With more words, I nonironically believe this. And it’s really the oligarchy, Republicans are just their best tool.

It will be slightly more subtle. But IMO this is the crux of the overall strategy, and frankly it’s plain as day IMO.

This is the abridged version of the final solution as far as I can tell:

• The only use for the religious part of the religious right is to get birth control down and birth rates up. The reason for this is to keep the factories they keep promising to build stocked with workers to ensure the oligarchy has their workforce. Anti-gay stuff? Gay couples don’t make babies. And babies are what it’s all about.

• All that “savings” on those ridiculous cuts to healthcare and healthcare research? It really is savings when you don’t care if people die. And they think they don’t have to care if people die because “only the strong will survive” and also women are now going to be making babies as fast as biology will allow. All the anti-trans stuff? Gender affirming care is expensive, that’s money that could be funding private jets and rebuilding Lolita Island 2.0. Autistic kids? Hey, they can do menial labor as well as anyone. Oh and also, that’s why Pro-life only means “until birth.” After that, there is no reason for them to give that baby a different go at the statistical survival game than anyone else. Doing so would not be anything but a net-drain on the profits of the oligarchs.

• Now that’s all damn ridiculous and people will surely figure that out as we are doing right now. But, they are slashing all that education funding and removing or whitewashing all those things from history. All they have to do is wait for the pre-dictatorship generations who had a broader education to die out, and (they think) what they will have left are the “fittest” survivors of their eugenics program, who will be educated such that they have education and opinions only as molded specifically to their place in society and support of its dogma.

• All those cuts to arts funding? Selling out our national forests to exploit the resources for profit? A nation of semi-educated workers doesn’t need art or national forests.

• My buddy the unicorn decent republican would never support anything like that. They probably don’t. Most of the shitty ones probably don’t, either. First they will assist the rising dictatorship to destroy it all in the name of stomping out wokeness as above, then the rising dictatorship just has to remake it as desired. At that point it would be too late and their opinions won’t matter.

• Even Republican congresspeople wouldn’t let that happen. They’ll do what Putin and whatever other blackmail tells them too, and those that aren’t in someone’s black book get whipped into shape by Trump, who is clearly a puppet of Putin (at least.)

Mind you, I think we as a nation will not go so quietly into the night and we will stop them. But I truly believe there’s a group at the top who is intentionally driving us towards exactly what I have described. A future where we all slavishly manufacture the same products we then purchase with our meager wages in an economy designed to ensure we can survive well enough to buy crap but still line their pockets.

Me either, but on desktop it doesn’t care. (unless it’s thanks to Linux/ff/ublock but I doubt that) I didn’t realize it forced you on phone on until recently. Sorry!

Here is essentially the same thing with less detail. I haven’t decided where I like uploading things these days yet.

I recently started using Qobuz also. I was impressed that there are Linux apps, including a (3rd party) downloader that lets me download FLAC. (Otherwise I think you need to use their app in Windows or Mac to download FLAC - the web downloader only let me grab MP3.)

However, although I have loved it, my use case is different than yours, so not really apples to apples. I have a media server running in a VPS, so ethical downloads are my primary requirement. For Download --> Self-host --> Self-stream they are a perfect fit, IMO, though I’m sure there are others.

I like it because I’m not buying music from Amazon, or Spotify, and that it’s DRM free, primarily. I will also buy from Bandcamp sometimes. (To be fair, some amazon music can also be downloaded DRM free, but I think anyone reading this probably already knows that. I can’t remember if FLACs were available to me never or rarely, because I didn’t use Amazon music much.)

Despite that, I’m watching this thread with interest, because I’m certainly open to other options.

Fair, will do!

Anyone else finds the casing engraving situation to be a bit strange?

This is the best explanation I’ve seen (and I do think the engravings are shared out there somewhere)

I’m not steeped in internet culture enough to have known all this Groyper stuff before, though I’d heard the term. However, this has the ring of truth to me, and is consistent with other Groyper descriptions I’ve seen.

This is the explanation I’m seeing most often outside mainstream media where they are too busy running around trying to analyze it and speak truthfully about his life without getting fired.

More or less the same point but with more information here: https://www.tiktok.com/@aidanetcetera/video/7549640789652032790

I still haven’t found a better analysis than this, so I feel pretty OK about what’s posted, and the clarification I made, despite the occasional drive-by.

I’ve seen one source posted by one person here who disagrees with what I have seen everywhere else. In the (checks notes) few hours since posting the meme I’ve addressed that in a few places, but haven’t gone on a massive internet hunt to determine whether that one detail (which doesn’t change the point of the meme anyhow) may have been updated.

There’s a downvote button, and there’s a report button. There’s also a block button. You are empowered to use all three if you deem it necessary.

Let me ask you this though, do you think removing those people from your life makes a difference to anybody but you and them.

The difference being made is that I’ve taken charge of the sphere of people with influence in my life more effectively and assertively than at any time in my many decades, and I refuse to be shamed for not allowing them in. (not suggesting you personally are, but it seems an increasingly popular position)

Have they noticed? Some of them probably have. I have a complicated family life with a lot of obligations. We don’t socialize much anyway. I don’t really care if they have or not though. This is a decision I have made for myself.

Are you changing the world

Me? Certainly not. In aggregate though? Maybe. I think it’s is a silent movement. I read and/or hear throwaway comments about people dodging their maga friends and relatives all the time. So, it probably is an inflection point of some kind.

just pushing them to be more radical due to being pushed out by people.

They had years to be reasonable. They had years to pull their head out of their ass. They had years to remember their humanity. And even today they still haven’t.

I antagonize no one I meet, but I’m not letting that into my life anymore. Other people can pan the magas for gold.

I find the meme accurate to the info I’ve seen aside from folks here in this very discussion, and have edited the body along with several other comments to clarify my personal position. You are free to disagree, of course.

Ironically, there’s a good possibility I internalized the same clip at the same time leading to my comment above in the first place. 😆

I’ve lost my train of thought now but what I’m saying is I think that there is more nuance than just they evil and we should shun them because that does nothing but radicalise both sides and I’m not comfortable with that.

I think they had a decade to see him for what he was and there is no excuse.

If they aren’t racist white supremacists it wasn’t a dealbreaker. At that point it’s academic.

I’m closing in on 60. I’ve interacted with and/or been targeted by these same types for my entire life. And they all unified under maga. By removing maga from my life wherever possible, I’ve removed the same sources of toxicity that I can remember all the way back to my youth. It’s the best mental health decision I’ve ever made. They weren’t born maga, they chose it, and they continue to choose it. Fine. Thanks for labeling yourselves with the red hats and stickers, magas. Life is so much easier now.

Also, you are very close to making the point this comic was written for.

Is that a requirement for a meme about Nancy Mace’s abrupt about-face? It seems a bit rigorous for a community where we share mostly regurgitated memes and screenshots.

I feel pretty satisfied. The viewer can make up their own mind, or find their own sources.

Edit: We can replace “far right” with the easily verified “not leftist” without changing the meme whatsoever, primarily because the meme is about Nancy Mace and her mercurial, disingenuous opinion, not (directly) about the shooter.

If you acknowledge they were maga (which is what a Trump supporter is) then I don’t know what language you find objectionable.

And I apologize for assuming, but maybe you are not familiar with the on the ground mix of folks in the US. (Based on your source and your instance, which I realize are also arbitrary.) It’s not possible to be a Trump supporter and not be far right. It might have been possible in 2016, it really wasn’t in 2020, and no one who voted for him in 2024 can even pretend. They can reject the label, but actions speak louder than words, and everything he’s doing was telegraphed long before the election.

I don’t know if that was George Carlin, but it sounds like something he’d say.

I will acknowledge that the meme creator could have been less (or more) specific. I still don’t think it changes the actual point which is that it was only death penalty worthy until Mace thought it was someone on “her team.” Now it’s “let’s pray for this troubled youth.”

Edit - You also seem to be reading much more moderate things about the shooter and his family than I have been, but I really don’t care to split that hair enough to trade sources with you. It will all come out in eventually, and again we know enough to know it’s just a matter of degree.

Yet another edit - Actually, are we moderate-washing magas already? Maga = far right.

https://www.project2025.observe/

Bare minimum he was a maga kid in a maga family, and that’s the reason for her change of tone. None of the other stuff is relevant to the point here.

Bare minimum he was a maga kid in a maga family, and that’s the reason for her change of tone. None of the other stuff is relevant to the point here.

They were very sure that it could only be one of the millions of people in groups that were explicitly targeted by Kirk. Given how broadly he spread his hate, they had pretty good odds.

She rolled the dice and lost on her kneejerk reaction, and is surely lacking in enough self awareness to even have noticed, let alone feel any shame about it, I’m sure.

Yep. And it goes back further. The religious freedom the Puritans wanted was essentially to be able to be more authoritarian.

The puritans[2] who settled New England in 1630 were not coming to America to promote religious freedom for all, but to achieve for themselves a freedom from the church and civil officials in England who had prevented them from pursuing their faith as they believed God wanted them to. The settlement of Massachusetts presented the colonists with their first opportunity to decide what views and actions were acceptable and to prohibit what was not.

Edited to add - in case this wasn’t blunt enough, just like conservatives have been for my entire life; the freedom they want on any given axis is actually the freedom to control others on that same axis.

Well there used to be, until the rest of us started being so mean to them.