CIRCLE WITH A DOT

On the electoral campaigning side, Peter Magyar's strategy was basically to be everywhere and talk with everyone. Go to every little one horse town, talk to anyone no matter how many fascist flags they're waving, get your counter messaging directly to people, etc. It took like 75% voter turnout to beat Orban's gerrymandering, rigged election laws, and control of media. Anti-corruption messaging remains powerful but you have to get it to people.

Liberal commentariat take note: one of the most visible turning points was Budapest Pride last year, when the Hungarian anti-authoritarian movement refused to back down from defending queer folks. Orban's power was broken in a major way when Hungarian organizing reached a point at which regular Hungarians started defending people because they were the people under attack, without concern for the supposed issues underneath. The question was not whether gay love is equal to straight love or whether trans people are who they say they are, but rather who does the regime want us to hate and how do we fight on that front?

But more seriously, this is the result of massive and sustained anti-authoritarian organizing in Hungary. Regular Hungarians increasinly built solidarity across different identities and ultimately refusing to leave anyone behind. Orban lost once regular Hungarians were willing to defy the government for their queer neighbors especially. Mass movement building and public protest mattered, building alternative media mattered, direct action mattered, and above all solidarity mattered.

This is big for Hungarians, and Hungarians have also done a great service for all of us abroad. Orban's political machine is a lyncpin of international fascism, and they're going to have to scramble to keep those operations running in much more difficult conditions. Hungarians have struck a blow against basically every fascist party in the Americas and Europe.

It's just so shocking that white hot charisma deity JD Vance couldn't save Orban

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@PallasRiot/116389357780074883

Lmao eat shit Orban

New opportunities and horizons for struggle for the Hungarian people. This means a new fight is starting, but perhaps on better footing.

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@PallasRiot/116352414077392128

Spectacular that I made this post so close to the revelation that an administration official invoked Avignon as a threat to the church lmao

Also worth pointing out that Jeffries and Schumer just successfully beat Republicans over DHS funding, with Republicans having to go through a whole second funding attempt grinder after Democrats refused to budge. Again, here we see signs of Trump buckling from positions that he was holding for more than a year, in this case his previous unwillingness to ever negotiate with Dems on funding.

(This is also a lesson in why things like mass protest movements do actually make a difference by changing political gravity. Schumer and Jeffries didn't chabge their strategy for no reason)

Just like with Trump I, the replacements will be awful. Possibly worse on a personal level than their predecessors. But a revolving door in the administration makes them less effective regardless.

I said that Noem's firing was significant because Trump II had a firm "no scalps" policy that they had held onto for like a year. Bondi getting fired pretty well confirms it, Trump's personal capacity to stick to that policy has been shattered.

Minneapolis broke Trump as an administrator and as a man.

@cmdr_nova This won't tear down all of therapy's norms and regulations overnight, this is more like something that will be the source of major scandals that get uncovered in 10 to 20 years probably, if it holds. The near-term thing is that conversion therapists are going to be able to enter the market as if they were real medical professionals, like how chiropractors currently do.

Anyway, while you're here I'm going to guess that Trump's birthright citizenship executive order gets overturned, probably 6-3. My guess is that Roberts wants to display independence and this was a case he thought would be useful for that. He's really trying to end the Republic without creating the political will for court reform, and he's largely succeeded.

Moreover, as I've said in the past the greatest predictor for what the Roberts Court will do is what will increase their own power. Technically the mechanism of their ruling here is that any law or regulation that involves the speech of a medical professional must face what's called "strict scrutiny" when it's brought to court. That's the highest level of barrier a law can face from the courts, the strictest test. The vast majority of laws subject to strict scrutiny are found to be unconstitutional. This means that the Roberts Court has effectively struck a huge blow against the regulatory power of legislatures and made those legislatures subject to much greater degree of control by the judiciary.

Look, I'm a bit of a history nerd but not even close to an expert and frankly barely in a position to fairly call myself an enthusiast. But I don't know of any Supreme Court in US history that is as adversial to facts as the Roberts Court. The Roberts Court truly embodies the worst things about lawyers as a cohort, as they very clearly truly believe that everything is reducible to a kind of vague thought experiment totally isolated from any context. They have a total contempt for reality or material consequence. The politics of the Roberts Court are shocking and fascist, but the Republican justices intuitions about what lawyers do are also just the most lawyer-brained idiocy found anywhere. Roberts and his comrades aren't just right-wing cranks, though they are, they're also people who think that being very good at logic games means you're smart.

So the Supreme Court didn't actually rule that conversion torture is constitutionally protected.

It's so much more insane than that.

They ruled that licensed medical professionals have a first amendment right to expression even in the context of professional intervention. So a therapist has a constitutional right to express whatever they want during therapy. Or "therapy" I guess since this functionally renders apeech based therapeutics impossible to regulate?

The implications here are like unimaginable. If a doctor anywhere in the country decided to start telling patients that their problems are caused by ghosts in their blood and they must repent by consuming a pound of Chex Mix every hour, there's a real question now if that's constitutionally protected speech. That doctor may be protected from consequences to their license. More realistically, if a doctor tells a patient that them being fat is a moral failing, or a therapist tells a patient that being dead would be better than being an atheist, those are potentially constitutionally protected speech.

So they kicked all the trannies out of the military and then immediately start losing a war? Do I have that right?

Hey unfriendly reminder but if someone describes American Jews as "Israeli Zionists" they're doing nazi shit. And if someone accuses random Jewish folks in the US of being Israeli Zionists you shouldn't just take their word for it?

@gwynnion The Trump administration's only move in all cases is to escalate if they can't declare victory, so it's definitely hard to see how he finds an off ramp at this point. The Iranian government needs Trump to know he lost, and Trump feels he needs to escalate if he's losing

Warren is part of the senate "fight club", the group of senators trying to oust Schumer and orchestrate a more progressive senate Dem leadership. Her endorsement of Platner is part of their strategy: they're trying to beat as many of Schumer's hand picked candidates as possible, and Mills is a major Schumer ally. Mills is also a really weak candidate (Schumer and the DSCC have really picked some real loser candidates for some very important races because they are staunch Schumer allies) and Platner is a very strong candidate that looks like he's got pretty good odds, especially in a strong Dem election year. I'd also suspect that Warren appreciates that Platner is a little wonky and surprisingly good at the inside-outside game, similar to Warren herself.

Warren stans have spent years willfully ignoring that Warren is a snake who wields power pretty ruthlessly and plays politics hard. She made the CFPB happen by being ruthless, she got a seat at the table with the Biden administration by being ruthless, etc. Her image as a smart, well meaning, nerdy wonk who always tries to do things the right way is her marketing. She's definitely smart and wonky, but she's also a pretty skilled hardened political player. For Warren stans who have desperately wanted to ignore that because it tarnishes their image of her, now is maybe a moment to reflect on how much they bought the mythology. Maybe especially how she got them to turn on Sanders.

@SharpCheddarGoblin Honestly I largely stopped paying attention to the Maine race because I think everything is basically baked in at this point, but it keeps getting so much attention that every so often I have thoughts. But like, my opinion for awhile now is that Platner clearly isn't a nazi, the nazis know he isn't a nazi, he's definitely going to beat Mills and probably will beat Collins, and that he should probably still drop out because preserving as much taboo against nazi symbolism as possible is just that important that the rest doesn't matter.

I suspect the Venn diagram of Warren stans and anti-Platner heads is something approaching a circle so there's definitely going to be some real struggle sessions on bluesky over her endorsement