WatDabney @ WatDabney @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Alternately:

"We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Nasty little Canadianses."

This is a great example of what is, to me, the most bizarre part of this bizarre timeline - this stinky-assed overgrown toddler actually believes this.

The way it works in his warped mind:

• He wants to annex Canada, therefore annexing Canada is just and right and proper and smart and best, because everything he wants automatically is. (And a side note - his Kremlin handlers almost certainly planted the idea of annexing Canada in his mind in the first place, though it's an open question whether he knows that or not).
• Canada unsurprisingly opposes annexation.
• But it's his idea (not really, but that's a distinction he's not equipped to make), therefore it's the bestest and beautifulest and perfectest idea ever in the history of ever, and Canada's just being nasty and disagreeable about it.

And that's it. That's the extent of the thinking in his overgrown toddler mind - "I want and you won't give so you're mean.

Ah... yes. Every bit of that tracks.

Some kid pushed him down the stairs and seriously injured him when he was in school

True story?

I wouldn't doubt it.

I really know very little about Musk's past in a biographical sense, but as a lifelong student of human nature - both collectively and individually - I know him all too well.

and I don’t blame them

Nor do I.

You can see it in his mannerisms and the look on his face. He was and still is one of those people who's unjustifiably smug - who's obnoxiously arrogant in spite of the fact that everyone around him just thinks he's a loudmouthed asshole. And the secret behind it is that he's actually desperately insecure and his entire life is bent toward (over)compensating for that.

He's obnoxiously smug and arrogant because he has virtually no empathy or understanding of other people, so he doesn't know how to act to actually appeal to people.

But he sees other people who do know how to act and who have spent a lifetime earning respect and admiration, and he sees their confidence and that's what he wants. So, failing to understand even the most basic principles, he jumps right past the earning respect and admiration stage and to the confidence stage, and unable to even pull that off convincingly, he just ends up smug and obnoxious.

Which makes people dislike him, which leads him to try to compensate, which ends up just being more obnoxious arrogance, which makes people dislike him and 'round and 'round it goes.

He's the adult version of that kid we all knew in middle school - the one who was creepy and awkward and desperate to get the cool kids to like him and he talked too much and laughed too loud in a way that sounded like he could tip over into hysteria any second, and the only thing he had going for him was that his family had money, so he always got the latest and coolest games and toys and he'd show them off in the desperate hope that someone would want to play with him but nobody ever did because he was just so desperate and creepy.

It sucks to even be in partial agreement with the broligarchs, but as a rural American, I have zero sympathy for this fuckhead or anyone else involved in the broadband fund.

The government has been pouring money into broadband expansion for decades, and for decades, internet providers have been sopping up that money while doing exactly nothing to actually earn it.

There have been lots of comparisons between Trump's administration and those of Nazi Germany and modern kleptocratic Russia, but lately I've been seeing an awful lot of North Korea.

People who can and do actually think have been telling you that they're a dumbass idea that's ultimately only going to hurt consumers since the very first moment Trump started talking about them.

All you had to do was fucking listen.

Dumb, sick, mean and scared = MAGA, so that tracks.

Moving closer to the mass arrests, concentration camps and mass graves stage every day.

I think a technocracy would initially be relatively better, but would rapidly decline and likely end up worse.

Initially, there would be some significant number of genuinely sincere people who would be well-positioned to move into the positions of power, and the requirement of technical expertise would eliminate a lot of the scumbags.

Over time though, the scumbags would figure out which hoops they needed to jump through in order to qualify for office, then they'd start co-opting that system, so that eventually, well-connected scumbags would, if anything, actually have an easier time of obtaining the necessary credentials than actual experts would.

I have no proposal for a non-hierarchical system because that's the exact sort of collective thinking that leads to hierarchical systems.

A non-hierarchical system can't be implemented. Rather, it can only be the result of all the paticipants in a system (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference) butting out of each other's decisions.

At that point, it will and can only take whatever form it takes - whatever the manifestation of the unconstrained decisions of all of the participants might end up being.

There are two levels of problems with a technocracy.

The first is a problem that's common to all hierarchical systems, entirely regardless of their specific nature. They will, each and all, sooner or later come to be dominated by people who hold the positions they hold solely because they most lust for those positions and are most willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to gain and hold them.

It makes no difference what sort of limitations or stipulations might be in place - if there is a position that holds authority over others, it will eventually come to be held by the most vicious and conniving bastard in the organization, because they will be willing and able to go to lengths to which nobody else will go.

The second problem with a technocracy is ancillary to the first, and common to all hierarchical systems that focus on some specific philosophy or identity. The positions of power will still come to be held by the most determined psychopaths, but unlike in a more general system, the abusers in power will have an additional claim to legitimacy by paying lip service to the ideal. They're generally able to act even more destructively than other psychopaths, since they can hide their malevolence behind the philosophy or identity both before and after the fact.

Or more simply - problem 1 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes, and problem 2 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes who have even more power than your run-of-the-mill psychopathic assholes because, after all, they're experts.

You would think that he'd be used to it by now, since he's obviously had the same basic personality since middle school, and everyone undoubtedly hated him then too.

Mm... good point.

My rhetorical question aside, yes - it's plain that what Zelenskyy's actually doing is putting Trump on the spot.

But I hadn't put together that the specific phrasing of it also strokes Trump's ego - that's a nice touch

No he doesn't.

Does he?

No - he can't possibly. He's not that stupid. He knows just as well as anyone and better than most that Trump can never be trusted, and especially when it comes to his idol Putin.

So he has to know that Russia could methodically reject or violate every single aspect of this deal, and Trump will just smile and nod and say, "Whatever you want Vladdy!"

So this has to be just a bit of careful rhetoric - an attempt by Zelenskyy to make the responsibility the US necessarily has for this deal manifest, so that he'll have something to point to later on, when Trump inevitably betrays him.

The really unfortunate thing is that this is nothing new.

Congress, pathetic, privileged cowards that they are, has been ceding power to the executive branch for decades now, and that's a lot of what's made the Trump/Musk coup d'etat possible in the first place.

While it's especially pointed and unfortunate right now, with the presidency in the tiny hands of a raving lunatic bent on destroying democracy primarily because it stands in the way of his fragile ego's squalling need to believe that he's the bestest president ever in the history of ever, I have no doubt that if tariffs had become a sufficiently controversial subject at any point in the last few decades, Congress would've done the same, entirely regardless of specifically whose ass was warming the seat in the Oval Office.

I'm not an anarchist by accident.

The institutionalization of authority inevitably leads to a social order in which the shallow self-interest of the ruling class usurps all other considerations.

Political power inevitably comes to be held and controlled by those who most lust for it and who are most willing to do whatever it takes to gain and hold it, and those people are virtually always malignant - some combination of narcissistic, megalomaniacal and sociopathic.

So, among other things, when it comes down to a crisis like the western world faces today, and faced in the 1930s, yes - they choose to side with the autocrats, entirely regardless of the specifics of their ideology, rather than siding with those who stand for liberty and justice and the well-being of the common people. Driven as they are by pathological self-interest and greed and entirely unconstrained as they are by their complete lack of morals, ethics, integrity or empathy, what else would they ever do?

That's Dictatorship 101 - if the experts say you're wrong, get rid of the experts.

Ah... this is such a perfectly Trump story. The Onion couldn't have done a better job of it.

The fate of the western world has been placed in the hands of a man who's the emotional equivalent of a four-year-old competing for daddy's attention.

I guess I should've been clearer.

He's obviously both. He's more of a lying sack of shit than he is an idiot.

And as I just tried to point out elsewhere, that's not to say that he's not an idiot - just that he's even more of a liar.