to help #underprivileged and #disabled Americans and not into the pockets of the #oligarchs. #uspol #capitalism #theRapingOfAmerica www.newsweek.com/how-snap-…

    Uh… wait a minute… wasn’t the #WSJ one of the boosters for #TFG? I guess all that bluster about fixing the economy and shit that’s not happening kind of soured them on his racist ass. I could be wrong… #uspol #capitalism #fascism www.salon.com/2025/01/2…

    Adam Something put out a great new video this morning about how #ElonMusk won the election and reminds us what is at stake, most of which doesn’t concern the bulk of humanity, but is super important to Musk’s bank account size and level of control. #uspol #capitalism www.youtube.com/watch

    #TheVerge has a helpful guide on how to delete your #Facebook account, which seems more likely now that you can count on it even less for accurate information about #politics and #news. I guess now all we can count on is that it will be a haven for #disinformation. #capitalism www.theverge.com/22231495/…

    While I can’t speak to other motivations, it’s clear that #WallStreet didn’t need to be pressured by #MAGA #Republicans to leave the #NetZeroBankingAlliance. It’s just a convenient excuse. This is how #Capitalism works. Not for you, but for money and power. #uspol #finance www.salon.com/2025/01/0…

    While I remain unsurprised I am still mortified, more at the unapologetic, emotionless callousness of #Texas' than of the disturbing number of babies left to die in ditches and dumpsters. Government prescribed subjugation of women will, after all, result in ugliness. Period. #humanrights #womensrights #abortion #health www.salon.com/2025/01/0…

    This is heartbreaking. I was very lucky to be among those whose loans were mostly wiped clean by the Biden administration and I’m “only” 56. And my outstanding loans were a pittance compared to Valerie’s. I thought my 16k was stressful… #studentloans #debt yro.slashdot.org/story/24/…

    From what I hear, she freakin' nailed it :) Good for her… and also, there are no legit jobs that require you to stop being who you are 24/7/365, so taking time off to make a personal dream come true is a non-issue. Period. Full stop. #uspol #scotus #broadway #stage #nontroversy www.theroot.com/justice-k…

    Oh god, what a disaster. It was bad enough that #ElonMiusk’s #SpaceX was shooting thousands of satellites into orbit, but now others are doing it. There are countless factors to blame for this, not the least of which are #Capitalism and toxic power fantasies. arstechnica.com/space/202…

    As one might say, “Must be nice.” I mean, it’s not like dropping a cool quarter million plus to go on a #cruise for four years is an option for all of the people whom #TFG is likely to cause harm with his addled concepts of ideas. It certainly appears to be a thing, though. #escape #uspol www.salon.com/2024/11/1…

    I feel like I’m going to be sick. While the #election isn’t done yet and there are still more votes to count, it’s looking more and more likely that #TFG will win. He’s a #liar, a #fraud, a #rapist, a #conman, a #racist, and possibly a #pedophile, and he and millions of Americans know it, but they do not care. All he and they care about is the win and control.

    Be prepared for the end of the great experiment. It will come. We warned you. He wins, we’re fucked.

    Orange County California Supervisor allegedly funneled millions to daughter's non-profit

    Orange County California Supervisor Andrew Do, accused of fraudulently directing millions of COVID-19 relief fund dollars to a non-profit that employs his daughter and subsequently used for personal expenses.

    We spend a lot of time focusing on the National elections. There’s nothing wrong with this, but this singular gaze has, for years now, been shifting our attention from local issues to the National stage, and we do so to our civic peril. Over and over again we see so-called politicians leveraging public office for personal gain, regardless of party affiliation. Stay awake. Keep your head on a swivel. #uspol #localpolitics #california #corruption

    “Orange County Supervisors Katrina Foley and Vicente Sarmiento are calling for Supervisor Andrew Do to resign Wednesday as authorities investigate allegations of fraudulent spending of COVID-19 relief funds by a nonprofit that employed Do’s daughter.”

    “Earlier this month, the county sued the Viet America Society and its President Peter Pham, alleging misappropriation of millions of dollars of pandemic relief earmarked for delivery of meals to needy residents. The Hand to Hand Relief organization, which subcontracted with Viet America Society, was also sued.”

    Russia's insane revisionist pulp fiction industry

    If you question why the general population of #Russia supports the #war in #Ukraine there’s likely one fact you are unaware of. I certainly knew nothing about this, because it is one of the single most insane methods of #propaganda sponsored by any sovereign state I have ever seen. This is bat shit crazy on steroids, crossed with Cthulhu, and cloned into oblivion. If you know of something more ludicrous and insidious, do let me know. #youtube #video #culture #putin #insane youtu.be/iCI6es9G0…

    The Preamble of The U.S. Constitution | Shallow Thoughts

    How do we define the United States of America? We call it a country, but that just means a plot of land with established borders. Land certainly tells stories, but those tales are woven over millennia, and definitions within that context just don’t scale down for the convenience of our human time-frame.

    The first quote I think of in regards to the makeup of our government is that it is formed…

    …of the people, by the people, and for the people…

    Sounds familiar, right? Well, it’s not from the US Constitution. The quote comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the idea had been discussed by others for centuries. That might disappoint you, if you didn’t know that until now, but we do have an actual Constitution. If you need a refresher, here’s the subject of today’s Shallow Thoughts, the Preamble:

    See if you can find the correction in the Preamble. Surprisingly, there are lots of corrections in the Constitution, which raises a question. If this was accepted as the final draft for the establishment of an entire country, how many punctuation errors are there, say, in the 2nd Amendment?
    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    You see, Lincoln’s sentiment is squishy and unclear. It’s nice, but it is not a ratified legal document. Just because the president says it, doesn’t make it law, or even true. It’s an aspirational concept. The Preamble, on the other hand, is a lucid, if flowery, 10,000 ft. outline of the idea behind America. At the time the definition of “people” was limited to white folk, but that’s the thing about weasel language being used to establish important institutions. The words you choose could have an unintended outcome at some point in the future.

    That point in time has been here since, at the very least, Reconstruction and “We the people” must now mean all humans. So-called “minorities” have been struggling for inclusion in the privileged caste since their feet first touched the shores of this ancient land, and while we’ve made progress over the course of a few hundred years, we keep getting dragged back by parties who are both inclined towards racial animosity and have amassed the resources necessary to control the direction of government. Those “resources” also include questionably warm bodies like almost the entire Republican party currently in office. Besides, much of the progress seen in minority populations is merely token, a bone if you will, to keep the boat from rocking too much.

    Wading the shallows…

    It might just be me, lord knows I never finished college (half a dozen times), but when your founding document starts with “We the people” and you use the formalized structure of organized society outlined in said document to exclude actual human people from deriving those benefits or achieving those aspirations while simultaneously granting favored whites free reign to commit crimes against minority bodies, that it specifically means we haven’t achieved the very first, most basic mandate of our Constitution in nearly 250 years?

    Kinda feels like we’ve all been getting gaslit for the last 400 years.

    Or maybe, just maybe*, we had a Civil War over the enslavement of human beings for purposes of building the nation we stole from the natives who had been establishing societies for thousands upon thousands of years where the slavers lost, but because of government flaccidity on the matter, didn’t bother actually enforcing equality for all those supposedly now free, new Americans and caved on States Rights, so that racist states could continue to oppress its citizens, but now with a veneer of sovereign legitimacy.

    Who knew we’d develop such deep, violent rifts between races in a country where non-white humans have been chewed up and spat out, all to appease fragile white egos, but what do I know…


    PS: YouTube is something of a cesspool. Despite this, I really love it. Well, I love the creators. Most of my content consumption is on YouTube, as I’ve found many, many creators who love what they do and put in the work. And yet, much of YouTube is filled with crap. Sure, it might be a nice place to keep your family videos of your meals and pets or terribly racist screeds and calls for race wars, but all the extra bandwidth, in storage, over the network, and in your hardware/software solutions, consume a constant flow of electricity to maintain.

    PPS: Meanwhile, our Earth-bound resources, which have a limited lifespan, are being burnt to spin the turbines that delivers power to the infrastructure, systems, suppliers, and services that reliably energize global capitalism efforts, but is used as a tool of oppression for the terminally lower class minorities. Don’t pay your bill, you get cut off, so you have to work, but you can only take a job that pays minimum wage, which isn’t a living wage, so you need to take another job or two, just to keep the water and lights on and for trash to get picked up on occasion. Oh, and don’t forget rent…

    PPPS: As the non-1% are dragged along with hypercapitalism’s reckless, futile desire to chase the mythological beast of unlimited growth, it seems we must make ourselves content with just waiting to see what happens. Maybe we should rewrite the Preamble:

    We the selfish, recognized white People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union in our image, establish Justice for some, insure domestic Tranquility for the few, provide for the common defence of the powerful, promote the general Welfare of private business, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to just us and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America until we think it’s no longer worth maintaining and drop the pretense.

    And if that’s what’s going to happen, then the death of planet Earth will come sooner, at least for us, than I think most of us would hope. The wealthy and their sycophants will just build themselves bunkers or whatnot so they’ll live, as will their descendants, and what do you think their parents are going to teach them about the world?

    What, indeed.


    * There’s no question that the Civil War happened due to disagreements over slavery. I’m just being sarcastic. The enslavement of human beings should never, ever be something that can be disagreed with. It’s criminal. Period.


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