there it is

And that's what happens when monopolies and historic wealth accumulation reach a certain point. A nation state, no matter how powerful, gets bought out. America has been bought out, from Trump to the parties to the economy, top to bottom. You either change that or you don't.

American hubris, nationalistic fairytales, and profit incentives keep people from seeing it, but it's not that hard to understand that all national interests, including the living conditions of its people, have been superseded by petty and large-scale corruption. That's it. The whole thing.

View Trump like a tinpot dictator in another country and it's all clear. You know why they do what they do, why they hurt their country, and you know who is profiting and pulling the strings. That's it. You make that adjustment and nothing's a mystery anymore and it's way past time to see it.

Keep an eye on Trump and his conspirators, for sure, because they are dangerous and their motivations make clear things that are being intentionally mystified, but the benefactors, controllers, and larger capitalist incentives are the thing. He's a buffoonish, corrupt middle manager, at best.

I get messages from people asking why I don't focus on Trump that much anymore and it's like asking why you don't talk about gravity enough. It is what it is and it's a useful lens to make clear the larger thing that's happening, but he's just a vessel, a mascot, a front man for the larger con.

Continuing to pretend like he's a president trying to serve the country is either a smokescreen for profit or a delusional attempt to hold onto a status quo that belched him forth and put him in the office. That's it. There's no mystery here. No riddle. It is all right there in the open.

Nothing with Trump has ever been hidden. From the moment he became a public figure it was obvious he was solely a broken, corrupt, self-seeking criminal Any "analysis" or framing that continues to act like this is anything else stems from a desire to hide it or denial in aid of their favored system

This execution, for the fascists, isn’t about Hasan. It’s a public ritual of counteracting failures with Iran and communicating that both leftists and Muslims will not be tolerated. The message is simple: we control death and you don’t want to wear the blindfold.

The state and fascists revel in control over designations like “criminal” or “terrorist” or “enemy” that then legitimizes violence and oppression. That process has been happening for so long, but when you start seeing it escalate and coinciding with new and manic actions, things are changing.

Hegseth, Trump, and others don’t understand this necessarily. They are instinctual fascists, which makes them the perfect vehicles for enabling these things. Hegseth views himself as a crusader, a performative character, and so the authoritarian project flows through him unimpeded.

Public executions, including lynchings and mob violence, are always focused on larger messages about control and power, and what we are experiencing, both with this firing squad and daylight killings by ICE, is the normalization of fascistic state power owning the right to life and death.

Fascism is grounded in creating in and out groups in which rights and protections and spoils and even life itself is the property of the former while the latter can be degraded and abused and murdered without consequence at any moment. This execution is a milestone along the road to that.

It isn’t a coincidence that Hegseth has greenlit the murder of an “Islamist” while the US loses a war with Iran and the Right continues to fear a leftist/Muslim takeover. The execution is a cult ritual in which the subject is transformed from an individual to a larger concept.

Laugh all you want, and certainly JD Vance deserves to be laughed at for so many things, but this is exactly, definitionally and theoretically, how I learned it in Socialism Class in the Socialism Program at Socialism School.

No lies here

I mean, yes, also see: every former Republican and Trump conspirator and "former MAGA that's seen the light" that they immediately throw all their cash and attention to

Don't even get me started on that shit

No analysis about any of the incentives pushing things, how institutions have created this situation or reform or changes needed. Just AI slop mixed with some of the cringiest supposed comedy and tireless focus on Trump. If I consumed this stuff for more than an hour I'd walk into a wall.