#241
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
Can someone remind me again which police or military authority is ready to obey orders to arrest Trump
#242
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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loool
#243
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
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swampman posted:

Can someone remind me again which police or military authority is ready to obey orders to arrest Trump



le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

#244
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cars posted:

judges and justices in the U.S. are basically 24/7 4th-of-July cosplayers.

lol very agree

#245
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Uh could be trump yeah yeah trump trump, oh yeah! Trump.
#246
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reminder; tump
#247
mt.real
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blinkandwheeze posted:

drwhat posted:

420 deep state every day.

Federal courts aren't the deep state lmao. what you are describing is ostensibly the restriction of the powers of the executive by checks and balances supposedly guaranteed by the constitution. by accepting that federal courts contain the "real" projection of power here you are apparently accepting that the democratic institutions of the constitutional republic are working as intended

the insight that the deep state offer us is that real projection of power is not in executive orders or federal injunctions but in the actual operations of security state apparatuses on the ground. Trump unilaterally removing some of the highest ranked military officials in government and replacing them with a white nationalist sycophant is far more instructive as to how actual power operates than the rituals of liberal democratic institutions

by accepting that it is federal courts and constitutional lawyers who somehow have the real grasp on the reigns you are asserting that constitutional, liberal democratic institutions ultimately have control over the covert security state. This is both extremely naive and extremely liberal, i have no idea why you seem to think "The police state is being constrained by the checks and balances of the republic" is somehow a radical sentiment

i thought the universal sarcasm indicator tag, "four and twenty", would be enough to clue you in, but i was wrong. thank you for thinking i was referencing US high school civics class though, sick burns

#248
mt.real
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the point at the heart of what i was trying to say was that the public statements of members of the state and justice departments and the dem/capital PR machine vs the direct application of executive authority and security/police apparatus is specifically interesting because it demonstrates how real power works. i.e. we actually agree.

sorry i said it wrong or whatever but i spend a lot of time talking to people in other languages and/or ESL and so sometimes my Formulations might not be Appropriately Formed or whatever. i had like ten people on twitter brand me a disgusting racist a few days ago because when someone said oh this is like when we didn't let jews into the US in the 30s, i said actually the US is directly or indirectly participating in &/or inciting violence against syrians and other middle eastern people so this seems worse, except i said it wrong somehow, so i actually want to put jews in the oven. cool times.
#249
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drwhat posted:

i.e. we actually agree.



i didn't think we did because you directly stated that you believed the execution of the department of homeland security would fall in line with the judicial orders of the attorney general. who was fired for taking a contrary line to the president almost immediately after you stated this. i can't interpret this in any way beside identifying the office of the attorney general and the opinion of federal judges as the site of real entrenched power. If that wasn't what you meant that's fine i just think it was difficult to make any other reading of it than that

you comparatively referred to trump as a seat warmer but every manifestation of political power we are seeing is indicative that he is wielding far more power through the office of the executive than any other branch of government is. of course this is only possible because of the backing of the shadow state but these political gains are being mobilised directly through his capacity as president

#250
mt.real
Post rating: +
i do think the president a seat warmer, in the sense of his actions merely allowing what was there, what is ready to emerge, to take its form. he is a conduit of the always already existing fascism embedded in the state.

the fault lines between the bureaucratic liberal order and the above are, i think we agree, because it's a voluntary submission to bureaucracy, which in itself demonstrably does not have power. but it's those fault lines which i am interested in watching, because it lets us know somewhat how things will unfold.

unless there is some kind of major liberal national alliance to reassert bureaucratic authority -- and so many actors both internal and external have no interest in allowing that to happen -- i don't think this trajectory will change. regardless of what PR story is inevitably provided to paper things over.


thank you for prompting me to refine what i meant and how to word it, even though you are confrontational about it. i was essentially shitposting before, which i tend to get into sometimes. also this chocolate roll thing i am eating right now is really really good and i have no one around to tell it to so i am announcing it on the internet.
#251
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Don't forget that everything Trump is doing has the full backing of the petty-bourgeoisie and settler aristocracy. It is opposed by the proletariat and a large faction of the bourgeoisie which is becoming increasingly vocal. But rather than being isolated or acting like a "dictator" as there media would have you believe Trump remains broadly popular with the class interests he represents. Of course these classes can potentially come into increasing conflict with the big bourgeoisie over issues like capital controls and immigration crackdowns which would be significant but nothing he's done has really been serious enough for Amazon to do anything except remind the administration of its power. I suppose that's when the military might actually become significant but there's a lot of fantasizing about what Trump could do and none of it is rooted in class analysis.
#252
UNUSUALY COOL
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one of the reasons that i think certain narrow-minded marxists/"marxians" should read medieval writers is that those marxists sometimes "know" a lot about how class constituencies were played against each other in western society through different levels of leadership but have a hard time imagining what thinking/writing about those topics looked like in the moment for the entire span of western history between the heyday of the pagans and machiavelli. and that leads to a paucity of understanding of the present day sometimes... not to mention an impoverished reading of machiavelli, a guy who a lot of marxists today love so much they should marry him.
#253
UNUSUALY COOL
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*clears throat* Makaveli in this? Fraticelli, all through your belly it blows like a casus belli *144,000 individual lightning bolts strike my head and body*
#254
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Who would you recommend us read friend
#255
UNUSUALY COOL
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imo start with Thomas Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's Politics, which was finished posthumously, most likely by one of Thomas's students, Peter of Auvergne. that's notable because the later parts of it are arguably a lot nicer to the demos than Aristotle himself was and they can be pretty striking to read in the present day. along with the Summa Theologiae it provides a primer for the topic of the classes as considered by a sizable portion of the medievals thanks both to Thomas's influence and his skill at synthesis.
#256
UNUSUALY COOL
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Useful for comparison is the Andalusian Muslim work which came at the question with much less access to Aristotle's texts on politics, mainly knowing his work through excerpts and other commentaries, which led them to more or less assume that he was in line with Plato's Republic on political questions which led in turn to wholly different assumptions about classical political history and philosophy and what it did and did not support. Ibn Rushd (Averroes) is the guy I would recommend the most there both because he was massively influential and because he was far from a slavish Platonist on political questions. The context of medievals dealing with these writers was often trying to balance their storied reputations as thinkers (and in the Christian case, with a unified theology of decline of civilization from the ancients to the time of medieval writers) with conclusions they drew that were flat out unacceptable to the social order of the later writers.
#257
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janefondafanclub posted:

no, reading the paper was terrible but the discussion was good. i sort of still think they're waiting for the inactive working class to spontaneously activate instead of going to them but at least they explained the idea of objective/subjective conditions (which i'm still pretty sure i misunderstood).

r. guyovich told me about it so i'm glad i went but honestly i think yelling into a bullhorn is still more fun than reading a newspaper out loud, even if it's less informative.



get you a communist organization that can do both.

but yes it was a little embarrassing to read aloud around a table like we're middle schoolers rather than expect adults to do the reading beforehand

#258
Online
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trump is centralizing power. idont know about "coup" but basiocally hollowing out potential pockets of resistance and streamlining everything through bannon etc

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.zc8jnfvca
#259
UNUSUALY COOL
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some of that is interesting but some of it is like...



which is something that only needs to be "heavily sourced" if you have no idea how high-level offices work during administration changeovers in the U.S., i.e., everyone hands in resignation letters but they're only accepted when the new admin wants you gone.

when i read something like that i question when in terms of the last few weeks this guy became a hot shit game theorist. his linkedin says he's an engineer from Google, so ... yeah.
#260
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He's brown Moses, disregard
#261
UNUSUALY COOL
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dude goes on to accuse Russia of secretly paying off Trump with one-fifth of total Rosneft shares per the pee pee document for... I guess winning the election? He's just Asking Questions, though.
#262
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
it maybe sums up the way a lot of Democrats have suddenly decided to selectively care about world capital that they think a real estate mogul would seize the most powerful political office in the entire world as part of a foreign-engineered coup, but only if he could then buy 19% of the common stock of an oil company that same week
#263
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +++++
#264
UNUSUALY COOL
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within the last hour i have received forwards from Politico, The Hill and WSJ all reminding me that John McCain is The Maverick... my friends... laissez's faire subforum is back
#265
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it is heartwarming watching liberals and democrats ponder for the first time What if the ruling class behaves strategically
#266
UNUSUALY COOL
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but what if REpublicans, only noble? let's take a detour to explore thi *clown car falls 1,857m into floor of grand canyon*
#267
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
Check it out I finally got published in the local news blog
http://gothamist.com/2017/01/31/protest_native_new_yorker.php#photo-1

Of course protesting helps, and you should keep doing it. It makes a difference in three ways: by showing the opposition Democrats that they have a huge base of support, and shouldn't waver in their beliefs;

#268
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +++++
russian gangster 1: (through solid gold incisors) vee have now own you... you owe us ewerything, and if you sqveal, vee reweal it all!
me: (nervous): what ... what do you want me to do now?
russian gangster 2: (smirking) now... vee sell you much stock of profitable company... AT MARKET RATE!
russian mob: (laugh uproariously)
me: (screaming in terror)
#269
Post rating: +
Liberals have seriously lost their goddamn minds. No material analysis of fascism + media telling you trump is a fascist for a year straight = we're about a week from the holocaust. I'm not even saying Trump isn't fascist, rather liberals don't have a clue what that means and think they'll be the victims instead of the passive collaborators.
#270
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
a girl on my facebook wrote an effortpost i didn't read but one of her early points was "if you voted for trump because you dont like political correctness, trump has censored the forest service from speaking" and i didnt have the heart to tell her that disliking "political correctness" doesn't mean you like dissent in government it means you like telling mean jokes about minorities, because she'd turn into a monkey looking at the monolith
#271
[account deactivated]
#272
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groundservices posted:

I'm scared to talk to girls too


#273
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I'm scared of talking to girls to
#274
Online
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They're just as afraid of you as you are of them everyone
#275
Online
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The AU 20 lip stretch meme
#276
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Girls are probably more afraid of me than I am of them due to culture and stuff actually. That's why you've got to establish kino (builds trust)
#277
[account deactivated]
#278
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groundservices posted:

Like, the bingo game or the low carb diet?

Edit that's keto n/m

The best thing for girl-talkin is to lift weights regularly following an established routine and also active listening. Treat em like a human being and look good doin' it. Be loose. Remember their name. I was always all chubbied up and after doing the starting strength thing for a few months it was like I was suddenly on the radar of friends who liked me for years but never liked-liked me

There's also the obvious health and political benefit of being able to exert physical strength explosively for the fash bash (Dr's notice I've never been in a fight)


Ah I remember when I first took the iron pill.

#279
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wow I think I just did that how many irony levels are you on comic to groundserve by accident
#280
UNUSUALY COOL
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i like where this thread is going