I wonder from time to timecwhat method the Trumpists are going to adopt for killing their opponents.

Defenestration is self-evidently effective, but it’s already Putin’s schtick. And while it might appeal to Trump to essentially pay tribute to his idol, I think it’s more likely that he’d want his own brand.

The US being what it is, some sort of handgun “suicide” would be on-brand, and courts have already shown that they’re willing to let things like “suicide” by gunshot to the back of the head or “suicide” by multiple gunshot slide.

I almost expect them to use concentration camps and gas chambers, counting on the media to refuse to cover it at all for fear that somebody might make a Nazi comparison.

We’ll see…

Ah… that makes sense.

Even with my fascination with character analysis and the rich vein of freakishness Trump provides, I generally can’t watch him - he’s just too creepy and unsettling.

The brownshirts are assembling.

Ooh… nicely spotted.

That’s a thing with his spoiled toddler emotional dysfunction that I’ve recognized but never really given a lot of thought to. He self-evidently has some seriously warped ideas regarding sex, but they don’t fit neatly into a toddler worldview, since toddlers are ignorant of sex. So I knew there was some way that he’d essentially adapted sexual desire to that extreme degree of emotional immaturity, but hadn’t sorted out exactly what it is.

And everything clicked with the idea of objectification. I have no doubt that that’s the link I hadn’t sussed out.

And it’s undoubtedly been recursive - like he started out objectifying women and thus treating their refusal to have sex with him the same way that another toddler would treat mom’s refusal to buy him a candy bar at the supermarket - but then over time developed a set of more specific ideas to better frame things - like “nasty” as a descriptor of someone who refuses his advances - which then melded back into his broader worldview.

When I wrote that last one, I had a hard time fitting “nasty” in. He’s obviously using it to represent bad/mean/awful, but the word has a specific spin that I couldn’t quite get a grip on, since it doesn’t seem to quite match up with any of the common usages I was considering.

And I have zero doubt that you’re right - that inside his own head, it’s playing the same role it would in the phrase “nasty whore.” And for the same reason - from his cripplingly self-absorbed viewpoint, he’s already recited the incantations about how beautiful she is and how cherished she’ll be, so it’s time for her to lie back and submit. And the nasty whore refuses…

Alternately:

“We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Nasty little Canadianses.”

This is a great example of what is, to me, the most bizarre part of this bizarre timeline - this stinky-assed overgrown toddler actually believes this.

The way it works in his warped mind:

• He wants to annex Canada, therefore annexing Canada is just and right and proper and smart and best, because everything he wants automatically is. (And a side note - his Kremlin handlers almost certainly planted the idea of annexing Canada in his mind in the first place, though it’s an open question whether he knows that or not).
• Canada unsurprisingly opposes annexation.
• But it’s his idea (not really, but that’s a distinction he’s not equipped to make), therefore it’s the bestest and beautifulest and perfectest idea ever in the history of ever, and Canada’s just being nasty and disagreeable about it.

And that’s it. That’s the extent of the thinking in his overgrown toddler mind - "I want and you won’t give so you’re mean.

Ah… yes. Every bit of that tracks.

Some kid pushed him down the stairs and seriously injured him when he was in school

True story?

I wouldn’t doubt it.

I really know very little about Musk’s past in a biographical sense, but as a lifelong student of human nature - both collectively and individually - I know him all too well.

and I don’t blame them

Nor do I.

You can see it in his mannerisms and the look on his face. He was and still is one of those people who’s unjustifiably smug - who’s obnoxiously arrogant in spite of the fact that everyone around him just thinks he’s a loudmouthed asshole. And the secret behind it is that he’s actually desperately insecure and his entire life is bent toward (over)compensating for that.

He’s obnoxiously smug and arrogant because he has virtually no empathy or understanding of other people, so he doesn’t know how to act to actually appeal to people.

But he sees other people who do know how to act and who have spent a lifetime earning respect and admiration, and he sees their confidence and that’s what he wants. So, failing to understand even the most basic principles, he jumps right past the earning respect and admiration stage and to the confidence stage, and unable to even pull that off convincingly, he just ends up smug and obnoxious.

Which makes people dislike him, which leads him to try to compensate, which ends up just being more obnoxious arrogance, which makes people dislike him and 'round and 'round it goes.

He’s the adult version of that kid we all knew in middle school - the one who was creepy and awkward and desperate to get the cool kids to like him and he talked too much and laughed too loud in a way that sounded like he could tip over into hysteria any second, and the only thing he had going for him was that his family had money, so he always got the latest and coolest games and toys and he’d show them off in the desperate hope that someone would want to play with him but nobody ever did because he was just so desperate and creepy.

I’ve only played the DS versions, so can’t say, but I would presume the Switch versions fix the most notorious problems (like the inexplicably slow Surf speed) so assuming they don’t also do something stupid and unnecessary like nerf the difficulty or rewrite the dialogue, they’d likely be best.

Black and White.

There will be mass graves in the US if the oligarchs have their way about it.

It sucks to even be in partial agreement with the broligarchs, but as a rural American, I have zero sympathy for this fuckhead or anyone else involved in the broadband fund.

The government has been pouring money into broadband expansion for decades, and for decades, internet providers have been sopping up that money while doing exactly nothing to actually earn it.

Trump, in response to the collapsing US economy and growing hostility and boycotts from virtually every ally the US has ever had, suddenly shouted, " Quick! Look over there!"

There have been lots of comparisons between Trump’s administration and those of Nazi Germany and modern kleptocratic Russia, but lately I’ve been seeing an awful lot of North Korea.

Democratic leaders blearily looked up from their mid-afternoon cocktails on the decks of billionaire’s yachts and said, “They want us to what?”

Gotta love the unintentional irony of a bill that addresses the supposed mental illness of Trump opponents in such a way that it vividly illustrates the very real mental illness of Trump supporters.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I say that Americans are just taking it because while a few thousand people here and there are protesting the wanton destruction of everything of value in their country by a handful of fucking psychopaths, the other 340-some million are just letting it happen.

So that means another important threshold is coming.

Trump and Musk, being the psychopathic pieces of shit they are, are going to want to treat their growing unpopularity and ever-stronger opposition as some sort of conspiracy rather than an honest expression of popular opinion, and they’re going to try to clamp down on it - to start arresting and silencing people for the “crime” of opposing them.

And the question is going to be, will Americans again just roll over and take it as a couple of psychopathic dickweeds with daddy issues systematically destroy everything the US has ever stood for?

Even a year ago I would’ve said no, but now…

People who can and do actually think have been telling you that they’re a dumbass idea that’s ultimately only going to hurt consumers since the very first moment Trump started talking about them.

All you had to do was fucking listen.