They want you to believe America is exceptional while Americans huddle against the freezing cold in the powerless dark, beg for money for healthcare online, go without clean drinking water, and sort through trash for food thrown out of massive chain grocery stores.
The fourth largest city in the United States is without water. Many of its people are in danger of freezing to death. All because we’re gripped by austerity and oil-dependency funded and defended by the wealthy and their bought-and-sold politicians.
This moment of crisis, not just in Texas with this storm, but the individual suffering, the racial and economic suffering, this roiling climate catastrophe, this fascistic death March, is because of one disastrous decision after another by the wealthy and powerful.
We are living in the consequences of malicious and incompetent management over the course of years and generations and no one responsible will admit their part or work to repair the damage. All they have are conspiracy theories and partisan blame to win news cycles.
If watching our decaying infrastructure crumble while undeniable climate change lashes us and we have to bury hundreds of thousands of our dead because we lack a shared reality or even a remotely-sane healthcare system doesn’t do it I don’t know what will.

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More from @JYSexton

17 Feb
I've been thinking a lot about Twitter, social media, and how we need better means of communication for larger, more complex, nuanced, and actionable ideas so that we might change things.

So. I'm starting a substack. I hope you'll subscribe and join me.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/coming-soon?…
What I hope to do is find a place where I can take the writing and research I've used for my threads and dives into history and current events and really expand on them.

Not to mention, a place where a freer exchange of ideas can take place to make the world better.
I want very badly to fight back against the mythologies that keep us prisoner, while also highlighting actual means of changing this world.

This Substack account will be used for that, as well as a place where I can give behind-the-scenes looks at what I'm finding in my research
Read 6 tweets
11 Feb
QAnon and the plethora of conspiracies are intentional fracturings of reality that serve to deflect blame from Right Wing ideology for the current state of the world and redirect it toward hidden plots by its enemies.

It’s dangerous, murderous denial.

religionnews.com/2021/02/11/sur…
We’ve reached a point where Right Wing and neoliberal policies simply don’t work anymore and the only alternative is to blame the failure on clandestine, unseen actions. This is the very essence of fascism, to demand more power to right the wrongs you’ve constructed.
Denying these conspiracies and ridiculing them only gives them space to grow and fester. We need to address the failed policies of the Right, reimagine a realer, more human society, and move beyond this shambling walking dead system.
Read 4 tweets
8 Feb
All right.

For people who want to know just how dangerous conspiracy theories like Qanon are, and want to know how and why we must defeat them, let's talk about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and what these paranoid appeals are capable of doing.

1/
We need to start back in 1682, with a cartoon printed by Francis Barlow called "A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot."

From the beginning of the printed word conspiracy theories about deep states and international plots were being disseminated.

2/
This "Popish" conspiracy theory claimed that the Pope and the Catholic Church planned on overthrowing England using a "state within a state" that would undermine the nation and turn its citizens into Catholic slaves.

That's right. It's Qanon in the 17th century.

3/
Read 17 tweets
8 Feb
Hear me out here, but maybe it would help sell your agenda to fully prosecute a tyrannical, irresponsible, criminal of an ex-president, which is the right thing to do anyway, and make the case that an ambitious new direction isn’t just necessary but imperative.
But, what do I know. I’m not an overpaid political consultant who’s lost 98% of the campaigns I’ve worked on and eaten dirt every time I’ve been in power but keeps getting massive jobs because I already know everybody anyway. Maybe it really is “complicated.”
The degree to which the Democratic Party can continue to make the same, predictable mistakes, and how those mistakes are so often spurred and directed by a class of centrist, talentless mercenary consultants, is just truly and breathtakingly astounding.
Read 4 tweets
6 Feb
Thinking a lot today about how fortunate we all are that Trump is an absolute coward. Coup attempts, plots to overthrow the election, war-brinksmanship. Things could’ve been so, so much worse if he was made of sterner stuff.
Watching Mike Lindell’s documentary was like realizing I’d narrowly avoided being struck by lightning in the past. The madness Lindell and Sidney Powell surrounded Trump with, and the madness Trump listened to, was as toxic and deranged as it gets.
Reading accounts now of the meeting Powell and Flynn had in the Oval Office, where Trump listened to their plans for coups and takeovers, waiting on someone to just carry it out for him...if he would’ve acted on any of this we would’ve been in real trouble.
Read 6 tweets
5 Feb
Again. Do not retweet or respond to these blatant attempts to provoke outrage. It only amplifies her reach and gives her impressions. She isn’t in DC to govern, to make anyone’s life better, she’s there to build a brand for herself.

We have to learn from the past.
We’re dealing with an incredibly dangerous thing here, a generation of fame-obsessed people who traffic in fascistic ideas and inspire violence as a means of self-aggrandizement, profit, and, sadly enough, brand development. We have to change how we deal with this.
If you feel the need to deal with people like MTG, to get information out, don’t retweet, quote tweet, or respond. Screenshot, explain what she’s doing to try and distill the poison, and recognize this is a communications strategy she’s employing.
Read 4 tweets

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