It’s actually already there.

Ending US wars is like universal healthcare. Sadly, this is one of those things where the mainstream public consensus is overwhelmingly on our side.

Which is really scary. This isn’t a challenge of shifting the Overton window. It’s one of figuring out how to translate the will of the people into government action in what is supposed to be a democracy. 'Cause we already won public opinion, and it turns out that’s not where the sticking point is.

I’m glad I’m not in Maine. Before Fetterman this would be easier to rationalize away.

I hope Platner can reassure folks and then serve honorably, because let’s be real: despite a lack of known tattoos, I don’t think Susan Collins or Janet Mills are actually less extreme. As you’ve pointed out, support for lawless colonial attrocities is the mainstream, bipartisan consensus.

This debate we’re having, imo, is really over whether the person he is today is a morally coherent champion of humanistic values or if there is no such candidate in this race. Which is kind of a bummer.

Respectfully: your point is unclear, but it feels like you’ve lost the plot.

Maybe reread the thread and see if you’re saying what you mean to be saying?

Do you have more info?

Can you share a source?

Agreed. His comments are so bizarrely stupid on so many levels.

They’re not just “wrong”: they’re half-right-half-wrong. And the half that is wrong is idiotic in the extreme, while the half that is right casually acknowledges a civilizational crisis like someone watching their neighbors screaming in a house fire while sipping a cup of coffee.

Like this farmer analogy: the farmers were right! Their way of life and all that mattered to them was largely exterminated by these changes, and we’re living in their worst nightmare! And he even goes so far as acknowledging this, and acknowledging that we’ll likely experience the same thing. We’re all basically cart horses at the dawn of the automobile, and we might actually hate where this is going. But… It’ll probably be great.

He just has a hunch that even though all evidence suggests that this will lead to the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, for some reason his brain can’t shake the sense that it’s going to be good anyway. I mean, it has to be, otherwise that would make him a monster! And that simply can’t be the case. So there you have it.

It’ll be terrible great.

100%.

Peter Frase deconstructed this in an article a decade ago (and subsequent book) “Four Futures”.

It’s really not complicated. Saying 'the rich want to make us all obsolete and then kill us off ’ sounds paranoid and reactionary, but if you actually study these dynamics critically that’s a pretty good distillation of what they’d like to do, and they’re not really concealing it.

Good for you, and thanks for doing all that! I won’t prescribe a specific strategy, but for what it’s worth: as soon as I read the news about this today, I went and donated $10.

I already liked him, but I don’t just throw $10 at everyone I like. But I saw this and immediately wanted his campaign to see strong fundraising this week and get the message that they don’t need to worry about this kind of thing.

Well maybe I’m wrong then. FWIW, you sound confident and credible to me.

I do agree that it seems obvious that this was sent to CNN by Janet Mills rather than discovered in house. I was just saying that I think this kind of research is easy enough for CNN to do that they could, but I agree that based on the timing of Mills’ entrance into the race and the fact that I just don’t really expect places like CNN to be that proactive that, yeah, this was absolutely sent to them in an email that probably looked like: “Subject: Anonymous bombshell tip! ; From: PR@ millsforsenate. com”

I’m curious how it works out. Attacking a guy running as an outsider in Maine for being pro-worker, pro-gun, and fed up with the system kind of sounds like they’re misreading the electorate. Like… don’t threaten Mainers with a good time, you know?

Really? You think so? I could be wrong, but that doesn’t seem at all the case to me.

First, I think a lot of this is just skill. You dig around in the stuff that’s publicly known, find usernames and links to old bios, and then start searching for those usernames on every social media site to see if a unique handle appears on OkCupid, PornHub, etc.

Second, on the resource side, there are tons of data brokers that have a ton of info on all of us. You don’t think CNN has $50 to drop on a file filled with tracking data on a senate candidate? I think even broke local newsrooms have access to license plate reader data and leaked medical records and a ton of super personal info. I don’t think they tend to use it, because a lot of them are understaffed and it’s less cost-effective than just writing up local police blotters and whatever appears on Nextdoor. But I don’t think it’s hard to get this stuff at all.

In the article I saw, it said that the account had identifying information, and the posts were deleted but archived.

My interpretation is that the campaign of Janet Mills – his primary rival – found all of this during opposition research and then sent it to CNN.

It’s kind of depressing to watch so many people just embrace this kind of naked smearing of someone.

I don’t know Hasan’s work. I know Vaush, and I think he frankly sucks. In either case, I’d rather people just say, ‘Fuck that guy, I don’t like him as a person’ rather than diving into this practice of labeling everyone you don’t like as a pedo or some other flavor of sick abusive pervert. It’s gross.