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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   26657 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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Let's see what happens with Elon / Vivek, but they might be the ones that end up burned from this.

To quote Parvini's most recent Substack:

Power is top-down. Democracy is an illusion. At best, one can say that this or that group of elites gets their friends elected. Power is never bottom-up, never comes as the result of a government-sanctioned street protest, a ratio, the fact you got 20,000 likes on Twitter, or because you ‘redpilled the normies’. When I wrote The Populist Delusion a couple of years ago, it was to teach these fundamentals of power. Many thousands of people read this book, but alas its lessons were not, in the end, internalised.

And later:

As I’ve pointed out countless times, there is no trade off. How it works is as follows: a big donor, whether Zionist, Tech Bro, or any other stripe, gives resources and in exchange they get what they want. You, dear voter, like the kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, GET NOTHING, YOU LOSE, GOOD DAY SIR. The costs to Trump of not going along with H-1B Visas or uncritical and blind Israel support is billions of dollars and institutional support. The cost to Trump of betraying the voters? None. ‘This time it will be different, get in the crystal’, they will cry. To which I can only say, ‘do not be silly, no it won’t be.’

All power belongs to a tiny elite; the masses do not matter. Elon and Vivek can't "get burned," because they're each one more powerful than all 77 million Trump voters put together.

Elon is an asset just through owning Twitter so I agree he has more weight to pull around than millions of ordinary Joes, though I don't think it's quite at the "I do whatever the fuck I want" level - his position is being propped up by the masses in a more direct way than that of any democratically elected politician.

What exactly does Vivek have to offer?

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