I rewatched that Invincible episode the day before making this. My first thought was a beholder but a cyclops was a much better fit.
Last time the alt-text I wrote didn't seem to work. So I'm going to put it in the body as well.
[Alt-Text] A cyclops considers his predicament. "This dungeon is known for plucking out an eye as part of a hazing ritual. I'll conspire to replace the current boss! That'll fix it!"
Spongebob Squarepants style time skip. "One adventuring party later..."
A cyclops wearing an eyepatch considers his predicament. "So an organization's culture can persist across multiple leaders... Systemic change will fix it!"
If you are consuming this meme then you are living during history.
We've reached the second iteration. There isn't a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.
People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.
People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.
This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.
I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.
I see this idea everywhere, that people who fall for fascism or MAGA must not be intelligent enough because no intelligent person could fall for that. This goes beyond just wanting to call MAGA dumb, which is not the issue.
This is effectively a thought terminating cliche, because we are lead to assume that nothing can be done about a person's intelligence.
There are all kinds of people in the MAGA movement. The commonality between them all is a refusal to use their critical thinking skills or in some cases a lack of those skills altogether.
Anyone can learn to think critically. We need to examine our neoliberal society to understand why people haven't or more often than not are refusing to think critically. And we need to encourage others to do the same.
The rule of law means that no one is above the law, not even the president. If the president is above the law then we do not have the rule of law. Being labeled a felon is the idea of a punishment, but since there are no consequences to this sentencing there is no punishment.
At least imposing a fine would have been consistent with precedent. At that point it would have been an issue with our laws being to lenient. That would have been a much more easily remedied problem than doing away with the rule of law, a founding concept of modern western civilization.
The rule of law was dead when the Supreme Court ruled presidents have immunity for core constitutional responsibilities and presumed immunity for official acts in Trump v. United States. This is another nail in the coffin.
I'm not a fan of the nepotism and I don't plan on defending it. Biden claims he needs to do this to keep his family safe from an unfair system. If he's going to do stuff like this and acknowledge our institutions are flawed how about do stuff for the American people, Ukraine, or anyone without the last name Biden. The peaceful transfer of power to fascism, but his family got theirs leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Always remember that we had a democracy. Fascists took it from us by leveraging the flaws in our institutions to take power.
The people who lie about our history do not value democracy, our freedoms, or us.
If pollution under Trump is as bad as he is promising the idea of hitting 5 degrees C by 2075 doesn't seem that far fetched.
It's 2024 so that's 51 years from now. I'm 31. If I'm not dead by then I would be 82. So I could, in theory, live to see it.
This is the story that we need to be focusing on until election day. None of the other stunts matter. If anything this post should be pinned. We should keep our eye on the ball even if the media won't.
Trump threatened to send the military and the national guard after people on the left and Democratic politicians. This is blatant and open fascism. In any other election Trump being openly fascist would be the October surprise. Everyone needs to see this.
I didn't want to believe it but they're already in the comments. We need to be vocal. Kamala is a great candidate.
Biden wasn't viable because he has cognitive decline. Kamala will mop the floor with Trump in debates.
The discourse around Biden exiting the race is moot because the only one who decides if he continues is Biden. Biden is still running so nothing changes. Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Biden had a bad debate performance. It was a missed opportunity to pick up new voters. Biden demoralized his base. But we're still stuck with him, because there is no external mechanism to stop him from running.
The most effective tool we have to prevent the christo-fascist takeover this November is voting. The debate did not change that.
I see a lot of people in comments sections, including this one, saying we should let states secede because they would lose federal funding and this would punish those states. I get that a lot of this is people joking around. But I would like to point out this isn't an effective way to punish the fascists who are actually causing problems.
The fascists in control of those states are usually wealthy individuals and won't be harmed by this at all. The people who will be harmed by this is our fellow people. Also, not everyone in those states identify as Republicans. Take Texas as an example where a majority of people are not Republican.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/state/texas/party-affiliation/
Only 39% of Texas adults identify as Republican or lean Republican. 21% have no lean and 40% identify as Democrat or lean Democrat.
We are much better off pressing sedition charges against Abbott and his cabinet members if he actually tries something more serious than this or keeps this stunt going for too long.
The fact they feel the phrase fuck tankies is acting as a barrier to their participation in 196 should be a wake up call for them to examine their political views.
Unlike their use of the word liberal, which they use to refer to everyone to the right of them on the political spectrum, we are using the word tankie for a single specific group. Tankie means authoritarian communist. Please keep the sign.
Poking at a person's insecurities can be one of the best ways to deal with bigotry and hatred. So very much exhaust.