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Bennett Tomlin
@bft.wtf
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Crypto & Frauds | Co-host: @cryptocriticscorner.com | Research: @protos.com | https://youtube.com/@bennettftomlin | Newsletter: @thefudletter.com | bennettftomlin.com
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bft.wtf
Interesting how the gender stereotypes have flipped on this
erations (Aeschylus was also a favorite of Karl Marx). Taken together, the Or-esteia plays dramatize a historical shift in Athenian society and consciousness. The move is away from a primitive justice system of retributive blood vengeance (framed as feminine and irrational, and personified by Clytemnestra and the chorus of Furies), and toward a more complex form of democratic constitutionalism that elevates political bonds over tribal ones and celebrates equal dignity before the law (this is presented as masculine and rational). Aeschylus puts the sobering heartbreak of political reality on-stage, and then, over the course of three plays, tentatively considers the possibility of reconciliation, and maybe even of progress. The reforms are liberal in the highest sense, meant to enlarge the com-
January 11, 2026 at 8:37 PM
bft.wtf
lmfao I had no idea that Obama put this book on one of his infamous lists
93 essay on air in September 2016. President Obama played a similar role for Patrick Deneen when he put Why Liberalism Failed on his list of favorite reads for 2018.13
January 11, 2026 at 1:44 AM
bft.wtf
Donald Trump ran for president in 2000 specifically to ratfuck Buchanan under the advice of Roger Stone, and during this campaign Trump called Buchanan a neo-Nazi
Buchanan was perhaps the most obvious precursor to Trump, but Krein located the intellectual source code for Trumpism in the writings of the paleo-conservative white supremacist thinker Sam Francis.*5
January 11, 2026 at 1:27 AM
bft.wtf
Does the New Right actually stand on isolationist foreign policy? Asking for Maduro and Greenland.

From: Furious Minds by Laura K. Field
The nomination of Donald Trump as the GOP candidate for president in 2016 was a reactionary eruption of buried conservative ideas and sentiment against a compromised and stagnating conservative mainstream and their liberal friends. If the old establishment stood on the three pillars of social conservatism, fiscal con-servatism, and foreign interventionism, the New Right stands on four: social conservativism (Reno's strong gods), economic nationalism, isolationist foreign pol-icy, and anti-immigration (Anton's trifecta). Between 2016 and 2024, the New Right was most consistent in its commitment to old-fashioned traditionalist values and opposition to immigration; the legs of economic nationalism and isolationism were wobblier. In these years, the MAGA New Right excelled at culture warrior-ism but was less effective at escaping the Republican Party's prior commitments to big tax breaks and the American establishment's interventionism in foreign affairs. The early days of 2025 revealed a second administration much less cowed and confused than the first.
January 11, 2026 at 12:04 AM
bft.wtf
It’s owned by a sexual harasser who’s also so rich there’s no possible economic lever you can pull to remove him from his role. How would you go about removing all the predators under those circumstances? Murder? Because US isn’t gonna extradite him to stand trial and he’s not going to be tried here
This is grim, to say the least. Mass female departures from X represent yet another instance of women being forced to modify their behaviour to accommodate dangerous men. We already avoid walking alone after dark. We already walk home at night with keys clenched in our hands. We already cover our drinks in clubs. Why, then, should we be the ones forced to leave X? Shouldn't we be removing the predators instead?
January 10, 2026 at 6:05 PM
bft.wtf
2014 2026
Charles Krauthammer has told Fox News that President Obama is a narcissist. And he should know, because once he was a psychologist. Trump, 79, sported a lapel pin in his likeness on the left side of his suit, just beneath a pin of the American flag, during a Friday meeting with Cabinet members and American oil executives.
January 10, 2026 at 2:48 AM
bft.wtf
From Lepore’s “We the People”
John Adams wrote back to his wife on April 14, joking about the "Despotism of the Peticoat" in much the same satirical spirit with which English periodicals had greeted the female congress at Edenton. "As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh," he wrote, with a dismissal worth reading word for word: We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient-that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent-that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.—This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out. Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. - location: 1588c ^ref-53544 Worried that the struggle for independence had "loosened the bands of government every where"-between husband and wife, master and servant, rich and poor-Adams pressed Warren to be sure to get that new constitution written, with all the trappings of rank intact, the sooner the better. He soon afterward wrote to another friend in Massachusetts, insisting on the importance of property qualifications for voting, on the theory that lifting any restriction threatened the legitimacy of all restrictions. If poor men could vote, Adams speculated, "there will be no End of it. New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their Rights not enough attended to, and every Man, who has not a Farthing, will demand an equal Voice with any other." 33 Women will demand a vote. The urgency with which Adams urged states to draft new constitutions came, in part, from his concern that a delay would lead to more radical demands. — location: 1612C ref-43713
January 10, 2026 at 2:32 AM
bft.wtf
lol www.experian.com/automotive/a...
Average Auto Loan Rates in January 2026 CREDIT SCORE NEW CAR LOAN USED CAR LOAN 781 or higher 4.88% 7.43% 661-780 6.51% 9.65% 601-660 9.77% 14.11% 501-600 13.34% 19.00% 300-500 15.85% 21.60% Source: Experian. These rates are for illustrative purposes only. Your individual car loan rate will vary.
January 10, 2026 at 1:47 AM
bft.wtf
"Under capitalist misrule the judicial nets are so adjusted as to catch the minnows and let the whales slip through."
As the tour went on, Debs became more and more outspoken in his criticism of the courts. He constantly repeated his earlier epigram: "Under capitalist misrule the judicial nets are so adjusted as to catch the minnows and let the whales slip through." Enormous crowds turned out to hear Debs lambast the Supreme Court. The circulation of the Appeal which was 368,791 when the tour began, averaged more than five hundred thousand for the year. The Postal authorities tried to halt this rise by ruling that all subscriptions given with tickets to Debs' lectures counted as free copies and could not be mailed second class. But Fred Warren simply ignored the ruling, and it became a dead letter.
January 9, 2026 at 10:26 PM
bft.wtf
If he should die in his sleep, he explained, he wanted everybody to know that he "wasn't a Republican."
red lapel buttons, and Steve Reynolds even pinned his button to his pajamas every night. If he should die in his sleep, he explained, he wanted everybody to know that he "wasn't a Republican." The Red Special, moving with the jaunty air of a playboy, left Chicago that evening and headed west.
January 9, 2026 at 9:27 PM
bft.wtf
Debs appears to have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson, back when Debs was part of the Populist party, sure Jefferson might have been there, but Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian America would not have fit in well here
THE SECOND NATIONAL CONVENTION of the Socialist Party met at Brand's Hall in Chicago, May 1, 1904. From thirty-six states and territories had come 183 delegates, seven of them women. The average age was thirty-nine years. Two-thirds of those present had been born in the United States. Although the main occupational groups were twenty editors, sixteen printers, and fifteen lawyers, seventy-eight delegates were members of trade unions. It was a young, native-born gathering of workingmen to whom Debs said: "Thomas Jefferson would scorn to enter a modern Democratic convention. He would have as little business there as Abraham Lincoln would have in a modern Republican convention. If they were living today, they would be delegates to this convention."
January 9, 2026 at 8:46 PM
bft.wtf
50 years ago we had basically zero immigrant detention facilities and now we just keep going up
Line showing immigrant detentions going up
January 9, 2026 at 7:32 PM
bft.wtf
Source: The America We Deserve by Donald Trump
Recently there have been some new names suggested for the presidency and one of them is mine. Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has strongly encouraged me to run. I highly respect Jesse not only as a dynamic governor but also as the embodiment of the political qualities America needs. Given the choice between another slate of stale
January 9, 2026 at 2:06 PM
bft.wtf
Only the development of robot soldiers, which, as previously mentioned, would eliminate the human factor completely and, conceivably, permit one man with a push button to destroy whomever he pleased, could change this fundamental ascendancy of power over violence.
with a push button to destroy whomever he pleased, could change this fundamental ascendancy of power over violence. Even the most despotic domination we
January 9, 2026 at 2:11 AM
bft.wtf
No government exclusively based on the means of violence has ever existed. Even the totalitarian ruler, whose chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a power basis-the secret police and its net of informers.
No government exclusively based on the means of violence has ever existed. Even the totalitarian ruler, whose chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a power basis-the secret police and its net of informers. Only the development of robot soldiers, which, as previously mentioned, would eliminate the human factor completely and, conceivably, permit one man
January 9, 2026 at 2:11 AM
bft.wtf
In a contest of violence against violence the superiority of the government has always been absolute; but this superiority lasts only as long as the power structure of the government is intact—that is, as long as commands are obeyed and the army or police forces are prepared to use their weapons.
tells a different story. Were people mad who even tried against such overwhelming odds? And, leaving out instances of full success, how can even a temporary success be explained? The fact is that the gap between state-owned means of violence and what people can muster by themselves-from beer bottles to Molotov cocktails and guns-has always been so enormous that technical improvements make hardly any difference. Textbook instructions on "how to make a revolution" in a step-by-step progression from dissent to conspir-acy, from resistance to armed uprising, are all based on the mistaken notion that revolutions are "made." In a contest of violence against violence the superiority of the government has always been absolute; but this superiority lasts only as long as the power structure of the government is intact—that is, as long as commands are obeyed and the army or police forces are prepared to use their weapons. When this is no longer the case, the situation changes abruptly. Not only is the rebellion not put down, but the arms themselves change hands —sometimes, as in the Hungarian revolution, within a few hours. (We should know about such things after
January 9, 2026 at 2:05 AM
bft.wtf
To the often-heard question Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.
ber of this generation two simple questions: "How do you want the world to be in fifty years?" and "What do you want your life to be like five years from now?" the answers are quite often preceded by "Provided there is still a world," and "Provided I am still alive." In George Wald's words, "what we are up against is a generation that is by no means sure that it has a future." 29 For the future, as Spender puts it, is "like a time-bomb buried, but ticking away, in the present." To the often-heard question Who are they, this new generation? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.
January 9, 2026 at 1:41 AM
bft.wtf
Applies to longtermists too
trusters in the councils of government during the last decades. The trouble is not that they are cold-blooded enough to "think the unthinkable," but that they do not think. Instead of indulging in such an old-fash-ioned, uncomputerizable activity, they reckon with the consequences of certain hypothetically assumed constellations without, however, being able to test their hypotheses against actual occurrences. The logical flaw in these hypothetical constructions of future events is always the same: what first appears as a hypothesis— with or without its implied alternatives, according to the level of sophistication—turns immediately, usually after a few paragraphs, into a "fact," which then gives birth to a whole string of similar non-facts, with the result that the purely speculative character of the whole enterprise is forgotten. Needless to say, this is not sci-
January 9, 2026 at 1:32 AM
bft.wtf
The New York Times two months later in 1933
MARCH 6, 1933 HITLER'S VICTORY SHOCK TO FRENCH They Hoped for Repudiation of Dictatorship by Germans In Yesterday's Elections. Wireless to The New York Times.
January 8, 2026 at 8:57 PM
bft.wtf
The NYT in 1933
JANUARY 31, 1933 HITLER PUTS ASIDE AIM TO BE DICTATOR Imprisoned For Munich Revolt In 1923 Adolf Hitler's acceptance of the German Chancellorship in a coalition with conservatives and nonpartisans marks a radical departure from his former demand that he be made "the Mussolini of Germany" as a condition to his assumption of government responsibility. It represents at the same time a recession from their former position by President Hindenburg and the Conservatives, who hitherto had been set against entrusting the Chancellorship to Hitler although willing to permit him to participate in the government. The net result is not altered thereby. For the first time in his spectacular and tempestuous career Hitler is now called upon to prove in deed what he has been promising in word to the many millions of his supporters. He takes of fice at a time when his own party is passing through a severe internal crisis, expressed in a bitter factional struggle between extremists who have insisted on extra-constitutional action and the more moderate elements who have maintained that the party could not continue in the Opposition forever and could survive only through constructive participation in the government. This factional struggle, in which the Nazi leader had tried to placate both sides, assumed acute form last December with the resignation of the leaders of the more moderate faction, Gregor Strasser and Gottfried Feder. Strasser was Hitler's chief executive. Feder was the party ideologist credited as being the real founder of the party. Both resigned in protest against their chief's refusal to participate in the government unless the powers of a dictator were given to him. This position, critics in the Nationalist Socialist party argued, was responsible for the loss of about 2,000,000 votes in the Reichstag elections last November.
January 8, 2026 at 8:48 PM
bft.wtf
Ho Chi Minh wrote several letters in 1945 and 1946 to President Truman requesting the United States "to support the idea of Annamese independence according to the Philippines example”
winning people's minds. According to a cable from an American diplomat in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh wrote several letters in 1945 and 1946 to President Truman requesting the United States "to support the idea of Annamese independence according to the Philippines example, to examine the case of the Annamese, and to take steps necessary to maintenance of world peace which is being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina" (italics added). 6° It is true; similar letters were addressed to other countries, China, Rus-sia, and Great Britain, none of which, however, at that
January 8, 2026 at 8:38 PM
bft.wtf
Was it excessive for a "superpower"
to add one more small country to its string of client states or to win a victory over a "tiny backward nation"? It was, rather, an unbelievable example of using excessive means to achieve minor aims in a region of marginal interest.
Clearly this was no case of "limited means to achieve excessive ends. "56 Was it excessive for a "superpower" to add one more small country to its string of client states or to win a victory over a "tiny backward nation"? It was, rather, an unbelievable example of using excessive means to achieve minor aims in a region of marginal interest. It was precisely this unavoidable impression of wrongheaded floundering that finally brought the country to the conviction "widely and strongly held that 'the Establishment' is out of its mind. The feeling is that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand... and we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths," as McNaughton wrote in 1967.57
January 8, 2026 at 8:36 PM
bft.wtf
to use a "tiny backward nation" devoid of any strategic importance "as a test case of U.S. capacity

to demonstrate "the will and the ability of the United States to have its way in world affairs"

in short, to "behave like" the "greatest power in the world"
bsky.app/profile/blue...
"To convince the world"; to "demonstrate that U.S. was a 'good doctor' willing to keep promises, be tough, take risks, get bloodied and hurt the enemy badly",20 to use a "tiny backward nation" devoid of any strategic importance "as a test case of U.S. capacity to help a nation meet a Communist 'war of liberation'" (italics added);21 to keep intact an image of omnipotence, "our worldwide position of leadership", 22 to demonstrate "the will and the ability of the United States to have its way in world affairs",23 to show "the credibility of our pledges to friends and allies",24 in short, to "behave like" (italics added) the "greatest power in the world" for no other reason than to convince the world of this "simple fact" (in Walt Rostow's words)25 this was the only permanent goal that, with the beginning of the Johnson administration, pushed into the background all other goals and theories, the domino theory and
January 8, 2026 at 8:30 PM
bft.wtf
What the Pentagon papers report is the haunting fear of the impact of defeat, not on the welfare of the nation, but "on the reputation of the United States and its President"
humiliation. What the Pentagon papers report is the haunting fear of the impact of defeat, not on the welfare of the nation, but "on the reputation of the United States and its President" (italics added). Thus, shortly before, during the many debates about the advisability of using ground troops against North Vietnam, the dominant argument was not fear of defeat itself and concern with the welfare of the troops in the case of withdrawal, but: "Once U.S. troops are in, it will be difficult to withdraw them... without admitting defeat" (italics added). 16 There was, finally, the "pol-itical" aim "to show the world the lengths to which the United States will go for a friend" and "to fulfill commitments."17
January 8, 2026 at 8:26 PM
bft.wtf
“an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because…he must surround himself with advisers…interpreting the outside world for him…This, of course, can happen only if the executive branch has cut itself off from contact with the legislative powers”
(Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the "National Security Managers," as they have recently been called by Richard J. Barnet, who "exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him."5 The President, one is tempted to argue, allegedly the most powerful man of the most powerful country, is the only person in this country whose range of choices can be predetermined. This, of course, can happen only if the executive branch has cut itself off from contact with the legislative powers of Congress; it is the logical outcome in our system of government when the Senate is being deprived of, or is reluctant to exercise, its powers to participate and advise in the conduct of foreign affairs. One of the Senate's functions, as we now know, is to shield the decision-making process against the transient moods and trends of society at large-in this
January 8, 2026 at 8:19 PM