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Phillip Overeem's avatar

Yep.

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koganbot's avatar

Thank you.

I don't have many subscribers, either here or on Bluesky, because I don't write enough. But thanks for unintentionally reminding me that I am a writer, and I have a Substack. I have 31 subscribers. I haven't written an actual full-scale Substack/Dreamwidth post since September. I've got a couple in the works, 1 about the Rifleman, another about New York Dolls, who knows when. I am also capable of writing thoughts about politics. As a matter of fact...

I have written recently: to my congressman Jason Crow, to my Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, several times. Calling is good too though the phone lines are overwhelmed, so I write actual letters that I send in envelopes. Email is less effective. I'm not assuming that I'm persuading them to believe something they wouldn't believe if I hadn't written, but to let them know that I'm among the few or many who'll have their back if they do the right thing. (Fwiw, I wanted 'em to vote against the Laken Riley Act and they did, not 'cos I wrote, rather 'cos they knew it was bad, but other senators who probably also knew it was bad did vote for it. Also wrote 'em about Musk madness and I'm going to again.)

Another thing I've done is to lend a sympathetic ear to a friend in the civil service who may be getting the ground yanked out from under her.

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Michael Biggs's avatar

Everything you say and more. Thanks for speaking out. As a Canadian living in Canada there is little concrete that I can do. My wife and I watch the television and yell at it with no effect except upon our appetites. Good luck and best wishes to everyone.

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calirad's avatar

Good thoughts, Brad. Hope we can all start to come together, right now. Can't permit their plans to play out as they intend. Here's one understanding of their intentions and their program, along with an envisioning of the consequences:

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-empire-self-destructs?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=156697133&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2e2d7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Gotta put our foot down and take the power that is ultimately ours, the people's, right?

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calirad's avatar

We also should keep in mind their utter contempt for democracy...and their comfort with, and desire for, dictatorship. We shouldn't mince words about this. Trump's statement that he would be a dictator only on day one was a typical ploy to simply test reaction to the general idea.

And now the dictatorial partnership, Trump-Musk, is playing its hand, pressing to keep us all off balance with outrageous announcement after outrageous announcement, turning up the heat in increments to boil the vestiges of democracy alive. We can't be apathetic and just let it happen.

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Ronald's avatar

I fully agree that Musk is an antidemocratic creep whose mission to destroy the functionality of the government and route out any of its humanitarian impulses we should protest. But what makes you say that Musk is a true believer in racial hierarchies? I’ve had a hard time finding any concrete reporting on this, and I admit that while I’m not convinced his Nazi salute was an accident, I’m also not convinced it wasn’t an accident. If you know of anything concrete I can read (maybe one of his two million Tweets says something damning?), I’d love to know.

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bradluen's avatar

The evidence is admittedly circumstantial (save perhaps for his Jewish jokes on Twitter, though even there I suppose "he's just a nonspecifically terrible person" is a potential defense), and it is genuinely possible that the fact that the only ethnic minority he's publicly going to bat for is Afrikaners is a function of his personal history rather than a symptom of a larger pattern. Given the company he keeps, however, I personally wouldn't bet on that.

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