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Notes -
Trump just tweeted "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
I know that Belisarius thinks I'm a far-leftist (lol), but I think that a fair reading my post history will show that I am what I present myself as, more or less a classical liberal who hates both the left and the right.
I've spent a lot of time and energy both online and offline defending Trump and Trumpism from the often hysterically-phrased accusation that it is fascist, a huge threat, etc. I feel a bit like an idiot now, to be frank. I still hate the woke and am somewhat glad that Trumpism rose up to halt the woke's authoritarian tendencies... but lord, more and more I wish that it had been almost anything other than Trumpism doing it. The argument that Trumpism is fundamentally a classical liberal force is becoming more and more absurd almost by the hour, in my opinion.
Accelerationists (the three or four actual ones for whom it's not just a funny pretense) must be rubbing their hands raw with glee right now. Things are moving very fast.
As much as I appreciate some of what Trumpism is doing to upend stale norms and wokism, at this point I, and probably many other centrists are starting to think "shit, maybe the hysterical libs had a point about these people". And if politics is making me start to side even slightly with literal Redditors, you know that things are bad and crazy.
My biggest mistake, I think, was to extremely overestimate libs and the left. I really thought they would manage to blunt Trumpism's worst impulses and there would be a sort of stalemate like there was during Trump's first term. But libs and the left seem to be missing. Turns out that there is no deep state waiting with sharp fangs and CIA assassins to stop the orange man as soon as he tries to actually do anything that hurts the Blob. Instead, there are only old tired bureaucrats and the occasional protester wearing a pussy hat.
Whoops. Well, so much for that. I was wrong. And this shit is starting to be a bit genuinely alarming. I think I am, actually, getting tired of "winning". I wanted the woke to be defeated by classical liberals, not by a rage-filled vengeful gaggle of right-wing revolutionaries.
Jesus Christ. So unless the spooks succeed they don't exist, even if the last year has just been incident after incident proving they exist. Even if we now have plenty of evidence of the deep state and espionage shenanigans, the media said this is different so let's get scared for America again! Progressive politics just let a large swathe of California burn to the ground and the media told us blaming politicians was the height of rudeness, but Trump said something typically hyperbolic, that is both appealing to red tribe sensibilities and and agitating to blue tribe sensibilities so let's all lose our minds like msnbc suggests! Bel is right, you can call yourself a centrist, but the only answer you will accept is the progressive status quo.
Edit: fixed a link
What the hell are you talking about? The level of deranged obsessive yet performative hatred and outright lying about California that exists in the right-wing sphere never ceases to amaze me. Are you saying "progressives" started literal fires? Or do you think your hobby horse and tribal "enemies" somehow made firefighting less effective? Or is this some weird dig at homelessness and media influences perceptions of petty crime, and the assumption that level surface tibal party politics has anything to do with them?
Yes.
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Our idiot mayor (promoted far above her competence because of her race and gender) decided to be in Ghana even after she was warned that conditions were going to be particularly dangerous for fires.
The deputy mayor - also a part of the same ethnic political machine - was out of the picture because he is being raided by the FBI for allegedly calling bomb threats in to City Hall.
The third in line - the City Council President who only got the gig after the previous President went down for allegedly racist comments about the same ethnic mafia - was too busy cutting off public comment and oversight over City Council meetings and didn't do anything either.
In previous fire seasons, fire-engines were forward-positioned in the hilly areas to respond quickly to reports of small brushfires before they could spread and get out of control. Efforts were made to clear fire access roads up into the hills and cut away excess brush. DBS inspections were made of properties with notably overgrown brush and fines assessed if the landlords did not engage in required clearance. Etc. Etc. None of this was done, and the fire department itself dedicated to issues of gender and sexual diversity rather than actual fire-fighting effectiveness.
To say nothing of how decades of one-party liberal rule have led to a situation where our municipal water infrastructure is ancient and creaky - unable to deliver the volume of water needed in a true crisis - the DWP has become a byword for corruption instead of competence, and we still have the same number of fire stations as we did when the city had half the residents.
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I think my hobby horse and tribal "enemies" somehow made firefighting less effective. How did you write level before surface in the last sentence? It's breaking my brain. Did you construct this post with the cut-up method?
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