I don't know a nazi skull from a non-nazi skull but I've never had either of them tattooed on my body. And I'd probably do that level of research before getting one as a t-shirt, much less a tattoo.
This seems fine to me because rent control is worse than building more housing, and this lets Zohran off the hook on both ends. Won't be responsible for the downsides of rent control, and can argue he's got no choice but to unleash WEAPONS OF MASS CONSTRUCTION
'Jane Doe vs Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein' is a 2016 court filing by Katie Johnson alleging that she was recruited by Epstein, and then violently assaulted by Trump and Epstein, in 1994, when she was 13 years old. You can find her video testimony on Youtube or read the whole filing online
The alleged TrumpStein footage is *graphic, violent rape where the child is screaming and begging him to stop, and every time she screams he visibly gets more and more into it*, so if it's that footage, he might actually be cooked.
But still photos? Probably survives it at this point.
I suspect social media primacy (more social contact through the internet than through real life) is a big part of the insecurity these people have; that having more real-life friends helps you not define your identity based on your clout with the crowd. A loving family is probably a huge plus, too.
I'm not a social scientist so I don't really know where to go with this thought. Maybe it's related to how Americans' social circles are increasingly class-locked (no friends much poorer than you) so if you become downwardly mobile you might lose all your connections by default.
At worst, getting kicked out of the power elite should be like moving from being on the stage, to being in the audience. But if you don't think the audience are valid human beings, that the lives of the "little people" are meaningful, I don't want you in power, categorically.
The basic problem with this thinking, of course, is that being kicked out of an elite clique isn't the same as being shot.
An associated issue is that these people apparently have no foundational identity other than being An Elite, so they have no social/emotional safety net to fall back on.
No friends, no prospects, no purpose, no pride. The person you used to be might as well be dead.
Humans fear shame/social death as real death, or more. So the chattering classes are reluctant to visit it on anyone, ever, because they fear standards and punishments being applied to them in turn.
So if you're an NYT editorialist and you write an essay so bad you can never work for a newspaper again, you lose your entire social circle and social identity. Have to move out of DC (what are you gonna do, get a job as the janitor at the country club where you used to hang out with sources?)
Yeah and the elite's terror of cancellation is probably worth examining as part of an important pathology.
My thinking is, the real fear is social death, because they feel like they're ensconced in an ivory tower and the walls are thick and high. If you're cast out, you can't get back in.
One of the best takeaways from Stancil Thought is you really have no advance notion what's going to stick, or why. Tons of stuff gets flung at the wall (by you, by them, by random chance) and when something sticks you gotta roll with it. This scandal might turn out to be a sticky one!
Yeah, even if there's a 0% chance that he is or ever was a Nazi or any kind of fellow traveler, it's OK to say that certain kinds of behavior & attitudes are disqualifying. This can include "not being sensitive enough to understand why nazi stuff is such a big deal to everyone."
Devereaux keeps trying to make this point. There's a wide gap between "permanent social death, exile from society" and "not gonna win a majority-vote election to govern us at the federal level"
Maybe Planter's an alright chap nowadays, but there's lots of alright chaps who shouldn't go to congress.
Are any of the survivors twitter-only posters? You can have bluesky primary/twitter secondary and won't feel as much pressure to accommodate to twitter vibes.
Or, I guess, have real-life primary/social media secondary, but that's sooooo last century.
As a left-progressive type I also harbor a special reserve of contempt for "left-progressive" basement-dwelling E-terrorists and I don't want them to win anything, or define what leftism and progressivism mean in the public eye.
Better they be outed, humiliated and run out on rails.
It would definitely be less comfortable for you, but I think the stakes are high enough that you shouldn't prioritize your own comfort.
In a broad sense, you have a good job, a nice house and a great family; you're gonna be pretty comfortable even if rando wackjobs on the internet yell at you.
I don't really know if there's a good way to word this, but I wish you would stay here anyway and just endure the blowback because I think it's genuinely bad and unsafe for so many important people with large followings to keep using X and tacitly normalizing the behavior going on there.
One reason Trump actively prefers criminal associates is that once he has dirt on someone, he can use it to ensure their loyalty, or at least their silence.
The case against John Bolton shows this dynamic pretty well. It's far stronger than the case vs James Comey, since Comey did nothing illegal.
