chapotraphouse

I still contend that Donald Trump is a fucking idiot. Therefore he has surrounded himself with sycophants instead of anyone of any intellectual value; let alone, of moral merit, or ethical principles. Because sycophants also tend to be incredibly stupid. There's not a lot "there", when it comes to Donald Trump's game plan. The Republican party is made up of opportunists and true believers in a conservative project, vehemently opposed to civil rights, as advanced from 1930s - 1973; with the culmination of Civil Rights and Roe v. Wade. And I say conservative, but it's really white supremacist, anti-communist, christo-facists. Because Conservatives operate on ideology, rather than dialectical thinking, or if they do, they are amoral and evil people, protected from their own policies – they do not give a shit. Their goals are directly opposed to equality, fairness, justice, and mercy and they ignore material conditions; therefore they are acting in extremely cruel and offensive ways. Because of how polarized society has gotten, Republicans/conservatives/racists just hang out and talk to other racists; there's not a modicum of moderating influence on them. So they are, to quote Zizek, "eating out of the trashcan of ideology" only with other members of their in-group. They are at the slop trough, thinking it a banquet. What does this mean? The previously moderating influence of both big tent parties, made of disparate interest groups allowing for disagreement and moderating output, has fallen apart with the polarization of society, and the normalizing of extremes. Most republicans will agree with each other, either genuinely or out of fear of losing their job, in-group privileges, or network. The ultimate game plan is anarcho-capitalism and libertarian ideology with a mixture of anti-immigration natalism, all shades of white supremacy, or Fascism, really. The federal government and its power is a direct byproduct of, first, the civil war and reconstruction, and – almost 80 years later – the civil rights period, which has used Federal power and its superseding of state rights to (badly) protect American citizenship.

Because we are reaching several terminal crises at the same time: political, economic, geopolitically, and environmentally. The cultivation of anti-communist (fascist) forces and their ascendancy since 1950s. The ever declining rate of profit. The decline of unipolarity and shift of global hegemony to China; Man-made global warming and climate change. The conservative project which has been steadily chipping away at American values and Federal Power has finally reached its zenith, peak Conservatism, in the form of Donald Trump. They have control of the Supreme Court, House of Rep, and the White House. They know how unpopular all of their actions are, so they've taken to this rapid flooding of the zone, violent crackdowns, and contentious and standoffish relationships with the courts, as a way to repress opposition. They are trying really hard to avoid a repeat of the resistance, trying to overwhelm and repress the populace and the institutions that can, and were, of value when forming a resistance to Donald Trump in 2016: Academia, the Press, local organizations, unions, protected federal employees, the courts, etc.

Do they believe they'll assert total control of the government? I don't think so, which is why I think the repression around the upcoming mid-term will be a true test of whatever remains of liberal values. If America makes it to 2026 mid-terms, I am 50% sure Donald Trump is going to lose the Senate and House. I am also sure he is going to test the limits of voting intimidation, voting crackdowns, federal election manipulation, and other insane maneuvers that will be so obviously crooked and corrupt, that the country will explode – if it doesn't explode this summer, I honestly don't think this shit is sustainable.

Do these people believe that they'll be able to assert total control of all government institutions by 2028? Or is it some form of fascist self destruction ritual? Because right now even the chuds are having second thoughts about their party.

The fascist, white supremacist project in America, is to have just enough government to enact brutal crackdown on progressive movements and forces within the contiguous United States. Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Friedman's son, the Kochs, evangelicals, and hundreds of other conservative "thought leaders" invested in libertarian and anarcho-capitalist ideology as a way to destroy progressive, and contradictory, wing of the U.S government, which concerned itself with welfare and civil rights. Fascism is also a highly self-contradictory ideological formation, and in my own observations, and for lack of a better word, a death cult. It aims at destroying everyone it deems the other, and therefore, its believers end up also destroying themselves.

They are Nazis, They do nazi shit. It's not gonna make sense and looking at it through that lens is not going to help you understand it.

Are you on their side? No? Well, then you are the enemy. Any and all measures are acceptable to defeat your enemy. But also, nazis are loser cowards and so they won't just go all the way immediately. No, they will just escalate more and more over time, as the circle of who is an ally shrinks. People okay with deporting criminals now, may not be okay with it any more when the definition of criminal gets changed later and then they too must be purged, but by the now more draconian measures. Repeat until it's defeated, or defeats itself.

"There's copper in them there walls!"

i dont know how this is a mystery. You have money, privilege, and delusion coming from a single sector of the empowered elite they exalt power and their own ideas of strength, they're disgusted by what they perceive as weakness, and for a lot of power and control reasons they want womens rights rolled back, they want social life policed so strongly that it doesnt make sense to tolerate queer or any kind of deviant-from-norm lifestyles. They consider true knowlege and understanding to be a threat and an expression of power, and as such they want the average person to be significantly more ignorant. They want kids to work because if you can start young, you can raise a person to basically be their job - which under a fascist view can range from early exposure to corporate life for the privileged, to really fucked up shit like, in tandem with rolling womens rights back, the earlier you can condition them to their assigned role, the less likely they are to want to break out of it.

They want us more atomized and dumber, for the sake of control. They want the privileged to be highly specialized and locked in, too busy striving to survive to make trouble. They want a world where the weak die and the bonds that tie us together need not cross paths with anything like empathy or compassion

these people are psychopaths. There's a reason these freaks all worship Odin and exalt their half baked ideas of norse identity. There's a reason they're willing to tear all this shit down. Their view of a climate collapse world is one where only the strong need be bothered to allow survival.

These folks have always been around, but since being rebuked in WW2 they've spent decades acquiring more wealth, more power, and making sure that they have credible smokescreens. The pageantry of 20th century fascism will start a fight, so they trade in confusion, illusion, and ignorance, rather than WWE-esque shows of strength. JSOC instead of the SS. the death camps made even more remote

it's the same worldview and it's the same money and it's the same basic bullshit, but with more obfuscation, and more concessions to the fact we live in a world where they can't pretend their ideas of elite excellence or whatever is localized to a single culture or skin color.

It doesn't fucking matter what they do, there's simply no one who is going to stop them, the more they break the less likely it is for any opposition to actually form. They're three steps ahead of us, even if they themselves don't know it.

I'm less and less convinced there is one. Sure, there was one. There were actually many! Libertarian think tanks have been brainstorming ways to cut the federal government down to the military for decades, the theocrats have been working on their Dominion theory, the war hawks have been planning their wars against Iran and China, but the people calling the shots have no idea what they're doing. They're just acting out the most dumbed-down versions of those factions' propaganda because that's where their comprehension meets its limits. The entire edifice is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality and they're all busy acting out their fever dreams in real life. It's pure nihilism; destroy for destruction's sake. And it'll continue until it hits a resource constraint; until there's a crisis because the ports are empty or the market finally crashes because the smart money's done ripping the copper out of the walls and needs foreign safe havens to escape to, or someone's itchy trigger finger starts a conflict that the country cannot win, and that's when gravity'll kick back in and everyone will feel the empty air beneath their feet and the scrambling will start.

Steal as much money as possible. It is always the plan.

Do I look like a man with a plan?

It's the 90s and you're a business ghoul trying to claw your way up to entrench yourself further and claw your way up above your peers. You shop around for fringe ideologues whose ideas would end up advancing your position, and invest some money to get them into into think tanks, advertising firms, talk shows, and the like. The reach of broadcast media explodes, the industry expands and everyone who got in early rises to the top, including your useful idiots. The propaganda industry gets better at its job, and you're still listening to the TV. You bought these messages because they were convenient to you, but they're so good at their job now that they've convinced you too. You're now a true believer in whatever nonsense was tactically convenient to you 30 years ago.

(As fun as this narrative is, I'd like to point out that adding more details makes a story less likely to be true while making it sound more likely to be true.)

Because right now even the chuds are having second thoughts about their party

no they're not

Destroying every institution is a necessary part of rebuilding it the way they want.

there's different camps, and party lines imo has nothing to do with it. the neoliberal types (more and more modern AI techbro fucks) want to privatize functions of the government for themselves. others just want to right-wing libertarian destroy everything that rich people don't need.

they forgot about the "riot tax" but they'll be reminded soon enough the more and more they squeeze people.

don't ever forget too: the Clinton administration destroyed welfare more than any administration ever. hell, the senate democrats voted for the house republican's spending bill just last month.

These American institutions keeping them in check are also fundamentally liberal-reactionary institutions that should not be defended by leftists. Attacking Harvard and Columbia and higher ed/research funding does suck for many reasons but it's not an attack on "the working class" by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is firing government bureaucrats. The only admin actions that really constitute attacks on the working class are the ongoing attempts to destroy the NIH and the postal service as well as the trade war. Even then, it's not as clear cut as "rich vs. poor". Hedge fund managers and MNCs have been some of the most vocal opponents of the trade war so far. Many of those opposing the university and research cuts are highly privileged, at least in terms of social and cultural capital.

Peter Turchin predicted all of this. It's elite overproduction and intra-elite conflict to a t. Bourgeois solidarity is broken (at least to some degree). That's how you have a cabinet full of billionaires and mega-multi-millionaires starting beef with other billionaires. On a lower but still important level, you have ideologues like Bannon and Rufo and BAP playing their own roles as counter-elites. When things get bad, the rich don't hesitate to eat their own. It's poor people being used as cannon fodder on both sides and poor people suffering the collateral damage.

Barring a geopolitical black swan like Canada invading the US, the Republicans are going to lose in the midterms and probably lose 2028. But it doesn't matter as the game has fundamentally changed. Intractable polarization, delegitimization of central authority, increasing incidence of stochastic terror, etc. Newsom might win in 2028 but it'll hardly matter.

Most of what's coming isn't Trump's doing, he's just the messenger. We started down this path after WWII, Nixon and Reagan stayed the course despite increasing pressure, and Obama put the nail in the coffin.

It looks like the heritage foundation finally got their way. Trump was always just about Trump, I don't think he had any interest in the heritage foundation before. After his term and all the ways he was blocked from getting what he wanted they must have convinced him that having their "project 2025" would help Trump get what he wanted. Like Steve Bannon has said, "he's an empty vessel" and I think the heritage foundation is using him as such to get their way.

From what I understand it's the heritage foundations plan for an autocratic pro-corporate theocracy, the tech bro "network state" scum have their own plans, but Trump just wants to enrich himself and play with his little ego. Being dictator suits him just fine. As for "Republicans" they're dead. This is the heritage foundation/tech bro/ MAGA government and I'm sure we're going to see an increase in their attempts to make the next election irrelevant. The Reich always wins with ~30% support and I think MAGA news networks can maintain that especially if any opposition is neutered and media is more deeply controlled as the FCC seems more than willing to carry out.

That the liberals are so enamored with their checks-and-balances system that they will do absolutely nothing, or at least not realize that they actually need to militarily resist fascism. They just think their aforementioned system will do self-correction and stop MAGA.

I need to refresh myself on the details, but I’m reminded of Sam Brownback getting to enact the entire republican playbook in Kansas at the state scale, and it had fairly awful consequences for the state and everyone in it if I recall correctly. This feels similar, except at a way more threatening and potentially permanent scope.

Edit: corrected Arizona to Kansas.

Russia was the dress rehearsal, now this is the real thing