Right, but it’s also Trump’s personal philosophy.

I don’t think Trump is even capable of considering a coherent ideology - his mind is just too scattershot and too self-absorbed for that.

Rather, I think that what happened is that after his first term. actual fascists like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and Elon Musk saw Trump as a tool through which they could get what they wanted. They feed his ego-driven tantrums and he demands things because he’s a giant overgrown toddler, and not coincidentally his demands and tantrums align with the fascist agenda that Miller, Vought et al are pursuing.

Weird though it is I sometimes suspect just that.

The sinplest explanation is simply that he’s oblivious to hypocrisy because he’s so narcissistic and so sociopathic that he can’t conceive of any conflicts between his desires since they are all his desires and thus inherently perfect and beautiful, and he conceive of any interpretation of events other than his own.

But there are times, and this is one of them, in which his hypocrisy os so obvious and so brazen that it does feelbaomost deliberately.

And I can actually see it from a warped paychological perspective - basically, he’s demonstrating that niceties like integrity and principles are for the small folk, but as an inherently superior member of the legitimate ruling class, he’s above such things, and entirely free to be just as capricious and self-serving as he pleases. It’s basically an ego flex.

Harmful either way.

Never seen it.

Off to see why I apparently should…

…Ah. I see.

That’s a specific approach I’ve never seen before, though the broad strategy is tediously familiar.

Thereby neatly proving that his war-mongering in Venezuela and his hatred for Maduro have nothing at all to do with narcotics.

I’m amazed and pleased. I almost never encounter anyone who shares my views, even among self-described 'anarchists."

Most of them carry around lists (figuratively at least) of all of the things that will be required and all of the things that will be prohibited in their “anarchism,” antagonistically immune to the fact that by doing so, they’ve already stipulated institutionalized, hierarchical authority and thus proactively eliminated anarchism.

I don’t think of it as a political philosophy but more just as a description of how I believe the world actually is when stripped of the systems we’ve laid on top of everything.

Very much yes.

My anarchism is rooted in my view that authority is a contrivance, and an ultimately unjustifiable one.

Tom lives alone on a desert island. That means that Tom, within the constraints necessarily imposed by simple reality (he can’t, for instance, flap his arms and fly) enjoys complete freedom of choice.

The only way that that freedom can be constrained is if another person is introduced and that other person acts to constrain Tom’s freedom.

So as you note, the state of affairs in which Tom’s freedom is constrained beyond anything determined by simple reality is some additional element that’s laid on top of the base state.

And as such, it’s the thing that must be justified. Tom doesn’t have to justify being free from constraint imposed by another - he already was so free, and would have remained so were it not for the fact that the other has chosen to try to introduce constraint.

Therefore, the introduction of constraint is the thing that must be justified

And there’s no possible justification for it that doesn’t ultimately establish a hierarchy by which the other person is seen to effectively be a superior being, such that their determination of what Tom may, may not, must or must not do is superior even to Tom’s

If the tacit presumption of innate superiority isn’t made, then any and all noninal justifications for authority over Tom’s decisions fail, since any argument by which any other party might justify imposing their will on Tom is also an argument by which Tom might justify imposing his will on them, and any argument by which they might claim to be rightly free of the imposition of Tom’s will is also an argument by which Tom might claim to be rightfully free of the imposition of their will upon him.

This is where and why institutionalized authority inevitably goes wrong, which in turn is why I’m an anarchist.

Without first hand knowledge, I couldn’t say in any detail, but I expect that ambitious, greedy, power-hungry psychopaths are already angling for Council positions, from which they’ll exercise tacit authority until such time as their positions and their authority can be institutionalized, at which point they’ll become the new generation of corrupt officials.

That’s not to say or imply I oppose the effort - if nothing else, they’ve gotten some breathing room. And hopefully the next time they throw off their tyrants, they’ll remember how they got their start and reject authority in and of itself and entirely, rather than deluding themselves that it can be constrained.

My anarchism.

Anarchism in general makes me the other when dealing with most people, but the specifics of my views on it also generally make me the other when dealing with most “anarchists.” (I oppose any and all attempts to institute anarchism - I believe it will arise organically or not at all - and I similarly reject any and all stipulations regarding what sort of standards, norms or systems may, may not, must or must not be a part of an anarchistic society),

Are we really going to let this fucking lunatic lead the US into an insane war?

Enough is enough. He’s an existential threat not just to the US but to the entire world. He needs to be removed from office, immediately.

The implication of a new Israeli war is a common talking point against Lebanon, though how big of a threat it is seen as is unclear, as Israel never really stopped attacking from the last war…

Well noted.

Israel’s brazen violations of the Gaza ceasefire are notable for their cruelty, but beyond that, they’re really just exactly and only what one should expect of Israel, since they have no integrity and no principles and violate ceasefires as a matter of course.

Genocide isn’t merely the systematic murder of a group of people - it’s the complete and utter destruction of their entire culture.

It’s not an accident that Israel has been systemstically reducing Gazan infrastructure to rubble from the very beginning. The exact point all along has been not merely to kill people, but to make of Gaza a place where the people they couldn’t manage to kill wouldn’t be able to live anyway.

This isn’t some sort of accident or unexpected consequence - it’s been part of Israel’s plan all along.

Where can I say F*ck, respectfully?

Fucking anywhere. If you feel some fucking need to self-censor like a little bitch, that’s on you.

Where can I call women sl*ts and wh#res when they disagree with me on opinion?

Wherever the fuck you want. You’re just likely going to end up facing some sort of consequences for being a sexist piece of shit. If you’re too much of a little bitch to deal with that, then maybe you should rethink the idea.

Where can I call men bitch*s, when they try to correct me?

Anywhere you want bitch.

Where do femcels, Andrew Tates and wizards talk here?

They mostly don’t because they need an echo chamber so they can pretend they’re something other than weak, pathetic little cowards, and Lemmy won’t give them one.

Where is the place where we say things we couldn’t say elsewhere?

That’s Lemmy

What you’re looking for is a place where you can say things that you could say elsewhere - where you can post the same sort of cowardly, bigoted, noxious crap you can spew on Reddit or 4chan or X or Facebook. You can do that too on Lemmy if you want - you’re just not going to get a safe space to do it in free from consequences. And again, if you’re too much of a little bitch to face the consequences you deserve for being a bigoted piece of shit, you should maybe rethink the idea.

And it’s not as if it was written by some schlub in a trailer park or something - the division of CNN responsible for that undoubtedly has a budget in at least seven figures and dozens of employees who are by definition professionals.

And that’s the best they could do? How is that even possible?

On a related note - I kept thinking, reading through that - how can something from CNN be that poorly written? It’s not as if it’s a jetliner or a bridge or a skyscraper - it’s an article and an accompanying set of news briefs that a high school English student could’ve knocked out in an hour, and the student would’ve done a better job.

How many employees does CNN have? And how is it that none of them could manage to make sure that that didn’t go out until it was competently written?

One would think that CNN could at least afford a proofreader.

What in the world are you babbling about?

This reeks of astroturf.

It’s just astonishing sometimes how far the US has fallen, and how quickly.

Granted that it was never all it claimed to be, still the US prided itself on being a “bastion of free speech” right up until less than a year ago. And now it’s become a place where the PotUS throws public temper tantrums (and files multi-billion dollar lawsuits) if anybody says anything mean about him and the media report on it as dispassionately as the day’s box scores or tomorrow’s weather forecast.

It’s sad and disturbing and scary, but more than anything else, it’s just fucking weird.

It’s weird and disturbing that the headline is probably true.

If the world made sense, it would be more than enough that he is, right now, moment-to-moment, obviously deeply mentally ill and wantonly destructive - a grotesquely corrupt pathological liar, vindictive narcissist, and raging sociopath who blatantly has done and is doing more harm to the US than any president at least in the modern era and quite possibly ever.

How has that not already been enough? I don’t think I’ll ever really understand that.

How perfect.

This is a great example of how it is that the right is always wrong, but always has followers anyway. It’s because they live in a doggedly self-affirming fantasy world in which they blithely believe unsupported nonsense like QAnon while just as blithely disregarding simple fact like the Epstein files, all based not on evidence or logic, but just based on whether or not it fits their preconceptions.

It’s a perfect little delusional universe where they’re free to be told whatever they want to believe and ignore whatever they don’t want to believe.

There’s no clearer indicator of the goals of Trump and his cronies than that they’re trying to make it a crime to oppose fascism.

Trump, who mercilessly mocked his predecessor’s use of an autopen

It’s always projection for Trump and his minions.

The Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden’s actions in office and sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging a full investigation.

“Senior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse,” the House Oversight Committee found.

Always projection.