The Trump Presidency, Season 2

[GoblinCampFollower]

Of course they know. They're in on the grift. Their proximity to power becomes a bragging point that they can leverage into their sales pitch when extorting charity from the flocks they fleece. It's part of that prosperity gospel pyramid scam, do your part to enrich those above you, and maybe you too might move up when they do!

Yes, but you're talking about other preachers. I'm talking about regular Christian people who aren't really benefiting from this grift financially at all.

 

[Cristiano]

I cannot put into words how much I am enjoying seeing MAGA realize that President Musk actually hates them. He and Vivek Supersmarmy have basically called Americans trash and they need to import workers. Dumb fuck Trump chimes in to support Musk because he is powerless and he knows it. It is also bringing out the most racist elements of MAGA (aka all of them). MAGA on MAGA violence is spectacular.

 

[Govi]

MAGA on MAGA violence reminds me of the Nazi on Nazi violence that was the Night of Long Knives when, at the orders of Hitler, the leaders of the SA (Brownshirts) were murdered by the SS/SD and the Gestapo, resulting in a more malevolent and more powerful tyranny.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Yes, but you're talking about other preachers. I'm talking about regular Christian people who aren't really benefiting from this grift financially at all.

I didn't get it either. I presume they send money because they're been brainwashed into thinking it will be used for a worthy cause... or at least used by worthier people. Maybe it's "doing something" other than feeling powerless.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

BTW Musk's to be erected department is dubbed at the moment as "Department of Government Efficiency", right?

Do you know who also had doges? Venice. Doges were the elected leaders of Venice for lifetime.

This is a venitian Doge from 1500 named Leonardo Loredan:

So is the name just coincidence, or has Musk some hidden agenda visible in plain sight? I mean lifetime leader dictator just sounds like Musk's thing... Who knows...

 

[Khamon]

I wondered this as well but concluded that he has always been referencing the cool kid techi wiki doge meme. We're in deep doo doo if Musk, and worse yet Trump, understand history well enough to sift out the revisions and establish forced conversion from republic to empire. Every record of it falsely reports a triumph of innovative brilliance but the fundamentals are there to follow if you can afford it and have sufficient social reach.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

/me laughs in Marino Faliero.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Guardian (@theguardian.com)

Donald Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/30/donald-trump-loses-appeal-e-jean-carroll?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu

bsky.app

The case is expected to continue even after Trump takes office for his second presidency on 20 January 2025, as the US supreme court ruled unanimously in 1997 that sitting presidents have no immunity from civil litigation over actions predating their official duties.

 

[Casey Pelous]

I wondered this as well but concluded that he has always been referencing the cool kid techi wiki doge meme. We're in deep doo doo if Musk, and worse yet Trump, understand history well enough to sift out the revisions and establish forced conversion from republic to empire. Every record of it falsely reports a triumph of innovative brilliance but the fundamentals are there to follow if you can afford it and have sufficient social reach.

My intuition is that no understanding is necessary. Once a nation starts down the authoritarian trail, it is like starting a complex but very dumb machine.

One feature that seems inevitable is some sort of Great Purge(s). I can't seem to come up with any counter-examples to the Cultural Revolution/Night of The Long Knives/Killing Fields scenarios that are so abundant in the history of dictatorships. Hell, look at the reign of Ivan the [Unusually] Terrible [Even for Tsars Which, Damn, That's Saying Something]. More recently, look at Kim Jong Nutjob's public executions by artillery.

Almost laughably, the most benign example I can readily recall is Mussolini's purge of all the opposition parties from the government which seems to have been a fairly bloodless affair, in the context of the other examples.

The only solution to the problems caused by authoritarian rule that seems to occur to the rulers is stronger authoritarianism.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

BTW Musk's to be erected department is dubbed at the moment as "Department of Government Efficiency", right?

Do you know who also had doges? Venice. Doges were the elected leaders of Venice for lifetime.

This is a venitian Doge from 1500 named Leonardo Loredan:

So is the name just coincidence, or has Musk some hidden agenda visible in plain sight? I mean lifetime leader dictator just sounds like Musk's thing... Who knows...

We know he likes reusing names, x.com was his banking transfer algorithm based site before meeting/getting bought by PayPal.

He apparently loved it so much he forced Twitter to pick it up.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

We know he likes reusing names, x.com was his banking transfer algorithm based site before meeting/getting bought by PayPal.

He apparently loved it so much he forced Twitter to put it up.

Thiel fucked Musk sideways and it's my belief that Musk has nursed this butthurt ever since in a demented need to prove he was right all along with the best website domain EVER, he'll show EVERYBODY and finally be LOVED BY ALL.

This is why a guy who was otherwise a mild and lonely kind of guy could be radicalized by heaps of approval on his posting of conspiracy memes.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

The only solution to the problems caused by authoritarian rule that seems to occur to the rulers is stronger authoritarianism.

Not always.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Some people were thinking if it is possible to elect a convicted felon like Trump as president, which popular criminal could be next?

Here's a first preliminary banner.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Not always.

Not sure what part of Il Douche's* rather extended time in power you're referring to, but, you're right; in the end he did exercise an alternative to Moar Strictness; the GFOD Strategy, wherein one scuttles rapidly out of town. What @Katheryne has hilariously referred to as "deassing" the area. Of course, it did not turn out well for him or his mistress but it did go much better for Idi Amin.

On a side note, I've always found it sort of grimly amusing that the entire nation of Italy went all Omerta about his assassination.

"What happened to this man?"

"Hard to say. Fell down the stairs?"

"He's full of bullet holes! Who shot him?"

"Didn't see -- had something in my eye."

"How did his body get to Milan?"

"*shrugs* Maybe he walked."

* Yes, it is.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Check out this projection.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

My intuition is that no understanding is necessary. Once a nation starts down the authoritarian trail, it is like starting a complex but very dumb machine.

One feature that seems inevitable is some sort of Great Purge(s). I can't seem to come up with any counter-examples to the Cultural Revolution/Night of The Long Knives/Killing Fields scenarios that are so abundant in the history of dictatorships. Hell, look at the reign of Ivan the [Unusually] Terrible [Even for Tsars Which, Damn, That's Saying Something]. More recently, look at Kim Jong Nutjob's public executions by artillery.

Almost laughably, the most benign example I can readily recall is Mussolini's purge of all the opposition parties from the government which seems to have been a fairly bloodless affair, in the context of the other examples.

The only solution to the problems caused by authoritarian rule that seems to occur to the rulers is stronger authoritarianism.

Several Central and Eastern European countries managed to bring authoritarian rule by the Communist Party to a peaceful end in 1991, as did the Baltic States.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Check out this projection.

When it was announced about a week ago that half mast would stretch into the Inauguration, I wondered when the catsup would hit the wall in Florida.

Took him longer than I thought it would.

 

[Free]

When it was announced about a week ago that half mast would stretch into the Inauguration, I wondered when the catsup would hit the wall in Florida.

Took him longer than I thought it would.

Wasn't until someone reminded Trump it was his inauguration.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Check out this projection.

Man, when it comes to insufferable fecal stained rugs... ^ That Effing Guy seems so much worse than the September 2023 Delta flight from Atlanta to Barcelona where a passenger's severe case of diarrhea left a trail down the aisle so heinous they had to turn around, deplain and sanitize the plane.

 

[Casey Pelous]

When it was announced about a week ago that half mast would stretch into the Inauguration, I wondered when the catsup would hit the wall in Florida.

Took him longer than I thought it would.

I think I'll take a little break from politics. Maybe just watch an old episode of Bridezilla. That should be a nice little escape from .... oh, ffs........