Hey team. Been a minute. Still not in a great state, still don’t have a good grip on any kind of way forward. But today’s avalanche of fuckery is… pretty dang bad. So let’s hit the low notes:
Remember when I wrote this?
Europeans who are reading this – you need to realise that amongst other things, you are now a military alliance. Keep NATO but throw the US out of it, at least, assuming you don’t want your American NATO participation to rely on staying in Elon Musk’s good graces and letting him set up fascist propaganda fountains in your countries. Arm up, and get ready to get your hands dirty, or rather, dirtier.
Keep Canada, if you can. Hell, bring Canada into the EU if they’re willing – I assure you it’s going to be very much in their interests if they want to remain Canadian.
If the UK actually come to their senses, let them back in too. If they don’t, get Scotland, if they wiggle themselves free.
I meant it. Today, here’s Trump refusing to rule out the use of military force to take Greenland from Denmark, and take control of the Panama Canal, and talking about using “economic force” to make Canada into an American state.
Meanwhile, here he is re-upping his threats to Gaza. I would take “direct US military involvement” as part of this threat; he was more explicit about that last time, as he was very explicit when he said that Netanyahu should “finish the job” against the Palestinians before the election.
If this sounds like a mix of Putin vs. Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia, maybe it should. All those conversations with Putin that Trump had while out of office were coaching sessions.
Meanwhile, remember when I wrote this?
If [Musk] pulls it off… buying a moderately representative site and turning it into an authoritarianism-and-alt-right propaganda-and-disinformation fountain will be shown to work.
That’s why it has to fail.
And for it to fail, people have to fucking leave.
Because if they don’t, it will succeed, and they’ll do it over, and over, and over again.
Well, here’s Zuckerberg doing exactly that, pledging in a long thread to make Threads, Instagram, and Facebook more like X, with explicit promises to Trump and plans to move moderation and content reviews out of California and to Texas, akin to Tesla moving there for political reasons as well.
When Trump was asked whether he thought all this was in response to his threats against Zuckerberg, he said, “probably.”
Musk’s experiment succeeded.
It is now being replicated, on Facebook, and Instagram, and Threads. They will all be part of the Trump propaganda network.
Basically, like I said. Again.
I’d say “time to get the hell off Meta,” but people mostly wouldn’t do it for Twitter with readily available alternatives everywhere, so why would they leave Facebook or Insta or even Threads? Mastodon is “too harrrrrrrrrd,” who even knows what Friendica or Loops are, TikTok is about to get shut down or taken over, and BlueSky’s “a lefty echo chamber” that’s ripe for the picking.
Nobody will leave.
Buckle up, kids. This ride is gonna suck, and given the impact of ramped-up global warming and various wars of adventurism and oppression at home, a lot of people just aren’t going to survive it.
Hell.
Maybe not even civilisation.
There’s reasons he wants to take over two countries to the north, you know?
So hey, if there any “peace president” motherfuckers reading me? You know, the ones who worked against Harris and absolutely hate on Democrats more than you fight actual fash? The ones who joke about how MAGA will never admit being wrong, but just like them, won’t admit a single mistake either? I wanna be real clear about something:
FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU ALL RIGHT TO HELL. YOU DID THIS. YOU HELPED PUT HIM BACK INTO POWER, YOU TROGLODYTES, YOU MORONS, YOU PREENING ASSEMBLY OF FECKLESS DICKBAGS AND FOOLS. NOW THE WHOLE WORLD GETS TO PAY FOR YOUR WRETCHED, SNEERING SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.
GREAT JOB.
GREAT FUCKING JOB.
…
[breathes]
…
This was winnable. It really was. This was not inevitable, and things did not have to be like this.
But instead, well.
Now we all get to pay for their sanctimonious pretensions.
For everyone else reading me – the vast majority of people reading me, I think:
I’m sorry. I did everything in my power for many, many years to stop this. I did everything I was capable of to get everyone else to do everything they could, too. I told everyone to leave everything on the field, not to hold anything back, and that’s what I did, myself.
And it wasn’t enough.
And right now, I don’t really have anything left. Maybe I’ll find something. I hope so.
Meanwhile…
Brace for impact.
Here we go.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.