Unemployed journalist, burner, raver, graphic artist and vandweller.

I read news so you don’t have to (but you still should).

  • 60 Posts
  • 293 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 6th, 2023

help-circle








  • Citizens are chasing ICE away in California.

    Yeah, but not shooting at them.

    People across the country are preparing themselves for armed conflict.

    This has been the case since before the Declaration of Independence.

    It’s “when” not “if”.

    That’s tautologically true. No empire lasts forever.

    There will be a flashpoint. There will be bloodshed. It’s going to happen real fast when it kicks off.

    I tend not to try to predict the future, mostly because I suck at it (see also: two ex-wives), but also because the more elaborate one paints a hypothetical future, the less likely it is to be accurate.

    None of those things is a given. The ICE/National Guard situation in L.A. shows that succinctly, with multiple flashpoints yet not a lot of bloodshed. This set of propositions is just doomerporn.



  • Millions having taken to the streets in protest since Trump retook the throne suggests otherwise. What else are we supposed to be “acting like”?

    Several organizations have decided to focus on brainstorming for 2026, which honestly makes the most sense. The Supreme Court won’t strike anything down, and we have prior art on whether the GOP would ever impeach and convict Dear Leader.

    Police are known to use any excuse to escalate to violence, so there’s very little that can be done beyond showing up with some signs, which may go somewhere if shit gets bad enough, but for now, it’s not moving the needle. And we saw the L.A. situation where ICE and the National Guard were deployed against the wishes of state and local leaders.

    Being aware of what’s wrong and being able to do anything about it are wildly different propositions. Call your industry-captured representative to complain? That’s gone really well so far. Meanwhile, we have plainclothes Gestapo working around to clock to silence dissent.

    So again, I ask: How should we be acting in such an environment?

    The people have no power at this point in the decline; the tech-corporate-military-industrial complex is the only constituent Washington cares about. Maybe if U1 shoots up to where U6 is now, the calculus changes, but that presumes accurate data going forward, which the recent sacking of the BLS statistics head suggests is unlikely to be the case.

    Regardless, the environment now is “how far can I push without getting whisked away to CECOT?”










  • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgOPtoChat@beehaw.org80% unemployment (N=5)
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    23 days ago

    I dropped out in 2000. This can be an issue, but I lucked out with my first managing editor … his rule was “no one with a journalism degree,” but though his idea was to get domain knowledge, I was able to slither in because I didn’t have one.

    (He had also been a speechwriter for Pat Buchanan; I’ve had a wild ride.)