By which I mean we may not need to work quite as hard to make the case against Reaganite ideology as we used to, because they've stopped really trying to make a case for it - they're leaning so hard on pure hate. But we'll see.

Did not mean it as fighting at all, sorry if it came across as aggro. I do see raw aggression as a different kind of thing than political persuasion, but that's just my POV

I am kind of nitpicking - I agree with you there has to be an honest reckoning with that myth. DOGE may have even made that simpler to do, by wrecking so many things with such huge consequences that we can say "SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DO THAT?"

The only deciding factor was the election of Trump, who then handed the keys to the wreckers. If you mean that you don't think Trump would've been elected without the idea of government waste... maybe, but I think that was far less prominent in his campaign than any Republican in my lifetime.

What I mean is that in this case the "well accepted lies" were secondary to the exercise of raw power by radicals who made Reagan and even Gingrich look like rule-followers. Vought and Musk didn't give a shit whether anyone believed their rationale.

Yes, that's what I was referring to when I said "the long tradition of putting down government work as wasteful." I'm 53 years old, I'm well aware.

The "techno-futurism" part was also not something that was offered to us to make it attractive-- it was the Musk crew's own schtick, but Musk was a last-minute addition to the Trump campaign, and not a popular one. He wasn't installed in a misguided attempt to modernize. He was there to destroy.

I mean, it's not as if someone proposed this to the American people and we agreed because we'd been duped into thinking there was all this waste. They just decided to do it and did it.

If by "well accepted lies" you mean the long tradition of putting down government work as wasteful... yes that is a thing, but it's not how DOGE got into power. They got into power because they were put there by people who openly wanted to destroy the federal government.

I mean, all of these people are certainly horrible, and I can easily believe Thiel had direct dealings with more of them than he's already admitted, and it's depressing to remember that Weev still exists. But the "new revelations from Epstein files" part here seems thin.

Honestly I think the article is written more confusingly than it had to be - the bits that are actual news are scattered among a lot of well established history, and some of what it's saying is "proof" is hard to distinguish from Weev talking shit to make himself sound big.

If you think using an RSS reader is somehow not giving traffic to the blogs you're reading, you're mistaken. Substack certainly considers that to be traffic, otherwise they would have no reason to provide RSS feeds.

And one of those three guys got re-elected after starting an incredibly destructive action, followed that up with an incredibly destructive inaction, and wrapped up with an economic crash. Great argument for unconditional second terms

This person was of course arguing on multiple threads that he wasn't trying to make Reagan sound good, he knew Reagan was bad, the point was Democrats were worse etc... but dude just literally made up untrue shit about Reagan to make him sound better in service of that point, so... agh

I mean, I don't give it much notice as a rule, but as someone who grew up in an area where there was a lot of Sanctuary movement activism, this particular variation hit a nerve. Just amazingly ahistorical.

I just unfollowed a friend of a friend for reposting one of those "Reagan & Nixon were less right-wing than the evil Democrats!" things. They claimed Reagan was not only less warlike in foreign policy, but also "was for open borders" because he signed the 1986 amnesty. Lord give me strength.

You mean our phrasal-ass verbs

I agree but I'm still not sure it fits the question - the AIs on the show have goals & intentions, the humans serving them understand what they're doing & aren't just deluding themselves. So I'm still struggling to think of fiction that gets near the full stupidity of our situation.

Fuck this and fuck you. Should've just blocked, will take care of that now.

You have no goddamn idea what the Congresswoman is or isn't doing, because the *moment* you saw this Maddow post, you jumped in to make sure everyone knows you think np one will do anything, and to mock her reaction by claiming it came off as "too bad, so sad." You're not here to listen to shit.

If your point is just that politicians in general should be trying harder, sure. But you went out of your way to specifically ask why this person who JUST NOW witnessed these things and spoke to the press about them isn't somehow simultaneously "screaming about it to every media outlet."

"It comes off as..." wtf are you talking about, you are projecting harder than an IMAX theater. Nothing about what she said in this story comes off this way.

You mean why wasn't she instantly on a bunch of TV shows at once today, fast enough to suit you? This story came out today. The inspection was last night.

Well, for real, I'd be curious to hear what it is you're disputing from a local POV. I was replying to what sounded like a much more general "it doesn't make sense that such a thing could ever happen" type statement.

Anyway, to be specific, I think the 3rd, and 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th paragraphs in the article in particular are meant to address the question the OP raised. I don't know the area so for all I know, maybe it's all overblown, but I've seen similar things happen many times, "logical" or not.

I think one of the worst side effects of the NIMBY/YIMBY wars has been that some people have concluded gentrification is just a made-up thing in general, because they've heard it brought up in some situation where they felt it didn't apply. But this one seems like pretty much a textbook case.

I mean, it's very demonstrably a thing that has happened over and over. If you want to say it's less likely to happen in this particular case for whatever reason, ok, but it's not as if it's some weird hypothetical that has to be proven to be possible.

I really don't want to start another one of the "don't you understand supply and demand!" fights that are so common here, but-- the article literally describes the basis for the concern about gentrification, which has been an extremely common scenario for a very long time.

It's in the first person, so: "*I* boobed boobily," etc.

I also enjoy how the convention of using present tense in headlines kind of makes it sound like this is just what the guy *does*, like, habitually.