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Reposted by Tom

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · Nov 24

A way I can tell this is the case is that the Democrats responded pretty comprehensively to "is the president old" being the number one issue of the campaign and the result was that the issue disappeared from all coverage once that was the case.

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Chris Kluwe @chriswarcraft.bsky.social · 23h

I give shit to Jeffries (and Schumer) when they suck, so it’s also important to recognize when they’re doing it right.

This is doing it right. More of this, indeed. *Everyone* involved in the corruption of this administration MUST face consequences for their actions.

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d

This is good, from Hakeem Jeffries. More of this please, in every conceivable forum:

"Sycophants who aid and abet the President’s vengeful schemes will not be able to hide from the serious legal consequences of their behavior. They will be held accountable."

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 9h

I like how one of the making-up-a-kobold gimmick accounts I follow is clearly written by someone taking the viewpoint of a dragon and the other one is clearly written by someone taking the viewpoint of a kobold

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 10h

There is no scenario where we don’t immiserate millions. That was already decided when America reelected Trump, and it was already locked in when he destroyed USAID.

The point now is to minimize how MANY millions get immiserated, and that requires ensuring this administration does not last.

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 1d

LIke, if literally any other president from Truman to Biden had openly monetized his properties, in plain sight, as part of regular WH business, & was selling branded items while in office, it would have ended immediately. And then we wonder why the One Special Boy keeps doing all of the things 🤷‍♂️

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 7d

One reason the One Special Boy thinks he can just issue Executive Orders to do whatever he wants is because he keeps issuing Executive Orders & doing whatever he wants - in obvious violation of the law & Constitution - & no one who swore oaths to country & Constitution is doing anything about it.

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 1d

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♨ naïve dumbass @atticusgf.bsky.social · 1d

Trump vs. US was the final straw imo. You cannot read that ruling and continue believing they have legitimacy. It is not only against the plain text of the constitution, it is anathema to the national ethos. It is offensively, insultingly un-American and they ceded legitimacy by committing that sin.

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 2d

The most effective Democratic messenger of my lifetime is the guy who broke every single rule Democrats are currently trying to follow: Barack Hussein Obama, the guy with the weird name who talked like a professor, made sweeping appeals to higher principles, and never once appeared salt-of-the-earth

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 1d

Well, ideally you would prevent that platform from being owned by a guy who does that, but people got really mad at Will when the deal was going down and he was suggesting we should throw up procedural roadblocks if at all possible

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 3d

The thing about Iran-Contra and Watergate was that they WEREN’T flagrant: they had to be exposed.Trump literally does stuff five times worse than Watergate every day, and then tweets an openly neo-Nazi meme about it from the official White House account. It’s a difference in kind, not just degree.

Emcee Hammerpants @emceehammerpants.bsky.social · 3d

I dunno, man. Iran-Contra and Watergate were pretty flagrant. I have a hard time believing they haven’t been heading down this road where the executive is all-powerful and power is the end, not the means, for a long, long time. Whether that alone qualifies as fascist I don’t know for sure.

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 3d

The people dunking on this like "former republicans haven't opposed trump, what are you talking about!!" are the same people who were like "ugh such a disaster that liz cheney endorsed kamala harris"

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 3d

One reason former Republicans have been better at opposing Trump than many progressives is because they correctly understand that the GOP’s descent into fascism represents a dramatic shift, and is therefore scarier, where the latter groups feel the need to argue it’s just a continuation of trend

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 3d

bsky.app/profile/esca...

escapedexplorer.bsky.social @escapedexplorer.bsky.social · 3d

You're always going to have 30-40% of the country saying "boy I think we spend too much on public schooling and I think that things were better when I was 20" and yeah they're generally wrong about things but it's better to divert their voting power into a Nelson Rockefeller than more Crazy Hitlers

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 3d

“Pointing out that pissing people off has consequences”

If you don’t want to be seen as saying the consequences are getting shot, don’t use a picture of someone right before they got shot.

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Astreia @redoubters.bsky.social · 4d

Certainly not going to pretend that there isn't a lot of shit the Dems aren't doing/are doing (that is bad), but fundamentally a shocking amount of otherwise intelligent people want them to retroactively make it so that Trump didn't win last year

and that's just like not a thing

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 4d

there’s always a big stupid discourse on this website about how southern states are full of good people and but for the interference of the politicians, they’d all vote the right way, but abbott won by more than ten points in the last election, maybe texas just fucking sucks

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 4d

There are some hardcore anti-immigration zealots inside and outside the administration, but the median voter has, hilariously, closer to an "open borders" mindset than anything, they just believe in a mythological paperwork system that "illegals" are refusing to complete out of laziness

Matt Casey @mattcasey.bsky.social · 4d

I was discussing immigration with a Republican family member of mine. I mentioned someone I knew who was a DACA recipient. The family member basically said that this person should "do the paperwork to become a citizen". Basically, a pathway to citizenship which is not a thing for DACA recipients.

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4d

if you ask the average American to describe what they think a tougher immigration system should look like, they will describe something a degree of magnitude softer and more generous than the current reality.

The lesson here is that people are both better and dumber than they appear.

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 3d

If you believe Stancil posts because he WANTS people to yell at him why are you giving him the attention he wants? Block and move on, the problem magically solves itself.

Reposted by Tom

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 5d

i do not think that destroying an object is wrong. i think that treating a thing like a person exclusively for the purpose of dehumanizing it is insane behavior.

man w smol pan @trimdog.bsky.social · 7d

Thinking about this, being mean to AI is not off-limits

Some tools are single-use, you destroy them to achieve your goal

You can't destroy a person to achieve a goal

How you treat an AI falls into the realm of tool usage, completely separate from how you treat people, and conflating them is naive

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 7d

i do not think that nonhuman things have feelings to be hurt but i do think the intent to hurt feelings is bad for a person notwithstanding whether the object of their sadism is real

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 5d

Everybody who says shit like this is implicitly agreeing with Trump that this isn’t just what America *is*, it’s what it *should be* and all it *can be*.

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 5d

People going "America was always fascist" or "it's been like this since the 1980s" or making related claims don't seem to realize it, but they're telling everyone that nothing different is happening, nothing worse than usual, so if you weren't up in arms about eg 2013, you shouldn't be now either.

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ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 5d

A lot of folks in the AI space are like people who insist it’s safe and smart to get drunk in the driver’s seat of their Tesla on a country road and a lot of their opponents are like people saying there’s no such thing as an automatic transmission

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ellie lockhart (she/they) @eleanor.lockhart.contact · 6d

and, like, on the "clanker" debate, same thing, it isn't generally mentally healthy for you to abuse your car, or beat up a teddy bear, those things make *you* a bit worse for reasons other than "this process causes the suffering of a sentient mind"

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 4d

im just sayin

A post draft reading “I understand why BATMAN doesn’t just start killing the supervillains but I have no idea why GOTHAM doesn’t.

I think after the second or third time joker broke out and turned a skyscraper into a giant jack in the box that breathes poison gas or whatever the residents of whatever state Gotham is in would be ready and willing to do a January 6th to reinstate the death penalty

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 6d

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 6d

Just watched an hour-long video essay about the history of scripted Minecraft content and literally zero mention of the yogscast

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Tom @tbestig.bsky.social · 7d

What’s worse, 1 billion dollars and 1 million votes or 1 billion dollars and 1 vote?

That money’s going toward fascism either way.

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