This isn’t war. It’s political action.

It’s beginning to be violent political action though. Strategizing in these times and thinking ahead is going to become more important.

My uncle lives up in Omak

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omak,_Washington

This is a small town. We don’t call them villages, we call them towns for some reason.

Technically speaking, Omak is a city actually. But pretty much everyone will call it a town around here.

Sunset Riders SNES.

Ummm. Elon Musk made $100,000,000,000 by making internet propaganda about how his electric cars are better than internal combustion, lies about their capabilities (full self driving), lies about how often they explode and lies about how well his Robots work. And then the propaganda is so strong he becomes Buddy in chief and people think that literally paying Musk another $50Billion is a good idea.

The cats out of the bag. Internet propaganda is too cheap and too effective. Everyone will be doing it if only to counter Elon Musk (let alone make money for themselves like through bullshit crypto coins or whatever).

You or I deciding to ‘not fill the internet with shit’ stops nobody. It’s going to happen given this political climate and the benefits therein.

Lemmy.ml started off as marxist-lenninist site. All sites need to start with a niche and I doubt any future social network will avoid the niche issue.

I think normies are turning off of Lemmy recently, which naturally causes the extremists feel more loud (because the extremists will NEVER leave this site).

Trying to figure out a good social network is like looking for a good hangout in real life. The people who frequent is entirely the picture. It’s hard to compete vs commercial interests like Blue sky or whatever as they pop up though.

Still, Threads, BlueSky and Twitter are all obviously suspect sites that will seed algorithms with their message. Lemmy doesn’t do that. Lemmy has its own issues but it’s very much a pick your poison situation.

Early internet was just information about hobbies and for the betterment of people and furthering knowledge. Let’s take that back.

Nope. After 2010s proved that the internet is the central location for political battles with Wikipedia Blackouts causing major political shifts, Pandoras Box has been opened.

The internet is now the premier location for propaganda and politicalization.

There are several powers that are just restated omnipotence.

Perhaps my favorite is Featherine Aurora from When they Cry. She is the author of the story you are reading. The world exists to please her (and her audience). She cares little about the pains any individual feels as they all serve her greater purpose.

It’s ‘Just Omnipotence’ but it’s written in a way for very meta interactions. But yeah, her power to create and change the world is ultimate, she literally can do anything.

Be sure to give your demons plenty of exercise!!

Basic psychology.

Anyone who has already decided that they like Elon (or MAGA) do not want to believe that they are the bad guy. So they will reach for even the worst of arguments to make themselves believe they aren’t the bad guy.

Remember: Nazis themselves refuse to believe the Holocaust happened. Same same really. No one wants to think of themselves as the bad guy.

Cartoon published in 1910. What do you think?

Note: Spain did NOT in fact, blowup that ship.

Yeah, the non-existent Deep State. These fuckers are firing important people looking for ghosts and goblins.

They became the Government and are using their power to mass fire everyone to get rid of the Deep State.

Why do you think MAGA is so willing and ready to fire huge swaths of the US Government?

Actually, the Bible just says it’s the fruit of a tree.

It could have been an orange, pomegranate, or banana.

Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.

Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks. It’s become obvious. That Twitter was mostly algorithm hype and FOMO.

Mastodon tries to be healthier but I’m not convinced that microblogs in general are that useful, especially to a techie audience who knows RSS and other publishing formats.

Perhaps the rule is that I’d like this place to be a good “Frontpage” for Lemmy posts. A “Beginner-to-Lemmy” kind of curation / discussion hub. By the time we’re on community-on-community or server-vs-server discussion, we’ve left the realm of beginner topics / introduction to Lemmy kind of things.

Its not the “drama” I’m necessarily against. Its more like, “my vision for this community means that discussions about the peculiars of servers or community comments is unhelpful here”.

I recognize the need to discuss different servers and communities. But “BestOfLemmy” should be beginner-to-lemmy focused. I don’t think new posters would necessarily have much benefit from that kind of comment.

1. Anti-federalism – Deep rooted distrust of the Federal Government has been around since the dawn of the USA, though its often been part of the minority.

2. Know Nothing / Native American Party – 1850s era movement. Protectionist, isolationist, nativist. Originally they popped up as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but overall the concept is that immigrants suck. The modern concept is: “I know nothing”, about the movement. The overall idea is that even in the 1800s, it was bad to look like a racist bigot, so you’d keep your support for these causes secret. Everyone in the party knows that “the Know Nothings are larger than everyone expects”, but no one really knows how big the movement is. And that’s the point.

3. America First – 1930s saw the rise of Fascism vs Communism in Europe with the dawn of the Spanish civil war. The “America First” movement focused on isolationism and even pro-German / Nazi slant mixed with religious fervor. This was pushed by tech-gurus of the time: Charles Lindberg (airplane entrepreneur, first Trans-atlantic flight, etc. etc.), and the Christian Front. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden).

4. NAFTA – 1990s free-trade by Bill Clinton opened up Mexico and Canada as incredible trading partners. However, local industry / local steel lost out as companies started to shop in Mexico for material. As Bill Clinton was a huge pusher of NAFTA, the anti-NAFTA political group consolidated under Republicans. This is likely where the bulk of blue-collar workers is coming from, especially because Trump started adding Tariffs / anti-globalism concepts back to the forefront of American Politics.

Some more recent context:

1. Trump has been building his brand for decades as a very rich, very macho straight-talker. Even in the 80s and earlier, there’s a large number of Hotels, Casinos, Resorts, Golf Courses (etc. etc.) that have relatively high reputation among Americans in general with Trump’s name.

2. Trump reads from the teleprompter in “another voice”, openly showing his disdain for public speaking and the political system. Anyone who has lost faith in the political system loves this. Trump pretends that the teleprompter is forcing him to talk and its all just a “through the motions” thing. Then Trump obviously goes off teleprompter and talks about different concepts, the “real stuff”. (Or so goes his branding). This simple trick is enough to get the gist to his followers: don’t listen to what I say (because I’m being forced to say this politically correct crap). This means that Trump’s true actions are only limited to the imagination of the listener.

3. Trump is playing and leaning into the borne again Christian role. From a religious perspective, the “former enemy / former outsider” coming into religion is a common story and religious love it. Trump was openly a Democrat in the 90s / 00s before switching into Republicanism.

The “bulk” of Trump’s political style is Know Nothing + Macho + anti-political correctness.

Foil here. Tall people suck to fight against. Skilled tall people were straight up impossible.

And I at least have right-of-way to deal with tall people. Eepee don’t got that, its all stupid hand-jabs or foot-jabs (as far as I can tell as a Foil-ist, lol).