New from me @splinter_news

JD Vance has happily sacrificed everyone and everything that has ever meant anything to him for power and profit.

He's the perfect running-mate for Trump and the heir apparent capable of taking MAGA to its next vicious level.

splinter.com/in-j-d-vance-t… Everyone is focused on how Vance criticized Trump, but this only obscures the power-hungry viciousness that he brings to the table.

His is a techno-fascist ideology. He's openly lusted after destroying democracy. And unless people recognize that, he'll get what he wants.

JD Vance is a historic piece of shit who sold out his family and people to make a buck and gain power. He’s in bed with techno-fascist billionaires and is one of the foremost advocates for a literal fascistic ideology that seeks to take MAGA to the next level of oppression. It’s bad enough that Vance is such a colossal asshole and that his ideology is literally fascistic, but he is capable of taking the MAGA baton and turning it into a force the likes of which most have yet to even imagine.

Terrible, terrible day for the country.

For years MAGA has promoted a culture of violence and oppression.

Now, in the wake of the shooting, calls to lower the temperature disgustingly obscure that fact and also undermine the need to protect millions of Americans from authoritarianism.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/this-new-wor…
This isn’t a “both sides” issue. One side has waged an authoritarian war on democracy predicated on violence. The other has said people deserve safety and dignity and shouldn’t be hunted and systematically erased.

This false equivalency is disgusting. And telling.

Absolutely disturbing but unsurprising that they’ve managed to equate a movement’s constant fearmongering and calls for literal violence and murder with people saying, hey, maybe this other side calling for literal violence and murder is dangerous. I just want people to remember that the reason this environment is so charged is because 1. One group has spent years openly talking about carrying out a bloody, reactionary revolution and 2. There are literal human beings whose lives and fates are on the line.

New from me @splinter_news

Donald Trump capitalized on Right Wing, evangelical paranoia and created a cult that views him as a messiah.

Following the assassination attempt, the next stage in that evolution is likely to be violent and even more extreme.

splinter.com/trumps-hardcor… Trump has used Christianity’s persecution complex and obsession with apocalyptic danger to his advantage, crediting imaginary battles between Good and Evil.

Now, they have a ready-made situation that will inflame those fears and necessitate more extremism.

Churches around America today are undoubtedly framing the assassination attempt through Christian ideology, some adhering to dogma and others telling a story that forwards Donald Trump as a messiah figure God personally saved on behalf of Christendom and America. The response by GOP figures to say God saved Trump will not be isolated. Rhetoric will only become more and more apocalyptic, throwing gas onto an already raging fire of Christian Nationalistic radicalism.

People need to wrestle with this and get familiar with it in a hurry.

The Supreme Court is, and has always been, a tool of the wealth class in its war against democracy.

We should expand it, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough. Like the Senate before it, we need to make the Court democratically-accountable

splinter.com/the-supreme-co… Simply packing the Court only kicks the can down the road. Justices should be elected by the people, be restricted by term limits, and subject to some of the most stringent ethical oversight imaginable. Until then, democracy will continue to be strangled.

Just a free piece of political advice: get a bunch of progressive coalitions in a room and draft an aggressive and aspirational counter agenda to Project 2025.

Drag the bastards out of the shadows and make them defend their ambitions. Turn it into a referendum. Center the counter agenda on reproductive and voting rights with specific goals, refunding education, investing in public works, and push court reform as a means of putting it on the ballot.

Focus on expanding rights and protections rather than just holding the status quo.

If Biden is staying in can someone please tell anyone associated with emails and texts and social media posts to stop focusing completely on him staying in the race and, for the love of god, start talking about what he’s going to do to address our major problems if he wins. Like, talking incessantly about his status as a candidate is only feeding an out of control cycle and jockeying with Democratic members and donors. Say you’re going to expand the Court. Release a detailed plan to codify reproductive rights.

Hear me out here.

There’s a way to talk about what’s happening with Democratic Party and the conflict over the nomination while also not losing sight of the fact that Trump is a generationally dangerous figure being used as a weapon by a wealth class dismantling democracy. That’s not to say our media is doing it. The Biden story is rich for capitalization, drives clicks and draws eyes. It’s a media feeding frenzy lacking actual nuance or respect for the situation and its consequences.

It’s a colossal failure but that’s what this media does.

The last few years have shown just how utterly dysfunctional society is and how that’s reflected in our politics. Now, in the past week, that has been emphasized by an inability to have anything approaching actual conversations about power and the myriad crises we face. A crisis requires clarity and trust. And it is so glaringly obvious how little of both we have, which checks out after decades of intentional precarity, the demolition of solidarity through relentless alienation, and the rewarding of sociopathic behaviors in all areas.

We’re in the middle of a full blown crisis and being forced to have conversations about power and abuse and aging and trauma and the past and the future that we were never taught to have.

In fact, capitalism actively incentivizes not having those conversations. This isn’t just a political crisis. It’s a mental health crisis. The issues we have with ourselves and our families are scaled to the society level, and capitalism and history in general has burdened us with so much trauma that it keeps us from recognizing what’s happening.

Just a reminder that every single time the Center will warn about the dangers of the Right and the Left and then immediately form coalitions with the Right because their differences are aesthetic and rhetorical, not material. The shared, main principle is service of capital. This is what keeps getting misunderstood in America.

The Center is fine with liberal democracy as long as it serves their purposes. But when things get dicey, they will soft-wash authoritarianism until they full embrace it.

That's what's happening now.

Alito’s comments that he views the Court as a weapon in a spiritual and existential war are revealing, but unsurprising.

The Court has been captured by the wealthy in order to destroy democracy by any means necessary, and we must begin fighting back.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-quiet-pa…
Alito’s extremism and Thomas’ corruption expose a larger threat: a long term plan by the wealthy to capture the Court and dismantle our rights and protections in order to cement control has come to fruition.

They aren’t outliers. They are perfect representations.

Authoritarianism is on the rise and democracy is on the verge of destruction because the wealthy have dismantled reality.

That's why we're awash in conspiracy theories and why education, journalism, and science are being demolished.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-flooded-…
The wealthy have always attacked information and tried to control education and access to information about what they have done, but this new era gives them incredible tools to complete what they have always tried to do: control reality itself.

Right now, we are losing this war.

Trump’s conviction should be the end of his political career.

The Right rallying violently around him should be a moment for some to realize we’re in a severe crisis and leave behind the comforting lies they’ve been sold.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/when-the-end…
For years people have been making so much money and gaining influence assuring followers the system would solve the Trump problem. That he would be held accountable and the spell would break.

These are false prophecies. The date of the apocalypse came and went. We’re still here.

Persecution is essential to the Right’s worldview.

They can become wealthy and influential for no reason whatsoever, get treated seriously despite never earning a shred of it, and still it’s never enough to fill the emptiness that defines them. The Right is defined by undiagnosed and repressed trauma, a self-hatred that has to be projected onto the rest of the world.

There’s not enough money or fame or power to fix it and any measure of it just feeds their self-hate, making them more and more miserable.

Trump should be punished for his crimes.

But the circus around his trial is more about avoiding talking about actual problems and instead believing our institutions are fundamentally sound and Trump isn’t a symptom of a much larger disease.

jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/decline-and-…
The Trump Hush Money Trial is a perfect tabloid storm. But nothing coming out of the trial will matter electorally.

And even if Trump were to go to jail, the Right Wing authoritarian movement won’t just dissipate. It’s comforting fantasy and entertainment.

Apple has unintentionally made one of the most fitting and revealing advertisements of the modern era.

My god. This horror perfectly encapsulates the feeling of life as the powerful wreak escalatingly careless and clueless destruction.

https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1787864325258162239

That nobody at Apple looked at this nightmare and vetoed it is everything you need to know. They were just in a hurry to sell some dumb, barely updated version of an old product and thought people would enjoy the visuals. And they gave us a perfect discordant horror show image.

The thing that so many people are resistant to deal with is that the protests aren’t just about Gaza anymore but also state violence and what confrontations over power will look like as our crisis worsens.

And how that and Gaza and all our other major issues are tied together.

https://twitter.com/prem_thakker/status/1786796023584629133

We’ve been conditioned to segment all issues, to separate them, but the truth is that the very force that enables indiscriminate brutality around the world is what keeps women from controlling their bodies, people of color from voting, and what keeps oppression rolling.

You’ll notice that Congress is a complete traffic jam, a black hole of legislation, until it’s time to pass a weapons deal, approve a new war, pump money into a market as it’s about to collapse, fund law enforcement, or restrict the people’s rights. There’s a reason for that.

Neoliberalism transferred trillions from the working and middle classes to the rich, allowing the elite to co-opt our government and turn the state into its own piggy bank and enforcer.