It’s weird. I’m kinda flexible on civil liberties generally, and fine with lighter forms of surveillance capitalism, big brother, little brother etc. But individuals making a grab for absolute authority in any form brings out my inner Sam Vimes. A deep-seated fuck-you response.
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Sam Vimes for those who don’t recognize the name, is one of the primary figures in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
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This is why I take such deep pleasure in Trump’s current misery. It’s not just that he’s a contemptible little asshole. He’s a contemptible little asshole who has been trying really hard to be a king.
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This period will be a source of anger and unhappiness for him, for the rest of his petty, miserable life, even if four more of those are spent in a vastly weakened White House.
That makes me happy. Yeah I’m petty too. I am not actively revengeful, but schadenfreude I can do.
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I have some sympathy for some of those protesting for reopens, since I imagine a lot of them are not the crabbe-and-goyle Nazi mooks stanning Trump. There are a lot of people really hurting from the shutdown who are *not* strutting around with swastikas.
But for the base, none.
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Still thinking about the king-and-mooks vulnerability of procedural democracy. I don’t think you can stop them being elected procedurally but you can probably constrain their attempts to abuse executive authority better.
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Is the bloc vote of a mass movement in the grips of memetic contagion a democratic mandate? Yes in letter, no in spirit.
Electoral democracy can’t structurally distinguish between mass movements and individual franchise. Should it?
I don’t know but let me try to frame it.
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