My point about voters is that everyone you EVER interact w on political twitter, at political events falls into the tails of this distribution (2.5%). Most people who watch mainstream major networks news, read @nytimes or @WAPO,watch Sunday shows would fall within the 13.5% bands
Although there are certainly some primary voters who hail from the two 34% areas, the bulk of the two party's primary electorates come from the right & left flank of this graph, which means the far left & right are far more extreme than average & even the center and mods are more
conservative and liberal than the average electorate. For all the convo about the Dem primary, polling consistently shows only about 40% of all people who plan to cast ballots in it, people who as a group are already non-representative of the whole country, have watched a debate
Much of the people sitting in those two 34% bands are America's "disengaged" (as @pewresearch calls them). They aren't particularly ideological, but bc of that, they aren't all that inclined to participate (although this is NOT the only thing driving our low participation rates).
So when I give public lectures and interviews I try to remind my audiences that if they are hearing me talk, they are in the 1%. And when they look around confused I clarify, "no, no, not the income 1%, the information 1%. Th engagement 1%. And this is the crisis that underlies
every other crisis we have in American politics."
I want to add this follower Q to the thread in case other people need this frame of reference. Very good Q!
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🧵We're Deep in the Shit Now
The Only Way to Win the Shutdown Was Not to Play
The Shutdown Power Grab
The government is shut down. That alone is bad enough, but here’s the kicker: Trump and his people have already said out loud that they’re going to redefine what “essential” means. Under normal shutdown rules, the basics keep going: Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, air traffic control, border patrol, some law enforcement. Everyone else gets furloughed. It’s disruptive, but it’s not supposed to be apocalyptic.
But this isn’t a normal shutdown. Trump isn’t Ted Cruz throwing a tantrum in 2013 or the Freedom Caucus in 2018 trying to leverage a short-term crisis. He doesn’t want the government back open. He wants it broken. And a shutdown is the perfect crowbar.
Smart People Are Dumb, Dumb People Are Experts:
Welcome to the De-Enlightenment
To tens of millions of Trump supporters, expertise itself is proof of corruption. The more qualified you are, the more you must be part of “the deep state.”
This isn’t just dumb. It’s coordinated dumb. It’s the De-Enlightenment: a deliberate inversion of the values that built modern society.
I monitor MAGA for a living. My feed is a constant firehose of crazy — conspiracy memes, medical quackery, climate hoaxes, and 19th-century economics dressed up as “America First.”
And the pattern is always the same: the very markers that once signaled someone was trustworthy — credentials, experience, a government position — now mark them as suspect. To tens of millions of Trump supporters, expertise itself is proof of corruption. The more qualified you are, the more you must be part of “the deep state.”
This isn’t just dumb. It’s coordinated dumb. It’s the De-Enlightenment: a deliberate inversion of the values that built modern society.
The Enlightenment (which religious nuts hate) Changed to Entire World
The Enlightenment was a global jailbreak. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant blew open the old world of kings, priests, and mercantilism. Isaac Newton’s physics gave us a cosmos governed by laws, not whims. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations gave us comparative advantage, free trade, and the idea that nations prosper by specializing and exchanging, not hoarding and walling off. The Enlightenment’s gift was method: reason, evidence, and institutions that force power to justify itself.
I didn’t want to be in DC on election night. I was sick to my stomach. But I went anyway, because if Harris won, I wanted to give people hope, and if she lost, I wanted to make sure no one could spin it as just another “normal” Republican victory.
On Sky News, I sat next to two grinning Republicans celebrating their win. And I said it plainly: this isn’t conservatism, it’s fascism. The panel looked at me like I’d dropped a bomb. But I wasn’t exaggerating. I was describing what’s right in front of us.
We watched Trump try not to leave office in 2020: the fake electors, the call to “find” votes in Georgia, the pressure campaign on DOJ to send fake fraud letters. He came within inches. The only reason he failed was because a handful of officials refused. Those people are gone now. Next time, there won’t be resistance.
🧵From Goebbels to Google:
Shame Shit, Different Century
When people say “social media is destroying our society,” they act like we’ve never been here before. But we have. Exactly one hundred years ago, a new technology burst onto the scene, and within a decade, it had completely altered politics, democracy, and the way people understood reality.
That technology was radio, and the Nazis immediately understood its potential to warp minds.
The parallels to today’s social media crisis aren’t just striking—they’re terrifying.
The First Mass Medium of Intimacy
Before the 1920s, mass communication ran through newspapers, pamphlets, and journals. These had editors, fact-checkers, and some degree of accountability. But the radio was different. Suddenly, the most powerful voices in the world could beam directly into people’s living rooms. No mediation. No filter. Just a voice in your ear, in your home.
🧵The Prices Are Too Damn High:
Trump's Tariffs are Hitting Americans Hard
Donald Trump loved to promise that other people would pay for his schemes. Mexico would pay for the wall. China would pay for the tariffs. Cute. Here’s the correction: other people don’t pay. You do.
Your kid. Your neighbor who works nights. The person at the hamburger joint sliding fries across the counter. Tariffs are a stealth sales tax — invisible, regressive, and perfectly designed to hurt people who can’t afford it.
This is Tax Scam 2.0. He calls it “tough on trade.” You call it “where did my paycheck go?”
How the Con Works (No Econ Class Required)
A retailer imports a $100 pair of work boots. The administration slaps a 20% tariff on them. The importer now owes $20. Who pays? Not the factory overseas. Not the CEO of the importing firm. You do — the price on the shelf goes up. That $100 pair becomes $120. Then your state charges sales tax on that $120. You just paid a tax on a tax. Congratulations. You’re in the art of the deal.
🧵Fear Factory
Turning Point isn't a Debate Organization, its a Conflict Machine
Charlie Kirk didn’t invent conflict entrepreneurship, but he sure helped to perfect it. He is the prototype of a generation of right wing internet entrepreneurs who figured out that the surest way to build power, attention, and money otherwise off limits to them is not by governing, legislating, or even persuading—it’s by manufacturing outrage and monetizing it.
From the garage to the donor class
Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 at just 18 years old but he wasn’t some grassroots kid hustling alone. He had a mentor, Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery, and very quickly he had a benefactor: Foster Friess, a conservative megadonor who bankrolled much of the group’s early work. That early money mattered. It allowed TPUSA to scale fast—staff, merch, events, and a social media strategy that turned “triggering the libs” into a donor-driven business model.
By 2015, Kirk had what every young conservative hustler of the early digital age wanted: legitimacy with the Republican elite. He was on panels, quoted in political press, and standing on the floor of the Republican National Convention in 2016 being profiled as the future of conservatism.