It’s not because we stopped talking to MAGA. Rather, we keep losing partially because our establishment Democrats haven’t gotten the memo abput the Republican party ceasing to engage the two-party democratic system in goid faith, rather are trying to dismantle it from within.

There’s no compromising with a literal fascist takeover.

Historians like to observe DSAs look like Eisenhower Republicans. The DSA does have some (worthwhile!) radical ideas on where to move the Overton window, but their current midterms platform is tame.

Eh. If what I have to say informs or allows me to link to something edifying, then I do it. I write for the readers of the thread as much as for the conversants.

Something similar happened in January 2013. In protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills that threatened section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Wikipedia went dark.

It got everyone’s attention, especially students, who had grown accustomed to Wikipedia’s ubiquity as a resource.

EOTWAWKI has always been a mythical fantasy, including the futuristic interpretation of Revelation regarding the second advent.

This is really the only way that cults in their late and isolated stages can hold together, not only that the end is neigh, but that it is imminent, a few month’s away at longest.

And that is because the devout are expected to be squeezed. They’re expected to toil to breaking for sake of the community and their leader.

In the cases of communes like Jonestown and the Branch Davidian compound, there’s always a dire labor shortage. There’s consistently more work to do than can be done by the labor force available to make sure everyone is fed, housed, treated for illness, clothed and so on.

Exploited labor cannot work under pressed conditions for super long, but giving them a hard deadline weeks or days away, helps a bunch. Doubly so if it comes with a guarantee of eternal bliss (or a UFO ride to join the space aliens).

Naturally, at least for all cases so far, the deadline comes and goes. This is usually when the prophets recompute and provide another deadline. Again it can only be a little bit longer. Even a year later and it’s too much to ask.

With each passing doomsday that doesn’t manifest, the cultists get more antsy like the crew of the Abraham Lincoln. Suicide and apostasy rates rise, then soar. Discontent heats up in the community, as each false apocalypse deteriorates confidence in the next one.

Eventually, something has to crack. In the 20th century US, reports leak to the authorities about the poor conditions and the abuse (there always is, in a large enough population), and in the face of intervention, the cult leader goes scorched earth like the Nero Decree.

In the meantime, the list of failed apocalypse predictions grows ever longer without any yet coming to fruition.

I am not surprised, nor am I impressed.

Don’t bother blocking me. I’ll do it for you.

Smaller insular groups get wiped out by infectious diseases, but they don’t communicate them to other insular groups. And that is the going hypothesis of why we really like to organize in small bands about the size of our Facebook friends list, and want to throw rocks at people from other tribes.

Larger intermixing populations gain their immunity by first having a lot of them die off. This is one of the benefits(?) of ranching livestock, since they’re a vector for diseases that commonly get transmitted to their human owners. The epidemics happen, and then the survivors have the antibodies, and even pass them on to their kin.

Nowadays, we have centralized disease control. It may be failing in the US but the rest of the developed world still have a robust system. But human beings haven’t had time to evolve (very much) towards large pluralistic societies that combat disease through science and proactive prevention.

Given enough time, I’d think we might, since large pluralistic societies also develop science, technology and arts much faster in general, often much to the chagrin of moral guardians like religious ministries.

One of the problems of being really rich is that so many people are willing to lie to you for a taste of your sweet, sweet lucre. I’m sure the pervasiveness of the sentiment is one of the factors the builds billionaire resentment of everyone else.

Also, legality, regulation and good ideas become secondary matters. This is not just an issue when it comes to yearnings to go to space, or Everest, or Titanic, but also when you’re annoyed that your grandson is gay, or that your sex life is wanting, or that your own body is getting old and creaky. People will show up with fabulous schemes by which to fix all that for you and (allegedly) make your dreams come true.

Also, to quote Robin Williams: Cocaine is God’s way of telling you, you have too much money.

Actually, bikes really are far left and a tool for liberty. They were especially significant in the US movements for feminism and women’s suffrage, as bicycles allowed women to scootle around on their own, where before they were restricted by access to horses and male escort. (Yes, I used the verb to scootle.)

Also bicycles encouraged women’s fashion to allow for pants, which were utilitarian for bicycling sooner than they were for equestrian riding.

(Bicycles also encouraged the paving of roads before automobiles dominated them.)

Many opponents to women’s suffrage (to women’s rights and women’s autonomy) also opposed bicycles. Including the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See asserted that bicycles, especially tandem bikes, were an instrument of the devil.

So bikes are Satan-approved!

Some recent useful videos (on YouTube):
Rebecca Watson’s take after SoT Sean Duffy decided bike lanes are woke
The Bicycle Episode of Climate Town with help from Not Just Bikes

Irving Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco elements, such as the tower decorations, streetlights, railing, and walkways. The famous International Orange color was Morrow’s personal selection, winning out over other possibilities. – Wikipedia

You’re engaging in violence fantasy. If you were here and tried to carry it out, you’d be dead and countless innocents piled on top of you.

You’re also totally underestimating the size of the response necessary.

Additionally, far-right Charlie Kirks are sponsored by the oligarchs, while far left ones are labeled as terrorists and hunted down by regime paramilitaries. We’ve seen this both during the German Reich and during the US civil rights movement. Why do you think the entire developed world is determined to strip anonymity from social media access?

We’re not fighting against a unite-the-right rally. We’re fighting the entirety of the federal government, and cooperating state governments.

You’re also asking some of us to sacrifice ourselves, which is a huge ask on its own. But the least we need to do is make sure those sacrifices aren’t in vein.

Something tells me you’ve never been in a society under attack by a captured government. Something tells me that you’d cow in your own dwelling if the circumstances rapidly developed around you. But do feel free to tell specific tales if I’m wrong. I’ll read them.

Oh I read quite a lot. Maybe you should give it a go.

Trump does not believe in expertise or data-driven science. He believes he knows better about everything than anyone else.

Curiously, he’s not entirely unique in this problem. One of the complaints about George W. Bush is that he was more impressed with arguments made with emphasis and drama than arguments backed by logic and data.

This is a specific grievance from Paul Krugman, that politicians often listen to well-dressed emphatic lobbyists than they do nerdy economists. Even Nobel laureates.

(This is one reason future civilizations might choose elections by sortition – by lottery – than by popular election. That would make the career of professional politician nonexistent, and much improve our chances of electing people who listen to experts. Such a system would have to be refined and include checks and balances, but this is true for any other system as well.)

I distinctly remember Trump trying to tell everyone this is fine and it’ll all just go away.

Later, when COVID-19 was epidemic in the community, he wanted to suppress the John Hopkins reports that informed their COVID-19 dashboard, because if Americans didn’t know how many were infected, then it wasn’t a problem.

So it’s no surprise the CDC and DHHS has stopped reporting on a lot of ailments in Trump 2.0.

Curiously, alphas and zoomers simultaneously hate AI the most while using AI the most.

Such as?

To fix this we need to organize twelve million Americans. We could seize Washington by force. Occupying Washington with six million supported by the other six would likely be enough. Or we could stage a general strike and support those workers not earning a living.

But we need to create a larger organized revolt than has ever been done before. And we’ll need a manifesto that everyone can agree on.

It turns out that’s actually quite difficult.

Firstly, racism is always a thing. Xenophobia is how humans kept infectious diseases at bay for most of human existence. But then we did the agriculture thing and decided to try out larger societies. Throughout history, though societies have always had to contend with half the population hating the other half enough to get violent.

The whole point of post-enlightenment civilizations is to treat everyone equally. But the US’ economy depended on slavery, and we weren’t ready to give rights to women, and those left cracks fit for social wedges.

Secondly, racism is a tool and always has been. The owner class has always resented the working class, and now they can live so far removed from us that they don’t even pretend or develop empathy by sharing the street with us. Heck Thiel wants to make his own Rapture in which everything is automated.

Racism is the hook by which the massive, oligarch-owned, far-right, propaganda machine draws in its viewership before feeding them the MAGA ideology and encouraging them to isolate themselves from all other information sources (and the libs). It turns out in the last century we’ve developed a lot of psychology. It’s just not used as much to heal minds.

But the owner class hates us all. It may hate non-white non-Christians slightly more, but the thing that disgusts them the most about us, by far, is that we are poor. And they’re just as eager to deny us a means to survive as working-class white men would to black men.

Oh it’s worse than that. Once America’s billionaires plunder the US treasury and tank the bond market (so we can’t borrow any more), they’ll make good their escape and then do the same to the rest of the developed world.

They’re richer than any royalty or industrialist robber baron has in history by at least a factor of four, and can afford to buy all the elections and capture all of the governments.

Quarries and data centers as far as the eye can see.

We only need to organize twelve million Americans to counter this.

Sadly, we’ll need to organize twelve million Americans to counter this.

Although, the billionaires and trillionaires are a symptom of the endgame. By far, most of our billionaires attained their wealth though financialization, that is to say financial shenanigans that do not produce value and wreak havoc on the economy.

An example is private equity, which is what happened to Toys 'R Us, Radio Shack, Claires, and countless other brands.

Normally, once the feds detect financial shenanigans, we outlaw them under fraud. But the owner class reacts by capturing regulatory agencies and/or defunding them so they can’t enforce their regulations. Citizens United was the death knell for the US.

It’s going to take ending the owner class to get out of this mess, and if wait too long, the ultra wealthy are rich enough to do the same thing to the rest of the developed world.

And we have to do it before we run out of water.