I finished work tonight at 10:00 pm but I decided not to go for a walk because I really didn’t want to deal with the fireworks that people let off at this time of the year. Personally I’d love to see the idea of restrictions on when one can buy fireworks and when one can let off those fireworks to avoid idiots letting off fireworks at random times during the week for no other reason that they’re bored. I’m relaxing at home on my laptop, catching up with some news and chatting with a friend I met many years ago on an online forum – the forum has gone but we’ve kept in touch via Microsoft Teams (formally Skype and before that Microsoft Messenger – yes, going back that far). At the moment it is currently raining and over the next few days it’ll be raining a bit more but the temperature hasn’t dropped too much so I’ve left my windows slightly open so I can get some fresh air when I go to bed at night.
Upon reflection regarding the United States election I think that maybe the downfall of MAGA has to do with a larger downfall of populist movements – when you policy platform is based on vibes rather than viability then at some point people wake up and realise it was never going to happen. I wonder whether the start of the downfall can be traced back to Poland voting for a change – away from the reactionary politics that had engulfed the country then Hungary rejected Viktor Orban, then in Italy we saw the Trump style populism of Giorgia Meloni changing direction. Then over to the UK where both the Greens and Reform have crashed at burned – it is easy to make a whole lot of noise and promises but it is another thing to actually get into power and deliver (not to mention these parties descending into infighting thus sending a clear message to the public that these aren’t serious people). The Reform candidates took over local city councils and let’s put it this way – if you cannot get the rubbish picked up and make sure the water pipes are well maintained then there is little hope that you have what it takes to run a country of around 70 million.
Just to add some icing on the cake – the ecosystem that allowed the likes of Trump and MAGA to gain political sway over ‘the youths’ with Joe Rogan’s and the ‘Rogansphere’ are now finding their credibility is heading down the toilet as Rogan moved from being ‘the everyman’s man’ to being part of the MAGA ecosystem (even though he goes out of his way to deny that). Then there is the Tate brothers and their court case where they admitted that they their whole lifestyle was ‘fake it till you make it’ (link) and Russell Brand has been found guilty (link). The bro culture has been shown up for being as vacuous and hollow that all of us on the left have been saying for years and young men (based on the exit polls in the midterms) have swung back to the left. Now the MAGA ecosystem are breaking apart thus demonstrating that their proximity to MAGA had little to nothing to do with some sort of conviction based politics but rather going where the dollars and the crowd is. That doesn’t even touch on Trump suing the BBC and Trump’s DOJ is trying to block Jack Smith from providing testimony (link).
I agree with Kamala Harris that the Democratic Party shouldn’t waste their time trying to impeach Trump (link) because unless you’ve got the numbers to get it through the upper house then the whole exercise is pointless and will provide a way to rally his supporters around him at a time he is losing support (this is the reason I opposed the Democratic Party doing it back in his first term – investigate, release the information and have a media strategy to ensure the findings are made known to the voting public). Should they have investigations? yes. Should the Democratic Party have a media strategy to ensure that the findings that are uncovered by these investigations are spread through every news outlet and social media? yes once again. One thing to keep in mind, the information uncovered may not result in the federal DOJ doing anything but there is nothing stopping individual states from doing their own investigation by using the findings from the congressional investigations as a starting point. Keep in mind, presidential pardons do not extend down to the state level so even if Trump issues a pardon there is no protection from prosecution at the state level – “karma may take its time to deliver but it never gets the wrong address”.
