Hey I'm gonna tell you some things without attribution that you may choose to believe or not

1) 5GW/infowar is not something weird online people are reading into things, it's USG's public-facing governing paradigm & they are playing to win

2) You already know that anyone who says NSA et al "have no domestic mission" is lying to you, but they don't even pretend that's true in the quasi-public fora that coffee-getters like me attend

It means about as much as "interstate commerce" at this point, there are no borders
3) Mil officials at the highest levels are openly courting Big Tech at the highest levels to "practice good digital citizenship" (IOW fight the infowar for them) bc government can't - not bc they gaf about the Constitution, but bc nobody in Congress knows how to use a computer
4) MIC admits that "kinetic effects" (things that blow up) are no longer the primary concern - they're worried about narrative collapse because no one is curating the flow of media to people who are "tribal, susceptible to misinformation, less educated"
5) So far none of this is really news (except that they're open about it), but one thing that may surprise: they are not soft on China, they are scared shitless

They despise Trump openly but the only good thing they have to say is "at least he cut China out of US finance & tech"
6) They forecast economic & tech parity with China within 5 years, then a Chinese century unless we act fast (ie give them the whip hand & shitloads of money)

CCP control of R&D + 4:1 manpower advantage almost insurmountable
7) US response is a buyout of tech, with massive govt R&D spending on ostensibly commercial applications in exchange for "security cooperation"

They insist that this is not just "corporatism with American characteristics", bc they ask nicely
8) When they say "the western liberal order" they don't mean "free markets & free minds" (though they still mouth the words) - it means respect for corporate fiefs (esp re: IP & trade) & a soft touch with client states, as opposed to the bullying/piratical posture of the CCP
9) Plans for mass automation, unemployment, unrest

R&D injections in domestic surveillance, infosec, hardening infrastructure, counter-extremism

the American people aren't *necessarily* the enemy, but they are a critical resource that must be kept out of enemy hands (BAMN)
Bottom line: Alex Jones is right about pretty much everything

& the coordination necessary for them to do what they need to do is making it increasingly difficult to market using the old good-guys-fighting-tyranny paradigm

at best it's "we're still the lesser evil"

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All the challenges to Leader Pelosi are coming from her right, in an apparent effort to make the party even more conservative and bent toward corporate interests.

Hard pass. So long as Leader Pelosi remains the most progressive candidate for Speaker, she can count on my support.


I agree that our party should, and must, evolve our leadership.

But changed leadership should reflect an actual, evolved mission; namely, an increased commitment to the middle + working class electorate that put us here.

Otherwise it’s a just new figure with the same problems.

I hope that we can move swiftly to conclude this discussion about party positions, so that we can spend more time discussing party priorities: voting rights, healthcare, wages, climate change, housing, cannabis legalization, good jobs, etc.
This idea - that elections should translate into policy - is not wrong at all. But political science can help explain why it's not working this way. There are three main explanations: 1. mandates are constructed, not automatic, 2. party asymmetry, 3. partisan conpetition 1/


First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/

Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/

Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/

Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/

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