Keep your good spirit and a stiff upper lip. These jerks are not the only people in the scrum.

Another Musk benefit:

DOGE employee cuts fall heavily on agency that regulates Musk’s Tesla

A small government team regulating the sort of autonomous cars that Elon Musk says represent the future of Tesla, his car company, is getting cut nearly in half by the Musk-led U.S. Doge Service, according to people briefed on the reductions.

The loss of personnel from the specialized unit is part of a 10 percent overall workforce reduction at the federal agency tasked with ensuring safety on America’s roads. In all, the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, will lose between 70 and 80 people, split roughly evenly between firings of probationary employees and buyouts, according to three people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. — WPost

The "insurrection narrative" pertains to what Trump and his team attempted, not his believers. The criminal charge is based upon fraud:

The Grand Jury indictment reads in part:

1. The Defendant, DONALD J . TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United
States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election.
2. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.
4. Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:

a. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;

b. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified ("the certification proceeding"), in violation of 18U.S.C. § 1512(k); and

c. A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.

Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election ("the federal government function"). — DOJ

Gold's account may be true or not. That in no way informs us as to how others were treated or whether their charges were bogus.

The charges were not based upon participating in an insurrection. Here is a breakdown of the charges. The following point was emphasized:

There are zero cases where a defendant was charged only with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so. Every defendant also faces other criminal charges—felonies, misdemeanors, or both—for illegal conduct related to the Capitol Breach. — Department of Justice

To the degree that you are correct about Gold's case being different from more vile transgressions is the extent of the injustice perpetrated by Trump's blanket pardon.

The validity of the prosecutions or the deficiencies of the trial processes for particular defendants has no bearing on the "quasi-coup narrative." Violent or not, the participants were repeating the language of their leader. And he has blessed them all with pardons. A coup is what a regime does. A crowd protesting a stolen election is another thing. They all did not spontaneously have this idea.

There were a lot of trials. I doubt this report establishes a principle that can be applied to them all, especially those that involve assault.

Would you accept that such context is pivotal to understanding this report?

Does the man say when this happened in the context of the attacks on police lines?

Those supposed peaceful visitors are not why they got access to the building.

If she is not claiming that about violence, what is the point of what she does observe? How does it change your understanding of what happened?

I watched it to the end. The claims amount to something like "I was shoplifting for a couple of hours in the store but saw nobody getting hurt."

I don't find anywhere in that video where Gold claims that no violence or rioting occurred on January 6. — Leontiskos

Then what is the value of her testimony measured against all the violence that was filmed and reported upon by others?

I was curious, not trying to make it about Gold's testimony which can be questioned by a review of the facts.

The love in the air:


Leaving aside the riot, are you a fellow traveler of the anti-vaccine crowd Gold hung out with back in the day?

Vance is comfortable adjusting his sheep outfit as needed. His pow wow with the Alternative for Germany party coincides with AfD MEP Hans Neuhoff calling for normalization with Russia:

I think the vivacity of dreams is a shifting ground of dream experiences not easily compared. The peculiarities of my own development must be a critical factor. I have a knack for imagining situations through models but have a poor memory of my chronology. I know people who can recall small details of their early life and the order in which events occurred. For me, it is all a shuffled deck of flash cards with few names attached.

With these differences in mind, it is interesting how we can refer to our dreaming as shared experience. Poetry and literature refer to the activity in ways that prompt recognition of the way it creates its own logic and physics. But it is no simple thing. The tension between the awakened and dreamt events emerges in different ways.

Rilke uses the gap to uncover what escapes perception without guidance:

As if escaping the creatures of a dream
engendered in the throes of anguish
the next day rises; so the vaulting ribs
spring from the tangled capital.

and leave that chaos of densely intertwined,
mysteriously winged creations:
their hesitance and the suddenness of the heads
and those strong leaves, whose sap

mounts like rising anger, finally spilling over
in a quick gesture that clenches
and thrusts out----: driving everything up

that always with darkness coldly
falls back again, like rain bearing worry
to keep this old growth alive. — Rilke, The Capital, translated by Edward Snow

In The Trial, by Kafka, the gap is seemingly infinite. All the particular struggles K takes on to defend himself do not reach up to a higher order of judgement where the "real" gets on. It seems to me that a lot of dreams are like that. We are dropped into a maze from which to escape but the design is changed when we start figuring some of it out.

If both sides of gap are necessary for either one to appear, then the question changes. I think of Borges in Borges and I which starts with:

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. — Borges

and ends with:

I do not know which of us has written this page. — ibid.

In fact Vance defended the European citizens who were roundly silenced by the weak commissars of European governments for the smallest of speech and thought crimes. Does anyone in the EU do the same? — NOS4A2

Viktor plays your song:

The globalist elites hate us, of course. The bureaucrats in Brussels, the Democrats in the US and the Soros network have set about hunting us down. They are hunting us because we have defended our country. And what have they done in the meantime? They have destroyed Europe. Brussels is sinking the European economy. Brussels is sending our money to Ukraine, to a hopeless war. Brussels has caused Europe to be overrun with migrants. Brussels has opened the gates and borders to an invasion of migrants. I remember in 2015 Soros announced that one million migrants a year should be allowed into Europe. And lo and behold: in nine years, nine million illegal migrants have arrived! Europe’s illegal migrant invasion and population replacement is not a conspiracy theory – it is a reality. As the dark joke has it, it’s time to look for new conspiracy theories, because the old ones have all been proven to be true. — ibid

Bannon sang a similar tune, especially in the Breitbart days. Is that not where you go for your "Deep State" updates?

If one is not willing to participate in a discussion are they ready to discuss? — DifferentiatingEgg

Now you will never know unless you happen upon the discussion in another thread.

No need to participate in a discussion you're not prepared for. — DifferentiatingEgg

No need to indulge in gratuitous insults.

Fair enough. All of these conditions concerning the conflict have been discussed in the 17,500 comments resting comfortably in the Ukraine Thread. The only difference now is that Tzeentch has a champion in the field.

Somehow I predict you would be a lot less eager to prolong this war if you had to make similar sacrifices. — Tzeentch

The armchair calls the sofa comfy.

Show me a well sourced, balanced story about DOGE, I double dog dare you. — philosch

Present one yourself.

So far, your presumption that alarm at executive actions is overwrought is only that. How is that not a form of gaslighting?

Where is the bias in this report?

After ceding power of the purse, GOP lawmakers beg Trump team for funds.

Edit to add: Another emerging Republican reaction: ‘You would see lawsuits’: Susan Collins fires new warning shot at Trump on spending.

That is strikingly similar to a Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán given at a meeting of the Patriots for Europe Party.

Some of the more purple bits would also be at home at the Alternative for Germany where Vance gave a cheery high five.

As someone who tries to stay open minded in the middle I have found more and more I have no where to go to get decently reported news. — philosch

Do you believe the reports concerning the Mass Firing of Federal Employees?

How about the Closure of Federal Agencies without the approval of Congress?

Here is report on Probationary Workers by Business Insider. Ironically, much of the information in the report comes from OPM, one of the agencies subject to the order.

After all the debate over the years here on this platform over different approaches to reading original texts, it is disappointing to see the scholarly pursuit assigned to a particular class of cultural influence.

Probationary workers in each agency are who do the job after the ones doing it now are gone:

The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, according to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) union, weeks after a fatal mid-air plane collision in Washington DC.

Several hundreds of the agency's probationary workers - who have generally been in their positions for less than a year - received the news via email late on Friday night, a statement from PASS's head, Alex Spero said.

It is a part of a cost-cutting drive, driven by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), that aims to drastically cut the federal workforce. — BBC

You asked me questions and I spoke my mind. I am okay with people doing drugs if I, or people I care about, are not harmed. I do not know of a more direct way to answer your questions.

Tobacco gets ruled out of the job site because of danger to others. I am libertarian enough to let people decide how they die left to their own devices.

I would rather make most guns illegal.

I appreciate what OSHA has done for work site safety but the most effective guarantee of not getting hurt is paying attention to the states of awareness around you. That includes one's own state of awareness.

So, if you have a habit that makes you okay at work but nonetheless shortens your life, that is on you.

In the building trades, the limits are closely linked to how dangerous one becomes to others. Substance abuse that just kills you is different from what kills others.

It looks like Macron may be thinking that as well. This from Politico: Macron calls emergency European summit on Trump, Polish minister says.

This is an interesting move also from the point of view of reducing some of the tension between Poland and France that has developed over the last two decades. Macron has stepped away from being the Trump Whisperer.

Suddenly, you are in the game.

Okay. Read the essay and get back to me.

What then, is your interest in the present topic?

It is rare that I have been enticed to join a discussion such as you have provided.

Well, Land refers to your neck of the woods more than the U.S.A. For example, Singapore gets a big thumbs up.

frank has proposed that the ascendancy of Trump is an outcome of the processes discussed by Nick Land, whose essay is available here.

Are you saying that Land's thesis is germane to the attempts of the present administration?

It's okay if you cannot though, at that point it just feels like you wanted to use a common, albeit poor, counter to Nietzsche's own philosophy and psychology, which has little to do with what I've said here. — DifferentiatingEgg

That is a lot to gather from my modest comment.

I am not seeing a lot of references to Rousseau's or Land's actual statements In the comments as yet. Will this be forthcoming?