Don’t insult people. Do not assume people are young or inexperienced. I’ve been voting for Democrats since 2008. And they’ve failed again and again. I fully understand why people would just throw their hands up and refuse to vote for the traitors. Don’t belittle people who are simply sick of the bullshit and decide “a pox on both your houses!” It’s not youthful inexperience, it’s disillusionment and exhaustion. People are fucking done with corporate dems. And honestly, the best long term strategy might be just to let the entire Democratic Party be burned to ashes.

We’re not the first country in modern times to fall to right wing autocrats. And one common thing? It’s not the captured opposition nominally liberal party that actually drives the autocrats out in the end. Usually the equivalent of the Democratic Party needs to be completely eliminated before the autocrats can be defeated. They suck up all the oxygen and prevent a real opposition party from forming. Typically, a popular front needs to be formed that completely sidelines and crushes the traditional liberal party and the autocrat.

Realistically, we are probably going to have to let the Democratic Party go the way of the Whigs. There’s really no other realistic way we end up defeating MAGAism. A feckless and useless opposition party is often far worse than no opposition party at all.

The same genocide that Trump is doing. In fact, Biden’s death toll in Gaza is far, far higher than Trump’s so far.

Those really were the options though.

When Biden won in 2020, I distinctly remember saying, “Trump is going to win in 2024.” I saw it clearly. It wasn’t hard to predict.

Trump didn’t come from nowhere. Learn history. What we are experiencing now is not unique. Whenever wealth inequality gets too great, people demand action. And if those in power aren’t willing to move the needle and improve the lot of the working class, then they will turn to demagogues. This happens again and again in sclerotic democracies. It happened in Rome. It happened in ancient Greece. It happened in Revolutionary France. People turn to demagogues who promise to ram change through if they are not taken care of. Yes, it’s fucking obvious that Trump isn’t going to actually help the people. That’s the definition of a demagogue. Yet demagogues crop up again and again whenever democracies face the challenges we are facing now.

Democrats have proven themselves, time and time again, to not be willing to actually move the needle. Imagine if Biden had showed even half of Trump’s willpower, except for good rather than evil. Think of where we would be now.

This is why the choice was “fascism” or “slightly delayed fascism.” Kamala wasn’t going to meaningfully move the needle either. If she had won in 2024, Trump or another fascist demagogue would have won in 2028.

Merely holding the line is not a viable strategy. If you are running against fascism, and you refuse to do anything to meaningfully fight it when you win, you are responsible for getting that fascist elected.

Trump is responsible for his own sins. But Democrats are the reason he is currently in the White House. He’s doing the evil, but they are the ones who put him there.

If people who stayed home in 2024 voted for Trump’s genocide, then logically, those who voted for Biden in 2020 voted for Biden’s genocide. These things go both ways.

Why do you support genocide?

See how ridiculous this is?

If you DID vote for Harris, you voted for slightly delayed fascism. You didn’t vote for democracy, you just voted for slightly delayed fascism. I know, I voted for her. Democracy wasn’t on the ballot.

I voted for Harris. But let’s be honest. There were two choices on the ballot in 2016, 2020, and 2024:

1. Fascism
2. Slightly delayed fascism.

“Our company develops AI. It has many uses and should substitute for human labor whenever possible.”

“USE OF AI BY APPLICANTS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED!”

I was hoping someone would quote this. Bravo!

Maybe that’s what you’re doing right now.

You know what? Fuck it. Let’s finally build Edward Teller’s Doomsday Machine.

Teller, the ‘father of the hydrogen bomb,’ wanted to build something even more mad, Project Sundial, a true Doomsday Device. It relies on the principle that there really is no upper limit to how big a thermonuclear weapon can get. As long as you’re willing to keep chaining stages, you can make them arbitrarily large. However, you do eventually hit a limit where the bomb is too big to deliver to a target.

However, for Project Sundial, this wasn’t a problem. The idea is you would build a single nuclear device so comically powerful that it doesn’t matter where on Earth you set it off. You build the thing in bunker, under a mountain, in the heart of your most closely guarded territory. It can be the size of a large building if need be; it doesn’t have to be movable. In extreme form, imagine a nuclear bomb the size of a stadium.

Once you push the button on this thing, it’s over. No matter where on Earth you set it off, the explosion would be so large that it would launch enough dust and debris into the atmosphere to block substantial sunlight and cool the planet. Instant nuclear winter from a single device that cannot be intercepted or shot down. And you can built it in a bunker buried so deep that no regular nuclear weapon can reach it.

It is the apotheosis of mutually assured destruction. If you threaten our existence, we retain the power to destroy everything. The entire species would be reset to c. 1500 or earlier at the press of a single button.

They did actually design the thing, though it was never built. And the details are still classified as all hell. But it is entirely possible to actually, in the real world, build a Doomsday Machine worthy of any comic book mad scientist. It is possible to build a single device that can destroy the entire world at the press of a button.

Or hell, for all we know, it’s possible someone has already built one…

A standard dose for Plan B is 1.5 mg levonorgestrel, CAS #797-63-7.

Hmmm…you might be on to something!

There isn’t some vast array of technologies that exists but that we’re holding back from employing. We’re employing everything. Are there inefficiencies and manipulations from a capitalist system? Yes. But that has been the case for generations. Food yields per acre were increasing quite regularly for decades prior to 15 years ago or so. This is a relatively new phenomenon. And even in the greediest of corporate systems there’s pressure to develop as efficient a supply chain as possible, and to make use of available land as profitably as possible. Ruthless profit seeking could decrease the total number of acres under production, but it shouldn’t restrain the productivity per acre. Land doesn’t come cheap.

I do terrible things to wood. My work involves saws, drills, soaking, boiling, firing in ovens, and loading specimens til they crack, break, and buckle.

If you want to associate that with your anatomy, well…you must have some particular fetishes indeed!

Well, I’m sure that’s actually quite true!

Veneer-based mass timber elements!

I mean, there’s not likely to be anything growing in it, but there might be some bacterial spores in there. Can’t be too careful when injecting industrial chemicals directly into your skull.

As much as shutting the government down will hurt, it’s preferable to letting lawlessness go unchecked. DOGE is planning on massive illegal cuts to social services. So putting off pain now will just lead to more pain later. Democrats need to hold the line and not vote for any continuing resolution without hefty strings attached reigning in the administration’s lawless behavior.

For God’s sake, Trump is illegally deporting people and planning openly political prosecutions. I would prefer the government completely closed down to one run by literal Nazis.