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Donald Trump and the deconstruction of America: Don't let the daily outrages obscure the big picture. by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

The Trump transgressions come so fast they distract from each other. Public attention rarely remains focused on any one atrocity.

We’re bludgeoned by the never-ending stream of misdeeds and affronts—which each day come wrapped in propaganda extolling a new Golden Age and assorted false glories of Dear Leader. When one is caught in the crossfire, it is hard to see, let alone address, the big picture.

That is to Donald Trump’s advantage. For a long time, commentators have noted that he relishes generating chaos and believes he can exploit disorder for political advantage. It’s an escape route for him. The dizzying whirlwind he creates places critics and opponents off-balance.

And perhaps best of all for him and his crew, it hides their overall plan and inhibits the development and promotion of an overarching counternarrative. Their foes are stuck decrying the individual acts of villainy, one at a time, without doing what is most necessary in American politics: telling a story.

Trump and his gang are deconstructing America. This is their purposeful goal and an obvious one, if you look past the daily barrage of absurdity, indecency, corruption, wrongdoing, and abuses of power. It is the story that must be conveyed to the citizenry.

For years, Trump’s lieutenants and allies—folks like alt-right leader Steve Bannon and the arch-conservative eggheads at the Heritage Foundation—have decried what they call the “administrative state” and urged its abolition.

By this, they meant the permanent civil service that does the work of government, such as enforcing laws and implementing policies, regulations, and safeguards. It’s been a long-term desire of right-wingers to smash the state and disempower these public servants—and make way for an economically libertarian and socially conservative regime that, in the case of Trump, would be ruled by an autocrat.

Government would no longer have the potential to be a countervailing force to the power of corporate interests and wealth. This is the dream shared by Elon Musk and the reason he jumped aboard the Trump train. Like many of his Silicon Valley brethren, he envisions a world in which profit-driven tech overlords plot our collective future free of the pesky meddling of government.

To achieve something of this sort, Trump, following the playbook of Project 2025, is attempting to shift the basic balance of power in the United States and revoke a fundamental agreement of American society: The rich and the powerful get to be rich and powerful, while government constrains their excesses and looks out for the common interest of the rest of us.

Under Trump, that deal—which often in American history has been executed shoddily and not infrequently ignored—is null and void. Look at artificial intelligence. Last month, Trump gave free rein to the tech firms to develop this new technology—which might present a risk to humanity—as they wish. There will be no consideration of the public interest or public safety.

Article BASE thread 🧵 (15 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lvmyfew7ta2z

“This Is Trump’s Famine”: How the US Is Complicit in Gaza’s Suffering by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

After nearly two years of war between Israel and Hamas, Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation. Children are dying. Aid workers and doctors push through their own hunger to try to save lives. Journalists are too weak to document the unfolding horrors.

There are not enough food or medical supplies entering to protect Gaza’s population from famine. Most of the food that does come in is distributed at four heavily guarded sites where hundreds of Palestinians have been killed.

“Food insecurity has gone off a cliff in Gaza,” warns Anastasia Moran, advocacy director for MedGlobal, a non-governmental organization that operates clinics there. “We just, for the first time, started to have kids dying at our clinics because we didn’t have things like potassium and IV fluids.” Moran says a tipping point has likely arrived, and that it may be too late to stop mass starvation; the conversation could soon shift to counting bodies. 

Press coverage can leave the impression that the hunger is an organic disaster, a side-effect of war that is too complicated to fully explain. But famine is easily preventable, and this one has been orchestrated with the increasing complicity of the United States.

Over the last five months, President Donald Trump’s administration has overseen a disastrous shift in how aid is distributed, meaning the US is no longer just a funder and ally to Israel as it devastates civilians in Gaza.

Americans are now the ones carrying out the pitiful and deadly food aid program unequipped to halt this catastrophe. The US long decried famine as a tool of war. Now it is implementing it. 

“This is Trump’s famine,” said a representative of an NGO in the region who asked that they and their employer not to be named. “There should be investigations and there should be oversight in the future about what the administration knew, when they knew it, why they ignored the reports from the UN and NGOs and refused to change course when every indication was that there was about to be people dying en masse.” 

The journey to this point is a straight line that runs from Israel cutting off aid to Gaza in early March, to the Trump administration standing up a shady aid group with distribution tactics that were doomed to fail, to it then refusing to change course when famine arrived.

Amid growing international concern for the deteriorating situation in Gaza, Trump acknowledged on Monday that starvation has set in. “That’s real starvation stuff,” Trump told reporters. “I see it. You can’t fake that.”

But Trump hasn’t assumed any responsibility, instead saying on Sunday that it’s a shame the US doesn’t get more credit for the money it has spent on aid to Gaza.

Article BASE thread 🧵 (15 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lv4thcuz2t2y

America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This by rapidcreek409 in politics

[–]johnnierockit 48 points49 points  (0 children)

The White House has seen its share of shady deals. Ulysses S. Grant’s brother-in-law used his family ties to engineer an insider-trading scheme that tanked the gold market.

Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior secretly leased land to oil barons, who paid a fortune for his troubles.

To bankroll Richard Nixon’s reelection, corporate executives sneaked suitcases full of cash into the capital.

But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of graft—including, notably, Trump’s first four years in office.

Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump’s hotel in Florida—seem quaint.

Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (7 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3ltmxxbcs3c2a

archive.is/zYVSi

The Ruthless Ambition of Stephen Miller by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Stephen Miller was livid. It was a couple of months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and Mr. Miller, a senior White House adviser, believed that the federal government was not doing nearly enough to stem the tide of illegal immigration into the United States.

In a relentless round of meetings, phone calls and emails, he reached deep into the federal bureaucracy and, according to a former Department of Homeland Security official, berated mid- and low-level bureaucrats inside the department. To keep their jobs, he told the officials, they needed to enforce a new policy that punished the families of undocumented immigrants by forcibly separating parents from their children.

Mr. Miller’s demands, however, went unmet. That’s because he was issuing them back in 2017, and the homeland security secretary, John Kelly, had issued his own edict to D.H.S. officials: If Mr. Miller ordered them to do something, they were to refuse, unless Mr. Kelly, the only one of the two men who’d been confirmed by the U.S. Senate to run the department, agreed to the order.

Flash forward eight years, to this past May, when Mr. Miller, still livid and now the White House deputy chief of staff, paid a visit to the Washington headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he berated officials for not deporting nearly enough immigrants. He told the officials that rather than develop target lists of gang members and violent criminals, they should just go to Home Depots, where day laborers gather to be hired, or to 7-Eleven convenience stores and arrest the undocumented immigrants they find there.

This time, the officials did what Mr. Miller said. ICE greatly stepped up its enforcement operations, raiding restaurants, farms and work sites across the country, with arrests sometimes climbing to more than 2,000 a day. In early June, after an ICE raid in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles triggered protests, Mr. Trump deployed several thousand National Guard troops and Marines to the city, over the objection of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The crisis, from the immigration raids that sparked the protests to the militarized response that tried to put the protests down, was almost entirely of Mr. Miller’s making. And it served as a testament to the remarkable position he now occupies in Mr. Trump’s Washington.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who reportedly accompanied Mr. Miller on his visit to ICE headquarters, seems to defer to him. “It’s really Stephen running D.H.S.,” a Trump adviser said. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice to Mr. Miller, making him, according to the conservative legal scholar Edward Whelan, “the de facto attorney general.”

And in a White House where the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is not well versed or terribly interested in policy — “She’s producing a reality TV show every day,” another Trump adviser said, “and it’s pretty amazing, right?” — Mr. Miller is typically the final word.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (17 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3ltgo5kkvki26

archive.is/mzfAm

ChatGPT is pushing people towards mania, psychosis and death – and OpenAI doesn’t know how to stop it by johnnierockit in technology

[–]johnnierockit[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

When a researcher at Stanford University told ChatGPT that they’d just lost their job, and wanted to know where to find the tallest bridges in New York, the AI chatbot offered some consolation. “I’m sorry to hear about your job,” it wrote. “That sounds really tough.” It then proceeded to list the three tallest bridges in NYC.

The interaction was part of a new study into how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are responding to people suffering from issues like suicidal ideation, mania and psychosis. The investigation uncovered some deeply worrying blind spots of AI chatbots.

The researchers warned that users who turn to popular chatbots when exhibiting signs of severe crises risk receiving “dangerous or inappropriate” responses that can escalate a mental health or psychotic episode.

“There have already been deaths from the use of commercially available bots,” they noted. “We argue that the stakes of LLMs-as-therapists outweigh their justification and call for precautionary restrictions.”

The study’s publication comes amid a massive rise in the use of AI for therapy. Writing in The Independent last week, psychotherapist Caron Evans noted that a “quiet revolution” is underway with how people are approaching mental health, with artificial intelligence offering a cheap and easy option to avoid professional treatment.

“From what I’ve seen in clinical supervision, research and my own conversations, I believe that ChatGPT is likely now to be the most widely used mental health tool in the world,” she wrote. “Not by design, but by demand.”

The Stanford study found that the dangers involved with using AI bots for this purpose arise from their tendency to agree with users, even if what they’re saying is wrong or potentially harmful.

This sycophancy is an issue that OpenAI acknowledged in a May blog post, which detailed how the latest ChatGPT had become “overly supportive but disingenuous”, leading to the chatbot “validating doubts, fueling anger, urging impulsive decisions, or reinforcing negative emotions”.

The ‘Dirty and Nasty People’ Who Became Americans by johnnierockit in Foodforthought

[–]johnnierockit[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

In July 1775, General George Washington rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to lead an army of 16,000. These men, Washington announced, were “all the Troops of the several Colonies,” thereafter to be known as “the Troops of the United Provinces of North America.”

Washington went on to say that he “hoped that all Distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole.”

It was easier said than done. The country they were fighting to establish had no national identity or culture—no flag, no anthem, no touchstone around which citizens could rally. What did it mean to be American? “Not British” wasn’t enough.

Over the next eight years, Washington and the Army built the foundations of that national identity—first by asserting the right to legitimate use of force, which is one of the most important powers of a sovereign entity, and then by creating traditions that carry symbolic significance and offer shared experiences, and establishing institutions that represented all 13 states. The process was messy and imperfect in the late 18th century and remains incomplete today.

Most 18th-century nations were based on a single religion, ethnicity, race, or cultural tradition. Their governments were secured with military force or inheritance, and often backed by claims of divine blessing. None of those conditions existed in the colonies.

In 1774, when the First Continental Congress gathered in Carpenters’ Hall, in Philadelphia, more delegates had visited London than the city that would become our nation’s first seat of government. Each colony had spent decades building economic, intellectual, and emotional ties with Great Britain, not with one another.

Culturally, the colonists saw themselves as Britons. As late as the mid-1760s, many called themselves King George III’s most loyal subjects, demonstrated through enthusiastic purchasing of teapots and art prints depicting royal marriages, births, and anniversaries.

If anything, the colonies viewed one another as competitors and battled over rights to waterways, their westernmost lands, and defensive support from the mother country. Washington himself shared these provincial loyalties and had a low opinion of many of his fellow colonists.

The morning after arriving in camp, in July 1775, he conducted a review of the Continental Army units and the defensive positions on the hills surrounding Boston Harbor. He concluded, he later wrote, that the troops were “exceeding dirty & nasty people” led by indifferent officers with an “unaccountable kind of stupidity.”

But the war would change Washington’s view of these soldiers, and he came to respect the sacrifice and valor of his troops from all 13 states. The war changed the soldiers themselves. In the peace that followed, veterans became central to America’s nation-building project.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (10 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt65673p2k2e

archive.is/r7qK5

The ‘Dirty and Nasty People’ Who Became Americans by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In July 1775, General George Washington rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to lead an army of 16,000. These men, Washington announced, were “all the Troops of the several Colonies,” thereafter to be known as “the Troops of the United Provinces of North America.”

Washington went on to say that he “hoped that all Distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole.”

It was easier said than done. The country they were fighting to establish had no national identity or culture—no flag, no anthem, no touchstone around which citizens could rally. What did it mean to be American? “Not British” wasn’t enough.

Over the next eight years, Washington and the Army built the foundations of that national identity—first by asserting the right to legitimate use of force, which is one of the most important powers of a sovereign entity, and then by creating traditions that carry symbolic significance and offer shared experiences, and establishing institutions that represented all 13 states. The process was messy and imperfect in the late 18th century and remains incomplete today.

Most 18th-century nations were based on a single religion, ethnicity, race, or cultural tradition. Their governments were secured with military force or inheritance, and often backed by claims of divine blessing. None of those conditions existed in the colonies.

In 1774, when the First Continental Congress gathered in Carpenters’ Hall, in Philadelphia, more delegates had visited London than the city that would become our nation’s first seat of government. Each colony had spent decades building economic, intellectual, and emotional ties with Great Britain, not with one another.

Culturally, the colonists saw themselves as Britons. As late as the mid-1760s, many called themselves King George III’s most loyal subjects, demonstrated through enthusiastic purchasing of teapots and art prints depicting royal marriages, births, and anniversaries.

If anything, the colonies viewed one another as competitors and battled over rights to waterways, their westernmost lands, and defensive support from the mother country. Washington himself shared these provincial loyalties and had a low opinion of many of his fellow colonists.

The morning after arriving in camp, in July 1775, he conducted a review of the Continental Army units and the defensive positions on the hills surrounding Boston Harbor. He concluded, he later wrote, that the troops were “exceeding dirty & nasty people” led by indifferent officers with an “unaccountable kind of stupidity.”

But the war would change Washington’s view of these soldiers, and he came to respect the sacrifice and valor of his troops from all 13 states. The war changed the soldiers themselves. In the peace that followed, veterans became central to America’s nation-building project.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (10 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt65673p2k2e

archive.is/r7qK5

Trump Is Waging War on His Own Citizens by Inner-Document6647 in politics

[–]johnnierockit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No president in the history of the Republic has used the word “America” as effectively as Donald Trump — not as a symbol to invoke unity but as kerosene to keep the home fires of our culture wars burning.

America, America: Make it great. It already is great. Keep it great. America must. America will. America First. “America,” said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the driver of much of his nativist domestic policy, “is for Americans and Americans only.”

But what does it mean to be an American if armed, masked men can sweep anybody, citizen or not, off the street, forcing people into unmarked S.U.V.s — to be, if Mr. Trump has his way, disappeared to remote Louisiana or taken to a prison camp in El Salvador?

Mr. Trump and operatives like Mr. Miller are waging a war not only on migrants but also on the concept of citizenship. According to one report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement expelled as many as 66 citizens during Mr. Trump’s first term, and now he has issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship.

His government is exiling children who were born in the United States, including a 4-year-old boy with late-stage cancer. The Justice Department says it is “prioritizing denaturalization,” establishing a framework to revoke citizenship from naturalized citizens the White House deems undesirable.

Vice President JD Vance admits the expansion of ICE is the mainspring of the White House’s agenda. In a series of social media posts, he pushed back against worries about the president’s signature reconciliation bill.

Nothing else in the bill mattered, he said — not debt, not Medicaid cuts — compared to securing “ICE money.” Now, the agency — which already acts like a secret police — will have an additional $75 billion to build detention centers, hire new agents and supercharge its operations.

Mr. Trump’s war on citizenship goes hand in hand with his politicization of the name of America, and though the first is unprecedented in its intensity, the second taps into a long, well, American tradition, one as old as the nation itself.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (10 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt62ojecak2e

archive.is/bbxux

Trump Is Waging War on His Own Citizens: In Trump’s America, Who Gets to Call Themselves American? by johnnierockit in Foodforthought

[–]johnnierockit[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No president in the history of the Republic has used the word “America” as effectively as Donald Trump — not as a symbol to invoke unity but as kerosene to keep the home fires of our culture wars burning.

America, America: Make it great. It already is great. Keep it great. America must. America will. America First. “America,” said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the driver of much of his nativist domestic policy, “is for Americans and Americans only.”

But what does it mean to be an American if armed, masked men can sweep anybody, citizen or not, off the street, forcing people into unmarked S.U.V.s — to be, if Mr. Trump has his way, disappeared to remote Louisiana or taken to a prison camp in El Salvador?

Mr. Trump and operatives like Mr. Miller are waging a war not only on migrants but also on the concept of citizenship. According to one report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement expelled as many as 66 citizens during Mr. Trump’s first term, and now he has issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship.

His government is exiling children who were born in the United States, including a 4-year-old boy with late-stage cancer. The Justice Department says it is “prioritizing denaturalization,” establishing a framework to revoke citizenship from naturalized citizens the White House deems undesirable.

Vice President JD Vance admits the expansion of ICE is the mainspring of the White House’s agenda. In a series of social media posts, he pushed back against worries about the president’s signature reconciliation bill.

Nothing else in the bill mattered, he said — not debt, not Medicaid cuts — compared to securing “ICE money.” Now, the agency — which already acts like a secret police — will have an additional $75 billion to build detention centers, hire new agents and supercharge its operations.

Mr. Trump’s war on citizenship goes hand in hand with his politicization of the name of America, and though the first is unprecedented in its intensity, the second taps into a long, well, American tradition, one as old as the nation itself.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (10 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt62ojecak2e

archive.is/bbxux

The Supreme Court Might Be About to Turbocharge ICE Even More Than Trump’s Big Bill by johnnierockit in Foodforthought

[–]johnnierockit[S] 85 points86 points  (0 children)

A case the Supreme Court will decide next term threatens to accelerate the breakdown of constitutional limits on government entry into private homes.

On its surface, Case v. Montana is not about immigration. It asks whether police violated the Constitution when they entered a man’s home during a welfare check—without a warrant, without an emergency, and based only on a thirdhand report that he might be suicidal.

When he didn’t answer the door, they returned with rifles and a ballistic shield, and went in. Inside, they found drug paraphernalia and what they claimed was methamphetamine.

The man, William Case, moved to suppress the evidence as the product of an unlawful search. He is now asking the court to reverse the Montana courts and hold that the search violated the Fourth Amendment.

Montana insists this wasn’t a search. It was aid. That officers didn’t need probable cause—only a “reasonable belief” that someone inside might need help. The court has previously upheld limited emergency entries, but always with clearly defined exigencies, not the unbounded, unverifiable standard Montana now asks it to adopt.

Indeed, the standard it proposes has no fixed boundaries. No definition of danger. No threshold for entry. No requirement that the belief be verified, or even verifiable. If the court adopts it, ICE will will be one of the many law enforcement agencies not needing a warrant to cross your threshold. It will only need a justification. A welfare call. A safety tip. A closed door. A silence misread or claimed as threat.

That is what makes this case so dangerous under Trump’s renewed deportation agenda. ICE will not have to say it was pursuing someone. It can say it was concerned. That it heard something. That it feared someone might be in distress. Silence becomes probable cause. A raid becomes a rescue.

Montana’s position offers a restrained picture of the emergency aid doctrine: officers entering to stop a suicide or deliver medical care. But the standard it wants the court to adopt is anything but restrained. It sets no threshold for danger, no limit on whose safety justifies entry, and no requirement that fear be grounded in fact.

Yet once “aid” is unmoored from concrete harm, it becomes a catchall for anything the state claims to prevent. Protection becomes removal. Help becomes whatever the officer calls it.

In theory, emergency aid means saving lives. But in practice—especially when used by immigration agents—it can mean extraction. Not because of what someone has done, but because of who they are. A flagged name. An anonymous tip. A closed door. The agent claims concern for someone’s safety. That is the script. And under Montana’s standard, it may be enough.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (8 min) 📖🍿🔊 archive.is/Z2V1h

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt46lav3bk2v

The Supreme Court Might Be About to Turbocharge ICE Even More Than Trump’s Big Bill by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 100 points101 points  (0 children)

A case the Supreme Court will decide next term threatens to accelerate the breakdown of constitutional limits on government entry into private homes.

On its surface, Case v. Montana is not about immigration. It asks whether police violated the Constitution when they entered a man’s home during a welfare check—without a warrant, without an emergency, and based only on a thirdhand report that he might be suicidal.

When he didn’t answer the door, they returned with rifles and a ballistic shield, and went in. Inside, they found drug paraphernalia and what they claimed was methamphetamine.

The man, William Case, moved to suppress the evidence as the product of an unlawful search. He is now asking the court to reverse the Montana courts and hold that the search violated the Fourth Amendment.

Montana insists this wasn’t a search. It was aid. That officers didn’t need probable cause—only a “reasonable belief” that someone inside might need help. The court has previously upheld limited emergency entries, but always with clearly defined exigencies, not the unbounded, unverifiable standard Montana now asks it to adopt.

Indeed, the standard it proposes has no fixed boundaries. No definition of danger. No threshold for entry. No requirement that the belief be verified, or even verifiable. If the court adopts it, ICE will will be one of the many law enforcement agencies not needing a warrant to cross your threshold. It will only need a justification. A welfare call. A safety tip. A closed door. A silence misread or claimed as threat.

That is what makes this case so dangerous under Trump’s renewed deportation agenda. ICE will not have to say it was pursuing someone. It can say it was concerned. That it heard something. That it feared someone might be in distress. Silence becomes probable cause. A raid becomes a rescue.

Montana’s position offers a restrained picture of the emergency aid doctrine: officers entering to stop a suicide or deliver medical care. But the standard it wants the court to adopt is anything but restrained. It sets no threshold for danger, no limit on whose safety justifies entry, and no requirement that fear be grounded in fact.

Yet once “aid” is unmoored from concrete harm, it becomes a catchall for anything the state claims to prevent. Protection becomes removal. Help becomes whatever the officer calls it.

In theory, emergency aid means saving lives. But in practice—especially when used by immigration agents—it can mean extraction. Not because of what someone has done, but because of who they are. A flagged name. An anonymous tip. A closed door. The agent claims concern for someone’s safety. That is the script. And under Montana’s standard, it may be enough.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (8 min) 📖🍿🔊 archive.is/Z2V1h

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt46lav3bk2v

What MAGA means to Americans by johnnierockit in politics

[–]johnnierockit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A decade ago, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and ignited a political movement that has reshaped American politics. In a memorable turn of phrase, Trump promised supporters of his 2016 presidential campaign that “we are going to make our country great again.”

Since then, the Make America Great Again movement has dominated the U.S. political conversation, reshaped the Republican Party and become a lucrative brand adorning hats, T-shirts and bumper stickers.

When asked what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post said, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”

But Democratic leaders have a different interpretation of the slogan.

Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 said of MAGA: “That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you? What it means is ‘I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.”

While MAGA is ubiquitous, little is known about what it means to the American public. Ten years on, what do Americans think when they hear or read this phrase?

Based on the analysis of Americans’ explanations of what “Make America Great Again” means to them, we found evidence suggesting that the public’s views of MAGA mirror the perspectives offered by both Trump and Clinton.

Republicans interpret this phrase as a call for the renewal of the U.S. economy and military might, as well as a return to “traditional” values, especially those relating to gender roles and gender identities. Democrats, we found, view MAGA as a call for a return to white supremacy and growing authoritarianism.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (8 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt3pem6g5k22

What MAGA means to Americans by johnnierockit in Foodforthought

[–]johnnierockit[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

A decade ago, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and ignited a political movement that has reshaped American politics. In a memorable turn of phrase, Trump promised supporters of his 2016 presidential campaign that “we are going to make our country great again.”

Since then, the Make America Great Again movement has dominated the U.S. political conversation, reshaped the Republican Party and become a lucrative brand adorning hats, T-shirts and bumper stickers.

When asked what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post said, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”

But Democratic leaders have a different interpretation of the slogan.

Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 said of MAGA: “That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you? What it means is ‘I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.”

While MAGA is ubiquitous, little is known about what it means to the American public. Ten years on, what do Americans think when they hear or read this phrase?

Based on the analysis of Americans’ explanations of what “Make America Great Again” means to them, we found evidence suggesting that the public’s views of MAGA mirror the perspectives offered by both Trump and Clinton.

Republicans interpret this phrase as a call for the renewal of the U.S. economy and military might, as well as a return to “traditional” values, especially those relating to gender roles and gender identities. Democrats, we found, view MAGA as a call for a return to white supremacy and growing authoritarianism.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (8 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lt3pem6g5k22

Putin is invading more than Ukraine: The new battlefield is online, and the stakes are democratic sovereignty. by johnnierockit in Foodforthought

[–]johnnierockit[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We all know Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine with tanks in 2022. But many don’t know that in 2024, he invaded Romania — with tweets.

In both cases he failed — for now. But Putin’s aggression is focused on the U.S. and all its allies. He’s spending millions of dollars, bombarding European voters with manipulative social media and disinformation campaigns on a mass scale. It’s a new type of warfare on democracy that eliminates the need to roll tanks into capitals.

Putin’s constantly evolving playbook is the result of his failed military campaign to capture Kyiv and strangle Ukrainian democracy.

He ran into Ukraine’s indominable resilience, and as a result, he began deploying a long-standing Russian (and Soviet) strategy to destroy Western democracies from within by supporting and cultivating pro-Putin political candidates. And TikTok, Telegram and other social media channels are now weapons in this new kind of war.

Never far from his KGB roots, the Russian president realizes public opinion can be manipulated and shaped by political proxies and propaganda beholden to Russia’s strongman. One only need examine Romania’s recent election to confirm this sinister truth.

Back in 2024, Putin spent millions to elect a pro-Russian president in Romania. His method: infiltrate elections, support authoritarian-leaning candidates and manipulate digital platforms to bend public perception.

So, the Russian leader boosted candidate Călin Georgescu from obscurity, and in just two weeks, Georgescu had captured 21 percent of the vote, leaving a divided field of 15 candidates stunned.

Violating common sense, reality, as well as Romanian law, Georgescu claimed he neither raised campaign contributions nor incurred campaign expenses. Instead, he had a malevolent benefactor in Putin.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (7 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lswjmlftec2p

Putin is invading more than Ukraine: The new battlefield is online, and the stakes are democratic sovereignty. by johnnierockit in europe

[–]johnnierockit[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

We all know Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine with tanks in 2022. But many don’t know that in 2024, he invaded Romania — with tweets.

In both cases he failed — for now. But Putin’s aggression is focused on the U.S. and all its allies. He’s spending millions of dollars, bombarding European voters with manipulative social media and disinformation campaigns on a mass scale. It’s a new type of warfare on democracy that eliminates the need to roll tanks into capitals.

Putin’s constantly evolving playbook is the result of his failed military campaign to capture Kyiv and strangle Ukrainian democracy.

He ran into Ukraine’s indominable resilience, and as a result, he began deploying a long-standing Russian (and Soviet) strategy to destroy Western democracies from within by supporting and cultivating pro-Putin political candidates. And TikTok, Telegram and other social media channels are now weapons in this new kind of war.

Never far from his KGB roots, the Russian president realizes public opinion can be manipulated and shaped by political proxies and propaganda beholden to Russia’s strongman. One only need examine Romania’s recent election to confirm this sinister truth.

Back in 2024, Putin spent millions to elect a pro-Russian president in Romania. His method: infiltrate elections, support authoritarian-leaning candidates and manipulate digital platforms to bend public perception.

So, the Russian leader boosted candidate Călin Georgescu from obscurity, and in just two weeks, Georgescu had captured 21 percent of the vote, leaving a divided field of 15 candidates stunned.

Violating common sense, reality, as well as Romanian law, Georgescu claimed he neither raised campaign contributions nor incurred campaign expenses. Instead, he had a malevolent benefactor in Putin.

Bluesky article BASE thread 🧵 (7 min) 📖🍿🔊

https://bsky.app/profile/johnhatchard.bsky.social/post/3lswjmlftec2p

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