Wow, a hugely wealthy oligarchical capitalist facilitating the rise of fascism?
How completely unpredictable, with no historical precedent whatsoever!
Who could have possibly expected this?!
Certainly not Prescott Bush!
Man… that’s one of the things that seems like a conspiracy theory to a great many people, but just actually is true.
Dude literally got caught doing massive amounts of money laundering for literal Nazis during WW2 and by all rights should have been convicted of treason.
Its like how most people don’t know that IBM machines enabled the Germans to tabulate and keep track of the holocaust, that their machines spit out the UIDs that were tattooed onto the victims at the death camps…
… I think that ‘War is a Racket’ by Smedley Butler really needs to be added to the basic K-12 curriculum alongside 1984 and Brave New World…
But oh oops, the Republicans already destroyed our education systems, nevermind.
And definitely not Woodrow Wilson!
How much money do these fuckers need before they are content enough to not rat fuck American democracy so they can eek out a few percent more on their billions?
… The answer is infinity.
Capitalism requires constant growth, constant extraction, constant return in investment, constant tendency toward monopolies and wealth disparity until you end up with a neo feudalistic caste society.
You can either attempt to restrain and regulate the system, which we are currently doing a rather poor job of, overthrow the system, which is nigh impossible given the precarity of the average prole, or you can just watch as we head closer and closer to… some kind of hybrid of the handmaids tale and elysium.
… Or, maybe, escape to a slightly less insane foreign country, but you’re gonna need a lot of money or a very lucrative skill set as an employee to do that as anything other than an illegal immigrant.
You know, I always wondered where the professionals ended up in Elysium. Like there are the medical professionals taking care of the earthlings, but the life saving machines are in Elysium so they aren’t needed up there.
But like, what about the software folks? Like there’s an epic shit ton of software going on in that movie that just kind of gets handwaved.
Passification is handled by robots and crazy humans. Other than the one executive who comes down, where are his direct reports? There is no way he was interested in the factory management, that would be a middle management job. And then what about accountants? Researchers designing the tech on Elysium?
It never really made a whole lot of sense that Elysium was just the rich. They can’t just “get” everything they want up there, it had to come from earth.
Not until they are the god king.
Capitalism eventually turns into feudalism.
No, capitalism is feudalism with loot boxes! Because I could win the lottery.
How much does a single round of ammunition cost these days?
7.62 x 51mm goes for around a dollar a round.
5.56 x 45mm is about 50 cents.
Jesus that’s a lot more than I would have expected.
I’m sure its Obama’s fault, somehow.
Well yeah, he had the audacity to be black, which scared bubba and jimbo so much they had to buy a year’s salary worth of bullets before ObAmA tAkEs ThEiR gUnS
Also, crickets when Trump said he’d take the guns and worry about the courts afterwards.
It was already teetering but Sandy Hook is what pretty much locked permanently high ammo prices
The motto of the Post is literally “Democracy dies in Darkness”, and it was adopted immediately after Trump was elected. It is deliberately positioned as pro-Democrat and anti Trump. I didn’t have a high esteem of Bezos, but I am still disappointed.
Nobody else finds this ominous? Besos was not exactly Trumps friend. Why is he being a bitch now? What does he know what’s changed
I don’t know about you, but I get this feeling there is a massive coordinated campaign between the monied interests behind the scenes. The Republican party is unpopular, by a lot. Voters are super pissed off about abortion, and it’s consistently been a losing issue for the GOP that they can’t help but double down on. Donald Trump is a criminal that a not-insignificant portion of the population think should be in prison. SCOTUS is openly corrupt, Kamala pulled in over a billion dollars last quarter, while Trump’s small-dollar donations have all but dried up.
Yes, the wealthy typically support the GOP, but like… why this election are they going so hard for Trump? If Kamala appoints a competent AG, there’s a very real chance Musk gets hit with election interference charges. Bezos had to know that this was going to lose WaPo subs, because the right doesn’t trust WaPo thanks to years of distrust sown by Trump so there was no way this wasn’t going to cause a financial hit. Ditto for the LA Times. So just… why? The whole vibe of the thing just feels off.
Edit: also not to mention the praising Hitler thing, the number of his former staff who are endorsing Harris, the number of former and current members of the GOP who are endorsing Harris, the fact that he’s been adjudicated as a rapist, his obvious sundowning, his “enemies within” remarks, wanting to send the military after his perceived enemies, his desire to see Israel completely obliterate what’s left of Palestine…
Almost makes you think they’re throwing it to the criminal so the rest of them can continue being criminals, doesn’t it?
Money is stronger than any ethics or morals billionaires pretend to have
If trump actually…shudder…wins, he could do as he’s said and bring down the fascist military hammer on any type of dissidents. These billionaire ghouls don’t care what happens to the country or world, they just care about their hoard.
The guy that “gifted” millions to political commentators from CNN tries to influence politics? No way!
Some real bald-headed behavior right here.
The world is full of surprises, my friend.
Has this f*ing idiot never heard of the Streisand Effect? The fact that they broke a decades long tradition to do this makes a louder thump than their endorsement would have.
Louder to people who know who they’re voting for already
Quieter to people on the fence
He’s not a calebrity reliant on publuc opinion. He doesn’t give a shit.
90% wealth tax is needed
Anyone with over 10 million dollars in wealth should be legally classified as a dragon and anyone stealing from their hoard shall not be punishable under the law.
Not so fun fact: The absolute richest dragons in all of fantasy, excluding Smaug, only have a net worth of several hundred million dollars. A Red Elder Wyrm will have, on average, around 2.5-3 million gold pieces of wealth, with an absolute maximum of 5 million gold pieces. That means that the absolute greediest, and richest type of dragon, by far, only has between 100,000 to 500,000 oz worth of gold.
Smaug being the absolute outlier because he had somewhere between 5 to 10 billion dollars worth of gold.
Now if you are wondering why I’m making a big deal about this, it is because 500,000 oz of gold is only worth about 1.1 billion US dollars. But that is the absolute outlier of the greediest type of dragon that there is. Still only looking at Chaotic Evil Red Elder Wyrms, the average would only be about 3.5 million gold pieces, or a mere 350,000 oz of gold. That’s only about $850,000,000 and that is just the most average of the absolute greediest manefestations of greed that our limited minds could imagine. Most dragons would be absolutely fine with between $1,000,000 to $10,000,000. The literal manefestations of greed don’t need more than $10,000,000 according to every treasure table.
Those people that have more than 100 million dollars have already passed the greed alignment chart into Chaotic Evil. They are damn near caricatures of dragons at this point.
My favorite is always the Egyptian god deciding to save the equivalent of $10,000 usd every day and never spend a single penny of it back in 10,000 BC and they still don’t have as much money as Jeff Bozos.
I believe that the normal person can imagine themselves as a dragonslayer far more easily than a godslayer. A dragonslayer just needs a sword, shield, set of armor, and an unbreakable will. A godslayer needs to be able to turn the entirety of their target, including the things that don’t exist on any Universe Plane, or Prime Material Plane, into a black hole.
These modern “unassailable” individuals that constitute global fifedoms in and of themselves are merely dragons. They absolutely can be defeated. They aren’t the invincible gods that they attempt to claim to be.
Edit: umm, what Egyptian god? They had a lot of them.
Sounds like a Set thing to do. Real prideful and blows up in his face.
Fair enough, I could see Ra or Anubis doing the same, based on your description of “real prideful and having the whole thing blow up in his face.” Certainly sounds like most of the exploits of all three of them.
You need to read up on Shadowrun.
Yeah, it’s been pointed out before that Shadowrun has some ridiculously wealthy dragons. I think the point still stands since Shadowrun isn’t exactly high fantasy. More like science fantasy, similar to Star Wars.
Right but my point is that when you start to follow the money in Shadowrun, you invariably end up with a dragon. Like, they took the metaphor literally and so the richest hoarders in the world, with their claws in every possible pie, influencing the destiny of entire countries, are literal dragons.
Maximum wealth law. Once you’re worth more than 100 million, 100% of any new income goes to a designated fund for social programs.
100 million is enough money that there is still no real limit to how pampered your life can be, so there’s no argument that the rule would hurt anyone.
The Washington Post: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”
Bozos:
I had to settle for the Jurassic Park GIF because I couldn’t find the one of Homer Simpson using his gun to turn off the lights. If anyone has that GIF, please hook me up.
I know this isn’t intentional, but the broken image makes the comment 10x funnier.
LOL. Task failed successfully!
I just re-linked the GIF to go through my image proxy (originally linked directly from yarn.io which usually works fine. Usually.). Did that help?
It’s also weird that it’s not showing the alt text. Figured that’d have at least come through.
Fixed!
Although I preferred when it looked like Bezos yeeted the file.
There you go!
No shooting, but does this work?
Democracy Dies in Darkness
We just didn’t realize this was a mission statement.
This episode.
I did find the “watch me turn off the TV” GIF but not not the lights :(
never ask rexy where she was on january 6
Not the one you’re looking for for but
Thanks!
Yeah, I found that one but it wasn’t quite what I wanted so passed on it and fell back to Jurassic Park.
The painful part is that I have that episode on DVD, so I have access to the scene. I just don’t know how to go from DVD to GIF. lol
I searched everywhere and couldn’t find it, so I made it. Has to be my best contribution to the internet
Thanks!
You are the best. Saving this! Will probably also upload it as a custom emoji on my instance.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, in his own tweet on the news wrote, “The first step towards fascism is when the free press cowers in fear.”
I don’t know if this is the free press cowering, or the free press being bought out by rich people. Either way, it’s some bullshit.
Private ownership of a news outlet breaks every definition of “free” in “free press”.
A “free press” no longer exists.
Eh… no? Most free press is privately owned. Just not by billionaires who influence the content.
When Bozos bought it, this was the exact concern, because there is no ethical billionaire. I’m pretty sure he promised to not interfere with the reporting or content. Turned out to be another lying, selfish asshole with more money than he can ever spend… Who could have predicted that? (besides everyone)
So government owned news is better?
When the billionaires who own the media and the highest level of government are in bed together so long as the government continues to tailor it’s policies to ensure that the wealthy stay wealthy, then the line is so blurred it might as well not exist.
Maybe non-profit would be best. Incentives to encourage good journalism, but not trying to raise the bottom line every year, chopping costs and spamming mass amounts of AI garbage because I’d bet 100 shitty articles is worth more than 1 good article for their bottom line.
Easy access links to the journalists other works, peer reviews from other non-profit and about me profiles can also help people discern bias.
I’m no expert though, so I’m sure someone has tried it and found making money is better for their paychecks
What if it already exists, but you, like many others, don’t read it and instead continue to passively consume the very media you’re complaining about? Making better journalism doesn’t mean multiple generations of people hooked on social-media-feed dopamine hits will read it.
I’m subbed to my local NPR’s daily top news stories. Highly recommend folks in the US look to see if their local station has a similar program or find the closest one.
Free press is your uncle’s Facebook rants
My first reaction was that it was cowering in fear, since trump keeps threatening newspapers. But after thinking about it, why would Bezos give a fuck if trump threatens the paper? He wants his paper to be a trump propaganda outlet because he wants trump to win. Not because he likes trump but because he wants the fascist movement to win so he can get richer (see Blue Origin govt contracts for one thing). Because having hundreds of billions of dollars is simply not enough, so fuck democracy.
This is that “liberal news media” that Republicans keep yammering on about.
The one that’s owned by six corporations.
As long as you mean ‘neo liberal open to fascism’ then yeah I guess they’re all liberal…
If Kamala really wanted to get back at Bezos for this, the best thing she could do is promote union membership in tech and in the press.
It has been Bezos’ kryptonite for years, and while I hold zero hope that unions will grow in popularity in the US, having a president push for them might be enough to make big businesses shut up.
She shouldn’t be “getting back” at people. That’s Trump’s MO, and a major part of the reason that makes him so unsuited for the role. She should do what’s best for the country. So ultimately I agree she should be pushing for unions.
To that end I’d say unions would be best for the country
I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
Bezos is worth so much there is no hope of a single president reigning him in.
It would require a group of countries all going at him at once. Otherwise we are not only stuck with Bezos for our whole life but his children and family will also be unstoppable.
These men should be disrupted. The “move fast and break things” was their mantra. Now they demand nobody move and nothing changes including wealth vectors.
Waltons entered the chat
If there is one thing that authoritarians are any good for, that is using their unlimited power to deflate millionaires’ ambitions and keeping them in line e.g. Jack Ma https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56448688 (but yea, despots will help billionaires fuck everyone over if it benefits said despot enough)
Not really Nazi Germany was a robber baron’s wet dream. All those train tracks in and out of the concentration camps were build with US investors money.
“The most consequential election in our country, a choice between Fascism and Democracy, and you sit out? Cowards. Unethical, fearful cowards,” wrote one reader.
Haha, yep.
Honestly don’t know what’s worse. People who don’t vote or people who vote 3rd party in protest.
You are worse than both, because you’re insulting them which in turn undermines your own goals.
“Hahahaha don’t you see that by being mildly mean to those sitting idle while fascism takes hold you were in fact just as bad?”
That’s how you sound.
If you really want Harris to win, and you’re working hard to help make that happen, I totally respect your efforts. But your actions are an obvious attempt to alienate potential voters. Why would they want to associate with someone like you, who treats them with disdain? Of course they wouldn’t.
So then there’s an obvious question. Which is more important to you, Harris winning the election or trash talking people you dislike? I know what it looks like, because we can all read what you wrote, but how do you feel?
Your comment would have more weight if we lived in a country with parliamentary or ranked choice elections. But we don’t.
Nothing I wrote depends on parliamentary or ranked choice elections. Perhaps you were replying to the wrong comment?
There should be a law for owners of media being kept at arm’s length.
I think the laws we already have about free speech mean the government absolutely can’t tell a newspaper owner what to print. They can be held liable if they break laws, but not endorsing a candidate is not illegal.
EDIT: If you don’t like what I’m saying that’s on you. The constitution of the US is pretty clear about this and the Supreme Court has upheld it numerous times. I don’t think it’s cool that Bezos did this, but I also don’t think that a law stopping someone from doing it is a good idea or even plausible in the US. As long as we’re run as an oligarchy we’ll never get past problems like this, because if there is money to be made off information and money can buy power, unethical people will make unethical moves to manipulate the information that people take in. But as we all know, you cannot legislate morality, so the only thing to do is to remove the incentive.
We absolutely have laws that regulate portions of news coverage. Yeah, they can’t tell them what to say or what not to say, but there could exist laws that prevent owners from exerting too much influence over it.
Were you thinking of the “fairness doctrine”?
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine
They can strongly recommend what to say and refuse press passes to the outlets that don’t follow the recommendation.
There are requirement for news to be “balance” (for some definition of balanced). There can be other laws added.
How would such a law work and not infringe on freedom of speech as it has been codified by jurisprudence?
I thought your laws for example had standards about news vs entertainment, which is why the idiots at Fox keep getting away with misinformation.
Who said it was illegal?
Oh man the first 3 words got me excited.
Pervert :)
That was my first reaction as well, but I’ve been well trained to expect a trick.
Also, cancel your prime subscriptions you cowards!
Anyone who’s still using Amazon and wants to keep democracy is drowning in cognitive dissonance. Amazon is a bigger threat to decent lives for non-millionaires than any single politician, even granting that Trump is a nightmare.
Laaaaaaazyyyyyyyy
Sigh.
Canceled my subscription.
Just spoke to my parents. Uninterrupted subscribers since '73.
I called them right after canceling my own subscription and they’d already canceled theirs.
I hope Bezos is happy losing 51-year patrons of his paper.
Look, that’s honestly quite sad and very telling of the way things are, but I audibly snorted at the idea of Jeff Bezos noticing his income slightly lower this week, panicking, scrambling to find The Borbendorfs’ payment. A single tear wells up, but he wipes it away frantically. Never let them see. Never let them know how it hurts.
Yes, and that’s exactly the point, isn’t it?
There are some areas of business that are still built on trust and personal relationships and people trying to right by each other so they can each support their families.
But that’s not the case in modern politics or tech. It doesn’t matter if you have a relationship dating back decades. It’s inconsequential to a billionaire who’s earning a margin on an all the goods - and increasing share of which are brazenly counterfeit - that he sells globally.
Bezos doesn’t care about you, or me, or my aged parents. It’s not only that he doesn’t care about us, but instead that the billionaire class in general doesn’t care about anything besides contingencies to maximize profits and mitigate losses, real-world consequences be damned.
He will never notice any of us. It will not meaningfully affect his paycheck. It is up to each of us, including you, to determine whether to construct meaning in a symbolic act of protest, if an effectual act of protest is no longer an option.
I know. I know. I’m already a converted vegetarian or “bad at it vegan”. I’m spending a fortune on an EV car payment. My electricity is from a wind farm. I’m off all the socials. I’ve been recycling properly for decades and they tell me it was pointless. I’m getting pretty tired of personal responsibility. Can we do the guillotines now? I can’t make the first move. I’ve got kids and a mortgage. Start rounding them up and I can do some small part there too.
Bezos has tons of federal government contracts. When Trump was president last time he went after Amazon and others he disliked to get their contracts cancelled. Bezos is concerned that if Trump wins, Trump could fuck with his contracts.
That’s the reason. It’s fucked up and more evidence of why news media shouldn’t be owned by fuckhead billionaires. Shameful day in WaPos history. Cowardice. Grovelling to placate Trump for the benefit of the paper 's owner.
Tin foil hat: I am somewhat concerned that our oligarch overlords seem to be hedging in a way that they think Trump might win.
I’m extremely concerned. LA times backing out too. There’s no reason not to, unless they’re afraid the psycho toddler dictator is going to be holding the reigns next year. Fucking traitorous cowards, money over country.
He is clearly just wants peace… For his money
tax them until they learn to mind their own business
Since he owns the Post, it is very strictly speaking “his business”.
On one hand, I’d love to see the Post endorse Harris, but on the other hand, I do feel that the owner of a company absolutely should have this level of control over their own company.
It might be different if he were compelling the paper to compromise on it’s integrity or something, but simply preventing his own paper from endorsing a political candidate is absolutely something that he should be able to do.
Please note that this isn’t a commentary on his immense wealth, or the role of the ultra wealthy in America…simply an observation on what a business owner should be able to do with their own company.
well he did it. why? looks like he’s trying to help by trumping the editors opinion. only they were bypassed because story’s out. pay site drama is not worth it. wsj and wp paywalls have always been not worth it. subs leaving in droves like TwX.
