Wandering Adventure Party

There's a reason law enforcement at every level wants to make recording them illegal.

The admirals and generals probably fucking hate Pete Hegseth's guts and consider him a wannabe but 99% of them will do exactly what he says.

A lot of soldiers came back from Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam and, and, and) totally fucked up by the experience and with a deep and justified loathing of the politicians who sent them there for spurious reasons. But they still did the job while they were there. Because the military are like cops. Systems of conformity crush everyone down to the same level in the end.

Americans' military hero worship is wrong on multiple levels.

RE: https://dice.camp/@artemis/115850447791966951

Seriously. People wildly overestimate the US military's willingness to disobey even an unlawful order coming from the president and his lackeys.

They may swear an oath to uphold the Constitution but it's drilled into them to follow orders first.

I find it's surprisingly easy to convince normal people in the real world that ICE, Venezuela, anti-vax, inequality, attacks on trans kids, etc. are bad.

It's affluent white people who think they're politically savvy and are laser focused on winning elections who balk. "But how are you going to win over Republicans and white moderates?"

Meanwhile, most people I know are counting the days until Trump, et al. are dead or in prison.

People hate this shit! But their politicians and wealthy patrons love it.

The corruption, the bipartisan complicity, the imperialist greed, the bigotry and xenophobia. The massive inequality that lets the wealthy own everything. The hollowing out of journalism and education. The surveillance, the lack of privacy. Oil companies in charge of foreign policy. Out of control cops and police budgets. Fucking genocide. Pogroms against vulnerable people. There was a literal pedophilia and sex trafficking ring connected to people at the highest levels of power!

Everything is exactly as bad if not worse than those "radical" leftists have been saying for decades and some people are still like, "Huh? How could this happen?"

Like, the attempted Democratic rehabilitation of GW Bush and Dick Cheney is truly bizarre in a world where Trump represents the apotheosis of their politics and the GOP as a whole. Just utter lawless imperialism, racism, and cruelty. And it makes sense once you understand that this Democratic Party is full of former cheerleaders for Bush, Cheney, the War on Terror, and the surveillance and privacy nightmare they collectively unleashed. They like this stuff. They think it's a "win."

So it's funny when people who think they're politically astute are constantly blindsided by what's happening because they believe more in the US, in the system, and in a political party like the Democrats than they do in a paradigm of human rights and dignity.

People who get their talking points and marching orders from the Democratic Party are, on the whole, useless. Because the Democrats have a vested interest in protecting the GOP and themselves, their wealth and their power.

And yet for all that, when Americans are forced to confront reality, they are repulsed by the shamelessness and greed of the people in charge, the xenophobia and racist fearmongering, the jingoism, the out-of-touch liberal patronizing, and the sheer indifference to anyone who isn't white and wealthy.

If there is a silver lining to the Trump era, it's how none of these people, in either party, even bother to hide it anymore and how much disgust that provokes.

Most people in other countries have a better understanding of what's wrong with the US than Americans do.

If you're politically aware and keep up with the news on a daily basis, even if you don't read any deep analysis, congratulations, you're in the 90th percentile of Americans. If you have even a basic grasp of US history such as Jim Crow, Reconstruction, etc., you're even higher than that. There is a reason they attacked journalism and education first.

Both parties, the Israel lobby, and the oligarchs all came down like a hammer on TikTok because a silly video sharing app did a better job of informing people than "prestige" news sources.

Most Americans consume either no news, state propaganda (e.g., Fox, CBS), elite propaganda (e.g., WaPo, NYT), or junk news (most online sources) and thus have a poor grasp of what is happening and almost zero context for why.

There basically aren't any trustworthy mainstream news sources anymore and the indifference of the political establishment means most people have given up. That's why local organizing about things people can see is so extremely important.

US Media: "Why won't anyone mourn our free speech hero, Charlie Kirk?"

Normal People: "Who? Oh, some Nazi."

US Media: "That's it. No more free speech for you."

Trump: "I'm building a ballroom."