I've probably spent 10 hours reconstructing what happened at the Capitol. Censorship has made this process more difficult, but I think I've gotten about as far as I'll get at this point. Unpreparedness and Chaos are both good words to describe what happened inside the Capitol. 1

I was working on something before the election that became the election...

Color revolutions are real and we just witnessed one live and direct...

1.

(THREAD) The main problem with that @DanDrezner piece in the Post is that it's an international politics prof writing about the field in which I'm a professor—communications. No one in communications would *ever* compare the blogosphere to either Twitter or Substack. Here's why.

1/ Back in the mid-aughts, I was a Koufax Award-nominated political blogger (I don't know what Drezner was doing then; I first heard of him about a year ago). So I was into the blogosphere pretty deep, as I also ran a second high-traffic blog that was focused on the art world.

2/ The "blogosphere" was an outgrowth of MySpace and LiveJournal, inasmuch as in the heady early days of the internet people suddenly realized that they could engage in private diaristic writing—a very specific subgenre of writing—in the public square, and it was suddenly "okay."

3/ So the blogosphere as such had *nothing* to do with journalism, which needless to say was in a different state just 15 years ago (note: unlike Drezner, I also teach writing and journalism at the university level, so this thread is squarely "in my area," unlike his Post piece).

4/ The blogosphere was a manifestation of the transformation of the public-private binary at the dawn of the internet—and *also* connected to the "creative writing" explosion (what I did a PhD on); in the aughts, creative writing was the fastest-growing discipline *in the world*.

so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol). they were burying food and ammo stashes out in the desert, running drills, crazy stuff

this included getting a cb license so he could be their lifeline to other groups of white idiots when the cell towers all went offline. wouldn't want to violate federal law while communicating with your resistance groups after the fall of the federal government i guess.

anyways, you would assume given that they've been prepping for the end of the world for at least a year they're well situated to ride out the rolling blackouts right?

wellll

their plan for cooking and heating during an extended power outage was natural gas, but like a lot of homes their gas service is out. the food in their freezer and fridge is already toast due to the power outrages, so they're down to canned stuff, but there's a catch.

they can get into the pull top cans just fine, but the ones that require an opener? their only can opener is electric. so a good 3/4 of his canned food store is inaccessible to him unless he goes after it with a knife, which i sincerely hope he does.