Why would an American tech millionaire believe in the power of money and become subservient to a Billionaire?

I dunno. Good question.

I was an active subscriber who regularly read WashPo.

Ruth Marcus, Alexandra Petri and a whole slew of other liberals have left the post after the 2024 election and various tampering by Jeff Bezos. Or have you not noticed the change of writers yourself??

The ones who remained are hardly NeoLiberal, but overall have shifted farther and farther right. Jeff Bezos killing a few key OpEds have made it clear to the liberals that they are no longer welcome at the Washington Post.

Or what? You gonna try to convince me that Hugh Hewitt is a liberal or some shit?

You youngsters will blame the next generation as well. You just aren’t old enough to see the pattern yet.

Washington Post is Murdoch connected as of December 2023 (new leader and Bezos began to flex his muscles at the paper). I hesitate to call it neoliberal. It’s moved right of that.

What’s that one dude who wore the hoodie and had the stroke and then turned out to be fucking insane? My guess is the stroke wasn’t what made him a republican.

His staffers were literally crying and large numbers of reports are that he is a changed man after the stroke. Its uncommon, but it happens. Brain damage can result in personality shifts.

He’s some Pennsylvania Politician, I forget his name but maybe a Senator.

Anyone who possesses the kind of money that they possess, even Yang, are only in it for themselves and their cronies.

Well yes. But that’s traditional American Politics and its been like that for a long time. People prefer the devil they know (money / greed) rather than other vices.

If anything, being openly greedy makes people more comfortable with the personality.

Now AI can sort through the hours of traffick camera footage

No it can’t, not without major hallucinations and/or basic errors (ex: Black People tend to be misidentified).

That’s the big thing about this AI push, it’s subtle mistakes are fucking people over right now. If AI actually worked reliably that’s another thing. But right now, people are mostly pretending that AI works and/or ignorant of its flaws.

I’m not on YangGang and I never liked that guy.

But it’s clear that this new party is Elon Money + Andrew Yang right now. This is somewhat worrying as Yang was a Democrat (albeit one that couldn’t win any primary and never reached critical mass, but a Democrat nonetheless). So there’s political power here that we need to consider as part of the equation

It gives Elon political cover and makes him look independent and looking like he’s splitting the Democrats. So we can’t fall for it but people out there will fall for it.

Elon Musk can’t start shit.

The only successes Musk has are when he buys out a leadership position, like Tesla (sued in court to become an official founder).

Andrew Yang is the one to keep an eye out here. Musk has the money but I’m expecting Yang to do the heavy lifting.

I spent $5 dollars cash buying a hotdog from the Street Vendor last night during the fireworks. Was this written down somewhere or otherwise can this be traced back to me?

And yeah, street vendors raise prices around festivals lol. But I needed a snack so I paid up.

Hopefully next time Democrats can give a better strategy than pretending that immigrants stand together.

Ex: Kamala is Indian and Black. Guess who is coming from a deeply segregated country where they believe certain castes to be racially superior to other castes?

You ain’t gonna get kumbaya togetherness as a message and get the Indian vote. You’ll be seen as naive.

Democrats are shit at understanding politics or how groups think. Republicans have outplayed you on this political point and it’s why the racial politics are more 50/50 than you expect.

Real question: if we just parked our cars in the streets during these events and blocked the road, what could they do about it?

Yes I get that my license plate is on there and that maybe I’ll get a ticket. But think about how many of those people actually have options beyond recording on their phones that is also nonviolent.

Don’t drive aggressively into their cars or whatever but it shouldn’t be too hard to organize a blockade down the road a bit.

One car is a hassle and needs a towing. 20 cars would be very difficult to remove. Of course it depends on territory (they might just drive off road and around) but consider your local geography and with some planning surely there’s a bottleneck that can be a real headache to them.

I feel like there isn’t an assertion that the police would act out from ignorance of the law, but just how they operate. If anything the enhanced legal awareness may embolden them to know how far they can push the line and get away with it.

More importantly, their enhanced legal training means that in say, 80% of cases, I’d expect an Officer to win in most legal fights vs a typical layperson (ex: typical protesters).

Yes we have some incredible abuses out there and it’s important to bring up Police Abuse to raise awareness. But there’s also the pragmatic truth that we cannot expect for protesters to truly match up well in a legal fight vs Officers.

There’s some dumbass advice out there about knowing your rights and asking the officers badge number and stuff. I think for most laypeople, this is bad advice because the typical protesters or layperson will mess up in the interaction. The proper recommendation when dealing with officers is to remain quiet and call your lawyer, and then have your lawyer always speak for you.

Policemen have more experience with the law than you.

It is a liberal fantasy to think that spouting a few words here and there could pin these guys in an ethical or legal dilemma. The officer has likely heard the argument before whatever you think you are pinning them on.

I’m not saying that means Officers are ethical people. But I’m trying to make sure everyone understands the threat here.

The protesters will fuck up first. We need to be ready for this. It only takes one protester to step out of line while the officers here are politically savvy and know what they can (and do) get away with.

The smart aren’t planning for how to escalate these protests. The smart are planning for the inevitable crackdown after a building is looted and the arson starts, and the police use that as an excuse to crack skulls with legal backing.

Our move after that, I dunno. But that’s happened in 2018, 2019, even 2012 with Occupy Wall Street. Building our coalition vs Trump will be harder but I get it, protesters need to strike back in anger after aggressions at this level. Just know we are getting actively outplayed by Trump as these predictable events happen.

You will be unfairly demonized. Republicans will get law and order propaganda on Fox News. Your Boomer grandparents will fall for the propaganda.

But where’s the silver lining here? What can we do to turn the tide in our favor despite this? I think we can start pointing out the overreach of the President here taking over States authority. We can use January 6th and Trump’s pardons against him. We need to start preparing these arguments moving forward.

The soldier vs officer discussion is important because I do think the soldiers are more ignorant of these matters, in a good way. Soldiers didn’t sign up to be riot squad or crack down on protesters. The National Guard do want to save the country from Wildfires and Floods (under normal circumstances).

Police easily will side with ICE. National Guard probably sides but there is a Hail Mary argument we can make to them (National Guard shouldn’t be riot squad) that could get them to flip.

I expect that if National Guard has a higher chance of fucking up and shooting a protester than a Police Officer. They know this however, but that’s the fear we can actually take as an argument point.

The idea that conservatives are unthinking dumbasses or ignorant people who can be convinced of a greater truth is a horrible, horrible liberal lie. Conservatives think deeply about these things and have already preplanned how they should act and react to various news. You liberals need to start thinking at least as deeply as they do on these subjects if you hope to win this coming political battle.

Doomerism on the correct contexts is correct.

We shouldn’t expect a military coup on this issue. The vast majority of soldiers will take the side of Police and ICE on this issue and proudly stand by them.

Doomerism here allows us to focus our efforts elsewhere, where it’d be more fruitful to strike back vs Trump.

I’m not saying it’s what we want them to receive.

But Police are constantly surrounded by lawyers, criminologists and judges. You ain’t convincing them of anything, they have higher trusted authorities on the issue of law and a single officer likely have stood inside of courtrooms longer than you and me and everyone else in this thread combined. (Unless we have a lawyer in the peanut gallery??)

So this idea that you can just call them ignorant of law (and consequently, capable of learning or changing their opinions on these issues give. Am online debate) is… grossly optimistic.

You have to see them as legal professionals. Not necessarily legal authorities (like a judge or lawyer). But as a legal professional, cops almost certainly know more about law then the typical person. Enough to be dangerous.

Trained enough to be stubborn.

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.

We convince officers and other respected leaders to coup at the right time at the right signal.

But we also accept that the Grunts and dumbasses are gonna dumbass. Maybe you can get like an E-8 or E-9 on our side but don’t give much effort to E-3 or E-5.

But sitting around hoping that the military just magically appears on our side (that leans hard into Libertarianism at best and outright far right hooo rah at worst) is dumb.

You may laugh but it’s the reality.

Soldiers don’t have legal training, riot training, or any other legal maneuver. Meanwhile, Police and Police investigators need to actually win court cases if they want their charges to stick.

Police know what they can get away with given the local judges and politicians.

This liberal fantasy where your enemies can just be ‘taught’ habeus corpus and suddenly agree with you is just fucking fantasy. Maybe the dumbass soldiers might learn that but Police absolutely already have legal training and experience in legal matters. They won’t listen to your lectures on legality.

The benefit to soldiers is that they often know they don’t know legal matters and know their ignorance on riot training. But otherwise you have to treat typical soldiers as ignorant. Police on the other hand are pretending to be dumb, they have far more legal experience than typical citizens.

That doesn’t make Police correct mind you. It just makes them more legally experienced.

You can’t even consistently convince liberals that Kamala is better than this shit. And you think adding a bunch of conservatives will help?

Lulz. The bulk of the military is 18Y old chumps.

I have trust in the generals, but they keep getting fired by this administration. The enlisted mooks will brainlessly shoot at civilians and call themselves heroes if given the chance.

The grunts and mooks aren’t professional at all. That’s the fucking point.

Police are those who actually study the law. Soldiers at best know they haven’t studied the law. It’s always the generals and officers who step in and protect us from the dumbasses, but the brains of the military are actively being drained right now.