Trump has already abused pardons for people on h'is side', like for Roger Stone, along with pardoning Jared Kushner's father Charles Kushner, who it should be pointed out that was not even conceivably a political prosecution, happening in 2005. (He was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering about those things.)
He also has pardoned someone convicted of war crimes... And I'm not talking about things that we might differ on whether they're war crimes or not, I'm talking about actual deliberate shooting of civilians In cold blood, arrested and convicted by the US military (people forget the presidential pardon power extends not just to civilian law but the military code), but the pro-fascist far right took him up as a cause because how dare a US soldier be held accountable for violating orders and murdering civilians. I'm on my phone right now and I can't be bothered to look up his name, but that pardon really should have gotten more pushback, but 'really should have gotten more pushback' is pretty much the defining trait of the last decade.
So whatever hypothetical precedent Biden is sitting here has already happened, Trump has already done it. The pardon power is one of the powers Trump already misused. He just doesn't seem to have committed any crimes while doing it, like sold pardons, although apparently that is now legal for him to do.
The only thing that was vaguely startling is that he didn't misuse it to pardon all the January 6th people.
Heinrich Müller did not have an enemies list. HItler did. Sometimes Müller executed that list, sometimes other people did, but it was not Müller's list.
Müller is actually notable as one of the top Na.zis that does not appear to be any sort of true believer, liking neither Hilter or Na.zism particularly. He was motivated almost solely by ambition. He's basically a career police officer who ended up being promoted into the position, and was perfectly willing to go after anyone his superiors said to, in any way they said. Wikipedia has a quote:
Criminal Police Chief Inspector Heinrich Müller is not a Party member. He has also never actively worked within the Party or in one of its ancillary organisations ...
Before the seizure of power Müller was employed in the political department of the Police Headquarters. He did his duty both under the direction of the notorious Police President Koch [Julius Koch, the Munich Police President 1929–33], and under Nortz and Mantel. His sphere of activity was to supervise and deal with the left-wing movement ... [H]e fought against it very hard, sometimes in fact ignoring legal provisions and regulations ... But it is equally clear that, ... Müller would have acted against the Right in just the same way. With his enormous ambition and his marked 'pushiness' he would win the approval of his superiors ... In terms of his political opinions ... his standpoint varied between the German National People's Party and the Bavarian People's Party. But he was by no means a National Socialist. - An evaluation by the Na.zi Party's Deputy Gauleiter
This isn't to defend him, only to point out how silly the comparison is. Kash Patel is a true believer. Heinrich Müller wasn't, or at least he wasn't in Na.zism, he just did the job handed to him by the Gerrman state, whether that was normal police work or executing Jewish scientists.
I'm wondering if we're ever going to address the fact that we seemed not to care in the slightest about money fraudulently paid to business under the Paycheck Protection Program to keep them functional and employing people, with huge amount of money sent to people who just blatantly lied.
Or with the fact we probably should have structured that program completely differently. It's not like it's a _secret_ how many people that a companies employs. We could have just done: Oh, you have applied to this, our tax records show you have fifteen employees and pay them X, and you have shut down under the pandemic, we are going to transfer you 80% of this month's paycheck for all of them, you need to pay them that money. All that money must go to your employees...it can go to different employees if you have cycled employees. If you have reduced staff and that is too much, hold on to it for now and contact us. We are also giving you some additional money to cover other expenses like rent.
Just the very basic 'is this a legitimate existing businesses with actual employees?', a thing that can trivially be done by looking at tax records of the previous year, and then looking at taxes _next_ year, where employees file taxes that report that income. How many employees a business has and how much they pay employees is not some opaque thing the government doesn't know, it's literally sitting in their tax records!
Instead, we had people just making up businesses and employees and buying Porsches with it. But, of course, we don't care about that sort of fraud, because those grifters were mostly middle class...the only people we care if they are defrauding the government are the extremely poor.
'Pay to not be annoyed' is basically the only other model besides 'pay to win' for games like this, they're not fixing that, they'd make no money from it. If the game wasn't more enjoyable after you subscribed, why on earth would you subscribe?
(I do find it funny you mention you can buy random in-card perk card packs if you have Fallout 1st as some sort of very useful thing. That...is not even vaguely useful. At all. You get to choose a perk card at each level up, and by the time you reach level 70 or so you've gotten all the ones you want, and anyone over 100 or so generally has around 10 perk cards sitting there they've forgotten to even select yet. No one needs five _random_ ones, those are mostly scrapped for perk coins.)
As for the constant repair and repeatable stuff...that's literally how MMOs operate. You will eventually run out of content in the game, and start doing things again, and part of the play cycle is making you have consumables that you have to do minor things to refill before you can do some of the big stuff.
Cycle without that for top level players:
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Cycle with that for top level players:
Fight biggest. most challenging enemy.
Do some farming to collect mirelurk meat because you want some boost that requires, cook that.
Repair some armor and guns.
While you're there, fix the damage to your house some idiot visitor allowed.
Sell some stuff to buy some chems, restock those.
Actually, you need money in general, so you craft some serums and sell them at the mall...
It's the exact same reason they have random things you have to do to earn S.C.O.R.E. to get seasonal stuff. It's not because it's useful, it's because interjecting randomness and small tasks (One that hopefully are not too annoying) into the play cycle keeps players from getting bored.
MMO cost money to run, and they need people to keep playing them a _lot_ longer than possible any main plot could hold their attention. They are indeed about maintenance, not finishing a story. But that's basically the premise of the genre.
And none of the 'main plots' in an MMO (Fallout 76 has half a dozen.) can to do anything to the game world at all, which makes them somewhat limited. You can't have the plot stop the scorched because you're in a game world where other players have not done that. Completing main game questions mostly just individually gives you access to things, like additional vendors or nuke launches.
Under fascism, the government, or their brown shirt proxies, do kill political rivals. Or, even better, frighten them from speaking or being in public, which removes them from politics without having to take the heat of killing them.
And, yes, there was an attempt to do that here, where the Proud Boys (One of the brown shirt armies working with Trump) attempted to kill certain members of Congress during Jan 6, along with the VP. It's unclear how serious this attempt was.
(It's also unclear how directed that was by the president, but that's exactly how brown shirt armies function. The fascist leadership merely hands them a target, without saying they want anything to happen, and the brown shirts go and destroy that target. Trump is actually notable bad at this and often says the quiet part out loud)
Anyway, I guess you've give up on actually writing down any _real_ lines, which means you conveniently get to keep saying it's not fascism no matter what happens. Cool.
No, but he might want to consider pardoning Jack Smith, who Trump has threatened to go after for running a normal DoJ investigation.
In fact, there actually is a small group of people pointing out that it might be smart to pardon all journalists for anything that they've ever run. Just issue a blanket pardon to any high-profile journalist that Trump has come after (and really any journalist) for anything that they've ever printed, which would seriously impair Trump for coming after them.
That is literally not part of fascism at all. That is, in fact, from a science fiction book. (Incidentally, being sci-fi, it also was just a _guess_, both at how political movements will evolve and how language works. It is not great at the first, and gets the second completely wrong.)
Mass censorship.
That's just authoritarianism in general. China has mass censorship, but is not fascist. I was specifically looking for fascist signifiers.
I wouldn't make a point of this except that you seem very determined to argue the exact definitions, so I feel it's important to get this exactly correct.
For the record, how do you feel about what happened in Turkey? Where the censorship, which does exist, is pretty thin and not particularly important, the control of information there is simply done by the fact that the regime and supporters completely own every media outlet. (We do all agree that what is happening in Turkey is a form of fascism, right? Let's not quibble if neo-fascism is different from fascism.)
Lawfare.
This isn't even vaguely an aspect of fascism, I have no idea where you got this from. It's not even an aspect of authoritarianism.
Debanking.
This is an oddly specific thing that might happen under authoritarianism, but it happens as a side effect of other things.
Also, by that logic, the US was a fascist state until the mid-70s when women could finally get bank accounts. Is that where you are going with that?
And some severe hardcore “othering” of people who merely have been believing the same stuff they believed a couple of decades ago.
It sure has been interesting to watch you attempt to twist this question to score political points.
Also, something like a mythical “Great Reset” movement to fundamentally change stuff.
That is literally the _opposite_ of fascism. Fascism almost always make claims of a past in which everything was better, and how some recent change has made things worse, and we should return to the imaginary past. (Both 'recent' and 'change' are, of course, very subjective and often outright lies.)
Fascism does not assert it wants to 'fundamentally change stuff', it assert it wants to 'unchange' stuff.
It really is interesting to watch you, a person who constantly complains that 'the left calls everything they don't like Hitler', to, uh, call everything you don't like fascism. Fascism is a specific, fairly well-defined political philosophy. It isn't just 'stuff you don't like', hell, it isn't even the same thing as general authoritarianism or dictatorships.
--
Also, wow, if we were to pretend this was an actual list instead of you twisting a bunch of nonsense complaints about the left, that is a really stupid list. You didn't include extremely obvious things like 'killing political rivals'. Or even 'stopping the peaceable transfer of power'. You don't think those would put us in fascist territory? You really don't have any actual lines?
To quote our future president: Sad.
Would you like to try again, listing _actual_ things Trump could do that would make you consider him a fascist (Feel free to just lookup what he's promising to do.) or should we consider this conversation over?
I think our political class lacks the language to describe what Trump really represents, which isn’t fascism so much as a combination of illiberal democracy and corruption, falling somewhere between Silvio Berlusconi and the kind of Latin American strong man that loots what he can and mismanages the finances, but lacks the ideological commitment or competence to create and empower death squads.
Why do you think that Trump will not be able to find people competent enough to create and empower death squads this time?
The only reason he failed last time is that he surrounded himself by more normal people who worked for him who were utterly horrified by what he was trying to do, and stopped him both by distracting him and doing things that, honestly, we'd call insubordination and be horrified at in any other circumstances.
That isn't going to happen again.
Incidentally, the government part of fascism doesn't start with government death squads. It starts with general propaganda and propagandist laws aimed at riling up violent mobs that oppose the 'enemies within', but whose actions can be disclaimed as brave patriotic warriors who are outraged by the situation.
And, of course, arresting the opposition and media.
I've gotten into Fallout 76 with some friends over the past month. It's actually a workable and real game now, unlike when it launched, and the community is a good deal less sucky than a lot of those types of games...it helps that the game is deliberately set up where there's no incentive to screwing other players over, and PvP is basically non-functional so no one does it.
It has recently gotten a lot of newbies thanks to the TV series (I guess I am technically one of them, I had a urge to play some Fallout and some friends started talking about Fallout 76 and I figured, why not. Although with two thousand hours in Fallout 4 alone, I'm hardly a newcomers to the series), so it's apparently a little weird right now.
So if you like Fallout, but heard bad things about 76 at launch (Which were all true, but the game has been fleshed out) or disliked the idea of online play because you worried about how other players act (Which I also did, but the community is actually really nice), give it another shot. There's a new 'season' starting Dec 2.
The only think Elon is doing with Space-X is funding it, which is, it should be pointed out, a thing the US government should do. He has also made a bunch of incredibly stupid decisions there that have resulted in it burning even more money for no reason.
Anyway it is going to be hilarious when Trump get tired of Elon and Elon decided to randomly try to swing Twitter against Trump. I don't know where exactly it will go, but honestly, Elon is literally one of the only people who command as much of a cult as Trump does, and their cults are currently mixed together...it is going to be a messy-as-hell divorce.
I can even see Elon attempting to swing left and the left just rejecting him. They already left Twitter, in a pretty massive and rapid exodus for a social media platform, especially one that isn't the immediate result of some huge change on the platform rendering it unusable.
Well, we’ve got a Hitlerian President who is using some of the guys used by the Hope/Change guy and who is disappointing the Redstaters.
Fascists often disappoint Christians (Despite using them to get elected), what an incredibly silly point.
Which tells *ME* that we’re not in Hitler territory but, like, “Yet another Republican got elected” territory.
Hey, Jaybird, just for fun, what exactly _would_ make you think we were in fascist territory?
Like, name a specific thing.
I actually thought we all agreed that 'having a brownshirt army attempt to overthrow the results of an election by violence' would be one of those things, but apparently not.
Do you actually have any defined line that crossing is correctly called 'fascism'?
Also, do you think that someone who has been elected but not taken offer promising to cross those line should correctly be described as fascism even if they are not in power yet?
Feel free to google what 'fascism' is, because you seem really hung up on Hitler and whether someone is or is not him. Fascism does actually have a pretty clearly defined set of traits, and none of them are 'lead by Hitler'...in fact, the actual origin of the term is not from anything Hitler did, but developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini.
Also, fun fact, Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, and thus _no one_ living is him. We just know that from basic knowledge of how long humans live.
and some picks that we knew were probably in the mix such as Tom Homan who, apparently, worked for Obama? In charge of Deportations???
It's almost as if ICE was _always_ a bunch of fascists, a bunch of racist thugs with no accountability who locked people up with basically no process or recognition of their civil rights, and that fact was almost entirely ignored by the American people because the victims were brown and had accents, and that was true under both Republicans and Democrats. And thus the actual fascist regime needs to change almost nothing about how it works, and the people who were appointed to that position in the past will have absolutely no objection to doing that Trump wants.
What an interesting and novel idea that I'm sure is not any sort of mainstay thought on the left.
ANYWAY.
And the only people who seem to be actively disappointed with his picks are people who are comparing Trump not to Hitler, but to Harris.
LOL. Yes. The only people disappointed with minutia of Trump's government are the people who think there is a chance that Trump's government will a) act like a normal government and not the completely random mess it will be, and b) do policies that they even vaguely approve of.
The rest of us really do not care, except to the extent that various appointments weakens his government.
Yes, Jaybird, and there were plenty of trade unionists who fled Italy when it was clear that Mussolini was consolidating power in the 1920s. Good catch, way to point out additional comparisons with what is about to happen.
(I could have made a different comparison, but I feel that Jaybird has completely forgotten we have other examples of fascism, because he's too focused on the 'Trump is not literally Hitler' game. (He also has forgotten which side the Catholic church was on during all that.))
Also: Why the hell do you think assassinating Trump would accomplish _anything_? What are you even talking about? Anyone assassinating Trump would be _disastrous_ for stopping this, especially if it was part of some left plot to stop his political goals. (Of course, they'd just lie about it and blame the left if it wasn't them.)
Do you literally not understand how the executive system works in this country and who would be in charge after that? Hint: It would be someone with the exact same fascist goals who is more competent.
Do you literally not understand why creating martyrs is bad?
Do you literally not understand why giving a government with fascistic tendencies and view of the world a very obvious reason to present to the country for declaring martial law and crack down on the left would be bad?
Would this result in a very small level of infighting? Yes. But this infighting would happen _on top of_ of innocent people, as fascists tries to prove they were more fascist than each other and they could crush the outgroup more than others. We already have state governors doing that. We know what happens.
Jaybird, I'm not playing along anymore. When people repeat lying Republican talking points, I'm just going to say 'Those are very blatant and disproven lies as part of Republican anti-immigration rhetoric' and just stop.
I don't have time to argue against Republican lies anymore. None of us actually do.
And I don't care if anyone finds the accusations 'laughable'. Even pretending you were not blatantly lying about the reactions of Martha's Vineyard and who did what (Which you are), all _that_ indicates is that Hitler stuff is going to be _easier_ because more people want it.
Yeah, and a good chunk of German's supported Hitler too. Really good point you're making there, I guess, where you pretend fascism can't be fascism if some random selection that everyone pretends is on the left side sorta want some of the bad things the fascist government is going to do. Yeah, Jaybird, that's how it works!
I do not give a flying f*ck about who thinks things are 'laughable' at this point. We are not actually in the realm of politics anymore, we are in the realm of protecting minorities.
We’re in this weird place where we’re casually discussing how disappointingly liberal Trump’s picks are!
Wait, you meant _us_? Yes, Jaybird, the focus of discussion _here_, on Ordinary Times, is extremely weird. It's a place for disillusioned libertarians and conservatives to argue with neoliberals, with a few very random outliers, and thus is actually kinda silly.
Now, in Trump's case, the entire political system is being extremely silly at this point. The discussion of 'exact policy decisions' around the guy who 'has asserted he going to use the military against his political enemies' and 'is a multiple convicted felon who tried to commit a coup' and 'is about to tank the US economy which will help solidify his and his billionaire friend's power' is hilariously stupid, it is indeed the last scene of Cabaret before things go Really Bad, and it's utterly insane to pretend we are having politics as normal.
But this site isn't going to magically realize that, considering that the actual media hasn't. Maybe I'll make an 'i told you so' tour in about a year.
But as for this _post_: As North pointed out, this entire post is aimed at Erik Erikson and other conservatives who thought Trump would be as 'normal'(1) this time as he was last time.
This is...no one here. Absolutely no one here thinks Trump is going to be 'normal' this time. I don't think anyone here thinks he was normal _last time_, but if they do, they certainly don't think it will happen again. This article is aimed at no one here.
1) Which, to be clear, last time he was not actually 'normal', but he did have some conventional appointees, because some of the people surrounding him were normal Republicans and/or the National Review. The 'grownups in the room'. Those people are gone this time, and thus he will no longer have 'normal people' unless they are appointed to positions that no deranged person willing to suck up is asking for.
You are all over the place, Jaybird. You utterly fail to actually state your thesis so no one actually understands you, you make broad generalizations that you then have to pick strange examples of.
And you're wrong: Erik Erikson never thought Trump was Hitler, _even when_ he was a Never Trumper and refused to vote for him.
Erikson's problem with Trump was his _moral failings_, his character. Erikson made it from a position of being A Christian (TM), a claim that a man who is so patently immoral should not be president. He made that incredibly clear at the time. It had nothing to do with Trump's Hitler-ness.
So, would you like to try again, and find a Never Trumper that claims Trump is Hitler (Or, at least, an authoritarian, as absolutely no one alive is Hitler, Hitler is dead.)
Anyone, find one who said that and who now is complaining about how his picks are too liberal?
And preferable find one that didn't change his mind and stop being a Never Trumper way back in _2020_, as Erikson did, which also undermines your point somewhat. But that's not a requirement.
In any case, I was under the impression that if Trump was, in fact, Hitlerian, that it would put obligations on us, as Good Germans, to be our own Bonhoeffers.
What? That is the strangest thing I have ever heard you say. No one has a moral obligation to assassinate anyone. (Even in some magical universe where a) it was trivial to do that, and b) would work at stopping anything instead of just devolving it to the next in line and making him a martyr.)
What being under fascism morally 'requires' us to do is to _not comply_, as best we can. To recognize evil is being done and not help it. (Bearing in mind our own personal safety.)
I literally pointed this out in a post here the other day: There are people here who are on the fence about, say, immigration. Or trans rights. Or whatever.
But some really _really_ bad stuff is about to happen to a bunch of people, and we don't need people standing there helping that stuff, even in the most minor ways.
When the Na.zis are asking you about your Marxist neighbor, you don't make a complain about how he plays the radio too loud at night and once punched you for complaining about it. Even if it is true. He's a perfect neighbor, you never had any problems with him, you don't even think he's a Marxist.
Same with policies. Maybe before, you had some level of national pride and thought maybe it would be nice if Poland was part of Germany again. But, uh...look. You don't think that anymore, or at least you don't _say_ that anymore, because that allow the Na.zis to claim that you support them.
On of the rules about fascism is, under it, you have to think before you speak. That's usually understood to mean 'or you might be in danger', but it's just as 'or you might put others in danger'. Either by directly putting them in danger, or by, even slightly, supporting what is happening, or even supporting some lesser version of what is happening.
But maybe we’re all in our own little Cabaret, doing our best to be our own little MC in our own little private Weimar.
To quote Toto: What do you mean 'We,' white man?
I've mentioned it before: The right has horrific operational security. Because they assume the authorities are on their side, so the very very few times the authorities are not (like storming the capitol), they are made to be utter fools.
The left has op-sec, because the authorities have never been on their side. You don't know what they're doing.
Yes, continue to blame the Muslims in Michigan despite the vote in Michigan not actually being any different than any other comparable state. Dastardly Michigan Muslims voting in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
You realize that's a quote by Erik Erickson, right?
A person who voted for Trump and presumably does not think he is Hitler.
The left is criticizing Trump for speaking like an authoritarian or a fascist (and, as we have apparently all forgot at this point, been revealed to have tried to act at various times but people around tried managed to dissuade him during his first presidency. Apparently we're supposed to pretend that the second time is going to be just like the first time, despite the fact we have learned how many times he hit the guardrails the first time, that are no longer going to be there.)
The right is attacking him for not being conservative, which is also a... I mean, I guess it's a valid point, I don't care, the fact he's promising to do horrific things to outgroups is slightly more important than who he's decided to put in random government positions, but whatever.
I'll show up here, and I haven't moved on. (I will be kind and not bother to explain it being fascist doesn't make Trump 'Hitler' or even a Na.zi... it just makes him a fascist.)
Are we simply not going to talk about Trump promising to use the military against the 'radical left lunatics'?
Referee: Okay, everyone, the football game is starting in an hour, and I want this to be a clean game.
Democrats: Are we going to address the fact the opposing quarterback is not eligible to play and appears to be wired with dynomite? We object to that?
Low bang goes off as the quarterback explodes, followed by dozens of people running around completely naked, general circus for seven minutes.
Referee: *AHEM*. As I was saying, the football game is starting in 53 minutes, and I want this to be a clean game.
Democrat: Um, okay, so, the quarterback blew up, so we withdraw our objection to him, but, like, we also object to these other guys too.
Trump defenders: As you can see this was all a clever plan by Trump's team to distract the other team while he repeatedly scored! He is so smart! *gestures at scoreboard, which is not lit up yet as the game has not started*
This is not 3D, let alone 11th dimensional chess. It’s basic negotiating. Strategic concession, anchoring, etc.
Who on earth do you think Trump 'negotiated' with here?
Can we agree that this is something he is pretty well versed in after a life time in commercial real estate?
Trump has literally never been competent at anything, ever. He certainly hasn't in real estate, where he has managed a constantly failing empire that gets propped up by the _money laundering_ that is 'New York high-end real estate' and even failed at both that and _running multiple casinos_, eventually getting bailed out by a TV show that decided he was celebrity enough to be on reality TV.
Regardless is it is intentional concession or not, Gaetz being withdrawn improves the path of other nominees.
It really doesn't. It literally does the opposite. If Gaetz had stayed in, and gotten to a nomination fight, and _other_ unqualifiyed-but-not-at-the-level-of-hiring-underaged-prostitutes nominees got in while he was being debated, sure, we could pretend that was some clever strategy by Trump.
But we are _two months away_ from the Trump presidency and the actual nomination fight. Gaetz didn't improve the path of anything! Everyone just immediately moved on to the fact that Pete Hegseth is _also_ someone who is unable to be a normal person about sex, because he apparently raped a prostitute he hired, which he denies...not the prostitute part, the raping her part.
The only person that vaguely came out ahead in this entire thing was Matt Gaetz, who was mostly able to pretend his resignation was for reasons besides 'Congress about to release damning report on him'.
Sorry, that was a little ruder sounding than I intended, but the trans community caught on to Brianna Wu's little grift years ago. She's a blatant truscum willing to throw anyone else under the bus.
I've been watching her get dragged on Xitter for years. Here's one so bad (She fricking promoted the Harry Benjamin standard of care, from the _1970s_, a thing trans people have been pushing against for decades) that she deleted her posts:
On “Making Lawfare Great Again”
Trump has already abused pardons for people on h'is side', like for Roger Stone, along with pardoning Jared Kushner's father Charles Kushner, who it should be pointed out that was not even conceivably a political prosecution, happening in 2005. (He was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering about those things.)
He also has pardoned someone convicted of war crimes... And I'm not talking about things that we might differ on whether they're war crimes or not, I'm talking about actual deliberate shooting of civilians In cold blood, arrested and convicted by the US military (people forget the presidential pardon power extends not just to civilian law but the military code), but the pro-fascist far right took him up as a cause because how dare a US soldier be held accountable for violating orders and murdering civilians. I'm on my phone right now and I can't be bothered to look up his name, but that pardon really should have gotten more pushback, but 'really should have gotten more pushback' is pretty much the defining trait of the last decade.
So whatever hypothetical precedent Biden is sitting here has already happened, Trump has already done it. The pardon power is one of the powers Trump already misused. He just doesn't seem to have committed any crimes while doing it, like sold pardons, although apparently that is now legal for him to do.
The only thing that was vaguely startling is that he didn't misuse it to pardon all the January 6th people.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/2/2024”
Heinrich Müller did not have an enemies list. HItler did. Sometimes Müller executed that list, sometimes other people did, but it was not Müller's list.
Müller is actually notable as one of the top Na.zis that does not appear to be any sort of true believer, liking neither Hilter or Na.zism particularly. He was motivated almost solely by ambition. He's basically a career police officer who ended up being promoted into the position, and was perfectly willing to go after anyone his superiors said to, in any way they said. Wikipedia has a quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_(Gestapo)
This isn't to defend him, only to point out how silly the comparison is. Kash Patel is a true believer. Heinrich Müller wasn't, or at least he wasn't in Na.zism, he just did the job handed to him by the Gerrman state, whether that was normal police work or executing Jewish scientists.
"
Almost everything in the bottom half is Republican conspiracy nonsense, BTW.
#1 is especially nonsense.
"
I'm wondering if we're ever going to address the fact that we seemed not to care in the slightest about money fraudulently paid to business under the Paycheck Protection Program to keep them functional and employing people, with huge amount of money sent to people who just blatantly lied.
Or with the fact we probably should have structured that program completely differently. It's not like it's a _secret_ how many people that a companies employs. We could have just done: Oh, you have applied to this, our tax records show you have fifteen employees and pay them X, and you have shut down under the pandemic, we are going to transfer you 80% of this month's paycheck for all of them, you need to pay them that money. All that money must go to your employees...it can go to different employees if you have cycled employees. If you have reduced staff and that is too much, hold on to it for now and contact us. We are also giving you some additional money to cover other expenses like rent.
Just the very basic 'is this a legitimate existing businesses with actual employees?', a thing that can trivially be done by looking at tax records of the previous year, and then looking at taxes _next_ year, where employees file taxes that report that income. How many employees a business has and how much they pay employees is not some opaque thing the government doesn't know, it's literally sitting in their tax records!
Instead, we had people just making up businesses and employees and buying Porsches with it. But, of course, we don't care about that sort of fraud, because those grifters were mostly middle class...the only people we care if they are defrauding the government are the extremely poor.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: The Steam Thanksgiving Sale!!!”
'Pay to not be annoyed' is basically the only other model besides 'pay to win' for games like this, they're not fixing that, they'd make no money from it. If the game wasn't more enjoyable after you subscribed, why on earth would you subscribe?
(I do find it funny you mention you can buy random in-card perk card packs if you have Fallout 1st as some sort of very useful thing. That...is not even vaguely useful. At all. You get to choose a perk card at each level up, and by the time you reach level 70 or so you've gotten all the ones you want, and anyone over 100 or so generally has around 10 perk cards sitting there they've forgotten to even select yet. No one needs five _random_ ones, those are mostly scrapped for perk coins.)
As for the constant repair and repeatable stuff...that's literally how MMOs operate. You will eventually run out of content in the game, and start doing things again, and part of the play cycle is making you have consumables that you have to do minor things to refill before you can do some of the big stuff.
Cycle without that for top level players:
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Fight biggest, most challenging enemy.
Cycle with that for top level players:
Fight biggest. most challenging enemy.
Do some farming to collect mirelurk meat because you want some boost that requires, cook that.
Repair some armor and guns.
While you're there, fix the damage to your house some idiot visitor allowed.
Sell some stuff to buy some chems, restock those.
Actually, you need money in general, so you craft some serums and sell them at the mall...
It's the exact same reason they have random things you have to do to earn S.C.O.R.E. to get seasonal stuff. It's not because it's useful, it's because interjecting randomness and small tasks (One that hopefully are not too annoying) into the play cycle keeps players from getting bored.
MMO cost money to run, and they need people to keep playing them a _lot_ longer than possible any main plot could hold their attention. They are indeed about maintenance, not finishing a story. But that's basically the premise of the genre.
And none of the 'main plots' in an MMO (Fallout 76 has half a dozen.) can to do anything to the game world at all, which makes them somewhat limited. You can't have the plot stop the scorched because you're in a game world where other players have not done that. Completing main game questions mostly just individually gives you access to things, like additional vendors or nuke launches.
On “I Told You So”
Under fascism, the government, or their brown shirt proxies, do kill political rivals. Or, even better, frighten them from speaking or being in public, which removes them from politics without having to take the heat of killing them.
And, yes, there was an attempt to do that here, where the Proud Boys (One of the brown shirt armies working with Trump) attempted to kill certain members of Congress during Jan 6, along with the VP. It's unclear how serious this attempt was.
(It's also unclear how directed that was by the president, but that's exactly how brown shirt armies function. The fascist leadership merely hands them a target, without saying they want anything to happen, and the brown shirts go and destroy that target. Trump is actually notable bad at this and often says the quiet part out loud)
Anyway, I guess you've give up on actually writing down any _real_ lines, which means you conveniently get to keep saying it's not fascism no matter what happens. Cool.
On “Making Lawfare Great Again”
No, but he might want to consider pardoning Jack Smith, who Trump has threatened to go after for running a normal DoJ investigation.
In fact, there actually is a small group of people pointing out that it might be smart to pardon all journalists for anything that they've ever run. Just issue a blanket pardon to any high-profile journalist that Trump has come after (and really any journalist) for anything that they've ever printed, which would seriously impair Trump for coming after them.
On “I Told You So”
That is literally not part of fascism at all. That is, in fact, from a science fiction book. (Incidentally, being sci-fi, it also was just a _guess_, both at how political movements will evolve and how language works. It is not great at the first, and gets the second completely wrong.)
That's just authoritarianism in general. China has mass censorship, but is not fascist. I was specifically looking for fascist signifiers.
I wouldn't make a point of this except that you seem very determined to argue the exact definitions, so I feel it's important to get this exactly correct.
For the record, how do you feel about what happened in Turkey? Where the censorship, which does exist, is pretty thin and not particularly important, the control of information there is simply done by the fact that the regime and supporters completely own every media outlet. (We do all agree that what is happening in Turkey is a form of fascism, right? Let's not quibble if neo-fascism is different from fascism.)
This isn't even vaguely an aspect of fascism, I have no idea where you got this from. It's not even an aspect of authoritarianism.
This is an oddly specific thing that might happen under authoritarianism, but it happens as a side effect of other things.
Also, by that logic, the US was a fascist state until the mid-70s when women could finally get bank accounts. Is that where you are going with that?
It sure has been interesting to watch you attempt to twist this question to score political points.
That is literally the _opposite_ of fascism. Fascism almost always make claims of a past in which everything was better, and how some recent change has made things worse, and we should return to the imaginary past. (Both 'recent' and 'change' are, of course, very subjective and often outright lies.)
Fascism does not assert it wants to 'fundamentally change stuff', it assert it wants to 'unchange' stuff.
It really is interesting to watch you, a person who constantly complains that 'the left calls everything they don't like Hitler', to, uh, call everything you don't like fascism. Fascism is a specific, fairly well-defined political philosophy. It isn't just 'stuff you don't like', hell, it isn't even the same thing as general authoritarianism or dictatorships.
--
Also, wow, if we were to pretend this was an actual list instead of you twisting a bunch of nonsense complaints about the left, that is a really stupid list. You didn't include extremely obvious things like 'killing political rivals'. Or even 'stopping the peaceable transfer of power'. You don't think those would put us in fascist territory? You really don't have any actual lines?
To quote our future president: Sad.
Would you like to try again, listing _actual_ things Trump could do that would make you consider him a fascist (Feel free to just lookup what he's promising to do.) or should we consider this conversation over?
"
Why do you think that Trump will not be able to find people competent enough to create and empower death squads this time?
The only reason he failed last time is that he surrounded himself by more normal people who worked for him who were utterly horrified by what he was trying to do, and stopped him both by distracting him and doing things that, honestly, we'd call insubordination and be horrified at in any other circumstances.
That isn't going to happen again.
Incidentally, the government part of fascism doesn't start with government death squads. It starts with general propaganda and propagandist laws aimed at riling up violent mobs that oppose the 'enemies within', but whose actions can be disclaimed as brave patriotic warriors who are outraged by the situation.
And, of course, arresting the opposition and media.
Hey, for fun, google 'Kash Patel'.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: The Steam Thanksgiving Sale!!!”
I've gotten into Fallout 76 with some friends over the past month. It's actually a workable and real game now, unlike when it launched, and the community is a good deal less sucky than a lot of those types of games...it helps that the game is deliberately set up where there's no incentive to screwing other players over, and PvP is basically non-functional so no one does it.
It has recently gotten a lot of newbies thanks to the TV series (I guess I am technically one of them, I had a urge to play some Fallout and some friends started talking about Fallout 76 and I figured, why not. Although with two thousand hours in Fallout 4 alone, I'm hardly a newcomers to the series), so it's apparently a little weird right now.
So if you like Fallout, but heard bad things about 76 at launch (Which were all true, but the game has been fleshed out) or disliked the idea of online play because you worried about how other players act (Which I also did, but the community is actually really nice), give it another shot. There's a new 'season' starting Dec 2.
On “Turkeys and Drumsticks 2024”
The only think Elon is doing with Space-X is funding it, which is, it should be pointed out, a thing the US government should do. He has also made a bunch of incredibly stupid decisions there that have resulted in it burning even more money for no reason.
Anyway it is going to be hilarious when Trump get tired of Elon and Elon decided to randomly try to swing Twitter against Trump. I don't know where exactly it will go, but honestly, Elon is literally one of the only people who command as much of a cult as Trump does, and their cults are currently mixed together...it is going to be a messy-as-hell divorce.
I can even see Elon attempting to swing left and the left just rejecting him. They already left Twitter, in a pretty massive and rapid exodus for a social media platform, especially one that isn't the immediate result of some huge change on the platform rendering it unusable.
On “I Told You So”
Fascists often disappoint Christians (Despite using them to get elected), what an incredibly silly point.
Hey, Jaybird, just for fun, what exactly _would_ make you think we were in fascist territory?
Like, name a specific thing.
I actually thought we all agreed that 'having a brownshirt army attempt to overthrow the results of an election by violence' would be one of those things, but apparently not.
Do you actually have any defined line that crossing is correctly called 'fascism'?
Also, do you think that someone who has been elected but not taken offer promising to cross those line should correctly be described as fascism even if they are not in power yet?
Feel free to google what 'fascism' is, because you seem really hung up on Hitler and whether someone is or is not him. Fascism does actually have a pretty clearly defined set of traits, and none of them are 'lead by Hitler'...in fact, the actual origin of the term is not from anything Hitler did, but developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini.
Also, fun fact, Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, and thus _no one_ living is him. We just know that from basic knowledge of how long humans live.
"
It's almost as if ICE was _always_ a bunch of fascists, a bunch of racist thugs with no accountability who locked people up with basically no process or recognition of their civil rights, and that fact was almost entirely ignored by the American people because the victims were brown and had accents, and that was true under both Republicans and Democrats. And thus the actual fascist regime needs to change almost nothing about how it works, and the people who were appointed to that position in the past will have absolutely no objection to doing that Trump wants.
What an interesting and novel idea that I'm sure is not any sort of mainstay thought on the left.
ANYWAY.
LOL. Yes. The only people disappointed with minutia of Trump's government are the people who think there is a chance that Trump's government will a) act like a normal government and not the completely random mess it will be, and b) do policies that they even vaguely approve of.
The rest of us really do not care, except to the extent that various appointments weakens his government.
"
Yes, Jaybird, and there were plenty of trade unionists who fled Italy when it was clear that Mussolini was consolidating power in the 1920s. Good catch, way to point out additional comparisons with what is about to happen.
(I could have made a different comparison, but I feel that Jaybird has completely forgotten we have other examples of fascism, because he's too focused on the 'Trump is not literally Hitler' game. (He also has forgotten which side the Catholic church was on during all that.))
"
Also: Why the hell do you think assassinating Trump would accomplish _anything_? What are you even talking about? Anyone assassinating Trump would be _disastrous_ for stopping this, especially if it was part of some left plot to stop his political goals. (Of course, they'd just lie about it and blame the left if it wasn't them.)
Do you literally not understand how the executive system works in this country and who would be in charge after that? Hint: It would be someone with the exact same fascist goals who is more competent.
Do you literally not understand why creating martyrs is bad?
Do you literally not understand why giving a government with fascistic tendencies and view of the world a very obvious reason to present to the country for declaring martial law and crack down on the left would be bad?
Would this result in a very small level of infighting? Yes. But this infighting would happen _on top of_ of innocent people, as fascists tries to prove they were more fascist than each other and they could crush the outgroup more than others. We already have state governors doing that. We know what happens.
"
Jaybird, I'm not playing along anymore. When people repeat lying Republican talking points, I'm just going to say 'Those are very blatant and disproven lies as part of Republican anti-immigration rhetoric' and just stop.
I don't have time to argue against Republican lies anymore. None of us actually do.
And I don't care if anyone finds the accusations 'laughable'. Even pretending you were not blatantly lying about the reactions of Martha's Vineyard and who did what (Which you are), all _that_ indicates is that Hitler stuff is going to be _easier_ because more people want it.
Yeah, and a good chunk of German's supported Hitler too. Really good point you're making there, I guess, where you pretend fascism can't be fascism if some random selection that everyone pretends is on the left side sorta want some of the bad things the fascist government is going to do. Yeah, Jaybird, that's how it works!
I do not give a flying f*ck about who thinks things are 'laughable' at this point. We are not actually in the realm of politics anymore, we are in the realm of protecting minorities.
"
Wait, you meant _us_? Yes, Jaybird, the focus of discussion _here_, on Ordinary Times, is extremely weird. It's a place for disillusioned libertarians and conservatives to argue with neoliberals, with a few very random outliers, and thus is actually kinda silly.
Now, in Trump's case, the entire political system is being extremely silly at this point. The discussion of 'exact policy decisions' around the guy who 'has asserted he going to use the military against his political enemies' and 'is a multiple convicted felon who tried to commit a coup' and 'is about to tank the US economy which will help solidify his and his billionaire friend's power' is hilariously stupid, it is indeed the last scene of Cabaret before things go Really Bad, and it's utterly insane to pretend we are having politics as normal.
But this site isn't going to magically realize that, considering that the actual media hasn't. Maybe I'll make an 'i told you so' tour in about a year.
But as for this _post_: As North pointed out, this entire post is aimed at Erik Erikson and other conservatives who thought Trump would be as 'normal'(1) this time as he was last time.
This is...no one here. Absolutely no one here thinks Trump is going to be 'normal' this time. I don't think anyone here thinks he was normal _last time_, but if they do, they certainly don't think it will happen again. This article is aimed at no one here.
1) Which, to be clear, last time he was not actually 'normal', but he did have some conventional appointees, because some of the people surrounding him were normal Republicans and/or the National Review. The 'grownups in the room'. Those people are gone this time, and thus he will no longer have 'normal people' unless they are appointed to positions that no deranged person willing to suck up is asking for.
"
*sigh*
You are all over the place, Jaybird. You utterly fail to actually state your thesis so no one actually understands you, you make broad generalizations that you then have to pick strange examples of.
And you're wrong: Erik Erikson never thought Trump was Hitler, _even when_ he was a Never Trumper and refused to vote for him.
Erikson's problem with Trump was his _moral failings_, his character. Erikson made it from a position of being A Christian (TM), a claim that a man who is so patently immoral should not be president. He made that incredibly clear at the time. It had nothing to do with Trump's Hitler-ness.
So, would you like to try again, and find a Never Trumper that claims Trump is Hitler (Or, at least, an authoritarian, as absolutely no one alive is Hitler, Hitler is dead.)
Anyone, find one who said that and who now is complaining about how his picks are too liberal?
And preferable find one that didn't change his mind and stop being a Never Trumper way back in _2020_, as Erikson did, which also undermines your point somewhat. But that's not a requirement.
"
What? That is the strangest thing I have ever heard you say. No one has a moral obligation to assassinate anyone. (Even in some magical universe where a) it was trivial to do that, and b) would work at stopping anything instead of just devolving it to the next in line and making him a martyr.)
What being under fascism morally 'requires' us to do is to _not comply_, as best we can. To recognize evil is being done and not help it. (Bearing in mind our own personal safety.)
I literally pointed this out in a post here the other day: There are people here who are on the fence about, say, immigration. Or trans rights. Or whatever.
But some really _really_ bad stuff is about to happen to a bunch of people, and we don't need people standing there helping that stuff, even in the most minor ways.
When the Na.zis are asking you about your Marxist neighbor, you don't make a complain about how he plays the radio too loud at night and once punched you for complaining about it. Even if it is true. He's a perfect neighbor, you never had any problems with him, you don't even think he's a Marxist.
Same with policies. Maybe before, you had some level of national pride and thought maybe it would be nice if Poland was part of Germany again. But, uh...look. You don't think that anymore, or at least you don't _say_ that anymore, because that allow the Na.zis to claim that you support them.
On of the rules about fascism is, under it, you have to think before you speak. That's usually understood to mean 'or you might be in danger', but it's just as 'or you might put others in danger'. Either by directly putting them in danger, or by, even slightly, supporting what is happening, or even supporting some lesser version of what is happening.
To quote Toto: What do you mean 'We,' white man?
I've mentioned it before: The right has horrific operational security. Because they assume the authorities are on their side, so the very very few times the authorities are not (like storming the capitol), they are made to be utter fools.
The left has op-sec, because the authorities have never been on their side. You don't know what they're doing.
"
Yes, continue to blame the Muslims in Michigan despite the vote in Michigan not actually being any different than any other comparable state. Dastardly Michigan Muslims voting in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"
You realize that's a quote by Erik Erickson, right?
A person who voted for Trump and presumably does not think he is Hitler.
The left is criticizing Trump for speaking like an authoritarian or a fascist (and, as we have apparently all forgot at this point, been revealed to have tried to act at various times but people around tried managed to dissuade him during his first presidency. Apparently we're supposed to pretend that the second time is going to be just like the first time, despite the fact we have learned how many times he hit the guardrails the first time, that are no longer going to be there.)
The right is attacking him for not being conservative, which is also a... I mean, I guess it's a valid point, I don't care, the fact he's promising to do horrific things to outgroups is slightly more important than who he's decided to put in random government positions, but whatever.
"
I'll show up here, and I haven't moved on. (I will be kind and not bother to explain it being fascist doesn't make Trump 'Hitler' or even a Na.zi... it just makes him a fascist.)
Are we simply not going to talk about Trump promising to use the military against the 'radical left lunatics'?
On “The Mandate That Wasn’t”
Referee: Okay, everyone, the football game is starting in an hour, and I want this to be a clean game.
Democrats: Are we going to address the fact the opposing quarterback is not eligible to play and appears to be wired with dynomite? We object to that?
Low bang goes off as the quarterback explodes, followed by dozens of people running around completely naked, general circus for seven minutes.
Referee: *AHEM*. As I was saying, the football game is starting in 53 minutes, and I want this to be a clean game.
Democrat: Um, okay, so, the quarterback blew up, so we withdraw our objection to him, but, like, we also object to these other guys too.
Trump defenders: As you can see this was all a clever plan by Trump's team to distract the other team while he repeatedly scored! He is so smart! *gestures at scoreboard, which is not lit up yet as the game has not started*
"
Who on earth do you think Trump 'negotiated' with here?
Trump has literally never been competent at anything, ever. He certainly hasn't in real estate, where he has managed a constantly failing empire that gets propped up by the _money laundering_ that is 'New York high-end real estate' and even failed at both that and _running multiple casinos_, eventually getting bailed out by a TV show that decided he was celebrity enough to be on reality TV.
It really doesn't. It literally does the opposite. If Gaetz had stayed in, and gotten to a nomination fight, and _other_ unqualifiyed-but-not-at-the-level-of-hiring-underaged-prostitutes nominees got in while he was being debated, sure, we could pretend that was some clever strategy by Trump.
But we are _two months away_ from the Trump presidency and the actual nomination fight. Gaetz didn't improve the path of anything! Everyone just immediately moved on to the fact that Pete Hegseth is _also_ someone who is unable to be a normal person about sex, because he apparently raped a prostitute he hired, which he denies...not the prostitute part, the raping her part.
The only person that vaguely came out ahead in this entire thing was Matt Gaetz, who was mostly able to pretend his resignation was for reasons besides 'Congress about to release damning report on him'.
On “The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty”
Sorry, that was a little ruder sounding than I intended, but the trans community caught on to Brianna Wu's little grift years ago. She's a blatant truscum willing to throw anyone else under the bus.
I've been watching her get dragged on Xitter for years. Here's one so bad (She fricking promoted the Harry Benjamin standard of care, from the _1970s_, a thing trans people have been pushing against for decades) that she deleted her posts:
https://x.com/badinfinity2/status/1636511420605952003
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.