My ADHD brain makes it difficult for me to focus on a full length book, and I’m not one of those people that can scan and retain information, so I have to confess I’ve never read her book, but I very much want to read Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

By the 20th century, Franklin Roosevelt called the South the nation’s No. 1 economic problem, resistant to unionization and social policies. Even today it leads indices for poverty and weak educational systems. The Jim Crow South was upended by the civil rights revolution. Yet even in defeat, its language of oligarchy and its opposition to progressive political and economic policies through an appeal to racism has been adopted by the modern Republican Party.

Sometimes people tell me I need to chill tf out and stop getting so worked up over this stuff, but I grew up in this world. I escaped and saw that it wasn’t like that in other parts of the country, or even all of the south.

Now I see this shit happening in 2025, and so much has been destroyed in 3 months (just realized today actually marks 3 very long months). It feels like they’re trying to make an entire country like the world I grew up in. I know there is no escape if they succeed, and I know it doesn’t stop with the United States. I just can’t accept that, and go on with life knowing that it doesn’t have to be this way.

This is decades in the making. It is a sort of “civil war” but the thing is, it’s a small group of wealthy people who are hoping to manipulate enough Americans into believing they have some kind of common in-group interest that will motivate them to fight against any Americans resistant to their takeover. Which, after actually typing that out, and reading it, I’m realizing that is also exactly what the American civil war was, there was just no way for people to be informed about who was actually pulling the country’s strings at the time.

That’s why they exploit political, racial, and religious divisions. They don’t actually care about any ideology. It’s a tool to manipulate and control in order to further exploit groups to do their fighting for them.

The Heritage Foundation first infiltrated the government by providing Reagan with a copy of their Mandate for leadership, and getting him on board back in the early 80s.

Over 40 years later, they are back in the White House ready to implement Project 2025.

Since Reagan opened the door for them, America has gradually accepted that social benefits are handouts, but corporate welfare actually benefits all of America, because somehow corporations ARE people.

Citizens United was a huge victory for this wealthy group of individuals, because they now have to jump through fewer hoops/hide the source of money used to buy elections.

The Heritage Foundation has also created a network of nonprofit think tanks in all 50 states that pays to promote state level policy benefitting wealthy individuals and corporate donors while disguising it as “small government” representative of state residents.

The creator of this network was Thomas Roe, an early member of the Heritage Foundation. As Roe himself explained to another Heritage Foundation trustee, Robert Krieble, “You capture the Soviet Union – I’m going to capture the states.”

Louisiana is full of mainly conservative leaning individuals who usually just don’t vote until they get angry enough/fed up with corruption.

Idk if you’ve heard of Bobby Jindal? But he was a Republican Governor corrupt enough to get the state to vote for a Democrat for the next 8 years. That’s part of why we’re one of the few red states with a Medicaid expansion.

We’re the second most dependent state in the country on Medicaid, and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, was encouraging cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for a tax cut to the wealthy.

Right now people are very pissed. They need to be kept informed of what’s actually going on so they stay pissed and keep putting pressure on these people.

I mean, just surprising to have one post removed from a state subreddit for being off topic then result in a total ban? Wtf is that?

Good reading skillz

You know normally I think the argument that people are less imaginative/creative than they used to be in the past is BS.

After reading the sentence “He made his way to the roof by threatening guards with a fake pistol and nectarines painted as grenades.” I think maybe that’s true

He’s Trump’s science advisor, Peter Theil’s protege, and son in law of Brexit Secretary Sir David Davis. The best of the best.

Yeah it was a dumb thing to say, that’s the point

Have you never seen a dystopian scifi movie? If this administration somehow attempted to time travel, you don’t think the world would look exactly like it does now?

I mean, if we are to go by Kratsios’ speech, it would appear they are just the first brave and innovative enough to take advantage of technology already existing but intentionally weighed down by regulations. This timeline being a result of their brave innovation makes a lot of sense.

Maybe in your house, but in the White House, I’m not so sure. Mr. Kratsios holds a political science degree (with a focus on Hellenic studies) and appears to have no hard science qualifications.

No joke, he was actually Trump’s acting director of OSTP during his first administration. During that time, people were critical of him because he lacked any qualifying experience in science.

Democratic members of the House actually wrote a letter begging Trump to pick a real science advisor to avoid a potential disaster. Trump eventually picked a meteorologist as his official science advisor several months later. If not for Anthony Fauci’s meddling, those two would have been solely responsible for handling the COVID pandemic under Trump.

Just to be clear, the point is that Kratsios seemed to be making a sciencebro sales pitch about U.S. innovation under Trump, but given how delusional and unethical this administration has already been when it comes to making a name for U.S. tech supremacy, people took it seriously.

Wasn’t expecting such a weirdly strong reaction to pointing this out, but yikes.

You just gave me a mental image of the dumbest BTFII reboot

Nope. But given our elite technologist leaders often have some dangerous ideas about innovation and “improvements to society,” that don’t quite align with reality, I can’t say I blame people for worrying they might actually try.

I would make an inappropriate Ted Kaczynski joke if I didn’t know everything we do is being constantly monitored at all times by a bunch of turds with zero sense of humor.

I’m just wondering how Trump squares an explanation for this with the fact that we’re in a technology war with China. Why would we make ourselves more vulnerable to them?

I guess to clarify, it seems easier for Trump to make the argument to his base that everything he does to make us more vulnerable to Russia shouldn’t really be a big deal bc he has so much respect and trust for Putin.

Most people (myself included) don’t really know about this program, but if cutting funding makes us more vulnerable to China and other bad actors, it seems like a point more Americans should be made aware of.

They’re doing so much of this shit quietly, but when you start to put each piece together it should be frightening to anyone that doesn’t believe Russia is our BFF.

In late Feb, just after the whole Zelenskyy White House visit, Hegseth issued an order to Cyber Command to halt all planning against Russia including cybersecurity offensive strategies.

He gave the order to Commander Timothy Haugh, who is also head of the National Security Agency. Haugh told the outgoing director of operations, and cyber command begun putting together an official document of why this is a very bad idea.

I missed this completely until yesterday, but it turns out that Haugh and his NSA deputy were both suddenly ousted from their positions less than 2 weeks ago.

No reason was given they were just told “your services are no longer required.” Apparently Laura Loomer requested Trump have them removed and made some vague accusations against them bc they had been installed under Biden.

I admit I hadn’t heard of CVE program before today. Since we are BFFs now and Russia is “totally not a threat” to the U.S., I guess it’s supposed to be ok because friends share everything. But wouldn’t this also make us incredibly more vulnerable to China and any other country?

I mean maybe you do, but not being able to afford healthcare doesn’t automatically mean you’re just choosing to play video games all day. I know a guy who’s in his second year of med school, does community health volunteering in his free time, and is on Medicaid with the intention of helping others on Medicaid when he finishes.

There’s tons of children dependent on Medicaid, pregnant women, people with disabilities, people who work full time but still fall below the poverty line. There are so many different people that depend on Medicaid for different reasons. That’s why cutting it to give wealthy people a tax cut is a disgusting thing to do.

Omg so just go to Mars and leave us all the fuck alone.

These bros are so goddamn stupid, and I wouldn’t even care except they’re going to kill us all in their delusional dumbass pursuit of a technocratic AI powered utopia.

And they’re all so fucking miserable even if they succeed they will just wind up all alone in their robotic powered biodomes wondering wtf the point of existence is bc nobody is left to stroke their dumb fucking egos.