In his newsletter today, Professor Timothy Snyder offers a new glossary of terms to use in the coming next few years: 1. Mump regime. Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. The real centibillionaire and the fake rich person in the proper order. 2. Mump oligarchy. The regime is an oligarchy, rule by the wealthy few. Trump is the oligarchs’ spokesman. He might stay or go. The oligarchs will remain. 3. Mump as illness. Physical illness: we are made sick and scammed blind (think of RFK Jr and Ramaswamy). Mumps is one of the diseases that will return without vaccines. Mental illness: Musk’s idea of prosperity is that he hurts you and you thank him. See my work on sadopopulism. 4. In Mumptopia, Americans spend our time in front of screens, instructed whom to hate and worship by algorithms curated by immigrant software engineers. We die pointlessly young on an overheated Earth with the word “Mars” on our lips. The Mump mage performs a ritual rocket dance, leaping a few inches over our graves. 5. Mump not MAGA. The MAGA folks somehow did not realize that they were giving power to a an illegal immigrant South African centibillionaire. This is not their regime. 6.
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Random notes Before we issue a sure-to-be-ignored word of caution to MAGA, let’s set the scene. I get that, with the reelection of King D, MAGA types just might be feeling their oats about taking back America from, you know, THOSE PEOPLE. The Daily Show‘s Ronny Chieng discourses on patriotism and education. He was born in Malaysia (like you’d care), but how would you know? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Cahn (@karencahn) Let’s got to Politico: A Colorado man is facing possible bias-motivated charges for allegedly attacking a television news reporter after demanding to know whether he was a citizen, saying “This is Trump’s America now,” according to court documents. Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander. Forty miles.
He’s global: The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest. The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico. Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”. Translated, Musk’s piece said: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you?
1924-2024. What an incredible hundred years he lived through. Since they are required to fly for 30 days, the flags will be at half-mast on inauguration day, as it should be.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Niall Harbison (@niall.harbison) Every morning when I wake up and put on my glasses the first thing I look at online is this feed by Niall Harbison. It never fails to get my day started in the right frame of mind. (That link is to his Twitter feed, but he also posts all the time on Instagram.) Niall lives in Thailand and runs a street dog rescue. Every day he has an amazing story about what he does often featuring the story of one dog he’s found in some terrible situation whom they bring back to what he calls “the land” and they fix the pup up both physically and psychologically. Then they find many of them a home there in Thailand and all over the world. One of the dogs was even adopted by Liam Gallagher from Oasis View this post on Instagram A post shared by Niall Harbison (@niall.harbison) He also runs sterilization clinics, feeds hundreds of street dogs and gives medication to those who need it every day.
This is from Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former National Security adviser: There’s a little mutual defense alliance in Europe called NATO. Denmark was one of the founding members in 1949. In the modern world that’s how we are supposed to defend ourselves against threats. We aren’t supposed to just seize territory for our own purposes. But it sounds like those are now quaint ideas and we are now in the business of territorial expansion again, to hell with our allies. Is that what people voted for? I don’t remember it coming up during the presidential campaign and I was paying pretty close attention. By the way, I’m sure you’ll recall that Trump always says that we should have just taken the oil in the middle east. Well: MineralsGreenland has large reserves of minerals such as copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, rare-earth elements, titanium, zinc, iron ore, coal, and graphite. Oil and gasThe Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland estimates that Greenland’s west coast contains about 18 billion barrels of oil. The U.S.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch Make America Grouse Again (Axios): This will not end well: Meanwhile, Trump supporters are engaged in as much wishcasting about whose benefits Trump sill slash (not theirs, just those low-caste Irresponsibles) as lefties who believed after the Berlin Wall fell that the “peace dividend” would be a boone for social safety net programs.
(Unless you’re an immigrant) The Wall St Journal went to Seymour, Indiana (the “small town” John Mellencamp is from) where they can’t wait to get rid of all the immigrants they believe are polluting their lives: [R]esidents have complained for years that a flood of unauthorized migrants under the Biden administration strained schools, hospitals and housing. Now, with President-elect Donald Trump promising to conduct mass deportations and shut down illegal border crossings, the pro-crackdown forces are feeling emboldened. They are organizing opposition to illegal immigration online and in local government meetings and pushing for new legislation and action at the state level. “Trump brought hope,” said Dana Clark, 66, who also spoke at the city council meeting. “Day one is going to see the biggest deportation ever.” Incorporated in the 1860s, Seymour sits at the intersection of two major railroads. Jobs are plentiful at large manufacturers such as auto-parts suppliers and agricultural businesses, including the country’s second-largest egg producer.
Who among us hasn’t accidentally texted the wrong person? But I don’t think any of us have accidentally posted on social media instead of texting. Then there’s Donald Trump… Trump posted a private message meant for Elon Musk on Truth Social by mistake. Trump-Musk Bromance Alive and Well? Who among us hasn’t accidentally texted the wrong person? But I don’t think any of us have accidentally posted on social media instead of texting. Then there’s Donald Trump… Trump posted a private message meant for Elon Musk on Truth Social… pic.twitter.com/lHLdeB8daZ — Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) December 28, 2024 Haha. Was he trying to make him jealous with Bill Gates? Too funny. The CNN reporter says that this suggests that Trump isn’t unhappy with Musk but who knows? If he isn’t I’d guess it’s because Trump is hoping for that rumored merger of Truth Social and X which will bring him a huge payday. But there is serious trouble in MAGA land with Elon and Vivek threatening his loyal followers like this: I doubt Trump cares at all about this visa issue. He’s happy to give Elon what he wants.
JV Last made an excellent observation about this Musk vs MAGA flap. This is from his Bluesky account. These guys are super into H1B precisely because they’re also into corporate tax cuts. They want to offload the expense of creating an educated workforce and just conjure labor out of thin air. This worldview makes sense if “efficiency” is your highest goal. You can outsource expenditures for human infrastructure to other countries and then import that fully formed human capital. It’s also a worldview in which the government’s primary function is to support corporations and all policies are downstream from that goal. Anyway, it’s absolutely impossible to reconcile “forgotten man” MAGA with the Elon/Vivek corporate ubermensch MAGA. The only thing that united them was that they hate trans people and NYT columnists. That works if you’re in the outside. But once you have power you have to make choices on how to apply it. And the zero-sum game pits the two factions against one another. Corporate MAGA is betting that the rubes won’t really know what’s going on. That’s probably right.