Creating a modern do-over of Stalinism mixed with Nazism and Christian theocracy.

Oh, I see. It was satire.

Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. (wikipedia)

Not to be confused with sarcasm. In writing it’s a well-known (I’d thought) technique going back thousands of years. In pre-Idiocracy times, roughly before the widespread use of cell phones and when people read written texts to become informed and for pleasure, satire was common and there were writers who were well-known for specializing in the mode. The quality of the satire was always debatable (as with the quality of any art offering) but it was normally always recognized as satire by people who were able to read it in the first place. In the case of written satire, while it might be accompanied by illustrations to emphasize one point or another, it didn’t require images or animations or the equivalent of “emojis” near the text in question in order to signify to the reader that satire was being employed. The text was self-evident as being satirical, or if not, could be understood from the context to be satire (if it was contained in a satirical book for example).

As for what I wrote, I would have expected that the absurd concepts (government-controlled turbines designed to change the weather both by harnessing the power of winds and by creating new winds by acting as giant fans; describing these “fans” as being able to move people and extremely heavy machinery with great accuracy, again under government control) and borrowed nutter phraseology along with depictions of nutter-like outrage, would have made it apparent that satire was what was on offer. I understand that some may think if to be of poor quality, but I’m surprised that some people cannot recognize the writing as satire at all.

Pre-Idiocracy this would rarely have been a problem, even when the writing appeared in a low-context medium such as an isolated web page or in a forum or Usenet posting. It may be that the satirical written form is now, in Idiocratic times, extinct except to specialized academics and historians and other educated elites. That would be a shame because it was a powerful (influential) communication tool and is a pleasure to write and to read.

A what?

I don’t know where the Wx radars are around here, but you don’t have to drive more than an hour to see a hell of a lot of wind turbines sharing space with crops out on the Palouse . Those turbines absorb wind and therefore they change the weather, right? I’d be very surprised if they can’t be run in reverse to generate winds - winds designed to blow farmers and their giant pickups and their farm equipment wherever the government wants them to be. Full government control. Fortunately I see that the small-town intelligentsia are starting to fight back against this kind of out-of control wind turbine government overreach.

Agreed. Whenever I hear of the latest internal MAGA feud (fElon, now Faux) it always brings to mind the old-school “professional” wrestling world. 100% scripted and acted-out. It gives the deplorables a “team” to identify with and emotionally bind to (pick a side, doesn’t really matter which) so they can stomp and fume and indulge in fantasy violence while society and life continue to grind them down into dirt, pockets picked.

And every UU congregation I’ve ever seen has pretty explicitly NOT been Xian. Not even in a watered-down way. I’ve watched their services online, and there’s been no Christ-talk, and no sky-daddy talk at all. I think that each UU congregation has wide leeway to do its own thing, and for most, that thing does not include identifying as Xian.

“Our beliefs are diverse and inclusive. We have no shared creed. Our shared covenant is expressed through the inseparable and deeply interdependent shared values of interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity, and equity – all centered around love. Although Unitarianism and Universalism both have origins as liberal Christian traditions, today we embrace diverse teachings from many different global religions and philosophies.” – https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe

Just feck these clickbait headlines containing words like “blast” and “slam”. Sorry Ars, no clicky until you grow up and write like adults who have something serious to say.

“One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”

The rise in domestic chip orders is a direct result of former President Donald Trump’s …

If only.

tough export tariffs

I think they mean import tariffs. The tariffs that domestic buyers pay when importing goods from overseas.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

How well would US Xian nationalists (Christofascists) get along with the CoE? Is the latter, like the former, actively attempting to acquire absolute power over social matters in their country? Would the two be of like minds w/respect to doctrine?

legal residents are abducted from their houses for saying genocide is a bad thing

And tortured, with impunity, by government agents.

The memo also proposed IRS detail a dedicated group of several dozen senior IRS auditors to launch investigations into companies suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants.

I guess I better step on the gas and get work done on my house right now, before the (mostly-MAGA-voting) contractors can no longer get any workers. Probably a good time to stockpile food too, before crops are rotting in the fields because of a lack of workers.

I guess I’d better put a halt to getting old too, before long-term care facilities run out of staff and shut their doors.

Within minutes of showing up, a twenty-something software engineer dispatched from DOGE began demanding access

I’m in software and I can guarantee you these punks are absolutely reveling in the feeling that they’re the “elite” because Leon likes them and picked them to do all this world-shattering demolition work. He wouldn’t have tapped them if they weren’t elite, if they weren’t 1% hackers, right? Oh and they’ll surely be in charge of the design and implementation of the Leon-approved Government 2.0 systems, work that only they, the best of the best, could possibly do! Incel no more!

The new IT stuff, assuming it’s ever implemented, will all collapse. I can’t wait for MAGA/Leon to kick them to the curb once he’s done using them for wrecking and intimidation and they get to go back to unemployment and incel-hood.

Republican Congressman from E. WA state. Yes, a corrupt American, one of the majority in the corrupt Congress. https://baumgartner.house.gov/about

Both Musk and Trump have claimed that some workers are either dead or fictional, and the president has publicly backed Musk’s approach.

Addressing people who didn’t respond to the first email, Trump said “they are on the bubble,” and he added that he wasn’t “thrilled” about them not responding.

Malicious Compliance time. Give Trump something that will “thrill” him.

“Congressman Michael Baumgartner is currently serving his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives where he represents the people of Washington State’s 5th Congressional District.” https://baumgartner.house.gov/about

He’s a MAGA bootlicker and is unfit for office. What an embarrassment to our nation he is.

Donated. I hope she enjoys the lawsuit settlement $ and has many more years of being a “rabble-rouser” and causing “ruckuses”.

It’s a good thing that N. ID cities and towns are so flush with cash these days. Umm, wait, well https://cdapress.com/news/2024/feb/06/cda-school-leaders-trustees-money-saving-measures/

Really? Source? And I was imagining a glorious cascade of creative malicious compliance landing right in old man Leon’s rickety lap.

AGGRESSIVELY, the way she likes it.