🔒 The Grift That's Smothering the Resistance

I wasn’t on Twitter during the Arab Spring. It sounds like it was a big deal. Millions of people across a continent throwing off the shackles of tyranny and demonstrating for the first time the power of online organizing. It’s widely regarded to be the least shitty thing that Twitter ever did.

Not that Twitter was entirely responsible for it, but it’s often cited as having been a major organizing factor and a proof of concept for social media and new technologies to be used for the greater human good.

 So what would it look like if that kind of energy came to America? If fascism came knocking at the home of democracy, a nation where the vast majority of people are hooked up to the World Wide Web and definitely know how to use it? Is this the era of the American Spring?

 The nightmare scenario that Americans have always been warned about has arrived. A president with no respect for or interest in the norms and traditions of his office or country, who claims dictatorial authority, who respects neither congress nor the judiciary. His footsoldiers have begun rounding people up—not just the undocumented, but also visa holders, permanent residents, and possibly citizens (we don’t actually know)—and disappearing them without trial or due process to concentration camps in El Salvador. They are being deported not for breaking any law, but for being Hispanic and having tattoos—literally any tattoos. Again, these are law-abiding legal residents who have not been charged with any crime.

 The president has unilaterally appointed the world’s richest man to lead a government department he made up, with no congressional approval or oversight, that evidently has powers nearly equivalent to the president himself. Elon Musk, effectively the co-president, has been granted the power to shut down any agency that he feels like, terminate the employment of anyone in the government at will, impound congressionally approved funds, and even cancel government contracts and award them instead to his own companies.

 The actual elected president, in the meantime, is governing by executive order, declaring it illegal to be transgender, to criticise the government of Israel to any extent, or to study climate science. He can’t actually do any of these things, mind you—it’s the exact same play as that gag from The Office where Michael Scott declares bankruptcy by yelling “I declare bankruptcy”—but when you’re a climate scientist and FBI agents come knocking at your door and strongly insinuate that you should try a new career if you don’t dream of an early retirement in a Salvadoran death camp, then what Trump is allowed to do kind of shrinks behind what he fucking is doing.

 The Democratic party under Chuck Schumer has folded like an ironing board for some reason and abdicated what little power they actually still wield in favor of their preferred technique of trying to grow his heart three sizes with the power of love and full capitulation. Trump and Musk, for all appearances, display closer allegiance with foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin, Nayib Bukele, and Viktor Orban than they do with the opposing party of their own country. It is only March, in year one of a four year administration, noting that the idea that Trump will remain in power for only four years is ludicrously optimistic.

 Shit seems bad, is what I’m saying. Let’s check out what Twitter looks like:

Fuck.

 But we already know this about Twitter, the place is a dumpster. Bluesky is the same, though—every social media site right now seems to look very much like this if you haven’t whipped your personalised algorithm enough into submission.

 I keep my social media feeds well disciplined—if a site makes it possible to populate my feed with only people I follow, that’s what I’m using. It’s why I practically never use Meta products anymore unless I want to check up on what one of my friends from uni from 15 years ago is posting, followed by three straight boomer jokes and just a shit ton of AI videos featuring Simon Cowell, Shrimp Jesus, and giants building pyramids.

 That said, I really had no idea what anyone was talking about when rumours started that Donk and Brittney had been banned from Bluesky.

Everybody, we gotta save Donk and Brittney! Donk and Brittney are in trouble, sign the petition for Donk and Britney, like and follow.

We’ve got this, guys, we’ve just gotta free Donk and Brittney for community solidarity. Just sign, share, follow, and subscribe. Repost and share, we have to bring the community together, bring it together like only Donk and Brittney can. 

And have you SIGNED and REPOSTED enough? You should repost this again, George, you should repost it again to put it back up to the top of the timeline. Donk and Brittney need your support, they need 400 more signatures. 400 more signatures to bring back Donk and Brittney and you have to follow as well, and follow back. 

 If these people had pulled out this level of energy for Kamala Harris last year then we’d all be sipping on coconut cocktails right now and peacefully existing in the context of all in which we live and what came before us. Instead we have White House Chief Secretary Big Balls “throwing his heart out” to Pepe the Frog while cutting healthcare for AIDS orphans.

 If you’re like me and you’ve never heard of Donk and Brittney before, they are a couple of Twitter memeposters who evidently got started in 2020 and run a pro-Democrat group called Blue Crew, who I guess promote solidarity and community among Democrat voters by helping them all find each other, and… and then what?

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