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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
I just assume that if the deep state actually set up a shooting to assassinate Trump, they would probably succeed at killing him. It's hard for me to believe that they would manage to get a shooter within fairly easy range of him, yet the shooter would miss. The lone wolf theory seems way more plausible to me. In any case, if the deep state has had 10 years in which to kill Trump and they haven't done it, then they are fairly irrelevant as a political force, which is part of my original point.
As for the progressive status quo, I don't know where you are getting that from. I disagree with progressives on a range of issues, including HBD, policing, and the economic consequences of socialism. The average progressive would certainly not classify me as a fellow progressive if exposed to my unfiltered political ideas.
If Trump didn't turn his head at the exact second he did, he'd be dead now. Call it luck, call it coincidence, call it providence, it wasn't incompetence that saved Trump that day. You can, if you are naive or lying, claim incompetence put him in that position, which is exactly why pretending to be retarded has been such an integral strategy for the deep state. And it is also why the lead 'counter sniper' in Trump's SS detail was two years into his career, wasn't on counter sniper detail, and forgot his radio. And why that chubby cutie was playing hot potato with her gun. And why they blamed the local police. And every other insane detail from that fiasco.
As for the progressive status quo, it's because you keep buying into this ridiculous hysteria despite a decade of fake news declaring every saucy tweet Trump fires off the end of America and democracy. And never mind that the people we supposedly put in charge of promoting America and democracy abroad were primarily lining their own pockets but also helping fund groups that literally fucking hate America and democracy. And you don't mind it, because the media, which you inexplicably still trust, tells you it's just defunding trans operas and aids cures and you probably can't fix it anyway. You have to recognise by now that you are being manipulated. I mean how can you read the motte, read posts by people like @WhiningCoil and @jeroboam and me and not realise that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." is a blatant appeal to red tribe values, in the same category as 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time' and '1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN'?
Edit: edited out a cheap shot
You know what, since I've been summoned...
You know how virtually the only thing the FBI ever did (prior to persecuting their political opponents) was textbook entrapment? Talk some neuro divergent weirdo in their mom's basement into joining ISIS or committing a McVeigh style attack, sell them some fake (or real) materials to do it, and then immediately arrest them? Take a few victory laps proudly in public about how they caught another "terrorist" and they're doing such a good job keeping America safe. Then depending on whether they caught a white guy or a brown guy, one party or the other would grumble. And libertarians. Always the libertarians.
Isn't it weird how as often as the FBI does this, we've never heard about them accidentally letting someone they radicalized slip between the cracks and actually commit an atrocity? I mean, you'd have to assume it's happened at least once. Everyone fucks up eventually. Maybe it was Bob's last day and the hand off of his casework was just sloppy. And if I were the FBI, and that happened on my watch, I'd bury that shit as hard as I possibly could.
I think about that sort of thing a lot with the Trump shooter in Butler PA. Except minus the part about him accidentally slipping between the cracks after being radicalized. It would be remarkable with all the declassification and all the regime enemies in charge of intelligence if we ever find out. But given that google searches for "Bleach bit", "lawyers", "wipe hard drive" and "offshore bank" are exploding in DC, I suspect they have their tracks well covered. You know... were that the case.
McVeigh described himself as the person whose fingers were slipped through originally to his attorneys. Of course, just one version of the narrative.
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