Depends on where the shit is getting real.

If it’s getting real at arm’s length, I definitely need my glasses.

If it’s getting real on the other side of the room, I’m gonna have to take my glasses off to see it properly.

Yes… I am old.

The US is a manufactured culture war distracting people from what should be a class war.

Attacking him ought to clear up those misgivings. I mean, when I’m uncertain about something, being verbally attacked by a person in favor of that thing usually brings me right around to their side.

“I don’t know about all this police brutality, Donny…”

“You’re the dumbest person, a real loser, and not popular with the ladies if you know what I mean.”

“You son of a bitch, I’m in.”

Expect selective enforcement or even some kind of DHS/ICE reserve officer program as an excuse to keep MAGA voters armed.

The message should have been “take accusations seriously…”

Right. Are we doing this yet?

Or are we still just complaining about “the left’s” sloganeering and wringing our hands over false accusations and the woke mob coming for us?

I was there

So was I.

Maybe they seized on one dude being pissed at his ex and making some accusations as a catalyst, and I’m certain well meaning folks got caught up in something they weren’t fully aware of, but that’s sort of the point with this kind of op. No one approaches you online and says “do you want to attack feminist game developers and entertainment journalists as the opening salvo in a culture war that will install fascism in the west?”

Even if it was co-opted, it was co-opted very early on and that doesn’t change what it was for most of its miserable time as part of the public consciousness or the damage it did.

Yeah, but if I misjudge and one of my friends turns out to be vehimently anti-bike, I don’t have to orchestrate a massive cover-up, conduct a decades long propaganda campaign, and install one of my other friends as the leader of the free world in an effort to avoid the legal, social, and political fallout from biking (literal biking, not a metaphor).

Seems like Epstein’s party planning would have required a little more thought than my Sunday rides.

Then again, all the evidence seems to show they were able to operate with a depressing lack of opsec, so maybe they just ask each other or there’s not enough people opposed to child rape in their world.

I have to wonder how these guys find each other. Do they crack an off color-joke and see who laughs? Do they catch each other looking at underage girls at a party? Is there a webpage that’s like tinder for pervs?

I can barely get four friends together for a bike ride on a Sunday afternoon, but somehow Epstein was able to connect with just about every wealthy pedo in the western world.

I’m still convinced that Gamergate was a trial run to see if open misogyny could win widespread support in the west and be used to indoctrinate young men into far-right ideology.

It worked.

My boss didn’t know how to use my ergonomic mouse

I use a logitech M575 trackball, people have tried to scoot it like a mouse and yanked their hand away from it as if it burned them.

At this point, even if they won’t admit it, I think most people understand that economic reality is the opposite of whatever Trump says.

Where the fuck is the outrage in Washington?

It’s been Exhausted/Diluted/Usurped by a neverending onslaught of daily ragebait and all the other atrocities currently happening in the nation and world.

Is this intentional? I can’t prove it but I think to an extent it is. But it’s not just about the Epstein files, it’s the people who enable Trump and the people who own him keeping him in place because his a useful tool for malfeasance on many, many fronts.

Should we be more upset about a global cabal of pedos, Gaza, ICE shooting people, Greenland, or what’s about to happen in Iran? What’s the biggest threat? The economy? The climate? China? Russia? Fascism? Terrorism? Antivaxxer’s fetish for contracting preventable diseases? Mass shootings? Robotaxis commiting road rage? AI disinfo and job loss? Housing costs? Groceries…?

All of this, whether by design or coincidence, is working together to force people to keep their heads down and worry about themselves as much as possible. That’s why it’s so important to organize, to give material and verbal support to protestors and advocates when you can, and to build a community where you live.

I’ll make it. I won’t be well off, but I’ll make it.

My kids probably won’t unless something changes soon. That fucks with my head a lot. How did we fuck this up so bad?

What’s the quote about virgins from that vampire show? Something like: If you’re going to eat a sandwich, wouldn’t your prefer if no one had fucked it first?

This seems similar.

Two things would happen.

1. They’d justify the ICE goon’s behavior by claiming the embassy was enabling terrorism or drug trafficking.

2. They would pitch a huge fit, take some sort of extreme action, and claim they’re in the right because US diplomats are good guys.

They don’t care about rules, ethics, or even having a consistent system of values. They only care about punishing people, power, and getting what they want when they want it. If they pull back at all, it’s only because they fear their support (and with it their immunity from consequences) is slipping. They’re just bullies and cowards.

That ought to fix it. Pack in the protests, guys, the Catholic Church has saved the world again.

He’s enabled by some very wealthy people. And in the US wealth is more than just money, it’s often the most important factor in status, popularity, and social and political power.

Even some the people screaming for empathy, understanding, and improved social programs often look down upon the poor and homeless, they just hide it behind a veneer of doing good. They want to rid the nation of poverty not because it’s the right thing to do, but so that they aren’t confronted with the reality of what causes poverty and the guilt they feel when they pass by someone who’s panhandling.

Our nation’s version of original sin is productivity. If you’re alive, you must feed into the economic system, you must support yourself and not be a burden to others. If you’re successful and wealthy enough, it means all lesser sins (getting bailed out with tax money, wage theft and fraud, destroying the environment, prejudice, sexual predation, etc.) will be forgiven by at least half the nation. This effect is more profound for celebrity performers.

So, if you’re stable financially and not under a direct threat from the administration, you’re probably upset, but your focus is going to be on finding a way to get rid of Trump and get out of this mess without winding up POOR.

You want to know why so many federal workers are still doing their jobs despite being complicit in many of the awful things that are happening? Because they don’t have a way to pay the rent if they walk off the job. The job market is awful. The economy is in the shitter. Everything is super expensive, and they don’t want to let their families down. Want the military and federal agents to quit? Give them a guaranteed way to pay their mortgages. Find them another job.

It’s not just about luxuries and standards of living. It’s about social acceptance and beloning. People will go to insane lengths to feel like an accepted member of a group. So these workers may be unhappy, even deeply upset about the direction the country is headed in, but it’ll have to get worse before the sacrifice is worth it, because being in jail or being dead is only a little bit worse than being a poor person.

Same holds true for much of the rest of the nation. It’s hard to risk belonging, to risk being part of our society, when there’s no guarantee you won’t wind up homeless and a pariah because of it.

deleted by creator

Well, if you take good old-fashioned violence out of the picture, money. Or specifically a lack of it.

Sanctions, selling off US debt, more retaliatory tariffs, blacklisting US investors and companies, anything that pulls cash out of the US economy and puts it somewhere else. Turn off the money tap, make the mega-donors hurt bad enough and the dystopia machine will eventually grind to a halt. Don’t think for a moment that the current squad of high-functioning sociopaths that are enabling this are principled enough to stay the course after a few of their mega-yachts are repossessed. They’ll flip sides again and again just to try and keep that horde they’ve built up. Someone just has to prove to them that the threat is serious, because right now, they think everyone else is helpless against them.

Additionally, the majority of Trump voters cited the economy as a primary reason for voting for him. A good portion of them were probably lying to cover for being racist and just wanted to see POC and the LGBTQ+ community suffer, but if you crash the US economy hard enough, you can still hijack a big chunk of Trump’s public support. It’s the same as with mega-yachts, but here we’re talking pickup trucks, ATVs, and rent-to-own furniture.

Few problems with this. 1. It’s slow. 2. It’ll hurt everyone else economically because US businesses have hooks set real deep in a lot of places. 3. Other nations have a wealthy elite with similar sway who want Trump in power for various reasons and might not play along. & 4. Whoever replaces the US might turn out to be just as big as bully in a few years if we’re not careful.

Still, it needs to be done.

EDIT: It’s like the old saying goes, everything is about money, except money, which is about power.

illegal and unwise.

Shocked. Shocked! That could describe damn near everything he does.

Bet this gets Epstein out of the headlines, and all he had to do was kidnap the duly elected leader of a foreign nation and start yet another war for oil. That’s obviously a master class in political subtlety.