The big problem is that having a demented and kompromised "president" whose handlers launch ill-advised unwinnable wars that give away needless victories to our adversaries makes us a weaker nation.

Way back at the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I remember there was a UN vote on whether to condemn it. The yeas and nays were how you'd generally expect from how nations are aligned, except Israel voted "nay". I remember thinking it was odd, as they should basically be an ally of the US and didn't seem involved in that specific situation.

But in retrospect, it makes sense - they're both countries with imperialist genocidal ambitions over their neighbors. The grounds to condemn Russia attacking Ukraine is the same as the grounds to condemn Israel's long term subjugation of Gaza and the West Bank - they're both a rejection of might makes right in favor of valuing individual human life of the other. And of course one pillar of US neofascism is this exact same type of othering (eg how they can so readily write off the summary executions of Pretti, Good, Taylor, et al).

Seeing how the fallout from the Epstein kompromat operation has been playing out, I suspect there are some deep ties between their intelligence operations - if not outright collaberation, at least respect that they're working the same "marks" (eg Trump and his circle being the most visible, but also all of the other enablers in the US power structure like the Senate and House).

> Here's hoping the regime is destabilised enough to topple by itself.

It's looking like this is the exact type of magical thinking of the most useless "president" ever. Meanwhile in the real world, such things take hard work.

Another way of looking at it is that Idiocracy illustrates what it will look like when we try to rebuild after the Grump catastrophe. The various sci-fi stories of advanced civilizations that depend on machines but have no idea how build them or of the first step to understanding them never really spell out how society would get there. Well, now we know. Eventually the ignorant taking-for-granted of Grumpism will turn into helpless appreciation as they realize how dependent they are on those technologies. Grumpism already has a strong contingent of mysticism and woo, which can just as easily be applied to real phenomena with solid technical explanations that few go looking for.

The thing about Biden was that the bureaucracy was still intact, so most government functionality carried on just fine regardless what Biden himself was doing. Trump gutted the bureaucracy in favor of autocracy, replacing the domain experts with sycophantic yes-men. So when Biden got a terrible idea that would unquestionably harm the country, the response would have been something like "We'll look into that" or even an outright "no". Whereas when Trump gets a terrible idea (which lets be honest is a few times a week), the only answer is "yes sir".

If you're comparing dementia styles, Biden was effectively the type that is happy to sit on the couch and stare off into space while his family does things around him. Trump is the combative kind that is always trying to find the keys to the car to drive away and assert his own independence, and violently rejects help and concern.

As for your larger comment, you're probably closer to right in that bureaucratic authoritarians were much more like Idiocracy. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho had better leadership, speaking ability, policy planning, honesty, work ethic, intelligence, humility, and outright patriotism than the piece of pig shit currently staining our White House could ever hope for. He also didn't rape trafficked underage girls or pardon Upgrayedd for a bribe. The movie makes me long for simpler times.

I don't know what you are talking about. I said - "Biden had problems unrightfully covered up" - and obviously we can't agree on that. So this is Idiocracy already - independent of Trump. If you are unable to speak truth independent of your own attitudes, wishes, ideas, etc. - that's idiocracy.

It's called adding context to keep the directionality correct. "Biden had problems unrightfully covered up" - I do agree with that.

But one of the pillars of Grumpism/destructionism is taking valid factual criticisms, but presenting them in a way that leads to a conclusion of normalization/nihilism/etc. For example, yes from when it was made Idiocracy has been a satire of the very real anti-intellectualism that has been everpresent in American society. But that doesn't justify dismissing its application to the current situation, as you started off your original comment doing.

I was referring to the author, not American politics in general. I added "then this should be called out as well." I thought this made it obvious.

No, it doesn't make it obvious - I don't see much difference between your first comment and one that goes on to conclude something something "both sides".

There is plenty of criticism to go around when analyzing how we got to Grump, but keeping it in the right context is key.

To me is lying about the obvious more "idiotic", than acting in a "bad manner". Again - I don't see a point in arguing here. If I show you the color "red" and you claim "it's blue", for political reasons or what ever, that is already idiocracy. I don't know what you are defending or what you are attacking or what you are even talking about. I wont change my mind or change my comment. It is what it is - learn to deal with it.

It's not a "bad manner", but rather a question of what larger point a criticism is ultimately making.

Keep on at it if you're fine effectively supporting the current idiots. But don't be surprised when people call you out for it.

It's not necessarily just for the 2FA snakeoil. The worst places snap on a glove and proctologize your network identity metadata (spilled by all the underlying carriers, IIUC), and sometimes even billing records with your name and address (more vulnerable if you're still on a postpaid). The US desperately needs a port of the EU's GDPR, for starters.

That doesn't account for the growing asymmetry in the CPI. In the CPI, the asset bubble really only shows up as housing and perhaps transportation. Meanwhile consumer goods go down to compensate (as you'd expect from CPI being in the feedback path for the monetary creation "operational amplifier"). So we're left with everyday expenses continuing to be affordable (eg food, toiletries) while life expenses become ever more unaffordable (eg buying a house).

If you want to refute the argument, you have to find a graph of wages normalized in terms of the cost of a starter home in areas with active economies. But I suspect that is going to be hard.

Yes, if you cherry pick a few things that are disproportionately going up in price and say inflation should be calculated based solely on those things then you can make the numbers look worse. Or the reverse if you cherry pick things that are going down in price. I don't think either of those would be a more reasonable approach than looking at CPI.

It's not a "cherry pick" - the critique is specifically about the asset bubble. Owning assets is what it takes to be economically enfranchised in our system. Even though the asset bubble encompasses much more than just housing, I was meeting you halfway by focusing on where the asset bubble connects to the CPI metric. But with this response it seems as if you're intentionally trying to dodge the issue by focusing on the CPI.

I guess I would just disagree and say that having money makes you "economically enfranchised" by definition. That's why I'm talking about CPI.

If you ignore CPI in favor of solely looking at who can afford to buy real estate in big cities ("areas with active economies") then yes, perhaps things have gotten worse, but I'm saying that's the wrong metric to be looking at.

It's not a wrong metric, but rather it is highly relevant - the ideal of individual home ownership has long been a staple of the American middle class. That its attainability has changed is worth focusing on.

It's good that most people can still afford food, toiletries, and other sundry expenses. But it's not really relevant to this conversation. And if this does change as well, that will be a different discussion.

I mean if those things are housing, medical care, and education that's not really cherry picking at all.

Yes it is. CPI already takes those things into account. If you ignore all other living costs in favor of just looking at those three things because they're the things that are going up the most then you're not getting an accurate measurement of purchasing power.

Note that a similar effect has now moved into traditionally consumer markets as well. It started showing at the grassroots with hoarding toilet paper and whatnot during the first Grump catastrophe, but has now solidified with things like completely fucking up the market for computing hardware.

I think I liked it better when the elites mainly conspired while playing mega golf - having that as the social attractor made for a naturally limiting effect on the imaginations of the people poised to do damage. If you would have gone to most coaches of distance-pissing teams (eg Gold Mansacks) in the 90's and asked for trillions of dollars to buy up all the RAM chips, you would have gotten answers on the order of "Kernel who?!". Now they're like "this guy looks like a serious nerd, we better not get left behind!"

Eh, I won't say buying up of commodities to manipulate markets is a new things exactly. Hell, look up the "Onion futures act". I think maybe the change here is a more of an institutional collapse of government entities that would attempt to stop this.

Another new thing is that the disruption is framed in terms of a purportedly productive-investment purpose, getting more people and capital onboard. Also with the coordinated irrationality there is a lot more momentum for priming a pump that will endure long term. Sure we can fantasize that all of these datacenter buildouts will go bust, leading to a glut of RAM and we can party like it's 2001. But does anybody think that will actually happen?

I'd say the real upstream problem is the lack of new "thick" business creation. Which is a tough thing to analyze in terms of semiconductor fabs, as they are notoriously centralized-capital-intensive regardless. So I'm not looking to flesh out that argument in this context, but it does fit the anti-competitive less-efficient market pattern I've noticed across the board.

The main pressure relief valve on the horizon seems to be China building new fabs, but that kind of demonstrates how our own Western-aligned market has eaten itself.

But all you need is a "concrete slab" ! You could even "dry pour" it, since you're going to need a wetdown for the photos anyway.

s/AI/capital/g. In general, but it works really well for that quote.

The problem, as always, isn't the technology. Rather it's how people with power use the technology. Today that technology is"AI". But several decades ago it was the replacement of human judgement with financial modeling and line-goes-up über alles.

(note that even though I'm critiquing "capital" I'm not what you would call an anti-capitalist)