Well, he certainly IS cuckoo!
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Performative cruelty. The cruelty and suffering are real, everything else (when they even bother to add anything else) is a feeble attempt to dress it up. No problems are being solved, nobody is being protected, nothing good will come of it. It’s all just a naked display of power and intimidation, taunting us with how brazenly they’re able to get away with it.
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(As a “yes, and”)
Umberto Eco agreed, and the first four points of his Ur-Fascism list expands on that.
- The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
…
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.- Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
…
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.- Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.
- No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
The Fascists are in charge, and thought is treason to them.
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Jesus… I hope that there are consequences for the plotters there. We need to see that as an example…
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Probably they wont pay for it.
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That’s plausible, but I do worry a lot about what the DOGE Boys are doing with our data. And about the destruction Musk and his minions seem to be doing left and right, basically anywhere Musk wants a hammer smashed.
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So, Jamie Raskin is actually calling it a coup, but still not acknowledging that they are bringing butter knives to a machine gun fight.
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Trump nominates ‘Sharpiegate’ scientist to lead
NOAA
Trump nominated Neil Jacobs, an atmospheric scientist, to
lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). If confirmed, this will be Jacobs’ second stint leading the agency. He served as its acting director from 2019 until Trump left office at the end of his term.
During the first Trump administration, the NOAA Science Council
investigated Jacobs after the “Sharpiegate” incident, in which Trump altered
a hurricane track map with a Sharpie to support his incorrect claim that
Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama when the forecasted path wouldn’t hit the state.
The Science Council said he violated the organization’s scientific integrity policy by pressuring the agency to release a statement supporting Trump’s claim.
In a November 2024 podcast interview, Jacobs shared his views on the future of government agencies like NOAA, and weighed in on Project 2025.
“Anytime there’s an administration or an election year, whether it’s an incumbent or a new administration, you’re always going to have these think tanks and groups pushing transition documents to the transition team saying, ‘This is what you should do, you should read this,’” Jacobs said. “The executive branch can’t just come in and completely change something that’s authorized in law.”
He also said that “NOAA has all of these congressional mandates that
are codified. Congress would have to rewrite a mountain of legislation to undo all that.”
Just when you think it can’t possibly get any dumber…
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I feel like that’s a whole separate agenda than the performative cruelty. Trump and Project 2025 are out to be as cruel as possible, Musk’s motives are more personal (though still heavily biased towards alt-right racist fuckery).
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The fact that one of his kids turned out to be trans has fed his hatred of the community and determination to eliminate it and them. I think it is that simple. He has taken it very personally and lashed out, but has the resources to do so in particularly nasty and effective way.
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Speaking of cruelty.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/us-withdraw-un-human-rights-council-trump-00202100
(not sure why it’s not one boxing)…Trump withdraws from UN Human Rights Council and UNWRA, and demands review of UNESCO for “erasing Jewish heritage”.
Oh, and…
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And people thought that he’d defend the Palestinians better than Harris?
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I don’t know how many prisoners Guantanamo Bay was built to hold, but the dark realization that if you’re not intending to keep them alive, it doesn’t matter how many it was intended to hold. I’d like to be able to believe this isn’t already happening, but at this point I wonder if I’m not being too optimistic.
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same with the outrageous “deal” Rubio has supposedly reached with El Salvador to take incarcerated US citizens.
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Take a minute to let that sink in. Once you enter the carceral state, you are a nonperson, and can be disposed of. Citizenship does not matter.
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It was already used to house migrants picked up from sea. I think it was made to hold 10,000.
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true.
Clinton and Bush II (shrub) sent Haitian and Cuban refugees to gitmo in the 90s:
In the early 1990s, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton authorized the indefinite detention of Haitian refugees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, which the U.S. maintains in southeastern Cuba.
edit: wrong bush… it was daddy.
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I was thinking about the cuckoo. It tosses out eggs in another bird’s nest to make room for its own, then gets the other birds to sit on them. Trump certainly tosses out (metaphorical) eggs, but without laying any of his own, and then pushes out the adult birds that built the nest and laid the eggs, to take over the nest for himself… but can’t be bothered with all the work of sitting on the eggs. He just shows up at another bird’s nest after the eggs have hatched to take credit for them. I don’t know if that makes him a reverse cuckoo or just an incredibly lazy one?
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