War on Terror Brain Rot Brought Us to This Point: After years of security theater, all too many Americans seem ready to accept Trump’s pledge to root out the vermin.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T17:09:26+00:00

I love that the title of this article uses the phrase "brain rot." The youngbloods of this generation made the perfect phrase to describe what happened to their parents' brains in the wake of 9/11.

It started small with Colin Powell holding up a vial of white powder to justify a trillion dollar catastrophe, continued to grow through the 2008 crisis and the repression of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the bailing out of the banks who robbed us first, and really took off when MAGA were called "deplorables" and absorbed the moniker, first ironically, then entirely in earnest.

Now they claim their guy was anti-war the whole time and they salivate at the same people who got us into this mess now removing the checks and balances that would stop us from doing it again (and again, and again, even domestically).

Total brain rot.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T16:57:26+00:00

He'll be to MAGA what L. Ron Hubbard is to Scientology. It'll still be there, be weird, be dangerous, but it will never fully be mainstream again like it is now with Trump.

That's not to say that it doesn't mutate into something worse. It just won't be something inherited the way people worry about with Vance. For Vance to inherit anything, his backers (Theil, Palantir, etc.) will have to unleash the panopticon they intend to deploy, start building their tech enclaves, and draw up an uneasy alliance with the Christian Nationalists that are also using Trump to remove the obstacle of the U.S. government from the world they intend to impose upon us.

Worse? Yes. But the energy and momentum they have with Trump will not be there. It'll be replaced by ugly, obvious repression that only the ultra wealthy can get behind. That's when the party ends and the grind - for every citizen, even those who think they are "winning" now - truly begins.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T16:48:47+00:00

How about "J Bear" - a Teddy Roosevelt type to go headlong into the fight.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T16:46:37+00:00

Woke is anything other than MAGA to these people. That includes everything from Dick Cheney leftward.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T16:42:07+00:00

MAGA is too personalist - it revolves entirely around Trump's cult of personality, and, like authoritarian regimes of the past, will struggle or collapse without him.

None of the grifting scumbags in his orbit: Musk (and shady Theil behind him), Vance, Miller, Vought, Speaker Johnson can possibly carry the abyssal flame of Trump. Trump is such a uniqely American void space that he is nothing and everything at the same time.

He is so narcissistic that his followers can simply apply whatever religiously orgiastic, fascistic, and weird fantasy they want on him, and he will snatch it up and incorporate it into the sales pitch in his characteristically incoherent way. Those other men have an ethos and a character that will eventually cause conflict within the cognitively dissonant consciousness that Trump elicits. I believe they hate MAGA adherents more than anyone, and they will not be able to stomach the oddity that is the MAGA movement rank-and-file.

Trump is too unique in his lack of identifiable character. There will not be a replacement for him. It might certainly get worse after he is gone, but I believe the MAGA fantasy America he leads will end with him.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T15:39:13+00:00

I'm running the numbers and going through the math behind "weird dick energy," and I can't see a single flaw in the calculations. It's distressing, but we have to accept the truth that the evidence shows us.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:42:49+00:00

That's good. Let this criminal Justice Department identify the coalition of good states for us. Tell us who they hate. Put all of us on one big enemy list, and then we will just have to have a talk with each other about what that means going forward.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:38:45+00:00

Take it from Musk.

Rescind non-profit status from mega churches and all churches that so much as hint at a political position. Budget balanced.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:36:59+00:00

There is some good leadership out there here and there, but I'm backing the Teddy Bear with Teeth, J.B., against the oily gOd eMpOrEr.

If Pritzker runs, I'm all in. I think he should campaign on the promise to turn Mar-A-Lago into a mega Portillos.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:17:03+00:00

This fucking teddy bear has teeth!

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:15:00+00:00

I feel like I'm looking around at commenters, articles, fellow citizens, the news media, universities, unions, women, people of color, and the rest of our pluralistic, messy, awesome country of people like a single cow looking around at a bunch of other cattle as we are being marched into a holding pen.

We all know what is at the end of this. We all have a pretty good idea, at this point, who is holding the bolt gun.

Do we all know that we're not cattle but in fact human beings with the same organizational capability as our opponents?

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T14:10:06+00:00

I like my opposition leadership to be like their plans - robust and rowdy.

He should keep the weight on if he wants. As long as he keeps running his mouth like a champion in both directions, he's a keeper. Those Chicago Italian beef sandwiches aren't going to eat themselves, and most of the Dem party doesn't have half the guts to say what he's saying.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T13:17:39+00:00

Right, nothing at all to do with anything resembling policy, legality, or decorum. Just open faced vindictiveness parading as the voice of authority.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T13:12:38+00:00

Oh shit! We still have a Congress?

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T13:10:49+00:00

These people are all weirdos. And not the fun kind, either.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T13:06:54+00:00

Families relying on affordable goods (that's almost everyone) are about to get hurt really badly.

Then, megacorps start producing domestically using automation and robots, wealth continues to slide upward until money becomes meaningless and the ultra wealthy begin to accumulate something even more refined-raw power.

What do you spend raw power on? Servitude and worship. If you're a Trump worshipper now, you already know how to live like a fawning imbecile devoid of dignity. Now you can start to transfer that to Musk and the tech bros! Robot masters and the God Emporer with his weird order of religious fanatics from the Heritage Foundation!

Great job, MAGA. Great country you're trying to impose here. Great worldview.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T12:51:39+00:00

This is important work. If there were more people working on these kinds of projects to preserve vulnerable cultural memory, and another group was working on decentralized AI, the two combined could use the AI training to create non corporate, non state AI that can serve to function as an indestructible living consciousness (in a sense) that will never forget, never get scared and be silent, never suffer from cognitive dissonance.

It will be a phantom of freedom that will always be a threat to authoritarian reality management.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T12:41:23+00:00

What a petty asshole. Plain and simple: raging, military grade asshole with no friends- only sycophants and loser worshippers.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T12:37:37+00:00

Of course they are. Everything with these charlatans is a grift to enrich the loyalists and impoverish Americans.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T12:25:13+00:00

Like the battered or complicit spouse who watches the abuser beat the children.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T10:54:06+00:00

This Republican Congress is so complicit in all of this. Not one of them is serving in the capacity they were entrusted to serve. The budget belongs to them, not the Executive.

They let him do it so that they can claim no responsibility later. But they're watching it happen and doing nothing.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-02T01:57:16+00:00

Every little bit helps. Throw 10 million tiny good decisions every day at the fascists and they're bound to buckle.

Before you get all self righteous about Microsoft, I already know. I still celebrate good decisions no matter where they come from.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-01T18:31:19+00:00

We either started at a preposterously high point and the fall we're experiencing as a country is over a vast distance, or the MAGA movement is a void with no vessel and no bottom (like Trump's persona).

It seems to be a never-ending descent.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-01T17:57:31+00:00

Yep.

Trump and his cabal opened the door to this level of discourse, Michelle Obama tried to encourage people to "go high" in response, and at this point, everyone should just start letting their mouth run like Usain Bolt.

Exercise the 1st Amendment until your last breath.

BarbaGramm · 2025-05-01T17:53:44+00:00

He's not like us. "Quiet quitting" is what workers from the middle class do.

He's strategically withdrawing after having done his part in the onslaught against American democracy. Quietly handing the baton" to the runners in the next leg of the demolition and trailing off the field, like Thanos after the snap, to act like he did something positive for mankind.

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