Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-kills-bill-that-would-prevent-government-shutdown-on-friday.1064907/

Whole thread is "DEFUND THE POLICE!! NOT LIKE THAT " bitching.

But let's take a look at the best stupidity anyway:

Don't you love when billionaires tell the rest of the country they're not allowed to get paid?

Biden put him in a black site before your lame duck session is over.

Stop buying Teslas and supporting him. NO EXCUSES!

That $44 Billion doesn't seem like a bad expense right about now

Ya if you control the town square then you get to dictate the narrative. Pays off handsomely.

All the lies and fearmongering bullshit about what George Soros was doing behind the scenes…

And Elon Musk just goes and does it. In the open. Loudly.

That $44 Billion doesn't seem like a bad expense right about now

So many people were rooting for the purchase to go through as well because they wanted Elon to get epicly pwned. And look where we are today.

Elon really not helping my mental state now

congratulations to the 75 million dipshits who voted for Trump and enabling Musk

Don't leave out the people that didn't vote for Trump but also didn't vote for Harris, now.

The US is gonna go through an absolutely insane phase.

Not a phase. It will be like this for the rest of our lives.

People about to be pretty fucking woken up when they try to "punish" Trump and Musk for destroying the country, only to discover they can't vote anymore.

I'm repeating myself: Anyone on SSI/Medicaid or any adjacent to them should go out and buy body armor and guns it's going to be bad

Elon isn't suffering enough for this

Elon cannot be punished in this country. He's a white dude worth over $400 billion who now has control of the government like he does with Twitter. We're cooked.

We're not going to have meaningful elections anymore. Elon will hand pick the winner of every race by paying people to vote.

This is what the playmakers wanted.
Hopefully someone out there has enough praxis, truth to power or whatever to revolution a way forward.

Unless Trump tosses him to the wolves. Never met a dictator that kept close associates for long, and all Trump would need to do is come up with an official act to do whatever he wanted to Musk.

Just wonderful that he found a way around Article II of the Constitution. Don't need to be a natural-born citizen if the entire government just does your bidding.

Don't worry, once Jan 20th hits, they will pass something. It's just going to be much worse, or they might not pass anything at all so they can starve the government without needing legislation.

The ulitmate goal is to make poor disabled people suffer

Billionaires a) shouldn't exist and b) shouldn't be allowed to influence our government.

oh I agree tbh, I have no hope for the USA for at least the next 20-30 years, it's basically over.

Christ so not even a specific reason. Yeah these next four years are going to be so much worse than what we can imagine.

This is why among people who should riot, disability support organization need to riot because protesting does nothing

A government shutdown right at Christmas seems like a REALLY poor idea and par for the course from what I expect from these chuds.

bOtH sIdEs ArE jUsT aS bAd

I would love if Hakeem would stop tweeting and eventually organize some kind of resistence to the eventually welfare cutting that's going come from this

we have a shitbag illegal immigrant controlling our government lol, fucking clown town

The bans being handed out in here are a joke

This is the world that neoliberalism has brought us to

Anyway, can we ban Twitter embeds yet?

I see my faith in democrat even resisting the DOGE agenda is crumbling before my eyes

good job on making my vote feel descrated and I'll bill the democrats for therapy and among other things?

If you are democratic politician delete yer twitter like right now

and start something now

Hasn't really posted much since she was running for the Oversight chair (which she lost to a 74-year old guy with cancer in typical Democrat fashion).

Hey as a cancer survivor I really don't appreciate seeing 'having cancer' used as an attack.

Truly amazing people aren't discussing this like it doesn't imply a cut in benefits in short time from now

I'm so glad that Era continues to platform his website, while banning people for making off-color jokes about the guy.

Trump's not even sworn in and the oligarchy has already begun.

Going to be a lot of "We told you so" in the coming years, not that it really matters.

It'd be cool if the deportations start with Musk.

I'm not advocating in the slightest that anyone does a Luigi but his continued existence after internationally funding right wing authoritarians and turbofucking global discourse is a planet sized rebuke to the idea of a competent functioning liberal/establishment conservative "deep state". Have the illuminati just packed up and gone home to their own planets or what.

Stop buying. Stop buying anything other than what you need. If you can learn to grow seasonal food at home. Buy from local farms and butchers. Stop buying anything in a package. Stop buying anything that isn't absolutely necessary for you or your families basic comfort and survival. Opt out of this shit whenever you can. It's the only thing theyll understand

True. And even if you can't do everything; it's not an all or nothing venture. Messages start as sentences and grow to essays.

This is the logical conclusion of this country's worship of wealth. We deserve it.

Screw christmas. Do you know how much shit happens over new years? Starting the new year for at least 3 weeks while most of the government is shutdown is going to be straight up catastrophic.

I know there are far greater concerns to worry about, but damn that ruins my Christmas/New Years vacation plans since National Parks will be closed

Dipshit isn't even in power and they're already fucking people over.

There is not a single person who voted for trump that would change it. They want people to suffer, and so long as libs are suffering, they don't mind suffering themselves.

Honestly Twitter embeds should be disabled here IMO. He buys Trump an election and people still don't have the self control to stop using Twitter. Even the OP included a tweet.

This embed took a really long time to load for me, compared to other twitter embeds, is Musk filtering anything that paints him in a bad light? lol

Does he still get an actual inauguration if Dems just let Republicans keep the government closed til he takes office lol

This is cartoon character villain levels of bullshit.

Elon Musk bent the entire Republican party to his whim in a matter of hours. He is the real president starting next year. Dude is unironically the greatest threat to America and he has all the tools necessary to do whatever he wants. Seriously who is stopping this asshole from taking away all the safety nets and public infrastructure that makes this place function? Mfer literally created a new department just to eliminate anything he deems as unnecessary (like he is some sort of god) and it seems like no one can do shit. Mfer is fking everything up and isn't even the shadow president yet. Worst part is he seems to be largely getting away with it by using culture war nonsense. He turned Twitter into 4chan 2.0 and he himself posts like a channer. Trump is bad but Elon is even worse. People think Trump will turn on him but I think he is too old and feeble for that.

Even if Trump turned on him, Vance is still his and Thiel's puppet. One wrong health turn for Trump would just put Musk back into being shadow president.

Why do we still support X here?

Well if I does happen, at least we get one final pay check this weekend. I consider myself fortunate, I just moved to a new apartment so I don't have to pay rent for the first two months and I also have a CD that matures in a few days.

But it's always the same, working class gets fucked.

I don't know if we can call this the seeds of fascism anymore so much as a full fucking garden.

While I understand why you're pessimistic, it's very possible that many factors prevent what you're saying from being true.

Like fucking what? What can stop a guy with 400 billion dollars?

Why do we still support X here?

People like and/or personally benefit from it.

Is it a good justification? Well...

Just one of those small things that says a lot.

The bans being handed out in here are a joke

Hear hear

Twitter must be shitting the bed because of the embeds aren't loading. If you're going to quote shit from Twitter at least quote the contents of the tweet in your post.

I think Trump's beholden to Elon due to his donations and who knows what else.

Just gonna say, swapping BlueSky to my home screen and tucking Twitter into a folder has done wonders. I'm down to only 43 minutes of usage time on Twitter with BlueSky having 7 hours and 28 minutes. The experience is so much better now. I'm not at the point I can outright delete the app but at least it's not being used like hardly at all anymore.

The longer Trump let's it appear Musk is basically in charge the more suspicious I'll get of the whole thing. I'm really not some tin foil hat wearing type but it's certainly within the realm of possibility that Musk having some sort of other leverage here beyond the obvious. I certainly think it's more likely just a money thing though.

I honestly don't see how this is all any different from how this plutocratic hellhole has worked for decades. It's more stupid and brazen, but it's not out of the ordinary.

If you have money, you own the politicians. Simples!

 

The Democrats have the easiest villain ever but they suck so hard at messaging that they could never turn Musk into Soros.

True incompetence. If the parties were reversed the entire Republican messaging machine would be working to take Musk down.

They're too busy electing a 74 year old man with cancer for the oversight committee role instead of going with the obvious choice.
It's just so frustrating how incompetent they are.

They're incompetent, but also primarily self-serving. Sadly it seems politics is self-selecting for the absolute worst, most corrupt people.

Oh, hey, I wonder who in the past has argued this and why it might be a reason not to make politics seize control of every aspect of life completely unchecked like you guys want?

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

https://mises.org/articles-interest/why-worst-get-top

Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves “the good of the whole”, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.

Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity. From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, deception and spying, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual are essential and unavoidable. Acts which revolt all our feelings, such as the shooting of hostages or the killing of the old or sick, are treated as mere matters of expediency; the compulsory uprooting and transportation of hundreds of thousands becomes an instrument of policy approved by almost everybody except the victims.

To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, therefore, a man must be prepared to break every moral rule he has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for him. In the totalitarian machine there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous. Neither the Gestapo nor the administration of a concentration camp, neither the Ministry of Propaganda nor the SA or SS (or their Russian counterparts) are suitable places for the exercise of humanitarian feelings. Yet it is through such positions that the road to the highest positions in the totalitarian state leads.
...
A further point should be made here: collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those they have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as this complete perversion of language.

The worst sufferer in this respect is the word “liberty”. It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said that wherever liberty as we know it has been destroyed, this has been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have planners who promise us a “collective freedom”, which is as misleading as anything said by totalitarian politicians. “Collective freedom” is not the freedom of the members of society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society that which he pleases. This is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme.

It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced. Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken support of the regime. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb report of the position in every Russian enterprise: “Whilst the work is in progress, any public expression of doubt that the plan will be successful is an act of disloyalty and even of treachery because of its possible effect on the will and efforts of the rest of the staff.”

Control extends even to subjects which seem to have no political significance. The theory of relativity, for instance, has been opposed as a “Semitic attack on the foundation of Christian and Nordic physics” and because it is “in conflict with dialectical materialism and Marxist dogma”. Every activity must derive its justification from conscious social purpose. There must be no spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide.

The principle extends even to games and amusements. I leave it to the reader to guess where it was that chess players were officially exhorted that “we must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula chess for the sake of chess.”

Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established, but can be found everywhere among those who have embraced a collectivist faith. The worst oppression is condoned if it is committed in the name of socialism. Intolerance of opposing ideas is openly extolled. The tragedy of collectivist thought is that while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason.

You want an older white man who was also a slave holder: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist-no-51

The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.
...
There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.