BeijingPalmer

actually I think there's a non-zero chance this is the same guy @jackwaltimore.bsky.social is talking about.

there's a really lovely Tim Kreider essay, "Escape from Pony Island" where he describes losing a friend because he became a full-time Peak Oil guy, and even in the essay he's like 'well he's probably right, this all seems correct, I just don't want to live like that'

peak oil doomerism was super-common!

ozone layer, recycling, peak oil.

It’s 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It’s cold and it’s mean-spirited and I don’t like it here anymore.

like, if you look at what people expected in the mid-1980s compared to how things turned out, it's pretty striking! check out Alan Moore's introduction to the, I think, 1988 version of V for Vendetta to get a sense of the mood.

homophobia massively and visibly decreased in my lifetime, including from the government.

bad judgment about people?!! from Bernie Sanders??? well I never expected this

he then appeared on Terry Wogan - a very popular talkshow - in a bright turquoise track suit and announced that he was the son of god and the world was going to end in 1997.

I am just about old enough to remember David Icke *before* he had the mental breakdown that started his course into being an unusually florid conspiracy theorist. he was a well-liked sports journalist and TV commentator, as well as an early Green Party member.

a) praises Mussolini, because Vespa was an ardent Italian Fascist
b) denounces anti-semitism in strong terms
c) denounces the Japanese regime in Manchuria

one of the more bizarre byproducts of the 1930s is the book by Amleto Vespa, SECRET AGENT OF JAPAN, in which he describes being forced into working for the Japanese in Manchuria. It simultaneously -

Are we forgetting that Russia has been firing all its actually existing munitions (including some fairly bespoke ones) at Ukraine to the point that they were buying stuff from Iran to keep up the tempo?

oh this is the guy who was posting himself into a stroke responding to @nameshiv.bsky.social a couple of days ago.

As someone who has long been quite critical of Israel, it’s getting really tiring hearing people say obscenely antisemitic shit and responding to outrage with “criticism of Israel is ok.” Like how about prove you’re capable of even a single complex thought before saying anything about anything?

the charitable interpretation of this is that you're really fucking stupid, the uncharitable one is that you're an anti-semite, either way please fuck off.

the 'it's anti-zionism not anti-semitism' routine doesn't work for the fucking totenkopf, or for promoting neo-Nazis like Stew Peters, or appearing on far-right podcasts and saying how much you like them

the guy had a literal Nazi tattoo, you fucking moron

yeah I've heard that one but it made the leap over to general anti-semitism post Gaza too

oh for sure. everything the trump admin does is mimicry of some other political moment or idea it barely comprehends - war, fascism, whatever. they rehearse the history they half-understand, racing right to the horrible crimes but without any of the underpinnings that made the crimes possible

the NYT updates on the war are like 2003 updates about the Iraq War run through some kind of Idiocracy translator

Sort of amazing that we have to do this discourse again after a decade of Trump but now it’s ‘left wingers’ doing the full Centrist ‘how dare you’ routine at the basic logic

Like 9/11 trutherism and anti-vaxx beliefs, antisemitism is rapidly becoming yet another weakly held idea that online influencers use to signal anti-establishment credentials. Like those other beliefs, that means people who strongly hold antisemitic beliefs can ride that ambiguity to gain power.

“I am the son of the guy whose secret police force used to terrorize you, please install me or my friends, for democracy” is an amazing pitch from the shah’s son

So many ostensibly straight news stories just flatly assumed that any friction in leaving Afghanistan had to be a result of incompetence by Biden, like there was a "no chaos" button he could have pushed to make the mass withdrawal of troops from an instantly failed state happen with no risk

a Jew.

"Yes well see when I said the Nazi bar rule, that applied to you, redneck pleb, not me, the cool kid."

I'm not going to judge them until the actual primary, but I'm going to judge them real hard afterward if he wins.

he can't even be bothered to come up with bad but original arguments, he just trots out the same shit he's been parroting for three decades and not edited on because even when the Post was good, it felt the need to have 'thinkers' like him from the right.

thiessen's such a lazy piece of shit.