Rising fascism in the US

Published December 4, 2017

Disgraced Trump NSA Flynn Proposed Using National Guard To Seize Voting Machines: NYT

Robert Draper, contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, discusses his reporting on the role of disgraced former Trump NSA Mike Flynn in the early planning by Trump acolytes of how to negate Trump's 2020 election loss, with Flynn advocating for using the military to seize voting machines.

Published Feb 4, 2022

Don't be absurd.

Look at the treatment of Alexei Navalny.

That's Russian society under a dictatorship.

What have you got against bureaucrats?

They make things work.

It shows a dislike of civil society in general.

Give an example of one socialist cooperative health system.

We could all find incidents of bad behavior by Russia, China, the US, the UK… we could tit for tat cite a crime for each of them, and we’d die of natural causes before we finished.

But if we stack the worst horrors mankind can inflict—and judge who’s guilty of those against the most people—you know who wins that contest. Proxy wars, included.

I’m headed to a long work day—not avoiding conversation today.

In my country, bureaucrats and lawmakers make things not work. They make it hard for people to make an honest living.

Horseshit.

You sound like bloody Reagan going on about being from the government and being there to help, something nobody wants to hear.

I was working for the government at the time. I was a National Insurance Inspector, I went to a Chinese Restaurant to do an audit.

They had only just started, and the poor bloke in charge didn't have a clue.

I sat down with him and showed him how to sort out his payroll. He was really grateful, wanted to give me some wine which I couldn't accept, but I did go back to his restaurant and got very good service.

That's not unique, that's what most bureaucrats, try to sort things out get them done, it's a thankless job, and I doubt American bureaucrats are any different from the ones over here.

Your brainwashing bollocks was a bit desperate.

Does that ever work?

Nobody has ever accused me of being brainwashed before. I get accused of getting bolshie.

What I am is educated. I know what Socialism is, and I know what Fascism is, and if someone sticks a socialist sticker on a load of far right bullshit I'm not going to fall for it because I'm not a bloody idiot.

I'm still waiting to hear of a working socialist cooperative health service, because it sounds like all theory and no practice.

On the other hand working models of UHC exist in practically every developed country apart from America.

And why is that? Is it because of bureaucrats, or Democrats?

Is it ****. It's because of rich arseholes paying politicians for less, not more government.

Yes. But one has to marvel at her insights. There are so many glorious elements of the Russian system but perhaps the most glorious is the absence of bureaucrats.

Indeed: an apparatchik (Russian: аппара́тчик) ist totally unknown in Russia.

The 9/11 Conspiracy theory is a case in point.

JTT and other bloody idiots made pages and pages about how the towers collapsing had **** all to do with two jets flying into them.

All that did was take attention away from the spurious reasons for illegally invading Iraq.

That's the real conspiracy theory, why do conspiracy nutjob theories always drown out the real issues?

With vaccines, lots of stuff about availability undereported, all because of bullshit

You can continue intentionally ignoring what I said, just not with me.
Fewer pencil pushers creating more headaches for regular people.

I almost asked you if you were a gov employee. The bias and reactionary dudgeon was a little strong.

Fewer.

Yes. Totally.

Rich people like military spending.

It makes them richer.

Instead of looking at small govt, why not look at campaign funding and spending where only the rich can run for president?

I worked for the Social before I was a teacher, both are government employees.

Both essential.

My two primary careers have been, as well: community mental health advocate at increasing levels, and teacher.

Obv, I’m only talking about the wasteful ones I mentioned—which are war-based, redundant, and / or gathering personal info on citizens, etc.

Our biggest problem—you’ve heard it before—is gross mismanagement, a huge salary gap between the bottom (say a classroom teacher) and the top (District Superintendent.)

I really don’t think there’s any hope for the US at this point, but citizens controlling the means of production and working together to derive the profits from their labor seems like a perfect economy—supported by the reduced government.

We fight that battle all the time. Citizens here have no voice in our govt. The DNC sues third parties and their candidates to ensure they can’t get on ballots.

As much as you may know, I doubt you know just how authoritarian it is here. It’s getting worse quickly.

From my Twitter friend, Tiberius, today
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Tiberius

@ecomarxi
Having the worst possible Labour Party at the same time as the worst possible Conservative Party at the same time as the US has the worst possible Democratic Party at the same time as the worst possible Republican Party isn’t just a coincidence we can just shrug off.

This is the result of decades of intentional centralisation of power and wealth, courtesy of late-stage capitalism, and the resulting authoritarianism working to prevent any reasonable alternative to the managed duopoly.

Or, in short, this terrible, undemocratic and dystopian juncture, where the nations who helped write international law ignore it to murder thousands of children, is the result of what happens when the system works precisely as intended—so we the people have no political power, the tyrants do as they please, and every avenue to change is blocked and tightly controlled.

This is what happens when we meekly accept terrible ‘representatives’ on repeat: they continue to disenfranchise us while pacifying us with lies.

And we know they’re lying. We know they’re playing us. We know they’re the worst kinds of people imaginable—child-killers and grave-robbers in business suits with dead eyes and greedy, plastic smiles.

Yet this will only continue and worsen even as time goes by. The state of play will continue to decay because the fundamentals are still the same: the same centralisation of power, the same bad actors stifling change, the same charlatans like Biden and Starmer presenting the illusion of hope while acting completely against our interests.

Until we take a stand. Until we unite across significant divides. Until we refuse to let them manipulate us with their ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ rhetoric where the fear of one tyrant plays us straight into the hands of another.

The solution is the old solution—organisation, mobilisation, mutual aid, civil disobedience, citizen education and direct action. And while the police state has never been stronger, we have new tools at our disposal, too, in how we organise and build movements for change.

If, like me, you have an issue with prejudice, with inequality, with climate change, with imperialism, or with any of the dystopian policies being carried out across the Western world, these are all upheld by the same system that exploits and disenfranchises us all, destroys communities across the world, murders innocent people, and treats our planet as nothing more than a resource to exploit.

This is the only fight in town, and we’ve been subjected to it for years. We need to get better at fighting back.
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11:54 AM · Jan 31, 2024
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So many people feel we’ve entered a different phase.

My god. Lash has discovered the long lost land of the Trotskyites! We shall all be saved! Or dead, of course, but little difference if free.

You won’t be saved.