butterbumps!

I said I’m agnostic as to the extent musk is actually a Nazi (and also, I do not care). I think he’s a troll who wants to rub everyone’s nose in shit that he can do anything he wants with impunity, and Nazism is the vehicle he happens to be using right now because it upsets the right people and makes him feel like an edgelord. My argument here is that fear of consequences is not a deterrent to musk or even trump right now. I don’t know what vehicle you believe would hold Trump accountable is he showed up in Hitler cosplay to the next rally. Impeachment? Good luck. Not to mention he’d have useful voices like yours arguing why it’s just a joke and not an indication of his true feelings and a simple body awkward wardrobe malfunction and so on.

More seriously, the argument that Musk wouldn't do this because there will be consequences does not seem borne out by fact. What evidence is there that Musk believes himself something other than completely invincible? Trump and the whole gruesome ship of ghouls as well-- what repercussions would they face for embracing literal Nazis or being themselves Nazis? (since we need to carefully distinguish between the two out of respect for the Nazis I guess). What exactly do you believe holds Trump accountable to not embrace literal Nazism? At home and abroad? I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be one of the people who takes something like Nazi posturing seriously if you are against Nazis. Even if I think this is largely trolling people upset by Nazism, and I'm agnostic about Musk's actual levels of Nazi belief.

Was the Afd op endorsement also a medication-induced orgasm of body awkwardness?

That's not an argument against what I said or what I asked. What repercussions do you think he thinks could possibly affect him for trolling all the liberals (and others!) who have been warning against Trump's fascist tendencies? You said it was unlikely he'd ever do a heil hitler in front of billions. Why? He bought Twitter largely to troll freely, and thinks he's above consequence, so why would you interpret that as anything other than his rubbing everyone's nose in the fact he can sieg heil in front of billions that and there's nothing they can do about it?

Are you kidding? Why would you ever think it's "unlikely he was purposefully doing a full on Heil Hitler in front of billions of people"? He's a professional "anti-woke" troll who believes he is invincible. What repercussions could possibly impact him for doing this? "I can sieg heil in front of the world and no one can do a thing to me about it"-- this sounds profoundly on brand. Also the caliber of people you choose to extend nuance and grace to on here is, well, it's something.

I do think this is the way in though. All these people are seeing thier lives could be better, but they aren’t really struggling, truly. They are constantly being told that these undeserving groups of people are cutting them in line, all the while corporations and the .01% control most that pie and power and the law seems to exist merely to enable these semi-oligarchs at everyone else expense. It’s quite the swindle the right has going. I’m just concerned that Vance and his ilk are going to capitalize on that sentiment (being complete bullshit coming from him) before the dems just lean into the Left on this.

So what’s also infuriating about this is that in my experience, 100% of the known trump voters I know are filled with resentment that life hasn’t gone for them what they hoped and blame the “cheaters”, AND 0% are actually in bad financial shape. One extended family household of Trump voters hold these resentments AND make over a million in income a year! To be honest, I wonder if the problem here is not that so many of these trump voters are actually hurt by the economy (and if those actually hurting are in fact voting trump), but that these people have been able to float along for too long not hurting financially, and it’s made them completely unserious.

I’ve come across a large number of admitted Trump voters, some within the family, most I know fairly well. Every. Single. One is filled with resentment of some kind. They may nominally care about the economy but they very strongly care, perhaps equally or more so, that they no longer have the place in the country that they think they deserve and that all these other people are getting special treatment. These feelings most certainly fall under the umbrella of bigotry and various isms, but I think it’s an extremely misdirected sense of unfairness that’s resonating, and those isms might be incidental. Shitheels like Trump, coporate oligarchs and the gop- Fox propaganda wing have been hammering for years that it’s gender and race giving the “cheaters” advantages and whatever. I wonder if that prevailing sense of unfairness and resentment at society’s “cheaters” could be channeled effectively toward the actual perpetrators that make everyone’s life more difficult and less fulfilling. Like keeping the sense of grievance and unfairness and going full throttle on fuck the rich/ corporations/ big pharma/ etc.

If you don’t like the term “misogyny” then how about machismo/ toxic masculinity/ male resentment/ patriarchies/ men feeling uprooted and adrift at their newly perceived place in the world? I mean, you cannot possibly not be aware that there is something really fucked up and persistent going on with bro culture and revanchist masculinity, and it absolutely transcends race. I’m gathering it seems that more than women, men vote thier gender over race.

On the economy, one of my biggest concerns is letting inauthentic chuds like Vance outflank us from the left on economics. It’s complete bullshit that he and others on the right who have adopted the language of economic populism will ever actually help anyone but the insanely wealthy. The only ray of hope I’ve been able to conjure is that the impending collapse opens a clear path for the next Sanders. I don’t know, maybe this trash election actually gets us closer to an economic system that isn’t complete trash. But I think dems need to be really smart about wresting the economic message from the Vance’s of the right.

Exactly, though they don’t even have to go that far because while NYC is extremely blue, there’s just a ton of people concentrated here, including a raw count of Trump supporters, especially if expanding to include Long Island. I have no doubt the ghouls in his advisory board see and encourage the parallel to the Nazi rally, but I’d bet anything that for Trump he just really, really wanted a packed rally because he’s losing his mind over Harris enthusiasm. I hope he has ten more rallies at MSG between now and Nov 5 if it means he continues to cede all game in the swing states.

I think this has 0% to do with election strategy and 100% to do with his personal vanity. I’d put a ton of money on the bet that he’s doing these rallies in areas he has no possibility of winning simply because they contain high numbers of his supporters in raw count (drowned out by much higher numbers of Harris supporters, but enough to fill an arena), and are the best way for him to get anything approaching the full rallies Harris has been holding. The trolling about his anemic attendance and d list celebrities pushed him over the edge and this is all one incredibly stupid tantrum to really show the dems that he has cool well attended rallies too! Edit: also he refused to even say the names of the r candidates running at the MSG rally just now because there “were too many names” so we can probably conclude this is absolutely not about down ballot races.

For what it’s worth that NYMag article isn’t calling him serious. It’s warning dems not to let his insincere rhetoric about economic populism outmaneuver us from the left. The potency of economic populism is what’s real- Vance and his adoption of it as his latest snake oil is bullshit.

Thanks! That was ….really quite something. Jones went a lot farther with that than I was expecting (that a successful assassination of Trump would be the best thing for the cause, not merely an attempt). Plus a good reminder that there’s even violent factions within the far right cesspool in terms of the Groyper quotes in there.

I was asking for a link to Alex jones waxing poetic about how great it would be for trumps campaign to undergo an assassination attempt. I’m interested in how wide spread that sentiment is in the red pill shithole of right wing agit prop.

100% agreed- just want to be clear I’m not down with coordinated conspiracy theories either. I just wonder how straightforward this motive is going to be given that he reads like someone straight from trumps core demographic.

I don’t disagree but if right wing dipshits have been plugging the idea that an assassination attempt would be a great thing for trumps campaign, I don’t think it’s a stretch that it would inspire an act like that in someone who might have found quarter in those places and make him believe he’s genuinely helping out his candidate. Like he’d be a hero or something. I mean, a young white gun enthusiast republican guy seems like exactly the type of person who’d not want Trump assassinated.

I have no doubt this is true but do you mind linking that for me? When it was announced he’s a somewhat awkward 20 year old republican I wondered if he thought he’d be helping out Trump’s cause, and was curious if there was talk like that in the cesspit of magadom forums or something. (If that’s the motive, I’d guess he came closer to the target than he might have meant to- that he never intended to actually kill him if this is what’s behind it)

Before freaking out too much it might be worth considering this might not even be a democrat or Biden supporter. Trump has pissed off all sorts of gun nuts who consider themselves conservatives, true republicans and libertarians for supposedly stealing their party. More recently, the hardcore forced-birthers are in a snit with him.

I’m in NYC with 3 kids. The two oldest (6.5 and 4) go to camp over the summer break. The older one gets bused out to a camp in the “woods” and the younger one goes to a day camp in the neighborhood that’s basically a preschool with swimming and water features. At least here there’s a lot of programs like that, and a good number have financial aid options. Is there anything like that around you? While the more preschool-like ones may offer aid or sliding tuition, there’s also day-long sports camps or academic summer programs in town as well.

Rag's collection of Tywin essays could be added to the "analysis" section