MSC

I mean the guy literally forgot the word "criminals" and fumbled to "people of crime" the other day. Dude probably can't even spell Lithuania. As far as I am aware everyone would have access, however if they just trusted the convener/inviter enough to not be careless they probably wouldn't think to check. I mean you wouldn't expect organized criminals to ask everyone to double check their phones to make sure nobody butt dialed 911.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/3362851/rfk-jr-states-remove-soda-from-snap-coverage/ The Joke here is that RFK thinks SNAP isn't on MAGAs hit list.

You answer your own question pretty quickly when you say "mind" is the mind alive, since we aren't suggesting the mind is also part of the illusion. Yes, our mind or brains conjure an attempt at a pragmatic to life approximation of what is "outside" through sensory data. However there is no smoke without a fire, whether you're a brain in a vat, a simulation, a hallucination in the mind of some other being or just living in cold hard reality, you have an existence, all that changes between those things is the nature of that existence. You're alive because you are aware of a thinking mind that you recognize having some ownership of. Doesn't matter if it's code, the guy that coded you has the same problem of wondering if he is or isn't in a simulation. Suffice it to say, there is nothing scientific about the idea of deriving knowledge from something other than sensory data. What else is there?

Oh he is probably pushing the public hard to protest so he can try declare martial law and postpone indefinitely elections under the guise of "protecting law and order"

Also a possibility that they will throw whomever under the bus as a "traitorous leaker" to the press.

Maybe, I haven't exactly been sleeping well recently either but yeah if y'all are all checking my rationality here I can only conclude there is nothing to it absent harder evidence. Now the Witkoffs phone as a possible deadrop of other messages between Trump and Putin; is that one feasible? How credible is the idea that there is a secret line of communication between Trump and Putin?

That I agree with; however I would point out that when dealing with a potential conspiracy between this administration and the Kremlin, the pool of bad actors to worry about is bigger and more sophisticated. We can't rule out feigned incompetence with an ulterior motive, in the same way we can't rule out actual incompetence. My point is simply that if we are going to speculate on one, why not the other? But I suppose in order to give my hypothesis a bit more weight we'd need to ask if the leak to a journalist could have at all benefitted Trump's administration or Putin's? If the answer is no, then there would be no need for me to speculate. But is the answer no? I'll need to think on it for a bit.

Greys law "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." Hanlons razor is a useful interpersonal safeguard in your personal life. Applied to politics, organizing, or any setting where you're dealing with relative strangers? You're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of. Bad actors WILL be part of the group, they WILL notice you deliberately putting yourself in "gullible person" mode, and they WILL exploit your hesitance to call out malice as malice.

You don't find it suspicious that a journalist was included in the chat and this just happened to be a mistake? It's less that I am overestimating the movement but not underestimating the ability of individuals and groups within said movement, they can figure out ways of taking advantage of the fractured state of news media consumption sources. Now that's something that is definitely incompetence and idiocy driven.

Yes he was the adopted son and a few other family relations to Claudius. It would be more accurate to say that Claudius was the only surviving male heir capable of assuming power at the time. Nero would have been four when Claudius became emperor.

I was asking about why Claudius specifically survived. Because Agrippina the Elder, Tiberius and Caligula did not see him as a threat, so he survived many purges and was overlooked as a potential assassination target. His disabilities made everyone underestimate him and at times he definitely played them up and acted the simpleton. So my suggestion is that we stop assuming incompetence drives every decision and move the MAGA movement makes.

Excellent! Now do you know why, he was the last surviving male heir? Perfect! I don't know that I am overthinking it, that's not even to say I think I am absolutely right, but amongst "flooding the zone with shit" there are obviously going to be more behind the scenes plans going on. These folks are literally conspiring to establish a de facto dictatorship with the intention of making it de jure. We need to remember there are a lot of different factions within MAGA not all with the same intentions, motivations or MOs. Another reason to examine my conspiracy hypothesis, is to examine a question; Should the response to Trump be to also "flood the zone"? Take what I said as an example, would it be immoral to flood the zone with counter-propaganda, conspiracy theories all with a theme that 47 and the Republican party are hurting and manipulating people through a series of entertaining narratives where speculation is allowed to run wild? Is there value in that? I don't know, just a thought.

I'd be really interested to see that, cryptography is a part time hobby, however I don't think we can rule out the possibility of misdirection either. I personally still find it very suspicious that they included a journalist in the chat and I've now seen a few different explanations as to why, and the name given isn't consistently the same. Sounds like the "condoms for the Taliban" Chinese whisper thing again that they did with lying to people about what USAID does. Starting to suspect something a little more sinister at work in this "flood the zone" strategy and one which helps explain why Trump retains base support. Put simply, with all the different lies and spins etc, Trump doesn't just have a megaphone, but a customisable one. Fake news writers can make Trump look like a lot of different things through a lot of different people's electronic windows. Now, I know we keep saying this is an incompetently driven thing, but maybe we need to realize they are playing an entirely different game, with different rules. All we have to go on, when thinking about who these people are, and I'm not even talking about AHOTUS (Yes I liked that one) I'm talking about the people behind project 2025 and whatever psychopaths Trump can get into whatever positions of authority he can. Like a lot of rotten eggs in a basket making one great stinking basket. All we have to go on, is what they do openly, which is pretty bad.... What do they do in the shadows? Oh God, now I sound like those conspiracy Wacko's. Seriously though, is anyone familiar with Emperor Claudius? Are we being punked right now?

Funny you should say that; guess who the US envoy to the Middle East was with, at the exact same time the chat was opened... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-envoy-steve-witkoff-signal-text-group-chat-russia-putin/ Apparently Witkoff was in a meeting with Putin for about an hour and a half after the signal chat was started. Oh just saw your post about this on the previous page, sorry I missed that. A thought occurs to me though; let's say I had some sensitive messages or information or data to share with someone, that in public I am not meant to share any of that kind of information with. Lots of eyes on me etc, maybe the messages are from Trump to Putin and I want him to get those messages. Maybe I'm an envoy able to travel to Russia with an unsecure phone, a honey pot hackers dead drop.

Of course not! Is betrayal to Mother Russia, Putin will order court martial, then shortly after, firing squad. Is how they do, in Russia, you not go to court martial, court martial go to you.

That still sounds like it could be about TFG! Felon-in-Chief. There, that's its new title, still begins with an F, just not the one that begins with F that it wants... FIC, can that be confused with anything else? I'll call it that if someone drives the nose of it right up his... Peepee hole.

I must have missed that executive order and it's really fucked up, that Trump is so deranged and ridiculous that if you told me he had legit signed an executive order trying to claim Obama is Kenyan, I'd probably believe it. Oh my God has he actually done that? Yeah I need to start thwarting keyword exploits now and may have to pare down my online presence and hide anything anti-TFG I've said. Still waiting for the conditions on my GC to be removed and they are demanding immigrants social media info now to apply for new GCs or to naturalise. I was going to become a citizen of the USA in a few short years from now, but with Trump in the Whitehouse and the USA going to hell, might be better to just keep my British citizenship as an exit clause. Honestly if my daughter wasn't American I'd already be gone. She and my girlfriend are all that keep me here at this point. That said, if things start to get a little to... Reich like, I'd rather be where the resistance to that needs to be, but maybe I'd send my daughter back to the UK at least. Solidaridad immigrante!

This makes me think of two scenarios that would be hilarious to see go down. Scenario one, Trump succeeds in making Canada a new US state, then with their new reps and electoral college votes, vote Republicans down into catastrophic election defeats. Scenario two, Trump succeeds in making a third presidential term legal, but then Obama beats his ass in an election. I know both of these scenarios are unlikely but yeah, those would be some good examples of critical backfires and self owns.

Seldom does having your own employees compete with each other lead to good outcomes for your business. They are supposed to compete with your competition. Right now the American governments competition is every other government and most are laughing at the USA now. Show us your news feed. Personally I'm wondering if Musk and Trump are trying to orchestrate a recession. With a recession and stock prices going down, the Trump camp, meaning the government and the business entities now supporting it are going to consolidate more economic power by taking a bigger share of the stock market. They probably believe they can tear it all down and rebuild it back up (ignoring the damage and harm this will do to people) better than before but with more control. If people don't like it and protest it too much, Trump tries to declare martial law. They are goading and provoking the American public so they can get to the next phase of installing a dictatorship, which is declaring martial law. @Trurl I don't know what propaganda you're reading but I think you need to start sharing your sources. You're being manipulated and taken advantage of when you believe this shit.

The theme I've noticed is less to do with which rights to value, but whom is more deserving of those rights. The sort of movement Trump represents is less to do with creating a just and moral society for everyone, but a comfortable and luxurious society for some people, at the cost of everyone else. Take a look at how Trump and his cronies use and abuse Judaism and have made themselves arbiters of it by determining who is and isn't a "bad jew" or a "good Jew". The whole "you're not Jewish if you vote Democrat" line is emblematic of something else; "You're not really a person if you don't support Donald Trump." And if you're not a person, why would you expect to have the sort of rights "real people" have? When it comes to the things we own and care about, we typically don't get defensive of them until they are under threat. To put it simply, the free speech rights of Trump supporters are not under threat because there is no risk associated with their use of it. I think we also have made the mistake (myself included) at times of focusing on the rich and white aspect of who Trump is out to benefit the most, when really it is himself. There are a fair amount of rich white Republican men who are still never Trumpers and there rights are under threat too. Every Trump supporter who isn't a white man, is just seen as a good servant who knows their place. Any white man against him is seen as a traitor to their race. Ultimately we are at a wall when it comes to understanding the many different kinds of people who support Trump and why, the data I lack to do deeper dives resides in their devices and news sources. For some, it will be that they are legit neo-nazis and this is all about eugenics, for others it's normally warm and kind people who are being fed lies about what Trump is doing and what the Democrats are doing. There are different levels to this and who Trump is to those people, I can't even really fathom it. All I know is that the past decade of dealing with Trump supporters has told me they are far better at mental gymnastics than I am. Note; not to say there are only two kinds of people that support Trump, everything in between those two also exists. I really want to know why some non-whites and women support him, for them it's even harder for me to understand.

My best friend of the time was cringily into him and I dunno why, something about seeing someone else fanboy or fangirl about something can kind of put me off it and the one thing about the majority of my role models in life that is the same, is they are all mostly fictional. I deeply distrust the rich and famous as a matter of personal policy. Someone needs to have been dead for awhile before I'll look up to them 😂 present company excluded.

It's the same logic wife beaters employ. "Oh if she hadn't made me mad, she wouldn't have a black eye." "Oh if you hadn't hired a black women, hadn't let in those Mexicans and not had any business dealings with Jews, I wouldn't have had to create a new Reich or enable and arm the neo Nazis!" Oh and don't forget Musk claiming "Mandela wouldn't have wanted this." In regards to their stupid claims about SA. How much reality warping are they going to employ? Now Nelson Mandela was a fascist and Hitler a communist? It would be laughable of so many people weren't eating it all up as gospel.

So how I envision it, is that the parties themselves are single issue, but voters belong to multiple parties, based on which group they feel has the best approach to the given issue. One issue, is personnel management and communication. This would make the role of president, more like that of a project manager, with a presidential roundtable council of team leads who work on the issues, independently of each other, with task forces for where issues meet and intersect. I suppose you could almost call it maintained coalition governance. I do value your feedback, even if the last batch required me to step back after a knee jerk that was completely my bad. Admittedly though, what I've described would be a headache come election time, but election time is always a headache and simpler ways don't imply better ways, people can stand to be asked to do something a bit more complex it it's only every few years.

Maybe you can help me with something; hit a wall in my research, trying to find out how the USA conducted elections pre 1796 and the normalisation of political parties via the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans.

Sidebar; funny as all hell that the slavers in the UK were too stupid to realize their funds were being attacked first, pre abolition. So maybe I'm arguing from the extreme, but I think the overall theme of diminishing party power and increasing individual accountability is achievable. I also want to make it clear that when faced with the world's current problems, I don't think there is any one strategy that will fix it all. The other ideas mentioned here, fixing campaign finance issues etc are still absolutely valid and should be followed through on. @iNow and @exchemist Sorry for how snappy my first response to you both today was. I hadn't had coffee yet and had just woken up. I appreciate you both taking the time to respond and I realize I haven't done a good job of explaining how I would envision this working, but that's mainly because some of this is still incubating and admittedly it would take some wild reformation of both the executive and legislative branches of government and changes in how elections are carried out. I was already aware that the thorniest part of it is the implications for the right to assembly. Having done more research, the forming of parties probably can't be outlawed, for the reasons @exchemist stated.. however I have come across mentions of small state and local governments around the world that have de jure non-partisan policies, where parties aren't allowed to take part in elections directly and they serve advisory roles to the executive and legislative branches instead.