[max_]

- [Palantir] A surveillance company used by by spy agencies

- [Meta] A social media company that has all your personal conversations & pictures, video, audio

- [Open AI] Something many people at work & school are uploading sensitive data to

- All run by acolytes of Peter Thiel

- Current president & vp are bankrolled Peter Thiel

- Top executives formally recruited into US Army.

USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is.

But please when it unravels. Let us not pretend we never saw it coming.

I am very worried about this. Something is being set up.

[jauntywundrkind]

> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is.

Maybe there's something fast & vicious in the works, but it could just be the merciless grasping at any shred of power these Hostis Humani Generis do.

The big move is writ large. It's multi-front sell off of the enduring value of America. Fullscale assault on schools. Destruction of science and medicine. Giving up on USAID then FEMA. Selling off millions of acres of land.

The network state ideology is that you should have to know someone and be in a network to get anything. If you aren't born into or allowed entrance into a network you get nothing. Reducing what government does to nothing melds well with the Christo-fascist ideology that likewise resents any state not run by and for the church: two sides of the same coin.

[pjmlp]

Sadly everyone keeps hoping there will be free elections still.

I do fear for my US friends and everyone else that is being impacted by what is happening.

[scottyah]

it's too late for free elections, we haven't had one since pre-Bush I think. Most votes are programmed into people and they don't really know it, and if they do they just don't care. I think very few people actually study and do unbiased research prior to voting. Everyone votes based on what people around them think, and whichever party's social media "brainwashing" has affected them most.

[xp84]

This is such bunk. People aren’t “programmed,” they just don’t agree with you. And people being poorly-informed is not new, and it doesn’t make elections “non-free” or make them not count.

I don’t want to get into a political debate here, but the DNC can thank itself for Trump since they coronated (with no primary!) a candidate who dropped out before Iowa when she ran in the primaries because she had zero support because no one liked her. They also basically ran on a platform of “if you don’t like our policies, you’re a bad person.” I’d imagine more than enough people to swing the election either way pulled the lever for Trump as an explicit rebuke of the DNC’s disdain for anyone outside their orthodoxy.

Anyway. When a party besides the Trump party remembers that persuading the rest of the public (not insulting them) is necessary to win elections, that’s when we’ll have relief from one-man rule by that jackass.

[scottyah]

I was programmed, I held strong opinions on stuff I later found out I didn't really know enough about and honestly didn't care about beyond the surface level bits. It took a media "fast" to get back to normal, and I still have to remain some level of vigilance to avoid it happening again. Both parties have teamed up with Ad people to implant memories and ideas in our heads https://www.wired.com/2011/05/ads-implant-false-memories/

[exe34]

> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is.

It's called fascism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_paramilitary

[autobodie]

No, it's called capitalism — capital has the last word. As we have seen clearly, even Trump is overwhelmingly limited by the constraints of capital.

[lemoncookiechip]

Fascism had it's roots in Capitalism. The elites not only welcomed it, but they backed it, because it helped shut down workers right movements and keep things stable at a time when the workers right movement was hurting their bottom line by asking their bosses for living wages and humane working conditions, which they saw as Socialism and Communism.

[autobodie]

I know. That's my point, and it's a point that calling it "Fascism" misses.

[blooalien]

Sadly, Fascism and Capitalism largely walk hand-in-hand these days... Their bastard love-child will almost certainly be the death of "civilized" society if allowed to continue on the path it's currently on... It's well past time society starts brainstorming a better option.

[autobodie]

I don't care. Capitalism is the problem and pretending its something more obscure is easier but useless.

[candiddevmike]

You could almost say capitalism's final form is some flavor of oligarchy fascism

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

This is an incredibly correct post.

[browningstreet]

Have a read: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/whats-next-for-capit...

[zeroCalories]

Capitalism is when people vote away their own rights? Leftist analysis can't explain why Bernie out-spent Biden and got crushed. There are strong capital interests on both sides of this issue.

[h2zizzle]

>Leftist analysis can't explain why Bernie out-spent Biden and got crushed.

Haven't we been saying it was stolen through suspect political maneuvering and the compromised nature of mass and social media as it exists today?

As a black person, it was not lost on me the difficulty CNN et al. had in finding black voters to interview, until the nation NEEDED to know that black South Carolinian voters definitely hated Sanders and backed Biden.

[zeroCalories]

> Haven't we been saying it was stolen through suspect political maneuvering and the compromised nature of mass and social media as it exists today?

Political maneuvering isn't capitalism. But putting that aside, if your candidate could only win by having the moderate vote split five ways, you're the ones doing political maneuvering.

> As a black person, it was not lost on me the difficulty CNN et al. had in finding black voters to interview, until the nation NEEDED to know that black South Carolinian voters definitely hated Sanders and backed Biden.

Polls always showed that Biden was the Obama guy.

[h2zizzle]

>if your candidate could only win by having the moderate vote split five ways, you're the ones doing political maneuvering.

That's highly presumptive. Supporters of the other candidates made their initial choices for reasons. If they could have chosen someone other than Biden, they would have. The DNC purposely induced a panicked run to their chosen candidate (when they weren't calling heads instead of tails). That's as much a vote as the decision which door to exit out of after someone yells, "Fire," is a choice. To belabor the analogy: there was no fire. They pushed everyone to the leave the way that led to the concession stand instead of to the parking lot.

On the other hand, if your candidate can only win by forcing his ideological rivals out of the race with backdoor quid-pro-quo deals, not only is he now corrupt, he is still definitely only winning through political maneuvering.

>Polls always showed that Biden was the Obama guy.

Clarence Thomas and Strom Thurmond.

[seydor]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ380SHZvYU

[h2zizzle]

Okay. What do we do? Be as radical as you want, just don't say, "Vote."

[epistasis]

There are many countries that have been in the position that the US has been, though few of them have been as strong democracies prior to falling to this state. I'd recommend the tactics in the two "Rules" section of this blog post:

https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival...

Though, personally, I'm having a lot of trouble following some of them...

[NHQ]

Ranking civilians is a wartime measure.

[grey-area]

It's a fascist measure.

[epistasis]

I would urge anybody who wants to soothe their fears to avoid reading up on Curtis Yarvin.

[melling]

Nice trick. I couldn’t stop myself from looking:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...

[epistasis]

The weirdest thing about those pieces (which I have not read) are the glamour shots. Why cover a political subject like that as if they are a beloved children's author or a lifestyle piece? It's a very unusual and strange thing to do for politics, and says a lot about the editors at these media outlets.

[echelon_musk]

https://archive.is/qJoI8

[infamouscow]

Giving federal employees 6+ month severance packages is a far cry from what Yarvin wrote ought to happen them.

Trump really can't get anything right.

[ryandv]

The people want to be surveilled. This is their choice, which has been revealed billions of times since the dawn of the modern social media era. As a result I have zero pity, and the public can reap what it has sown.

Privacy advocates, cypherpunks, hackers, et cetera have been sounding the alarm bells since Room 641A, if not earlier. Not only has the Internet at large failed to heed these warnings, some of those "conscientious objectors" who refused to willingly submit their information to these systems of surveillance capitalism were actively demonized and hunted.

After all, if you are not willingly signing up for these services, social media, and voluntarily forfeiting your data to these systems, then there is something wrong with you and you should probably just sign up for that Meta account already.

You are the ones who have kept these systems running by voluntarily feeding them your time, attention, and/or data. Now the beast has reached maturity and it is too late to do anything about it.

[h2zizzle]

*The people are too poor and disconnected to dissent.

Everything comes down to the desperation to survive in a world where abundant (ABUNDANT) food, shelter, and clothing still must be "earned" (so say our elites).

[malfist]

By your logic people also want to get into car wrecks, develop cancer in old age, get food poisoning, etc.

Just because there's risks with something or side effects with something doesn't mean people want the side effects

[ryandv]

I would agree in cases where the desired effect is distinct from the side effect.

However, for social media in particular, the desired effect is the side effect, which is the surveillance.