CI hadn’t realized this was Clay Higgins. If you haven’t heard what this clown sounds like, you’re in for a treat.

Yeah those are the strongest part, but very well supported by the shiny dome, gray stubble and classic Hugo boss grey of his jacket.

He really does. I’d say coincidence… but the probability is that it’s more intentional than accidental.

Ugh so annoying. So like both in movies and body building, what they’re selling is actually not a healthy or strong physique—but someone who could be on the verge of organ failure.

I like the idea of fitness, and being in functionally good shape, so this sort of exaggeration is something I find uniquely distasteful—portraying a a goal state that is actually just a grift/scam, and that is dangerous to partake in.

They basically did something similar to what happened to Bernie with the DNC. they did a full court press antisemitism campaign against him, but like many of the charges of antisemitism in the US right now, it was largely based on criticism of Israeli policy AFAIK.

Edit: to clarify—they ousted him because labor was looking ascendant, and the more centrist and corporatist elements of labor could not stomach the idea of actually having a PM that wanted to do left wing things that aligned with the theoretical purpose of the labor party, so they took him out by getting enough articles published in the famously above-board uk media to force him from leadership.

Given that half of them were enthusiastically taking horse de-wormer a few years back… this is not impossible

This shit is so wild. Large hyper-real push to define objecting to ongoing and unimpeachable military atrocities as hate crimes and anti-semitism. This then means that people objecting are either “Hamas terrorists” or “leftist fascists”. Therefore, use of snipers and para-military force must be employed. Like, all of this potential violence and oppression from a grotesque, albeit impressive, PR / propaganda campaign.

What I can’t wrap my head around, is that the claims are so insanely obviously fake/wrong. It really feels like some sort of shared delusion where the powers that be have agreed to just all agree that this absurd claim is reality, even though it looks the opposite to literally everyone else.

Whoever quarterbacked the destruction of Harvard and Penn’s presidents early on really did a whammy—the reactions at all of these universities seems so insanely disproportionate to what’s going on, it really reads as if they’re being blackmailed or otherwise compelled.

I really don’t see how you justify having snipers trained on your own students who are literally sitting on grass and singing/chanting.

Also, I assume it’s like a trespassing thing, but what is the legal basis for violently arresting students hanging out on quads? Is it just the university has “closed” these spaces, so the normal right to free movement of students is now revoked, and so being in these spaces counts as some sort of trespass?

I guess it doesn’t really matter, they can always fabricate whatever basis they need to bring in the thugs, but it just adds to the strange hyper-real feeling. Most of the protests haven’t had anything remotely approaching any definition of violence. The anti-war stuff in the 60s involved firebombing and lots of “property destruction” etc.

Anyhow, power to these kids, and glad they’re not balking in the face of all these threats and intimidation.

Side note: I realize that minorities and other marginalized groups have experienced the business end of American security state for years/decades/centuries, but is this perhaps a good example of the security state expanding its oppression and crackdown onto more privileged “mainstream” groups? I realize a lot of the protestors are minorities themselves, but I mean in the sense that these are college students at elite universities, some of them presumably from backgrounds of means/opportunity. Some dem senator did a voice clip on the news about how these college students are “leftist fascists” which is obviously garbage, but like everything else now, everything is just fascist this fascist that, with zero relation to the more academic understanding of the term.

If they somehow successfully get this hyper-real fiction to stick, there’s no limits to what they can get up to next—anything that challenges the dominant paradigm will just be labeled, targeted and removed. Not a unique occurrence, but certainly a signal that you’re well into authoritarian land.

I know this is an old, time-tested tactic against leftists and oppositions everywhere, it’s just one of the first times in my life I’ve noticed it really being used and pushed by mainstream media across the political spectrum. Similar shit was going down with BLM post George Floyd, but that was still mostly relegated to very partisan outlets, this feels much more broad-spectrum.

It’s almost worse than actually just laying off x% of a workforce—you stress everyone out and force them to contemplate leaving, some amount do (achieving the ulterior motive) and the rest who didn’t leave now have increased workload and are also immiserated by being forced to commute to a stupid cube farm some portion of the week. It’s like they found a way to make layoffs affect everyone more than they already did in the past.

Like we’ve been totally normalized to it—the frog in water thing. But by any objective standard, the US is a sick, sick country if this is the only outcome possible for an election. We must look so bizarre to other countries.

I mean, they are occupying a section of the border of the entire country, and denying, through threat of violence, the federal government/military access to said border. At some point, this simply has to be read as insurrection, and put down. A country only gets to exist and enforce laws by virtue of the implied violence (physical or otherwise) that it can leverage to back it up.

Of course there are complications to this, like the thought that steamrolling these troopers would then spark a greater revolt. But when you have a state doing things like this, particularly a state that has made it abundantly clear they desire to secede and have prepared for secession, I think you need to play hardball. This could be either by forcibly bringing them back in line through state violence, or giving them what they want, in such a way that it ends up being a pyrrhic victory; imagine aggressive border protocols and removal of free travel along the Texas border, intense tariffs and duties on Texan goods, etc… honestly a Texit could be quite beneficial for the country, shifting congress balances somewhat. Add in some statehood’s for PR, Guam and DC and now you’re really cooking with gas.

Who knows though, I’m still finding it hard to believe that the Jan 6 insurrectionists weren’t mowed down in machine gun fire when they penetrated the capitol, so clearly my expectations of government reaction and what actually happens have some daylight between them.

It’s really wild how hard the media is trying to emotionally anchor this for Americans. They reference 9/11 AND Pearl Harbor in that list.

I have no way of really knowing, but I strongly suspect that Average-America’s regard for Israel is far more negative or at least neutral than it might have been a decade ago, and the way the media is going so hard in framing the narrative feels like they know it.

For reference: that sign is 5’ high.