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Allison Gustavson's avatar

I am curious about the reception to the Larry Ellison quote on surveillance. I suppose you were in the SV space, where surveillance is the bread and butter; but in my mind, this message could be used much more widely and more effectively than it is, as could the “Netanyahu wants Trump to win” bumper sticker message for the masses.

I was at the Bitcoin conference where arguable 95% of people in attendance, tuning in, and generally aligned are voting Trump. Tens of millions. And it’s all about government control and surveillance. Edward Snowden beamed in and gave a chilling speech about the dark road we’re heading down. If Dems really want to promote freedom and disavow the new world order shit, they have to really walk the walk and, as Audrey Tang puts it, radically trust the people. I think if we do some kind of non-electoral Trump-squashing move inside of this brainwashed moment we will never again be able to claim that we are the party of democracy. We kind of let this happen. We didn’t do enough, over decades and yes, against extraordinary forces of determination, to prevent this. We didn’t run for school boards until 2018, fight for working class, show up in Michigan,etc (obv oversimplifying). It’s not our fault, but it’s not not our fault.

We are in a codependent relationship with republicans. Like Javert needs Valjean. Without a threat, we lose our fucking focus.

Well, here’s the threat. I think surveillance is a huge issue that maybe wouldn’t alienate dem voters but could win some others if we came out strongly against. Pair this message with the Kroger “flexible pricing” and “eye tracking” dystopian shit that ppl would viscerally recoil against, and claim that anti corporate/pro freedom message as our rightful inheritance

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Jonathan Zap's avatar

Here's what I've posted on social media in case anyone wants to repost or repurpose:

In the last few days, Trump has repeatedly said that his political opponents —and he mentions explicitly Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff to make it clear he is not talking about immigrants, etc —are an "enemy within" and that he will use the national guard and the military to deal with them. Trump is explicitly saying that he intends to be a military dictator.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-democrats-enemies-within-rcna175628

Here is the "Truth" Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, where he says he is entitled to suspend the Constitution:

"Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused "Big Tech" of working closely with Democrats. "Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"

The whole idea of America was not to be ruled by a king and to have checks and balances to keep a would-be despot from seizing power. The founding fathers warned us that democracy was a fragile experiment that could fail if a despotic demagogue fooled voters. 

From: 

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-26/demagogues-constitution-impeachment-washington-hamilton

Less than two weeks after the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, George Washington wrote to his friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, on June 6, 1787, explaining that his critical purpose in attending the convention was to prevent a demagogue from gaining power in the politically unstable young nation and thus destroying it.

Washington described how he was pulled out of retirement by an urgent risk to the United States. "Anarchy and confusion" were threatening the security of the American people and the rule of constitutional law. But this was only half the danger.

The deeper risk, he wrote that early June, was that the political chaos created fertile ground for exploitation "by some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his country so much as his own ambitious views."

Washington, of course, was not the only framer who viewed our Constitution largely as a bulwark against demagogues. In the surviving records of the speeches given at the Constitutional Convention, the word "demagogue" was used 21 times by the framers as they crafted the Constitution's essential checks and balances against despotism and tyranny.

Voters in this country are on the verge of giving an Electoral College victory to a man who tried a coup to hold on to power and is explicitly telling you that he intends to suspend the Constitution and be a military dictator.

This is not time for "what aboutisms" related to Biden/Harris. Yes, Biden had some disastrous failures. Yes, Wokism is a motherload of stupid ideas. Yes, Harris said stupid things in 2019. Yes, we have a mass psychosis in this country on both the left and on the right--the left version is more obnoxious, but the right version is far more dangerous.

As a well-informed, lifelong Republican said in 2016 on why he was going to vote for Clinton,

"I disagree with Clinton on almost everything, but she's within the normal range of being wrong."

Trump is far outside the normal range of being wrong--he has explicitly announced his intentions to end democracy. Anyone voting for him or failing to vote for the only viable alternative will be complicit in ending America's fragile, 240-year experiment with democracy.

Besides voting for Harris, here's what you can do. This election will be decided by about 75,000 people in seven swing states--Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Search your contacts for voters in those states who might not vote or are not fully committed to a candidate. DO NOT waste time debating someone who is fully intoxicated by the Orange Koolaide. Research shows that offering facts to those who are ideologically captured only causes them to harden and double down on their position. I've tried that experiment. When I was fourteen, I was a champion debater on the #1 debate team in the country year after year, the Bronx High School of Science Debate Team. Winning the debate will only motivate them to get off the couch and vote for the Orange Goblin. I was able to turn around one vote so far, someone who is a classic liberal but turned off by the mass psychosis on the left (Wokism). If you don't want to call your contact in a swing state, PM with their number, and I will cold call them.

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