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Civil War Inside The Confederacy

Oh my, my. Steve Bannon has declared war on Elon Musk:

“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.”

“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.”

Bannon’s still beating the H-1B visas conflict, obviously banking on being able to continue his grift on the hardcore racist MAGA base. And he’s cleverly doing it by turning the racism on to the tech-bro Mafia that’s infiltrated the upper reaches of MAGA.

Does he have his finger on the pulse? He said, “This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious. No blacks or Hispanics have any of these jobs or any access to these jobs. Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans. He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

He’s playing the populist card hard here which makes sense for him but I can’t see how it makes sense for MAGA which is not only racist but worships a billionaire as their Dear Leader. But Bannon thinks he’s on to something, at least for the section of MAGA that takes this stuff somewhat seriously:

“He went out of his way to mock our movement as racist and retards, and he lost,” Bannon said. “We blew him out of the water. He won’t fight. He’s got the maturity of a little boy.” Musk has had “tremendous loss of credibility here in the United States, and quite frankly, the people around Trump are tired of it,” he said. Bannon went on to accuse Musk of being self-serving, insisting that his “sole objective is to become a trillionaire.”

He says that Musk’s just protecting his companies and trying to make more money but his financial support for the extreme right is good and he should do more of it. However:

“What’s not positive,” he added, “is when all of a sudden he tries to put his half-baked ideas which are really about the implementation of techno-feudalism on a global scale. I don’t support that and we’ll fight it.”

If you read the DOGE post below and then this one it’s pretty obvious that all the leaders of the right are in the midst of a massive collective wet dream. It’s probably going to end up the way they all do…

The DOGE Conspiracies

The DOGE is operating in complete secrecy, speaking only on Signal and guarding against leaks. The NY Times did get some information about it, however. It’s not good.

But parts of the operation are becoming clear: Many of the executives involved are expecting to do six-month voluntary stints inside the federal government before returning to their high-paying jobs. Mr. Musk has said they will not be paid — a nonstarter for some originally interested tech executives — and have been asked by him to work 80-hour weeks. Some, including possibly Mr. Musk, will be so-called special government employees, a specific category of temporary workers who can only work for the federal government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period.

The representatives will largely be stationed inside federal agencies. After some consideration by top officials, DOGE itself is now unlikely to incorporate as an organized outside entity or nonprofit. Instead, it is likely to exist as more of a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats and share a loyalty to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy.

“The cynics among us will say, ‘Oh, it’s naïve billionaires stepping into the fray.’ But the other side will say this is a service to the nation that we saw more typically around the founding of the nation,” said Trevor Traina, an entrepreneur who worked in the first Trump administration with associates who have considered joining DOGE.

Delusions of grandeur much???? Jesus, these people …

The DOGE team, including those paid engineers, is largely working out of a glass building in SpaceX’s downtown office located a few blocks from the White House. Some people close to Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Musk hope that these DOGE engineers can use artificial intelligence to find cost-cutting opportunities.

The broader effort is being run by two people with starkly different backgrounds: One is Brad Smith, a health care entrepreneur and former top health official in Mr. Trump’s first White House who is close with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. Mr. Smith has effectively been running DOGE during the transition period, with a particular focus on recruiting, especially for the workers who will be embedded at the agencies.

Mr. Smith has been working closely with Steve Davis, a collaborator of Mr. Musk’s for two decades who is widely seen as working as Mr. Musk’s proxy on all things. Mr. Davis has joined Mr. Musk as he calls experts with questions about the federal budget, for instance.

Other people involved include Matt Luby, Mr. Ramaswamy’s chief of staff and childhood friend; Joanna Wischer, a Trump campaign official; and Rachel Riley, a McKinsey partner who works closely with Mr. Smith.

Mr. Musk’s personal counsel — Chris Gober — and Mr. Ramaswamy’s personal lawyer — Steve Roberts — have been exploring various legal issues regarding the structure of DOGE. James Burnham, a former Justice Department official, is also helping DOGE with legal matters. Bill McGinley, Mr. Trump’s initial pick for White House counsel who was instead named as legal counsel for DOGE, has played a more minimal role.

What a cozy little group! I’m sure they all must be the best and the brightest.

I think most of us have known successful people who believe that because they’re good at one thing it makes them Leonardo DaVinci. I certainly came across this in the movie business where every lawyer sees himself as a director. But this is something else.

Peter Thiel is very involved in this project. He recently wrote a very, very weird, paranoid piece for the Financial Times called “A Time for Truth and Reconciliation” (a rather crude evocation of his home country of South Africa’ post-apartheid commission, which takes some real chutzpah.) He babbles about all the Red-pill conspiracies around the Deep State, Jeffrey Epstein, the JFK assassination, and COVID-19 in the kind of prose reserved for the most pretentious of Q-Anon fanatics.

“Trump’s return to the White House augurs the apokálypsis of the ancien regime’s secrets. The new administration’s revelations need not justify vengeance—reconstruction can go hand in hand with reconciliation. But for reconciliation to take place, there must first be truth.”

FFS. Edward Luce of the Financial Times was not amused:

Inside the mind of a Silicon Valley fanatic. Peter Thiel makes Orwellian analogy bwtween today’s liberal democracy and South African apartheid – and calls for a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover the crimes of America’s “ancien regime”. Beyond nuts www.ft.com/content/a46c…

Edward Luce (@edwardluce.bsky.social) 2025-01-10T13:23:03.079Z

peter thiel, if he ever had it, has certainly lost it now www.ft.com/content/a46c…

Quinta Jurecic (@qjurecic.bsky.social) 2025-01-10T14:19:11.995Z

I think this captures it perfectly:

"Peter Thiel, longtime Trump supporter and billionaire master of the universe, published an op-ed in Financial Times that perfectly replicates the experience of being cornered by a sweaty cokehead at an Austin, Texas house party."

Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix.bsky.social) 2025-01-11T03:53:28.427Z

Just read it. And pray that these ridiculous incel freaks get bored with this little project and move on to building their shopping malls on Mars or whatever other adolescent fantasy they’ve been nursing since middle school. I’m not sure any of them have the faintest idea of how bureaucracies work or understand the power of them. But I guess we’re going to see. Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn about any of it. He got his. He won and he’s going to make more money than he ever has.

I’ve never been one to hate on the pointy headed nerd types but I’m becoming converted. These people are living in another dimension.

Update: Tom had a great post the other day about Thiel’s op-ed. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Trump’s All They’ve Ever Known

If 18 year old white men were a a state their closest analog in terms of partisan lean would be Wyoming.To be clear 18 year's of all race/genders have gotten more conservative though: non-white men have moved the most to the right, white women have moved the least.

David Shor (@davidshor.bsky.social) 2025-01-12T16:06:47.229Z

He is normal to them.

Also this which explains the GOP reversal on banning TikTok:



What have we done?

Only The Worst People On Earth

Tate’s a right wing star:

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has voiced his support for Andrew Tate’s bid to become the UK Prime Minister, despite Tate’s controversial views and criminal allegations. Musk’s involvement in British politics, which includes criticism of Labour leader Keir Starmer and endorsement of far-right figures, has sparked significant debate. Conservative spokespersons have described Musk’s actions as irresponsible and dangerous.

A video clip surfacing on social media shows Andrew Tate denouncing the “generational failure” of UK politics. Earlier this week, he referred to himself as the “unofficial Prime Minister of The United Kingdom” in a post and voiced support for Greenland being annexed into the US.

To this, Musk replied, “He’s not wrong”.

Who is Andrew Tate?


Andrew Tate, a self-described “misogynist,” is infamous for his extreme views and criminal allegations, including charges of rape and human trafficking. Alongside his brother, he faces accusations in Romania of exploiting women and is set to be extradited to the UK to address further allegations. Tate has consistently denied all charges.

Tate has openly criticised the UK government, claiming the nation is deteriorating under its current leadership.

He has previously supported controversial figures like Tommy Robinson, a convicted criminal known for racist behaviour. Robinson, who was imprisoned for libelling a Syrian refugee, has also received public support from Musk, who has repeatedly called for his release.

Some examples of Tate’s commentary:

Trump’s senior counsellor Alina Habba is a big fan but a few MAGA women aren’t so sure he’s good for the MAGA movement.

This is what MAGA has always been. Their leader is a man who openly proclaimed that he could grab strange women by the pussy and they let him do it yet they voted for him twice.

MAGA is a violent misogynist cult. But don’t forget, they’re very devout Christians.

Dispatches From The Dark Side

While you lost sleep over friends in L.A.

Photo shot from Sherman Oaks via Kathy Van Ness of Manhattan Beach, CA.

For those of you not following the victim-blaming on Fox News:

This is what Fox News chooses to speak about. Nitpicking at diversity & LGBTQ+ line items in the budget? Where the HELL is the information about how to help these people majorly impacted by the LA fires? Where’s the resources? Where are the emergency numbers? Any updated info? Absolutely sickening.🤬

Peter Morley 💙 ♿️ (@petermorley.bsky.social) 2025-01-11T13:18:35.550Z

“We stoke hatred.” Is it on their business cards?

Rude Pundit remarks:

Not that it’s up to me (it’s up to LA County voters–home rule is cool & all that), but LA County in 2024 had a $49.2 billion budget (https://ceo.lacounty.gov/budget/), and I don’t see anything wrong with spending these amounts on these ⬇️ activities.

ICYMI:

The Supreme Court said Friday it will review the constitutionality of a provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires health plans to provide no-cost preventive care, including cancer screenings, immunizations and contraception, to millions of Americans.

The case puts the law, commonly known as Obamacare, in the crosshairs once again and follows several challenges in recent years by conservatives hoping to overturn it, as well as a landmark 2012 ruling by the justices upholding its legality.

In Becerra v. Braidwood Management Inc., a Christian-owned business and six individuals challenged the preventive-care provision because it requires health-care plans to cover pre-exposure medications intended to prevent the spread of HIV among certain at-risk populations. The plaintiffs argue that the medications “encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior,” which conflicts with their religious beliefs.

Rude Pundit on that subject:

What this headline is not saying is that the case happened because some ultra Christian fucknuts didn't like that their insurance had to provide drugs that prevent HIV. That might "encourage and facilitate homosexual behavior." That's right. We might lose cancer screening because of homophobia.

The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit.bsky.social) 2025-01-12T14:51:23.845Z

Live and let live is not part of their faith model.

Meanwhile, out on the Interwebs, there is a conspiracy theory going around about House Resolution 7 introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Az.) and Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.). Summarized in brief:

House Resolution 7Recognizing the importance of access to comprehensive, high-quality, life-affirming medical care for women of all ages, was referred to the Committee on Energy on Commerce. HR 7 states that women should feel empowered and equipped with the knowledge to listen to their body and advocate for their health.

The resolution emphasizes women having access to health care for the sake of their physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. It also states that women’s health care should address the needs of men, families, and communities. While focusing on women’s health care, the resolution, does not state, why or how men or families are related to the care of women’s health.

Additionally the resolution adds that the use of Pro Women’s Healthcare Centers, a group of centers that provide health care to women is a goal of the representatives sponsoring the bill in the 119th Congress.

No, what the resolution states is that the Pro Women’s Healthcare Centers model is one “worth implementing nationwide,” and that, again, women’s health care “should also address the needs of men, families, and communities,” including her “spiritual wellness.”

One fact check from MSN states that, contra online rumors, the resolution will not require women “to get permission from their husband, father or priest to obtain birth control, have their tubes tied, access IVF, get treated for a miscarriage or end a pregnancy for any reason.”

First, it’s a resolution, not a law. Second, it doesn’t state any of that expressly.

OTOH, you can read between the lines where Biggs and Higgins want to take women in this country and why these men introduced this resolution. You don’t need a weatherman….

Mindful Vs. Mindless

Some days it seems like we’re doomed

“I love these mountains,” said the workman driving the pickup truck as he admired the ridgetops. Then he tossed his empty drink cup out the window. The wife retells that anecdote now and then. She was in the passenger seat.

For a time in the 1990s, New Agers called this area the Sedona of the East. Others call it the Paris of the South. People in certain circles toss around words like mindful and intentional, whatever they mean. That’s aging hippie lingo to a lot of people just trying to pay their bills each week as expenses rise and paychecks don’t. Some people need to be whacked upside of the head for concerns like climate change to sink in, even when notice arrives at the front door.

Helene whacked a lot of people upside of the head here on September 27. And still the broader patterns may remain invisible to people like the guy in the truck.

Los Angeles got its own whacking last week. The question is will residents spared and who lost homes see the bigger picture, or like here in WNC will they be too busy rebuilding the lives they had to rebuild them differently.

“[E]ven in this place where there is little dispute that the danger is only getting worse due to climate change, we don’t leave,” explains David Siders at Politico. Even in “fire-gutted, heavily Democratic Altadena … climate change was nowhere near top of mind,” he found:

“When the wind gets like that, I’m sure that’s been happening since the beginning of time,” said David Allen, a writer whose own home was spared, but who was surveying a less fortunate neighbor’s. In this neighborhood full of doctors and professors and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Allen said he suspected people here just might become more animated about climate change. He nodded to the darkened sky obscuring the daytime sun — a “toxic wasteland,” he said.

But everywhere else? The country had just elected Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, joked about rising seas creating “more oceanfront property” and promises to “drill, baby, drill.”

“We’re in a stage where half the country’s thinking magically about things,” Allen said. “They’ve allowed themselves that luxury to be anti-everything — the end of expertise.”

Another blast of wind. Another fire. Okay, this one was nastier than most. Apocalyptic, like the Helene winds and flooding that killed over 100 in Western North Carolina and altered the landscape. But were the Los Angeles fires apocalyptic enough to change minds?

“Blame?” said one resident Siders spoke with about the fire. “No,” he said, “We don’t know what started it.”

There’s an idea I’ve heard from many Democrats, especially in California, that more experience with natural disasters might spur more urgency around climate change. And in fact, polling suggests people affected by extreme weather do draw a link. California’s former governor, Jerry Brown, told me when we met last month in Sacramento that Trump might represent something of an opening for Democrats on the issue: “If the assault on the environment is as extreme as expected, then I believe the fervor for protecting the environment will increase far beyond what it is today.” Attitudes about climate might shift, he said, when “we get a big set of fires or floods, which we’re going to get.”

He was right, it turned out, about the set of fires. And the climate science was right there with it. The same day I visited Altadena, a group of researchers released a study describing how climate change had accelerated “hydroclimate whiplash” between wet and dry conditions, increasing the risk of fire. Its lead author, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California’s agriculture and natural resources division and UCLA, told me that one of the challenges when it comes to public opinion about climate change is that while people “correctly understand that climate change exists,” many “don’t feel it is viscerally or tangibly affecting them.”

Major catastrophes are relatively rare, and when they do happen, not everyone draws a connection to climate. He called it an “information crisis.”

And it is a political one, too. Even if people do accept the reality of climate change, and even if they are concerned about it, the issue tends to rank low on people’s list of priorities when it comes to electing politicians who can shape public policy.

There are dozens of cartoons picturing a pair of dinosaurs and the Chicxulub asteroid. “Maybe it isn’t going to be so bad,” says one from The New Yorker.

I imagine dinosaurs in MAGA hats sneering, “Cry more, asteroid.”

 
View on Threads

L.A. is a feeling: A mixtape

Drivin’ down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone, so alone

– from “L.A. Woman”, by The Doors

In my 2019 review of Jacques Demy’s 1969 drama Model Shop, I wrote:

George’s day (and the film) turns a 180 when he visits a pal who runs an auto repair shop and espies a lovely woman (Anouk Aimee) who is there to pick up her car. On impulse, he decides to follow her in his MG (yes, it’s a bit on the stalking side). He follows her high up into the hills over L.A., and then seems to lose interest. He stops and takes in a commanding view of the city and the valley beyond, deeply lost in thought.

In my favorite scene, he drives up into (Laurel Canyon?) to visit a friend who’s a musician in an up-and-coming band. George’s pal turns out to be Jay Ferguson, keyboardist and lead singer of the band Spirit (and later, Jo Jo Gunne). Ferguson (playing himself) introduces George to his band mates, who are just wrapping a rehearsal. Sure enough, the boys in the band are Ed Cassidy, Randy California, and Matthew Andes-which is the classic lineup for Spirit! The band also provided the soundtrack for the film.

After the band splits, Jay plays a lovely piano piece for George; a song he’s “working on”. After some small talk, George sheepishly hits Jay up for a loan. No problem, man. Jay’s got him covered. George delivers this short, eloquent soliloquy about Los Angeles:

I was driving down Sunset and I turned on one of those roads that leads into the hills, and I stopped at this place that overlooks the whole city; it was fantastic. I suddenly felt exhilarated. I was really moved by the geometry of the place…its harmony. To think that some people claim that it’s an ugly city, when it’s really pure poetry…it just kills me. I wanted to build something right then; create something. It’s a fabulous city.

It is a fabulous city…as far as I know. I don’t live there, but the “L.A.” that lives in my mind will always be a fabulous city. I’ve visited maybe 10 times in my life, and it’s always a fresh kick.

I was all of 19 years old in 1975 the first time I visited L.A., while still living in Alaska. I went with a friend, a fellow music geek who had grown up there. He introduced me to his “holy trinity” of record stores: Tower Records on the Strip, Aron’s on Melrose (their sidewalk sales were legend), and of course, the original Rhino Records store on Westwood Boulevard (as immortalized by Wild Man Fischer).

I actually remember picking up a copy of that 45, which Rhino was offering for free with any purchase. At any rate, I went absolutely ape shit (I remember flying back north with about 150 LPs in tow). We didn’t have record stores like that in Fairbanks. We returned the following summer for a rinse and repeat.

The L.A. music scene was a real eye-opener for me. I was there only a week or so for both trips (1975 and 1976), but was able to catch quite a few acts at The Roxy and The Troubadour (and possibly the Whisky A Go Go…I was in a Thai Stick haze at the time). I can’t recall which acts I saw which year, but the list includes Captain Beefheart, Nils Lofgren, The L.A. Express (with a surprise appearance by Joni Mitchell!), Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, Larry Coryell, Chunky, Novi & Ernie, Procter & Bergman, and others I’m fogging on.

My most recent visit was in 2019, to hang for a few days with my pal Digby and her husband. We took a road trip from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara to catch The Cult at the Bowl. I’d never been to Santa Barbara, so I was really digging the 90-mile drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. For locals, I’m sure the road signs you pass along the way are incidental, but for me, it was like “Ventura? As in Ventura Highway in the sunshine? Malibu? Redondo Beach?! Point Dume?! You mean…THE Point Dume? As in god damn you all to hell?”

I may not be a resident Angelino, but my heart certainly goes out to the people who have lost loved ones, homes and businesses in the unprecedented wildfires that continue to threaten life and property in the greater Los Angeles region as of this writing. Having been through a house fire where I literally lost nearly everything I owned, I can empathize. I was in my early 20s at the time, so I had the resilience of youth on my side and got back on track relatively quickly-but I think about people who are getting on later in life (like I am now) and how difficult it must be to lose everything and have to start over again. This too shall soon pass.

In the meantime, there are good vetted resources available if you want to help victims. And for this week’s post, I’ve curated a special mixtape as a musical love letter to that “fabulous city” that lives in my mind.

L.A. Woman – The Doors

To Live and Die in L.A. – Wang Chung

Nite City – Nite City

L.A. Dreamer – Charlie

Walking in L.A. – Missing Persons

Hollywood Nights – Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

The Sixteens – The Sweet

Valley Girl – Frank Zappa and Moon Zappa

Los Angeles – X

Cracked Actor – David Bowie

Marie Provost – Nick Lowe

Celluloid Heroes – The Kinks

Sunset Boulevard – City Boy

Free-Fallin’ – Tom Petty

Ladies of the Canyon – Joni Mitchell

California Dreamin’ – The Mama’s and the Papa’s

California Girls – The Beach Boys

Mulholland Drive – October London

Straight From the Heart – George Duke

Ventura Highway – America

99 Miles From L.A. – Albert Hammond

I Love L.A. – Randy Newman

Redondo Beach – Patti Smith

Coming Into Los Angeles – Arlo Guthrie

All I Wanna Do – Sheryl Crow

Previous posts with related themes:

Chinatown

Criss-Cross

The Day of the Locust

The Decline of Western Civilization

Drive

Farewell, My Lovely

He Walked By Night

In a Lonely Place

Kiss Me Deadly

The Long Goodbye

The Loved One

The Mayor of the Sunset Strip

Miracle Mile

Mulholland Drive

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Rampart

Repo Man

The Runaways

Shampoo

To Live and Die in L.A.

More at Den of Cinema

Dennis Hartley

Blatant Corruption 2.0

It’s even worse than the last time:

The Trump family business released a voluntary ethics agreement Friday that allows it to strike deals with private foreign companies, a move that could help outside actors try to buy influence with the new administration.

The so-called ethics white paper bars the Trump Organization from striking deals directly with foreign governments, but allows ones with private companies abroad, a significant departure from President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. An ethics pact that Trump signed eight years ago barred both foreign government and foreign company deals.

They’re also trying to buy back the lease on the Trump Hotel in DC which they let go a couple of years ago. Why give up all that easy money? Plus MAGA DC needs a club house.

Corruption is no longer an issue, at least until the Democrats take power again. Then the right wing scandal machine will rev up to a thousand and the Democrats will cower in fear. But right now, Trump can be photographed taking bankers boxes full of hundred dollar bills from an Afghan warlord and everyone would just shrug.

Mister Trendy Hits His Mid-Life Crisis

Max Read published an interesting piece today about Mark Zuckerberg’s move right. He reminds us that Zuck has changed up the moderation policies every election since 2016. He just rolls with flow of whatever he thinks is the political zeitgeist. But now it’s also happening at a very important time in Zuckerberg’s life. Read writes:

[This] is a useful corrective to the unfortunate framing that this announcement represents an “unapologetic” Zuck (if anything, the 2025 version is more “apologetic” than its 2021 or 2016 equivalents, just presented in a well-calibrated tone of defiance that casts his previous decisions as coerced). But I do think there’s an important and interesting difference between this video and Zuck’s previous post-election weathervane announcements: The gold chain.

It’s been clear for a while now that Zuckerberg has been Up To Something. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have described it as the “Zuckaissance”: Over the past eighteen months or so he grew out his hair; he replaced his hoodies with boxy tees; he got really into M.M.A. and wakeboarding. And, yes, he started wearing a gold chain. New Zuck is undeniably less off-putting than old, sweaty-hoodie, Caesar-cut Zuck. But he’s also unmistakably fratty, butch, and (to borrow an overused Twitter phrase) “right-coded,” partaking in the aesthetic and the hobbies of people you would expect to own crypto, listen to mindset podcasts, and vote for Trump (or, at least, refuse to vote for Biden).

It’s not exactly groundbreaking that a rich 40-year-old man has started wearing expensive streetwear. But usually this kind of personal journey culminates in divorce or hilarious/gruesome police body-cam footage or an announcement that you’re moving to Africa for a year, not in a video about new content-moderation guidelines. Zuck seems to have slowly transformed himself into a Dana White hanger-on who dresses like a Kick streamer in order to make to make this post-election right-wing turn seem authentic and deeply felt, rather than merely convenient.

Oh boy. But apparently friends are saying that Zuck’s hard turn right is genuine, which also isn’t too surprising considering his stage of life. And as I’ve been surmising, these allegedly machotech-bros are all engaged in a dick measuring contest, part of which is trying to get closer to power.

One answer, I think, is that Zuck’s new image is as much about a shifting political environment within Silicon Valley as it about the changing winds outside of the industry. A period of tech-industry labor unrest–walkouts and protests at tech megaplatforms over sexual harassment, racism, and defense contracts1–has given way to a “reset” marked by mass layoffs and corporate clampdowns. A looser tech labor market (and a general national atmosphere of reaction) has shifted power back to management, and a highly visible clique of tech workers with quasi-libertarian, open-to-the-possibility-of-race-science politics, clustered on Twitter in communities like “tcot” and “tpot,” has presented executives with the tantalizing (if still ephemeral) prospect of workforce free of Obama-era idealism and political consciousness.

News on Friday that Meta is ending its D.E.I. program should be seen in this context–as not just another way to cozy up to the Trump administration, but as another sally in a war against a workforce that tech management has come to see as dangerously left-wing. I’ve argued before that the hard-right turn of investors like Marc Andreessen should be seen in part as a kind of marketing strategy, an attempt to find founders and workers whose politics make them less likely to jeopardize profits with workplace action. I suspect that Zuck’s makeover functions at least in part in the same way. I don’t think Republican electeds much care if Zuck is cageside at M.M.A. matches or using right-wing slang like “legacy media” and “virtue-signaling”–but I think the kinds of employees he might like to attract probably do. (As do, from the other direction, the kinds of employees he would like to attrite)

Which leads, I think, to the other important function of Zuck’s new look. I think Roose is right that Zuck is “has clearly been studying Mr. Musk’s playbook”–not just in his rhetorical choices, but in his efforts to become more of a social-media main character in the same manner as Musk. (Note that Zuck is on Threads doing an uncanny imitation of Musk spamming single-emoji responses to Tweets thing.) For most of his career, Zuck has followed the general conventional wisdom around being a C.E.O. and attempted to appear generally nonpartisan (and when partisanship was unavoidable, to express it in the blandest ways possible). But Musk has, over the last few years, demonstrated that there are distinct advantages to aggressive and committed partisanship–specifically, the ability to command and direct swarms of protectors and apologists online.

Musk is the big kahuna but the other boys want to play too. Zuck (and Bezos to some degree) are among the richest tech bros and they’re all jostling for dominance. Part of that apparently requires licking Donald Trump’s boots which is not how I would have ever assumed such a game would be played.

It’s pathetic.

“Jawohl!” He Replied.

I am reliably told by virtually everyone that mentioning fascism is off the menu and that we need to only talk about kitchen table issues. But Jeff Sharlet makes a good point about how we have also decided to oppose Trump nominees on matters of character rather than ideology which doesn’t seem to be working:

Problems with Pete Hegseth ranked from very bad to way, way worse: 6. drunkenness (common); 5. incompetence (common); 4. corruption (common); 3. raving bigotry (common); 2. alleged rape (less common); 1. Proposing military attack on US cities to exterminate all enemies. (That’s a new one).

And yet focus has been winnowed down to drunkenness and incompetence, which probably describes a good 1/4 of cabinet secretaries in history. It’s framed as outrage—“he’s a drunk!”—but it functions as normalization.

Not normalization via some insidious media plot to sanewash fascism. Rather, a much broader subconscious desire to frame problems in a fashion that lets us belittle actual threats. Just a dumb drunk. Ha, ha, incompetent. Not existential risk.

When Hegseth was first announced there was a flurry of attention paid to the wildly violent fascist statements in his books; but that got pushed aside for his personal failings. Which are profound. But that provided fascism a very old path forward…

Hegseth’s defenders could deal with drunkenness and even alleged rape with the old story of “I was lost, now I’m found.” Some us noticed that story began for Hegseth after the allegations; and that his “found” involved far more violent Christian Reconstructionism.

But both the press and a public conditioned to understand the threats of fascism in individual terms preferred to make the case against Hegseth as those of bad character. As if a sober man w/ no assault allegations calling for civil war would be ok?

And surprise: the old methods haven’t worked to stop 8Hegseth and his defenders as they’ve used the familiar narrative designed long ago to defang such critiques. It shldnt work, no. But we shldnt be so witlessly naive to imagine it couldn’t. And yet here we are.

I don’t know if what I and others started proposing the night Hegseth was nominated—that we oppose his fascism by researching & talking about his fascism—would have worked any better. Maybe not. But, to quote Homer Simpson, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”

People don’t seem to care much about the threat of authoritarianism. Maybe that’s the way it always is — until it happens.

For some reason this makes me think of this article in this week’s Atlantic about how Hitler dismantled democracy in 53 days. (gift link)

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

Hans Frank served as Hitler’s private attorney and chief legal strategist in the early years of the Nazi movement. While later awaiting execution at Nuremberg for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, Frank commented on his client’s uncanny capacity for sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler had renounced trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic by violent means but not his commitment to destroying the country’s democratic system, a determination he reiterated in a Legalitätseid—“legality oath”—before the Constitutional Court in September 1930. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.

“So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.

“Jawohl!” Hitler replied.

Yes.

Update: If you want to know exactly what Sharlet is talking about with respect to Hegseth, his article about it is here. He is as extreme as it gets which I think I knew when he worked to persuade Trump to pardon war criminals. And, of course, Trump loved him for it. He’s a man of peace dontcha know.