Choke (Empire, Part One.)

[Darth Vader is choking a Rebel Officer]
Stormtrooper: [to Vader] The Death Star plans are not in the main computer.
Darth Vader: [to Rebel] Where are those transmissions you intercepted? What have you done with those plans?
Rebel Captain: [Gasping for breath] We intercepted no transmissions. This is a consular ship. We're on a diplomatic mission...
Darth Vader: If this is a consular ship, where is the Ambassador? [crushes the officer's neck, then throws him against the wall] Commander, tear this ship apart until you've found those plans, and bring me the passengers. I want them alive!

~Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Is it just me, or is Elon Musk running Twitter about the same way that Darth Vader ran the investigation trying to find the Death Star plans in the first Star Wars movie?

It's like he's trying to Force Choke whatever Liberal secret sauce he thinks there is out of the company, and firing people (or getting them to quit, with severance) and basically trashing the whole system until he finds whatever he thinks he wants.

And of course it won't work, because he missed the damn point a long time ago, and so did most of his fans.

He never even considers that it's us, the people, the users, who make the platform and its culture. Seriously these people thought the Blue Checks were some kind of a secret society or something.

Modern "Conservatism" even before Trump was rabid, slavish loyalty to ideas over and above people, country, or anything else. This is regardless of how those ideas would affect them or other people in the real world. And these fuckers literally seem to count on the rest of us to save them from suffering the effects of these ideas, or to exempt the "Conservatives" from the damage they do while suffering it ourselves.

When we don't...or simply can't...the result is death and destruction.

And they don't care.

And this shit was that way before Trump came along. 

You want my honest opinion? This garbage started a long damn time ago, but  it truly gained its modern form with the congressional term of Newt Gingrich in the 1980's and it was given dominance over the Republican Party starting with Newt's speakership in the 1990's. The "Compassionate Conservatism" of the Bush 43 years was a disdained sideline that never bore fruit...for a reason. These Fucking People didn't want it. And that was 20 goddamn years ago. 

Trumpism is a hologram. We're living with...yes, the logical conclusions of the Same Old Shit.

This is Republicanism as it has existed for two generations. These fuckers have wanted a President like Trump since 1964. It's just that Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the Bushes didn't...would not have...given them what they wanted. And believe me when I tell you these motherfuckers deeply resented that too, and they eventually ran out all the other Republicans.

I know, I was there, I was one of those people who got chased out.

You can draw a direct line from Ayn Rand to Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert. And then, yet further from there to people like Donald Trump and downwards from him to "people" like Kyle Rittenhouse. 

And far, far too many of these "Conservatives" will tolerate literally infinite bad behavior up to and including outright fascism and murder so long as those "ideas" of hierarchy and power in the service of the wealthy...with racism, rape and religion handed out like Opioids in a Kentucky mining town to keep the masses...or at least the only masses that matter to these assholes i.e. White Conservative male voters...pacified.

Except the problem with that is that the addicts have hit the point where they need ever-larger doses of hate and rage and sexual debasement to get the same old high. But don't worry...there's people out there who are willing to set that shit up.

Doesn't matter to them if it eventually kills the, uh, consumer, I guess. And it certainly will if this puerile "Own The Libs" bullshit isn't reigned in.

And we're literally at the point where killers...who are known for nothing else and who have done nothing else but openly commit murder...figure they have a real shot at getting into our government.

There's something...there's a lot of things...wrong with this picture.

How in the hell did we reach the point in our society where people are so bored...or their lives so empty...that they'll sign on to a set of propositions that is pretty much built around the destruction of life for the power and profit of so very few of us? And by definition...you aren't going to be one of those people.

For the average person this amounts to even the destruction of basic societal norms or institutions or things that some of us depend on for existence; like Medicare and Social Security...or something as simple as Twitter that is far less of a requirement for life...but stuff that we all depend on every damn day, just to feel like they "Belong" to something?

They don't care if they die choking on their own hate, so long as they think somebody they don't like will feel bad because of it?

Maybe it's just me, but I think we, as a people, need a better set of things to aspire to.

Otherwise, what the hell are we?

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

Last Post

Слава Україна!

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same.  And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan