…& so it begins

If the prime minister’s announcement of a snap election had been an event in a scripted drama, we might accuse the director of laying it on a little thick. The rain might be justified as pathetic fallacy, but having Things Can Only Get Better blasting on a tinny speaker was a bit over the top.

…over the top…& sub-par at the same time…sounds like a contradiction but I can’t think of a better metaphor for the whole sorry mess…& if I don’t make it…for the record…what probably did for me was having to hear such incredible density of disingenuous non-answers in such ludicrous profusion for a month & a half…you’d think by now I’d have developed a pretty high tolerance for that sort of shit…but apparently not?

Why now? Even on the morning of the statement, it would have been difficult to believe that Rishi Sunak was really about to go to the country, if for no other reason than that Downing Street’s main media story had been a stern warning to voters to start stockpiling canned food and bottled water – hardly an auspicious backdrop to an election campaign.

There was a case for an early election, to be held in May. Coinciding with the local elections might have lifted the Tory turnout, saved councillors and allowed CCHQ to fight the campaign with a stronger ground machine, its ranks not yet thinned by the loss of almost 500 councillors.

If not then, the most likely option seemed to be the autumn. It would give the government the maximum possible time to turn things round before the campaign risked ruining Christmas, offer Jeremy Hunt the chance to deliver a second fiscal event and allow Sunak to reach his second anniversary in No 10.

Given all that, why did the prime minister decide to go now – and when did he make that decision? There has been speculation about a summer election since the start of the year. Was it the plan all along?

…in a word…no…in two words…obviously not…but…again…kinda good example…haven’t actually seen a formal suggestion for the reason that was a pretty big consensus among the excessively online before any of those pieces got filed…namely that the elephant in the room is the insane “logic” of the internal logic of the party…you’d think that heading into an election they seem fated to get battered in you might as well stick with the scapegoat you’ve got & replace him after as though you’re fixing shit…but there are enough of the deluded assholes that can’t believe they wouldn’t turn it around & stay in power (personally & as a party) that they credibly might have passed the point where there was a real possibility that the count was flirting with the number of requests submitted to trigger a confidence vote & have a whole internal election for leader immediately preceding the wider election the fresh face would then call

On the organisational side, there remain about 150 constituencies where no Conservative candidate has been selected – not the conduct of a party secretly putting itself on a war footing.

By last week, the evidence was there for those (not I) with the courage to call it. When Sunak was pressed after his big election-framing speech to rule out a July election, he would only repeat that he would go to the country “in the second half of the year”.

So, what might have changed between the beginning of March and today that would induce him to take the extraordinary step of calling an election, sooner than he has to, when his party is about 20 points down in the polls?

…the idea that going to the country after putting them through spectating another round of the sort of mechanism that threw up liz truss…& it would be…more or less…because that’s the brand of insanity that would be provoking it…would somehow improve their electoral fortunes…is…I don’t think I can even describe the levels of cognitive dissonance these people have to have reached…but…for whatever reason…apparently bringing it up isn’t cricket so this is the game instead?

It could be Rwanda. Downing Street may have realised either that it almost certainly will get a plane off the ground before July – thus hopefully banking any benefit to be had from voters seeing the scheme become a reality – or that it definitely won’t, in which case another summer of Channel crossings would risk further corroding the government’s credibility with voters most concerned about immigration.

…eh…of those two…definitely not seems to have the odds on its side…best you can say is that rishi is trying to leverage the choice between “I’ll go through with it & trust me that’ll stop the boats”…which is some serious

…energy…&…of course…the part where labour would nix the whole thing…which, per rishi…is the same as saying actually they want more migrants in smaller boats because labour are evil & they want people to die but also to steal your job while you pay more tax & rich people leave britain in droves & everything goes to shit in a way that will make you nostalgic for a decade & a half of getting shit on by tories…I’m not even really exaggerating…I’m paraphrasing but if anything I toned it down a notch

Perhaps, too, ministers have realised that the mounting crisis over prison places, which has seen inmates released early and the police advised to arrest fewer people, is only going to get worse. Or they have weighed up the risk that events in Ukraine or the Middle East could trigger another global shock and destroy the government’s narrative about economic recovery.

On the positive side, a summer election is at least as far away as possible from the annual NHS winter crisis, and households may be feeling a small cost of living benefit from lower energy bills in the warm weather.

Tory MPs didn’t expect a July general election – and now they are rightly furious [Guardian]

…for context…the guy who’s sounding off there…that’s the deputy editor of a concern by the name of https://conservativehome.com/…which is another reason I’m perplexed that they don’t seem to be willing to admit the line ran from “they were gonna knife him in the back” through “he threw them a hospital pass” to “everyone says it’s all the other guy’s fault but trust them, they’re you’re savior” & now the default setting is to approach everyone from every party with “here’s all the things that are true that make people not want to vote for you, so why should they?” even knowing that the responses will be solidly “here’s all the things we say the other options will result in that should make you be afraid, be very afraid & only we can save you”…but…seriously…despite his skin-tone being in the wrong quadrant of the pantone spectrum…& all the gags about how getting out of dodge a week into july gives him a chance to get his kids into californian schools before term starts up again…if you actually listen to rishi peevishly imply that it’s frankly ungrateful & not a little impertinent of the public not to adore him & award him the biggest majority in the commons ever to be called a mandate…it drips with the thing we short-hand as white privilege™…so…apologies if this seems like a non sequitur…but

It was typical pub chat, my conviction proportional to the one and a half glasses of wine I’d drunk. But I wanted to settle the debate, so I posted a poll to Twitter.

Within less than 24 hours, it had received 120,000 votes, overwhelmingly concluding that Alien was a horror film – and vitriolic messages were pouring in.

Online, people held me up as an example of everything wrong with journalism, scouring my work for further evidence of my idiocy, and CCing my editors to demand I be fired (I’m self-employed – but believe me, at that moment, I’d have fired myself if I could).

Scorn, rage and abuse ran rampant in my replies and DMs – much of it sexist, some violent. Entire episodes of film podcasts were dedicated to explaining why I was so wrong.

The scale and feeling of the response was shocking, unpleasant and hard to brush off. For months, I second-guessed every published sentence, trying to anticipate bad-faith interpretations.

Since then, I’ve been more circumspect about what I post – and have watched, with mounting unease, as countless more people have been thrust into the punitive spotlight.

…&…look…jon stewart isn’t wide of the mark

…but…there’s also not nothing to this angle

One gen Z friend tells me they worry about being called out for posting the wrong thing – or not posting enough of the right things. Several say they edit their posts and hold off on sharing jokes for fear of inadvertently causing offence.

“The ferocity of backlash these days feels much worse than it was even a few years ago,” says one friend. A 2021 YouGov survey found that nearly 60% of Britons have “at least sometimes” stopped themselves from expressing political and social views for fear of judgment or negative responses from others – a majority view among Conservative and Labour voters alike.

The same year, a study by Pew of 10,000 US adults found “a public deeply divided” about “call-out culture” online. What some saw as people experiencing the consequences of their actions, others saw as unjust punishment.
[…]
The online climate is intolerant of human complexity, Brooke argues, allowing no room for people “to stumble, fuck up, learn and grow”. Users treat each other as public figures who must be “held to account” and an online profile constitutes a “platform” you are obligated to use – despite the costs of misspeaking, revealing your ignorance or even holding a different opinion.

As a result, many are learning to stay silent. “The perception of an ‘external’ mob can create an internalised one,” she writes. It can stoke self-doubt, anxiety and fear of judgment.

While “cancel culture” is not uniformly invoked or understood, the concept of a “collective intolerance” resonates with us intuitively, Brooke says. “I like to bring it back to the everyday: what does it feel like now when conversations are being had around a dinner table? Do you feel that there are things you can or can’t say that are different to maybe even four years ago?”
[…]
Opting out altogether is not always possible, with people increasingly obliged to maintain digital presences for their work and relationships. But what’s at stake with this febrile, suppressive climate is more than just the freedom to express ourselves online.

A 2020 study found that social media was contributing to widespread dehumanisation by stoking the perception of threat, locking people into their positions and distorting their worldview to create what researchers termed an “intractable conflict”.
[…]
Brooke prefers to speak of “collective self-sabotage”, whereby people might speak out or stay silent in a way that works against our best interests and progress as a society.

Many people feel like they’re walking a tightrope: wanting to express themselves online or feeling social pressure to post, at the same time fearing to put a foot wrong. It’s no wonder they might stick to sharing pictures of cats – though I was once lovingly told by a friend that I was posting mine too much.
[…]
She advocates gaining an awareness of how social media pits us against each other and reflecting on how we want to participate in the public sphere. Online activism plays an important part in raising awareness of crises and causes, but it’s not the only way to make ourselves heard. “We have an assumption that to undo self-censorship and speak bravely, we need to be brave online, but that’s not the case,” says Brooke.
[…]
Brooke sees the change as starting in our interpersonal relationships – by seeking to understand our individual blindspots and biases, learning to relate to others without negating ourselves, and speaking our mind thoughtfully, with care and conviction.

And in the event that we are called out for being ignorant, insensitive or offensive, we can try to resist the impulse to either defiantly double down or instantly apologise, and instead parse the feedback for what we can learn and how we might do better in future.

Some comfort with difficult conversations is necessary if we’re ever to achieve transformative change, Brooke points out: “A lot of this is about being willing to take emotional and conversational risks – because that’s what creates intimacy and understanding.”

Everyone’s so intolerant online. Am I right to stay silent? [Guardian]

…& that might even be half-decent advice a bunch of people would benefit from…but…nobody believes for a moment that politicians are going to try that…right?

…& whether it’s conscious or unconscious bias that lets folks claim with a straight face they believe stuff that’s demonstrably bullshit…like…their boy saying he can’t help but tell the truth & if he got on the stand they’d all hear that the truth was there was no case to answer…but the mean judge won’t let him speak…then the judge answered very explicitly that the blowhard dotard could knock himself out anytime he chose to & invited him to be the court’s guest…&…true to form…he wouldn’t even contemplate saying that shit in a context where lying has consequences…it’s…what should we call that?

Since the moment I learned about the concept of the “thought-terminating cliche” I’ve been seeing them everywhere I look: in televised political debates, in flouncily stencilled motivational posters, in the hashtag wisdom that clogs my social media feeds. Coined in 1961 by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, the phrase describes a catchy platitude aimed at shutting down or bypassing independent thinking and questioning. I first heard about the tactic while researching a book about the language of cult leaders, but these sayings also pervade our everyday conversations: expressions such as “It is what it is”, “Boys will be boys”, “Everything happens for a reason” and “Don’t overthink it” are familiar examples.

From populist politicians to holistic wellness influencers, anyone interested in power is able to weaponise thought-terminating cliches to dismiss followers’ dissent or rationalise flawed arguments. In his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton wrote that these semantic stop signs compress “the most far-reaching and complex of human problems … into brief, highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

…& maybe it just plays to my implicit biases…but…”thought-terminating cliché”…damn if that doesn’t feel like it sums up the overwhelming preponderance of politicians for me?

Thought-terminating cliches exist, of course, in every language. In China, some government officials are known to exploit the phrase “Mei banfa”, meaning “No solution”, or “There’s nothing to be done” to justify inaction. The saying “Shouganai”, a linguistic shrug of resignation similar to “It is what it is”, is similarly weaponised in Japan. The Polish idiom “Co wolno wojewodzie, to nie tobie, smrodzie” roughly means “People in positions of power can get away with anything” (hence, don’t bother putting up a fight). According to Walter Scheirer, author of A History of Fake Things on the Internet, thought-terminating cliches commonly carry a defeatist flavour. It’s hard work, involving psychological friction, to figure out the best way to think about complex subjects such as climate policy or geopolitics. Any licence to give up the struggle is going to be appealing.

…gonna be a bitch for the historians of the future to unpick that shit, too

The internet is disappearing, study says [Independent]

[…been reading things about the profusion of dead links everywhere from blog posts to court filings for well over a decade but that seemed like the most recent remix of the issue I could get google to spit out this morning & it’s a reasonably representative sample of the genre]

Unfortunately, mere awareness of such tricks is not always enough to help us resist their influence. For this, we can blame the “illusory truth effect” – a cognitive bias defined by the unconscious yet pervasive tendency to trust a statement simply because we have heard it multiple times. Memory scientist Lisa Fazio has found that we are so primed to confuse a statement’s familiarity with veracity that the bias persists even when listeners are warned to look out for it, even when they are explicitly told the source was untrustworthy. “Some of these cliches catch on not necessarily because we believe them to be true but because they feel comfortable and are easy to understand,” she says.

In the past, repetition was a decent clue that a statement was reliable. When we hear a piece of information over and over again, that’s a sign it has come from multiple sources and is more likely to be true than a one-off factoid. “Our brains pick up early on in development that these cues are associated with truth, but this can go wrong in situations with a lot of ambient misinformation [like social media],” Fazio says.

Of the many cognitive biases that silently govern our decision-making, the illusory truth effect is one of the most potent. There’s really no way to prevent or combat it, says Spampatti, as “even raising awareness of this risk does not lower its effectiveness”. To compete in the marketplace of thought-terminating cliches, then, our best bet might be to take what we know about illusory truth and harness it to spread accurate information.

…& ain’t that a bitch?

…as is the part where I might have to admit that my obscure beef with the way meme had a perfectly good meaning before it got hijacked to mean a very specific subset of ideas that propagate along viral vectors isn’t just a lost cause…those fuckers are arguably a refinement very much in the evolutionary mold…still & all…it’s not just the text-over-image ones that are memes in the other sense…damn it

Beyond repetition, studies show that people perceive statements as more believable when presented in easy-to-read fonts or easy-to-understand speech styles, such as rhyme. In contemporary studies of the so-called rhyme-as-reason effect, researchers found that participants generally rate the phrase “Woes unite foes” as more truthful than “Woes unite enemies”, even though they mean the same thing. And a 2021 study showed that humour is among the qualities that make information more memorable and shareable. A titbit is “just more likely to spread if it’s funny”, says Scheirer.

…you know what…I might borrow the end of this as a way to wind this up

…so…yeah…in a bleak sort of way I can find myself finding some of this shit darkly comic

At the end of April, Judge Aileen M. Cannon unsealed a number of documents related to the investigation into Donald Trump’s retention of documents marked as classified after he left the White House. Within hours, a new line of rhetoric emerged among the former president’s most fervent supporters: The whole thing had been a frame-up!

Julie Kelly, a right-wing writer who specializes in plucking sensational-sounding allegations from legal documents, had plucked a sensational-sounding allegation from the mix. The General Services Administration, she claimed, had stored and shipped material to Mar-a-Lago that included the marked documents — a discovery that she suggested indicated that Trump had been framed.

…& yeah…that’s the NYT but if you want to know what kelly’s deal is you’d probably do better to check out what marcy wheeler has to say about her…but…it’s all in that ball of thread that I witter about from time to time…which is still being added to/backfilled…so…in your own time, as they say…meanwhile

On Tuesday, Cannon unsealed a new tranche of documents in the Florida case being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith (and being delayed by Cannon). And there was Kelly, picking out details of the FBI’s documents preparing for the search and casting them in a remarkable light: They showed not standard operating procedure but, instead, that federal law enforcement was ready to draw their weapons on the former president.

“Armed FBI agents were preparing to confront Trump and even engage Secret Service if necessary,” she wrote on social media, following a post quoting a filing from a legal team in which the FBI’s authorization to use deadly force was noted. “They were going to go door to door to terrorize [Mar-a-Lago] guests and even pick the locks. Gestapo.”

Later she shared a document titled “Policy Statement Use of Deadly Force.”

…who else read that & found the phrase “deadly farce” flitted across your mind’s eye…how’s that for a thought-terminating cliché?

Even just Kelly’s summation of the “confrontation” is misleading. The linked document notes that, if Trump (the former president of the United States, or FPOTUS) should show up during the search — he was known to be at his home in New Jersey, which was one reason that the search occurred when it did — that staff from the FBI and the special counsel’s office “will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS” and his Secret Service team.

Kelly’s presentation of “engage” here is in the military, engage-the-enemy sense. The obvious interpretation, however, is that the unexpected arrival of the former president was a contingency for which the bureau needed to be prepared (this document is titled “contingencies”) and that the plan was simply for the FBI and special counsel team to deal with it. If, additionally, the Secret Service made the search difficult, the FBI would engage with the Secret Service … “per existing liaison relationships.” This is phone call engagement, not bang-bang engagement.

…but…she’s a self-styled expert in online engagement…so…people listen to her shit…apparently…some people…for their sins, presumably…which I guess must be way worse than mine because I refuse to suffer that sort of purgatory

In a statement, the FBI noted that it “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.” That point is important: The deadly-force document shared by Kelly constrains how and when firearms might be used. (Kelly wrote that it showed how the “FBI risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests for a publicity stunt to make it look like Trump stole national security files.”)

…it’s like people getting that eye for an eye thing backwards…so…in a sense she’s working with low-hanging fruit…but…c’mon…deadly farce…anyone?

Thanks to her repeated willingness to make sweeping, unsubstantiated allegations of dire malfeasance to an audience utterly uninterested in the validity of those allegations, Kelly has amassed a large audience on social media. So the “the feds wanted to kill Trump” story quickly took off.

The right-wing blog Federalist wrote a story about it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shared Kelly’s allegation, asking if the FBI was “going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too???” When Trump himself posted the allegation on Truth Social, Greene took credit for tipping him off that the “Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.”

…speaking of taking & credit

By Thursday evening, Trump was fundraising off it.

…because that’s the point…I’d say it maybe ought to matter that this was on his watch…not least because one of the molotovs he tried to land on joe’s desk in ’20 was yanking the yanks out of the region…but…since they brought that playbook into play

For years, American military leaders lionized Raziq as a model partner in Afghanistan, their “if only” ally in the battle against the Taliban: If only everyone fought like Raziq, we might actually win this war, American commanders often said.

America’s Monster
How the U.S. Backed Kidnapping, Torture and Murder in Afghanistan [NYT]

…not a particularly exceptional bit of americanism or anything

This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.

The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel [NYT]

…but enough about the deadly farces & their attendant death tolls…no…the bell apparently tolls for thee…& me…& these heart-string-pluckers (how’s that for plucking rhyming slang, btw?)…they can play that grindable-axe “like ringing a bell”, as the song had it…& that rhymed…so…now you’re hypnotized & I might even be able to induce you to keep reading this miserable screed

The idea that opposition to Trump is so fervent among his opponents that they want to see him dead is not new. In a conversation last year, Carlson suggested this possibility to Trump directly. The former president replied that the “savage animals” who were targeting him are “people that are sick.” It’s an appealing bit of rhetoric in that it frames the left as deranged and bloodthirsty and it reinforces a sense of victimization that’s undergirding Trump’s 2024 campaign.

To an objective observer? It is self-evidently ludicrous.

It is a feature of the modern age that people peruse large sets of documents or data and pluck out things that they then misinterpret. Few, however, have Julie Kelly’s combination of audience, devotion to Trump and shamelessness. The result is that her dishonest or incorrect assessments of important issues drive news coverage and spur the claims made by the former president.

[…OK…this is due up but I’m not really even nearly there…so here it is but it’s going to get worse before we get down to where someone will hopefully make it all better…apologies in advance?]

…&…look…as an intellectual exercise constructing a case for murdering the man being a net benefit to humanity on a scale that puts in contention for an act of moral righteousness…is a piece of piss…& claiming otherwise takes the fucking piss…but…there’s a world of difference between the shit in those two links up there…or the way politics happens in…haiti…or mexico…& the god-forsaken US of freaking A…so stretching the metaphorical muscles required to limber up & take a run at the exercise is worlds away from gearing up to take a run at the man…unless you live in an escapist fantasy land where one day you’ll get to save the world by shooting some poor bastard…or bastards…no shortage of those assholes…target-rich environment is, I believe, the appropriate term of art…like the dothraki ladies were wont to observe back before game of thrones failed to stick the landing the way aria stark stuck the night king…”it is known“

There was another post she offered Tuesday that was not as attention-grabbing. She noted that the new documents again noted the transfer of material to Florida in September 2021

“[W]ho knows if some of the ‘classified’ docs seized during FBI raid were contained in GSA-packed boxes,” she mused.

And the answer is: She did, back in April — at least according to her initial thread on social media that went viral then.

It’s almost as if her sensational claims don’t hold up over time. Perhaps her allies might be more cautious in elevating them.

Gaining fame on the right doesn’t require being correct. It just requires being alarmist. [WaPo]

…&…whether or not it’s too woke to wake up & smell the coffee…I like to keep that shit around because I don’t know what I’d do without it…or, rather…I do…& it’s even less than I do with it…so…personally I think coffee…as aromas of choice go…beats what they’re stinking up the joint with

President Biden has been battling a new phenomenon in American politics: what Democrats and pollsters have taken to calling “Trump amnesia,” a softening of feeling about his predecessor’s tumultuous term as president.

But over roughly 24 hours on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump provided what looked like at least a temporary cure. He reposted a video containing the words “unified Reich,” reviving accusations that he flirts with Nazism. He hinted at the idea of restricting contraception, and rehired as a campaign aide a political operative with a record of accusations of sexual harassment.

A court ruling unsealed later in the day in one of the federal criminal cases against Mr. Trump showed that a judge had questioned how documents with classification markings could have been overlooked repeatedly before they turned up in Mr. Trump’s own bedroom.

And by midmorning, Mr. Trump’s defense rested in a criminal case that threatens to forever affix a label to him that no presidential candidate has yet survived: convicted felon.

Mr. Trump has built a political career on surviving the unsurvivable: No matter how much chaos he creates or how many political norms he shatters, his Republican base stands by him. But now, he is leaving the all-forgiving conservative cocoon to enter the crucible of a general election. Much of his electoral success may depend on whether voters who are not yet irrevocably in his corner recall, are repelled by and reject the turbulence, divisiveness and inflammatory rhetoric that cost him re-election four years ago.

…which…even the NYT occasionally admits might actually not be disadvantageous to ol’ joe

There is plenty of material with which Mr. Biden and his Democratic allies can try to shake voters free of any Trump amnesia. The former president faces four criminal indictments in four different courts. He is implicated in helping foment a siege of the Capitol, and is the first president to have been impeached twice. And under Mr. Trump, Republicans have lost or underperformed in every election since his 2016 victory.

The Biden campaign has focused on directing voters’ attention to issues that it believes will work most in its favor: abortion bans, threats to democracy and the sense of chaos that often consumed the Trump administration.

Which is why Tuesday’s headlines seemed to unspool like a series of gifts from Mr. Trump to his successor.

…it’s…not rocket science

“Posting Nazi imagery and promising to rip away more freedoms from women is not what we would call a winning campaign strategy,” said Ammar Moussa, a campaign spokesman. “Every day, Donald Trump reminds voters just how extreme and dangerous Donald Trump is.”

…although…in common with shots fired from a rifle…their trajectory depends to an enormous degree on how fast they can make that shit spin

[Brian] Hughes [a Trump spokesman] argued that the Biden campaign had seized on the “unified Reich” video and Mr. Trump’s comments on contraception — and had taken them both out of context — in an effort to distract voters from what he called “the core of what’s at stake” in November.

…really…if they weren’t immune to self-awareness this would not be the time to be talking smack about taking shit out of the appropriate context or the core of what’s at stake in the context of…your man did that shit…& there are receipts

Mr. Trump’s response on Tuesday to news about the classified-documents case, however, wound up landing like yet another unforced error. After the four documents in Mr. Trump’s bedroom came to light in a court filing, the former president took to his social media network Tuesday night to accuse Mr. Biden’s administration of authorizing “the F.B.I. to use deadly (lethal) force” against him. “They were authorized to shoot me!” he said in the subject line of a fund-raising email.

Even that, though, set off another round of recrimination. The F.B.I. took the unusual step of disputing Mr. Trump’s claim.

A Day of Negative Headlines for Trump Points to a Cure for Voter ‘Amnesia’ [NYT]

…but then amnesia hasn’t really been my curse

The many punts of Donald Trump [WaPo]

…you know what stinks & sometimes won’t go away even when you try to “kick it to the curb”?

…shit on your shoe

When historians and political scientists rank presidents from best to worst, Donald Trump invariably comes out at the bottom.

This year, to give one example, the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project released the results of a survey of 154 current and former members of the presidents and executive politics section of the American Political Science Association.

The highest ranked included no surprises: on a scale of 0 to 100, Abraham Lincoln (95.03), Franklin Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58) and Thomas Jefferson (77.53).

Dead last: Donald Trump (10.92), substantially below James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6) and William Henry Harrison (26.01).

There are other ways to rank American presidents, however: How consequential were they?

By these standards, Trump no longer falls at the bottom of the pack. That’s not necessarily a good thing. My view is that Trump is a consequential president for all the wrong reasons.

After the nation rejected the presidential bids of George Wallace, Pat Buchanan and David Duke, Trump demonstrated that the contemporary American electorate would put a candidate who appeals to voters’ worst instincts in the White House.

Trump has capitalized on the anger, fears and resentments of a besieged but fundamentally decent working class to exacerbate ethnonationalist hostility to immigrants and minorities, creating a right-wing populist antidemocratic movement.

What Trump Looks Like to Historians [NYT]

…&…damn if I don’t fervently wish the fucker really were fucking history…but doubtless in the hands of a true believer…of the sort that lets their freak flag fly…even at their home-away-from-home…that admission would amount to a legitimate threat a man in the running for the position of “most powerful in the world” would claim had him fearing for his life off the back of a throwaway remark by some absolute nobody…like…in my fucking dreams could I say some shit & wake up to find out some stochastic nutter had rid me of that troublesome priest & his malignant cult…but…that’s not the point, is it?

…keeping up appearances is serious business…but…I dunno…the bones of the thing they’re feeding like a fatted calf for the prodigal son…or the profligate son of a bitch, if you want to be a little more accurate…looks a whole hell of a lot like a skeleton he’d as soon stayed out of sight like a good little closeted home truth?

The elder Mr. Trump was presiding over a cocktail reception for about 150 guests to celebrate the public debut of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his social media app, Truth Social. Trump Media’s share price had soared in its first day of trading, adding billions of dollars to Mr. Trump’s wealth.

But the party was far from lavish. Guests munched on cookies emblazoned with the letters DJT, the company’s stock symbol. They were invited via the free Paperless Post app and told they couldn’t bring a plus one, according to a copy of the invitation.

Mr. Trump was not shy about the frugality. A benefit of Truth Social, he told guests, is that it is “not very expensive to run.”

…that’s how to make a profit, right…err…well…it’s…complicated?

From the moment Trump Media was founded in 2021, Mr. Trump has treated it as a low-cost, low-effort venture. While he once served as chief executive and owns nearly 65 percent of the company, he has been only marginally involved in its day-to-day operations, mostly posting on Truth Social and delegating the business to others. At times, he considered working on competing ventures, according to court filings, corporate records, and five former employees and others familiar with the company.

Mr. Trump now finds himself in a strange position, with his financial future hinging on an endeavor that he sometimes seemed indifferent toward. Trump Media’s Wall Street debut in March turned Mr. Trump’s stake into a more than $5 billion bonanza. It has tripled his net worth, providing a potential monetary lifeline as he runs for president and grapples with steep legal bills tied to the civil and criminal cases against him.

Yet his newfound fortune is precarious. For years, Trump Media, founded by two former contestants of “The Apprentice,” was entangled in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry and an insider-trading investigation. It has no products beyond Truth Social, which has a small audience and generated $770,000 in revenue in the first three months of the year while losing $328 million. Still, it has a market valuation greater than $7 billion.

“It’s one of the most obvious worthless stocks I have ever seen,’’ said Alan Jagolinzer, an accounting professor at the University of Cambridge in England.
[…]
“The risk of the Trump Media fortune is very, very high,” said Mike Stegemoller, a finance professor at Baylor University. “You’re now dealing with a fortune that is somewhat disconnected from reality.”
[…]
But before the app was even built, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky wanted to take Trump Media public through a merger with a “special purpose acquisition company.” SPACs are shell corporations that raise funds by offering shares on Wall Street, then look for private companies to combine with, allowing those companies to bypass the scrutiny that typically comes with an initial public offering.
[…]
He eventually found Patrick Orlando, an ex-Deutsche Bank trader who was working on setting up a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corporation.
[…]
Mr. Trump, who occasionally met Trump Media’s investors, leaned heavily on Donald Jr. to represent his interests, according to company records and two people familiar with the talks.

But in the end, the elder Mr. Trump was the “ultimate decision maker” on the SPAC deal, Mr. Litinsky testified.
[…]
Yet as negotiations unfolded, Mr. Trump considered abandoning Trump Media, according to a daily log of the company’s activities maintained by a former executive. He held talks with a rival start-up called Gettr, a conservative social media platform led by a former campaign adviser, Jason Miller.
[…]
Some Digital World board members were uneasy about the merger with Trump Media. On a call in October 2021, a board member, Lee Jacobson, complained that Trump Media was taking a “cowboy approach,” with financial projections that did not add up, according to a recording filed in court.

Mr. Orlando quelled the dissent, insisting that the deal was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

…not going down the rabbit hole of how much of its sole proprietary asset that’s ripped off from mastadon’s open-source codebase…at least not today…but…that can’t compete for the title of shadiest shit about this shady-ass shit

Legal hurdles soon arose that delayed the regulatory approval for the merger. In late 2021, the S.E.C. opened an investigation into the merger, while prosecutors prepared separate insider-trading charges against a group of early Digital World investors. (No one from Trump Media was charged with wrongdoing.) Trump Media’s public debut couldn’t move forward until those legal issues were resolved.
[…]
But Trump Media was struggling to stay afloat. In regulatory filings, the company warned that it might go out of business if the merger wasn’t approved soon.

Last July, Digital World agreed to pay $18 million to the S.E.C. to settle charges that it had misled investors about the deal with Trump Media. The settlement lifted a legal cloud. Mr. Trump received a new class of shares that gave him majority voting power over the company, and Trump Media recommitted to the merger.
[…]
Whatever reservations Mr. Trump had about Trump Media appeared to have melted away. On March 23, a day after Digital World shareholders approved the merger, Mr. Trump posted a short message on his app: “I love Truth Social.”

When the company started trading publicly on March 26, it surged 32 percent over its first two days, closing at around $66.

After an infusion of new shares from the merger, Mr. Trump’s 90 percent stake in Trump Media dropped to around 65 percent. But he remains the single biggest shareholder with about 115 million shares — including 36 million that he received last month as a kind of bonus for the stock trading so well.

…but…beyond specious bragging rights & a forum in which to brag about them without fear of being contradicted…what’s all that worth…well…worth?

The company’s future is not assured. While it has outperformed other right-wing apps, Truth Social had just one million unique visitors in April, a small fraction of X’s traffic, according to Similarweb, an internet tracker. Its revenue comes solely from ads, including ones for patriot-themed apparel and Trump paraphernalia. The company’s $328 million loss in the first quarter, which it reported on Monday, was affected by merger-related costs.

In September, Mr. Trump can start selling Trump Media’s shares or use them as collateral for loans. If he sells on the open market, investors could take it as a negative sign and dump their stock, hurting the share price. To avoid that, Mr. Trump could try to negotiate a private sale, cashing in on some of his shares without causing a market panic.

“There would have to be a big discount,” Mr. Jagolinzer, the accounting professor, said. “The red flags are just so glaring.”

Mr. Trump has treated Trump Media, which runs his social network Truth Social, as a low-cost sideshow. Now a big portion of his wealth hinges on its success. [NYT]

…I mean…it’s nothing if not squarely on-brand for brand fucking-nightmare-of-a-man…anyway…that’s about enough out of me…where did I leave that loose end?

It doesn’t only have to be shameless disinformers who exploit the power of repetition, rhyme, pleasing graphics and funny memes. “Remember, it’s OK to repeat true information,” says Fazio. “People need reminders of what’s true,” such as the fact that vaccines are safe and climate change is driven by our actions.

“I think it is better to create our own catchy phrases – ‘There is no planet B’ comes to mind – and repeat them,” advised Spampatti. In the pursuit of spreading sense during senseless times, it’s surely worth sounding a bit cliched.

Influencers and politicians use snappy cliches to get you on side – but you can fight fire with fire [Guardian]

…or…indeed…dynamite…&…since I’m feeling guilty & I’m hoping it might distract anyone thinking wistfully about torches & pitchforks…here’s a bit of fire-spitting trivia for you…that akala lad?

…his big sis is the lady that went by ms. dynamite…pronunciation guide very much included

…surprised?

…she was the hot ticket for a hot minute, too…& one of the things I find impressive about her brother is he didn’t ever come close to riding coat-tails…which…was very much doing things the hard way on purpose

…&…before you go ahead & dismiss the whole thing as a bunch of noise & tell yourself the london grime scene never did you no favors…spare a thought to the part where odds on you like at least one song someone’s sung that sprung from the pen of one ed sheeran

…&…guess how he came up?

…for realsies

…that’s where he came from…well…think it was ipswich first…but that was before he met jamal…or devlin…who used to be bigger than ed on account of he’s pretty much mr sbtv…which is a big deal in some circles

…some nice touches in there…that two bob line, for one…but…more of it has more than one meaning than not…for the record

…still & all…speaking for myself…also got to respect those boys can roll with the classics, too…so here’s a two-fer & I’m out?

…&…just because I always think of it when I hear him say he “reps the gingers”