And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:5-6

To look at a historical analogue:

The system of government was formed whereby leading Nazi officials were forced to interpret Hitler’s speeches, remarks and writings on government policies and turn them into programs and legislation. Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead he communicated them verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate, Martin Bormann. He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. Hitler’s cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently.

Hitler’s leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have “the stronger one [do] the job”. In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power.

The process allowed more unscrupulous and ambitious Nazis to get away with implementing the more radical and extreme elements of Hitler’s ideology, such as antisemitism, and in doing so win political favour. It was protected by Joseph Goebbels’ effective propaganda machine, which portrayed Hitler as a heroic and infallible leader. Further, the government was portrayed as a dedicated, dutiful and efficient outfit. Through successive Reichsstatthalter decrees, Germany’s states were effectively replaced by Nazi provinces called Gaue.

When I used to fix cars for a dealership we would sometimes have the service advisor ask us to do work for free. “Come on, it’ll just take you ten minutes!”

I’d tell them that they can do it themselves if it only takes ten minutes. “But I don’t know how to do that!”

You’re not just paying for the part, you’re paying for the knowledge, time, and tools of the technician.

It’s missing the cover plates, so I doubt it’s really playable.

What kind of music would you like to play? If you want something that can do bends, you should look into the Hohner Blues Band harmonica: they run about $10 in the States and are a good option for a beginner.

Note that harmonicas are diatonic*, and you’ll need them in multiple keys if you want to play with others. You can buy them in sets or mix different ones to see what you like.

It’s a fun instrument to just noodle around on and pick out tunes. Get familiar with the feel of it, then look for videos or books to go deeper.

*There are actually different scales that you can play on a standard diatonic harmonica if you play cross harp. This is what you’ll need to look at if you want to play the blues.

Hermes Conrad. He’s got a level head and knows his way around a bureaucracy.

That’s my point: billionaires are an establishment unto themselves, and they’re already in a cartel to control the US government.

Corey Robin put it better than I can in The Reactionary Mind:

Far from yielding a knee-jerk defense of an unchanging old regime or a thoughtful traditionalism, the reactionary imperative presses conservatism in two rather different directions: first, to a critique and reconfiguration of the old regime; and second, to an absorption of the ideas and tactics of the very revolution or reform it opposes. What conservatism seeks to accomplish through that reconfiguration of the old and absorption of the new is to make privilege popular, to transform a tottering old regime into a dynamic, ideologically coherent movement of the masses. A new old regime, one could say, which brings the energy and dynamism of the street to the antique inequalities of a dilapidated estate.

How anyone can see a billionaire as “anti-establishment” is beyond me.

Musk is so impervious to ego-death that I suspect his will hang around for a few decades after his body.

I think it’s a mistake to believe that everyone has a sense of empathy; there are plenty of people who do not because of their brain meat or their experiences.

I think the closest Musk gets is the desperate and pathetic attempts to get gamers to like him: it makes him crazy that he can’t just buy their respect like he does for everything else that he wants.

People like that genuinely believe that they should be in charge because of who they are. He has absolutely no feelings of guilt about the terrible things that he does; he thinks they’re good because he did them.

Narcissistic megalomaniacs, especially ultra wealthy ones, lose their ability to empathize (or even the ability to mask and pretend) because they quite literally never have to care about how another person feels.

I do think he’s confused as to why people hate him though. He sees himself as a lovable cheeky troll instead of the Nazi dickhead that he clearly is.

I made that exact mistake a couple weeks ago, and it was just like you say. Biggs doesn’t have nearly as many of those bitter ones, either.

No. It’s another form of government that has its own issues, but not all authoritarian regimes are fascist.

On the other hand, neo-feudalists are reactionaries because they want to return society to a mythical past where a heirarchy of elites rules over their subjects. Fascism, neo-feudalism, and conservatism are all subsets of reactionary ideology, but they are not the same thing.

So… Bring my HEV suit and crowbar?

I feel like I could get flintknapping down pretty well.

This is kind of amazing.

“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

Notably, it’s for property crimes against President Musk.

This piggy committed the worst crime possible against the US, then would send citizens to a concentration camp for upsetting his owner.

This dude is the textbook definition of a reactionary centrist: so comfortable with his entrenched wealth that he’ll gladly sell out anyone who is getting stomped by the system that he benefits from.

This exactly.

They don’t see imposing a state of fundamentalist Christian supremacy as tyranny, because their ideology is one of Christian Nationalism (which in the US is inherently white nationalism).

They see the erosion of their relevance as the tyranny they’re supposed to stand up to despite it mostly being driven by cultural changes instead of government mandates. This means that the militias are meant to commit violence against civilians; they know the cops will side with them in a scrum. They’re more afraid of a lesbian with blue hair than a rogue sherrif depriving them of rights.

Mercutio from Romeo & Juliet is an all-timer. Just a clown who nobody takes seriously, but is liked by everyone. Then while he’s being stupid playing with swords (but trying to patch up a blood feud at the same time) he gets killed, triggering a revenge murder that spirals into the deaths of the teens. Sorry for spoilers.

There has been a concerted push by reactionary media to demonize it.

The same thing happened with issues like the estate tax, lawsuits against corporations, police reform, etc.