When the cost to try something is virtually zero, you don’t have to try very hard. If only one in ten thousand people will fall for a scam, then millions of attempts will still get you thousands of successes.

They’ll probably settle on creating a higher denomination. I mean, it’s not like it would be hard to justify having a higher denomination. The US Treasury used to issue higher denomination bank notes., but the highest has been the $100 note since 1934. We’ve had quite a lot of cumulative inflation since then. Sure, cash is less important now than it was in the past. But if just by inflation, a $1000 note would be appropriate. So maybe as a compromise you issue $250 and $500 notes.

Or maybe he’ll just mint a ten trillion dollar platinum coin with his mug on it. Then have the treasury deposit it in the president’s personal bank account as “a tip for good public service.”

Paradoxically, it might actually be. Progressives might actually have an easier time getting elected as Republicans than Democrats.

Remember, Republicans don’t actually have platforms anymore. Their base just views it as a football game; they don’t actually believe in anything; they just want to win. They nominate celebrities and whoever can simply channel enough raw energy and emotion.

Progressives could run as Republicans, billing themselves as “Radical Republicans,” promising to rekindle the fire of the post-Civil War party. They could say they support strong borders, but flip the table on Republicans by running on a strong social safety net.

Remember, the policies progressives champion are actually quite popular among the working white working class Republican base. They just hate that it’s Democrats championing the policies. So if progressives simply run as Republicans instead, well that barrier drops away.

If Republicans don’t actually believe in anything anymore, and they only run on grievance and vibes, why not just run progressives as Republicans? Run as a Republican and condemn Democrats as being servants of the wealthy. Do it with an R next to your name, and the Republican base will eat it up. Remember, they don’t actually believe in anything. If you can offer them the rage and “winning” that they so desperately want, your actual policies are irrelevant. It’s entirely possible for progressives to win running as Republicans. In fact, it’s probably easier for progressives to win as Republicans than as Democrats now.

The answer is not to embrace Republicans. The answer is to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. They need to go the way of the Whigs. They’re simply irredeemable at this point.

If that’s not possible, honestly I think progressives would have better luck running as Republicans than Democrats. Republicans don’t really have an ideology anymore. They’re all just celebrity, vibes, and raw emotion. Maybe progressives should start running as “radical Republicans,” declaring that their intention is to resurrect the spirit of the post-Civil War party. That honestly is probably the quickest way we have now of actually getting progressives elected.

One thing about the Republican party is that it’s much more vulnerable to outside disruption and takeover. Trump proved that. The Democratic party meanwhile goes to great lengths in its organization and primary structure to prevent outside usurpers from coming in and grabbing the nomination in a big populist wave.

At this point, we do need to burn the Democratic Party to ashes. We need to put it out of its misery and let It needs to go the way of the Whigs. Some things simply can’t be repaired.

There have been many countries caught in this same authoritarian trap that we’re in now. And one common lesson is that you need to give up on the captured opposition if you want to have any hope of actually ending the authoritarian regime.

Democrats are going to lose again in 2028. They’re going to yet again nominate a corporate centrist and yet again try the failed policy of appealing to Republican suburbanites. That’s all these clowns know.

How many times do they have to lose elections before we give up on these fucking losers? They lost in 2016, they lost in 2024, and they would have lost in 2020 if it weren’t for Covid.

The only reason to vote for Democrats is a pragmatic approach - they’re better than the alternative. But they don’t actually have that pragmatic argument anymore, and they haven’t for a long time. They’ve been completely unelectable for a decade at this point.

They’re a party of losers. Just absolute, irredeemable losers. They are fundamentally incapable of winning a presidential election now. They just don’t have it in them.

We need to let them go. It’s ritual self-mutilation to keep trying to prop up the dead corpse that is the Democratic party. It’s dead man. It’s time to let it go.

The problem with this is that it assumes both parties act independently.

You know how right now how Republicans are willing to use every loophole, cite ancient forgotten laws, and violate every norm? That’s always been possible. You can’t actually write a constitution to constrain bad-faith actors. You can always come up with a bogus interpretation to do what you want.

If this is possible, you have to ask, why did leaders ever try to follow the law in good faith? How was it ever possible to establish a norms-based stability when either side could knock over the board at any moment?

The answer is that good-faith interpretation of the law fails when people only do so out of principle. It succeeds when good-faith interpretation is a peace treaty. Both sides agree to follow the law in good faith, as the alternative is complete chaos as both sides try to twist every loophole.

Democrats are a bunch of liberal arts majors that have forgotten that Democracy and the rule of law does not exist because everyone worships them as high ideals. They exist because they are a compromise, a peace treaty.

Republicans break norms. In response, Dems latch on even tighter to the norms. Instead, they should be seeking to break them at every opportunity they can. They need to be as ruthless as the Republicans, and even more so.

Following the rule of law is hard. It means giving up power and results that you could otherwise achieve by violating the rule of law.

Right now, only Democrats are trying to obey every norm and precedent. As such, Republicans have nothing to lose by violating these. It’s all upside to them. Their bad behavior is the direct result of Democratic cowardice. If Democrats were willing to give as well as they get, we could actually have a rules-based order again. Paradoxically, a prerequisite for rules to be effective is that both sides need to be willing to violate them.

Be careful what you wish for. For you may get it, Monkey’s Paw style.

Your citizenship may be revoked. Without you getting citizenship anywhere else.

On the up side, I have always wanted to build a secret cabin in a national park…

Sure, in a one-party system like China, the one ruling party is always responsible for everything that happens. The fatal flaw in the system though is - how do you actually hold that one party accountable? If the Chinese Communist Party fails, the only way to actually hold them accountable is to start building bombs and killing people. There’s no way to vote them out of office. The only way to hold them accountable is a total revolution.

Who gives a fuck? Stop trying to sew division and relitigate an election that ended three months ago. Fuck the politics of division. The left needs unity now. Fuck the dividers.

My favorite is how they downvote posts that point this out to Hell. Then they look around and say, “wow, all the pro-Palestine posts are gone. Guess they were all just Russian bots!”

And I propose jail time for Senator Hawley. Specifically, life without parole for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

You know what? Fuck it. Let’s go back to 19th century rules. We’ll have open unlimited immigration, but in a very annoying fashion.

First, we’ll reopen and expand the Ellis Island facility. We’ll let anyone without a serious criminal record in, but all immigrants have to go through Ellis Island.

Second, no more plane travel. That’s just too damn easy. You have to come here by boat. And we’ll require they be slow boats that take at least a month to cross the ocean. Also we’ll set a minimum ticket price to whatever the inflation-adjusted value of a steerage ticket was on a passenger liner c. 1910.

We’ll turn immigration from a criminally regulated matter into what amounts to an international hazing ritual. We’ll let anyone who wants in, but you got to prove you really want it by putting up with a whole lot of pointless bullshit first.

Live in Ciudad Juarez and want to move to El Paso? Nah, you’re not just going to be able to walk across the border. You’re going to have to haul your ass down Vera Cruz, book a ticket on a boat, and then spend at least a month fucking around on the ocean until you get to NYC. Then you’ll be let in and can go live in El Paso if you want.

My ancestors came here during the time of open immigration, but they also had to put up with a lot shit in order to do so. We’ll make immigration like joining a fraternity or sorority. We’ll let you in, but we’re going to make you put up with a bunch of pointless and arbitrary crap first.

The DNC needs to be burned to ashes. The Democratic Party needs to go the way of the whigs.

We’re caught in a coordinated action problem here. The DNC is terrible and is impossible to change. Yet, every 4 years, they trot out another shit candidate, and anyone left of the Nazis has to support them simply because they are the “only option.”

What we need to do is have a movement or petition that makes it abundantly clear that the Democratic Party is dead. We need Democratic voters, by the millions, to sign a pledge promising NOT to vote for whatever candidate the Dems nominate.

Imagine if we had 20 million people who voted for Kamala pledged to never support a Democratic presidential candidate ever again. They pledge this and pledge to support the Working Families Party or similar. That would be enough that it would doom any potential Democratic candidate in the future.

The only thing the DNC has going for it is the sense of inevitability. Every four years, they’re the only rational choice, so we have to support them. What we need to do now is to forever take away that ability from them. It needs to be made clear that the Democratic Party will never win an election again. America’s system means that two parties are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t swap out one party for another.

If enough people make clear that they will simply never support the Democratic Party ever again, then its spell is broken. If 20 million people pledged this, suddenly the “inevitability” would switch to the Working Families Party. Any presidential candidates on the left wanting any hope of winning the presidency would have to run in the Working Families primary.

Why is deporting protesters a worse crime than being complicit in the murder of tens of thousands of civilians?

And remember, we’re talking about sins Trump might commit. But more often then not he’s just rambling and bluster. People judged Biden based on the crimes he actually committed. He was complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. That’s not rhetoric or bluster, those are people he actually had a hand in murdering.

If anything, so far at least, Biden’s crimes vastly, vastly outweigh Trump’s in regards to Gaza. Trump is threatening, but still hasn’t yet, deported protesters. Biden is complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Trump, admittedly through crooked means, actually managed to get a cease fire passed.

It’s possible that in the future Trump’s crimes will outstrip Biden’s. But Trump promises a lot of things that never actually end up happening. He says he would like to ethnically cleanse Gaza, but until he actually follows through on that, Biden’s crime in regards to Gaza are objectively far, far worse than Trump’s. Trump has the potential to eventually end up the greater villain. But right now, on January 30 2025, in terms of Gaza, Biden objectively has a far worse record than Trump.

You’re judging the two men based on Trump’s rhetoric, bluster, and what he might do. The people you’re reacting to are judging Biden based on the things he actually did, not the things he promised to do.

You’re a short-term voter. The people you’re railing against are long-term voters. Short-term thinking is what has got us into this mess.

You have to select “prime eligible” items. Are these penny ebooks included in the minimum purchase total?

It’s what I call the Rapiscan systems

https://www.rapiscansystems.com/en/

I just call them the rape scanners.

My biggest pet peeve about the TSA is how they get all annoyed if you don’t know what randomly selected procedures they’ll be using today.

The TSA deliberately randomizes its security procedures. Different airports use different procedures, and the same airport uses different procedures at random. Sometimes you need to take your laptop out of your bag; sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you need to take off your shoes; sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you can just use the metal detector, sometimes they want you to use the rape scanner.

Which is fine I suppose; it makes sense to leave potential threats guessing. But the real problem is the attitude of the TSA agents themselves. It’s not just that they randomly select procedures; it’s that they get angry about it. Start taking off your shoes out of habit at a TSA line that today doesn’t require it? A community college dropout will soon be by, screaming at you for daring to take your shoes off in line. Start taking your laptop out when they’ve decided that today is a day for leaving it in? Some guy that couldn’t even meet the low bar of becoming a regular police officer will be in your face about it within seconds.