Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@Leucrotta Oh, I accidentally skipped a step in my argument. n.n; I was going to point out that in the 1940s, direct force was much more effective and people were both much more inured to privation and much more insulated from events outside their immediate lives. That was a rich breeding ground for fascism, which is a very *directly* forceful sort of ideology that was totally unashamed about committing its brutality right out in the open.

In the information age, right-wing populism has had to a much less *directly* violent form. The will for massive state force is still there... as we're seeing with Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton this week... but you can also see the massive backlash which would never have been possible under Fascism.

Instead, Trump has a regime where that kind of backlash isn't devoured... it's DILUTED until it's lost harmlessly in the media backwash and spun out of existence. Trump's brand of plutocratic oligarchy is, again, much more reminiscent of the KGB playbook. Why shoot someone when you can just peacefully neutralize their reputation and poison the public debate? It sure saves money on bullets...

And if anything, I'd argue it might be MORE dangerous in the grand scheme... for the same reason COVID-19 is more dangerous than Ebola. Fascism burns itself out, trying to annex neighbors and set the world on fire. Whatever Trump and Putin have inflicted on the world can just sit there in its tower like Sauron and quietly poison the countryside for years.

@Leucrotta I don't have the time to have it out in great detail, but... I did do some reading about the rise of Hitler, and right now my position is it's *not* quite accurate to call the modern GOP Nazi, but it is accurate to call it proto-fascist.

For instance, I'd argue we really *don't* have the level of utter totalitarianism, with an effective death penalty for criticism. Also, the right is currently forced to at least play lip service to not being openly, virulently racist -- which doesn't make them any better or less covertly racist, but it *does* make it a different species with different tactics.

Trump doesn't have the same absurd level of popular suppor that Hitler did. Also, fascism was really more of a late industrial-era ideology. I don't see the Republicans being nearly so focused on direct militarist conquest as the Nazis. Never mind a martial tradition that demands valor and sacrifice -- we can't even get most Republicans to endure two months of stay-at-home.

Ultimately, I feel like what we've got now is more taxonomically like Russian under Putin: it's a criminal oligarchy that excels in propaganda, subversion, and reality-manipulation but is pretty inept at domestic policy. It's definitely got fascist elements and I think at last count I gave it something like a 10/14 on Umberto Eco's famous Fourteen Points, so you're not wrong; it's a matter of precision, not accuracy.

And I would definitely agree there are fascist *elements* in the modern alt-right. But Trump honestly reminds me of nobody so much as the string of inept reality-averse old men who rules Russia between Brezhnev and Gorbachev...

On the other hand, I will always love Blondie's "Rapture" for not only being the only pop song whose lyrics include the word "sacroiliac" but ALSO being about Martians running around eating things that rhyme with "Mars." 🐯​

#EatinCars
#EatinBars
#EatinGuitars
#EatinJars
#EatinStars
#EatinCzars
#EatinMagyars
#EatinSitars
#EatinAvatars
#EatinMemoirs

Huh.

Billy Ocean wasn't very good, was he? I mean, he wasn't very bad, either, FWIW.

I mean, apologies if I'm stepping on anybody''s favorite artist here. But to be fair, I've never encountered anyone in my entire life you was, you know, *excited* to hear Billy Ocean.

@Phorm @anthracite I'll bet in some alternate universe (or the Library of Babel), there's a Philip K Dickian conspiracy novel based on the premise that Obama himself is phishing people in their dreams, for Reasons Of Great Mystickqxal And Secret Import, and it is a *corker*.

I... I may be a bit cranky today. ​

@Phorm @anthracite Also a lot of "Uh... what the hell am I doing in high school? I graduated. I can just... leave whenever the fuck I want. I wonder if my car is still in the parking lot where I left it." (It never is.)

Though I did have one the other night where we were in a shopping mall/high school on lockdown because one of the English teachers had a gun... and Peg kept drawing attention to us by trying on BIZARRE SEXY SHINY costumes from the mall & walking around in them...

@Phorm @anthracite Honestly, mine have been pretty boring lately too. Fun boring by my standards, like "Oh, look, there's a Boston subway station I've never been to before because it doesn't exist" or "Huh, I missed my plane and have a 22 hour layover in Londontokyo, guess I'm looking for a place to eat" or "why are there twelve bongs in my closet in my parents' home, I can't even get away with using them here."

@anthracite @Phorm Er, be warned that you might end up dreaming of the following:

* chasing zero-g antelopes
* napping (memetic hazard warning: recursion)
* chasing some stupid monk off a cliff and having to watch him eat a strawberry
* sitting =behind a door waiting for some dipshit to solve a logic puzzle
* shovels, so many shovels [ask any tiger, we love those things]
* 8' tall stripey fuzzy warrior women in cyberrave gear
* geniefoxes with empty spherical plastic heads
* legal weed (sigh)

@Austin_Dern Phase One complete. ​

@anthracite @Phorm Haha, hand those over to ME. My dreams have been too quiet lately and I think my Inner Tigress is about ready to visc some spectral motherfucker...

@Phorm @anthracite Oh, darling. *hugs tight* The cosmos owes you a lot more of those, but I'm so happy you got one.

@anthracite @Phorm I've mostly just been wishing I were on fire, and able to easily set other people on fire without harm to myself. Preferably, at a range of up to 1,086 miles.

Why 1,086 in particular? Oh... no reason!

https://goo.gl/maps/naX1cvaDqXqcujVk9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZlP_Ltzyc

It's Pride Month, but honestly...

(a) you critters are the only segment of the queer community I've ever felt remotely welcomed by

(b) I've never fit into any neat LGBT+ category

(c) Right now "in RL" I guess I'm pretty much just some cishet guy who happens to be engaged to a woman with a Y chromosome (I'm sure this shocks you all utterly), which doesn't really even qualify me as queer, certainly not by the standards of most Earnest Young Millennial And Zoomer Activists

So I don't really have much to say. Rawr, rawr, I'm a tigress. Chirr, chirr, I'm a raccoon. Most of my OCs are female for reasons I don't even really bother examining anymore. And one of my facemasks has glittery rainbow zebra stripes on it, I guess. *shrug*

I don't do much else queer anymore except for rally for queerer people and draw a comic that... should probably be much queerer, honestly, given what people are getting away with in the mainstream.

Let me know when it's Sloth, Gluttony, or Envy Month. I *know* I'm qualified for those. I'll leave this one to shinier, more colorful people than me.

Well, FWIW, I've now heard from the whitest of white America -- i.e., my Ohioan parents, who hate both Biden and Trump about equally.

Mom did the expected "listen, once you're burning down your own community it's not a protest" dance, but she did actually listen patiently to my counterarguments. And (kinda expected from a Kent State massacre survivor), she's more pissed off at the police than she is about the protests. If her reaction is any indication, yeah, the Midwest ain't necessarily buying the right's line about what's happening.

Apparently the protests are MUCH BIGGER in NE Ohio than I'd expected. Cleveland, Akron, and Canton were virtually shut down. They're also apparently missing my niece and her boyfriend's apartment in Columbus by all of a few blocks. Yikes. There was even a protest in my shithole hometown, but to my pride and astonishment, it was totally peaceful...

@hystericempress *studies it for a few minutes. nods thoughtfully, scratches some preliminaries into some tree bark, and starts hoarding binder clips, threepenny nails, tire scraps, and wads of bubblegum* Thank you! I'll let you know how it goes! ​

Keep yellin'. <3