“The colossal emptiness and lack of meaning of these never-ending events was by no means unintentional. The population should become used to cheering and jubilation, even when there was no visible reason for it…”
German journalist Sebastian Haffner, writing in 1939 about Nazis.
If you wonder why Trump’s rallies all have the same lies, the same lines, and the same call-and-response with the crowd, it’s because it’s effective as a propaganda tool. The impressionable people watching those crowds can be made to feel a sense of belonging when they watch.
Goebbels, head of the “Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,” believed these frequent, flashy events—no matter how devoid of substance—would be a powerful tool to win enthusiastic adherents to the Nazis’ nationalist dogma, even as their own agency was being eroded.
It isn’t hyperbole to suggest there are parallels between Trump’s GOP and Germany’s NSDAP.
Pop quiz: which of those parties attacked oppositional media, sent “election monitors” to supervise the vote, and held frequent rallies to unite their followers against the evil “others?”
Of course, the answer is self-evident.
We must not allow history to repeat itself.
Make a plan to vote. Vote in numbers too large to manipulate. That means: involve others in your plan; make sure they’re voting, too.
End this nightmare, so we can begin to heal, and to rebuild.
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You’d think that Trump’s own DOJ would be shouting from the rooftops about “Hunter’s hard drive” if it was found to be legitimate after a digital forensics analysis. But they’re not.
One thing we do know: the FBI was investigating if it’s a Russian disinformation campaign.
The repair shop owner said the computer (an an external hard drive that appears to have been purchased by the shop after the laptop was allegedly dropped off) was given to the FBI for a grand jury investigation in December 2019.
Also in December 2019: NSA Chief O’Brien told Trump that he believed Giuliani was being targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign in an effort to influence the 2020 election by discrediting Joe Biden.
As some of you may remember, I spoiled my mail-in ballot. Rather than risk a mail delay and requesting a new one, I planned to surrender it and vote early, in person.
It struck me how lucky and privileged I am to live in a (mostly) blue state, and in a (mostly) white county.
1/
After arriving at the county clerk’s office—where early voting has been live for three weeks—I waited in line to surrender my mail-in ballot. By “in line,” I mean, “I waited three minutes to be helped by a county official.”
I then waited for them to process my replacement.
2/
And by “I then waited,” I mean, “it took one minute.” The line behind me was…one person, a young Black woman. I was handed a replacement ballot, my new voting buddy and I gave each other a crinkled-eyes smile from behind our masks, and I filled it out.
3/
Docs show the laptop was dropped on Apr 12, 2019. They also show an external drive and its serial number.
Western Digital’s web site says that drive’s **3-year** warranty expires Apr 18, 2022…meaning it was manufactured Apr *18*, 2019.
If the data was on the MBP’s NVMe SSD, it was either readable or not. The TRIM command is constantly shuffling blocks around to level the wear on the memory cells, and any legit data recovery firm will tell you: recovery of damaged/deleted files from an NVME drive is impossible.
The external drive was claimed to be used to recover the data, but there is no “recovery” of a solid state disk drive, such as the one in Hunter’s alleged Mac. If the data is corrupted or deleted, it’s lost forever, unless the Mac’s owner runs a *specific* command from a shell.
You’ve probably seen this ad here. The majority of the video is for another product entirely. It shows a projection from the Sega Toys Homestar, which is $240. (And is amazing. I know; I bought one like 15 years ago.)
You can see it briefly in the video (snapshot below)
The Sega device is amazing, has multiple lenses, and microfilm-style projection discs that create an amazingly lifelike star field. Like, seriously, it’s fucking amazing.
But this advertised device is cheap, and projects a cartoonish scene without regard for realism or focus.
It’s sold by one of a dozen or so cookie-cutter web sites you’ve probably seen running ads on Twitter. Often with nonsense domain names (in the .co TLD) and with most of the sites using the same exact template. Everything they sell is advertised in a misleading way.
My primary isn’t for two weeks. If you’re doing any math around who gets whose Warren’s votes if she drops out before then:
I am a progressive Warren supporter. I decry racial, financial, gender, and social inequality.
I believe that big corporations have an obligation to “pay back” (by way of higher taxes) the rest of us that paved their way.
I believe that free markets result in a consolidation of power and wealth that benefits the already-rich and powerful…which harms of the rest of us.
I believe in civil liberty. The right to privacy. The right to be forgotten. The right to choose. The right to be seen & treated as an equal. The right to an education that improves one’s capacity to contribute to society. The right to not live in fear of guns every-damn-where.
Over ten years ago, @guardian published a story about cults and their charismatic leaders. They included a list of behaviors that should be warning signs of an unsafe group or leader.
I'll list them in this thread, along with sample news stories about Trump that align with them.
1) Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao Zedong curated dysfunction in their respective governments, in order to gain power.