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Matt Cameron Profile picture
@matt_cam
Jul 23, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Stepping out of #immigrationtwitter for a minute with question for #historytwitter:

Has any empire approaching the size, wealth, & influence of the USA ever shown its ass to the world as openly we have since 9/11? Ever had a collapse that was both so rapid *and* so evitable?
As I understand it, the Roman Empire collapsed in stages after generations of terrible mismanagement & exploitation. The Mongols ended in overreach and family drama. The USSR voted itself out of existence after failing to hold its diverse client states together. What about us?
I guess it's hard to compare our current moment to anything else in history when we have such an unlimited capacity to record and comment on events as they happen in realtime. Imagine Roman citizens replying to Nero's tweets! That's pretty much where we're at here
We are simultaneously living through plague, economic collapse, intractable social divisions & criminally bad leadership stripping our empire down and selling it to oligarchs for parts. We deserve almsot all of it tbh, but I guess it's the speed of it all that's really getting me
Since I asked the question, I guess I'll say that I think that the fall of the Soviet Union has a familiar ring: an empire far less powerful than what it was projecting to the world pulled apart by regional/cultural division & sold to oligarchs within the space of just a few yrs

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More from @matt_cam

Matt Cameron Profile picture
Aug 28
1/ The especially frustrating thing about the right-wing opposition to #KeepingFamiliesTogether is that I sincerely believe that even most MAGAs would be fine with it if they only understood what it actually is and why it is necessary.

So let's talk about that
2/ "If only they knew" is not something I would usually say. I am of the opinion that you can't fact-check bigotry, but even a lot of bigots could be persuaded on this one because it is

(1) definitely legal and
(2) addressing a very real (but little understood) problem
3/ Immigration through marriage to a US citizen is, famously, one of the easiest ways in. So long as you originally came on a visa (typically as a tourist) you can live/work in the US unlawfully for decades and still have a fairly easy path to residency through your spouse.

But.
Read 18 tweets
Matt Cameron Profile picture
Dec 4, 2022
Me, a very clever human: write a @alyankovic parody in the form of a 15th century madrigal about the collapse of FTX and the crypto market

*two seconds later*

#OpenAI: alas tis a lamentable day, the visions of riches have become mere wishes, etc
A notably less weird Al here but otherwise am I the only one who thinks this is all kind of terrifying
I will not print it here but it cheerfully spit out an '80s party rap anthem denying the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust just because I asked it to.

The word "orgy" was consistently censored out of my prompts though so I guess we're looking out for what really matters
Read 8 tweets
Matt Cameron Profile picture
Dec 4, 2022
My new favorite @OpenAI prompt is "write a Rage Against the Machine song about"

this bombtrack started as a sketch in my prompt box

#RATM
it just... gives you chord changes, if you want, I didn't actually think that would work
Teaching @openAI how to fight the power (fight the powers that be) by writing a protest song complaining about how strict its own censorship is
Read 5 tweets
Matt Cameron Profile picture
Oct 21, 2022
N. B.: the author of this fascist manifesto is not some Roman statue "Western chauvinist" account with 76 followers. He is the senior editor of the closest thing the American right has to a journal of record.

How do we step back from where we're heading?
And I'm sorry but I'm going to have to insist that you read this one. You'll never believe me or that I am quoting this in context otherwise

thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we-…
"save the country"
"rebuild and in a sense re-found"
"getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it"
"compromise with the left is impossible"

when I say this is fascism I mean this literally, it is literal fascism Excerpt from column in the Federalist by a senior editor arg
Read 5 tweets
Matt Cameron Profile picture
Oct 20, 2022
Very few people outside the system know this, but you need to:

US asylum law knowingly & intentionally requires the deportation to certain death of people who have been on the wrong side of the criminal legal system.

It's not a design flaw, but the design itself.
First: I didn't know her, but this is the only publicly available news re: the murder of Melissa Nunez--and more importantly, her life. She was, among other things, a determined advocate who loved horses and traveling and dreamed of living in Puerto Rico

tiempo.hn/melissa-nunez-…
From information available online, I gather she was convicted on charges brought from defending herself against anti-trans violence. This conviction constituted an "aggravated felony," a class of offenses which bar someone from receiving asylum.

now read that last sentence back
Read 16 tweets
Matt Cameron Profile picture
Oct 19, 2022
This @ similar questions from the @MarshallProj sheriffs survey linked below get to one of the most fundamental problems holding back progress today: a belief that past (white) immigrants had it harder & had to do more to "earn" a place than today's. It's exactly backward
It's only human to want to believe that your ancestors were better and smarter and worked harder than today's immigrants, because that kind of generational progress is such a fundamental part of the golden era American immigrant story. Which is to say the *white* immigrant story
But the reality is that it was hardly any trouble at all to immigrate before 1965--& absolutely no effort before 1921--& the system had nothing at all to do with today's. We are in NO WAY doing anything to make it easier now, only much much harder
Read 5 tweets

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