“smirk you think nothing happened under Trump. Well, here’s a list of bad things that happened under him. …yes, Biden then proceeded to do much, much worse on some of these issues and many others and I don’t regard him as the same threat to democracy, but…”

refused to allow the peaceful transition of power

I mean he literally did do that. On the 21st of January 2021, Trump was indeed no longer president and everybody who mattered agreed, including himself. Kind of the ultimate failure of the “fascist dictator” story if they get voted out of office not a second later than other presidents have.

if Project 2025 happens then that is a failure of the American system for allowing it. in which case, why do we care about the preservation of this system? we should, like, make a better one, probably. it’s also funny to read the plan for Project 2025 and see how Biden is quite happily enforcing, or at least not opposing, several of its policies. Biden’s anti-immigration policy is essentially no different from Trump’s, he’s arming police at a massive rate to create a fascist police state, he’s expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and opposing renewables just because they come from a different country, he refuses to restore country-wide abortion rights, all this anti-trans legislation is happening under his presidency, etc. it’s a real head-scratcher that he has the power to send Israel billions of dollars of weaponry without Congress needing to sign off on it, but as soon as a good policy hits his desk, suddenly it’s simply impossible, it’s against the Peepee Poopoo Bill of 1985 to do it, I’m sorry, we need the parliamentarian’s permission, etc.

you have to understand that a Palestinian dying of starvation has no ability to tell if the bombs being dropped on their mosque originated from a Democrat or a Republican. and if you’re the typical American Democrat with zero empathy for anything outside your border as I suspect you may be, it’s also impossible for a homeless trans person to tell if the rifle-carrying officer forcibly relocating them and their limited possessions was sent by Biden’s Awesome Epic Law And Order Program For Reducing Crime or Trump’s Evil Fascist Law And Order Mandate For Crushing Criminals.

perhaps, if things get bad enough quickly enough, but in all likelihood I think we’ll just have elections that are increasingly shambolic. the shadows on the cave wall have always been more important than the real thing.

their insistence in the sanctity and preciousness and power of Western democracy is directly correlated to the degree to which they are disempowered and made more obviously false. the last election until the generals take over will be regarded as the most righteous and free of all of them, and will consist of a single set of voting booths per state, surrounded by police and dogs and tanks, with the insides surveilled by the best AI face technology yet conceived.

Obama’s word is absolute law so that guarantees that Biden will be facing off against Trump, pretty cool

it is definitely ultimately manufacturing consent for the “partisan” “democratic” system. hypothetically, the ideal political debate would be a civil discussion about the candidates’ respective worldviews and how they differ, and I don’t see anything explicitly wrong with that, but in practice, this is all taking place between two bourgeois capitalist parties and so it’s all just rather pointless.

it certainly feels very ridiculous now when the candidates aren’t really doing any political discussion at all, hurling thought-terminating cliches at each other and comparing golf performance (real life truly is just reddit) but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if this sort of thing was going on 50 years ago. in fact I’m fairly sure it was, given that I’ve heard that Nixon sweating was a big thing back then, when there were so many other reasons to despise that man.

the most ironic thing is that I find people who are persona non grata to the West like Putin do actually tend to have something approaching comprehensive understandings of issues. I’m sure we all remember that interview with Tucket where Putin starts off an answer talking about Russian princes from centuries back, which was joked about by many. I’m reminded of Nasrallah explaining, perhaps surprisingly to Zionists and Westerners in general, that he is perfectly aware that Jews do not rule the world from behind the scenes, and that America - and American imperialism - is largely responsible for the near-century-long catastrophe in the Middle East known as Israel. It makes sense; many Westeners are fundamentally incurious people. It actively benefits them to not learn about the world around them and mindlessly devour the fruits of the hard work of the many billions below them. Knowledge of that arrangement carries guilt, even if you decide to cope with it by becoming a fuck-you-got-mine conservative. Better to not think of the forever wars and keep your head down.

they could drop a thousand thermonuclear bombs on the border and Mexico and the incumbent would still be regarded as “weak on immigration”. in a million years, when we have all ascended to a digital existence powered by dyson shells surrounding a thousand stars, the Americans that we left behind will still be arguing about immigrants and asking the presidents what their plans to deal with it are, and the media will be crying about how there’s a giant caravan coming to destroy America from beyond the stars

The saddest part of this election is that I can’t vote for both candidates, given what an excellent performance they both gave in the debate. Profoundly illustrating the biggest issues in America and describing expertly how they’d solve them.

The best essay I’ve seen that really drills into fascism - not just how it’s presented itself throughout history, but what it is at some fundamental level, and how the various fascisms of various states are interlinked - is Roderic Day’s Really Existing Fascism, which both explores fascism and also explains how Nietzche is its progenitor (although, as always, it’s more complicated than that) much like Marx was communism’s progenitor (of the non-anarchist variety, and again, it’s more complicated than that).

The most relevant part of the essay (though the whole thing is very good and worth reading):

I’ve seen Umberto Eco’s checklist simultaneously be rejected and accepted by the left. Some will say that it’s non-Marxist and prefer not to use it, but if anybody here says “the enemy is both strong and weak,” nobody (that I’ve seen) rejects that rhetoric device. I think the list is… fine. It’s a useful object to create pipelines further left. It’s “fun” to go down the list and explain how each bulletpoint corresponds to a feature in American society, because some of those things are just so accepted that it’s like trying to tell a fish that water exists. But one mustn’t lose sight of the definition of fascism given above.

The left-liberal conception of fascism is pretty interesting and/or strange, though. As you say, “you see a lot of libs and liblefts calling America fascist, but then being asked how, and not being able to respond.” If you’re a liberal, and your entire conception of fascism is “It’s what Hitler did,” it is pretty confusing to call America fascist. Where are the death camps? Where is the dictator?

I think at least one of the big reasons why liberals get so confused about fascism - simultaneously opposing it yet fumbling around about definitions and comparisons; calling Trump a fascist and yet not violently opposing him - is that by being liberals, they don’t really fundamentally disagree with any of the tenets of fascism. The problems with Hitler are very easy to describe. How many of them could, if pressed, offer an explanation of why exactly Mussolini was bad, let alone Franco? The “trains ran on time” myth is very emblematic of this sort of begrudging respect that liberals have for fascism. And how many liberals could articulate why the genocide of Native Americans isn’t remembered with as much abject horror - never again! - as the genocide of European Jews? How many of them have positive or at least complicated impressions of Manifest Destiny, but shudder at the word Lebensraum?

In the liberal conception of reality, the Jewish people endured so much hardship that they deserved a state and endless money to protect themselves - could they explain why, without looking like fascists, the Native Americans don’t deserve this? Can they explain, without looking like fascists, why neither them nor Black Americans deserve reparations? Many strange contradictions abound due to the white supremacy hiding like a black hole at the center of liberal ideology. This black hole is not there by accident. In the essay I linked, it’s explained that liberalism came into being to excuse and justify slavery, essentially. Many of the top liberal figures (thinkers and leaders) had atrociously racist views. This cannot be dismissed as “people were racist back then” because no, not everybody was bigoted back then, unless you don’t consider people outside the West to be people (that white supremacy again!). Stalin, as the essay quotes, was against anti-semitism and had strong principles about why. He accepted hundreds of thousands of fleeing Jews at the same time that the US was sending ships full of Jews back to Germany, for a large number of their occupants to later die in concentration camps. Liberalism has no problem with fascism’s bigotry and atrocities, while socialism opposes it.

One of the major problems with basic political communication with liberals today is their denial of the principle contradiction (imperialism), as well as the anti-communist propaganda that has totally polluted their conception of reality and history, and talking about fascism is one of the best ways to illuminate the divide between liberals and socialists.

yeah, it just feels like social media now isn’t merely posting, it’s the experience of watching yourself posting. submitting yourself to the panopticon willingly. I think your early Facebook experience might actually kinda match what Hexbear is now, at least in the general megathreads, albeit with necessary anonymization.

I have a complicated relationship with the concept of creating a “brand” around oneself because of what I just said. on the one hand, it can feel nice to be this known quantity on the internet, even if it’s in the most limited way possible. the phenomenon of recognizing others and yourself being recognized by others on different platforms might be a nightmare in terms of opsec but there’s a certain euphoria there too. on the other hand, it feels like a total capitulation to capitalism and online surveillance and the most harmful forms of western individualism; treating merely having opinions as this revolutionary act but totally disconnected from changing anything. many personalities I see online have this desire for a social media brand, to be promoted from Screaming Into Void to Screaming Into Loyal Fanbase. it seems a big change from the early internet you describe, which seems more Screaming Into Friends (more accurately described as “a nexus of close, reliable friendships and/or romantic interests” I suppose)

watching people play games for the first time just stresses me out, especially when they’re very unwilling to receive hints (perfectly understandable to not want to get backseated but it does undoubtably result in a lot of time spent doing things that I know are a waste of time and so I’m just anxiously waiting there like “ok, when are they gonna figure it out so we can move on?”)

Streamers are only useful as background noise for me. Whenever I try and just watch one, even smaller ones, I inevitably get annoyed - they have some personal quirk that bothers me, enforce the rules too little or too much, or when politics comes up, it’s usually either milquetoast lib stuff said sanctimoniously or people who are kinda left-leaning but their closeness to meaningfully good opinions is itself annoying as I want to push them on but I cannot because that would be creating a parasocial relationship. I prefer to just move on and remove them from algorithmic recommendations.

Having any kind of “allegiance” to a streamer or really any content (bleurgh) creator just seems unwise to me, no matter how amazing they are and correct they are on issues. Because the drama will come for them, and then instead of discussing real-world issues, you’ve delving into reddit threads about he-said she-saids to determine if they’re Still A Good Person or not.

It feels like the modern incarnation of celebrity culture but for people who say they don’t care about celebrities. “Oh no, I don’t give a shit about what’s going on with Taylor Swift or Megan Markle, caring about random people like that is kinda weird. HOLY SHIT have you seen the newest video by Blungle292? The video game challenge he just did is so INSANE and DIFFICULT.” And explicitly political streamers? Good god, I don’t even go near them, they’re inevitably uninteresting and annoying.

As somebody who fits best in the zoomer archetype:

Cannot get into ASMR. I’ve tried. Often its women 20 years younger than me, rubbing their fingernails on hairbrushes. The intentional sounds they make with their lips and fingers are things that would make me want to change seats on a bus.

I really understand this. I’m not massive on ASMR but there are a couple I think do a pretty good job. I gravitate towards the more non-sexual stuff and higher-concept, higher-effort stuff, and tend to avoid anything that’s too intimate because it makes me very uncomfortable as an aro.

Instagram. I was maybe the last person to get a smart phone. It was probably 2016. I’m just fully lazy to take photos of stuff. This is a real issue when I’m single and I need to start putting photos on dating sites, as all pics of me in my phone are me squeezing carrots in my nostrils and similarly goofy things.

I also don’t use Instagram or really any phone apps like that. I only have a Whatsapp for work. My opinion of TikTok has changed from “I have no idea what’s going on there and want nothing to do with it” to “Hm, maybe it actually does have some potential if the US wants to get rid of it” but I still will never download it, just very uninterested.

I feel like I’m an odd zoomer as I don’t really use social media beyond Hexbear and checking my twitter for ~10-20 minutes per day for geopolitical news, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a very large minority of zoomers who also not plugged into this stuff and we just find it difficult to find each other because, uh, that would usually require social media nowadays.

They’re also getting pretty shit at colour revolutions tbh. They can start them but then it just kinda dies down and eventually the thing the US hated happens anyway. They don’t always fail (e.g. Peru) but it’s far from guaranteed success

Nate Silver is the temple’s leading haruspex. When he predicted in 2012 that the volcano god would not erupt based on the entrails of a bird, he was widely applauded for being correct among the townsfolk.

usually it’s reddit or twitter posts, so I might as well occasionally bring along some moderate-wing fascists from tumblr to round out the only 5-6 platforms on the internet

My single issue is that I don’t vote for people who are actively committing a genocide.

If I ever have kids, I would so fucking disgusted with myself if they asked me what I was doing during the Palestine Genocide and I said “…I voted for the person carrying out the genocide.” I can’t even imagine. It’s like if you were German and your parent or grandparent did nothing during the Holocaust; you’d be so ashamed to be associated with them.

Nearly 100,000 transgender youth live in states that banned access to health care, sports, or school bathrooms in 2023

Oh, you expect Biden to do anything about the red states banning trans existence? Those are STATE ISSUES!

Also, yes, Biden does indeed have the ability to completely bypass Congress on matters of sending colossal amounts of weaponry to states actively wiping out millions of people. That’s just how things landed! The system just happens to be this way! Total inability to do good things and not even vague oversight when doing bad things! If you think this is bad, then vote! …nobody is running against changing those systematic issues except third parties, and the two parties have no reason to change this and many, MANY reasons to keep the current system intact, and we have no real way to exert power over them due to our refusal to even withdraw our votes let alone take major co-ordinated national action, but…

It would be so hilarious if shit popped off in northern Israel during the 8 hour downtime in a few hours. I don’t see why it would, but maybe Nasrallah is a Hexbear lurker.

I have no mouth but I must celebrate Zionist death

Time and time again the Ukros resort to naked terrorism due to their lack of military success

The Zionist strategy. Can’t win against Hamas? Well, we might as well torture thousands of Palestinians within an inch of their lives in the most barbaric and humiliating fashion; that’ll teach them to never try and rise up against us again! (author’s note: it did not stop them trying to rise up against them again and instead prompted further and more intense resistance)

He said the situation facing his government had been “titanic” and claimed his administration is returning “15 points of GDP to the private sector.”

It’s so weird that literally every single time a capitalist government takes power, without fail, in every single country, the government faces immense challenges caused by the previous government spending too much and increasing the debt, necessitating austerity measures to try and fix things and undescribed Bad Things will happen if everybody doesn’t do some self-sacrifice!