This is actually the dark side of the social contract. When enough of the plebians have access to bread and circuses, they’re content not to stand against empire.

What happened was too many people stopped getting theirs, and voted for King Heron (the fascist autocrats) instead of King Log (the neoliberals).

If the status quo is a crisis for you, and your options are only to vote for more of the same or put everyone in crisis, it makes sense to vote Heron over Log.

That’s how we got here in the US. And many industrialized nations are facing similar paradgms. In fact, the current push towards liberal representatives outside the US is because Trump and MAGA serve a stark reminder how bad it is.

Which isn’t how bad it’s going to get unless we can, by a sociological miracle, get organized enough to general strike.

Then we’ll see regime change and reform…provided we demand it.

There will be blood, just hopefully in the tens of thousands rather than tens of millions.

So did the Brevard County sheriff’s department murder anyone today? Or beat them brutally? Or otherwise dispense unjustified violence?

So it means we all get to be Spartacus.

Too quick, though a classic.

Falling into a deep canyon (or from the top of Notre-Dame) would give him a moment to think about what he’s done. More so, being stuck in a lamp in the Cave of Wonders.

I am especially particular to the horror of being torn apart and eaten by hyenas (that you’ve just betrayed), but I’ve reserved that for people higher up on the Trump hierarchy.

I may be thinking of the July Revolution of 1830, in which case you’re right. They’re not the same, just related.

You’re going to have to elaborate on both. I can’t imagine a far-right opinion I agree with.

ETA: I’m echoing the sentiments of centuries of COIN theory: brutal state response to protest only multiplies the numbers in the movement. And it’s so well known that tyrants and usurpers are fools to ignore the paradigm. And yet they do.

Listen, years ago I rode with Juárez against Emperor Maximilian. I lost many chickens but I thought it was worth it to be free. When Porfirio became President, I supported him – but he stole my chickens. Then came Huerta and he stole my chickens. Then it was Carranza’s term, and he stole my chickens too. Now comes Pancho Villa to liberate me and the first thing he does is steal my chickens.(…) What makes one different from the others? My chickens don’t know. All over the world revolutions come and go. Presidents rise and fall. They all stole your chickens. The only thing to change is the name of the man who takes them.

―Old Man in Pueblo, Young Indiana Jones

Or for a more modern version

The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace: They never are.

Um, a lot gets done without violence, including regime change. In fact, nothing swells the numbers of a movement like state brutality on peaceful protests, and that is amplified with the ubiquity of the cell-phone camera and the internet.

This is not to say a movement by violence is bad, just that it can detract sympathizers.

But don’t worry, when the regime has to choose between giving up (say in the face of a general strike) and sending out the goons, they’ll always choose the latter. No one tosses the One Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom. It’s the same paradigm that leaves us with senile geriatrics unwilling to relinquish the power of office until it is pried from their cold, dead hands.

Usually, by then, the military has realized the regime is illegal and as luney as Aerys II Targaryen (The Mad King, who Jamie slew, SoIaF) and is willing to do the wet-work. By artillery if necessary.

Then again, destruction of property like burning the Waymo cabs, is a common necessity. That wasn’t the act of rioters, but saboteurs. Waymos are snitches and have been reporting to ICE the location of targeted civilians.

Honestly, I don’t know what, in a meme format, differentates a shitpost from a non-shitpost.

Yep. Saw it after I posted it.

ETA In full disclosure, it should be bystanders and sympathizers but I was in a hurry.

The French Revolution took about a century to fully process through. There were several instances of guillotines and piles of heads. We usually know about the first one (and the second one for those who’ve seen Les Misérables. ) During the post 1789 process there was also a weird cult thing that looked a bit like MAGA, until even the cultists got tired of Robespierre’s bullshit.

Marie Antoinette was a perfectly serviceable princess / queen and fielded charities and smiled at the commoners and all the things ambitious feudal ladies are supposed to do. She never said Qu’ils mangent de la brioche but the rumor of it was current, and sped her way to the guillotine. She was also accused of sexual perversities, including The German Vice (lesbianism) most of which had to be explained to her so she could deny having ever done them.

I think falling from a great height is too kind a Disney fate for Charlie Kirk. Perhaps he should be permanently turned into a kitten to suffer the effervescent (grabby, drooling) adulations of small children for all of eternity.

When I played The Sims 2, the first thing I’d do is create a small public lot where everyone could get all their needs met and buy food and a cell phone (since starting characters didn’t have one). There were some oddities, since Sims get dirty quickly, I’d replace sinks with showers, and would make sure coffee was available everywhere.

Eventually, sims could walk from their home, rather than investing in a garage and a car or taking a cab.

Note that Disney and Universal pirate other people’s stuff whenever they want.

Note also that all the Generative AI services are very protective of their big cistern of web-crawled data, say when China borrows it for DeepSeek.

Content, content everywhere and not a drop of principle.

Looney Tunes did it first.

I presume the point that you only need one methane source connection for two appliances that use it heavily.

So, an appliance for low-drag homesteads.

My first instance shut down permanently within days of my signing up. I believe it had sometime remotely doing with Russia suddenly deciding to invade Ukraine.

It really gave me that full cyberpunk experience.

Some of us have had Cascadia dreams. The problem is that Canada has its own issues and is on the same oozing, shambling drift towards fascist autocracy.

But yeah, the problem is that the US is a big pastiche of purple, and we can’t even tell how much of the red side is pressured by peer pressure and the colossal far-right-wing propaganda machine that features the most popular media offerings in the nation. Huge swaths of people are literally being mind controlled, and no-one is addressing this. (On a related note, we keep allowing more loopholes to allow gambling outside Nevada and Georgia, not to mention have failed to criminalize lootboxes)

The US isn’t even trying to be democratic and hasn’t for decades, which is how seventy seven million people, many of them low-information voters, voted for the guy who campaigned on a fascist autocratic coup d’etat.

That is to say once we finally unseat President Donald J. Trump, we should get ready for a Pete Townshend scream:

Meet the new boss!
Same as the old boss!

The Heritage Foundation is a society of monarchists. It’s supported by oligarchs who want to be king to push the world towards that agenda, and such oligarchs routinely infuse it with capital.

Do we know it was a pure tourist visit and they could choose the location? Many state departments are already flagging the US with a state instability warning if not no-go, so I’d assume she (or the husband) was here on business, or because there were circumstances that pushed them.

To be fair, NYC is pretty blue, it’s just the NYPD that has been for decades a threat to the people, especially nonwhites, with Bloomberg’s mayorship taking much of the blame.