You’re right. We need to get real. Those who support Democrats are just throwing their votes away. At this point, the Democratic Party has proven itself utterly incapable of winning a national election. Voting for Democrats is throwing your vote away. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Republican. We need to focus on real political parties like the Working Families Party that actually have a vision that they’re trying to fight for. Democrats don’t believe in anything. Democrats don’t even care about winning elections. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for MAGA. Centrists may not like voting for a progressive candidate, but they need to get over themselves. If centrists want to vote for Democrats, they’re choosing Fascism over Democracy.

California, Oregon, Washington.

New independent country. We’ll call ourselves, “North Chile.”

It’s possible that we’re also just seeing a fundamental shift in tech here. When this plane was being developed, the only way to track the F-35 was to have a world-class radar system. That’s the kind of defense net it’s meant to evade. But now? You can track things optically just by having a bunch of cameras pointed at the sky, combining data together using some cheap AI system. Did this event happen in the daytime?

Let’s look at the series of events:

1. California severely restricts the supply of housing to benefit the wealthy. Existing homeowners and corporate landlords get rich as the price of housing soars, as the state actively restricts people from building enough to keep up with the need.

2. Homelessness rates soar. Millions find that the market value of their labor is now exceeded by the market value of rent. They become homeless through no fault of their own.

3. Instead of providing adequate services to the homeless, the state responds by demonizing the homeless. Homeless people are stereotyped. Any crime committed by a homeless person is shouted about from the rooftops. A hate campaign is enacted to portray the homeless as violent, drug-addicted, and insane. The homeless use drugs at a lower rate than the housed, but public opinion believes the opposite. Their disheveled state is portrayed as a deep character flaw rather than simply an inevitable consequence of their material reality. People are made homeless through no fault of their own. But the public is convinced through a vast propaganda campaign that the homeless deserve to be homeless and are fundamentally evil people.

4. The state unleashes a campaign of performative terror on the homeless population. Police disband camps and force people out, without providing anywhere for these people to go. It is simply action for action’s sake. Newsom can proudly state, “I didn’t solve homelessness, but I sure made their lives a living hell by forcing them to endlessly move from place to place! The dirty hobos deserve it!”

That’s textbook fascism. Newsom doesn’t have a solution to this problem. Solutions do exist, but they would require building enough housing to drive down its cost. And that would hurt the bank accounts of rich people. So instead, Newsom has unleashed a state terror campaign against California’s homeless population. The goal of this terror campaign isn’t to solve homelessness or to help anyone in any manner. It is meant to show middle class and wealthy people that Newsom is making those “dirty homeless people” pay for their sins. Well off folks are tired of seeing the homeless that they created in public view. So Newsom is promising to use state terror to drive them out of the public sphere entirely.

If you think this isn’t fascism, well…you need to learn what fascism actually is.

Do you know what fascism is? I am not saying that Newsom is exhibiting fascist behavior as some cheap and quick pejorative. I’m not using fascism as a synonym for “bad” here. I’m pointing out that this kind of policy literally is the textbook definition of fascism.

This is fascism 101. Among Umberto Eco’s 14 common features of fascism is the cult of action for action’s sake.

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Your response would make sense if I was complaining that the police disbanding camps simply wasn’t going to enough good. But this action doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t reduce homelessness at all. In fact, it actually makes homelessness worse. Every time camps are torn down, people lose possessions and documents they need to escape homelessness. If you bulldoze a homeless camp, you’re sending a fair number of personal and ID documents to the landfill. Every time you clear a camp, you’re making it that much harder for people to actually get back on their feet.

This isn’t the perfect being the enemy of the good. This is simply an unambiguously harmful policy that does no good at all for the community.

Why is this action fascist? It meets several of Eco’s points. From the linked list numbers:

(3) Cult of action for action’s sake. It is purely performative. It will actually increase the number of unhoused people, as the more unstable someone’s situation, the harder it is to return to housing. It’s an objectively negative policy, but people support it because Newsom is “doing something.” This meets Eco’s point 3, the cult of action.

(6) Appeal to social frustration. People are tired of seeing the homeless and being reminded of their own precarious state. Better sweep them out of view.

(10) Contempt for the weak. Pretty obvious. These people have simply been priced out of the housing market. But Newsom vilifies these people and treats them like animals.

(12) Machismo and weaponry. Better send in the SWAT team to tear down some tents.

This is quite literally textbook fascism. I’m not condemning camp sweeps because they fail to meet some ideological purity test. I’m condemning them because they’re completely unproductive and are a textbook definition of fascist policy.

Do you not know what fascism is? The cult of action is one of the hallmarks of Fascism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

This policy has all the marks of the cult of action. It does nothing to actually solve the homelessness issue. It focuses on using cruel brute force to punish the undesirable members of society. It’s a performative action not meant to actually achieve any noble end, but simply to show that the regime is “doing something.”

How is this actually helping anyone? What good actually comes from spending millions in public resources to endlessly shuffle homeless people from one location to another?

The state is using performative violence simply as a propaganda tool to make citizens think the government is “doing something.” That is the cult of action for action’s sake. It’s literally one of the textbook characteristics of fascism.

This isn’t hyperbole. We’re talking fascism 101 here. California is sending in the jack boots to terrorize the undesiables. How is that not fascism?

I understand why he’s chosen to do something.

You’re falling for fascist propaganda. Notice, Newsom isn’t actually doing anything to fix the problem. He’s not providing these people housing at all. All he’s doing is sending out law enforcement to endlessly harass the homeless. That’s what his “doing something” actually is. He’s sending the police to “deal with” the homeless.

You recognize there’s a problem. But you can’t identify a solution. A fascist strongman comes along and promises to “do something,” without any real plans or promises, just the vague cult of action for the sake of action. Newsom tortures some poor people, and you walk away feeling good, believing that at last someone is “doing something.”

This won’t actually house anyone. People don’t disappear simply because you kicked them out of their camping spot. All you really do every time you disburse the homeless is make it that much harder for them to escape homelessness at all. Every time a camp is torn down, people lose invaluable possessions, resources, and documents that are really their only hope of ever pulling themselves out of homelessness. Newsom’s actions are only exacerbating the homelessness crisis.

It’s the poorest of the poor that will pay the price for Newsom’s fascist propaganda campaign. But, at least you get to feel good knowing that he’s “doing something.” You must be a big fan of the TSA.

Something has to be done, at least Gavin is trying things.

This is fascist thinking - the cult of action for the sake of action. You can’t identify any real solution to the problem, but by God, you want SOMETHING done. And that something, when undefined, inevitably just means, “send law enforcement to torture them until they kill themselves.”

This is one of those comforting lies people tell themselves. It’s the just world fallacy.

Drug use and homelessness are mostly orthogonal issues, but people latch onto it as a quick and easy way to dismiss providing housing for the homeless. People of all income levels have mental illnesses and drug use issues. But for the homeless, we decide that their drug use issues are such a moral failing that it’s OK to deny them housing as punishment.

Also, people confuse cause and effect. Being homeless causes mental health and drug abuse, not the other way around.

Exactly. People of all income levels struggle with mental health and drug issues. The drug use and mental health struggles of the homeless are just much more publicly visible.

Housing really is the main issue though. People get the cause and effect backwards. People don’t become homeless because they do drugs; they do drugs because they’re homeless. If you were stuck sleeping on the sidewalk, wouldn’t you want to be high 24/7? I sure would.

I’m trans. I voted for Kamala, but I have zero hate on anyone who didn’t due to Gaza.

The Democrat’s problem isn’t just Gaza. It’s what the enabling of a genocide signals and means. If you will enable a literal ethnic cleansing, what won’t you do? You’ve literally already elevated things to full-on Hitlerian levels. If you’re willing to do that for political power, there is nothing you won’t do.

And as we’ve seen recently, Democrats have frequently thrown trans people under the bus. Even Kamala didn’t even try to refute the endless barrage of anti-trans ads thrown by the Republicans.

When asked if she supported trans care for inmates, do you know what she said? She said, “we’ll follow the law.” She was defending her past actions as California attorney general to provide trans prisoners gender-affirming healthcare. But when given the perfect opportunity to stand up for trans people everywhere, she said that she only did it because it’s what the law required of her.

Someone who actually gave a shit about trans lives would never say something like that. Instead they would say, “of fucking course prisoners get trans healthcare. Trans healthcare is medically-necessary care. It saves lives. To deny someone that care or to force them to detransition is literal torture. We sentence people to prison. We don’t sentence them to torture. We give inmates gender-affirming healthcare because to do otherwise is cruel and unusual punishment.”

That’s how you actually answer that question if you have an ounce of empathy in your soul for trans people or any understanding of the issue at all. If you make trans care some frivolous thing that can be denied to prisoners, then all trans identities are frivolous and undeserving of legal recognition or respect in any context.

And there are far worse Democrats than Kamala. Plenty of centrist Dems are willing to throw trans people under the bus if they can earn cheap political points. It turns out that if you’re willing to support a literal genocide, then persecuting a small minority group isn’t that big an ask. Once you’ve committed murder, shoplifting isn’t something you think twice about.

What evidence do you have for your claim that things are worse in Gaza under Trump than they were under the Biden/Kamala path?

Note, rhetoric is not evidence. Trump lies all the time. Biden lies all the time. Trump says he would like the US to ethnically cleanse Gaza, but he’s taken no actual steps towards that end. And Biden also tried to negotiate resettlement of the Gazans to other countries.

All I’m seeing here are vibe. You see someone who is objectively a bad human being, and you decide that they must be the worst possible person on Earth for every conceivable category. Trump can be far worse domestically than Biden while still being equivalent to him in terms of Palestine.

So again, don’t quote me rhetoric. I don’t care about Trump’s verbal diarrhea. What actual material things can you point to that are different from what Biden was allowing without any resistance? Because I think you’re mostly just going on vibes.

To me, this is an unscientific position. What actions on Gaza has the Trump regime taken that are demonstrably worse than what the Biden administration allowed? Are you forming your judgements based on faith or actual critical thought and observation?

Yes, Trump says a lot of things that are worse than those Biden said. But politicians lie all the time. Biden lied about trying to rein in Israel, and Trump so far has blustered a whole lot about mass atrocities he would like to do. But he hasn’t actually done those.

Again, forget the rhetoric. Trump is a dancing rage clown and you’re getting distracted by by the clown.

What has Trump done, MATERIALLY, in Gaza, that is any worse than what Biden did? Again, not rhetoric, actual real-world actions.

Depending on the design of its memory, a device with a full drive will literally weigh slightly more or slightly less than one with an empty drive. Charging the battery in all cases causes it to weigh more.

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This entire thread was started by a blue MAGAT stirring up shit.

And again. You’re blinded by partisanship. You’re no different than MAGA worshiping their God king. You see any criticism of your team, and you immediately bring out the pitchforks and start accusing people of supporting Trump.

Trump got elected because “blue no matter who” has lead the Democrats into Hell. Democrats are going to lose again in 2028, because they lack the self-reflection necessary to actually ask why they lost. Any criticism means you support Trump. We have to accept the perfection of the blue team, and any criticism means you want Trump to win.

In reality, those who want to reform the Democratic party want Trump to lose far more than people like yourself. The actions of people like you are precisely why Trump is now in office. You are responsible for Trump. MAGA is going to win again in 2028 because of people like you.

I mean, that was a literally true statement. She sacrificed her chance at the presidency because she cared more about enabling genocide than any other issue. It was what she cared more about than all other things. It was her highest campaign ambition. Everything else was secondary.