It'd amazing how these billionaires can push for this, when the example of Putin's Russia or Xi's China are right there, showing what happens when you have a government headed by an thin-skinned autocrat who might decide to take your money and your life, not necessarily in that order.

Ask any one of a number of Russian oligarchs. You might need a Ouija board, of course.

We knew he was a garbage human being during the Anita Hill hearings.

That he's still a garbage human being now that he had even more power shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with any understanding of how people work.

This would be accurate if they ever cared about neonatal or prenatal health.. They don't.

Infant mortality being sky-high is completely fine. Mothers with no supports, nutrition, or health care? Fine. A baby can die in utero as a result of neglect and they'd say it was God's will, or rather that it's God's will that they not pay taxes for health care.

Wait, the threat to capitalism from the modern Democratic Party, which is a bunch of weak-kneed neoliberal do-nothings, is worse than the threat of fascism from a guy who said he's willing to use the power of the state to punish enemies?

Ask the Russian oligarchs that fell down stairs, out of windows, ran into mysterious rains of bullets and/or drank radioactive tea how they feel about selling out democracy for profit.

Oh wait, you can't ask them.

These nitwits don't realize that even if they're not the first line in Niemoller's poem, they'll at best be the last.

I mean, Howard Dean talked into an unadjusted microphone one time. That's totes just as bad.

Yeah, listened to him carry water for people that wanted to harm me and people like me either through neglect, if not outright malice.

He's not Henry Kissinger, so I'm not actively hoping he's burning in hell, but I'm not sorry he's gone.

This is what the State is afraid of: not that people will protest Israel's actions, but that the left might organize trans-nationally and demand better from their governments.

They've been happy to let the political Right metastatize because at least fascism can be good for business, but they're terrified of the rest of us realizing the we have the numbers and that the rich need us more than we need them.

They had a narrow escape in 2008 and spent the last decade and a bit stoking culture wars. The last thing the west wants is it's own Arab Spring.

Not even businesses want this, it's just performative cruelty at this point.

They weren't supposed to do anything for wait times, they were supposed to break the public system while making rich people even richer.

In that way, they're a success.

So we're supposed to truck ourselves for an hour or more in a car, at our expense, to spend money in a downtown that we can't afford to live in, so that landlords--who are already rich--can get richer? How about landlords pull themselves up by their bootstraps, stop buying lattes and avocado toast, and cancel their Disney+ subscription?

Also:

• This is rich, coming from a guy who avoids downtowns where possible, and ran away and hid when the Convoy occupied Ottawa
• If you want people to live downtown, how about providing for actual affordable housing in downtown? Get out your chequebook and fucking build it, Doug.

This'll be great at the business level: do you use Outlook, or Outlook?

Kind of like Teams: do you use Teams, Teams (New) or Teams (Home)?

Microsoft: failing at branding since 1992.

There's a psychological phenomenon, a cascade effect, that causes people's perceptions to flip if enough people around them also change their minds.

It's not nefarious, or a sign of stupidity or ignorance, it's part of how social primates like humans work. And it's something that the Right knows to work, and is exploiting.

It's how we got LGBTQ rights, and it's how we'll lose them if we, and especially the media, don't stop giving these troglodytes and their ideas oxygen.

Anyone who tells you that if we just educate people it'll make a difference ( it won't, cf the Backfire Effect) and that "sunshine is the best disinfectant" is either woefully ignorant of how humans work, or is actively disingenuous.

Tl;dr radical centrists are paving stones on the path to He'll.