[…so…umm…couldn’t decide whether to go off on a whole thing…or fill the thing with the usual crop of crap other people said instead of inflicting my own thoughts on you in greater profusion…but…more than usually…it’s basically the one broken up & interspersed with the other…in a more obviously oil & water sort of a fashion than I generally get away with…&…well…I couldn’t sleep…so…sorrynotsorry…but…you have been warned?]

…there’s all kinds of people

See the Voting Groups That Swung to the Right in the 2024 Vote [NYT]

…so…I don’t mean to upset the undeserving faithful out there…but…some of the ones who…in defiance of recent events…think there are still some things that are sacred

Mixing classical quotes with cliche (“it is time to fight fire with fire”) and metaphors about forest fires and Smokey Bear, Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, advocates “a long, controlled burn” of targets including the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the New York Times, “every Ivy League college” and even the Boy Scouts of America.

Roberts’s book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy, but the book has proved controversial already. This summer, news outlets used review copies to report violent imagery in an introduction by the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential pick, and to highlight both Roberts’s own violent language and his work on Project 2025. Roberts’s original subtitle – Burning Down Washington to Save America – also attracted attention, as did incendiary language in promotional materials.

As Trump sought to distance himself from the book and Project 2025, including by lying about not knowing Roberts, publication was postponed until after election day. Now, with Trump victorious, Roberts’s heated rhetoric seems likely to alarm progressives all over again.

Beginning with a quote from Virgil’s Aeneid – “My spirit kindles to fire, and rises in wrath to avenge my dying land” – Roberts writes: “In 2020, our country went up in flames.

“Some of those conflagrations were intentional arson, such as the ‘mostly peaceful’ protests [for racial justice after the police murder of George Floyd] that caused more than a billion dollars in damage [a controversial claim] in some of America’s greatest cities: Others were more unintentional, such as the record-setting California wildfires that torched more than 4 million acres of our most beautiful forests.

“In fact, all those fires were connected. They spring from a conspiracy against nature – against ordered, civilized societies, against common sense and normal people – orchestrated by a network of political, corporate, and cultural elites who share a set of interests quite apart from those of ordinary Americans.

“… Be it Black Lives Matter (BLM) in the cities or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the countryside, the … playbook is the same: destroy the embodied institutions that define the American way of life and replace them with ideological commitments and bureaucratic imperatives.

“It is time to fight fire with fire.”

…those [bits] are the guardian, not me…for once

…some of…that sort…at least claim to…still think one of those things is sundays…&…well…some of them sorts of folks might not like some of my bits of this sunday offering…any more than I like the looks of this bit of proselytization

“There’s plenty of fuel. Like deadwood in a forest, many of America’s institutions have been completely hollowed out … Decadent and rootless, these institutions serve only as shelter for our corrupt elite. Meanwhile, they block out the light and suck up the nutrients necessary for new American institutions to grow. For America to flourish again, they don’t need to be reformed; they need to be burned. A nice start would include:

“Every Ivy League college, the FBI, the New York Times, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education, 80% of ‘Catholic’ higher education, BlackRock, the Loudoun County Public School System, the Boy Scouts of America, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, the Chinese Communist Party, and the National Endowment for Democracy.”
[…]
Turning from Virgil – and the composer Gustav Mahler – to Smokey Bear, Roberts says the US Forest Service mascot might not approve of his aims. But, he insists, “any good conservationist can tell you that fire is an intrinsic part of the cycle of life … without regular controlled burns, a conflagration eventually occurs that wrecks the forest rather than renews it.”

Saying his aim is “to inspire the New Conservative Movement to rekindle the fire of the American tradition, and to empower real Americans to take back our country”, Roberts says that despite advocating burning down the FBI, he represents “the Party of Creation” against “the Party of Destruction – those who seek to abolish the existing order in the name of emancipation, freedom, and progress”.
[…]
Roberts’s fiery imagery and rhetoric does not end there. Elsewhere, he compares progressive policies to Dutch elm disease, with affected bodies needing to be “promptly burned”; says “the only way to revive” institutions “haggard with age, decay, and bloat, is to burn away the rot”; and even meditates on the nature of fire itself.

“Man’s taming of fire is the cornerstone of human culture,” Roberts muses. “That’s the funny thing about fire. It is so fleeting, a flame flickering from moment to moment, yet in its evanescence, it is eternal. Of all the elements, fire is most associated with transformation, renewal, and change. You can’t have a blaze without some kind of sacrificial transformation of fuel into fire. Yet precisely for this reason, fire demands an attention to continuity. Unlike any of the other elements, fire dies … a fire must be continually tended.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/project-2025-kevin-roberts-book-burning-fbi-new-york-times

…&…I’m sorry about that…plus…I’m not looking to take a pop at any personal faith that might keep anyone standing who would have dropped out of the forced march we call the human race by now without it…but…religion?

After having repeatedly depicted the presidential election as a spiritual clash between good and evil, leading figures in the movement to remake America as an explicitly Christian nation celebrated President-elect Donald Trump’s victory as a fulfillment of God’s divine will.

Lance Wallnau, a celebrity evangelist who has spent decades calling on conservative Christians to occupy positions of power and influence over society, told followers on an election night livestream that Trump’s victory had been prophesied years ago — a key step in God’s plan to usher in a new era of Christian dominion around the world.

“There’s a different dialogue about spirituality happening in America,” said Wallnau, who had worked to mobilize Trump voters in swing states. “And with Donald Trump,” he continued, God has “given permission to take it right to the White House.”White evangelical support for Trump has not wavered since he pledged in early 2016 while running for the GOP presidential nomination that if he were elected, “Christianity will have power.” 

“If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else,” Trump continued. “You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

Trump renewed that vow in the 2024 campaign, telling Christians they would be granted “power at a level that you’ve never used before.”[…]his campaign said it would create a task force focused on “investigating all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.”
[…]
Trump embraced that narrative in his victory speech in Florida early Wednesday.“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
[…]
About 80% of white evangelicals backed Trump in Tuesday’s election, the NBC News Exit Poll shows. He also won an estimated 67% of Latino evangelicals, according to the poll, and 14% of Black evangelicals.

The chain of events that propelled Trump back to the White House represented a “dream scenario” for Christians leaders who have sought to portray him as God’s chosen vessel, said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the nonprofit Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Maryland.Taylor, who has extensively researched the role Christian Trump loyalists played in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, said he believed the view of Trump as ordained by God could give him license to take extreme actions in office.

“He has the capacity now to claim not only a democratic mandate, but a divine mandate,” Taylor said. “And there are legions of American Christians who are primed to embrace that narrative and to provide theological, moral and spiritual cover to whatever Trump decides to do.”
[…]
Sheets told his followers that Trump’s victory would help usher in what he called a “Third Great Awakening” — what he and other believers say will be a global revival of fervent Christian faith around the world.“The reformation will take some time, but we will get there,” Sheets said. “And Trump is a necessary part of this reformation.”
[…]
During his first term in office, Trump and his staff welcomed Christian leaders, including Sheets, to the White House. He further earned their loyalty when the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court helped overturn the abortion rights enshrined in Roe v. Wade. 
[…]
“I think you’re going to be seeing much more explicit advocacy of Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy from the White House,” Taylor said, noting Trump’s close connection to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana, who has embraced the claim that America was founded as an explicitly Christian nation.

Evangelical leaders celebrate Trump’s victory as a prophecy fulfilled [NBC]

…it’s by a long way the best example I can think of for something I’m trying to get my head around…so…I beg a little forbearance…& if necessary…some forgiveness for an imminent transgression or two…but…they started it…I hadn’t brought up burning things…or even stakes…yet

The world is still underestimating the risk of catastrophic climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse, the UN secretary general has warned in the run-up to Cop29, acknowledging that the rise in global heating is on course to soar past 1.5C (2.7F) over pre-industrial levels in the coming years.

Humanity is approaching potentially irreversible tipping points such as the collapse of the Amazon rainforest and the Greenland ice sheet as global temperatures rise, António Guterres has said, warning that governments are not making the deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions needed to limit warming to safe levels.

With wildfires, drought and extreme weather already ravaging parts of the planet, new research raises concerns about the stability of natural carbon sinks that underpin decarbonisation efforts. Forests, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon in 2023 during the hottest year on record. While the collapse of land carbon sinks may be temporary, scientists have warned that cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems are beginning to show.

Guterres urged greater coordination on the interlinked environmental crises of the 21st century, warning that it was impossible to take action on global heating without action on biodiversity loss to protects forests and other natural carbon stores and sinks.

“The risk of these tipping points accelerating climate change is something that must be taken very seriously. Just to give two examples, some people say that we might come to a situation where the Amazon forest will become a savanna irreversibly, or that the Greenland [ice sheet] and west Antarctica will melt.

“Even if it happens over a huge period, it will melt irreversibly. So we are coming close to dramatic gamechangers in relation to the impacts of climate change in the life of the planet,” Guterres said in an interview on the sidelines of the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which concluded on 1 November.

“The world is still underestimating climate risks. I have no doubt that we are risking reach[ing] a number of tipping points that will dramatically accelerate the impacts of climate change. It is absolutely essential to act now. It’s absolutely essential to reduce emissions drastically now,” he said.
[…]
“Until 2030, we should be reducing by 9% every year. Unfortunately, last year, there was still a growth of 1.3% which means that either we fully assume the sense of urgency at the level of governments, corporations and the other key generators of climate change, or we risk not only to go above the 1.5 degrees, but eventually to go above two degrees. Let’s not forget that we are on course for 3.1C at the present moment,” he said.

This year, a Guardian survey of hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists found that most of them expect global heating to exceed 1.5C, reaching at least 2.5C above pre-industrial levels this century and prompting warnings of large-scale societal destruction.
[…]
“So the question is not whether the 1.5 degrees is possible or not. The question is whether there will be – or not – political will for that. Let’s be honest, until now, that political will has not been there. So either the political will emerges in order to make it possible, or it will be lost,” he said.
[…]
Guterres said in June that fossil fuel companies should be banned from advertising, calling them the “godfathers of climate chaos”. When asked if he thought they should be excluded from climate Cop summits, he said there should be greater focus instead on governments that did not stand up to pressure from the industry.

“What worries me is not that there are people lobbying for fossil fuels; what worries me is that governments might not resist that lobby. Let me be very clear, there is no way to preserve 1.5 degrees or avoid a catastrophic development in relation to climate change if we don’t accept the principle that there must be a phase-out of fossil fuels,” he said.

“Until now, there has been some ambiguity sometimes in the texts and the problem with ambiguity is that those who misbehave will have a justification to do so.”

Questioned on whether Saudi Arabia, the UAE and China should contribute to climate finance, Guterres said the countries were in different positions.

“You cannot compare Saudi Arabia with China. The GDP per capita in Saudi Arabia is much higher, and Saudi Arabia basically has built its wealth on oil and gas,” he said.

“I don’t think we need to go on with the exploitation of new sources, because I’m totally convinced that we will not be able to use the reserve that exists in the world until the end of history,” he said.

‘Essential to act now’ to prevent chaotic climate breakdown, warns UN chief [Guardian]

…maybe there’s other reasons

The physical shocks caused by climate breakdown will hit global economic growth by a third, according to a risk assessment by a network of central banks.
[…]
The Network for Greening the Financial System, a membership body of global banks and financial organisations, said in a report this week that the huge increase in the risk from physical shocks to the economy marked a considerable change in the overall severity of the damage caused.

The report was published as the business losses alone from the devastating floods in Valencia, which killed more than 200 people, were calculated at well over €10bn (£8.3bn).

“This new study is based on the most recent climate and economic datasets,” the report said. “They offer highly granular and robust data with excellent geographic and temporal coverage. With the consequences of climate change gradually becoming more apparent, adding the most recent data makes our estimates much more robust.”

Despite the increase in risk to global economies, some experts say the analysis is a huge understatement of the impact climate breakdown will wreak on economic growth.

Sandy Trust, an actuary who works on sustainability and the climate crisis, said the small print in the report by the network of central banks revealed they had failed to take in to account the impact of climate tipping points, sea temperature rises, migration and conflict as a result of global heating, human health impacts or biodiversity loss. Climate tipping points, for example the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the deforestation of the Amazon, are critical thresholds that, if crossed, will lead to huge, accelerating and sometimes irreversible changes in the climate system.

Trust said: “This is a massive one-third hit from physical damage on GDP. It has increased more than five times, from about 6% to 33%.

“But while this is a much more severe damage risk, it is by no means comprehensive. The analogy I would use is a model of the Titanic where you can see the iceberg, but the modelling fails to recognise that there are not enough lifeboats on board, or that the cold water is a threat to human life. So this report is still systemically underestimating the risk.”
[…]
Yet the group warned that the future economic outlook may be significantly worse. “It cannot be excluded that the economic effects of climate change might turn out to be even more severe than visualised under the NGFS scenarios, for instance, if certain tipping points are reached,” the report said.

“Thus, users should also take into account the tail risks of climate change, along with other risks such as nature-related ones, which are not necessarily captured by these scenarios.”

Trust wrote a report last year with the University of Exeter, which said widely available climate crisis scenarios systematically underestimated the risks, and he said underestimating the impact of global heating was “extremely dangerous”.

New modelling finds risk to global economies much worse than previously thought, but group of central banks says even this may be an underestimate [Guardian]

…but it’s always seemed to me that you only really need a couple to explain why just about every culture ever to have one part of humanity use it to try to understand the rest of itself has been on record as having some sort of religion…& that they all (just about) have several things in common…there’s an origin myth…like superhero movies these are basically de rigueur…&…very nearly always…there’s a deity…& there’s more often than not an afterlife…mostly one that can go more than one way depending on how your life would score by the criteria the deity considers to be the ones that count…&…while we’re figuring out what counts…before all else that answer seems to come down to how many believers in your system believe you represent a world in alignment with the beliefs they hold dearer than life itself…&…well…whether it’s clerical or a pantheon model that spills over…there’s almost universally a hierarchy in which some mortals are higher than others

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, recently imprisoned for contempt of Congress and soon to face fraud charges in New York, used his War Room podcast to display a copy of the Mandate for Leadership, a Project 2025 publication.
[…]
Authors of chapters in the Mandate for Leadership seen as contenders for jobs in the new administration include Chris Miller, who was acting defense secretary during the January 6 Capitol attack; Ken Cuccinelli, formerly acting deputy secretary of homeland security; Russell Vought, Trump’s chair of the Office of Management and Budget; Peter Navarro, a trade adviser who, like Bannon, went to prison for contempt of Congress related to investigations of Trump’s election subversion; and Roger Severino, formerly a senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services.
[…]
Furthermore, sources say the true engine of planning for Trump’s second term is not the Heritage Foundation, but the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller, a Trump adviser, speechwriter and anti-immigrant hawk widely expected to assume a senior post in the new administration.

AFPI’s work on the Trump transition is being run by its president, Brooke Rollins, acting director of the Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration, and Linda McMahon, AFPI board chair and formerly both chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment and chief of the Small Business Administration under Trump.

McMahon is an official Trump transition co-chair, with Howard Lutnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Other AFPI members who served under Trump include Larry Kudlow, a TV host turned economic adviser, and Chad Wolf, acting secretary for Homeland Security between 2019 and 2021.
[…]
In a statement greeting Trump’s election victory, Roberts, of the Heritage Foundation, said: “We look forward to this historic term, during which President Trump has an opportunity to make America great, healthy, safe, and prosperous once again.

“The entire conservative movement stands united behind him as he prepares to secure our wide-open border, restore the rule of law, put parents back in charge of their children’s education, restore America to its proper place as a leader in manufacturing, put families and children first, and dismantle the deep state.”

The “deep state” conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats, intelligence operatives and progressives exists to thwart Trump. Bannon is among its chief propagators. Nonetheless, he has said it is “for nut cases”.

Trump allies say Project 2025 is on as Heritage affiliates vie for cabinet posts [Guardian]

…&…I’m not going to start block-quoting the bible from the parts around the trip through the desert…but…even if a bunch of them are certifiably batshit 

The outcome of the election, it almost goes without saying, puts America on a right-wing populist path, inching ever closer toward a form of national autocratic rule rarely, if ever, seen in the nation’s history.

Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, summed up the situation in an email:

Trump won a clear victory, in a free and fair election, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. A majority of American voters seems to have embraced his dark message of a nation in decline, with its false narrative of a failing economy, rising crime, predatory minorities as well as an existential threat from left-wing radicals.

Trump’s campaign was openly racist, xenophobic and authoritarian and his supporters appear to be willing to jettison democracy in support of an autocratic demagogue who promises to “fix everything” while pandering to their angers, resentments and prejudices.
[…]
Once in power with a supine Republican-controlled congress and judiciary, Trump will govern despotically as a populist based on his uninformed and increasingly delusional understanding of the nation and its challenges, wreaking havoc on the American political economy and the global political order.

The 2024 election did answer one key question: Does the Trump coalition provide the basis for a fully competitive political party?
[…]

The MAGA/Republican coalition is clearly a viable competitor. Indeed, the coalition just won the White House — and the Senate. The coalition has proved its ability to retain strong support with the working class, rural, non-college-educated base, still attract most of the rest of the older Republican electorate, and has demonstrated the capacity to grow into new areas such as Latino and Black men

Early predictions of inevitable demographic shifts toward the Democrats missed how identity is complex, and how it can change. In our era of intense polarization, coalitions don’t have to be overwhelming. They just need to be big enough to push a party over in the swing states.

Trump, [Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton] argued, will have wide latitude to pursue his agenda:

The first time a person is elected, for example, Reagan in 1980, we vote based on promise, aspiration and potential. The re-election campaign, which this is more comparable to, for Trump, is about legitimation. Voters know what they are getting and say that is who they want in office.

Trump, Zelizer pointed out, “has been extraordinarily transparent about his hostility toward core democratic principles — the peaceful transition of power, confidence in the election system, limitations on presidential power and more.”

Many of those I contacted stressed the breadth and depth of Trump’s victory, perhaps best demonstrated in this Times graphic, which shows that Trump improved on his 2020 vote margins in 2,367 counties so far compared with Harris improving on Biden’s 2020 margins in 240 counties.
[…]
The primary threat Trump poses, [Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies] argues,

is to the rule of law. He’s been very clear in the last few months and weeks that he’s really out for revenge. He wants to take revenge on all the people that he believes have been prosecuting him and or persecuting him. And I think that this is where Schedule F (Trump’s proposal to politicize the top ranks of the civil service) really matters. I think he’s going to put people in key positions in the Justice Department that will enable them to open up investigations.

Fukuyama expects Hungary’s Viktor Orban to provide Trump a governing model with “this kind of steady, slow erosion of one check and balance against executive power after another.”
[…]
The problem now facing Democrats, [Yphtach Lelkes, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania] noted, is that they “will have to grapple with the fact that they are seen as the cultural elite and this is off-putting to a majority of the country, who do not see their values represented by highly educated city dwellers.”

…like the “accommodations” made to the whole spend-one-week-of-the-month-making-anything-you-touch-unclean “women’s issues” so as to not require the entire caravan to spend more time ritually cleansing itself than travelling…but also without ruling out the option to stone some folks…so presumably it was a stony sort of desert…because…well…who’s read leviticus?

Driving the transformation of politics here and abroad, in [Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke]’s view, are “changing ‘labor markets’ and changing ‘marriage/family markets.’ ”

…it’s the one right after the blockbuster 2nd book with the parting of the red sea & the escape from slavery…& for a divine text…it has its eye on some fairly mundane minutiae

These changes, according to Kitschelt,

have produced new “winners” and “losers.” Changing labor markets have eroded the earnings potential of less educated people, and particularly those in occupations that were in demand in manufacturing. Changing marriage markets have reduced the bargaining power of men to dominate gender relations and the choice of offspring.

Young men of lesser education are hit twice, both in marriage and in labor markets. It is not surprising that they are most likely to voice their grievances in expressions of political dissatisfaction with the status quo. Add onto this that almost without exception around the Western Hemisphere women now constitute the majority of college students and graduates and the full picture of change comes into view.
[…]
The moderate and progressive left in the United States thought it could count on disadvantaged minorities as fixed components of a left-wing “rainbow coalition.” But it now turns out in the United States — and elsewhere — that these ethnic groups are internally divided by the same kinds of knowledge-society-induced divisions based on education, occupation and gender that run through the ethnic majority population. And right-wing populist authoritarians are increasingly skilled to sense these divisions and make their appeals resonate among the aggrieved elements of these minorities, especially younger people without college education, particularly young men.
[…]
The rise of Trumpism in the United States — and right-wing populist authoritarianism around the world — throws down the gauntlet to the remaining liberal and progressive forces to come up with new ideas for institutional innovation and policy reform that include those who have hitherto been losers of multiple decades of social change. The 2024 U.S. election is a signal that the political projects of the existing left have failed.

Kitschelt’s conclusion is both dark and bleak, suggesting that if Trump’s policies fail to produce a boom economy, his inclination toward authoritarianism will intensify as he tries to hold power in the face of growing public opposition:
[…]

Trump’s current ideas to soothe the ills of the knowledge society through tariffs and eviction of immigrants. But there is a strong probability that these policies will disappoint the president’s core constituencies.

Few jobs will be created through re-industrialization and the absence of immigrants will hurt — instead of improve — the labor market payoffs of many natives. All the while the real incomes of the less well-off will be reduced by a surge of tariff-induced inflation that bond and gold markets are now already anticipating.

When backed into a corner by policy failure, the greatest danger, then, becomes Donald Trump’s and his strategists’ inclination to suffocate opposition.
[…]
The hour of political authoritarianism arrives, when the new wagers to create economic affluence among the less well-off and to resurrect the old kinship relations of industrial society turn sour and generate disenchantment among Trump’s own following.

Trump then may well want to make sure that his disenchanted supporters — as well as those who always opposed Trumpism — will not get another chance to express their opinions.

Let’s Not Lose Sight of Who Trump Is [NYT]

…so…it doesn’t get quoted in sermons so much

In this year of elections, when a full quarter of humanity was eligible to vote, pessimism about the fate of democracy has spread among politicians, civil society, media commentators and political scientists. The victory of Donald Trump on Wednesday, with his demagogy and verbal assaults on what he referred to as “enemies from within,” makes the assessment that democracy is in retreat seem all the more plausible.

Even before the U.S. election, liberal thinkers in America and other Western nations warned of a relapse into authoritarianism around the world — or even the coming of a new wave of fascism. Political scientists have spoken darkly of the erosion of civil liberties and democratic institutions known as “democratic backsliding,” the decrease in the number of democratic governments globally and the rise of autocrats.
[…]
Before this year of record voting, the number of changes of government brought about by elections had been stable over the past two decades, according to recent research. Nor was there any significant evidence of a decline in electoral competition, the researchers found. If democracy was already backsliding, as many worried when the election year kicked off, then we should have already been able to observe incumbents staying in power and electoral competition declining. But we did not.
[…]
It’s also worth mentioning that in many nations, the spectrum of parties is widening and in some places, more people are voting. In Germany, which has long been characterized by a relatively narrow range of parties, their number has multiplied and the relatively low participation in elections, which political scientists long considered to be problematic, has also risen. This was particularly impressive in state elections in eastern Germany. While voter turnout there was around 55 percent 20 years ago, it shot up to almost 75 percent in the election in September. You can certainly accuse the so-called right-wing populists who benefited from this turnout of many things, but not of discouraging people from going to the polls.

What, then, is behind the prevailing pessimism and the impression that democracy could be coming to an end?

[Incumbents everywhere are doing poorly. America just proved it’s not exceptional. – Vox]

…here’s a fairly benign example

Since both the Western liberal commentariat and a significant number of political scientists are supporters of those principles and projects, it’s plausible that they experience these developments as a period of decline — and even crisis. If liberalism fails, they assume, democracy will too. This can be illustrated by the thinking of Francis Fukuyama, who argued at the beginning of the 1990s that the “end of history” could come about because liberalism’s triumph might bring peace, prosperity, and democracy to all. More recently, he has been of the opinion that liberal democracy is in crisis and in dire need of defense.

…it opens with relaying “divine” instructions about sacrifices

The weakening of this long-dominant ideology represents an opportunity for political contenders often described as populists, though they hardly resemble the original movement bearing that name. But because liberals tend to conflate liberalism with democracy, they consider it indisputable that the parties and politicians from this new camp are undemocratic. Mr. Trump’s disdain for the principle that giving up office after losing an election is part of democracy seems to be a case in point.

But not all of the so-called populists who have gained support over the past year have run on an openly anti-democratic program. In fact, many of them demand more direct democracy. And sometimes things are more complicated than they seem at first glance: For instance, the German Alternative for Germany party is prone to radical right-wing activism but at the same time also displays a surprisingly high level of internal democratic decision making.

There are other reasons right-wing populist parties are making inroads, of course. Their retrograde political program suggests that the solutions to the problems of the present — inflation, housing shortages, unemployment, crime — lie in the past, which must be brought back to life. When a society’s outlook is bleak, formerly dominant political recipes seem exhausted, and the state of things no longer seem sustainable to voters. Politicians who peddle visions of an idealized functional past often gain support.

Yet there is no question that pessimism among voters about the effectiveness of democracy, despite the flourishing of elections, is growing. In one 2023 poll, most respondents said that it is important to live in a democracy. But dissatisfaction with the actual workings of democratic systems is rising. Although participation in elections has increased, trust in parties, politicians and public administration hasn’t.

In some countries, including France and the Netherlands, both of which saw populist parties make major gains this year, just about half of respondents said they believe that their country is democratic. In another survey in Germany, only a quarter of respondents believed that the state is capable of fulfilling its tasks and solving its problems.

Americans, too, are no longer sure democracy serves them: In a late October New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters, nearly half said that American democracy does not do a good job of representing the people.

All of these figures reflect the fact that democracies are performing poorly both in solving public problems and in responding to ordinary citizens’ concerns and interests. It is important that governments can be voted out of office, and so far, most citizens agree with that proposition. But they also expect more than that, and these expectations are increasingly being disappointed. This is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that political influence is unevenly distributed: decision making in democracies is dominated by the interests of economic elites and the upper classes. That is why fewer citizens believe that the current crop of democratic parties and politicians can or wants to solve the central problems of our time.

The democratic creed consists of the belief that ordinary citizens can influence political life. It holds that even though the big players call the shots, regular people also have their share of influence — or at least will in the future. The current disenchantment with democracy in many Western countries stems from this once popular belief becoming detached from reality for a growing proportion of citizens. Although they adhere to the ideal of democracy, they cannot imagine how the reality of the system they live in could come any closer to it.

If this gap between norm and reality widens in the future, democratic systems will appear like institutional hypocrites. What is often said about communism could then also one day apply to democracy: It may be a good idea, but unfortunately it doesn’t work in practice.

Goodbye to Democracy? Not Quite Yet.

…specifically the sort of sacrifices that start out as animals & involve something getting slaughtered & burnt

Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House, one big question is how much sway — if any — Mr. Musk’s views on climate change and clean energy might have in the new administration.
[…]
Now Mr. Musk, who spent election night at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and posed for a group photograph with the president-elect’s family, is expected to have a direct line to the White House in the coming months. Mr. Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, already make billions from government contracts and federal policies, and he is expected to seek additional advantages for his businesses.
[…]
Mr. Trump’s views on global warming and energy policy are no mystery. He has doubted whether the Earth is getting hotter. (Scientists are unequivocal that it is.) He has falsely described climate change as “where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years.” (Sea levels have already risen an average of roughly eight inches over the past century and are expected to rise several feet or more by 2100 as glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt.)
[…]
Tesla’s success in producing electric cars with mass appeal helped supercharge a global industry. Mr. Musk’s company also sells rooftop solar panels as well as batteries that can provide backup power to homes or help balance wind and solar power on the grid. This year, battery storage accounts for roughly 10 percent of Tesla’s revenue.

“I think we should just generally lean in the direction of sustainability,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Trump during a two-hour, live-streamed chat the two men held on X in August. “And I actually think solar is going to be a majority of Earth’s energy generation in the future.”
[…]
Yet Mr. Musk also suggested that there was no hurry to stop global warming. “We still have quite a bit of time, we don’t need to rush,” he said in August. He later added, “If, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re mostly sustainable, I think that’ll probably be OK.”
[…]
In recent years, Mr. Musk has urged caution about drastic societal changes to address climate change. “I’m super pro climate, but we definitely don’t need to put farmers out of work to solve climate change,” he wrote on X last year, commenting on farmers in Belgium who were protesting limits on nitrogen pollution.

He also said in his August chat with Mr. Trump, “If we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So it’s, you know, I don’t think it’s right to vilify the oil and gas industry.”

…funny thing

In 2017, when Mr. Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Mr. Musk stepped down from two presidential advisory councils in protest. “Climate change is real,” he wrote. “Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”

…once you have your male without blemish & you’ve flayed him & divided him up into pieces…& washed all the insides…the head & the fat & the guts & such go on the fire…but it’s only the birds where it says you throw all of the thing on there…& maybe you hung about until the thing was ash…but also maybe one side of the grate had a bunch of burning offal nobody wanted to be near for long…& the other would look a lot like a barbecue pit?

Some observers point out that Mr. Musk isn’t the only influential donor on the issue of energy in the president-elect’s orbit. During the campaign, Mr. Trump raised more than $75 million from oil and gas interests, including the billionaire Harold Hamm of Continental Resources.

Mr. Hamm has had Mr. Trump’s ear since 2016 and pushed him then to appoint Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency, where Mr. Pruitt denied the science of global warming and unraveled various climate regulations. (Mr. Hamm did not respond to a request for comment.)

…maybe that seems blasphemous…but…I draw your attention to chapter 2

“One can only hope that Donald Trump will put conspiracy theories to the side and take the decisive action to address the climate crisis that the American people deserve,” said Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. “But I won’t hold my breath.”

Musk Believes in Global Warming. Trump Doesn’t. Will That Change?

…I mean…at a whole beast a throw…say that fatted calf you were saving for a prodigal son returning to your fold…that’s going put a swift dent in a modest herd &/or flock…or just a hole in your pocket…so…maybe you try for just a bit of an animal most of the time…that seems reasonable…well…you better make sure you follow the instructions so it counts, then…which are…by a stunning coincidence…instructions that read a lot like ways to be reasonably sure if you eat some of it you probably wouldn’t be poisoned?

I met with a government official [in Hong Kong in December 2019] preparing to resign and told him I was writing a book about the rise of authoritarian nationalism. “The nationalism in the U.S. and Europe is somewhat different,” he told me. “Yours started with the financial crisis in 2008. That’s when liberalism started to lose its appeal, when people saw this wasn’t working. The narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed. This spilled over into China, too. This is when China started to think — should we really follow a Western model?” We were sitting in a hotel lounge, the invisible forces he described surrounding us: capitalism, but not democracy; cultural elites cloistered away from the working class. “The nationalist movements in East and West were both a response to the collapse of the Western model,” he added.

Everything I’d experienced told me he was right. Eight years serving in the Obama White House after the financial crisis felt like swimming upstream, against the currents of global politics. A radicalized Republican Party rejected liberal democracy at home, mirroring far-right leaders like Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary who spoke about installing “illiberal democracy” (a polite term for “blood and soil” nationalism) across Europe. In Russia, Vladimir Putin set out to undermine — if not dismantle — the liberal order helmed by the United States. In China, Xi Jinping began to shift Beijing’s strategy from rising within that order to building a separate one, drained of democratic values. Barack Obama’s political skills and cultural appeal allowed him to navigate those currents, but they didn’t always transfer to other Democrats.

Donald Trump’s first victory challenged my liberal assumptions about the inevitability of a certain kind of progress: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” For eight years outside of government, I have talked to opposition figures around the world and heard versions of the same story everywhere. After the Cold War, globalization chipped away at people’s sense of security and identity.

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed-out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

The persistent anti-incumbent mood was so strong that it even (narrowly) swept Mr. Trump out of office in 2020, aided by his bungling of a pandemic. But even after the shock of Jan. 6, heavy unease hung over American politics: There was no return to pre-Trump normalcy.

As president, Joe Biden embraced protectionism, organized labor and industrial policy, and his administration made investments in hollowed out communities through executive orders and legislation. Democrats relentlessly communicated the threat Mr. Trump posed to democracy, with the removal of abortion rights as proof. When they fought a mediocre collection of Republican candidates to a draw in the 2022 midterm elections, many in the party — including Mr. Biden — drew the lesson that this approach was working.

Yet now Mr. Trump has decisively won back the presidency. I would never claim to have all the answers about what went wrong, but I do worry that Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions — the “establishment” — that most Americans distrust. As a party interested in competent technocracy, we lost touch with the anger people feel at government. As a party that prizes data, we seized on indicators of growth and job creation as proof that the economy was booming, even though people felt crushed by rising costs. As a party motivated by social justice, we let revulsion at white Christian nationalism bait us into identity politics on their terms — whether it was debates about transgender athletes, the busing of migrants to cities, or shaming racist MAGA personalities who can’t be shamed. As a party committed to American leadership of a “rules-based international order,” we defended a national security enterprise that has failed repeatedly in the 21st century, and made ourselves hypocrites through unconditional military support for Israel’s bombardment of civilians in Gaza.

…yes, yes…I might be reading that into it

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/07/joe-rogan-elon-musk-heterodoxy-trump-win-reaction

…it doesn’t say right in the text that the priests would eat your sacrifice

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10

…except…it does, actually

As a former speechwriter, I am sympathetic to the challenge of weaving these threads together. But for all his many strengths, over the last four years, Mr. Biden — in part because of his age, in part because of social media — could not fill that intangible presidential role of narrating what was happening in our nation and world. Democratic leaders in Congress tended to be old hands who’d spent decades in Washington, making them imperfect messengers for an electorate demanding change. It is no coincidence that two outsiders as different as Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump have dominated politics for 20 years.

…your “meat offering” also needed flour & to have oil poured over it (which is a handy preservative up to a point) as well as some frankincense…& a handful of the fine flour gets burned…which if you chuck it at an open flame is fairly impressive for a brief burning moment…& they take “of” the oil…but “all of” the frankincense…& burn that to make the whole thing holy & an offering the sweet savour of which will delight the lord…but…another thing that is thusly made “a thing most holy of the offerings to the lord by fire”…is that the rest of the meat offering…which sounds a lot like…the meat…goes to the priesthood specifically to eat

Kamala Harris brought new energy and remarkable discipline to the campaign’s final months, revitalizing the collaborative joy essential to Democratic politics. But her ties to an unpopular incumbent — and a global post-pandemic backlash against any incumbent — held her back. Democrats understandably have a hard time fathoming why Americans would put our democracy at risk, but we miss the reality that our democracy is part of what angers them. Many voters have come to associate democracy with globalization, corruption, financial capitalism, migration, forever wars and elites (like me) who talk about it as an end in itself rather than a means to redressing inequality, reining in capitalist systems that are rigged, responding to global conflict and fostering a sense of shared national identity.

Yes, this is unfair: Republican policies from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush did far more than Democrats to create this mess. But Mr. Trump’s crusade against the past elites of his own party — from the Bush family to Mitch McConnell — credentialed him with a public hungry for accountability, while the Harris campaign’s embrace of Dick Cheney conveyed the opposite message.

…then we move on to instructions if your offering is prepared in an oven…or a frying pan…or even non-meat based offerings…well, those don’t really get burned…just a “memorial” of them…so best be sure you don’t got no leavened nonsense in there & just to be absolutely clear the requirement that the meat be salted is going to repeat itself in a few different phrasings

Donald Trump has won the presidency, but I don’t believe he will deliver on his promises. Like other self-interested autocrats, his remedies are designed to exploit problems instead of solving them, and he’s surrounded by oligarchs who want to loot the system instead of reforming it. Mass deportation and tariffs are recipes for inflation. Tax cuts and deregulation will exacerbate inequality. America First impulses will fuel global conflict, technological disruption and climate conflagration. Mr. Trump is the new establishment in this country and globally, and we should emphasize that instead of painting him as an outlier or interloper.

…where the fuck am I going with this?

Out of the wreckage of this election, Democrats must reject the impulse to simply be a resistance that condemns whatever outrageous thing Mr. Trump says. While confronting Mr. Trump when we must, we must also focus on ourselves — what we stand for, and how we tell our story. That means acknowledging — as my Hong Kong interlocutor said — that “the narrative of liberalism and democracy collapsed.” Instead of defending a system that has been rejected, we need to articulate an alternative vision for what kind of democracy comes next.

…well…it’s like this…if you have a big enough bunch of people…left to their own devices at least some of them will almost certainly try to murder some of the others…arguably it’s just a matter of time & how many join in & left unchecked will probably wind up with a lone individual who won’t survive all that long…so…arguably…big groups of people commit suicide if left to their own devices

We should merge our commitment to the moral, social and demographic necessity of an inclusive America with a populist critique of the system that Mr. Trump now runs; a focus more on reform than just redistribution. We must reform the corruption endemic to American capitalism, corporate malfeasance, profiteering in politics, unregulated technologies transforming our lives, an immigration system broken by Washington, the cabal of autocrats pushing the world to the brink of war and climate catastrophe.

…you can head a bunch of that off at the pass, though…with this one weird trick that leverages the twin poles of belief & avoidance of the kind of thinking that isn’t easy to short circuit &/or fuse the things people think they think & break them clean off from a connection with the things you can get them to do if you say doing them proves they really believe 

We are not living in Hong Kong, where a democratic movement could be extinguished. A midterm election looms. Mr. Trump is term-limited. The next four years will be trying and dangerous — especially for the more vulnerable among us. But if we understand the global trends that got us here, we can swing the political pendulum back in our direction and seize that moment with a new vision of liberalism and democracy.

Democrats Walked Into a Trap Republicans Set for Them [NYT]

…the real problem are the ones who find it easiest to ignore their conscience…or whatever you choose to call that internal awareness of what is or isn’t fair or moral or just if you’re really being honest…the one that also tells you when you’re getting the best of a deal to the point that you probably need to call it something else…because anyone with a conscience that worked on a standalone basis would give more or take less…so…if you outsource that & expand the timeframe so that whatever short-term gain they get in this life from doing shit they shouldn’t get away with is less than the potentially infinite penalty they pay for anything up to & including the rest of eternity…& a deity can do that because it knows everything & is all powerful…so there’s nowhere…even in your own mind…that it can’t see you sinning…& you might be able to tell the little voice in your head that it can fuck off because you’re going to get yours & fuck everyone else…but the deity sees that…& it’s what they think that determines who gets the good eternity…some of those people…get scared straight

Donald Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants has no “price tag”, the president-elect has said, setting the scene for a confrontation between his incoming administration and Democratic officials across the US.

As Democratic state governors and mayors signalled their determination to resist the most extreme elements of his agenda, Trump promised that his campaign pledge to expel an estimated 11 million people – though Trump himself has given a figure as high as 21 million – would be implemented come what may.

“It’s not a question of a price tag,” Trump told NBC.

“Really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

…we find it naïve when that argument works on kids about christmas presents & santa claus…but…it works on a surprisingly large amount of people in any number of permutations & variations

The American Immigration Council has estimated that mass deportation on the scale Trump envisions could cost $315bn, including the broader economic costs through the impact on the US labour market.

…& almost nobody reads the parts about how if you do your sacrificing wrong the priests might all shit their guts out…& if they do…mostly that’s not the way they interpret it

Trump’s comments, given in a phone interview with the network’s Kristen Welker, reinforced an uncompromising message declared to his supporters on election night as victory became certain. “I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept,” he said.

…but…let’s say…for the sake of argument…you don’t believe in any kind of deity

NBC News reported that Trump could withhold federal grants from police and sheriffs’ departments that refused to participate in programmes to round up immigrants.

…& you think the primary utility of what other people call a conscience is to see how it makes other people suckers…&…you’d rather get to partake of the sacrifice than have to do any sacrificing of your own…for starters

The outgoing Biden administration announced it was preparing to address a contrary concern: a mass upsurge of illegal border crossings into the US through its southern border before Trump takes office on 20 January, as smugglers seek to push people through before an expected crackdown is launched.

Concern over Trump’s intentions has also reached the armed forces, with the Pentagon bracing itself for upheavals amid consternation about his repeated campaign threats to use the military to crush internal dissent.

After Tuesday’s election victory, Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, addressed the matter directly in a written memo, the Washington Post reported. He promised that the Pentagon would conduct a “calm, orderly, and professional transition to the incoming Trump administration”.

“As it always has, the US military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” Austin wrote. He added that the military must “continue to stand apart from the political arena”.

General John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff in his first term, told journalists during the campaign that Trump had repeatedly mused that he hankered after having military commanders that were personally loyal to him in the manner German generals showed Adolf Hitler.

Rachel VanLandingham, a former US air force attorney, said dangers of the military being used to suppress internal opposition were high.

“They will follow President Trump’s orders, particularly because the president can lawfully order domestic use of the military in a wide variety of situations,” she told the Post.

“There is huge risk in disobeying a president’s order, and seemingly little risk in obeying it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/trump-mass-deportation-plan

…well…some of those people…they find priesthoods to be attractive prospects for career advancement

Gabriel Gatehouse only got back from Florida a few minutes ago. His wheeled suitcase is still in the hallway of his London home. He was out there covering the US election for Channel 4 News and has had very little sleep, he says, but you’d never guess it from his twinkle-eyed sprightliness. His original plan was to try to get into Donald Trump’s election party at Mar-a-Lago, he tells me as he makes us each an espresso, but his contact told him to forget it; it was full, “and you don’t blag your way in when the guy’s survived two assassination attempts”.

…so…what are we being asked to believe?

For months, Gatehouse had also had that feeling – that Trump was going to win. But then prophesying turbulent times ahead has almost become Gatehouse’s brand: his BBC podcast series, and the new book adapted from it, are called The Coming Storm. For the past four years, Gatehouse has been going down a whole warren of rabbit holes, investigating, surveying and seeking to explain the tangled web of conspiracy theories that got the US to where it is now. His journey goes far and wide, from QAnon and the 6 January Capitol riot, to online disinformation networks, artificial intelligence and the libertarians of Silicon Valley, and further back to the buried roots of modern conspiracy theorism: the New Deal in the 30s, the Clintons in the 90s, even a prophetic book co-authored by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s dad, more of which later.

In terms of this election, Gatehouse suggests two factors why Trump won. The first and most obvious, speaking to the Cuban Americans in Little Havana, was the cost of living. “A lot of them told me, ‘My grocery bills have gone up exponentially.’ It’s not clear to me what policies Donald Trump offers that will solve that, but it’s quite clear that this is a problem the Democrats haven’t adequately addressed.”

For the other reason, he points to the New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters in late October. Its top line was that Trump and Harris were neck and neck in the race, but somewhere near the bottom came the question: “Which comes closest to your view about the political and economic system in America?” Only 3% thought the system was working fine and 38% thought it needed “minor changes”, but 51% thought the system needed “major changes” and 7% thought that “the system needs to be torn down entirely”. “So you’ve got a nearly 60% block who are like, ‘The system sucks, it’s fucked,’ and Trump is attracting those voters. Because, for better or for worse – well, for worse, actually – the Democrats have kind of become the party that defends the system.” The terms “left” and “right” no longer apply in US politics, he says. “I frame it as pro-system and anti-system.”

This is what unites the coalition around Trump, from the ostensibly Democratic anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr, to the anti-“legacy news” crusader Elon Musk, to edgelord manosphere podcasters and wealthy politicians smashing it to “the elites” – they’re the anti-system option. This is also where conspiracy theory comes in, says Gatehouse: “Conspiracy theories are, by definition, anti-system.”

Gatehouse’s attitude to conspiracy theories is “you don’t take them literally, but you take them seriously”, he says. “A conspiracy theory tells you something about society, and the fact that so many Americans believe that the people they elect are not really in charge: hidden hands pulling the strings behind the scenes, all this kind of meta, QAnon stuff about elite cabals. It’s telling you the same thing as that Siena College poll was telling you: belief in the system is catastrophically draining away. And Trump is the guy who promises to rip it all apart, to tear it up, to ‘make America great again’.”

None of this is to say that Gatehouse ascribes to the conspiracist mindset. In contrast to the outlandish and paranoid narratives it lays out, The Coming Storm is level-headed, even-handed and well researched – albeit augmented with a few stirring musical cues, including Gatehouse’s own piano-playing. It’s in a similar ballpark to the work of Jon Ronson or Adam Curtis, you might say, but tempered through the sensibility of a veteran BBC journalist. As Newsnight’s international editor, Gatehouse has reported from war zones and hotspots around the globe: Ukraine, Iraq, Yemen, Russia, Hong Kong. “I had basically the best job in television news,” he says.

…that ending the war in ukraine by ceding all currently occupied territory to russia is making it “about saving lives” that are more important than mere territory?

Over the course of two seasons of The Coming Storm, Gatehouse and his producer, Lucy Proctor, investigate the dynamics of modern-day, information-age conspiracy theorism: where it came from, how it is manufactured and how it has fed into mainstream politics. Fredrick Brennan, the creator of 8chan, the message board where the QAnon conspiracy first took hold, told him: “Look for who was using Q and what they were trying to do with it,” says Gatehouse. “So that led me to look at the people in the Trump orbit, before and after QAnon arrived.” It also led him back to the US politics of the early internet era. “Names that popped up in the 90s that were pushing conspiracy theories about the Clintons would then pop up again in connection to pushing Q-adjacent conspiracy theories around the stolen election, etc. So then this is what you do as a journalist. You make a connection, right?” He ended up making a lot of connections, and weaving together a grand and somewhat terrifying narrative of misfits, misinformation and manipulation.

Did he literally map out the grand plot at any stage? With red string on a pinboard, for example? “I did at one point. But there was so much of it – I mapped out bits of it,” he says, “in an A4 notepad with, like, spider diagrams. Basically, I have these pencils that are black on one end and red on the other. So I was sort of scribbling with my black-and-red pencil.”

…texas used to be part of mexico…if they’d annexed it 15 or so years ago & then invaded new mexico, arizona & california recently enough that the dust hadn’t settled where there used to be schools & hospitals & such…how do you suppose the denizens of what used to be those states might feel about being told they were mexicans now because the important thing would be not fighting about it?

To be certain, he sent his spider diagrams to Timothy Tangherlini, a professor of folklore at the University of California, who had created an AI machine-learning program that he claimed could tell the difference between a conspiracy theory and an actual conspiracy. “Because, of course, conspiracies do exist, right? And so I sent him my theory, kind of hoping that he would say, ‘You need to step back from the rabbit hole, my friend.’” But instead, to his surprise, Prof Tangherlini told him to keep digging.

The parallels between media reporting and conspiracy theory manufacturing are uncomfortably close, especially now that “the media” is itself fragmented into different camps, each pushing its own conflicting version of reality. “If some people take this series as a sort of critique of establishment media, then we’ll be happy about that,” he says. Bias is unavoidable: “You’re not just putting facts in there in a random order; you are crafting a narrative, so obviously you are choosing what to include and what to leave out.” As a conspiracist, you can be more cavalier, but as a journalist, “You’ve got to do that in as honest a way as possible, but you can’t help but go into a story with some kind of preconceived idea of what the story is.”

…or that fucking elon musk is going to go from popping up on calls with zelensky to wooing his new best friend into abandoning fossil fuels & not taking any more middle eastern cash to do stuff that makes joe manchin happy?

Gatehouse does come close to positing a conspiracy theory of his own in The Coming Storm, and it’s a terrifying one. It stems from a book called The Sovereign Individual, written in 1997 by the American investor James Dale Davidson and the former Times editor William Rees-Mogg – yes, Jacob’s dad. The book is uncannily prescient about the emerging internet age: cryptocurrency, disinformation, nationalism, the gig economy and wealthy individuals free from the authority (and tax laws) of nation states. Their vision of the future, says Gatehouse, is “a post-nation-state world in which a few individuals – sovereign individuals – have become so powerful that they rival the gods of Greek myth”. Certain sections of big tech saw the book almost as a route map; it was reprinted in 2020 with a new preface by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

…no…not really…there’s other people they can ask that who’ll believe them…we’re just being asked to believe that there are more of those people than any other sort so there’s nothing we can do about any of it

“He was definitely at the centre of one of my spider diagrams,” says Gatehouse. Thiel was an early investor in the likes of Facebook, PayPal, the data analysis company Palantir and OpenAI, among others, which connects him to Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Elon Musk. He has already helped set up a proto-“network state”: an autonomous economic zone called Próspera, on the Honduran island of Roatán. Thiel also has connections with Trump-world: JD Vance was a protege.

Thiel and Musk could be described as “accelerationist” in their thinking, which means they are keen to speed up the pace of technological change and get to the next level, or planet, or whatever – regardless of the consequences. Where some see climate breakdown, civil disorder and societal collapse as disasters, they see opportunity. All of which leads Gatehouse to ask: “Are big tech billionaires using the Maga movement as a vehicle for their accelerationist cause?”

He follows a lot of people from this community online, he says. “They were jumping up and down with glee on the night of the election.” He reads me a line from one of their posts: “Techno kings about to rule the free world. Massive wave of acceleration incoming.”

…which is just all kinds of fucking ironic…considering that what got a lot of those people to pick believing that cant in what they also believe to be their own self-interest…is that it’s their only way to make a dent on all the stuff they can’t do anything about that’s making their life harder than they they think they should have to endure it being…sort of…*I* won’t/don’t/shouldn’t have to think…& thus…here *we* find ourselves…but…*I* believe that’s a good thing…& santa will bring presents even if they aren’t good…or nice

The coming storm indeed. But not even Gatehouse is making predictions about what a second Trump presidency might bring. “We just don’t know what’s around the corner,” he says. “My children are six and two. When they’re my age – I am 47 – are they still going to be living under the same system of government and societal structures that I grew up in, and my parents grew up in and, to an extent, my grandparents grew up in? I think that’s an open question.”

…even when they’re mistaken for having grown the fuck up

Is he optimistic? “My glass is pretty half-empty at this point,” he admits. “I have an optimistic disposition generally, so I kind of feel like what will be, will be, but I think there’s going to be big changes coming down the track. And some of it might be good. The current system is definitely not perfect, right? There are lots of problems. Is the solution to tear it all down and build it up again from scratch? I think not.”

…so…here’s a fairy tale for you…& you can decide for yourself who the fairy is…& whether they’re the sort that use glamors to beguile & pay in gold that disappears with the break of dawn

But tearing things down, being “anti-system”, looks to be on the agenda, between the accelerationists, Musk’s “government efficiency” ambitions and the notorious Project 2025 agenda, which, among other things, includes dismantling key departments such as education and homeland security. “I don’t know whether Trump has the temperament to build new institutions. I suspect not.”

A reporter down the rabbit hole: Gabriel Gatehouse on edgelords, conspiracy theories and Trump’s America [Guardian]

…there once was a man…who traded with other men…including those who were his people’s enemies…& to them he gave…in return for personal rewards…things that belonged to his people…that they considered sacred…so sacred that to do this thing was among the worst sins against that nation it could imagine…others who had committed it they committed to institutions in which they remain incarcerated to this day…even though some of those thought it a price worth paying for an attempt to make their people aware of something of great importance…& others even the courts agreed didn’t mean to transgress…& probably hadn’t really…but accidentally did something that meant it could have been taken advantage of so it had to be treated as though they had

…but not this man…who…for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with even an attempt to claim he hadn’t done it…was excused from having to answer to any such charges…& perhaps more importantly…people who didn’t think about it much…didn’t think it could be the same sort of thing…because there he was running for president & not rotting in a cell…disavowed as you’d expect by the ones who’d performed the necessary formalities to indicate that it would go against the precious scripture of their forefathers to allow such a man to sully their great nation by assuming any office of the land…much less the highest one…but there those were saluting him with their expressions of devotion & fealty

…no…this man…they voted to give the key to the vault in which those sacred texts reside…for…at a conservative estimate…a long four years…or…depending on whether you go with the short one, the medium sort or the longest…is between 7 & not-quite-a-half…& not quite 7…months of sundays

Historians will long scratch their heads that a Republican candidate who – despite an inability to string a coherent sentence together, being grossly underqualified and rife with extramarital affairs – would go on to not only win election but become one of the most popular presidents in US history.

The first candidate to grasp how to use “new media” in a presidential campaign effectively and who – rather than getting to work in Washington after the election, as expected, immediately took off on vacation to play golf.

Despite all this, the candidate’s popularity among his “stonehead” supporters grew and grew – “an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly unable to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.” I’m talking, of course, about Warren G Harding and his presidential victory in 1920.

The poetic description of Harding’s pre-Maga fanbase comes from HL Mencken, who like Harding was a newspaper man. Mencken helped found the Baltimore Evening Sun, where the above quotes appeared, while Harding (the first and only career journalist to become US president) had cornered the Ohio newspaper market and used it to propel himself first into state office and eventually the presidency.

Then, as now, the media were partisan outlets with a worldview and political agenda to push. Each candidate and party had their papers, and their market was those who shared their ideology. Then, as now, the truth mattered little to these markets and the papers were rife with unfounded gossip and hyperbolic claims about the other side.

But the social media era has forced news outlets into a stark choice – publish articles that generate the most clicks, or publish articles that motivate your subscribers to pay for news. Both of these things come together at the very same point: Trump.

…& can any of us honestly say we feel sure that several of those mightn’t prove to be after we stop saying we aren’t currently waging WWIII?

Behind it all, then as now, sits a network of industrialists fuelling a noise machine that keeps us at odds with each other as we feverishly debate Trump-mania.

You may recognise some of its manifestations in your own feed here in Australia. Switch on Sky News After Dark or their YouTube feed and you could be mistaken for thinking you’d stumbled upon a Trump paean bent on reshaping Australia into Alabama.

Wade into the comments section of any Facebook post talking about offshore wind in the Illawarra and you will see Maga bots sharing the same content they do in New Jersey.

Check through the global membership of fossil fuel-backed Atlas network which drives the Trumpian agenda globally and you will find our homegrown Institute of Public Affairs and Advance Australia, they of the Indigenous voice No campaign. Trump is global, and your passions are part of his plan.

These ingredients: partisan media ecosystems; supportive crowds whipped into frenzies; wealthy backers keen to exploit the first two ingredients for their own financial gain – these are what have delivered us Trump.

Just ask Fox News, where supporters turned away in droves when the network tried to get off the Trump train, only for them to get back on it even if it meant denying the 2020 election results they knew were legitimate. That ended in a $US787m settlement with Dominion voting machines.

Just ask the New York Times, which was on the verge of bankruptcy in the years leading up to 2016 until a shock Trump victory sent all the haters to rush to subscribe in defence of fact-based journalism, whose incentive is now to keep them subscribed with a steady stream of Trump schadenfreude. The Maga movement would call it a Trump Derangement Syndrome-based revenue model.

Just ask Elon Musk, who has used his acquisition of a social media platform to become a cult-like figure of adoration for crypto-bros, UFC fans and Andrew Tate acolytes with his misinformation-laden Trump sycophancy.

…I guess it depends on what kind of faith you keep…but…speaking for myself…I aim to start by keeping faith with the folks I’ve found to reward my faith in them…which would include you lot…& not losing faith in myself, if I can manage it…however much of an apostasy the neo-othodoxy would have me believe I represent

Our hatred is as much the oxygen to his fire as his supporters’ love is the fuel. Brace for another four years of obsession and obeisance, depending on which side of the fence you sit. But the net result is the same, as Mencken warned us when faced with the fact people are driven not by sense but by emotion, “the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost”. So too, it appears, will the media.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/white-noise-why-hatred-of-donald-trump-fuels-his-success-as-much-as-his-supporters-love

…hopefully that’s a low enough bar that I still manage to get away with it…I’m reliably informed however that sometimes when it seems like the bar rises up & smacks you in the face…that’s a trick of perspective…so by all means take this as an artefact of a series of potential concussions…but…while everyone’s trying to figure out what *the* answer is that explains what went so wrong that this is where we’ve wound up…I can’t help thinking the first move most of them make without noticing is the same damn thing any number of times & ways

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/23856/how-do-we-know-something-is-a-category-mistake

…now…where did I put that prescription?

…maybe this is it?

‘No man will touch me until I have my rights back’: why is the 4B movement going viral after Trump’s win? [Guardian]

…I mean

…we know the motherfuckers can’t spell lysistrata