David Atkins Profile picture
Nov 26 13 tweets 3 min read
A big part of the freakout you're seeing from Elon and the rest of the rightwing crowd is that they just ran a whole campaign against the "woke mind virus" and LGBTQ people in an electoral environment that should have favored them heavily--and they lost. /1
They thought they had a big popular majority for "anti-woke." They did not. They lost. Elon is going anti-woke, and going broke. All their rightwing startups are going belly-up.

They lost a Senate seat, and without new illegal gerrymandering they would've lost the House. /2
Normies voted against them. Women were more furious about Roe than they expected. Young people voted big against them.

They've lost the culture, and they've lost faith in electoral solutions to it. Who is gonna save them? Trump 2024? DeSantis 2024? Lol. /3
Tech is stacked in favor of the GOP: the Facebook groups/algorithms & YouTube algorithms favor them. They dominate AM radio & cable news. Twitter was the most balanced & responsible, so Elon bought it because the far right couldn't stomach even a hint of social responsibility. /4
But they still lost. They lost the popular vote in 2016. They lost in 2018. They lost in 2020. They lost embarrassingly in 2022. They lost in Brazil. Putin lost in Ukraine. White Christian Nationalism is failing. So they're taking desperate measures for control. /5
As generational replacement continues and the failures of authoritarianism become more obvious, they will lose even harder. The desperation for control will increase. Times will get more dangerous. But as long as the rest of society resists ,we will win. /6
This "rest of society" is what the far-right calls "The Cathedral" as if it's some conspiracy. They see themselves as a brave rebellious resistance to it. But of course none of that is true. They are defending the hegemony of good ol' boy power. /7
Meanwhile, "the cathedral" is no such thing. Creatives, the well-educated, scientists, real altruists and curious all lean left. Young people are economically disadvantaged, and lean left. The big problems like climate change do not have rightwing answers. And importantly.../8
Now even big corporations *seem* to lean left in their public comms only because 18-45 years are the target advertising demo. And guess where we live, what our values are and how we vote?

The Fox News audience isn't the target demo anymore. Too bad. /9
So now you've got a coalition of theocrats with aging, declining followings, and megalomaniac billionaires who think only an dictatorship under their control will lead humanity into a sci-fi future of their grandiose and self-serving delusions. /10
But normal people aren't buying in--especially the vast majority of people under 45. They're going to lose. As for twitter? Either Elon gets bored and makes it normal again, or he turns it into Gab and destroys it as the people who actually provide value here move elsewhere. /11
And regarding Elon's "longtermism"? No worries--progressives and ethical science will get us to a sustainable sci-fi San Junipero future just fine. And we'll get there faster and more safely the more that Dunning-Kruger tyrants like Elon are sidelined from control over it. /end
And since we're adopting backup plans to ditch Elon's far-right Gab 2.0, I've crossposted this at Post.News here:

post.news/article/2I6QKW…

And at Mastodon here:
mastodon.world/@DavidOAtkins/…

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More from @DavidOAtkins

Jan 10, 2021
I understand why the media are calling it a "mob" conducting a"riot." But it's just not true.

QAnon is a CULT. This was a quasi-religious cult engaging in a theocratic, seditious coup.

If ISIS or Scientologists had done it, you wouldn't call it a "mob" or a "riot." /1
The FBI is looking at each person trying to ascertain their own intent. But they wouldn't do that if this was an attack by ISIS or some other violent cult.

Everyone who was there, knew what they were there for. They were all in the cult, and the ideology was public. /2
The intent was expressly to overturn the secular government with a government of the Great Awakening, headed by God Emperor Trump. The Ichthys & Crusader flags were no accident. The scaffold was there for a reason. The zip ties, all of it. They knew what they were there for. /3
Read 9 tweets
Jan 10, 2021
It's less mystifying when you realize that none of the seditious mob thought there would be consequences.

They thought they were helping Trump cross the Rubicon, that Congress would affirm him as president, and they would be the heroic vanguard of the New Trump Imperial Order.
If you were closely following QAnon over the last year, none of this was surprising. They all thought they would be the heirs to the Republic when Trump brought "The Pain" during the "The Habbening," conducting show trials and executions for Trump's enemies. /2
The zip ties & the gallows were there for a reason. They expected to force Congress to send the electors back to the states, to conduct "citizens' arrest" of members of Congress, and to hold show trials and executions as Trump triumphantly announced the beginning of the "Storm."
Read 8 tweets
Jan 7, 2021
If Trump really is decompensating in his bunker demanding martial law and gleeful at the violence on his behalf, the answer isn't to try to wait him out for two weeks while Pence quietly runs things. It won't work.

Proactive action *must* be taken.
Either Trump isn't too dangerous to be president, or he is. If he's too dangerous--which of course he is--then he MUST be legally removed. If he isn't, he's the president and the constitutional order must be observed.

Putting him in a timeout room is not an option.
We're a nation of laws, and our ethics are broadly rule utilitarian. For a huge number of small things, we bend rules and that's ok. It's why we have prosecutorial discretion.

But on the biggest things like this, we absolutely have to follow the rules! Or change them!
Read 4 tweets
Jan 7, 2021
Watching the artificial fake comity of the U.S. Senate on one side, and the threat of civil insurrectionist violence on the other, and I'm honestly not sure which one fills me with more disgust.

The people on this floor hate each other, they don't want the same things. Admit it.
The uselessness and fakeness of the U.S. Senate is part of what brought us to this point. Nothing is allowed to get done. Republicans in the Senate are pursuing a coup by only slightly less violent means than the flag-waving MAGAs. It is a boil on the rear end of democracy.
The wild disparity between the attitude in this room, and what is *actually going on in the real world outside* could not be more stark.

And it's perfectly obvious that most of the speeches are painfully rehearsed and fake. It's like a puppet show of inauthentic politics.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 3, 2021
Btw, what is happening with the Dore/Greenwald faction canceling AOC, Nomiki, even Nina Turner as establishment mods? It happens Every. Single. Time. Every time outsider progressives actually get involved and try to fix things.

Happened to the Deaniacs and the Obamans, too.
Stay involved long enough, and everything just looks like an endless cyclic mandala of pain where no one ever learns, and the same jackasses with the same personality types try to ruin things every time for the same selfish reasons, using the same failed theories of change.
And then whoever the New Cool is in 2028, will dismiss the long-suffering, hardworking Berniecrats who were frozen out for years before getting enough power to change things, as losers who never really got "it", whatever "it" is.

Sic transit gloria mundi.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 2, 2021
One thing right-wing aligned dictators learned in the last decade how to hack democracies and install rightwing dictatorships in all but name. They did it in Hungary, Russia and Poland.

And they're doing it here in America, too. /1
In most cases it involves a combination of stacking courts and rigging the constitution until you functionally can't lose elections as long as you hold onto an older rural religious authoritarian base. /2
In America it looks like using existing apartheid iniquities in the Senate and electoral college, and then multiplying those injustices by devolving presidential elections to statehouses that are themselves rigged by gerrymandering. /3
Read 5 tweets

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