Anti-liberal jokes

For the sake of transparency, I am not the architect of the following discoveries, and am just helping to forward their message and clean it up. Copywrite of the following work belongs to no one and everyone is not only welcome to share these findings as if they were their own, but openly encouraged to do so.
Introduction
If you think you know anything about MAGA. Trust me, you know nothing. Not even his most devout followers or haters will have considered the following. And for the sake of our democracy and way of life, I hope people read this.
This work may very well help to shift the narrative on Trump in a meaningful and foundational way, but I don't want this work exacerbate any feelings of ill will to MAGA members, for they have been prey to possibly one of the largest con jobs our world has ever seen, especially without the help of this counternarrative.
Snippet From My Thesis On MAGA
As I work on tidying up the master file with the helpful dms I got, allow me to post just the most contentious part of it below, now that it’s able to stand on its own.
MAGA didn’t begin in 2015. I argue it began in 2001 on 9/11, while also harnessing and funneling decades of anti-government resentment till many Americans would openly call for a “wrecking ball” figure to help “drain the swamp.”

A Key Fueling Factor To American Outrage- Inflation
Many elements contributed to growing American anger that would later contribute to MAGA, this is a snippet from the larger work.
Rising Cost of Living
o In 1950, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 24.1. By 2000, it had risen to 168 (a 597% increase), and by 2023, it had reached 304.7, a 1163% increase from 1950.
o Housing prices saw a drastic rise overtime, with the median home price increasing from $7,354 in 1950 to $388,700 in 2023, a staggering 5185% increase.
o While rising rent costs can contribute to overall inflation and cost of living, even the left has largely failed to address how exponentially increasing real estate prices impact the cost of living. This omission has made many other conspiracy theories seem more plausible in its wake.
o If we don’t find real solutions for real estate that also aren’t extreme, then society will feel more and more pressure to accept “unreasonable solutions” like Trump, even though he’s the last person on earth who could solve it, considering his business acumen and history.
MAGA Dynamics and Blind Devotion
In 2016, it wasn't just the left calling the MAGA movement a cult. Trump famously said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." Even the left failed to grasp the gravity of this statement. As someone who nearly died in a deadly cult and based on my research, I don't know of a single cult where the founder could openly commit murder without losing members. Trump didn't just believe he'd created one of the largest cults ever; he believed he'd created the most fanatical. Let's hope his followers prove him wrong by showing a willingness to criticize him, regardless of their vote.

The MAGA Question
Instead of challenging MAGA supporters on fallacious beliefs, ask them this question to see if they’re at least able to see a world where Trump isn’t a biblical King: "If Trump admitted he was behind 9/11 and used resulting insurance money and donations from hostile governments to create false “grass root” campaigns. And did it all in a way to make it seem like others committed his own atrocities. And that he intended to destroy America in every way if he got elected, would you still vote for him?"

Yet even then, getting through to a MAGA supporter inevitably refers to 9/11 “research” out there when they realize individual positions are usually fallacious. This quagmire me decide to investigate this tragedy, to see if there was a more plausible counter theory. Honestly, the more I looked the more surprised I became. Here are my findings that are but a snippet of my full thesis on MAGA.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories and MAGA
Conspiracy Theories and Credibility:
o First off, conspiracy theories should involve some effort to verify narratives, rather than just repeating claims across multiple sources that mistake themselves as evidence; like a bunch of people who repeat “bob farted” across multiple websites may see that as evidence, when in fact, it was Sean. Sorry Sean.

Early Origins of MAGA:
o Although some believe MAGA began in 2015, its roots lie as early as the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh and later became "serious" on 9/11.
o 9/11 conspiracy theories claim controlled demolitions were used, but the lack of any cellphone recordings of explosions weakens this theory.

Suspicious Factors:
o The official narrative involving chaotic jet fuel leading to a straight fall seemed questionable.
o The collapse of a third building (WTC 7), which wasn’t directly hit, fueled suspicions.
o Airline stocks were heavily shorted before the attacks, raising concerns about insider trading. Harvey Pitt, Republican SEC Chairman at the time, investigated this and claimed there was nothing amiss, but was criticized for later crimes and forced to resign.
o It’s also suspicious that in Trumps 2000 book “The America We Deserve” that he stated, “I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen*.”*
§ Yet democrats would largely miss this point entirely and obsess over his false claim that he called for Bin Laden to be killed, when he had not. Somehow conspiracy theorists would find this ‘cool’ rather than suspicious.
CNN Fact Check Donald Trump Osama Bin Laden Book Claim

Reports and Simplified Narratives:
o FEMA's 2002 report and NIST's 2005 report provided technical explanations of the tower collapses.
o However, the Port Authority Chairman stuck to the oversimplified narrative that "jet fuel melted steel beams," even though he knew this was a half-truth, as detailed in the next section, fueling anti-government conspiracies. The question is why.

Potential Impact:
o 9/11 conspiracy theories sowed distrust in the government, which may have been one of the attackers' objectives. Anyone that heavily profited from this tragedy, and helped further those objects, should be questioned.
o The ‘Loose Change’ “documentary” pointed out suspicious parts of the story, but failed to give any clear claims as to who was purportedly behind it. It also failed to note the Twin Towers titanic design flaw that could result in a straight fall. Even the 2015 version of this film fails to mention nearly all of the known facts in this report.
o The Director of that film later states:
“I DON’T THINK WE’D HAVE PRESIDENT TRUMP IF IT WEREN’T FOR 9/11”
“9/11 created a culture of fear, of xenophobia, this sense of entitlement and everything we’ve seen. Warrantless wire-tapping, Guantanamo Bay, everything that’s happened led us to this point, we wouldn’t be here without 9/11. They want to kick out all the Mexicans and Muslims because of this culture of fear and bigotry and xenophobia that directly led to the election of fucking Donald Trump. [laughing] That’s our world now! We had Reagan before, and Governor Schwarzenegger. But President Donald Trump? It’s just weird. Everything is just weird.”
Theoutline Reflecting On Loose Change
o While the director was in the right to ask questions, he failed to ask the most obvious ones.
o However, his lead “researcher,” Jason Bermas, would turn out to be a full blown MAGA wingnut.
Patriot Jason Bermas
o Anyone that would benefit politically and financially from 9/11 should be fully investigated.
Further Reading:
Harvey Pitt - Wikipedia
Politifact How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation
It will never be possible to defeat MAGA followers “logically” with people who believed his parties rhetoric “that 9/11 was an inside job.”

I say… what if those Republican leaders were self reporting?
What if Trump followers have been rallying behind the very man responsible for its orchestration?

The Twin Towers and Larry Silverstein
Architectural Pitfalls of the Twin Towers:
· The Twin Towers had unique architectural flaws due to the excessive heavy load on their exoskeletons to allow for more floor and leasing space, which greatly contributed to their straight collapse after the 9/11 attacks. This was the first and last skyscraper made in this way.
· For anyone who said that “any other building would have fallen sideways,” you were right, though perhaps not entirely how you may have imagined. A "Coke Can" analogy shows how a similar weakened structure can result in a straight fall, contrary to conspiracy theories claiming controlled demolitions. This isn't something I'm asking you to take for granted, or to read from media sources you don’t trust. This is something you can verify on your own, in person, in real time, in reality.
· However Trump, despite being close friends with Silverstein as we’ll cover later, claimed "It wasn’t architectural defects, you know, the World Trade Center was always known as a very, very strong building” per the attached PolitiFact article.
· Supporting Article:
Engineering Experts Explain the Collapse of the Twin Towers
Politifact Donald Trumps 911 Speculation

Larry Silverstein, The Leasor Of The Twin Towers:
· Nearly went bankrupt after losing his main tenant Drexel Burnham in 1980 after he built tower 7 with him in mind.
· I don't know how many of us understand the level of desperation a situation like this can cause in someone and how many potential crimes it can easily push them towards.
· He is known for then saying, “…looking up at the twin towers and thinking, my building is huge, but it is made diminutive by the twin towers. So I said to myself, wouldn't it be incredible someday to own those?" That's not the statement of a sane person who nearly went bankrupt, and if anything, hints towards jealousy.
· He managed to secure Salomon Brothers two years later, which later paid $300 million in securities fraud penalties casting suspicion over the entities who saved Silverstein, in addition to their overall plans for the future.
· How he would become able to outbid everyone else in 2001, for the right to lease the twin towers, would become a mystery we will untangle later.
Further Reading
Manhattan Institute – Silverstein On Ground Zero
Justice Department: Salomon Brothers Securities Fraud

Trump and Real Estate Connections
Historical Context and Redevelopment Plans:
· A redevelopment plan commenced in the 1990s by Gov. Pataki and Mayor Giuliani, spurred a commercial revival in downtown Manhattan, making the World Trade Center prime property. Pataki would go on to criticize trump, while the other would prove to be one of this wildest, if not craziest, supporters to truly fanatical degrees.
Further Reading:
Manhattan Institute: Rebuilding Ground Zero
· Tom Leppert was the CEO of Turner construction which right wing conspiracy theorists claimed helped ensure the towers would fall straight down. He also became part of Trumps transition team. While there’s no evidence of explosives being used, tampering with the exoskeleton and weaking the relatively thin central column ahead of time are theoretically plausible.
Huffpost Donald Trump Transition Team
Wikipedia Tom Leppert

The bidding for the World Trade Center lease involved only a few major real estate firms as allowed by the Port Authority Chairman. Below are the allowed bidders and their estimated worth at the time included:

· Donald J. Trump’s Organization:
o Worth around $1.5 billion in 1996 after multiple bankruptcies. Confirmed only by Forbes magazine in 2005.
· Tishman Speyer:
o Valued at approximately $1.8 billion in 2000, would soon face ‘tenant issues’ with many scrupulous legal claims against them.
· Gale & Wentworth:
o Worth a few million.
· Mortimer Zuckerman’s Boston Properties:
o Mortimer Zuckerman alone was worth around $2 billion.
· The Rouse Company:
o Mainly a shopping mall operator.
· Brookfield Properties:
o A Canadian firm valued at over $20 billion in 2000.
· Vornado Realty Trust:
o Worth an estimated $2-3 billion. Had the highest bid, but was unexpectedly outed by the Port Authority Chairman, paving the way for Silverstein’s win. CEO of Vornado Trust, Steven Roth would later do many deals with Trump in 2005 and beyond.
· Larry Silverstein:
o As mentioned, was nearly bankrupt in the 1980s, and was mysteriously awarded the right to lease the World Trade Center contract at $3.2 billion, twice the original asking price of 1.2 Billion. It would still be owned by the Port authority of NY and NJ, he would just own the rights to lease it.
o Port Authority Chairman, Lewis Eisenberg, made this unexplained decision, who also later became Trumps lead fundraiser in 2015.
o After putting down only $125 million, as per the contract, Silverstein would be getting back $100 million just 6 weeks after his bid and with an uncommon terrorist insurance addition. His exaggerated bid and insurance contract would also greatly inflate the amount of money he could get from an insurance claim. If the winning bid was 1.5 billion, the insurance payout would also have been much less.
o In real estate, its quite rare for a prudent investor to bid twice the asking price, as demonstrated by the other companies that backed out, of which I find no connections to Trump.
o If anyone had known about 9/11 ahead of time, like Trump claims he did, it would become drastically easier to outbid all competitors, knowing that for pennies on the dollar, you would be getting much more back.

Further Reading:
NY Times Article on World Trade Center Deal
Wikipedia on Lewis Eisenberg
Patch On Lew Eisenberg Leading Trump Fundraising
NY Times Article Silverstein Gets Most Of His Money Back

Giuliani’s Gangster Acts
Arguably, if the above points are what they objectively appear to be, that would be a bad thing. You’d think that would be enough. However, Guliani would say “hold my beer’ to those sentiments.

1. Outdated Equipment for First Responders:
· Due to Giuliani’s inadequate leadership, first responders used old equipment that failed to warn them to evacuate the towers. Which contributed to their deaths while they searched for survivors.
NY Times Article: Giuliani’s Preparedness on 9/11
2. Obstructed Recovery Efforts:
· Giuliani delayed proper search and rescue operations for days, possibly costing lives of citizens and first responders who didn’t know they needed to leave.
· 20 Years later he would claim that some of Bidens actions were so reckless that… “It would be as if I got down to ground zero and said take out the firefighters, all you civilians see if you can get yourselves out.” Self report?
NBC News Report: Giuliani’s Role in Recovery
NY1: Giuliani Reflects on 9/11 Anniversary
3. Twin Towers Fund and Privatization:
· Giuliani privatized the Twin Towers relief funds, making them unauditable.
NY Times Article on Privatization
NY Post Article: Giuliani and Twin Towers Fund
4. Survivors Threaten To SUE Guliani For Relief Funds
· Even after privatizing the twin towers fund, Giuliani would make it incredibly difficult for the victims to receive their fair share. Requiring many of them to spend unnecessary money on advisors and consultants.
· Even with their legal pressure, he only agreed to “give the remaining 100 million to victims,” out of 170 million, if he could first put the money into the bank account of a charity in which he controlled.
· From the attached article: “But Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said that he remained adamantly opposed to any transfer of funds to Mr. Giuliani's charity.
He also objected to Mr. Giuliani's continued control over even the $15 million in his private charity. Mr. Giuliani, he charged, gives every indication of using the Twin Towers Fund to maintain a staff of loyal supporters and to advance his political aspirations.
'The concern that politics will infiltrate the fund becomes even more apparent when one reviews the list of the mayor's former political appointees who are assuming senior staff positions or serving on the fund's board of directors,'' he wrote in a letter on Monday to Eliot L. Spitzer, the state attorney general.”
NY Times Article On Guliani Pressed To Disperse Twin Tower Funds
· However, there is no evidence of Giuliani making good on this promise.
· There are honestly no words for this. All associates of Guliani should be investigated.
5. Attempted Election Cancellation in 2001:
· Giuliani tried to cancel the 2001 election to stay mayor longer. He even considered removing term limits with Governor Pataki’s support. Similar to how Trump has “joked” about increasing his own term limits.
Business Insider: Giuliani and Pataki’s Attempt to Cancel Elections
Esquire Trump Joke Third Term
6. Motive
· In 2000, Guliani unfortunately got prostate cancer. We have to be willing to ask if this was a motive for his corrupt acts.
SurvivorNet: Giuliani’s Cancer


Silverstein’s Unscrupulous Greed
1. Initial Settlement Demands and Profit Claims:
· Despite only having been out for $25 million, Silverstein initially sought nearly $8 BILLION in insurance settlements and argued for "loss of revenue from those buildings," which is quite an uncompassionate claim considering how many lost their lives. Talk about a prime example of the working and lower classes making sacrifices while rich elites complain they didn’t profit enough from the same tragedy.
2. Rebuilding Contributions and Insurance Payout:
· Despite the fact that he only owned the leasing rights to the twin towers, ‘Silverstein Properties’ received up to $4 billion from insurance payouts, instead of the Port Authority, which would be customary as the owner.
· While it's assumed that most of that money went to rebuilding, this isn't actually known or proven. It would be different if he had a separate insurance policy that was not connected to the rebuilding of the towers, with different monies going to the Port Authority to rebuild. This was not the case.
History.com: Rebuilding of Ground Zero
· He additionally refused to return the rights of Building 1 to the Port Authority until he secured additional funds from an $8 billion state fund. Talk about heartless.
Wikipedia: Larry Silverstein
· Various entities would contribute a total of $20 billion to rebuild all six damaged or destroyed towers, including four towers leased by Silverstein and two others he hadn't. This makes it unlikely that he had to go out of pocket with his 4 Billion.
3. Estimated Net Worth:
· While earlier records of Silverstein's net worth are unavailable, aside from his near bankruptcy in 1980, he is currently estimated to be worth around $1 billion.
Forbes Profile: Larry Silverstein

Silverstein’s Controversial Alignment with Trump
Larry Silverstein's connections and public persona have often been scrutinized. This scrutiny became particularly relevant in 2015 when he publicly displayed his support for Donald Trump:

• Long-standing Relationship: Silverstein revealed a 30-year-long acquaintance with Trump, emphasizing the depth of their connection. This means his relationship started in 1985, roughly two years after gaining a powerful criminal organization as a tenant in his tower 7, that saved him from bankruptcy, and 6 years before Trumps first, of many, bankruptcies. This also means they knew each other before 9/11.
• Supportive Yet Vague: He commended Trump for diligently pursuing what he believed to be right, echoing Trump's own ambiguous rhetoric. When pressed about the righteousness of Trump’s goals, Silverstein ambiguously responded, "well, it’s... you know... we’ll find out." This mirrors Trump’s evasive " Well, we're going to have to see what happens" stance, when questioned about committing to a peaceful transfer of power prior to January 6th—an event that ultimately unfolded with violence and chaos.
• Early Endorsement: By voicing his support when Trump announced his presidential campaign, Silverstein positioned himself as one of the early prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

Watch Silverstein Discuss Trump
CNN Trump On 2020 Election

The Man Who Boasted
When most people witness a tragedy, especially of this size, it takes time for their brains to comprehend what happened, it takes even more time to process it. Thus, anyone who was able to brag about their own assets hours after this tragedy on a radio show, is at least worthy of Investigation, especially if this very event helped reshape a misinformation landscape in which he would thrive as its King.
Politifact – How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation

· Insensitive Boasts About Building Height:
o Trump also boasted that with the fall of the Twin Towers, his building became the tallest in Manhattan—an inaccurate and insensitive claim given the context.
Independent 9 11 Trump Tallest Building
· Early Claims and Revisions:
o Shortly after 9/11, Donald Trump claimed he saw the second plane hit the towers from his Manhattan apartment. He also made an unfounded claim that he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering, a statement that has been widely debunked. Despite varying explanations and suggesting that he saw it on an untraceable video that was “widely covered,” these claims helped fueled significant conspiracy theories. If anything, this was a self-report.
o Snopes: Trump Claims Muslims Cheered
o FactCheck.org: Trump’s Revised 9/11 Claim
· Visit to Ground Zero:
o A week after the attacks, Trump visited Ground Zero and stated that although he was present, he wouldn’t consider himself a first responder. This attempt at humility struck many as morbidly insensitive, considering the true heroism displayed by actual first responders.
ABC News: Trump Shares New Details About Morning of 9/11

Legacy of Suspicion:
These actions paint Trump as one of the more suspicious figures post-9/11, who may have used the tragedy for personal and political gain. His connections with figures like Larry Silverstein and Lewis Eisenberg, the Port Authority chairman, hint at deep financial interests potentially influenced by the 9/11 aftermath. Meanwhile, survivors and first responders faced challenges in securing support, highlighting the disparities between their experiences and the political maneuvers at play. Again morbidly juxtaposing the struggles of the poor and working class versus elite swamp members such as Trump and his ilk.

While being, arguably, one of the more suspicious Americans of potentially “being an insider," Trump would go on to cast doubt everywhere else with his new holier than thou rhetoric and hints and claims that “it was an inside job” for the next 15 years.

What if he was speaking from personal experience.

The Deepfake Dilemma
Now in a world where Trump's followers already discount reality, the emergence of AI-generated deepfakes threatens to further distort the truth. This technology could transform legal standards of evidence, making it easy to dismiss genuine evidence against the right as fabricated, while baseless accusations against the left might be accepted as the long-awaited proof.

The Potential Escalation of MAGA Actions
Given the willingness of MAGA supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th, bolstered by Trump's incendiary rhetoric, the potential for escalation is alarming. The advent of fabricated images and videos could present unprecedented national security threats.

Trump's Incendiary Rhetoric on January 6th
Trump's speech on January 6th was a clear incitement, as he urged his followers to "fight like hell" to "stop the steal," despite admitting DURING THE SPEECH that there was no evidence of the massive electoral fraud he claimed. As well as his lawyers laughable court “arguments.”
“...while there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing…”
Npr.Org Read Trumps Jan 6 Speech
LawAndCrime Come On Now

This speech, coupled with his undermining of constitutional processes, underscores the risks and intentional deceit of his rhetoric. Too bad Republicans senators and our Supreme Court have either claimed he was above the law, or continue to postpone his court dates till after elections. A wild position when treason is on the table. Did that dude commit treason that claims he wants to become a dictator? I dunno, lets let him potentially get elected and then find out!

Elon Musk's Political Shift
Elon was once very much a leftist, unfortunately in more and more far left “activists” continue to attack him endlessly for not agreeing with them on their own singular issues and perspectives. To them I say congratulations, you successfully pushed the most powerful man on earth into the far right. Great job. Great job.
Elon Musk's journey from a liberal supporter to a figure embraced by the far right highlights the volatile nature of political affiliations in today's polarized environment. His actions since acquiring Twitter—such as promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and making high-profile firings—suggest a departure from his initial free speech advocacy.
Especially when considering he fired Don Lemon from his platform for an interview he found offensive. Canceling opinions you find offensive isn’t free speech, it’s literally the opposite. I’m sure many people were offended by the examples below. What about them?
Far Right Support Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The Need for a Critical Approach
Supporters of Trump should critically evaluate why he did not pardon the January 6th insurrectionists during his term, despite using them as political leverage now. This pattern of using allies until they are no longer useful is evident throughout his political and personal dealings.
What better example could there possibly be as to what trump truly thinks of his supporters, how sacrificial he sees them as part of his endless narratives, then his refusal and failure to pardon January 6th insurrectionists while still in office?
Of course, anyone “just on the grass” or outside the building should only get a day in jail at most, however people that barged inside the capital should naturally get much more.
And while trump refused to pardon those people before, he now calls them “hostages” and is using them as political bait to a truly wild degree. It's very likely he will make good on this promise to further embolden the narrative that “Democrats are trying to take you down and only I can save you.”
His supporters need to seriously ask, “Why didn’t he pardon us before?”
Also, remember when he claimed he would pay legal fees for supporters that were violent at his rallies, but then seemed to falter and change his mind. Much like how Amber Heard donated her money, “by pledging it.”
List of allies he was quick to discard or dump. And let's face it, all of these people have done more for him than the average MAGA supporter. The only person he cares about is himself.
Trump claims that Mike Pence, the man he vetted more than anyone else, “has gone to the dark side.”
Trump seems to have supported the chants to “Hang Mike Pense,” at least in jest? We hope? There are also no links of him condemning them. Yet admittedly this one point doesn’t have hard evidence like a recording or video as far as I know, it certainly fits his brand.
Mike Flynn, a Trump appointee, later testifies against him.
Trump admits Flynn lied on his behalf, accidentally testifying against him, but does pardon him. As long as you’re colluding with Russia you’re ok it seems?

The Future Under Trump's Influence
Trump's rhetoric about overriding constitutional norms to address what he calls "massive fraud" hints at authoritarian aspirations. His praise for dictators and divisive language further aligns with dangerous historical precedents.
Important Articles:
“How a second trump term could end us democracy.” -commondreams
“Ask the expert: What a 2nd Trump term could mean for democracy and advancing policy.” - Msu Today
“Judgement Day” for political opponents.

To predict the future lets base it on known facts:
Apparently, he will help attack our constitution like he may have with the Twin Towers.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Stated he intended to be a Dictator on day one, but then promises it will be just for a day. Is that how that works? Or is it “Once you go Dictator you don’t go back?”
Praising dictators, referring to immigrants as vermin etc, akin to Hitlers rhetoric against “blood mixing.”
More fraudulent use of lawyers and courts that gets everyone else in trouble but him, with them arguing he's above the law. This further shows how much he will consistently use people for his own ends and then dump them when they're no longer of use.
Warning from republicans and notes on ass kissing. As well as being generally unfit for office.
If you want help from Trump you better kiss his ***
Trumps says he kept Omarosa just because she said nice things about him, while defaming her
DeSantis: "You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful."
Thehill Trump Views People Who Kiss His A As Weak.
And if you dare to speak out against trump, you better kiss his ****
Politico Graham Breaks With Trump On Abortion
WashingtonPost Trump Graham Abortion
News Yahoo 30 More Republicans Denounce Donald Trump Unqualified President
Hot take, if he’s elected president America, and the world, is frankly fucked.

Predicting MAGA 2024 And Beyond
Naturally there are endless possibilities of what MAGA and dictators around the world decide to do this year and into the future. I believe that the one thing that insinuates when it's time for their next evil actions is dictated by their standings in the polls or when a fellow dictator needs a little more political pressure from war torn inflated oil prices etc.
Dictators Unite
While writing my thesis, I speculated that dictators globally were uniting, finding mutual benefits in their governance and deceitful tactics. This theory is increasingly recognized as these autocrats appear to be forming a coalition, undermining peaceful unity efforts through conspiracy theories to preserve their power.
Unherd How Autocrats Unite
The True Nature of MAGA
MAGA was never genuinely about speaking truth to power or restoring America's glory. It has been an elaborate scheme funded by immense wealth, perpetuating anti-American sentiments through fabricated grassroots movements by domestic and foreign actors. This movement has primarily enriched a select few power-hungry dictators and may have been responsible for some of our most horrific moments in history in the past and acts yet to come.
Trump and MAGA
While 'MAGA' predates Trump, he conveniently stepped into a role long in the making. Despite occasional deviations from the MAGA ideology, such as promoting vaccines to emphatic boos, Trump has largely embodied its principles. The real architects of MAGA, however, are likely disillusioned with his unpredictable attacks, which contradict their broader agenda of absolute power.
Nbc News Donald Trump Booed
Trump as a Martyr
Regardless of election outcomes, Trump is poised to claim interference. His rhetoric and the devout belief of his followers in his divine anointment could lead to his martyrdom, especially given his age and the vulnerabilities it brings. This martyrdom could solidify his legacy while serving the interests of MAGA strategists who find him increasingly burdensome even if he “wins.”
Factcheck Trumps Bogus Voter Fraud Claims
La Times Trump Democrats Effort Presidential Ballot

u/neodestiny and friends.
Introduction
If you think you know anything about MAGA. Trust me, you know nothing. Not even his most devout followers or haters will have considered the following. And for the sake of our democracy and way of life, I hope people read this.
This work may very well help to shift the narrative on Trump in a meaningful and foundational way, but I don't want this work exacerbate any feelings of ill will to MAGA members, for they have been prey to possibly one of the largest con jobs our world has ever seen, especially without the help of this counternarrative.
Snippet From My Thesis On MAGA
As I work on tidying up the master file with the helpful dms I got, allow me to post just the most contentious part of it below, now that it’s able to stand on its own.
MAGA didn’t begin in 2015. I argue it began in 2001 on 9/11, while also harnessing and funneling decades of anti-government resentment till many Americans would openly call for a “wrecking ball” figure to help “drain the swamp.”
This work may very well help to shift the narrative on Trump in a meaningful and foundational way, but I don't want this work exacerbate any feelings of ill will to MAGA members, for they have been prey to possibly one of the largest con jobs our world has ever seen, especially without the help of this counternarrative.
A Key Fueling Factor To American Outrage- Inflation
Many elements contributed to growing American anger that would later contribute to MAGA, this is a snippet from the larger work.
Rising Cost of Living
o In 1950, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 24.1. By 2000, it had risen to 168 (a 597% increase), and by 2023, it had reached 304.7, a 1163% increase from 1950.
o Housing prices saw a drastic rise overtime, with the median home price increasing from $7,354 in 1950 to $388,700 in 2023, a staggering 5185% increase.
o While rising rent costs can contribute to overall inflation and cost of living, even the left has largely failed to address how exponentially increasing real estate prices impact the cost of living. This omission has made many other conspiracy theories seem more plausible in its wake.
o If we don’t find real solutions for real estate that also aren’t extreme, then society will feel more and more pressure to accept “unreasonable solutions” like Trump, even though he’s the last person on earth who could solve it, considering his business acumen and history.
MAGA Dynamics and Blind Devotion
In 2016, it wasn't just the left calling the MAGA movement a cult. Trump famously said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." Even the left failed to grasp the gravity of this statement. As someone who nearly died in a deadly cult and based on my research, I don't know of a single cult where the founder could openly commit murder without losing members. Trump didn't just believe he'd created one of the largest cults ever; he believed he'd created the most fanatical. Let's hope his followers prove him wrong by showing a willingness to criticize him, regardless of their vote.

The MAGA Question
Instead of challenging MAGA supporters on fallacious beliefs, ask them this question to see if they’re at least able to see a world where Trump isn’t a biblical King: "If Trump admitted he was behind 9/11 and used resulting insurance money and donations from hostile governments to create false “grass root” campaigns. And did it all in a way to make it seem like others committed his own atrocities. And that he intended to destroy America in every way if he got elected, would you still vote for him?"

Yet even then, getting through to a MAGA supporter inevitably refers to 9/11 “research” out there when they realize individual positions are usually fallacious. This quagmire me decide to investigate this tragedy, to see if there was a more plausible counter theory. Honestly, the more I looked the more surprised I became. Here are my findings that are but a snippet of my full thesis on MAGA.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories and MAGA
Conspiracy Theories and Credibility:
o First off, conspiracy theories should involve some effort to verify narratives, rather than just repeating claims across multiple sources that mistake themselves as evidence; like a bunch of people who repeat “bob farted” across multiple websites may see that as evidence, when in fact, it was Sean. Sorry Sean.

Early Origins of MAGA:
o Although some believe MAGA began in 2015, its roots lie as early as the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh and later became "serious" on 9/11.
o 9/11 conspiracy theories claim controlled demolitions were used, but the lack of any cellphone recordings of explosions weakens this theory.

Suspicious Factors:
o The official narrative involving chaotic jet fuel leading to a straight fall seemed questionable.
o The collapse of a third building (WTC 7), which wasn’t directly hit, fueled suspicions.
o Airline stocks were heavily shorted before the attacks, raising concerns about insider trading. Harvey Pitt, Republican SEC Chairman at the time, investigated this and claimed there was nothing amiss, but was criticized for later crimes and forced to resign.
o It’s also suspicious that in Trumps 2000 book “The America We Deserve” that he stated, “I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen*.”*
§ Yet democrats would largely miss this point entirely and obsess over his false claim that he called for Bin Laden to be killed, when he had not. Somehow conspiracy theorists would find this ‘cool’ rather than suspicious.
CNN Fact Check Donald Trump Osama Bin Laden Book Claim

Reports and Simplified Narratives:
o FEMA's 2002 report and NIST's 2005 report provided technical explanations of the tower collapses.
o However, the Port Authority Chairman stuck to the oversimplified narrative that "jet fuel melted steel beams," even though he knew this was a half-truth, as detailed in the next section, fueling anti-government conspiracies. The question is why.

Potential Impact:
o 9/11 conspiracy theories sowed distrust in the government, which may have been one of the attackers' objectives. Anyone that heavily profited from this tragedy, and helped further those objects, should be questioned.
o The ‘Loose Change’ “documentary” pointed out suspicious parts of the story, but failed to give any clear claims as to who was purportedly behind it. It also failed to note the Twin Towers titanic design flaw that could result in a straight fall. Even the 2015 version of this film fails to mention nearly all of the known facts in this report.
o The Director of that film later states:
“I DON’T THINK WE’D HAVE PRESIDENT TRUMP IF IT WEREN’T FOR 9/11”
“9/11 created a culture of fear, of xenophobia, this sense of entitlement and everything we’ve seen. Warrantless wire-tapping, Guantanamo Bay, everything that’s happened led us to this point, we wouldn’t be here without 9/11. They want to kick out all the Mexicans and Muslims because of this culture of fear and bigotry and xenophobia that directly led to the election of fucking Donald Trump. [laughing] That’s our world now! We had Reagan before, and Governor Schwarzenegger. But President Donald Trump? It’s just weird. Everything is just weird.”
Theoutline Reflecting On Loose Change
o While the director was in the right to ask questions, he failed to ask the most obvious ones.
o However, his lead “researcher,” Jason Bermas, would turn out to be a full blown MAGA wingnut.
Patriot Jason Bermas
o Anyone that would benefit politically and financially from 9/11 should be fully investigated.
Further Reading:
Harvey Pitt - Wikipedia
Politifact How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation
It will never be possible to defeat MAGA followers “logically” with people who believed his parties rhetoric “that 9/11 was an inside job.”

I say… what if those Republican leaders were self reporting?
What if Trump followers have been rallying behind the very man responsible for its orchestration?

The Twin Towers and Larry Silverstein
Architectural Pitfalls of the Twin Towers:
· The Twin Towers had unique architectural flaws due to the excessive heavy load on their exoskeletons to allow for more floor and leasing space, which greatly contributed to their straight collapse after the 9/11 attacks. This was the first and last skyscraper made in this way.
· For anyone who said that “any other building would have fallen sideways,” you were right, though perhaps not entirely how you may have imagined. A "Coke Can" analogy shows how a similar weakened structure can result in a straight fall, contrary to conspiracy theories claiming controlled demolitions. This isn't something I'm asking you to take for granted, or to read from media sources you don’t trust. This is something you can verify on your own, in person, in real time, in reality.
· However Trump, despite being close friends with Silverstein as we’ll cover later, claimed "It wasn’t architectural defects, you know, the World Trade Center was always known as a very, very strong building” per the attached PolitiFact article.
· Supporting Article:
Engineering Experts Explain the Collapse of the Twin Towers
Politifact Donald Trumps 911 Speculation

Larry Silverstein, The Leasor Of The Twin Towers:
· Nearly went bankrupt after losing his main tenant Drexel Burnham in 1980 after he built tower 7 with him in mind.
· I don't know how many of us understand the level of desperation a situation like this can cause in someone and how many potential crimes it can easily push them towards.
· He is known for then saying, “…looking up at the twin towers and thinking, my building is huge, but it is made diminutive by the twin towers. So I said to myself, wouldn't it be incredible someday to own those?" That's not the statement of a sane person who nearly went bankrupt, and if anything, hints towards jealousy.
· He managed to secure Salomon Brothers two years later, which later paid $300 million in securities fraud penalties casting suspicion over the entities who saved Silverstein, in addition to their overall plans for the future.
· How he would become able to outbid everyone else in 2001, for the right to lease the twin towers, would become a mystery we will untangle later.
Further Reading
Manhattan Institute – Silverstein On Ground Zero
Justice Department: Salomon Brothers Securities Fraud

Trump and Real Estate Connections
Historical Context and Redevelopment Plans:
· A redevelopment plan commenced in the 1990s by Gov. Pataki and Mayor Giuliani, spurred a commercial revival in downtown Manhattan, making the World Trade Center prime property. Pataki would go on to criticize trump, while the other would prove to be one of this wildest, if not craziest, supporters to truly fanatical degrees.
Further Reading:
Manhattan Institute: Rebuilding Ground Zero
· Tom Leppert was the CEO of Turner construction which right wing conspiracy theorists claimed helped ensure the towers would fall straight down. He also became part of Trumps transition team. While there’s no evidence of explosives being used, tampering with the exoskeleton and weaking the relatively thin central column ahead of time are theoretically plausible.
Huffpost Donald Trump Transition Team
Wikipedia Tom Leppert

The bidding for the World Trade Center lease involved only a few major real estate firms as allowed by the Port Authority Chairman. Below are the allowed bidders and their estimated worth at the time included:

· Donald J. Trump’s Organization:
o Worth around $1.5 billion in 1996 after multiple bankruptcies. Confirmed only by Forbes magazine in 2005.
· Tishman Speyer:
o Valued at approximately $1.8 billion in 2000, would soon face ‘tenant issues’ with many scrupulous legal claims against them.
· Gale & Wentworth:
o Worth a few million.
· Mortimer Zuckerman’s Boston Properties:
o Mortimer Zuckerman alone was worth around $2 billion.
· The Rouse Company:
o Mainly a shopping mall operator.
· Brookfield Properties:
o A Canadian firm valued at over $20 billion in 2000.
· Vornado Realty Trust:
o Worth an estimated $2-3 billion. Had the highest bid, but was unexpectedly outed by the Port Authority Chairman, paving the way for Silverstein’s win. CEO of Vornado Trust, Steven Roth would later do many deals with Trump in 2005 and beyond.
· Larry Silverstein:
o As mentioned, was nearly bankrupt in the 1980s, and was mysteriously awarded the right to lease the World Trade Center contract at $3.2 billion, twice the original asking price of 1.2 Billion. It would still be owned by the Port authority of NY and NJ, he would just own the rights to lease it.
o Port Authority Chairman, Lewis Eisenberg, made this unexplained decision, who also later became Trumps lead fundraiser in 2015.
o After putting down only $125 million, as per the contract, Silverstein would be getting back $100 million just 6 weeks after his bid and with an uncommon terrorist insurance addition. His exaggerated bid and insurance contract would also greatly inflate the amount of money he could get from an insurance claim. If the winning bid was 1.5 billion, the insurance payout would also have been much less.
o In real estate, its quite rare for a prudent investor to bid twice the asking price, as demonstrated by the other companies that backed out, of which I find no connections to Trump.
o If anyone had known about 9/11 ahead of time, like Trump claims he did, it would become drastically easier to outbid all competitors, knowing that for pennies on the dollar, you would be getting much more back.

Further Reading:
NY Times Article on World Trade Center Deal
Wikipedia on Lewis Eisenberg
Patch On Lew Eisenberg Leading Trump Fundraising
NY Times Article Silverstein Gets Most Of His Money Back

Giuliani’s Gangster Acts
Arguably, if the above points are what they objectively appear to be, that would be a bad thing. You’d think that would be enough. However, Guliani would say “hold my beer’ to those sentiments.

1. Outdated Equipment for First Responders:
· Due to Giuliani’s inadequate leadership, first responders used old equipment that failed to warn them to evacuate the towers. Which contributed to their deaths while they searched for survivors.
NY Times Article: Giuliani’s Preparedness on 9/11
2. Obstructed Recovery Efforts:
· Giuliani delayed proper search and rescue operations for days, possibly costing lives of citizens and first responders who didn’t know they needed to leave.
· 20 Years later he would claim that some of Bidens actions were so reckless that… “It would be as if I got down to ground zero and said take out the firefighters, all you civilians see if you can get yourselves out.” Self report?
NBC News Report: Giuliani’s Role in Recovery
NY1: Giuliani Reflects on 9/11 Anniversary
3. Twin Towers Fund and Privatization:
· Giuliani privatized the Twin Towers relief funds, making them unauditable.
NY Times Article on Privatization
NY Post Article: Giuliani and Twin Towers Fund
4. Survivors Threaten To SUE Guliani For Relief Funds
· Even after privatizing the twin towers fund, Giuliani would make it incredibly difficult for the victims to receive their fair share. Requiring many of them to spend unnecessary money on advisors and consultants.
· Even with their legal pressure, he only agreed to “give the remaining 100 million to victims,” out of 170 million, if he could first put the money into the bank account of a charity in which he controlled.
· From the attached article: “But Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said that he remained adamantly opposed to any transfer of funds to Mr. Giuliani's charity.
He also objected to Mr. Giuliani's continued control over even the $15 million in his private charity. Mr. Giuliani, he charged, gives every indication of using the Twin Towers Fund to maintain a staff of loyal supporters and to advance his political aspirations.
'The concern that politics will infiltrate the fund becomes even more apparent when one reviews the list of the mayor's former political appointees who are assuming senior staff positions or serving on the fund's board of directors,'' he wrote in a letter on Monday to Eliot L. Spitzer, the state attorney general.”
NY Times Article On Guliani Pressed To Disperse Twin Tower Funds
· However, there is no evidence of Giuliani making good on this promise.
· There are honestly no words for this. All associates of Guliani should be investigated.
5. Attempted Election Cancellation in 2001:
· Giuliani tried to cancel the 2001 election to stay mayor longer. He even considered removing term limits with Governor Pataki’s support. Similar to how Trump has “joked” about increasing his own term limits.
Business Insider: Giuliani and Pataki’s Attempt to Cancel Elections
Esquire Trump Joke Third Term
6. Motive
· In 2000, Guliani unfortunately got prostate cancer. We have to be willing to ask if this was a motive for his corrupt acts.
SurvivorNet: Giuliani’s Cancer


Silverstein’s Unscrupulous Greed
1. Initial Settlement Demands and Profit Claims:
· Despite only having been out for $25 million, Silverstein initially sought nearly $8 BILLION in insurance settlements and argued for "loss of revenue from those buildings," which is quite an uncompassionate claim considering how many lost their lives. Talk about a prime example of the working and lower classes making sacrifices while rich elites complain they didn’t profit enough from the same tragedy.
2. Rebuilding Contributions and Insurance Payout:
· Despite the fact that he only owned the leasing rights to the twin towers, ‘Silverstein Properties’ received up to $4 billion from insurance payouts, instead of the Port Authority, which would be customary as the owner.
· While it's assumed that most of that money went to rebuilding, this isn't actually known or proven. It would be different if he had a separate insurance policy that was not connected to the rebuilding of the towers, with different monies going to the Port Authority to rebuild. This was not the case.
History.com: Rebuilding of Ground Zero
· He additionally refused to return the rights of Building 1 to the Port Authority until he secured additional funds from an $8 billion state fund. Talk about heartless.
Wikipedia: Larry Silverstein
· Various entities would contribute a total of $20 billion to rebuild all six damaged or destroyed towers, including four towers leased by Silverstein and two others he hadn't. This makes it unlikely that he had to go out of pocket with his 4 Billion.
3. Estimated Net Worth:
· While earlier records of Silverstein's net worth are unavailable, aside from his near bankruptcy in 1980, he is currently estimated to be worth around $1 billion.
Forbes Profile: Larry Silverstein

Silverstein’s Controversial Alignment with Trump
Larry Silverstein's connections and public persona have often been scrutinized. This scrutiny became particularly relevant in 2015 when he publicly displayed his support for Donald Trump:

• Long-standing Relationship: Silverstein revealed a 30-year-long acquaintance with Trump, emphasizing the depth of their connection. This means his relationship started in 1985, roughly two years after gaining a powerful criminal organization as a tenant in his tower 7, that saved him from bankruptcy, and 6 years before Trumps first, of many, bankruptcies. This also means they knew each other before 9/11.
• Supportive Yet Vague: He commended Trump for diligently pursuing what he believed to be right, echoing Trump's own ambiguous rhetoric. When pressed about the righteousness of Trump’s goals, Silverstein ambiguously responded, "well, it’s... you know... we’ll find out." This mirrors Trump’s evasive " Well, we're going to have to see what happens" stance, when questioned about committing to a peaceful transfer of power prior to January 6th—an event that ultimately unfolded with violence and chaos.
• Early Endorsement: By voicing his support when Trump announced his presidential campaign, Silverstein positioned himself as one of the early prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

Watch Silverstein Discuss Trump
CNN Trump On 2020 Election

The Man Who Boasted
When most people witness a tragedy, especially of this size, it takes time for their brains to comprehend what happened, it takes even more time to process it. Thus, anyone who was able to brag about their own assets hours after this tragedy on a radio show, is at least worthy of Investigation, especially if this very event helped reshape a misinformation landscape in which he would thrive as its King.
Politifact – How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation

· Insensitive Boasts About Building Height:
o Trump also boasted that with the fall of the Twin Towers, his building became the tallest in Manhattan—an inaccurate and insensitive claim given the context.
Independent 9 11 Trump Tallest Building
· Early Claims and Revisions:
o Shortly after 9/11, Donald Trump claimed he saw the second plane hit the towers from his Manhattan apartment. He also made an unfounded claim that he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering, a statement that has been widely debunked. Despite varying explanations and suggesting that he saw it on an untraceable video that was “widely covered,” these claims helped fueled significant conspiracy theories. If anything, this was a self-report.
o Snopes: Trump Claims Muslims Cheered
o FactCheck.org: Trump’s Revised 9/11 Claim
· Visit to Ground Zero:
o A week after the attacks, Trump visited Ground Zero and stated that although he was present, he wouldn’t consider himself a first responder. This attempt at humility struck many as morbidly insensitive, considering the true heroism displayed by actual first responders.
ABC News: Trump Shares New Details About Morning of 9/11

Legacy of Suspicion:
These actions paint Trump as one of the more suspicious figures post-9/11, who may have used the tragedy for personal and political gain. His connections with figures like Larry Silverstein and Lewis Eisenberg, the Port Authority chairman, hint at deep financial interests potentially influenced by the 9/11 aftermath. Meanwhile, survivors and first responders faced challenges in securing support, highlighting the disparities between their experiences and the political maneuvers at play. Again morbidly juxtaposing the struggles of the poor and working class versus elite swamp members such as Trump and his ilk.

While being, arguably, one of the more suspicious Americans of potentially “being an insider," Trump would go on to cast doubt everywhere else with his new holier than thou rhetoric and hints and claims that “it was an inside job” for the next 15 years.

What if he was speaking from personal experience.

The Deepfake Dilemma
Now in a world where Trump's followers already discount reality, the emergence of AI-generated deepfakes threatens to further distort the truth. This technology could transform legal standards of evidence, making it easy to dismiss genuine evidence against the right as fabricated, while baseless accusations against the left might be accepted as the long-awaited proof.

The Potential Escalation of MAGA Actions
Given the willingness of MAGA supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th, bolstered by Trump's incendiary rhetoric, the potential for escalation is alarming. The advent of fabricated images and videos could present unprecedented national security threats.

Trump's Incendiary Rhetoric on January 6th
Trump's speech on January 6th was a clear incitement, as he urged his followers to "fight like hell" to "stop the steal," despite admitting DURING THE SPEECH that there was no evidence of the massive electoral fraud he claimed. As well as his lawyers laughable court “arguments.”
“...while there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing…”
Npr.Org Read Trumps Jan 6 Speech
LawAndCrime Come On Now

This speech, coupled with his undermining of constitutional processes, underscores the risks and intentional deceit of his rhetoric. Too bad Republicans senators and our Supreme Court have either claimed he was above the law, or continue to postpone his court dates till after elections. A wild position when treason is on the table. Did that dude commit treason that claims he wants to become a dictator? I dunno, lets let him potentially get elected and then find out!

Elon Musk's Political Shift
Elon was once very much a leftist, unfortunately in more and more far left “activists” continue to attack him endlessly for not agreeing with them on their own singular issues and perspectives. To them I say congratulations, you successfully pushed the most powerful man on earth into the far right. Great job. Great job.
Elon Musk's journey from a liberal supporter to a figure embraced by the far right highlights the volatile nature of political affiliations in today's polarized environment. His actions since acquiring Twitter—such as promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and making high-profile firings—suggest a departure from his initial free speech advocacy.
Especially when considering he fired Don Lemon from his platform for an interview he found offensive. Canceling opinions you find offensive isn’t free speech, it’s literally the opposite. I’m sure many people were offended by the examples below. What about them?
Far Right Support Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The Need for a Critical Approach
Supporters of Trump should critically evaluate why he did not pardon the January 6th insurrectionists during his term, despite using them as political leverage now. This pattern of using allies until they are no longer useful is evident throughout his political and personal dealings.
What better example could there possibly be as to what trump truly thinks of his supporters, how sacrificial he sees them as part of his endless narratives, then his refusal and failure to pardon January 6th insurrectionists while still in office?
Of course, anyone “just on the grass” or outside the building should only get a day in jail at most, however people that barged inside the capital should naturally get much more.
And while trump refused to pardon those people before, he now calls them “hostages” and is using them as political bait to a truly wild degree. It's very likely he will make good on this promise to further embolden the narrative that “Democrats are trying to take you down and only I can save you.”
His supporters need to seriously ask, “Why didn’t he pardon us before?”
Also, remember when he claimed he would pay legal fees for supporters that were violent at his rallies, but then seemed to falter and change his mind. Much like how Amber Heard donated her money, “by pledging it.”
List of allies he was quick to discard or dump. And let's face it, all of these people have done more for him than the average MAGA supporter. The only person he cares about is himself.
Trump claims that Mike Pence, the man he vetted more than anyone else, “has gone to the dark side.”
Trump seems to have supported the chants to “Hang Mike Pense,” at least in jest? We hope? There are also no links of him condemning them. Yet admittedly this one point doesn’t have hard evidence like a recording or video as far as I know, it certainly fits his brand.
Mike Flynn, a Trump appointee, later testifies against him.
Trump admits Flynn lied on his behalf, accidentally testifying against him, but does pardon him. As long as you’re colluding with Russia you’re ok it seems?

The Future Under Trump's Influence
Trump's rhetoric about overriding constitutional norms to address what he calls "massive fraud" hints at authoritarian aspirations. His praise for dictators and divisive language further aligns with dangerous historical precedents.
Important Articles:
“How a second trump term could end us democracy.” -commondreams
“Ask the expert: What a 2nd Trump term could mean for democracy and advancing policy.” - Msu Today
“Judgement Day” for political opponents.

To predict the future lets base it on known facts:
Apparently, he will help attack our constitution like he may have with the Twin Towers.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Stated he intended to be a Dictator on day one, but then promises it will be just for a day. Is that how that works? Or is it “Once you go Dictator you don’t go back?”
Praising dictators, referring to immigrants as vermin etc, akin to Hitlers rhetoric against “blood mixing.”
More fraudulent use of lawyers and courts that gets everyone else in trouble but him, with them arguing he's above the law. This further shows how much he will consistently use people for his own ends and then dump them when they're no longer of use.
Warning from republicans and notes on ass kissing. As well as being generally unfit for office.
If you want help from Trump you better kiss his ***
Trumps says he kept Omarosa just because she said nice things about him, while defaming her
DeSantis: "You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful."
Thehill Trump Views People Who Kiss His A As Weak.
And if you dare to speak out against trump, you better kiss his ****
Politico Graham Breaks With Trump On Abortion
WashingtonPost Trump Graham Abortion
News Yahoo 30 More Republicans Denounce Donald Trump Unqualified President
Hot take, if he’s elected president America, and the world, is frankly fucked.

Predicting MAGA 2024 And Beyond
Naturally there are endless possibilities of what MAGA and dictators around the world decide to do this year and into the future. I believe that the one thing that insinuates when it's time for their next evil actions is dictated by their standings in the polls or when a fellow dictator needs a little more political pressure from war torn inflated oil prices etc.
Dictators Unite
While writing my thesis, I speculated that dictators globally were uniting, finding mutual benefits in their governance and deceitful tactics. This theory is increasingly recognized as these autocrats appear to be forming a coalition, undermining peaceful unity efforts through conspiracy theories to preserve their power.
Unherd How Autocrats Unite
The True Nature of MAGA
MAGA was never genuinely about speaking truth to power or restoring America's glory. It has been an elaborate scheme funded by immense wealth, perpetuating anti-American sentiments through fabricated grassroots movements by domestic and foreign actors. This movement has primarily enriched a select few power-hungry dictators and may have been responsible for some of our most horrific moments in history in the past and acts yet to come.
Trump and MAGA
While 'MAGA' predates Trump, he conveniently stepped into a role long in the making. Despite occasional deviations from the MAGA ideology, such as promoting vaccines to emphatic boos, Trump has largely embodied its principles. The real architects of MAGA, however, are likely disillusioned with his unpredictable attacks, which contradict their broader agenda of absolute power.
Nbc News Donald Trump Booed
Trump as a Martyr
Regardless of election outcomes, Trump is poised to claim interference. His rhetoric and the devout belief of his followers in his divine anointment could lead to his martyrdom, especially given his age and the vulnerabilities it brings. This martyrdom could solidify his legacy while serving the interests of MAGA strategists who find him increasingly burdensome even if he “wins.”
Factcheck Trumps Bogus Voter Fraud Claims
La Times Trump Democrats Effort Presidential Ballot

u/neodestiny and friends.
For the sake of transparency, I am not the architect of the following discoveries, and am just helping to forward their message and clean it up. Copywrite of the following work belongs to no one and everyone is not only welcome to share these findings as if they were their own, but openly encouraged to do so.
Introduction
If you think you know anything about MAGA. Trust me, you know nothing. Not even his most devout followers or haters will have considered the following. And for the sake of our democracy and way of life, I hope people read this.
This work may very well help to shift the narrative on Trump in a meaningful and foundational way, but I don't want this work exacerbate any feelings of ill will to MAGA members, for they have been prey to possibly one of the largest con jobs our world has ever seen, especially without the help of this counternarrative.
Snippet From My Thesis On MAGA
As I work on tidying up the master file with the helpful dms I got, allow me to post just the most contentious part of it below, now that it’s able to stand on its own.
MAGA didn’t begin in 2015. I argue it began in 2001 on 9/11, while also harnessing and funneling decades of anti-government resentment till many Americans would openly call for a “wrecking ball” figure to help “drain the swamp.”

A Key Fueling Factor To American Outrage- Inflation
Many elements contributed to growing American anger that would later contribute to MAGA, this is a snippet from the larger work.
Rising Cost of Living
o In 1950, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 24.1. By 2000, it had risen to 168 (a 597% increase), and by 2023, it had reached 304.7, a 1163% increase from 1950.
o Housing prices saw a drastic rise overtime, with the median home price increasing from $7,354 in 1950 to $388,700 in 2023, a staggering 5185% increase.
o While rising rent costs can contribute to overall inflation and cost of living, even the left has largely failed to address how exponentially increasing real estate prices impact the cost of living. This omission has made many other conspiracy theories seem more plausible in its wake.
o If we don’t find real solutions for real estate that also aren’t extreme, then society will feel more and more pressure to accept “unreasonable solutions” like Trump, even though he’s the last person on earth who could solve it, considering his business acumen and history.
MAGA Dynamics and Blind Devotion
In 2016, it wasn't just the left calling the MAGA movement a cult. Trump famously said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." Even the left failed to grasp the gravity of this statement. As someone who nearly died in a deadly cult and based on my research, I don't know of a single cult where the founder could openly commit murder without losing members. Trump didn't just believe he'd created one of the largest cults ever; he believed he'd created the most fanatical. Let's hope his followers prove him wrong by showing a willingness to criticize him, regardless of their vote.

The MAGA Question
Instead of challenging MAGA supporters on fallacious beliefs, ask them this question to see if they’re at least able to see a world where Trump isn’t a biblical King: "If Trump admitted he was behind 9/11 and used resulting insurance money and donations from hostile governments to create false “grass root” campaigns. And did it all in a way to make it seem like others committed his own atrocities. And that he intended to destroy America in every way if he got elected, would you still vote for him?"

Yet even then, getting through to a MAGA supporter inevitably refers to 9/11 “research” out there when they realize individual positions are usually fallacious. This quagmire me decide to investigate this tragedy, to see if there was a more plausible counter theory. Honestly, the more I looked the more surprised I became. Here are my findings that are but a snippet of my full thesis on MAGA.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories and MAGA
Conspiracy Theories and Credibility:
o First off, conspiracy theories should involve some effort to verify narratives, rather than just repeating claims across multiple sources that mistake themselves as evidence; like a bunch of people who repeat “bob farted” across multiple websites may see that as evidence, when in fact, it was Sean. Sorry Sean.

Early Origins of MAGA:
o Although some believe MAGA began in 2015, its roots lie as early as the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh and later became "serious" on 9/11.
o 9/11 conspiracy theories claim controlled demolitions were used, but the lack of any cellphone recordings of explosions weakens this theory.

Suspicious Factors:
o The official narrative involving chaotic jet fuel leading to a straight fall seemed questionable.
o The collapse of a third building (WTC 7), which wasn’t directly hit, fueled suspicions.
o Airline stocks were heavily shorted before the attacks, raising concerns about insider trading. Harvey Pitt, Republican SEC Chairman at the time, investigated this and claimed there was nothing amiss, but was criticized for later crimes and forced to resign.
o It’s also suspicious that in Trumps 2000 book “The America We Deserve” that he stated, “I really am convinced we’re in danger of the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers. No sensible analyst rejects this possibility, and plenty of them, like me, are not wondering if but when it will happen*.”*
§ Yet democrats would largely miss this point entirely and obsess over his false claim that he called for Bin Laden to be killed, when he had not. Somehow conspiracy theorists would find this ‘cool’ rather than suspicious.
CNN Fact Check Donald Trump Osama Bin Laden Book Claim

Reports and Simplified Narratives:
o FEMA's 2002 report and NIST's 2005 report provided technical explanations of the tower collapses.
o However, the Port Authority Chairman stuck to the oversimplified narrative that "jet fuel melted steel beams," even though he knew this was a half-truth, as detailed in the next section, fueling anti-government conspiracies. The question is why.

Potential Impact:
o 9/11 conspiracy theories sowed distrust in the government, which may have been one of the attackers' objectives. Anyone that heavily profited from this tragedy, and helped further those objects, should be questioned.
o The ‘Loose Change’ “documentary” pointed out suspicious parts of the story, but failed to give any clear claims as to who was purportedly behind it. It also failed to note the Twin Towers titanic design flaw that could result in a straight fall. Even the 2015 version of this film fails to mention nearly all of the known facts in this report.
o The Director of that film later states:
“I DON’T THINK WE’D HAVE PRESIDENT TRUMP IF IT WEREN’T FOR 9/11”
“9/11 created a culture of fear, of xenophobia, this sense of entitlement and everything we’ve seen. Warrantless wire-tapping, Guantanamo Bay, everything that’s happened led us to this point, we wouldn’t be here without 9/11. They want to kick out all the Mexicans and Muslims because of this culture of fear and bigotry and xenophobia that directly led to the election of fucking Donald Trump. [laughing] That’s our world now! We had Reagan before, and Governor Schwarzenegger. But President Donald Trump? It’s just weird. Everything is just weird.”
Theoutline Reflecting On Loose Change
o While the director was in the right to ask questions, he failed to ask the most obvious ones.
o However, his lead “researcher,” Jason Bermas, would turn out to be a full blown MAGA wingnut.
Patriot Jason Bermas
o Anyone that would benefit politically and financially from 9/11 should be fully investigated.
Further Reading:
Harvey Pitt - Wikipedia
Politifact How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation
It will never be possible to defeat MAGA followers “logically” with people who believed his parties rhetoric “that 9/11 was an inside job.”

I say… what if those Republican leaders were self reporting?
What if Trump followers have been rallying behind the very man responsible for its orchestration?

The Twin Towers and Larry Silverstein
Architectural Pitfalls of the Twin Towers:
· The Twin Towers had unique architectural flaws due to the excessive heavy load on their exoskeletons to allow for more floor and leasing space, which greatly contributed to their straight collapse after the 9/11 attacks. This was the first and last skyscraper made in this way.
· For anyone who said that “any other building would have fallen sideways,” you were right, though perhaps not entirely how you may have imagined. A "Coke Can" analogy shows how a similar weakened structure can result in a straight fall, contrary to conspiracy theories claiming controlled demolitions. This isn't something I'm asking you to take for granted, or to read from media sources you don’t trust. This is something you can verify on your own, in person, in real time, in reality.
· However Trump, despite being close friends with Silverstein as we’ll cover later, claimed "It wasn’t architectural defects, you know, the World Trade Center was always known as a very, very strong building” per the attached PolitiFact article.
· Supporting Article:
Engineering Experts Explain the Collapse of the Twin Towers
Politifact Donald Trumps 911 Speculation

Larry Silverstein, The Leasor Of The Twin Towers:
· Nearly went bankrupt after losing his main tenant Drexel Burnham in 1980 after he built tower 7 with him in mind.
· I don't know how many of us understand the level of desperation a situation like this can cause in someone and how many potential crimes it can easily push them towards.
· He is known for then saying, “…looking up at the twin towers and thinking, my building is huge, but it is made diminutive by the twin towers. So I said to myself, wouldn't it be incredible someday to own those?" That's not the statement of a sane person who nearly went bankrupt, and if anything, hints towards jealousy.
· He managed to secure Salomon Brothers two years later, which later paid $300 million in securities fraud penalties casting suspicion over the entities who saved Silverstein, in addition to their overall plans for the future.
· How he would become able to outbid everyone else in 2001, for the right to lease the twin towers, would become a mystery we will untangle later.
Further Reading
Manhattan Institute – Silverstein On Ground Zero
Justice Department: Salomon Brothers Securities Fraud

Trump and Real Estate Connections
Historical Context and Redevelopment Plans:
· A redevelopment plan commenced in the 1990s by Gov. Pataki and Mayor Giuliani, spurred a commercial revival in downtown Manhattan, making the World Trade Center prime property. Pataki would go on to criticize trump, while the other would prove to be one of this wildest, if not craziest, supporters to truly fanatical degrees.
Further Reading:
Manhattan Institute: Rebuilding Ground Zero
· Tom Leppert was the CEO of Turner construction which right wing conspiracy theorists claimed helped ensure the towers would fall straight down. He also became part of Trumps transition team. While there’s no evidence of explosives being used, tampering with the exoskeleton and weaking the relatively thin central column ahead of time are theoretically plausible.
Huffpost Donald Trump Transition Team
Wikipedia Tom Leppert

The bidding for the World Trade Center lease involved only a few major real estate firms as allowed by the Port Authority Chairman. Below are the allowed bidders and their estimated worth at the time included:

· Donald J. Trump’s Organization:
o Worth around $1.5 billion in 1996 after multiple bankruptcies. Confirmed only by Forbes magazine in 2005.
· Tishman Speyer:
o Valued at approximately $1.8 billion in 2000, would soon face ‘tenant issues’ with many scrupulous legal claims against them.
· Gale & Wentworth:
o Worth a few million.
· Mortimer Zuckerman’s Boston Properties:
o Mortimer Zuckerman alone was worth around $2 billion.
· The Rouse Company:
o Mainly a shopping mall operator.
· Brookfield Properties:
o A Canadian firm valued at over $20 billion in 2000.
· Vornado Realty Trust:
o Worth an estimated $2-3 billion. Had the highest bid, but was unexpectedly outed by the Port Authority Chairman, paving the way for Silverstein’s win. CEO of Vornado Trust, Steven Roth would later do many deals with Trump in 2005 and beyond.
· Larry Silverstein:
o As mentioned, was nearly bankrupt in the 1980s, and was mysteriously awarded the right to lease the World Trade Center contract at $3.2 billion, twice the original asking price of 1.2 Billion. It would still be owned by the Port authority of NY and NJ, he would just own the rights to lease it.
o Port Authority Chairman, Lewis Eisenberg, made this unexplained decision, who also later became Trumps lead fundraiser in 2015.
o After putting down only $125 million, as per the contract, Silverstein would be getting back $100 million just 6 weeks after his bid and with an uncommon terrorist insurance addition. His exaggerated bid and insurance contract would also greatly inflate the amount of money he could get from an insurance claim. If the winning bid was 1.5 billion, the insurance payout would also have been much less.
o In real estate, its quite rare for a prudent investor to bid twice the asking price, as demonstrated by the other companies that backed out, of which I find no connections to Trump.
o If anyone had known about 9/11 ahead of time, like Trump claims he did, it would become drastically easier to outbid all competitors, knowing that for pennies on the dollar, you would be getting much more back.

Further Reading:
NY Times Article on World Trade Center Deal
Wikipedia on Lewis Eisenberg
Patch On Lew Eisenberg Leading Trump Fundraising
NY Times Article Silverstein Gets Most Of His Money Back

Giuliani’s Gangster Acts
Arguably, if the above points are what they objectively appear to be, that would be a bad thing. You’d think that would be enough. However, Guliani would say “hold my beer’ to those sentiments.

1. Outdated Equipment for First Responders:
· Due to Giuliani’s inadequate leadership, first responders used old equipment that failed to warn them to evacuate the towers. Which contributed to their deaths while they searched for survivors.
NY Times Article: Giuliani’s Preparedness on 9/11
2. Obstructed Recovery Efforts:
· Giuliani delayed proper search and rescue operations for days, possibly costing lives of citizens and first responders who didn’t know they needed to leave.
· 20 Years later he would claim that some of Bidens actions were so reckless that… “It would be as if I got down to ground zero and said take out the firefighters, all you civilians see if you can get yourselves out.” Self report?
NBC News Report: Giuliani’s Role in Recovery
NY1: Giuliani Reflects on 9/11 Anniversary
3. Twin Towers Fund and Privatization:
· Giuliani privatized the Twin Towers relief funds, making them unauditable.
NY Times Article on Privatization
NY Post Article: Giuliani and Twin Towers Fund
4. Survivors Threaten To SUE Guliani For Relief Funds
· Even after privatizing the twin towers fund, Giuliani would make it incredibly difficult for the victims to receive their fair share. Requiring many of them to spend unnecessary money on advisors and consultants.
· Even with their legal pressure, he only agreed to “give the remaining 100 million to victims,” out of 170 million, if he could first put the money into the bank account of a charity in which he controlled.
· From the attached article: “But Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said that he remained adamantly opposed to any transfer of funds to Mr. Giuliani's charity.
He also objected to Mr. Giuliani's continued control over even the $15 million in his private charity. Mr. Giuliani, he charged, gives every indication of using the Twin Towers Fund to maintain a staff of loyal supporters and to advance his political aspirations.
'The concern that politics will infiltrate the fund becomes even more apparent when one reviews the list of the mayor's former political appointees who are assuming senior staff positions or serving on the fund's board of directors,'' he wrote in a letter on Monday to Eliot L. Spitzer, the state attorney general.”
NY Times Article On Guliani Pressed To Disperse Twin Tower Funds
· However, there is no evidence of Giuliani making good on this promise.
· There are honestly no words for this. All associates of Guliani should be investigated.
5. Attempted Election Cancellation in 2001:
· Giuliani tried to cancel the 2001 election to stay mayor longer. He even considered removing term limits with Governor Pataki’s support. Similar to how Trump has “joked” about increasing his own term limits.
Business Insider: Giuliani and Pataki’s Attempt to Cancel Elections
Esquire Trump Joke Third Term
6. Motive
· In 2000, Guliani unfortunately got prostate cancer. We have to be willing to ask if this was a motive for his corrupt acts.
SurvivorNet: Giuliani’s Cancer


Silverstein’s Unscrupulous Greed
1. Initial Settlement Demands and Profit Claims:
· Despite only having been out for $25 million, Silverstein initially sought nearly $8 BILLION in insurance settlements and argued for "loss of revenue from those buildings," which is quite an uncompassionate claim considering how many lost their lives. Talk about a prime example of the working and lower classes making sacrifices while rich elites complain they didn’t profit enough from the same tragedy.
2. Rebuilding Contributions and Insurance Payout:
· Despite the fact that he only owned the leasing rights to the twin towers, ‘Silverstein Properties’ received up to $4 billion from insurance payouts, instead of the Port Authority, which would be customary as the owner.
· While it's assumed that most of that money went to rebuilding, this isn't actually known or proven. It would be different if he had a separate insurance policy that was not connected to the rebuilding of the towers, with different monies going to the Port Authority to rebuild. This was not the case.
History.com: Rebuilding of Ground Zero
· He additionally refused to return the rights of Building 1 to the Port Authority until he secured additional funds from an $8 billion state fund. Talk about heartless.
Wikipedia: Larry Silverstein
· Various entities would contribute a total of $20 billion to rebuild all six damaged or destroyed towers, including four towers leased by Silverstein and two others he hadn't. This makes it unlikely that he had to go out of pocket with his 4 Billion.
3. Estimated Net Worth:
· While earlier records of Silverstein's net worth are unavailable, aside from his near bankruptcy in 1980, he is currently estimated to be worth around $1 billion.
Forbes Profile: Larry Silverstein

Silverstein’s Controversial Alignment with Trump
Larry Silverstein's connections and public persona have often been scrutinized. This scrutiny became particularly relevant in 2015 when he publicly displayed his support for Donald Trump:

• Long-standing Relationship: Silverstein revealed a 30-year-long acquaintance with Trump, emphasizing the depth of their connection. This means his relationship started in 1985, roughly two years after gaining a powerful criminal organization as a tenant in his tower 7, that saved him from bankruptcy, and 6 years before Trumps first, of many, bankruptcies. This also means they knew each other before 9/11.
• Supportive Yet Vague: He commended Trump for diligently pursuing what he believed to be right, echoing Trump's own ambiguous rhetoric. When pressed about the righteousness of Trump’s goals, Silverstein ambiguously responded, "well, it’s... you know... we’ll find out." This mirrors Trump’s evasive " Well, we're going to have to see what happens" stance, when questioned about committing to a peaceful transfer of power prior to January 6th—an event that ultimately unfolded with violence and chaos.
• Early Endorsement: By voicing his support when Trump announced his presidential campaign, Silverstein positioned himself as one of the early prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

Watch Silverstein Discuss Trump
CNN Trump On 2020 Election

The Man Who Boasted
When most people witness a tragedy, especially of this size, it takes time for their brains to comprehend what happened, it takes even more time to process it. Thus, anyone who was able to brag about their own assets hours after this tragedy on a radio show, is at least worthy of Investigation, especially if this very event helped reshape a misinformation landscape in which he would thrive as its King.
Politifact – How 911 Attacks Helped Shape Modern Misinformation

· Insensitive Boasts About Building Height:
o Trump also boasted that with the fall of the Twin Towers, his building became the tallest in Manhattan—an inaccurate and insensitive claim given the context.
Independent 9 11 Trump Tallest Building
· Early Claims and Revisions:
o Shortly after 9/11, Donald Trump claimed he saw the second plane hit the towers from his Manhattan apartment. He also made an unfounded claim that he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering, a statement that has been widely debunked. Despite varying explanations and suggesting that he saw it on an untraceable video that was “widely covered,” these claims helped fueled significant conspiracy theories. If anything, this was a self-report.
o Snopes: Trump Claims Muslims Cheered
o FactCheck.org: Trump’s Revised 9/11 Claim
· Visit to Ground Zero:
o A week after the attacks, Trump visited Ground Zero and stated that although he was present, he wouldn’t consider himself a first responder. This attempt at humility struck many as morbidly insensitive, considering the true heroism displayed by actual first responders.
ABC News: Trump Shares New Details About Morning of 9/11

Legacy of Suspicion:
These actions paint Trump as one of the more suspicious figures post-9/11, who may have used the tragedy for personal and political gain. His connections with figures like Larry Silverstein and Lewis Eisenberg, the Port Authority chairman, hint at deep financial interests potentially influenced by the 9/11 aftermath. Meanwhile, survivors and first responders faced challenges in securing support, highlighting the disparities between their experiences and the political maneuvers at play. Again morbidly juxtaposing the struggles of the poor and working class versus elite swamp members such as Trump and his ilk.

While being, arguably, one of the more suspicious Americans of potentially “being an insider," Trump would go on to cast doubt everywhere else with his new holier than thou rhetoric and hints and claims that “it was an inside job” for the next 15 years.

What if he was speaking from personal experience.

The Deepfake Dilemma
Now in a world where Trump's followers already discount reality, the emergence of AI-generated deepfakes threatens to further distort the truth. This technology could transform legal standards of evidence, making it easy to dismiss genuine evidence against the right as fabricated, while baseless accusations against the left might be accepted as the long-awaited proof.

The Potential Escalation of MAGA Actions
Given the willingness of MAGA supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th, bolstered by Trump's incendiary rhetoric, the potential for escalation is alarming. The advent of fabricated images and videos could present unprecedented national security threats.

Trump's Incendiary Rhetoric on January 6th
Trump's speech on January 6th was a clear incitement, as he urged his followers to "fight like hell" to "stop the steal," despite admitting DURING THE SPEECH that there was no evidence of the massive electoral fraud he claimed. As well as his lawyers laughable court “arguments.”
“...while there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing…”
Npr.Org Read Trumps Jan 6 Speech
LawAndCrime Come On Now

This speech, coupled with his undermining of constitutional processes, underscores the risks and intentional deceit of his rhetoric. Too bad Republicans senators and our Supreme Court have either claimed he was above the law, or continue to postpone his court dates till after elections. A wild position when treason is on the table. Did that dude commit treason that claims he wants to become a dictator? I dunno, lets let him potentially get elected and then find out!

Elon Musk's Political Shift
Elon was once very much a leftist, unfortunately in more and more far left “activists” continue to attack him endlessly for not agreeing with them on their own singular issues and perspectives. To them I say congratulations, you successfully pushed the most powerful man on earth into the far right. Great job. Great job.
Elon Musk's journey from a liberal supporter to a figure embraced by the far right highlights the volatile nature of political affiliations in today's polarized environment. His actions since acquiring Twitter—such as promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and making high-profile firings—suggest a departure from his initial free speech advocacy.
Especially when considering he fired Don Lemon from his platform for an interview he found offensive. Canceling opinions you find offensive isn’t free speech, it’s literally the opposite. I’m sure many people were offended by the examples below. What about them?
Far Right Support Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The Need for a Critical Approach
Supporters of Trump should critically evaluate why he did not pardon the January 6th insurrectionists during his term, despite using them as political leverage now. This pattern of using allies until they are no longer useful is evident throughout his political and personal dealings.
What better example could there possibly be as to what trump truly thinks of his supporters, how sacrificial he sees them as part of his endless narratives, then his refusal and failure to pardon January 6th insurrectionists while still in office?
Of course, anyone “just on the grass” or outside the building should only get a day in jail at most, however people that barged inside the capital should naturally get much more.
And while trump refused to pardon those people before, he now calls them “hostages” and is using them as political bait to a truly wild degree. It's very likely he will make good on this promise to further embolden the narrative that “Democrats are trying to take you down and only I can save you.”
His supporters need to seriously ask, “Why didn’t he pardon us before?”
Also, remember when he claimed he would pay legal fees for supporters that were violent at his rallies, but then seemed to falter and change his mind. Much like how Amber Heard donated her money, “by pledging it.”
List of allies he was quick to discard or dump. And let's face it, all of these people have done more for him than the average MAGA supporter. The only person he cares about is himself.
Trump claims that Mike Pence, the man he vetted more than anyone else, “has gone to the dark side.”
Trump seems to have supported the chants to “Hang Mike Pense,” at least in jest? We hope? There are also no links of him condemning them. Yet admittedly this one point doesn’t have hard evidence like a recording or video as far as I know, it certainly fits his brand.
Mike Flynn, a Trump appointee, later testifies against him.
Trump admits Flynn lied on his behalf, accidentally testifying against him, but does pardon him. As long as you’re colluding with Russia you’re ok it seems?

The Future Under Trump's Influence
Trump's rhetoric about overriding constitutional norms to address what he calls "massive fraud" hints at authoritarian aspirations. His praise for dictators and divisive language further aligns with dangerous historical precedents.
Important Articles:
“How a second trump term could end us democracy.” -commondreams
“Ask the expert: What a 2nd Trump term could mean for democracy and advancing policy.” - Msu Today
“Judgement Day” for political opponents.

To predict the future lets base it on known facts:
Apparently, he will help attack our constitution like he may have with the Twin Towers.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Stated he intended to be a Dictator on day one, but then promises it will be just for a day. Is that how that works? Or is it “Once you go Dictator you don’t go back?”
Praising dictators, referring to immigrants as vermin etc, akin to Hitlers rhetoric against “blood mixing.”
More fraudulent use of lawyers and courts that gets everyone else in trouble but him, with them arguing he's above the law. This further shows how much he will consistently use people for his own ends and then dump them when they're no longer of use.
Warning from republicans and notes on ass kissing. As well as being generally unfit for office.
If you want help from Trump you better kiss his ***
Trumps says he kept Omarosa just because she said nice things about him, while defaming her
DeSantis: "You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful."
Thehill Trump Views People Who Kiss His A As Weak.
And if you dare to speak out against trump, you better kiss his ****
Politico Graham Breaks With Trump On Abortion
WashingtonPost Trump Graham Abortion
News Yahoo 30 More Republicans Denounce Donald Trump Unqualified President
Hot take, if he’s elected president America, and the world, is frankly fucked.

Predicting MAGA 2024 And Beyond
Naturally there are endless possibilities of what MAGA and dictators around the world decide to do this year and into the future. I believe that the one thing that insinuates when it's time for their next evil actions is dictated by their standings in the polls or when a fellow dictator needs a little more political pressure from war torn inflated oil prices etc.
Dictators Unite
While writing my thesis, I speculated that dictators globally were uniting, finding mutual benefits in their governance and deceitful tactics. This theory is increasingly recognized as these autocrats appear to be forming a coalition, undermining peaceful unity efforts through conspiracy theories to preserve their power.
Unherd How Autocrats Unite
The True Nature of MAGA
MAGA was never genuinely about speaking truth to power or restoring America's glory. It has been an elaborate scheme funded by immense wealth, perpetuating anti-American sentiments through fabricated grassroots movements by domestic and foreign actors. This movement has primarily enriched a select few power-hungry dictators and may have been responsible for some of our most horrific moments in history in the past and acts yet to come.
Trump and MAGA
While 'MAGA' predates Trump, he conveniently stepped into a role long in the making. Despite occasional deviations from the MAGA ideology, such as promoting vaccines to emphatic boos, Trump has largely embodied its principles. The real architects of MAGA, however, are likely disillusioned with his unpredictable attacks, which contradict their broader agenda of absolute power.
Nbc News Donald Trump Booed
Trump as a Martyr
Regardless of election outcomes, Trump is poised to claim interference. His rhetoric and the devout belief of his followers in his divine anointment could lead to his martyrdom, especially given his age and the vulnerabilities it brings. This martyrdom could solidify his legacy while serving the interests of MAGA strategists who find him increasingly burdensome even if he “wins.”
Factcheck Trumps Bogus Voter Fraud Claims
La Times Trump Democrats Effort Presidential Ballot

This will most likely be a long and I think confusing post, mostly due to me being confused, but I figured that Ill try my best to explain as much as "needed" and ask for your opinion.
Ill try to keep my history short but with the "important stuff" in it:
Parents from ME, they moved to europe while my mother was pregnent and their relationship during this time was supposedly very horrible for her and they got divorced shortly after.
I remember my kid years (2-13/14y/o ) as strange because life was strange. My mom had to work dubble shifts to make ends meet, so when I was young I had some of her friends or a babysitter taking care of me and the older I got the more I had to be solo in the house til she came back but I made it work.
School was rough, I am diagnosed with ADHD and as a immigrant in a mostly white school I stood out in several ways (we used to live in more mixed communitys before and then moved into more suburban "white" places).
Around 14-15 I started acting out, by that time school was shit, I saw religion & god as a joke, I had a stepdad in the picture and my family was busy getting to work on their future plans and life in general.
This is when I try out ciggarettes, drugs and sex for the first time and I get hooked on ciggarettes shortly after. Worth mentioning I was always found ciggarettes horrible but both my parents are heavy smokers.
Around that age I get to know some other people who are into what I used to deem "cool shit" (drugs, gangs, crime)
Around 15 I get busted by my mom that I was smoking cigarettes, had tried weed out and also helped in a couple of deals through some friends and we get in touch with social security people throughout the next years. It looked like things where going good on their side but in reality I was just getting rly good at living a "dubble" life full off lies.
From 16-19 I was partially commited to school (just getting pass, not actually trying to get decent grades) and almost fully commited to being a criminal and drug user. (Selling, scamming, transporting etc) Also worth mentioning that I have periods during these years where I play around with drugs such as coke, painkillers, amfetamins and LSD and I do enjoy them but they dont rly get stuck like that unlike weed which I have smoked since 15-16.
Around 19 when high school ends my other life also crumbles due to the human factors involved and I also want out, i'm SLOWLY starting to realize where my life is headed and ever since i've tried to get my life togheter which I have done to a certain degree (complicated).
Since 19 ive been a "deep thinker", trying to understand the different aspects of the human condition and sociaty in general all the way down to the individual. All of this to try to figure out what to to with this interesting hand we got dealt and how to go about that task so to say.
Thus far ive manged to get certain tasks done and failed with some;
Got a morgage for my apartment. Got & lost my drivers lisence. Got & lost 1 relationship. Got a decent office job where I get a decent enough salary to make things go around for the time being and having a possible career there if I want to
Have not yet: Quit smoking cigarettes or weed (and if not weed, alcohol since im an expert at replacing one drug with another at this point (: )
Have not yet: Actually determined if I want to get a degree in something I like (Psycology or something with helping people) or If I need to work due to my morgage and the cost of living. (IE I have not actually figured out what I want to do with my life to cut it short and how to go about it I do since im in my situation)
Have not yet: Found a partner and ive been single for 2 years now.
Throughout my life i've never feelt a "cconnection" to god or a higher being so to say, but i've had family and friends who are deeply/moderetly theistic and always both been jelous of them and also frowned upon them somehow. Saw myself as a "moderate" liberal/left leaning guy and pretty anti religion/anti old values (Not all of them but alot of core values to most theist is something I look down upon heavily)
After 5 years of listening to all sort of people like Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, JPB, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Dawkins, Alex O'connor and etc - I've always identified with some sort of atheistic moral relativist/emotisvim with a utalitarian outlook.
During these years ive tried to beat my addictions and moral short comings through different methods like training of mind and body through meditation and working out, through being picky with my diet and what I consume from the internet and much much more, but I still fall short the most important things I NEED to overcome, like addicition.
Its gone so far that I've tried everything I can think of, taking LSD and trying to force a ego death/break down, stopped cold turkey with everything and gone into "Zen mode/Munk Mode", talking to a shrink, read books upon books and more. Nothing has worked and ive gotten to the point where the only thing in my mind is "Will this be my life forever? Subcumbing to my addiction and letting it control me and my life and hindering me in all aspects that I need to improve? If that so, whats the point of even trying?" Ive actually started to have harmfull thoughts becasue I feel so hardstuck and unable to move forward and unwilling almost to backwards.
Jordan Petersson talks about religion in a metaphorical way where one needs to submit to the divine to be able to take on the hardest of challenges, and even if I have never bought into the concept of something divine I feel like its the last thing to try out before being back at square one for yet another time. At this point im unable to submitt my current action to my future "me", and I have nothing to guide me.
And if I choose to go down the rabbit hole of religion, how would I ever be able to choose one? Should I even try it since I most likely will never fully buy into it? Am I just lying to myself to try to gather some form of motivation/hope?
This rock is becoming harder to push up that hill.
Sorry if this post dosnt belong here.
Edit: Worth mentioning i've considered this question before and would usually say that Id follow Jesuses teachings since he always seemed to be the most just and sane of the historical figures but due to family and friends I have a longer connection with Islam ( also a deeper connection with its bad sides) while respecting/almost wanting for that dogmatic method of prayer and worshipping/connection) so hence thinking about which one to commit to.

This Liberal NDP federal government is the most anti Canadian anti middle class government. They do nothing that is in the interest of Canadians. Nothing to benefit Canadians. I truly mean this when I say this. Fuck Marc Miller and fuck Sean Fraser. Today this idiot after teasing something the entire nation wanted (REDUCED IMMIGRATION) decided to pull his penis out and piss on the entire nation. They’ve decided they’re going to make the millions of people they brought PR’s. Some of these people are scammers (all the students using food banks) and those with fake papers/no funds, some of them are full blown criminals (The Indian guys we now know came as students and killed Hardeep Singh in Canada).
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7200025
Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/10480761/hardeep-singh-nijjar-suspect-canadian-student-visa/amp/
We’re such a joke of the country even the Indian politicians are clowning us. Here’s Indias foreign minister mocking Canada saying we let in criminals. He’s not lying. They’re apparently wanted in India.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-welcomes-criminals-india-says
Every politician supporting mass immigration needs to be publicly humiliated and fired. There is no benefit to any Canadian to experience this. Our cost of housing has increased, our birth rates are lowering even with this again as a result of the increased demand on cost of living (housing). Our economy and country as a whole are becoming non-productive. We the Canadian people want a fucking referendum. You do not for some esoteric reason in your head after hitting a crack pipe get to flood our country with more people than any western nation has seen in over half a century and then say they’re already here. Give them permanent residency. No these people are here as students at bullshit programs. They complete their studies they came for and they go home. Fuck loblaws. Fuck metro. Fuck McDonald’s. Fuck Tim Hortons and fuck any company lobbying to get these people PR’s for low wages. We are on our way to turning into a South American nation.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/statistics-canada-says-population-growth-rate-in-2023-was-highest-since-1957
Source: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/03/time-to-break-the-glass-fixing-canadas-productivity-problem/
https://nowtoronto.com/news/weve-seen-cases-like-this-on-a-regular-basis-brampton-mayor-says-25-international-students-were-found-living-in-a-basement-and-now-hes-pushing-the-feds-to-provide-more-housing/
https://globalnews.ca/news/10262331/canadas-fertility-rate-record-low/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/data-jobs-unemployment-waterloo-region-1.7066533
https://betterdwelling.com/if-canadian-unemployment-is-so-low-why-all-the-long-job-lines/
For anyone who doesn’t believe me. What is the difference between a Brazilian favela and a Brampton one? In a Brazilian favela 20 people don’t share a basement and one bathroom. We do not have a labour shortage that was a lie. We do not need 1M international students to build homes that was a lie. They all went into Tim hortons stirring and Uber. We sure as hell do not need to give illegals and these students PR. They are of no use to Canada in any way shape or form. They are unskilled, culturally divisive. We share no similarities . Has anyone seen the ads people from India are putting up. Indian girl only Punjabi, vegetarian. In CANADA. Indian girl only Gujarati, vegetarian. What the fuck.
Then we have this. Illegals. People here illegally not only putting increased demand on our housing. We the Canadian people are paying for this. We paid $769M alone for this in 2023. Our Canadian tax dollars that that could’ve went to improving Canada you know building more hospitals, houses. Infrastructure spent on this shit.
https://torontosun.com/news/national/free-hotel-rooms-meals-for-refugee-applicants-reportedly-cost-769m-in-2023
Then we have illegals overstaying their visas in Canada with no health insurance, asking Canadians to cover their medical costs to the tune of $90,000 alone for this one man. What the fuck is going on in Canada. Enough is enough. His dream of a better life should include Mexico covering his medical bill because he’s a MEXICAN here illegally and a deportation back to his home country.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/05/09/uninsured-patient-major-hospital-bills-ontario-legs-amputated/
Here’s another slap in your faces and mine as well. Canadian newcomers will get free passes to parks as part of the new budget. We as Canadians including seniors the people paying for these people to get free access have to pay for access. I should’ve been an illegal. Whenever you’re all ready announce a date and time I’m there. Enough is fucking enough. Fuck these people from Justin Tredeau to Sean Fraser to Doug Ford to Pollievre and all the other premiers pushing for this amidst our current housing crisis. They have bankrupted the country and they’re trying to drive the Canadian middle class into feudalism and an early grave.
https://torontosun.com/news/national/federal-govt-sparks-outrage-for-giving-newcomers-free-access-to-canadas-parks

First Previous Wiki
"Praise his name," Keers said, greeting the departing prisoners one by one. They'd be heading back to their rebuilt homes, or the ones they normally inhabited, now that they were free. Many of them even waved at Skira's drones on the way out or took one of the normal drones with them as some sort of companion.
The yellow quadrupeds didn't object to it. Keers wondered about that, though she could see the appeal in both sides. The prisoners had come to rely on Skira a lot through their time on his planet, and they were an element of familiarity that would serve them well on their return to the Ratlatmil Republic. Or the Ratlatmil Protectorate, as it was now known. A stupid name since the Alliance wasn't 'protecting' them in any way.
It was an occupation. The Sevvi were no longer free, as they had no God Emperor to defend them. Only the supposed goodwill of the Alliance kept them out of eternal servitude now, and perhaps the Alliance's fear of a bad reputation in the galaxy. They'd pampered her with food and gifts like all the prisoners to try and make her forget it. But she could not, even if there were decent people within it. Keers' scowl grew colder.
"You know, frowning is bad for the facial muscles," Arjun said. The human boy who'd helped with their advocacy efforts was standing beside her in the traditional sleeveless shirt and shorts that most humans wore on Skira's planet due to its 'tropical' climate.
It was a combination of the words humid and warm for most purposes.
"Praise the God Emperor!" A prisoner gave her a salute, reminiscent of her rank as a Mind Assassin. Though she hadn't received such respect on Cradle due to her being female, it was nice that the other planets and moons the Republic had colonized had managed to break that oppressive culture.
All were free under the Emperor, no matter who they were.
"Praise his name," she repeated to another set of prisoners.
She turned toward him, deepening her expression.
"People do that when they're in prison."
"Yeah, but you're free. And all that Silver Gate stuff is over now, too. No one else will have to experience conversion to a Mind Assassin."
"Perhaps I should do as my namesake, to rid myself of your drivel."
"And a timeless friend?"
"You're hardly either."
"I think I qualify. Don't I, boys?" Arjun asked, fist-bumping one of her guards. The several larger male Sevvi surrounding her, several of whom she knew had an interest in her, started laughing.
"Yeah. Human friend!" One of them mimed throwing a rock, another inside joke Arjun had with them. Somehow, he'd managed to join their boy band, or friend group, or whatever. One of them had even called themselves part of Keers' harem, which was a shockingly terrible attempt at flirting that had resulted in him getting a 'mysterious' headache over the next week.
Ugh. She was even using human units now. She'd been fully converted. Her culture was wiped away, her Emperor dead, and for what?
"I could take you guys to a bakery I know," Arjun was saying. "They have some great treats. You'll get the basic income for every month you've been here, so you'll have some money saved up. Phoebe had made the system for you like your own banks, even if it's owned by China now."
"A human nation bought one of her banks?"
"Well, she sold off a ton of her assets. Probably some politics or something, but I don't care. They're keeping nearly all the same processes in place."
"Politics," one of them groaned. "The whole universe has them, huh?"
"Not the whole universe," Skira said through a drone. "Hiveminds naturally don't have them."
The man pointed at Arjun. "Oh yeah? Tell me, do they call Humanity something else now? Perhaps just the Artificial Hivemind? Or is there another word in there?"
"Yes, it's a hivemind," Skira said. "Though obviously not what I meant."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"You positive?"
"My ionic charge is actually slightly negative, so-"
The Sevvi chuckled loudly. "You're not so bad for an evil overlord, you know?"
"I don't do much evil, or much overlording," Skira said.
"All you do is run a concentration camp," Keers growled.
"Where you all are provided free food, water, air, and even entertainment, with no commitments except a single rehabilitation class for one hour every day? Let me guess, you wanted us to just release you immediately?"
"Well, yes. You can hardly call yourself moral if you don't."
"Maybe when a God Emperor declares war on you, and you're deciding what to do with the soldiers who surrendered, you can give them all that. Though I get the sense you'd just put a bullet in people's heads."
"It would be nicer, and better for their honor."
"What about those who want to see their families again? Who have wives, husbands, parents, and children? People die in war, but that's no excuse for abject cruelty. And considering your argument, I think I'm being quite fair with my accommodations. Of course, you can always renounce your new Alliance citizenship."
"No. But don't think what you have here is a good thing."
"I didn't say that. But prisons are things all societies have, unless they want to cease existing. Luckily for you, the Alliance had a path to invasion that was cheap and low-damage. Me. Anyone else, you all would have experienced far worse than a crashing ship on Cradle. Yes, more could have been done, but it's foolish to expect us to reach any further, considering how far we already reach. That said, if you all want to leave now, you can. You have no obligation to stay here."
"We're going with Arjun," one of the Sevvi said. "He's cool."
"Uh... I'm not sure that's a good idea. A lot of people still don't like you guys."
"Personal shields work wonders."
"But not miracles."
"True. That's what the God Emperor is for."
"He's dead."
"You don't know that."
"Planet crackers don't leave survivors."
"They usually don't. Maybe these ones did. We don't have a body, right?"
"Bodies are not able to resist forces powerful enough to blast continents into orbit."
"His was."
Arjun sighed. He looked at Keers, noticing her smirk before she hid it. "Well?" he asked.
"Fine," she agreed.
"Nice. Though we should probably stick to fringe areas. No bars."
"Why not?"
"Do you want to get into some argument, and have a drunk guy come up, be racist, and then get into a fight?"
"Sounds pretty fun actually! Let's go to a bar!"
"Can you even drink human drinks like that?"
"Ehh, we're of age. And if not, so what? Who's going to stop us?"
"The law, probably."
"It's a sad thing if your society prosecutes people who drink. The God Emperor's Grace is for all people to experience!"
"Is that a wine?"
"No," the Sevvi said. "It's what happens when we get drunk. Revelations, miracles, prophecies!"
"In other words, you trip out of your sufficiently sized minds."
"My mind is above average, thank you very much," he said.
Arjun chuckled. "Above average, huh? I doubt that."
"Oh yeah? Get me on that Dogfight Simulator game, and we'll see the power of my mind compared to yours!"
"It's not size that matters," Keers said. "It's how you use it. Plus, Nadro, you can't say much in either of the two departments on that."
"I've got a big brain, and a big heart, too," he said defensively.
"You mean an 'above average' heart?"
"Uh, I guess. If that's what you want."
"Guys, I'm not dating any of you. And no, I'm not going to change my mind."
"We like you as friends! And you like us as friends, otherwise you'd have told us to leave!"
"You're all just adorable fools, but not quality material."
"High-quality material is another word for pompous fools. Come on, Keers, let's have some fun. The human's culture is rich, and I know I'd like to ride out the Grace again!"
"Until the next morning when you'll be on a toilet for three hours."
"Well worth it," Nadro grinned. "Can we do it, Arjun?"
"Fine. But no fights."
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"Penny's poorly articulated point is made. We will either design a treaty now, or adjourn this meeting," Justicar said, staring down the infuriating form of his latest enemy, Elder Valisada. The smug Grand Fleet Commander was almost ignoring him, yet his eyes remained focused on their surroundings. He examined the dead bodies around them without a hint of concern. Obviously, in a virtual reality environment, the cost of such a thing was lower.
But Justicar had intended for Valisada to at least do his best to compensate him. And sure, he was setting the costs to be a little high... but that was as an additional punishment. He couldn't afford to look weak after an attack on his own planet.
Portions of Justicar's mind drifted to the ongoing offensives against the gangs of the Underground. A ripple of explosions near the evacuation zone had Justicar sending a contingent of Guides and one Corrector to the scene. It didn't call for any more of his attention now that only the fire departments and the police would be dealing with it from now on. Kashaunta spent most of their meeting so far doing something else. Her hologram was dead, unmoving in every way except for mostly random motions generated by a middling-quality VI.
Only Penny had shown genuine sorrow for the dead. It was the epitome of irony for an alien to care more about Sprilnav than the Elders, but here, Justicar was seeing that. And Valisada, at least, was supposed to be one of the good ones.
"I would agree on that front," Valisada said. "Though I do have pride, it will not be enough to jeopardize my position. Elder Kashaunta, I know you have mostly been silent during this meeting. But rest assured, I do not mean you or your allies in the Grand Fleet harm."
He turned to look at Penny.
"Nor do I seek to harm you, either. I can only hope that you gain a better understanding of the scope of plan you wish to undertake before actually doing so. If you believe you are fighting for all people, remember that the average person in this galaxy is a Sprilnav. At least see if you can improve their lives before tearing down the regimes you are offended by."
"I am not offended by any Sprilnav nations," Penny said. "I will not wade into that mess if I am not forced to. I am to fight injustice wherever I see it. Human slaves, Sprilnav slaves, any slaves, it doesn't matter. All are wrong, and all will end. I will end them myself."
Valisada gave Justicar a long look. Justicar understood it, but Penny was still young. She didn't know all there was to know about the way things were run.
"Your legacy currently stands as the catalyst for breaking the truce I had with the gangs," Justicar said. "What events will you add to that?"
"The end of slavery on Justicar, of course," Penny said. "I am happy to take your freed slaves and form a new nation away from your territory."
"And you back this, I presume?" Justicar asked Kashaunta.
"Yes," Kashaunta declared. "I will support their applications to citizenship under the Autonomous Peoples' Stars. However, they currently have Provisional Citizenship, which means that attacking them is not an act of war. It will remain this way until certain matters are resolved."
"Do not be vague," Penny chided. "What she means is the end of the gangs. I will continue my destruction of the Blue Moons, and then I will continue my attacks on the gangs in the Underground. I plan to get help from Phoebe on this task."
"She still will not be allowed in my networks," Justicar said. "She attacked one Elder, and I will not risk her attacking me, even if I do have adequate defenses. I will only say that the consequences for any unprovoked attack on me like you did to Azeri for the kidnapping will be highly severe, and should not be done if you value your life."
That AI is more dangerous than we know, if it is already capable of doing this much damage to a Grand Fleet, whether truly reactivated or only stocked with low-cost defense provisions.
"I understand, Elder Justicar," Penny said. "And Phoebe knows better."
"She obviously does not, seeing as I am having to tell you this risk."
"That is a product of your worry."
"And her actions," Justicar corrected. "Let's not pretend her attack on the 85th isn't the reason we're here at all."
Penny's side of the story wasn't the full one. Justicar knew the importance of ensuring that Valisada remained open to considering anything. If he wasn't, then he would be a more serious threat during and after the Judgment.
The efforts at fortification of the court were still ongoing. Thousands of new anti-ship weapons and specialized identity cards for all relevant personnel were on their way. Barriers of shields and psychic energy in equal fashion were being set up, while several siege bunkers were being stocked with ammunition.
He'd selected the location of the Judgment to be the building nicknamed the 'Fort Court' for its high-quality construction and defensive capacity. Thousands of Guides and nearly five Correctors made the facility their home, and the next few Judges, as well as High Judges, would also be on the case. Or maybe not. The organization was still being figured out. Using High Judges only would be preferred, and he was still deciding whether he would recuse himself from the trial.
"That was due to Azeri kidnapping my father."
"There may come a day when you have to choose him or the Alliance," Valisada warned. "You will know the right choice then."
"I might not," Penny admitted. "Though I suppose that before we end this meeting, I should ask you directly, Elder Valisada. Will you agree to a truce, with true binding stipulations?"
"For what purpose?"
"To prevent our forces from clashing again, obviously. With both Kashaunta and Justicar here, it would have sufficient standing for punishment if broken by either of us."
"And what is your standing to meet with me on that front, Penny Balica?" Valisada asked, standing imperiously.
"Champion of Humanity, Conceptual Cardinality, and as the Liberator. I also am a direct associate of Kashaunta." Penny stood as well. Justicar knew that most of those names were empty titles, though Penny still carried weight. Mainly, her conceptual power and psychic abilities were high for a non-Elder and extreme for an alien species.
"You back her statement?" Valisada verified with Kashaunta, who affirmed it.
"Right. I have a proposal for you, then. One year of non-interference, in exchange for you leaving Justicar's territory and Sprilnav space immediately when the Judgment is complete."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Surely I am not that great of a threat."
She was.
"That matters not," Valisada said. "That is the offer which stands. Accept or decline, for there will be no further ones."
Valisada handed her a list on a paper bearing a number of stipulations written on it in neat lines. Though they were not in a standard human language, Penny read it without even a pause to consider. They all waited as her eyes scanned the sheet once. Then again. Then three more times. She turned it over a final time, searching for fine print. Small puffs of psychic power flew from her fingers, and then she looked back up at the waiting Elders.
"I request a single alteration," Penny said. "On point 37, where you state that you would reserve interference in the Judgment to low-levels, I would request that you instead state 'These points apply to Elder Valisada and every individual employed within the 85th Grand Fleet or was employed in the 85th Grand Fleet in the past 13 billion Justicar years.
The signatories will not direct anyone, or direct anyone to direct anyone, whether any living creature, AI or not, to discuss, alter, or influence the decisions of any Sprilnav, regular or Elders, across any and all means of communication which can be accessed by Elders on Justicar or who are Judges, High Judges, or Correctors.
Violation of this point will result in a fine paid to Kashaunta Banking Solutions of a minimum of 100 trillion credits, with additional fines to be stipulated for damages and emotional distress of up to 10 quadrillion credits depending on the severity of the infraction.' I believe that would be more useful in ensuring non-interference. Otherwise, there is no point in having a treaty."
Kashaunta nodded, which pleased Justicar. It meant this would be over soon. She'd force him into it now. Or soon, if not now. Kashaunta's power was the bane of many of Justicar's allies and foes alike, and he was about to see a hint of it.
But new developments still caught his interest. The fact that Kashaunta was willing to use her power for Penny suggested that the human was more valuable than both she and Justicar knew. There was little sense in Kashaunta taking her more friendly attitude with Penny unless it was to coddle her until she was firmly in her camp.
But if so, Justicar could do nothing. He could not compare to her, and Kashaunta was sure to steal away any momentum he gained. Kashaunta likely would point Penny to the slavery the gangs facilitated to drive a wedge into the heart of any budding alliances.
"And if I do not agree to such a ridiculous stipulation?"
"It is perfectly reasonable of me to ask that you don't violate this through a loophole. Just as it is reasonable for Kashaunta and I to seek out blood if you do, as your Grand Fleet's jurisdiction is not in this system, and the outcome of the Judgment is not something you must concern yourself with. Though if you don't agree to this, we can continue to be enemies. I will treat you as an enemy in that case. I believe we can be acquaintances, but Grand Fleets are things I have learned the hard way not to trifle with."
Valisada scowled. Kashaunta stood up. "Perhaps we should apply additional pressure."
She glared at him. "Sign it, or I will cut your Grand Fleet and all who work at it out of my banking systems, and will subject you to steeper equipment costs."
"She is not worth that much."
"No, she is not," Kashaunta agreed. "She is worth more. And I will be making sure that the harvest is as rich as possible before I enter the field with my scythe."
Harvest, Justicar thought.
Is that why? Is Kashaunta planning on harvesting Conceptual Cardinality like the Progenitors seem to be?
Theoretically, the energy would be enough to turn a normal Elder into half of a Progenitor. But Kashaunta was an Engineer and had wealth the envy of the galaxy. Kashaunta could likely be a Progenitor in full, which was a level of power no Elders had reached for billions of years. After the Source war, only Nova was confirmed to know how to make more Progenitors.
"This is a risky move," Valisada growled. But everyone at the table knew he'd already lost.
"Such is the spice of life. What's the next billion years but drudgery without genuine stakes? Otherwise you could just break this agreement at your leisure. It's not like you're concerned about your reputation, given your lack of willingness to take a heavy claw with those who deserve it."
"I run my fleet as I see fit."
"And if you do not sign this agreement, which you yourself made, with only a single reasonable addition from Penny, I will do my best to ensure that you do not run it for much longer."
"You don't know who you are trifling with."
His voice trembled slightly.
"I do, Elder Valisada. I have a full 11 Grand Fleets I can bring to bear upon you, and nearly 50 more I can pay off to do the same. Money is power, and I could buy your entire family line, all 13 billion years of it, all 4 quadrillion full members of it, a million times over, at Justicar's rate for enslavement. You now have the most power you've had in your lifetime. Unfortunately for you, your power is new. Mine is ancient."
Valisada's narrowed eyes fixed upon Kashaunta's face, his jaws tighter than Justicar had ever seen them. For a long time, they stood there, glaring at each other.
Penny started examining the virtual reality with small puffs of psychic energy again, this time emerging from her nose. Hints of conceptual energy emerged as well, but they were too small for Justicar to properly capture and analyze without equipment.
As the growing tension reached an almost painful degree, Kashaunta took out a communicator, slowly moving her claws to its screen. When Valisada still didn't move, Kashaunta tapped it.
"Hello. May I discuss a matter with the Galactic Banking Manager?"
Her voice was sweet, but Justicar and Valisada both noticed a hint of malice in it. Valisada started looking a lot more nervous while Kashaunta pretended she couldn't tell.
"He's in a meeting," another voice on the line said, with far less seniority in its tone. Justicar almost laughed at how small it sounded, but now was not the time. Meanwhile, Penny continued to look glad. Was it because she'd been worried Kashaunta would have limits to how far she'd go to back her up?
Or was it a lack of trust or a recent argument? Whatever the case, Penny was nearly radiating gratefulness. Kashaunta tossed her an odd look before looking back at the communicator.
"I'm the Queen."
Technically, she did have that title, though she rarely used it. Being rich and an Elder was usually enough for her to get what she needed. The voice on the other end paused, perhaps to process her voice to detect any irregularities that would suggest coercion or falsification.
"...What message will you pass-"
"Fine," Valisada growled, taking back the paper. His claw moved toward it.
"Ah-ah," Penny said. "Add the point I said."
Valisada let out a long sigh and did so. He then signed the treaty. Penny looked it over one last time, and then she signed it also. Her finger morphed into some sort of writing instrument which smeared ink onto the paper in neat lines. Given that they were in a virtual reality, this was possible, though hardly necessary.
Psychic energy was drawn from both of them and into the 'paper' in the virtual reality. Justicar used specialized machines to imprint the psychic energy into a few hundred exact copies of the treaty, with orders for his people to distribute them among the necessary parties. Some would head off to other Grand Fleets, some to various nations, and some directly to the desks of Elders who hadn't been named in millennia. Power brokers the galaxy over, and even a few in the Primary Galaxy, would soon receive proof of treaty.
It was a major accomplishment. A treaty with an Elder, one as high as Valisada and backed by both Justicar and Kashaunta, was no small thing. For any alien to sign one with such high declarations of confidence attached would shift the paradigm yet again. In yet another small way, the rest of the galaxy gained legitimacy, with the Alliance and Penny gaining the lion's share. It would not undo ancient rivalries and suspicion, but it would open many more avenues for the Alliance to access if it was smart about it.
Perhaps Valisada's resistance to signing it was due to his backers' recognition of what it would mean.
Penny and Kashaunta had won, and now Valisada would be out of the picture. More realistically, he would be further away while he figured out how to circumvent his own treaty. Treaties were the lifeblood of Sprilnav high society, so he couldn't outright violate one, especially as a Grand Fleet Commander, and especially not with him and Kashaunta on the observing ends. Without backing, no treaty could survive.
And one did not trifle with Kashaunta.
But every treaty was backed either by severe penalties economically, or outright military attacks. Treaty breakers didn't last long, and often, people would take runs at them to raid the resources they had. Justicar had arbitrated many of those cases himself when they were high-profile enough, as had his High Judges a million times over.
Justicar and Kashaunta both received copies of it.
Kashaunta smiled. "It looks like things have proceeded properly."
"The message?"
"Tell the Galactic Banking Manager that I'll be raising his pay by 8.5%."
"Elder Kashaunta?"
"Oh, relax, I can afford it. I just had a number in mind, you know. Also tell him I'm sending his wife an extra 85 billion credits for their trust fund. That's all."
She put away the communicator, and they all sat back down.
"Must you rub it in?" Valisada asked.
"Will you adhere to the treaty?"
"Obviously."
"Then this will be all for now," Kashaunta said. "Thank you for making the right choice. As a bonus, you can now expect a 30% discount on items in the Grand Fleet Psychic Defense and Clandestine Communications Catalog."
"30%!?"
"Yes," Kashaunta replied. "For the next year. I expect that to be enough time to make your purchases, yes? I would never harm a paying customer."
"We're done here, then?" Justicar asked.
"We're done," Kashaunta and Penny agreed.
"We're done," Valisada said. "Goodbye."
He left the meeting. Justicar closed it down, returning to his main body to focus on preparations for the Judgment. He looked at the gradually narrowing list of candidates for the Judge positions and then ticked the box to only consider High Judges. 50 High Judges appeared.
He added more criteria, and the number shrunk to 20. Finally, he ticked the box that ranked them based on their bias scores, and a recent lineup of corroborating cases appeared under them. He raised the threshold until only 11 High Judges were left.
He pulled Tassidonia out of the search.
And that left just 10 High Judges.
"Check suitability scores for a high-profile case dealing with an alien species against a Sprilnav Elder," Justicar ordered. A hundred VIs went to the task. They kept churning away for nearly a whole day.
"What are you doing, Justicar?" a new voice asked next to his body. He turned to look at Progenitor Indrafabar. His tail waved like it was in the wind, and thin bands of lightning raced across his skin.
"No."
"Why not? I'm a High Judge too."
"Only by a flawed procedure."
"And I went through the subsequent re-certification tests," Indrafabar said. "Even if it's only been a few million years, so what? I hold the rank. And I am uniquely suited to identifying true and false digital evidence, which is likely to present a large role in this trial."
"If you wish to join, we will do this a different way," Justicar said. "But I will not bend the rules for you. You will be entered into the bias tests."
"As you wish, Justicar."
"And I will change the trial format to Trial by Majority, then. One dissenting opinion will not be enough for dismiss either."
The list of High Judges expanded back to 20, though this was a somewhat different set than the previous twenty to account for the bias rankings. Justicar added Indrafabar into it, though he also added himself. Indrafabar's eyes flashed with interest. The Progenitor actually looked pleased with him, like Justicar had done what he'd wanted all along. Maybe he had, but Justicar would let up now.
"Interesting. So you will now be a Judge on the court?"
Justicar clacked his jaws, looking at the list gradually sorting itself as the VIs processed all the necessary data going back millions of years. Remarks, special parameters, and information were also factored in. Indrafabar was merely listed as an Elder and High Judge in the records, which Justicar had done specifically to avoid acknowledging his unique status.
And knowing the strength of that status, Justicar had no choice but to participate.
"To counterbalance the massive sway you hold, yes."
"Very well. I relish the sight of my scores."
When they returned, Justicar's score was 9th, and Indrafabar's was 7th.
"Well then. We can begin soon."
"No," Justicar said. "I don't care how much power you have, I will have protections around the court. And they will be active and on site before the Judgment begins. That is final."
I can't let him destroy the Judgment, Justicar thought. I'll have to step in if he goes rogue.
He was obviously here for a reason, but Justicar would root out his agenda if possible. The Progenitor could never be outright denied with his influence, but Justicar could stonewall him. That would also mean a discussion with the rest of the High Judges on the case now. They'd already gotten the notification when he finalized it, but this was far more serious than he'd feared. Progenitors didn't just take potentially weeks out of their time for nothing. Justicar stared at Indrafabar's tail.
Tails were the only limb a Progenitor was allowed to have. That made them easy to identify, for all who saw them. And the punishments for illegal gene modifications or biological implants to get anything near a tail were laughably extreme. But as such, they were a sign of immense power, in both the Primary and Secondary Galaxies. Indrafabar waved it again, seemingly enjoying the worry undoubtedly plastered on Justicar's face.
"Very well, High Judge Justicar. I respect your wishes, and also that you didn't give yourself an arbitrary rank."
"High Judge Indrafabar," Justicar said. "Know this. You are a High Judge, but do not think that will allow you to trample over the rule of law. Your word will not count for more than anyone elses. If you are in the minority opinion on this case, your side will lose. It does not matter who you are, as a High Judge, you stand no higher than the rest of us. When you are a High Judge, you are not a Progenitor. I expect you to clarify such to those who ask, and to do so again at the main trial. Lastly, I will receive a full report from you, written by claw, on your reasons for joining this case, in 2 days."
"Then I will want a full report from you with the same, also written by claw."
"It will be done. Go now."
Indrafabar left, disappearing in a quick portal. Somehow, Justicar could sense Fate laughing at him.

Greetings my darlings.
Forgive me for a delay but I was hit by a SHITSUNAMI and barely survived.
But the one-shot is here now. And I hope you enjoy it.
My thanks to editors: Candiman, NinjaKing and Flikmaster
First Previous Next
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She opened her eyes. It hurt. The light was blinding. Her entire body ached. Her mouth and throat were dry and rough. She looked around, memories slowly returning as she realized where she was.
Commonwealth hospital. She would recognize their architecture anywhere. Over the years of her service as ambassadorial guard, the style grew on her.
Her thoughts changed course, once again, when she realized something.
She had lost the duel and was now in the hospital.
A former Death’s Head actually lost. To a male of all things. Le’lia let out a quiet sigh. She would be the laughingstock of the entire military when the news reached her sisters in uniform. Not that she cared much. She guessed that this would be the end of her career either way.
She started moving parts of her body, testing her reaction speed and strength.
Weakened and slow. No wonder. That Human trashed her quite hard, and combat drug shock probably didn’t help either. She cursed silently as she sat up.
She had warned that damn noble about the dangers of keeping her combat stim implant operational. Not to mention that cheap father-fucker wouldn’t let her test it regularly, because of the costs of combat stims. Not that her patron would allow her to replace the supply regularly, either.
Enough money to hire an ex-Death Head. Not enough to keep her operational on 100%.
She turned her attention from her own body to the room once more, and froze.
The Human was looking at her through the window of her room. She didn’t notice him until now. How long had he stood there? Her mind, still recovering from a long period of sleep, struggled to comprehend the data coming to it from all directions. To her own surprise, the Human smiled and raised a hand in greeting. She blinked and returned a gesture. He pointed at the door and raised one eyebrow.
Was he asking if he could come in?
Le’lia tilted her head slightly, before nodding.
Samuel Carlin walked in and closed the doors behind him.
“Good morning,” he said casually, speaking in her language with only a small accent.
“Good morning,” Le’lia answered, her voice cracking under her dry throat and weakened state.
She blushed, embarrassed by the sound that escaped her mouth, but Samuel didn’t seem to mind. He grabbed a bottle of water that was stored in her room, opened it and passed it to her without as much as a word.
Le’lia gave him an appreciative nod, before drinking and letting out a sigh of relief.
At the moment she sated her thirst, Samuel sat down on one of the chairs and remained silent. She eyed him with caution. After all, he managed to defeat her. Not a small feat. Not just for a male, but in general. She was chosen as a bodyguard of a noble for a reason.
“Why are you here?” She asked finally.
“Just… wanted to talk,” Samuel answered after a moment. “There are no people like you and me in this building.” In response, she raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Ex-special forces,” he clarified
She almost snorted, but managed to keep cool. “It would be weird if they were. We are a rare breed,” she answered smoothly.
“True. But I mean in a more specific way. You and I are ex-special forces who ended up as guards for diplomats who use us for their own ends,” he spoke without venom or even regret. Just… in a monotone voice of stating a boring fact.
Le’lia shrugged. “We are soldiers. A resource. They don’t tell us that during training, but our role is to be used and spent. Better to be a guard to an asshole diplomat than to crawl through blood and mud.”
“Ain’t that true,” Samuel let out a chuckle.
They sat in silence once again.
It was… oddly comforting.
They were beings that enjoyed the silence. The silence was a total opposite from what they were made for. The sound of guns, the screaming, explosions. Moments of chaos, cut by long periods of silence.
Silence that promised only more chaos. A growing tension. And yet… there was comfort in this silence.
A note of hope… a promise that silence will reign forever.
But it never did.
“Where did you serve?” He asked.
Le’lia tilted her head. “You wouldn't know.”
“Neither would you,” he countered.
“I know you served on Earth,” she half-joked.
A shadow passed on Samuel’s face. He didn’t like that answer. Not at all.
“And what does it tell you?” Samuel asked back. “What terrain? What foe? Huh?”
His tone made her angry. She read through data Humans released publicly. Only source of information she had access to. Officially at least. She suspected that her former boss knew more, seeing her reaction to the information that Humans were showing up in Commonwealth space, but if the embassy had data on Humans, she didn’t have enough clearance to see it. But it didn’t matter. The data Humans supplied themselves was more than enough.
“You fought other Humans,” she countered. “That’s all I need to know. A species that wars with itself and lacks the ability to unite for a greater purpose, is nothing new to the Imperium. We have saved dozens of species like yours from destroying themselves,” she spoke with renewed conviction. “That’s the great mission of the Imperium. To save the people of the galaxy.”
She spoke with clarity of purpose and conviction.
And Samuel…?
Samuel laughed at that. He laughed loudly and unkindly. It was as much a sound of mockery of her ideas as his own species. A bitter sound of resentment.
“Death is sometimes preferable to servitude,” he answered coldly. “And that’s what your imperium really wants. Not to save people. But to make them their servants.”
She blinked. “That’s ludicrous,” she tried to dismiss him.
“Is it?” Samuel asked, leaning back in his chair. “Tell me. What makes us who we are?”
Le’lia furrowed her brow. What kind of question was that?
“I don’t think I understand,” she started.
The Human’s face twisted into an expression of such bitterness and resentment, that it made her blood run cold. This wasn’t the face of a predator she faced in a duel. This was something else. Something more concrete, hard and unmoving.
“It’s a simple question, soldier,” Samuel’s voice was colder now. “And the answer is just as simple. Our history, culture, tradition, beliefs. That makes us into who we are. If we lose this, we are nothing. Slaves. Servants. Second class citizens.”
She shook her head, grimacing back with an expression of pity towards his ignorance.
“What if the culture and tradition you speak of leads to self-destruction?” She asked back. “You can’t possibly believe that death of an entire species and their culture is better than-”
“This is exactly what I’m saying,” Samuel answered with a voice hard as iron, cutting her off.
She barked a humorless laugh.
“Then you are mad,” Shil’vati countered. “Life matters. So many species live because we saved them from themselves. Without the Imperium, this galaxy would be populated by graveyards.”
It was Samuel’s turn to back a mocking, humorless laugh.
“You act as if your Imperium doesn’t kill them,” he shot back.
“We don’t! Didn’t you hear-” she started to say, before being cut off again.
“No. I don’t speak of something as simple as killing a body. I’m talking about killing their soul,” his words hit her and made her silent. “Tell me… all those species that you speak of. The races you saved. What happened to their culture? Their faith? Their art? Are they still there? Or were they consumed by the Imperium?”
Le’lia opened her mouth, but closed it to think of how to word an answer. She knew it, of course. She has seen it all. Species venerating her Goddesses and her Empress. Purple buildings. Her language replaced their own.
“Cohesive culture is important to keep Imperium stable,” she tried to sidestep the question.
“That’s not an answer to my question,” Samuel shot back, looking at her with sharp eyes, before blinking. “Good lord… you saw it didn’t you?” Le’lia clenched her fists. “You saw how a soul of a species was killed, and you didn’t even notice, did you?”
Le’lia looked away and remained silent. Yes. She has seen it all… personally. There was a reason why she wasn’t a Death Head anymore. Samuel leaned closer, arms crossed across his chest.
“Well?” He prompted.
Le’lia sighed and nodded, for some reason not wanting to lie.
“I saw something like that. Years ago. I was part of the liberation of Vau’la. A small world. Backwater. Expansion region where Imperium interests clash with those of Consortium. Vau’la was populated by U’las. A small reptilian species. Their civilization was split between great city-states that fought for resources and faith. The world would be of little consequence if not for gas giants in their home system. Perfect refueling station for our fleets. Good stellar position to ensure security of mining colonies in the region. We were sent in to secure the planet, before the Consortium tried doing the same,” she began with a dry tone.
“Liberation was easy. Barely worth deployment, really. The best weapons they had were primitive crossbows. To them… we were like goddesses… and soon we became them,” she shook her head. “The cult of their War Goddess grew, seeing us as her messengers. We became angels. Holy messengers of her will. Every death we enacted was justified. Every person killed by our hands was a heretic and blasphemer deserving to die…” She let out a deep sigh. “The Command, of course, encouraged this. Liberation was far easier with the support of the cultists…” she fell silent for a moment.
Samuel rubbed his eyes and shook his head with disgust.
“You were a divine being to them…” he spat. “How did it feel? To be seen as an instrument of your Empress-Goddess?”
Le’lia was silent. Ashamed and haunted by what she has seen.
“At first… it was empowering. To… be loved in such a way was something I never experienced. The adoration, the fame, the respect. Not something that someone like me had experienced before,” she said quietly. “Then we found out about my sisters who abused this trust. The kidnappers, rapists… pedophiles,” her face twisted with rage. “U’las were happy to give their sons and daughters to messengers of the gods… blind to the fate of their children. When information about what really was going on reached the populace… it started a bloody holy war between rebels and believers. I saw children murder their parents to show their devotion and loyalty towards their Goddess and her messengers,” she looked down on her hands. “Consortium never showed up. In fact, it turned out that the whole threat of Consortium expansion was fabricated by one of the noble houses leading the liberation. All that death… just to satisfy the greed of the few.”
Samuel was sitting there, silent and she was sure he would curse her, but instead he started talking.
“I was a soldier of Israel. My tribe lived in exile for centuries. When we finally returned to our land, it was already home to completely different people… as one could predict, this led to conflicts… a lot of conflicts,” he sighed loudly. “My people suffered much in our history. Because of a different faith and customs, we were seen as outsiders wherever we went. We were blamed for plagues, betrayals, accused of cannibalism and cultist behavior. From perspective of your own faith, my tribe many times was depicted as servants of Deep Minder himself,”
Le’lia remained silent, but frowned in confusion. This was something she couldn’t comprehend. How could a member of the same species see another one of their own kind as something naturally evil?
“And we suffered for this unjustly. We were hunted. Burned alive. Exiled from each home built. Made into slaves… we were even the main target of one of the most infamous genocides in Human history…” He said bitterly.
“Holocaust,” she responded quietly, remembering the name from her research.
“Indeed. 6 million people killed in an industrial act of genocide and hatred,” Samuel agreed with a nod of his head. “In exchange for our suffering, we were given land that belonged to somebody else at the time… and this time… it was our chance to play the role of a hunter.”
Le’lia blinked in surprise and Samuel smiled bitterly.
“You won’t find this in official data and history… but the simple fact is, that all of the trauma my people experienced fused with the land we now own. All we sacrificed. All the suffering. It had to mean something. It meant getting our homeland back. Which meant… that in order to keep that land our own… to ensure that we won’t become exiles once again… that we won’t be hunted…” his voice trailed to silence as his eyes glossed over with dark memories. “We had to do everything to keep that land our own.”
Samuel leaned back in his chair.
“I’ve done much to do just that. I’ve killed a lot of people. Both wretches who cared only for their own gain. Madmen who wished to cause my people only pain… and a lot of people, who wholeheartedly believed that they were the Hunted… and I’ve proven them right the same moment I ended their lives,” he let out a bitter sigh. “And so the circle of violence and hatred keeps on rolling along. Maybe this isn’t the nature of all species in the galaxy… but it sure is for Humanity…” he looked up at her with conviction. “And that is exactly why your Imperium won’t win this war.”
“Excuse me?” She turned to him in confusion.
“Do you realize how much blood is soaked into the Earth? For how many petty reasons we were killing each other? How much we sacrificed for the sake of something as stupid as a piece of ground which belonged to our grandparents?” He asked with a sad smile. “Do you realize what it means for your Imperium to be our enemy? To attempt liberation?”
Le’lia remained silent, as Samuel continued.
“For us, this liberation means that you want to take everything we paid for in blood. To level what was built upon countless corpses to the ground. To make a mockery of all the pain and grief and rage and pride… that means that every person that values their world even a little bit… will stand against your empire,” he finished boldly.
“Even if that was true, your people have no hope for victory. You are outnumbered and outgunned. With void supremacy, Earth won’t be able to resist,” Le’lia countered. “What can your planet have to stop orbital bombardment?”
Samuel shook his head, and she was almost certain he was agreeing with her before he spoke. “Outnumbered? Are you sure about that?” He asked.
She almost scoffed.
“Imperium’s population is far greater than that of Earth,” she said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Oh I am aware of that… but how big will your Liberation Force be?” He asked with a smile.
Le’lia frowned. “I have no idea… if I had to make a calculated guess I would put the initial force at something around… 25 maybe 30 million in terms of marines alone,” she answered. “With a world that large and with population of that size, Imperium would need a lot of boots on the ground to keep the peace after the landings.” She answered casually.
“True. But that makes you still outnumbered. With military forces alone there would be at least 2 soldiers for each 1 of your own,” he smiled.
“Our technological advantage is more than enough to deal with that,” Le’lia answered with clear confidence. “I don’t see what other choice Earth has other than surrender.”
“What about mass training and preparation for long term insurgency and resistance all over the world?” Samuel said casually. “What if each of those 60 million of our soldiers would become an instructor for a resistance cell. Each with a dozen fighters. Suddenly Earth has 720 million insurgents spread all around the globe. More than 28 to 1 advantage on our side.”
Le’lia looked straight into his eyes with disbelief and shock.
“You can’t be serious,” she tried.
“Can’t I?” Samuel asked with a smirk. “I was on the other side of this equation. I fought against resistance movements and insurgencies all my bloody life. I can assure you, it’s not a pleasant experience,” he leaned back in his chair. “How many peasant marines will have to die, before you Imperium will realize that Earth isn’t worth the blood spent to hold it?”
This time it was Le’lia time to snort and smile grimly.
“They don’t care,” she answered without a doubt in her voice. “The nobles will keep throwing bodies at the problem until it goes away. If what you say is true… this will be a very long war.”
They fell silent once more.
“You should retire,” Samuel said after a long moment.
“What?” Le’lia looked back at him.
“For all the faults of my people… all people… I can’t sit this one out,” Samuel stood up from his seat. “Not after what you told me.”
She frowned, not understanding what he meant.
“What are you talking about?” She asked.
“You said that nobles don’t care about common soldiers dying to secure their goals…” he smiled. “So Earth will have a need for a specialist who will be able to get to those nobles and thin out their numbers. Make sure that their fear of death will be greater than their greed.”
She blinked. “And you? You want to be that person?”
“Among others,” he answered. “That’s why I propose that you retire. Because when I get to work, they will call for their best to keep them safe… and it would be a damn shame If I would have to kill you.”
Le’lia remained silent as Samuel turned around and simply left.
There was no goodbye.
No good luck or any kind of closure.
It felt anti-climatic.
Like… something grand should have happened here.
But nothing did.
It was just a soldier asking another soldier to step away so they wouldn’t have a need to kill each other.
After all, Le’lia said it herself.
This wasn’t a war of common Shil’vati.
It was a war of Imperial Nobles.
Planned by them, for them and led by them.
The few mighty of the Imperium were about to declare war against many common people of Earth.
Le’lia almost laughed when she realized that if but a fraction of them are half the person Samuel was… the Imperium won’t stand a chance.

Executioner: butt of jokes in tos1 and a true neutral evil, has been reworked into tos2 to potentially target anyone and with a torment function that can screw over both sides.
Honestly I don’t mind NEs (exe/jest/doom) having the potential to hurt both town/coven, but I think NP should be added to the game with the same “eliminate the town” concept.
I know a proposed/BTOS2 rework is that exe will have a town target start of game and instead of torment no trials will happen the next day. I think torment can be really cheesy (3f0 day 2 off of “sheriff n1 sus, guilty this or you’re a liberal”), but I like the idea of a post win effect.
No trial the next day sounds too harsh/anti town so I would change it to one trial a day, additionally choosing roles that reveal is automatically blotted out N1.
So tldr: - Exe can target evil or town still - Exe will allow only one trial the next day if they successfully hang their target. - N1, Exe can not target revealing roles (mayor, pros, marshal, dep) - as a replacement for point 2, I could have exe punish town more if they successfully kill an evil, and punish town less if they successfully kill a town.
What are your thoughts?
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Here's how to fix the Netherlands:

• illegalize extreme BDSM (first),
  
• legalize prostitution (already legal)
  
• especial unhackable cameras for sex-workers,
  
• the punishment for beating a woman be life sentence,
  

Extreme bdsm, as in, face-slapping, punching, anything that causes traumatic-brain-injury, concussions, (which can be detected in MRI tests for court trials), and any other permanent bodily injury.
That would make it the only place in the world where women be safe and free. The only place where:

• domestic violence is illegal (for real, not just on paper)
  
• sex-work is legal,
  
• abortion is legal.
  

To further limit domestic violence in households (not brothels), some optional things that can be implemented (which I highly advice) are:

• every registered home be laiden with unhackable ring-sig/multi-sig encrypted cameras with microphones sensitive to grid-line emf for timestampping,
  
• no court fees for women filing for domestic-violence cases (or any),
  
• no repercussions for falsely filing a case against your man (to reduce the fear of filing a case; the most that could go wrong is a mere No-Contact restrain order),
  
• if verifiably proven (as in, camera recordings, etc), suspect gets life sentence and forced labour with which the prison gets funded and the victim gets compensated,
  
• if not proven for certain, at least a restrain/no-contact order whereby the suspect cannot enter the towns/microstates the accuser happens to be in.
  
• suspicion-until-proven-not-guilty; the onus to prove one's innocence be upon the accused, the male, so men have every incentive to carry body cameras etc, to defend against false rape charges.
  
• everyone's past, past suspicions, trials, all such data, be on a website. If you can make a society safe for women, the good men would follow in like bees. Thus, catering to women's defence needs is very (Misesian) entrepreneurially advantageous. Afterall, the primary purpose of a society is DATING; keeping women safe in such dating/matchmaking game be your highest priority. There's many an evolutionarily evolved trait that keep children safe anyway, but fewer for women, especially in a non-tribal society with hookup culture wherein a psychopath has every incentive to harm/kill his date and run away. It's a surprise that that isn't more prevalent... Societies are playing with fire; they have no clue how deep in trouble they are. Reform or lose the game to psychopaths; much like the evol sexual-stretegy simulation studies on rat societies lol.
  

+++
Your current law code is lame and hypocritical; as per the current laws on racism, to highlight IQ differences between races, to emphasize empathy/psychopathy prevalence differences between racial groups, is racist! And yet, the very notion of a-law-against-racism rests on the belief that races do exist, that there's skin-coloskull-shape/genetic differences between so called "races" they aim to protect; how could the state accept that there be such differences but illegalize for such differences to be discussed and admitted? Utterly ridiculous!
Your current judicial framework is a joke. A client could beat the hell out of a prostitute (just short of killing her) and he has more-or-less legal impunity! A wife-beater gets a mere month is prison! What sense does that make? To believe that, somehow, in a closed cell, locked in for a few months, playing GTA, banging pussies (sex-therapy with prostitutes, for sex offenders; as dumb as it sounds; wouldn't be surprised if UN says the right to sex is every human's basic fundamental human right lol), free food in the prison, somehow makes a psychopath a sunflower, is beyond my comprehension. One would have to be utterly braindead to believe so. Another hypothesis: the dutch politicians and justices are NOT braindead, they're just a little too psychopathic themselves, and being so, concerned for themselves and their own future wife-beating sons. Facts.
Your king is too empathetic and naive, very like the many white people all over the globe who believe in humanity, who believe that every human is deep down a fluffy furry, and to prove so to the world (or themselves), who venture into dangerous territory in the Africas or Arabian towns, only to be lynched by the mobs (many such cases in the news)...
The dutch people who want diversity can go live in Africa or the UAE; in the name of diversity, to advocate that others be put in danger for one's own naivety, is not just foolish, but downright wrong.
The dutch people who have big hearts, who wish to help the desperate immigrants, go do so with your own money. To advocate that others' money be stolen to be donated to one group, is no philanthropy. Theft in the name of charity is just that: THEFT.
+++
To fix the Netherlands in the long run:

• do away with the laws on racism; keep only the laws against physical harm; words are words; one should only be prosecuted for actions, not threat by words, not threat to act, only action itself. At best, you could exile those deemed threatening (in the short run), but not imprison.
  
• do away with the laws against discrimination in the private sector; an entrepreneur who doesn't hire an equally talented woman/newcomeimmigrant/black for a job, would lose his revenue to the one who does; in the free market, wrong biases just aren't solvent, just aren't efficient and profitable. Such feminist equal-pay laws do more harm to women then good; no one wants to hire women anymore, especially for technical roles... Only misogynists pass such laws. Facts.
  

END WELFARE SOCIALISM:

• no free healthcare for nobody,
  
• no free housing for nobody,
  
• no state-funded pension for nobody,
  
• no child-care subsidies for nobody,
  
• etc.
  

+++
PRIVATIZE THE STATE:

• with defence (international and internal) as the only service of the state of Netherlands, privatize such an entity; privatize the Dutch Defence Agency.
  
• every citizen gets one (or ten, or thousand; whatever denomination) equal shares of the private entity Dutch Defence Agency.
  
• inhabitants of the netherlands be required to pay a head-tax, a fixed tax/payment per person, for the services of international defence (radars, nukes, anti-nukes, iron dome, etc).
  
• people be free to sell their shares in the open market. And no, it doesn't make you susceptible to foreign interference/meddling in dutch statehood, on the contrary: state-privatization flips-the-table overnight, making all one's enemies into one's extended friends. Not only is the amount of money needed to become the majority shareholder quite high, but, upon putting so much money in, (an amount of money only sensible people get to have), any sensible actor is incentivized to not mess up and keep peace in one's stock, not hijack one's earnings, and just reap the dividents. Very like the Bitcoin/Monero POW incentives for major-miner.
  
• no trade tarrifs. Trump thinks an equal trade-tax for countries which charge a trade-tax with the US, is based. It's not, but it's better than most's beliefs, so okay. But, if one is to be serious, then no, Austrian Economists would never support such a scheme, for the simplest of reasons: selfishness. If Trump (and any country) is to be selfish enough, they should realize that zero-trade-tarrifs for all countries is the thing that makes one prosper, regardless of how much they be taxing us. Mises has said it a million times: war begins when trade ends. So no trade tarrifs whatsoever. Physical/existential security be the only service and concern of a state. Leave it to the dutch people (and private source-auditing firms) to not buy goods from products sourced from child-labouRussians/whatever. The scandenavian madness of One-Family, with the president as the country's daddy, is ludicrous! People are grown ups; they can make their own decisions.
  
• replace the ill notion of democracy with shareholder democracy.
  
• the CEO/president, in power only as long as they stay popular with the state's shareholders.
  

+++
PRIVATIZE THE TOWNS:

• every town becomes a gated-community (with or without actual physical gates).
  
• every home-owner of such a town gets an equal number of shares in that community-stock (Citystate of Amsterdam, for example).
  
• dressing code (public nudity allowance), pollution/negative-externality laws (some with very strict noice-pollution laws, some lenient and affordable ones), traffic rules (bicycle exceptions, lanes, etc), architecture code and rules, all be the liberties of the city-state to decide upon.
  
• the only punishment a city-state be able to give people be: monetary fine, deducted from the prepaid lock-in fund, or, when it gets empty, eviction/exile from the city-state, free to move in to some cheaper lenient one in the Netherlands or elsewhere.
  
• no city-state could "imprison" people. A city-state which forbids abortion, cages pregnant women, preventing them from access to healthcare, would be thus unconstitutional.
  
• every city-state-resident be required to pay a policing-tax/fee; more protected towns have higher fees. Towns with more immigrants, requiring a well-funded police, for a bigger police force, to keep the people safe, would thus be more expensive, more inefficient, and it would thus only be a matter of time that the low-risk-tolerance Dutch populace segregate and buy up the city-stocks and even buy up the properties of the selling-immigrants-in-need-of-money-to-pay-their-state-tax-or-get-exiled, and vote to exile the immigrant population from their towns. All entrepreneurial. Mises knew it all in advance; he knew that the supreme notion of private-property was complete and enough, that it needed no exceptions for such immigration problems. Leftist liberals who are blindly pro-immigration shouldn't call themselves liberals; they're merely leftists, and they're wrong. In the liberal framework of private property, immigration is NEVER a problem that even needs addressing! Hail Von Mises. Ultimately, it all boils down to the entrepreneurial utilitarian benefits of lower policing costs and at a much higher safety-level that come from barring violent races from one's towns, benifits that ultimately pale the compromises in cheap-labour (that the immigrants provide) or the slightly higher shipping costs of buying such products of cheap-labour from a thousand miles afar. The idiots in the dutch parliament and the businessmen who pretend like without all this cheap labour their economy would collapse and they'd be in losses, are misguiding. Shipping costs are already low enough; the inefficiencies of slavery over willful employment and low shipping costs is what defunded slavery; you would be better off buying goods from Africa than having Africans in your own country making those goods at your doorstep. Instead, free trade cross-borders should be encouraged and cherished.
  

As for oppression and foreign wars, if you can't help a people defend their lives and territory by military and financial aid (funded from private charities), don't pretend to help by taking in refugees either, most of whom are, by the very definition of how things work, often the worst of the stock; the average good empathetic african/muslim/indian doesn't want to loot away someone's prosperous country. The good ones never even cry for help to begin with, and most of them are within your borders already: the native Dutch too afraid to express their fear of immigrants; heed to their cries and help them first instead.
+++
REFURNISH DOMESTIC SPACES:

• cameras in every registered home; totally very economical, heck, a billionaire could fund it all out of his own pocket. Mass survillience isn't a concern because it's not impossible to design a black-box encryption protocol with multi-signature encryptions which can only be decoded if all the parties (you, your wife, and the state) provide their keys to decode the video feed. Zero-knowledge-sharing sorcerry whereby keys don't get disclosed to any party either.
  
• the right to discriminate. It's the home-owner's right to dictate who gets to visit inside and who doesn't, whether he/she discriminates on the basis of skin colour or hair colour. In fact, the right to discriminate is as important as the right to free speech, and mutually dependent on each other. One has every right to discriminate who one marries based purely on their race! One has every right to befriend people based on their race. And so does an employer when hiring. To say otherwise and pass anti-discrimination laws is no less discriminatory; just discriminatory in a certain cunning state-sponsered way, for a select few's advantage. An argument can be made that, given how many white women only date big black guys, such anti-discrimination laws would hurt them so-called minorities as much, if not more.
  
• corporal punishment of children (or women/men) be illegal.
  
• no-caging law. One cannot cage someone in one's house without their consent. So, husband denying wife her freedom to abort be first degree violence, no different from switching the button on an electric chair, or pulling the trigger of a gun.
  
• gun laws up to the private property's owner. No home owner would wany guests to carry guns inside, prolly. As for city-state's rules on gun-ownership inside households, that's a purely entrepreneurial matter:
  

fines for owning a gun, disincentivizing gun ownership, has built-in unenforcability; criminal always carries a gun (which can even be 3d printed at home these days), but overall, fewer guns in the public, so fewer rage fights becoming lethal, less money needed to manage the populace for the police, so lower tax/fee,
vs
legal to own a gun in wild spaces, illegal in private spaces (like malls, homes, schools) as per private wish, with metal checks; more guns, higher tax to manage, but ability to defend oneself from criminals carrying guns.
The latter is better imo. Those who think the former is better, can opt in and live in such city-states. What there cannot be is: a sentence for just owning a gun. Only monetary fine or eviction from the city-state; a sentence would be unconstitutional as per the theory of actions-ultimate-judgement, not words, not threats, not gun ownership, not genes, not mental disorders, only actions. There's no better simulation substitute than the real world; all else predictions are merely probabilistic, and when people get imprisoned for mere threats, such predictions are doomed to become ultimately baseless and divorced from reality.
+++
REFORM YOUR CONSTITUTION:

• Make Ludwig Von Mises your constitution's founding-grandpa. Base the code to rule by, on his magnum opus Human Action.
  
• Besides the theoretical basings, short readable constitution that's basically a consent-form that every citizen consents to; consent to be rescued when drowning, consent to be operated on by doctor when unconscious, consent to be arrested for suspicion and inquiry (?), consent to be punched when resisting arrest (which no one would sign to, so no punching people EVER, especially in the name of law enforcement).
  

The idea is, it's a matter of selecting between explicit consent (consent denied unless explicitly granted) vs implicit consent (consent granted unless explicitly revoked); the former allows for illegalizing sex with drunk/unconscious people, and even the slaughter of animals (which, though probably an unpopular take even in the Netherlands, is ultimately the right thing to do, but boy oh boy do people hate vegans, and you'd get more support for illegalizing domestic violence (from women and half the men) than you would for illegalizing slaughter, but hey, when was the popular thing ever the right thing to do lol). Even for abortion, explicit-consent-theory (consent-denied-unless-granted) supports abortion in a legal constitutional sense in that the fetus' right-to-exist is denied by default, so the host mother be free to deny its existence and act upon it by aborting.
Much like, the theoretical basing of the judiciary on illegalizing suicide/euthanasia illegalizes extreme bdsm (brain damage) too, and, extrepreneurially speaking, saves many a woman from abuse; legalized lovemaking-in-exchange-for-money but illegalized-extreme-bdsm won't move the abuse underground either, or so my judgement says, for, the poor unfortunate untalented women would have plenty of monetary opportunity in the white sex market, and no such woman would want to go to the underground black market to make money off of her own possible murder; what use is such money if one's dead or braindead; upon a concussion, one's never the same again, one stops enjoying the things one once enjoyed, so the money earned thusly would be a waste too. Then again, I'm guessing you aren't interested in the theoretical philosophical and risk-assessment ideas behind this all, so won't bother with that.
+++
REFORM THE JUDICIARY:

• base the law code away from the fraudulent brain-dead notion of justice; 'cause, there really is no such thing as justice, as putting someone in their victim's shoes, tit for tat; a psycho could never know how it feels to have his tits cut off, for he doesn't have any to begin with! Even within the same gender, people are different, their ages are different. The earth is always moving through space, never in the same place twice; we're moving through time. It's just impossible to simulate being in another's shoes here on Earth (ignoring the NDE life-reviews in the afterlife lol); it's physically impossible.
  
• base the law code away from the fraudulent notion of punishment. Being in a prison, getting free food, is no punishment. Some loners might even enjoy it. Heck, Israeli women released from prison choose to commit petty crimes (like breaking the window of the police vehicle) just to get back in the prison. Prison is often far safer a place, and many feel comfy down there. Heck, even the Singaporean judicial caning is some people's most craved fantasy. Heck, extreme masochists would, rather than finding a psycho, paying them to chop their hands off, then making sure the other person doesn't get prosecuted, find it more effortless, cheaper, more realistic, to rob a bank then get their hands chopped off by the Sharia law enforcers! So really, there's no such thing as a just punishment, cause there's no such thing as a punishment to begin with!
  
• base the law code on the two pillars of PREVENTION and COMPENSATION;
  
• life sentence for violent people (be it, slapping/punching/stabbing/murdering), to PREVENT it from happening again, to PREVENT the society from such actors;
  
• compensation for the victim, proportional to the harm caused, funded by the victimizer's money and forced labour in the prison. Come up with an entrepreneurial figure, 50%, ish, portion of the inmate's income (remote working from the prison), which goes to the victim for compensation. Too high that portion and the inmate might lose the drive to work/be-productive. Psychopathy atrophies over generations when its evolutionarily advantageous opportunities cease to be. Rightful compensation tilts the trade-offs in good people's favour.
  
• Proportional compensation. When a man slaps a woman, the damage is a hundread times worse than when a woman slaps a man, and ten times worse than when the same gender slaps the same gender. Not only are men's hands bigger and arms more muscular, but also women's skulls are thinner and more susceptible to concussing. So such laws are not sexist; they're just. This notion called equality has been a menace for women, second only to neo-feminism that advocates fiddling with the free market.
  
• Inside prison, with their own earned money, inmates be free to buy TV, stereo, air-conditioning, king-size bed, whatever.
  
• ONLY for violent crimes does one be sent to prison, and once sent, to never return.
  
• for financial crimes, one be made an economic slave; losing one's 50% income to the victims of one's fraud/whatever. Economic slaves, which, most europeans paying 50% in taxes (and getting back close to nothing in return, thanks to states, by nature, being so inefficient with money), kinda already are, lol.
  

+++
REFORM THE CAPITAL MARKET:

• Do away with Limited-Liability. The idiots who call themselves climate activists who think capitalism is the enemy, are just that: idiots. The Koala escaping from wildfire gets comfort in the air-conditioned room that every household today can afford; none of this would be there if it weren't for capitalism. People get to feed and care for millions of stray animals; none of this would be possible without capitalism. Morality, especially charity, is a luxury commodity; something socialists don't get to enjoy. But the fact is, these so called climate activists don't care about animals, don't care about trees, all they care about is this molecule called Carbon Dioxide, because they're stupid, or wose, tesla-fanatics.
  
• Replace Limited-Liability with Full-Liability. If Nestle poisons a village or sells lead-laiden food products, or commits a murder, the ones responsible for the violent actions first-hand be convicted of first-degree physical harm, and the shareholders be convicted of third-degree harm, and be made to compensate the victims, whether that requires seizing all their assets (and those of the company) or making them economic slaves for the rest of their lives. Fact is, it is the duty and moral obligation of a shareholder to watch for the actions of the company; negligence, inaction, their primary sin. Buying is supporting; Bill Gates is a moron for being an investor in Monsanto.
  

There be basically, degrees of freedom:

• freest citizens
  
• economic slaves (losing half their income to victim-compensation),
  
• prison inmates (who have compensated fully, now buying luxury goods and mansions in the prison island),
  
• prison slaves (losing half their income to victim-compensation),
  
• tied prison slaves (who have anger issues, so be somewhat elbow-restrained to prevent them from being violent toward other inmates),
  
• solitary-confinement prison slaves (zero reason to do so, yet, Japan does it all the time). Prisoners should be free to socialize, bond together, share a cell together, and these things don't increase the risks of prison-escape either.
  

Ultimately, life's purpose is to just live, make experiences, form memories, and learn some lessons. Death penalty is just wrong; so is solitary confinement when so many mechanisms exist to prevent violence among inmates via boxing-gloves-handcuffs, teeth-covers, and elbow and knee restrains.
+++
REFORM THE POLICE:

• No impunity for cops. Cops be help liable for their actions, liable to the law. In fact, more liable.
  
• Learn from Prince Machiavelli lol; embrace some Game Theory. Legalize and grant moral impunity to cops who shoot down fellow cops abusing people wrongfully.
  

Those who think police reforms will never work are stupid; one lone man could make his men commit the organized genocide of 6 million, against the empathetic impulses of the men themselves, and they're saying, well-behaved police is impossible to have? What nonsense! Truth is, the powers that be are utterly inept or themselves psychopathic and fap to the videos of police officers punching women in the face for cursing them. Because the matter of fact is, one needs neither the right kind of people, nor the majority power, to commit acts of good or evil; just a good grip on whatever little power one has. Such a shame that literally no ruler alive knows how to rule.

• Cops be free to arrest fellow cops for misconduct.
  
• Cops (and others) be free to report such psychopathic cops.
  
• Samaritan protection laws. It be legal for strangers to beat a wife-beater beating his wife in public, or even, to shoot at a cop abusing someone when making arrest. Maybe even rewarding, in that, when imprisoned and compensated, the victim is free to pass on some share of her compensations to her savious who risked their well-being to save her.
  

In fact, no sociologist worth his salt would deny that women were safer and more protected from psychopaths and better off ten thousand years ago than in today's anonomyous mega societies; something even Ted Bundy alluded to. Sex as payments in ancient times lol, and David Friedman even hypothesizes that that's how and why women evolved concealed ovulation lol.

• for crimes like traffic law violation, no arresting and car-chases; the said person be sent a notice to appear in a court all by themself instead.
  
• city-state's domestic-law-enforcing cops be split into two teams:
  
• benign cops should not carry guns, instead, be wearing funny-looking non-intimidating bulletproof body suit and helmet and be carrying mancatchers, handcuffs, legcuffs; autistic people or psychopathic people never be hired, only those with very sharp social skills, and be trained to read social cues, to be funny, to crack jokes, make people laugh, break fights peacefully, or, as a last resort, arrest, but with dignity, never insulting the arrested, never judging, and be carrying those arrested on a bed instead of making them walk with their hands cuffed, which could be dangerous for drunk drivers, old people with arm pain, etc.
  
• gun-violence-control cops carry guns, but should only be deployed for gun-violence, wherein they might have to shoot (tranquilizers or bullets) to neutralize a gun-weilding madman.
  

Giving people unrestricted licence to kill is dangerous. No cops are better than bad cops. Just like no laws are better than bad laws whereby the average woman acting in self-defence gets sentenced to 20 years for killing her man, while a (drunk) man killing his wife gets 2 years. And that's a fact; women get five times longer sentences for homocide than men, in the US. And the average sentence for proven domestic violence cases is: a few weeks behind bars, with the possibility of parole and bail. Talk about feminism running rampant.
Some entrepreneurial suggessions:

• half the cops' income be locked in a conditional account, sorta a pension fund, which they lose entirely if they commit a crime on duty. Afterall, cops are petty puppet people too, who can be controlled by money just as neatly as any other.
  
• of the remaining half, half be conditional on the basis of being useful. Lazy cops who do nothing don't get that, and his employer be loosing more (from his allowance package; the more savings, the more his/her bonus) by design too, by hiring more useless cops without as much of a need in a neighbourhood. For making false arrests, arresting innocent people without reason, the cop be fined and the fine be handed to the person arrested wrongfully.
  
• like in Georgia, for misconduct (groping women, etc) or for taking bribes, the whole batch and the batch-leader (employer; sergent; whatever) be fired. Thus, sergents have every incentive to check for psychopathy (MRI tests, whatever), past history, beforehand, when hiring a cop.
  

+++
EDUCATE CHILDREN:

• corporal punishment be illegal,
  
• children who can pass language/literature test be full acting citizens, free to buy shares and vote in shareholder meetings,
  
• exploiting the power of the default to fiddle in the free-market of dating, for women's advantage. Why? Entrepreneurial: good laws that make women feel safe attract a surplus of rich happy attractive women who attract rich nice men (which need less police to manage), which means more population, lower expenses, higher dividents for the shareholders of the state!
  
• by default, for impregnating someone, whether they go through labour pain or lesser abortion pain, the guy be liable for a payment of 100k to her. [Vasectomies incentivized over pills, traumatic IUDs, fallopian-tying, all of which are unhealthy.]. Regarding science, though paternity tests and gene-sequencings are a blessing, IVF is a curse, and a woman could use a guy's skin dust for gametogenesis via stem-cell technology and impregnate herself with such artificial cum and the jury wouldn't know... Big gray zone.
  
• the mother gets the custody of the baby, always. Up to her to give up the custody to him or someone else if she feels so.
  
• artificial wombs be fully legal. It's utter pure hypocracy to advocate against external human-fetus-growth in labs past 7 days, in a world where slaughtering full grown animals, hunting them for fun, killing even SUPERIOR animals like Orcas, their entire families, baiting their mothers with their baby-whale tied in a fishing-net, is all legal. Artificial wombs are already fully viable, there's no scientific hurdle preventing them from being deployed, only legal. Regardless, for logistical reasons, I can bet many countries would be more than happy to adopt such technology in a decade. Only a matter of time.
  
• though every child deserves a female mother for none can love one like a woman does, it's something for culture to enforce and normalize, and for self-conscience to make gay couples consider a nanny/3rd-partner, not legal interventions.
  
• baby becomes an acting individual upon 3 years old, or whenever he can speak/read/write fluently and pass language tests, and has to read and sign the constitution or face eviction lol. Prodigies thus at an advantage in the money game 'cus they can start investing early on, unlike the current one which renders races which sexually mature before or at the legal age of 18 at an advantage over those who mature much later. Lol nevermind.
  
• up until the baby becomes an actor, animal-protection laws (or more specifically, pet-protection) laws should apply on the baby: no violence, no murder, unless in self-defence (i.e., almost never), no medical negligence, no abandoning the baby. For medical negligence or abandoning the baby, no sentencing, only blacklisting the said caretaker from future reproductive baby-care, so not allowed in kindergartens, schools, baby-spaces, and genetically blacklisted.
  
• criminals in prison should get genetically blacklisted. Eugenics is not a bad idea; it's the state that should stay out of it, except for the clensing of criminal genes. A criminal's entire descending-tree shuld get blacklisted; said violent criminal's children either get sterilized or promise to not procreate or get evicted. Gene banks be legal; culture should normalize borrowing the genes of (jewish/dutch) geniuses and raising their babies via IVF.
  

The selfish man doesn't have sex; he clones.
Why mix your genes with someone so different, of the opposite sex, despite being better than oneself. The fact that people have sex and choose good pretty intelligent partners unrelated to themselves, when compounded, is the same as adopting pure Jewish babies. Even Jews are distant cousins to all anyway. Heck, adopt orcas. Either black or white; clones or orcas; ignoring clone mutations (7 mutations per generation, I think), the latter, survival of the group over oneself, is a better strategy and thus more selfish a strategy, whereas the former is doomed to fail, at least for humans, and is only seen in ants which can afford a thousand kids and an epic one-in-a-thousand style selection pressures. Even if that's how superior alien societies operate, even in the latter case, most (worker ants) be raising the royal princes/princesses anyway; raising the babies of mathematical geniuses is not that different. Gene banking (positive eugenics) would speed evolution exponenetially!

• child-care payments. By default, the guy be liable to maternal-care payments to the mother.
  
• state-ensured child-care and pregnancy-payments to the mother. Even if the guy defaults/can't-pay, the state pays the mother and the state extorts the due from the guy in private/court. Mother always gets paid. Guy thus has no grudges against the mother, only the state. Such an arrangement reduces the chances of domestic or hate/revenge violence against the mother.
  
• prenups can be used to sway away from this defaults and arrange for custom scenarios.
  
• full liability for the baby/pet's actions. If your pet/baby hurts someone seriously, you be liable for full monetary compensation and economic slavery; you also lose your pet/baby-keeping licence.
  
• no impunity for acting children (post 3 years of age who have passed the tests) for commiting crimes. Schools should only accept acting-children, not babies. If your child punches another child on the head in school, he gets tried as an adult acting actor. Incentivizes parents to inculcate values of conviction to non-violence in their kids, if they wish to send them to schools and public places. If your babies are violent, postpone the language-comprehension test and constitution-signing and keep them at home; don't put other's kids at risk. American schools are a hellscape. Not only is segregation in schools outlawed, kids have legal impunity, so of course, (black) psycho bullies roam free and abound.
  
• full head-tax per baby. From day 1.
  

+++
DO AWAY WITH SOCIAL SECURITY:

• Instead, private insurance companies can replace most of the services of social-security.
  
• An insurance package of 100k, insurance against homeless, whereby, once deposited, the company invests it in long term assets, compounds it with every passing day, and should one become bankrupt, one should be able to use such a Social-Security-Number to buy rent of up to 20$/day, food up to 10$/meal, three meals a day, for as long as one lives. Or pooled insurance based on average bankrupcy risk statistics, for much lower premium.
  
• Likewise, health insurance, bough from private insurance companies.
  
• For babies, an insurance package of orphan-insurance, so, should the parents die in a car crash or whatever, the insurance company pays its head-tax, pays for its orphanage fee, its schooling and medical expenses, etc.
  
• No, none, zero, nil whatsoever, restrictions/laws/rules on insurance companies. Hans Herman Hoppe is right on how messy and ridiculous the laws have made the insurance market into. Of course, if an insurance company defaults on its promises, it, like with all Full Liability Companies, should get scavenged along with its shareholders. But other than that, no forcing inclusion of fringe groups in insurance pools over such insurance companies.
  

+++
TRANS-CONTINENTAL COLONY

• bribe some local leader and arrange for a colony in Africa whereupon to dump those unable to pay the taxes (the poor immigrants, for the most part; the dutch poor can be saved by private charities funding their head-tax) and those barred from dutch city-states (non-dutch).
  
• in the long run, deport them to whichever country they be willing to go, whichever be willing to accept them.
  

+++
That's it. And just like that, you'd have fixed the Netherlands, and, the world being a mere copycat mirror-complex of stupid politicians (except Wilders) unable to think for themselves, only learning from other's experiences, very like the trickling down of monarchies after the French Revolution like a domino falls, just like that, you'd possibly have fixed the whole world! If the world sees from the Dutch exemplary example of privatization of statehood and follows suit, that would singlehandedly save humanity from poverty (socialism), war (tradelessness), and immorality (dictatorships like in Iran where morality police kills girls who don't wear proper dresses). The Dutch were the example of free-trade and privatization once before, they can do it again too.
Geert Wilders is the only hope.
Milei, being so totally anti-abortion, is an utter disgrace in the name of an Austrian Liberal; should have been aborted before he was even born.
Mises was, is, and forever will be, PRO-CHOICE.
That's right, I just said it. And any liberals who are pro-life are fake liberals who pretend to be liberals but are at the core, braindead or worse, psychopaths.
Nicholas Sarwark doesn't talk about abortion (to stay nice to both groups, when actually, that just makes him an idiot who'd get votes from neither unless he takes a stance; classic demogogue),
Ron Paul is very very against abortion too, his whole lineage sucks,
Justin Amash outright opposes it,
it's so funny, cause, Mises, Ludwig Von Mises, the guy he so likes to quote, himself was very pro-choice, and said the process of becoming sentient, becoming a consenting individual of the society, is "gradual", doesn't happen overnight, that a fetus is not the same as an adult, and above all, was a UTILITARIAN who believed in family-planning at the family-level as per the family's economic potential and incentives and time-preference, who vouched against state-sponsered eugenics and child-subsidies as population control measures, who believed in women being more of an acting being, was the champion of economic freedom for women, who in his own personal life recognized the entrepreneurial value bargain in prefering these talented undervalued women, who was the biggest feminist and women's liberator in the history of manking (equal contestent with Morgentaler, another Jew)! Amash's (and others') preaching Mises wholly, saying that their views are practically indistinguishable from Mises's, then opposing abortion, is like killing people "in the name of God the creator"; it's pure blasphemy, heck, worse than that, for Mises is above God, and these false preachers shall be judged harshly by Mises' immortal spirit. *inhales lol.
Not all races are equal. Sexual and survival stretegies dictate the differences. The muslims have been murdering the intelligent (dissident/scientific) and beautiful (emo boys/girls) among themselves for more than a millenia; no wonder they've gotten so retarded. The Chinese are apathetic people, bred to obey, war, and kill, without remorse; free-thinking pricipled dissidents all but extinct among them. Evolutionary psychologists who think that war is good for the genes are idiots; sure, war is good for genes, but peace is better. Heck, EVERYTHING is good for the genes. The genes are set on a track to evolve forwards, and they'd only do so, and abominations like Islam are mere incidental dips in a more or less upward-rising curve. The least-warring greeks were the most feminist, the highest longevity-people, the most nicest, until war struck Europe too.
The Dutch are one of the best races in the world, second only to the Jews who have significantly higher IQ, higher empathy, the lowest domestic violence and physical violence rates, and the cleanest past history (never practiced witchhunts, and despite brutal punishments legal in Judiasm, never practiced them; it's like, despite judiasm, the Jews never gave in to barbarianism; such noble genes; never committed genocides), way better than the forever stained dutch history of the witchhunts which took the lives of some 300 innocent women... Still, the Dutch are better than the rest, by a huge margin. Not to mention the Dutch are the most good-looking tall handsome honest people in the whole world. Unpopular opinion but, me thinks Geert Wilders is the most handsome man ever; boy would I pay to suck his cock lol. Even an imaginary anime character better looking than Wilders is too wild an idea to be plausible lol. Lol I literaly saw him in my dream yesterday on the second day of discovering him and binge-watching his videos, lol.
The Dutch people need saving. You're already very few in numbers; intermarriage is the Dutch's biggest existential threat; extinction by dissolution. A Dutch State is the only possible saviour; people mostly only fall in love with someone within a mile from them; a state wherein most (if not all) are Dutch, would thus preserve the dutch genes.
A free-market championing privatization-proposing Geert Wilders wouldn't need to resort to Islam to achieve the end result all Dutch people desire: a safe and prosperous Netherlands for the Dutch.
Thanks.
-- Mises's no. 1 cocksucker.

Here's how to fix the Netherlands:

• illegalize extreme BDSM (first),
  
• legalize prostitution (already legal)
  
• especial unhackable cameras for sex-workers,
  
• the punishment for beating a woman be life sentence,
  

Extreme bdsm, as in, face-slapping, punching, anything that causes traumatic-brain-injury, concussions, (which can be detected in MRI tests for court trials), and any other permanent bodily injury.
That would make it the only place in the world where women be safe and free. The only place where:

• domestic violence is illegal (for real, not just on paper)
  
• sex-work is legal,
  
• abortion is legal.
  

To further limit domestic violence in households (not brothels), some optional things that can be implemented (which I highly advice) are:

• every registered home be laiden with unhackable ring-sig/multi-sig encrypted cameras with microphones sensitive to grid-line emf for timestampping,
  
• no court fees for women filing for domestic-violence cases (or any),
  
• no repercussions for falsely filing a case against your man (to reduce the fear of filing a case; the most that could go wrong is a mere No-Contact restrain order),
  
• if verifiably proven (as in, camera recordings, etc), suspect gets life sentence and forced labour with which the prison gets funded and the victim gets compensated,
  
• if not proven for certain, at least a restrain/no-contact order whereby the suspect cannot enter the towns/microstates the accuser happens to be in.
  
• suspicion-until-proven-not-guilty; the onus to prove one's innocence be upon the accused, the male, so men have every incentive to carry body cameras etc, to defend against false rape charges.
  
• everyone's past, past suspicions, trials, all such data, be on a website. If you can make a society safe for women, the good men would follow in like bees. Thus, catering to women's defence needs is very (Misesian) entrepreneurially advantageous. Afterall, the primary purpose of a society is DATING; keeping women safe in such dating/matchmaking game be your highest priority. There's many an evolutionarily evolved trait that keep children safe anyway, but fewer for women, especially in a non-tribal society with hookup culture wherein a psychopath has every incentive to harm/kill his date and run away. It's a surprise that that isn't more prevalent... Societies are playing with fire; they have no clue how deep in trouble they are. Reform or lose the game to psychopaths; much like the evol sexual-stretegy simulation studies on rat societies lol.
  

Your current law code is lame and hypocritical; as per the current laws on racism, to highlight IQ differences between races, to emphasize empathy/psychopathy prevalence differences between racial groups, is racist! And yet, the very notion of a-law-against-racism rests on the belief that races do exist, that there's skin-coloskull-shape/genetic differences between so called "races" they aim to protect; how could the state accept that there be such differences but illegalize for such differences to be discussed and admitted? Utterly ridiculous!
Your current judicial framework is a joke. A client could beat the hell out of a prostitute (just short of killing her) and he has more-or-less legal impunity! A wife-beater gets a mere month is prison! What sense does that make? To believe that, somehow, in a closed cell, locked in for a few months, playing GTA, banging pussies (sex-therapy with prostitutes, for sex offenders; as dumb as it sounds; wouldn't be surprised if UN says the right to sex is every human's basic fundamental human right lol), free food in the prison, somehow makes a psychopath a sunflower, is beyond my comprehension. One would have to be utterly braindead to believe so. Another hypothesis: the dutch politicians and justices are NOT braindead, they're just a little too psychopathic themselves, and being so, concerned for themselves and their own future wife-beating sons. Facts.
Your king is too empathetic and naive, very like the many white people all over the globe who believe in humanity, who believe that every human is deep down a fluffy furry, and to prove so to the world (or themselves), who venture into dangerous territory in the Africas or Arabian towns, only to be lynched by the mobs (many such cases in the news)...
The dutch people who want diversity can go live in Africa or the UAE; in the name of diversity, to advocate that others be put in danger for one's own naivety, is not just foolish, but downright wrong.
The dutch people who have big hearts, who wish to help the desperate immigrants, go do so with your own money. To advocate that others' money be stolen to be donated to one group, is no philanthropy. Theft in the name of charity is just that: THEFT.
To fix the Netherlands in the long run:

• do away with the laws on racism; keep only the laws against physical harm; words are words; one should only be prosecuted for actions, not threat by words, not threat to act, only action itself. At best, you could exile those deemed threatening (in the short run), but not imprison.
  
• do away with the laws against discrimination in the private sector; an entrepreneur who doesn't hire an equally talented woman/newcomeimmigrant/black for a job, would lose his revenue to the one who does; in the free market, wrong biases just aren't solvent, just aren't efficient and profitable. Such feminist equal-pay laws do more harm to women then good; no one wants to hire women anymore, especially for technical roles... Only misogynists pass such laws. Facts.
  

END WELFARE SOCIALISM:

• no free healthcare for nobody,
  
• no free housing for nobody,
  
• no state-funded pension for nobody,
  
• no child-care subsidies for nobody,
  
• etc.
  

PRIVATIZE THE STATE:

• with defence (international and internal) as the only service of the state of Netherlands, privatize such an entity; privatize the Dutch Defence Agency.
  
• every citizen gets one (or ten, or thousand; whatever denomination) equal shares of the private entity Dutch Defence Agency.
  
• inhabitants of the netherlands be required to pay a head-tax, a fixed tax/payment per person, for the services of international defence (radars, nukes, anti-nukes, iron dome, etc).
  
• people be free to sell their shares in the open market. And no, it doesn't make you susceptible to foreign interference/meddling in dutch statehood, on the contrary: state-privatization flips-the-table overnight, making all one's enemies into one's extended friends. Not only is the amount of money needed to become the majority shareholder quite high, but, upon putting so much money in, (an amount of money only sensible people get to have), any sensible actor is incentivized to not mess up and keep peace in one's stock, not hijack one's earnings, and just reap the dividents. Very like the Bitcoin/Monero POW incentives for major-miner.
  
• no trade tarrifs. Trump thinks an equal trade-tax for countries which charge a trade-tax with the US, is based. It's not, but it's better than most's beliefs, so okay. But, if one is to be serious, then no, Austrian Economists would never support such a scheme, for the simplest of reasons: selfishness. If Trump (and any country) is to be selfish enough, they should realize that zero-trade-tarrifs for all countries is the thing that makes one prosper, regardless of how much they be taxing us. Mises has said it a million times: war begins when trade ends. So no trade tarrifs whatsoever. Physical/existential security be the only service and concern of a state. Leave it to the dutch people (and private source-auditing firms) to not buy goods from products sourced from child-labouRussians/whatever. The scandenavian madness of One-Family, with the president as the country's daddy, is ludicrous! People are grown ups; they can make their own decisions.
  
• replace the ill notion of democracy with shareholder democracy.
  
• the CEO/president, in power only as long as they stay popular with the state's shareholders.
  

PRIVATIZE THE TOWNS:

• every town becomes a gated-community (with or without actual physical gates).
  
• every home-owner of such a town gets an equal number of shares in that community-stock (Citystate of Amsterdam, for example).
  
• dressing code (public nudity allowance), pollution/negative-externality laws (some with very strict noice-pollution laws, some lenient and affordable ones), traffic rules (bicycle exceptions, lanes, etc), architecture code and rules, all be the liberties of the city-state to decide upon.
  
• the only punishment a city-state be able to give people be: monetary fine, deducted from the prepaid lock-in fund, or, when it gets empty, eviction/exile from the city-state, free to move in to some cheaper lenient one in the Netherlands or elsewhere.
  
• no city-state could "imprison" people. A city-state which forbids abortion, cages pregnant women, preventing them from access to healthcare, would be thus unconstitutional.
  
• every city-state-resident be required to pay a policing-tax/fee; more protected towns have higher fees. Towns with more immigrants, requiring a well-funded police, for a bigger police force, to keep the people safe, would thus be more expensive, more inefficient, and it would thus only be a matter of time that the low-risk-tolerance Dutch populace segregate and buy up the city-stocks and even buy up the properties of the selling-immigrants-in-need-of-money-to-pay-their-state-tax-or-get-exiled, and vote to exile the immigrant population from their towns. All entrepreneurial. Mises knew it all in advance; he knew that the supreme notion of private-property was complete and enough, that it needed no exceptions for such immigration problems. Leftist liberals who are blindly pro-immigration shouldn't call themselves liberals; they're merely leftists, and they're wrong. In the liberal framework of private property, immigration is NEVER a problem that even needs addressing! Hail Von Mises. Ultimately, it all boils down to the entrepreneurial utilitarian benefits of lower policing costs and at a much higher safety-level that come from barring violent races from one's towns, benifits that ultimately pale the compromises in cheap-labour (that the immigrants provide) or the slightly higher shipping costs of buying such products of cheap-labour from a thousand miles afar. The idiots in the dutch parliament and the businessmen who pretend like without all this cheap labour their economy would collapse and they'd be in losses, are misguiding. Shipping costs are already low enough; the inefficiencies of slavery over willful employment and low shipping costs is what defunded slavery; you would be better off buying goods from Africa than having Africans in your own country making those goods at your doorstep. Instead, free trade cross-borders should be encouraged and cherished.
  

As for oppression and foreign wars, if you can't help a people defend their lives and territory by military and financial aid (funded from private charities), don't pretend to help by taking in refugees either, most of whom are, by the very definition of how things work, often the worst of the stock; the average good empathetic african/muslim/indian doesn't want to loot away someone's prosperous country. The good ones never even cry for help to begin with, and most of them are within your borders already: the native Dutch too afraid to express their fear of immigrants; heed to their cries and help them first instead.
REFURNISH DOMESTIC SPACES:

• cameras in every registered home; totally very economical, heck, a billionaire could fund it all out of his own pocket. Mass survillience isn't a concern because it's not impossible to design a black-box encryption protocol with multi-signature encryptions which can only be decoded if all the parties (you, your wife, and the state) provide their keys to decode the video feed. Zero-knowledge-sharing sorcerry whereby keys don't get disclosed to any party either.
  
• the right to discriminate. It's the home-owner's right to dictate who gets to visit inside and who doesn't, whether he/she discriminates on the basis of skin colour or hair colour. In fact, the right to discriminate is as important as the right to free speech, and mutually dependent on each other. One has every right to discriminate who one marries based purely on their race! One has every right to befriend people based on their race. And so does an employer when hiring. To say otherwise and pass anti-discrimination laws is no less discriminatory; just discriminatory in a certain cunning state-sponsered way, for a select few's advantage. An argument can be made that, given how many white women only date big black guys, such anti-discrimination laws would hurt them so-called minorities as much, if not more.
  
• corporal punishment of children (or women/men) be illegal.
  
• no-caging law. One cannot cage someone in one's house without their consent. So, husband denying wife her freedom to abort be first degree violence, no different from switching the button on an electric chair, or pulling the trigger of a gun.
  
• gun laws up to the private property's owner. No home owner would wany guests to carry guns inside, prolly. As for city-state's rules on gun-ownership inside households, that's a purely entrepreneurial matter:
  

fines for owning a gun, disincentivizing gun ownership, has built-in unenforcability; criminal always carries a gun (which can even be 3d printed at home these days), but overall, fewer guns in the public, so fewer rage fights becoming lethal, less money needed to manage the populace for the police, so lower tax/fee,
vs
legal to own a gun in wild spaces, illegal in private spaces (like malls, homes, schools) as per private wish, with metal checks; more guns, higher tax to manage, but ability to defend oneself from criminals carrying guns.
The latter is better imo. Those who think the former is better, can opt in and live in such city-states. What there cannot be is: a sentence for just owning a gun. Only monetary fine or eviction from the city-state; a sentence would be unconstitutional as per the theory of actions-ultimate-judgement, not words, not threats, not gun ownership, not genes, not mental disorders, only actions. There's no better simulation substitute than the real world; all else predictions are merely probabilistic, and when people get imprisoned for mere threats, such predictions are doomed to become ultimately baseless and divorced from reality.
REFORM YOUR CONSTITUTION:

• Make Ludwig Von Mises your constitution's founding-grandpa. Base the code to rule by, on his magnum opus Human Action.
  
• Besides the theoretical basings, short readable constitution that's basically a consent-form that every citizen consents to; consent to be rescued when drowning, consent to be operated on by doctor when unconscious, consent to be arrested for suspicion and inquiry (?), consent to be punched when resisting arrest (which no one would sign to, so no punching people EVER, especially in the name of law enforcement).
  

The idea is, it's a matter of selecting between explicit consent (consent denied unless explicitly granted) vs implicit consent (consent granted unless explicitly revoked); the former allows for illegalizing sex with drunk/unconscious people, and even the slaughter of animals (which, though probably an unpopular take even in the Netherlands, is ultimately the right thing to do, but boy oh boy do people hate vegans, and you'd get more support for illegalizing domestic violence (from women and half the men) than you would for illegalizing slaughter, but hey, when was the popular thing ever the right thing to do lol). Even for abortion, explicit-consent-theory (consent-denied-unless-granted) supports abortion in a legal constitutional sense in that the fetus' right-to-exist is denied by default, so the host mother be free to deny its existence and act upon it by aborting.
Much like, the theoretical basing of the judiciary on illegalizing suicide/euthanasia illegalizes extreme bdsm (brain damage) too, and, extrepreneurially speaking, saves many a woman from abuse; legalized lovemaking-in-exchange-for-money but illegalized-extreme-bdsm won't move the abuse underground either, or so my judgement says, for, the poor unfortunate untalented women would have plenty of monetary opportunity in the white sex market, and no such woman would want to go to the underground black market to make money off of her own possible murder; what use is such money if one's dead or braindead; upon a concussion, one's never the same again, one stops enjoying the things one once enjoyed, so the money earned thusly would be a waste too. Then again, I'm guessing you aren't interested in the theoretical philosophical and risk-assessment ideas behind this all, so won't bother with that.
REFORM THE JUDICIARY:

• base the law code away from the fraudulent brain-dead notion of justice; 'cause, there really is no such thing as justice, as putting someone in their victim's shoes, tit for tat; a psycho could never know how it feels to have his tits cut off, for he doesn't have any to begin with! Even within the same gender, people are different, their ages are different. The earth is always moving through space, never in the same place twice; we're moving through time. It's just impossible to simulate being in another's shoes here on Earth (ignoring the NDE life-reviews in the afterlife lol); it's physically impossible.
  
• base the law code away from the fraudulent notion of punishment. Being in a prison, getting free food, is no punishment. Some loners might even enjoy it. Heck, Israeli women released from prison choose to commit petty crimes (like breaking the window of the police vehicle) just to get back in the prison. Prison is often far safer a place, and many feel comfy down there. Heck, even the Singaporean judicial caning is some people's most craved fantasy. Heck, extreme masochists would, rather than finding a psycho, paying them to chop their hands off, then making sure the other person doesn't get prosecuted, find it more effortless, cheaper, more realistic, to rob a bank then get their hands chopped off by the Sharia law enforcers! So really, there's no such thing as a just punishment, cause there's no such thing as a punishment to begin with!
  
• base the law code on the two pillars of PREVENTION and COMPENSATION;
  
• life sentence for violent people (be it, slapping/punching/stabbing/murdering), to PREVENT it from happening again, to PREVENT the society from such actors;
  
• compensation for the victim, proportional to the harm caused, funded by the victimizer's money and forced labour in the prison. Come up with an entrepreneurial figure, 50%, ish, portion of the inmate's income (remote working from the prison), which goes to the victim for compensation. Too high that portion and the inmate might lose the drive to work/be-productive. Psychopathy atrophies over generations when its evolutionarily advantageous opportunities cease to be. Rightful compensation tilts the trade-offs in good people's favour.
  
• Proportional compensation. When a man slaps a woman, the damage is a hundread times worse than when a woman slaps a man, and ten times worse than when the same gender slaps the same gender. Not only are men's hands bigger and arms more muscular, but also women's skulls are thinner and more susceptible to concussing. So such laws are not sexist; they're just. This notion called equality has been a menace for women, second only to neo-feminism that advocates fiddling with the free market.
  
• Inside prison, with their own earned money, inmates be free to buy TV, stereo, air-conditioning, king-size bed, whatever.
  
• ONLY for violent crimes does one be sent to prison, and once sent, to never return.
  
• for financial crimes, one be made an economic slave; losing one's 50% income to the victims of one's fraud/whatever. Economic slaves, which, most europeans paying 50% in taxes (and getting back close to nothing in return, thanks to states, by nature, being so inefficient with money), kinda already are, lol.
  

REFORM THE CAPITAL MARKET:

• Do away with Limited-Liability. The idiots who call themselves climate activists who think capitalism is the enemy, are just that: idiots. The Koala escaping from wildfire gets comfort in the air-conditioned room that every household today can afford; none of this would be there if it weren't for capitalism. People get to feed and care for millions of stray animals; none of this would be possible without capitalism. Morality, especially charity, is a luxury commodity; something socialists don't get to enjoy. But the fact is, these so called climate activists don't care about animals, don't care about trees, all they care about is this molecule called Carbon Dioxide, because they're stupid, or wose, tesla-fanatics.
  
• Replace Limited-Liability with Full-Liability. If Nestle poisons a village or sells lead-laiden food products, or commits a murder, the ones responsible for the violent actions first-hand be convicted of first-degree physical harm, and the shareholders be convicted of third-degree harm, and be made to compensate the victims, whether that requires seizing all their assets (and those of the company) or making them economic slaves for the rest of their lives. Fact is, it is the duty and moral obligation of a shareholder to watch for the actions of the company; negligence, inaction, their primary sin. Buying is supporting; Bill Gates is a moron for being an investor in Monsanto.
  

There be basically, degrees of freedom:

• freest citizens
  
• economic slaves (losing half their income to victim-compensation),
  
• prison inmates (who have compensated fully, now buying luxury goods and mansions in the prison island),
  
• prison slaves (losing half their income to victim-compensation),
  
• tied prison slaves (who have anger issues, so be somewhat elbow-restrained to prevent them from being violent toward other inmates),
  
• solitary-confinement prison slaves (zero reason to do so, yet, Japan does it all the time). Prisoners should be free to socialize, bond together, share a cell together, and these things don't increase the risks of prison-escape either.
  

Ultimately, life's purpose is to just live, make experiences, form memories, and learn some lessons. Death penalty is just wrong; so is solitary confinement when so many mechanisms exist to prevent violence among inmates via boxing-gloves-handcuffs, teeth-covers, and elbow and knee restrains.
REFORM THE POLICE:

• No impunity for cops. Cops be help liable for their actions, liable to the law. In fact, more liable.
  
• Learn from Prince Machiavelli lol; embrace some Game Theory. Legalize and grant moral impunity to cops who shoot down fellow cops abusing people wrongfully.
  

Those who think police reforms will never work are stupid; one lone man could make his men commit the organized genocide of 6 million, against the empathetic impulses of the men themselves, and they're saying, well-behaved police is impossible to have? What nonsense! Truth is, the powers that be are utterly inept or themselves psychopathic and fap to the videos of police officers punching women in the face for cursing them. Because the matter of fact is, one needs neither the right kind of people, nor the majority power, to commit acts of good or evil; just a good grip on whatever little power one has. Such a shame that literally no ruler alive knows how to rule.

• Cops be free to arrest fellow cops for misconduct.
  
• Cops (and others) be free to report such psychopathic cops.
  
• Samaritan protection laws. It be legal for strangers to beat a wife-beater beating his wife in public, or even, to shoot at a cop abusing someone when making arrest. Maybe even rewarding, in that, when imprisoned and compensated, the victim is free to pass on some share of her compensations to her savious who risked their well-being to save her.
  

In fact, no sociologist worth his salt would deny that women were safer and more protected from psychopaths and better off ten thousand years ago than in today's anonomyous mega societies; something even Ted Bundy alluded to. Sex as payments in ancient times lol, and David Friedman even hypothesizes that that's how and why women evolved concealed ovulation lol.

• for crimes like traffic law violation, no arresting and car-chases; the said person be sent a notice to appear in a court all by themself instead.
  
• city-state's domestic-law-enforcing cops be split into two teams:
  
• benign cops should not carry guns, instead, be wearing funny-looking non-intimidating bulletproof body suit and helmet and be carrying mancatchers, handcuffs, legcuffs; autistic people or psychopathic people never be hired, only those with very sharp social skills, and be trained to read social cues, to be funny, to crack jokes, make people laugh, break fights peacefully, or, as a last resort, arrest, but with dignity, never insulting the arrested, never judging, and be carrying those arrested on a bed instead of making them walk with their hands cuffed, which could be dangerous for drunk drivers, old people with arm pain, etc.
  
• gun-violence-control cops carry guns, but should only be deployed for gun-violence, wherein they might have to shoot (tranquilizers or bullets) to neutralize a gun-weilding madman.
  

Giving people unrestricted licence to kill is dangerous. No cops are better than bad cops. Just like no laws are better than bad laws whereby the average woman acting in self-defence gets sentenced to 20 years for killing her man, while a (drunk) man killing his wife gets 2 years. And that's a fact; women get five times longer sentences for homocide than men, in the US. And the average sentence for proven domestic violence cases is: a few weeks behind bars, with the possibility of parole and bail. Talk about feminism running rampant.
Some entrepreneurial suggessions:

• half the cops' income be locked in a conditional account, sorta a pension fund, which they lose entirely if they commit a crime on duty. Afterall, cops are petty puppet people too, who can be controlled by money just as neatly as any other.
  
• of the remaining half, half be conditional on the basis of being useful. Lazy cops who do nothing don't get that, and his employer be loosing more (from his allowance package; the more savings, the more his/her bonus) by design too, by hiring more useless cops without as much of a need in a neighbourhood. For making false arrests, arresting innocent people without reason, the cop be fined and the fine be handed to the person arrested wrongfully.
  
• like in Georgia, for misconduct (groping women, etc) or for taking bribes, the whole batch and the batch-leader (employer; sergent; whatever) be fired. Thus, sergents have every incentive to check for psychopathy (MRI tests, whatever), past history, beforehand, when hiring a cop.
  

REGARDING CHILDREN:

• corporal punishment be illegal,
  
• children who can pass language/literature test be full acting citizens, free to buy shares and vote in shareholder meetings,
  
• exploiting the power of the default to fiddle in the free-market of dating, for women's advantage. Why? Entrepreneurial: good laws that make women feel safe attract a surplus of rich happy attractive women who attract rich nice men (which need less police to manage), which means more population, lower expenses, higher dividents for the shareholders of the state!
  
• by default, for impregnating someone, whether they go through labour pain or lesser abortion pain, the guy be liable for a payment of 100k to her. [Vasectomies incentivized over pills, traumatic IUDs, fallopian-tying, all of which are unhealthy.]. Regarding science, though paternity tests and gene-sequencings are a blessing, IVF is a curse, and a woman could use a guy's skin dust for gametogenesis via stem-cell technology and impregnate herself with such artificial cum and the jury wouldn't know... Big gray zone.
  
• the mother gets the custody of the baby, always. Up to her to give up the custody to him or someone else if she feels so.
  
• artificial wombs be fully legal. It's utter pure hypocracy to advocate against external human-fetus-growth in labs past 7 days, in a world where slaughtering full grown animals, hunting them for fun, killing even SUPERIOR animals like Orcas, their entire families, baiting their mothers with their baby-whale tied in a fishing-net, is all legal. Artificial wombs are already fully viable, there's no scientific hurdle preventing them from being deployed, only legal. Regardless, for logistical reasons, I can bet many countries would be more than happy to adopt such technology in a decade. Only a matter of time.
  
• though every child deserves a female mother for none can love one like a woman does, it's something for culture to enforce and normalize, and for self-conscience to make gay couples consider a nanny/3rd-partner, not legal interventions.
  
• baby becomes an acting individual upon 3 years old, or whenever he can speak/read/write fluently and pass language tests, and has to read and sign the constitution or face eviction lol. Prodigies thus at an advantage in the money game 'cus they can start investing early on, unlike the current one which renders races which sexually mature before or at the legal age of 18 at an advantage over those who mature much later. Lol nevermind.
  
• up until the baby becomes an actor, animal-protection laws (or more specifically, pet-protection) laws should apply on the baby: no violence, no murder, unless in self-defence (i.e., almost never), no medical negligence, no abandoning the baby. For medical negligence or abandoning the baby, no sentencing, only blacklisting the said caretaker from future reproductive baby-care, so not allowed in kindergartens, schools, baby-spaces, and genetically blacklisted.
  
• criminals in prison should get genetically blacklisted. Eugenics is not a bad idea; it's the state that should stay out of it, except for the clensing of criminal genes. A criminal's entire descending-tree shuld get blacklisted; said violent criminal's children either get sterilized or promise to not procreate or get evicted. Gene banks be legal; culture should normalize borrowing the genes of (jewish/dutch) geniuses and raising their babies via IVF.
  

The selfish man doesn't have sex; he clones.
Why mix your genes with someone so different, of the opposite sex, despite being better than oneself. The fact that people have sex and choose good pretty intelligent partners unrelated to themselves, when compounded, is the same as adopting pure Jewish babies. Even Jews are distant cousins to all anyway. Heck, adopt orcas. Either black or white; clones or orcas; ignoring clone mutations (7 mutations per generation, I think), the latter, survival of the group over oneself, is a better strategy and thus more selfish a strategy, whereas the former is doomed to fail, at least for humans, and is only seen in ants which can afford a thousand kids and an epic one-in-a-thousand style selection pressures. Even if that's how superior alien societies operate, even in the latter case, most (worker ants) be raising the royal princes/princesses anyway; raising the babies of mathematical geniuses is not that different. Gene banking (positive eugenics) would speed evolution exponenetially!

• child-care payments. By default, the guy be liable to maternal-care payments to the mother.
  
• state-ensured child-care and pregnancy-payments to the mother. Even if the guy defaults/can't-pay, the state pays the mother and the state extorts the due from the guy in private/court. Mother always gets paid. Guy thus has no grudges against the mother, only the state. Such an arrangement reduces the chances of domestic or hate/revenge violence against the mother.
  
• prenups can be used to sway away from this defaults and arrange for custom scenarios.
  
• full liability for the baby/pet's actions. If your pet/baby hurts someone seriously, you be liable for full monetary compensation and economic slavery; you also lose your pet/baby-keeping licence.
  
• no impunity for acting children (post 3 years of age who have passed the tests) for commiting crimes. Schools should only accept acting-children, not babies. If your child punches another child on the head in school, he gets tried as an adult acting actor. Incentivizes parents to inculcate values of conviction to non-violence in their kids, if they wish to send them to schools and public places. If your babies are violent, postpone the language-comprehension test and constitution-signing and keep them at home; don't put other's kids at risk. American schools are a hellscape. Not only is segregation in schools outlawed, kids have legal impunity, so of course, (black) psycho bullies roam free and abound.
  
• full head-tax per baby. From day 1.
  

DO AWAY WITH SOCIAL SECURITY:

• Instead, private insurance companies can replace most of the services of social-security.
  
• An insurance package of 100k, insurance against homeless, whereby, once deposited, the company invests it in long term assets, compounds it with every passing day, and should one become bankrupt, one should be able to use such a Social-Security-Number to buy rent of up to 20$/day, food up to 10$/meal, three meals a day, for as long as one lives. Or pooled insurance based on average bankrupcy risk statistics, for much lower premium.
  
• Likewise, health insurance, bough from private insurance companies.
  
• For babies, an insurance package of orphan-insurance, so, should the parents die in a car crash or whatever, the insurance company pays its head-tax, pays for its orphanage fee, its schooling and medical expenses, etc.
  
• No, none, zero, nil whatsoever, restrictions/laws/rules on insurance companies. Hans Herman Hoppe is right on how messy and ridiculous the laws have made the insurance market into. Of course, if an insurance company defaults on its promises, it, like with all Full Liability Companies, should get scavenged along with its shareholders. But other than that, no forcing inclusion of fringe groups in insurance pools over such insurance companies.
  

TRANS-CONTINENTAL COLONY

• bribe some local leader and arrange for a colony in Africa whereupon to dump those unable to pay the taxes (the poor immigrants, for the most part; the dutch poor can be saved by private charities funding their head-tax) and those barred from dutch city-states (non-dutch).
  
• in the long run, deport them to whichever country they be willing to go, whichever be willing to accept them.
  

That's it. And just like that, you'd have fixed the Netherlands, and, the world being a mere copycat mirror-complex of stupid politicians (except Wilders) unable to think for themselves, only learning from other's experiences, very like the trickling down of monarchies after the French Revolution like a domino falls, just like that, you'd possibly have fixed the whole world! If the world sees from the Dutch exemplary example of privatization of statehood and follows suit, that would singlehandedly save humanity from poverty (socialism), war (tradelessness), and immorality (dictatorships like in Iran where morality police kills girls who don't wear proper dresses). The Dutch were the example of free-trade and privatization once before, they can do it again too.
Geert Wilders is the only hope.
Milei, being so totally anti-abortion, is an utter disgrace in the name of an Austrian Liberal; should have been aborted before he was even born.
Mises was, is, and forever will be, PRO-CHOICE.
That's right, I just said it. And any liberals who are pro-life are fake liberals who pretend to be liberals but are at the core, braindead or worse, psychopaths.
Nicholas Sarwark doesn't talk about abortion (to stay nice to both groups, when actually, that just makes him an idiot who'd get votes from neither unless he takes a stance; classic demogogue),
Ron Paul is very very against abortion too, his whole lineage sucks,
Justin Amash outright opposes it,
it's so funny, cause, Mises, Ludwig Von Mises, the guy he so likes to quote, himself was very pro-choice, and said the process of becoming sentient, becoming a consenting individual of the society, is "gradual", doesn't happen overnight, that a fetus is not the same as an adult, and above all, was a UTILITARIAN who believed in family-planning at the family-level as per the family's economic potential and incentives and time-preference, who vouched against state-sponsered eugenics and child-subsidies as population control measures, who believed in women being more of an acting being, was the champion of economic freedom for women, who in his own personal life recognized the entrepreneurial value bargain in prefering these talented undervalued women, who was the biggest feminist and women's liberator in the history of manking (equal contestent with Morgentaler, another Jew)! Amash's (and others') preaching Mises wholly, saying that their views are practically indistinguishable from Mises's, then opposing abortion, is like killing people "in the name of God the creator"; it's pure blasphemy, heck, worse than that, for Mises is above God, and these false preachers shall be judged harshly by Mises' immortal spirit. *inhales lol.
Not all races are equal. Sexual and survival stretegies dictate the differences. The muslims have been murdering the intelligent (dissident/scientific) and beautiful (emo boys/girls) among themselves for more than a millenia; no wonder they've gotten so retarded. The Chinese are apathetic people, bred to obey, war, and kill, without remorse; free-thinking pricipled dissidents all but extinct among them. Evolutionary psychologists who think that war is good for the genes are idiots; sure, war is good for genes, but peace is better. Heck, EVERYTHING is good for the genes. The genes are set on a track to evolve forwards, and they'd only do so, and abominations like Islam are mere incidental dips in a more or less upward-rising curve. The least-warring greeks were the most feminist, the highest longevity-people, the most nicest, until war struck Europe too.
The Dutch are one of the best races in the world, second only to the Jews who have significantly higher IQ, higher empathy, the lowest domestic violence and physical violence rates, and the cleanest past history (never practiced witchhunts, and despite brutal punishments legal in Judiasm, never practiced them; it's like, despite judiasm, the Jews never gave in to barbarianism; such noble genes; never committed genocides), way better than the forever stained dutch history of the witchhunts which took the lives of some 300 innocent women... Still, the Dutch are better than the rest, by a huge margin. Not to mention the Dutch are the most good-looking tall handsome honest people in the whole world. Unpopular opinion but, me thinks Geert Wilders is the most handsome man ever; boy would I pay to suck his cock lol. Even an imaginary anime character better looking than Wilders is too wild an idea to be plausible lol. Lol I literaly saw him in my dream yesterday on the second day of discovering him and binge-watching his videos, lol.
The Dutch people need saving. You're already very few in numbers; intermarriage is the Dutch's biggest existential threat; extinction by dissolution. A Dutch State is the only possible saviour; people mostly only fall in love with someone within a mile from them; a state wherein most (if not all) are Dutch, would thus preserve the dutch genes.
A free-market championing privatization-proposing Geert Wilders wouldn't need to resort to Islam to achieve the end result all Dutch people desire: a safe and prosperous Netherlands for the Dutch.
Thanks.
-- Mises's No. 1 Cocksucker.

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

There and Back Again is a reaction fic by MrDenim that has a time traveler by the name of Orio Natsuo arriving one year before canon to warn all of Japan on the dangers that are to come in the next four decades.
This premise got me thinking: What could have possibly happened that was so bad, that needed a man to travel back in time, disregarding every current secret at the time (One For All, Shigaraki, All For One, Endeavor, etc), to warn everyone. I even asked you all what might be the cause.
Well, that answer has been in my head for the last few weeks, so much so, that I decided to come up with my own timeline, an entire forty years, to get an answer. This includes original characters from other fic writers, along with plot lines from a whole bunch of different sources, and if there’s any writer crazy enough to actually make a story on this, I will personally hug you.
As a heads up, by the end of this, it’s gonna go from Justice League to Godzilla, to Pirates of the Caribbean, to X-Men: Days of Future Past, so buckle up, this is gonna be a long and wild ride; you’ve been warned.
So, here it is: A Potential Future Timeline for “There and Back Again,” by MrDenim.
Alright, so, our timeline begins with the first three years. Year one, nothing happens. Year, two, canon begins with the Sludge Villain incident, and then year three is the first year of UA.
Year four begins with end of the Final War. All Might tells Midoriya to go on vacation as Japan is rebuilding, so he heads over to America with Ochako and Melissa, who are gonna be Midoriya’s biggest loves for this timeline.
During an emergency response to put out a fire at a lab by the name of CADMUS, the trio discover that the lab was actually creating clones of using the DNA of legacy Heroes and Villains, along with using Nomus for their evil plans.
The three of them liberate the clones, shut down the lab and arrest the scientists, with Nedzu offering the clones the chance to become Heroes as the newest generation of Class 1-A.
Meanwhile, the newest big bads, the High Council, no that it’s only a matter of time before the Heroes learn of their existence, and decide that it’s time to make their move.
The second year goes on with the clones learning to be Heroes, while Midoriya and friends keep working as Heroes, taking on one-off Villains like the Volcano Thieves and whatnot, while Midoriya himself focuses on the High Council’s operations.
By the time January rolls around again, the High Council sends their Quirk-suppressing bombs and artificial Kaijus to Europe, causing the WHA to send in the international Heroes again, and starting another Villain War against the High Council.
For context, the High Council is actually an alliance from some of the big bads in Mirrond’s fic, which include Eclipse, Beast, Purity, Mechanist, Glassmaker, Liberator, Miss Compress, Onslaught, and Entropy.
However, in this story, these guys are All For One’s old goons that decided to stay in the shadows when the big man made his comeback with the League of Villains, and decided to take over once he was gone.
Anyways, Midoriya and friends are now in their third year, and things have begun to change. The WHA has created an international team of Heroes to act as a quick-response unit, which consists of both Deku and Invincible (Mirrond’s version, not the guy from Image Comics), with more Heroes and Villains making themselves known, missions being done, both against the High Council and not, and by graduation day, the High Council has decided to team up with Salem’s Faction.
And yes, I’m referring to the bad guys from RWBY, just swap out “Semblance” with “Quirk” and you’re good.
Now, the original Class 1-A has graduated as Pro Heroes, spending several years fighting against the main bad guys, along with one-off Villains, like Mazahs, the Quirkless Society, Deathstorm, and the High Council’s recently escaped Symbiote Nomus, which are now tracking down Quirkless hosts to commit evil.
A year after something I’m dubbing the “Anti-Venom Incident,” life continues, Heroes fight Villains, Midoriya builds his relationships with Ochako and Melissa, when a signal is set off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, pinging the location of one of the legendary Clockmaker’s Vaults.
For even more context, the Clockmaker is a Dawn of Quirks bad guy (made by Mirrond, as well), who is basically Hatsume but even more insane. She’s responsible for creating several things, such as robots, plasma weapons, mutagenic chemicals, and weapons so powerful that a Quirkless person would be able to take on a Top Hero.
So, Midoriya and several Heroes head to the coordinates, which happen to have the Vault located at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately, the Villains are also there, and both of them duke it out, continuously.
As more Vaults appear, the Heroes reach some of them first, sometimes it’s the Villains, and sometimes it’s a shady foreign government, all of them either taking the weapons or the AIs (such as Humility, Grid, and Ultron), for their own sides.
Unfortunately, by the end of the year, the Heroes and Villains meet up in another undersea vault, resulting in a fight that destroys the base, releasing the mutagenic chemicals into the ocean.
And here come the kaijus.
If you ever read the Colossal Kaiju Combat wiki, Gamma World, or any speculative evolution that contains massive amounts of radiation, then you know what happens next.
Massive monsters wreck cities, sea monsters attack ships, and the Heroes are now split between dealing with the High Council and their allies, while also doubling as monster hunters.
And during all of this time, Heroes are being picked off one by one, either by natural disasters, monster attacks, or being hunted down the High Council and their goons.
I’m pretty sure that I even added Monoma doing a heroic sacrifice during one of their missions (along with several other beloved characters dying over the years), but that’s a footnote compared to what happens next.
Despite what happened over the years, the Heroes are still kicking the butts of the Villain Alliance, with Midoriya even locking up Salem, Eclipse, Beast and Purity.
Unfortunately, Onslaught (real name Ko Yotsubashi, daughter of Re-Destro), and her second-in-command, Soma (Geten’s sister), have taken multiple Heroes and Midoriya’s friends hostage. So, naturally, he goes in to save them.
Unfortunately, he’s outmanned and outgunned, so unless Midoriya wanted his friends to die some seriously painful deaths, he would have to accept to their demands.
They only had one demand. And it was something that would haunt Midoriya for a long time to come.
By the end of the ordeal, Midoriya and his friends are free to go. Meanwhile, at the High Council’s clinic, both Ko and Soma have tested positive.
Anyways, life goes on, our lovable Heroes live their lives, get married, have children, all while dealing with their new lives. From chemicals weapons, to killer robots, monsters and Villains.
Speaking of Villains, the Villain Alliance has now teamed up with another group, the Chinese Triad, aka the Phoenix Brigade (courtesy of the fic writer ChaosPhoenix), with their pink-haired edgelord of a leader, Angelo (I think that’s his name).
Anyways, despite these new alliances, the Villain Alliance is screwed, with the fall of Entropy, but not before Ko and Soma escape with a small number of their forces, while also revealing their bastard children with Midoriya (as opposed to his legal ones with Ochako and Melissa) to mess with him.
With the fall of the Villain Alliance and the Chinese Triad, Angelo is upset, and decides to take it out on the Japanese Heroes by targeting the old retired Heroes, such as Eraserhead, Ms. Joke, Present Mic, and Thirteen, by using his Quirk (puppet-like strings, I believe) to make them kill each other.
When he gets outed, he uses his Quirk during the final battle to control Midoriya in an attempt to force him to kill all of his friends and loved ones with One For All.
However, using all of his willpower, Midoriya uses his Quirk at full power to punch himself in the face, and everything goes black.
He wakes up in a bed in a room which he doesn’t recognize, with Kodai of all people watching over him. And weirdest of all, he had a beard and his muscles were atrophied.
Long story short, he was in a coma for six years, and things went horribly wrong while he was gone.
When Midoriya knocked himself out and foiled Angelo’s plan, the pink-haired maniac decided to target Invincible instead, causing the Hero to kill his pregnant wife, along with causing the destruction of South Korea.
Grief-stricken, Invincible decided that enough was enough, deciding that Heroes had to become more proactive, and ensure that Villains can never hurt anyone again.
Naturally, this leads to a slippery slope that ends with Invincible becoming a despot (or as it’s more commonly called, Injustice).
Naturally, several Heroes and world governments called him out on that, with an insurgency against Invincible’s regime, which ended up spiraling into World War III.
Australia got nuked, China was sunk, two billion people died, and the (still living) good guys and their allies (with the UA Heroes even teaming up with the remnants of the High Council) having to scatter to the four winds, with Kodai being responsible to care for Midoriya and make sure he didn’t fall into the enemy’s hands. Naturally, Midoriya wants out of his metal tomb, learning that he’s was hidden on the other side of the world (either Africa or Mexico), with the first person to respond to Kodai’s emergency beacon being Mineta, of all people.
He’s taller, now Midoriya’s height, with a scar on the side of his head, and now living on a small boat, while also telling Midoriya that he doesn’t know where everyone is, in order to make sure that if any one of them was ever caught by Invincible and his goons, they wouldn’t be able to tell them where everyone is.
And to make matters worse, thanks to the war (and monsters), air travel is a bad idea, so the fastest way to find everyone (and the most discrete) is using a ship.
Insert One Piece theme here.
Midoriya and friends gather their allies, including some new ones, ready to take on Invincible and his allies once more, resulting in the second half of the Third World War.
And they end it, just in the worst way possible.
In a desperate attempt to take down the enemy (not sure who to blame yet) a new invention (or Clockmaker’s final one), a magic bullet is unleashed: An army of robots designed to hunt down and kill anyone who has a Quirk.
Several years later, and the Earth has been reduced to a literal hell, where if you’re not being hunted down by machines, you’re hunted down by monsters. Humanity is officially an endangered species.
There’s now only a handful of “Heroes” left, with Midoriya now being a somewhat jaded old man, after losing his entire family, including the ones he had with Ko and Soma.
However, while he can’t get them back, Hatsume informs him that there might be a way to prevent this from happening again: A time machine.
However, the person who is gonna go back isn’t gonna be Midoriya or Hatsume, but an older man, Orio Natsuo, whose Quirk, while under the effects of Trigger, could show the entire world what happened through his screens.
So, the time machine is built, but before it can be used, the Sentinels (the killer robots), launch an all-out attack at humanity’s last stronghold, killing Hatsume, but not before she could begin the process to ready the machine.
So, Midoriya gets between them and the machine, fighting them off, and using a final attack: Overcharging his heart with One For All, turning himself into an atomic bomb.
As the time machine vanished, Midoriya closes his eyes, as his life flashes before his eyes, smiling, as he detonates, taking all of the Sentinels with him.
One year before the Sludge Villain incident, several screens appear across the world, as an old man addresses everyone.
“My name is Orio Natsuo. My Hero Identification was zero-seven-two dash eight-zero-zero-four dash one-three. The present me is roughly 21 years old and works out of the Shimane Prefecture. My Quirk is Vision.”
“Due to… circumstances. I find myself alone to right the wrongs before they come to pass.”
“First, I come from 40 years in the future.”
“It was through the collective abilities of the remaining few heroes that allowed me to come back to try and change things for the better.”
“The last few heroes fought to the end to ensure we got this chance. The device that is allowing me to do this was designed and made by the late, great Hatsume Mei.”
“It allows me to broadcast my quirk to the entirety of Japan.”
“A lot of secrets are going to come to light. Some of these will shake the hero society of Japan to its core. Some will change it for the better. Villains will be exposed, and current and future heroes will be tested.”
“I feel sad for who I must focus on the most with my Quirk. While he eventually becomes one of the greatest heroes that Japan has ever seen, right now, he is just a boy. He is a 13, maybe 14-year-old boy with a dream.”
“So, I apologize in advance that I must show your secrets, past, and future, Midoriya Izuku.”
The End.
Whaddya think?

I'm not really one to complain. The patch had some good changes. Spreading democracy at higher difficulty, senator buff and hmg qol were all excellent additions. But the sheer volume of issues this patch and overall unpopularity of the gameplay changes make me question if the patch should be out in its current state.
Edit: Please note- while my particular frustrations are on the technical side of things, I wrote this post after going through the subreddit and a couple of discords noting just how many complaints there were and trying to organise them.
Firstly: severe technical issues introduced this patch.
The game is now tripping certain anti viruses rendering it unplayable in some instances on pc. Massive frame drops and stuttering have been introduced on both ps5 and pc. New crashes have been introduced as well. Notable areas include loading into the bridge, launching into a mission and arrival on the new TCS missions. Another notable thing is disconnects seem to be much higher this patch and general matchmaking issues from previously still aren't fixed.
Gameplay side of glitches: Terrain issues are pretty prominent this patch. Fenrir has invisible walls, there's been a lot more people getting stuck underground or in bug eggs/corpses. The richochet mechanic change is not just unpopular but came with an annoying bug that sometimes made explosives detonate inside a helldiver's personal shield. The force implosion bug gone but in its place is a new physics bug. Ragdolls are funny but not when they are cross map instant kills.
There's been texture errors as well. The map has messed up a bit for me personally though I havent seen that bug elsewhere, and other users are reporting the purple texture not loaded bug on certain weapons. The bug with automatons shooting missiles through terrain is still there.
Some people are reporting no strategems at all and a crash when an annihilator tank explodes.
Second: poorly thought out mechanical changes
The changes to patrols below 4 players is devastating. 1/6 of 4 man patrols for a solo player to 1/4 is a practical increase of 56% more patrols. Sometimes players like to be stealthy. Being solo or two player is hard as it is depending on the rng. This just makes it unfair with no discernible outcome other than frustration.
Another mechanical change is the ricochet adjustment. Now we can shoot ourselves, but the automatons dont when they shoot our shield bubbles or the riot shield. Not to mention there seems to be chargers having AT weapons bounce off them now.
Third: heavy handed, unrequired and unpopular balance changes.
Balance is important, though as a pve game it can afford for some options that are slightly stronger in a generalist sense (after all thats why we level up) Both buffs and nerfs are important. While some may espouse an "always buff" approach it is not healthy in the long term. Sometimes nerfs are necessary.
It does not however mean that nerfs need to be so nasty. Just because a weapon is popular does not mean its unbalanced. Looking at you dominator nerf.
One example of an unnecessary nerf are the guard dog changes. The liberator version got a 15% damage buff, while the laser got a massive 30% nerf. Yet in practice all this will do is cripple the laser dog's ability to kill hunters (its main selling point) without addressing why its a straight upgrade (that being no need to resupply it and less downtime from overheating vs reloading)
The eruptor nerfs are examples of unpopular heavy handed nerfing. 50% ammo is a crippling cut as it is. The explosion reduction was just kicking it while its down. The crossbow is just as bad. Its niche has been removed as an aoe tool. Now its supposed to be a good single target weapon but it doesnt even do that.
A much fairer nerf would be a cut to 9 mags
Fourth: meaningless buffs
Several weapons got small damage buffs this patch but most of them are lackluster.
Liberator and concussive liberator- The smg is still better than the base liberator. The concussive is still a joke weapon and the poor armour piercing version didn't get anything. Guard dog liberator- as said earlier, does nothing to address the flaws that cripple its usage Tesla tower- what's its health now? doesn't matter a charger can still instantly kill it. Diligence- Still no reason to run this over the base liberator if your aim is halfway decent. MG sentry- its still weaker than every other sentry in every category
idk, it feels like this patch needed more testing at minimum and more clarity on certain notes. Eg instead of reduced recoil. Put reduced recoil by 10%

33 male. I used to have a ton of friends and rich social circle in my city where I moved to after college. I still have great childhood friends but we’re all spread out, some have kids and families and we are lucky to see each other once a year but we text a good bit. Through a really tough breakup and the pandemic, I lost the majority of my friend group and community. Over the last two years I’ve found new acquaintances but nothing really seems to ever mature into a regular friendship. Two friends of mine are just gym buddies essentially, but they have been making some very overtly sexist and anti-trans comments as jokes. That’s just not really my type of humor so I just kind of ignore it, but it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve known these guys for about 8 years but only in the context of working out and the occasional happy hour. Recently one of these friends accused ME of being racist because I did not like Deion Sanders as a coach and he said “oh you just can’t handle the fact he’s a black head football coach.” He’s one of these NIMBY guys who pretends to be liberal but in reality he’s anything but. I said fuck off and that’s uncalled for and he apologized “if he insulted me” and I didn’t accept that as a real apology. We haven’t spoken now in about 7 months.
My new friends and I recently had a falling out. They were making very racist, homophobic, anti trans jokes VERY frequently in a text group. I would ignore or slightly confront them but it got worse and worse. The final straw was when someone said the N word. I left the group.
Now I’m not super liberal or conservative. I don’t like punching down, I don’t like slurs, and I like to treat everyone with respect. I don’t necessarily miss hanging out with these friends, but now I’m essentially just alone all the time except for my gf and her friends. I’ve lived here 10 years and all of my friends are gone and I’ve alienated myself from a few communities- for good reasons, but I just feel so lost now and lonely.
Just wanted to vent. Thanks for reading of you made it this far.

Hello Catholicism. I almost can’t believe I’m posting this but have been seriously interested in entering into the Catholic faith. I do have some worries and reservations, but am open to any advice.
Some background about me. I’m 31 years old. My fathers family is Catholic and my mothers is Protestant. They divorced when I was 10. My dad is not really involved in the church and doesn’t attend mass as far as I know. The only times I’ve been with him and his family at church was during funerals, but it led to be interested in Catholicism as it was very different than the Protestant churches I’d been to. I was mostly raised by my mom and would go to an evangelical church with her every Sunday as a teenager. Even then the evangelical churches to me always felt too casual. They didn’t feel like I was stepping into a holy place the way that Catholic church’s did. The format of the preacher just delivering a lively sermon (often filled with pop culture references and jokes) and then inviting people up to pray also didn’t seem right to me, like I was just going to a Christian Ted Talk. It just didn’t reverberate with me.
I became very obsessed with Catholicism in my early twenties and attended RCIA classes with the intention of joining the church. I struggled a lot at the same time with faith and belief and got very caught up in philosophy and theology, to the point where I felt very stressed out. I also was living with my mom at the time and I was scared about her reaction out so I kept it all a secret. She’s not super anti-Catholic, but has expressed dislike towards the church in the past.
Then I basically turned away from faith altogether. I stopped attending RCIA. I stopped believing in God. I started drinking, smoking, doing drugs, casual sex, basically all the stuff that was bad for me. I was very depressed and suicidal for a long time and struggled a lot with mental health and substance use. I feel very ashamed and embarrassed for this time in my life.
Within the past couple years I have tried to move past this and have made many positive steps. I quit drinking, smoking, and using any substances. My views on sexuality changed to where I wanted to view women in a way that was respectful, and I didn’t want to have sex unless it was meaningful. I starting working in education and want to make a positive impact on students. I wanted to express compassion and understanding to people and help those that are struggling. I want to be a good person and leave my self destructive behavior behind me.
I still however considered myself an agnostic, I just didn’t know or care about spiritual health at all. But recently I’ve realized that despite living a secular life, my own morals and lessons I’d learned were basically exactly what Christians had told me all along. That living a worldly life seeking worldly pleasures is unfulfilling and toxic. Having discovered this through experience, it has recently led me to take a renewed interest in faith. I began questioning my agnosticism, which I believe was just an easy excuse to not have to feel responsible for my actions or think about wider philosophical questions. I do believe that there is something greater, and that striving for that something greater is admirable and healthy.
Even while agnostic I admired those who were devoted to a higher power and made sacrifices in their lives for their belief. I respected my Christian friends for not trying to hide who they were or what they believed, or compromise their values. I also had a Muslim coworker who would often share with me about her faith and the reasons behind things like fasting for Ramadan. Even though I am not drawn towards Islam or accept it, I greatly respected the dedication and struggle she went through for her faith. As I have struggle to bring discipline into my own life, I have gained even more respect for those of faith.
It does scare me though. I keep having reservations about whether I can commit to the morals of the Church, what other people will think of me, and whether I truly believe in the Church teachings. I still find myself sitting on the fence of agnosticism and faith. Whenever I watch arguments between atheists and theists, I find myself against both sides, often thinking “here’s why they are wrong and God does/doesn’t exist.” I have accepted that I can never truly know empirically the existence of God. But I do think that striving for God is beneficial, which is where I’m at. Society today is so focused on the material, and I don’t see any fulfillment coming from that.
My main apprehension though of joining the faith is how others will perceive me, both non-Catholics and Catholics. I am generally a pretty left leaning person, no doubt more so than others here. Although I’m not as radical as I used to be I still hold sympathies for more egalitarian and socially progressive beliefs. I am not LGBT, but have friends and family members in that community who I care very much for. I also have been friends with sex workers, trans people, people struggling with disabilities or homelessness. One of the things I have always admired about Jesus was his compassion towards those that are outcast from society, and I try to emulate that in my own interactions. I fear that by becoming Catholic people may view me as hateful, or not compassionate, due to the church teachings. On the other hand, I worry that Catholics will view me as sinful or heretical for my interactions and beliefs. Despite my more liberal sympathies I am actually drawn more towards traditional Catholicism, such as the Latin Mass, which I view as a beautiful tradition that is an escape from modern society.
Sorry for such a long post. I am considering attending Mass again but today I chickened out and didn’t go. I also have looked into RCIA but haven’t reached out yet. Back when I was originally interested in Catholicism I was gifted a rosary from Medugorje. Even in my most anti-religious phase, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I’ve kept it with my in my backpack all this time and recently have been sitting with it and praying for guidance. I am wondering if anyone here can relate to me or have any advice. I know that this subreddit is going to be biased towards “join the church” but I want to make sure that I’m going into this for the right reasons. I also would like some advice for how to bring this up to people or express my interest in this without being seen as “that guy who went super Christian” and alienating my friends.
Thank you.

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

[...]

Nicaragua’s Ortega seeks re-election in questioned vote

In June, police arrested seven potential presidential challengers on charges that essentially amount to treason. They remained in detention on election day. Some two dozen other opposition leaders were also swept up ahead of the elections.

https://apnews.com/article/elections-central-america-nicaragua-daniel-ortega-rosario-murillo-c8d9e42cb0dcc7d9a537cb39536110a8
Ortega wins again in Nicaraguan elections panned as ‘parody’ by international observers

“Going to vote is a joke,” a high-ranking clergy member of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua told CNN by text message. “The people are fearful and locked in their houses.”
“A lot of the people I know are not leaving their homes,” said another Nicaraguan in the city of Granada, asking to remain anonymous for safety reasons. Driving through town, the streets and polling stations he saw were empty, he added. ....
Hundreds of protesters and activists are believed to still be detained, according to a report by the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights in February, and more than 100,000 Nicaraguans have fled the country, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Anti-government protests were subsequently banned. Even waving the country’s flag in public – a key symbol of the 2018 demonstrations – was criminalized.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/07/americas/nicaragua-election-nov-7-intl-latam/index.html
Nicaragua’s Farcical Election Marks Consolidation of Ortega’s Autocracy

Nicaragua’s democracy had been severely compromised for years. The president and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who is thought to be in charge of day-to-day decisions of government, tightly control the executive, the legislature, the courts, and the electoral authorities. Six months ahead of the previous presidential elections in 2016, Nicaragua’s Supreme Court barred Eduardo Montealegre—the head of the Independent Liberal Party, which was the leading opposition party at the time—from running.
Several factors all suggested that the president—who lost re-election in 1990 and only became president again in 2006—had no intention to allow a return to democracy. In 2018, Ortega pulled out of a national reconciliation dialogue that was established after the large-scale anti-government protests that shook the country in 2018, during which pro-government paramilitary groups killed at least 300 protesters. And in 2020, he adopted harsh laws that laid the groundwork for eliminating any opposition in the country by judicial persecution—and used them to charge business leaders and politicians with vague crimes such as “undermining sovereignty.” And yet, the brazenness with which the government has cracked down, over the past year, on the media, opposition parties, and civil society is unprecedented in Latin America's recent past.

https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/08/nicaragua-s-farcical-election-marks-consolidation-of-ortega-s-autocracy-pub-85733
Nicaragua used 'weapons of war' to kill protesters, says Amnesty International

Weapons of war have been used to indiscriminately kill and injure anti-government protesters in Nicaragua, as part of the ongoing violent crackdown ordered by the upper echelons of government, according to an Amnesty International investigation.
At least 322 people have been killed and 2,000 others injured – mostly by the police and pro-government paramilitary groups – since demonstrations over social security system reforms began in April.
Protesters have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and at least 300 prosecuted, many on terrorism charges. At least one journalist has been killed, and several foreign reporters deported.
...
The report is based on 115 interviews that uncovered six possible extrajudicial executions. Victims include 16-year-old Leyting Chavarría, who was found dead with a gunshot wound to his chest following an attack in July on makeshift barricades in the city of Jinotega by riot police and paramilitary groups. The teenager’s body was found in an alley alongside a catapult.
In a separate case, also in July, officer Faber López was killed shortly after telling his family that he was going to resign from the riot police, and that if they did not hear from him the next day, it would be because he had been killed by colleagues.
Official reports said López was shot in the head by “armed terrorists” while trying to direct traffic. His body was returned to his family with multiple signs of torture, but no bullet wounds.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/18/nicaragua-amnesty-international-police-killings-daniel-ortega
Arrests of Catholic priests in Nicaragua tick up as dragnet intensifies

Nicaraguan police on Friday arrested three more Catholic priests, bringing the number of clergymen detained this week to at least nine, according to sources close to the local church leadership, including one who is a high-ranking church member.
The three sources, who requested anonymity for fear of arrest, said two of the priests were taken into custody for publicly praying for jailed Bishop Rolando Alvarez, the most prominent critic of President Daniel Ortega.
The pair "were arrested for refusing to stop mentioning Bishop Alvarez in their sermons," one of the sources said, naming Marco Diaz and Bayardo Aguilar as among the latest clerical detainees. The source said Aguilar was later released.
...
At least 11 priests, bishops and seminarians are currently behind bars in the country, according to exiled Nicaraguan researcher Martha Patricia Molina, who publishes records of what she describes as the persecution of the Catholic Church under Ortega.

​
Yeah, sign me up.
​

I'm pro palestinian and pro israeli so I'll come up with 10 for each
Pro Israel
1) the far right israeli government and the genocidal statements made by them and the whole let's nuke Gaza comments
There was a pro Israel user on here who said that while they didn’t believe Israel was committing a genocide they did agree that these statements made by Khanists make South Africa’s case in the icj a lot stronger and if they stopped with these comments the South Africa case can be made weaker
2) comments such as you can't be gay in Gaza when I show sympathy for palestinian civilians or calling people self hating Jews if they criticize Israel or calling any criticism blood libel etc. Wanting palestinians to be free, or to not deal with the humanitarian crisis is something you should be able to support regardless if the people in question are progressive or not. I'm aware Palestine isn't a progressive haven no need to remind me.
I remember talking to a guy from Israel who was really extreme (he was featured on a Hamza Saddah video who is a palestinian streamer) because I said I didn't like his nuke Gaza comments, or calling all Gazans terrorists, or supporting Itamar Ben Gvir and he called me a self hating Jew, or the worst kind of Jew because I would criticize Israeli policy. Mind you, I don't like Hamas at all and want Israel to take them out, I support a 2ss, I've been to Israel and did my re batmizfah there on top of Mt Masada I’m just critical of israeli policy and leaders. The fact that I had to explain that I’m not pro Hamas or bring up the fact that I’ve been to Israel, cared about my Jewish identity more after October 7th but still hate the current gov for him to back off of the self hating Jew statements.
3) Being anti settlements and expansion in the WB
There was a militant group called the lions den in Gaza I’m not sure if they have targeted civilians or not but I thought I read on Wikipedia that they were frustrated by the WB settlements expanding and I think getting rid of them would make this group less frustrated now if it turns out that this group still isn’t happy after that then you can prove that this group in particular just wants to kill Jews and settlement expansion isn’t the problem for them
4) using religion to justify stuff, god gave me this or the bible that.... I support Israel because my religion…
For someone like me who’s an atheist Jew I don’t like appeals to religion and it doesn’t really convince other non religious people and top of that supporting Israel because of religion is silly, you should be able to talk about why you support Israel without saying my religion.. when you say things like this I assume that if your Bible told you to support Palestine you would do that
5) pretending like Palestinians aren't starving and using things like pallywood to dehumanize Palestinians
I see screen shots from pro Palestine accounts who find Zionists who mock the suffering of Palestinians or make rape threats or do edgy jokes regarding Palestinian suffering and it just reinforces the idea that Zionists don’t care about Arab suffering or have evil they are. Be better!
6)labeling every pro palestine rally as pro Hamas or every pro Palestine person as pro Hamas
Unless you hear individual people or see signs or orgs that are pro Hamas then the org is pro Hamas or you’re referring to the rallies that took place on October 7th or the 8th then those are pro Hamas rallies. Somewhat related but one Twitter user who’s a pro Israel grifter (Oli London) who was criticizing the protestors at Columbia for doing the dabke and I wanted to be like, out of all the stuff you criticize the protestors for you choose a dance which is similar to the stuff you see at Jewish weddings
7) telling Palestinians that they have other Arab countries to go to, or to live in
This doesn’t work with Israelis since there’s no other Jewish country but just like with Israelis who consider Israel home, Palestinians consider Palestine home. Calls for ethnically cleansing Palestinians are not good
8) calling all Palestinians terrorists
I hear this from racist Israelis I speak to online who are upset at October 7th, upset when they saw Hamas parading their people around like war trophy’s and Gazans joining in. Hatred doesn’t solve anything. My bf said that what each side does to the other is something the leaders of each side does to keep the people hating each other.
9) whenever the idf makes a mistake I hear pro Israel respond with well Hamas doesn’t discipline their men they support it
Hamas is a terrorist group of course they won’t do anything but I heard from one American Israeli who said that under bibi right now soldiers are acting up, I saw one article stating that a higher up with the idf saying this is a problem. I’ve seen pro Israel people criticize the idf for this you don’t need to defend the idf if they do something bad with its a mistake if its not or do the but Hamas thing
10) constantly asking pro Palestine people to condemn Hamas
I get why it’s asked because a sizeable portion of pro Palestine people support Hamas but at the same time condemnation should come naturally and if they don’t do it after a few tries then give up
Pro Palestine
1) wanting to kick israelis out or calling them all racist or child killers
One racist Palestinian I spoke to asked me why I have Israeli friends because they kill kids and he was shocked when I said that she doesn’t and I’m not a racist who judges people based on where they’re from. In another Reddit post I saw an Israeli getting harassed playing chess with free Palestine comments or people not wanting him on their team because he’s Israeli. He brought up just wanting to play chess free of politics and a number of people on Twitter supported the people harassing him
2) supporting October 7th I saw a sizeable chunk of people who are pro Palestine that supported Hamas's action on October 7th, the "by any means necessary" signs "intifada" signs "from the river to the sea" particularly when said by pro Hamas orgs or saying long live the palestinian resistance etc. This alienates reasonable Pro Palestine voices or even a Gazan pro peace activists from twitter I follow who end up wanting to create their own movement or they go to peace vigils because most of the rallies are toxic. Do something about the anti semitism in your movement/spaces so people don’t view your rallies as hateful
3) blanket labeling all zionists as if they're a monolith similarly with pro palestine people, there's religious zionists, liberal zionists, labor zionists etc
4)⁠wanting a greater Palestine 1ss all of Israel with israelis going back to Europe
Israelis aren’t going anywhere, and getting rid of Israel won’t be easy since it’s a strong nuclear power and Israelis are middle eastern and besides that most Israelis are mizrahi Jews
5) white washing Hamas (they want peace with Israel, they didn't rape israelis, they don't want to get rid of Jews)
You don’t need to do this to support Palestinians
6) not trusting what the idf says but trusting statements made by Hamas
be skeptical of either source to be consistent, I’ve seen people taking what the Al Quds network seriously but not Times of Israel or Haaretz. These outlets have more oversight compared to Hamas run outlets and will criticize Israel too and I’ve seen pro Palestine people use their articles as a source
7) not caring about what Israelis want or their concerns
I’ve seen from more hardcore Marxist Leninist Palestine supporters who say things like who cares what the oppressor wants and I’m like, they’re people too and Israeli civilians aren’t oppressing anyone. Government leaders can but civilians are just people who happen to be born there, for peace to work you need to take concerns of both parties that includes Israelis into consideration and make compromises
8) not wanting to work with Zionists or pro Israel people for solutions for peace
I refer back to the pro Palestine peace activist who is a non Zionist from Gaza city who says working with people across the isle is how you foster dialogue and come up with solutions and discussing concerns. If a pro Israel says I’m concerned with Israel’s security I’m concerned with Israeli safety don’t just brush it off listen to them and sympathize with their concerns
9) taking down hostage posters
What’s the point other than to show that you’re a garbage person
10) people boycotting Starbucks etc
Starbucks isn’t in Israel and the McDonald’s that gave the idf food was the Israel one, there were McDonald’s in Oman and other middle eastern countries who made statements for Gaza. Boycotting everything you think is affiliated with Israel or is pro Israel when it’s not is silly. All of this reminds me of a communist on Twitter who said their 4 year old son was going up to his mom while shopping asking him if the product they’re buying is on a boycott list and to scan it on some BDS website or something like it. I doubt this kid said that but if he did it’s because you’re indoctrinating him to care. If you want to boycott products be my guest but it’s just sad to deprive yourself of stuff out of fear that it’s associated with Israel. Similarly I see some pro Israel people fire back with I’m going to boycott Palestinian products. There isn’t any that I’m aware of but if there is it just seems silly to me too.

Previously, I wrote an AAR here: https://old.reddit.com/suzerain/comments/1c3bcbf/champagne_socialism_and_selfdeception_adhd/
Look, if I'm going to rip off u/Smiling-Otter, I'm going to do it properly. There was more story to be told, and here it is. If you want more details, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with!
THE GOVERNMENT
Rayne’s reforms had chipped away at the once impregnable discipline of the United Sordland Party. Experienced representatives deserted the party in worryingly high numbers, some defecting to other parties, others simply giving up on their political careers. Many rejected Rayne’s economic policies, and left along with Gus Manger and Symon Holl. Others, such as Lileas Graf’s followers, objected to his alignment with the Contanan Security Pact. This meant that while the USP retained a high number of seats, many of them were filled with fresh faces who had never seen the inside of the Assembly chambers before. The chance for Rayne to mould the party in his own image was counterbalanced by what some in the press referred to as the ‘brain drain’ from high-level positions within the party.
While Rayne was an active leader, the job of filling the cabinet fell to Vice-President Lucian Galade. His first and best appointment was Symon Holl’s replacement in the Ministry of the Economy, a young Agno-Sordish representative called Casper van den Bergh. Van den Bergh was a former teacher at the Lachaven Business School who had been a member of the Communist Party of Sordland before following Rayne to the USP. While he lacked Holl’s instinctive head for facts and figures, he brought an unquestionable work ethic to the position and inspired great loyalty in his subordinates. Under his guidance the state was able to fully integrate recently nationalised industries and take control of further sectors of the economy without wrecking anything in the process. In doing so he was able to fulfil one of Rayne’s wilder ideas, the Universal Wage he advocated in the Presidential debate. Through reform of the welfare system he was able to combine multiple state-provided benefits into one streamlined system that paid out a basic rate to every citizen, with extra provisions for those in greater need. While he would continue tweaking the system until his retirement, the Universal Wage stands perhaps more as van den Bergh’s legacy than Anton Rayne’s.
The rest of the cabinet was filled with a selection of candidates mostly put in place to appease factional interests. Gloria Tory and Albin Clavin had readily held onto their seats, and while Tory’s conservative faction was greatly weakened by defections and Clavin had lost much political capital after being denied the role of Vice President, they had the advantage of experience in an increasingly youthful USP. Ultimately, everyone accepted the truth: that the USP was now firmly wedded to the CSP and to Marcian economics. The only question was what that would look like in practice.
THE GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
The National Front Party marched into the Assembly Hall after the elections full of the confidence of the official opposition, prepared to fight against Rayne’s Malenyevist leanings and represent the values of true purple-blooded Sords everywhere. Several familiar faces now stared down their former comrades, as die-hard nationalists pledged their allegiance to Kesaro Kibener and brought their voters with them. As far as they were concerned, the only way from here was up.
As it happens, the NFP would prove to be very disappointed. While many voters remained suspicious of the USP’s liberal stance on Bludish rights, the fact was that Anton Rayne had dismantled the Bludish Freedom Front, something his predecessors had been unable to do. His alignment with the CSP may have been ideologically repugnant to many, but Valgslandian ships protected Sordish waters and Contanan techniques produced bumper harvests, driving down prices of staple foods in markets across the nation. And while all good Sords spat on the name Karlos Marcias, nobody could argue with the Great Sordish Recovery. The NFP would never replicate their success in the ‘57 elections, and would fracture and collapse over the next decade. Kesaro Kibener, sensing which way the wind was blowing, began an attempt to reconcile the party with Rayne’s popular socialist economics, believing that they could survive as an ethno-nationalist faction aligned with Wiktor Smolak’s Wehlen. This was a step too far for Remus Holstrom, who launched a highly public leadership challenge in which he accused Kesaro Kibener of being a puppet attempting to pollute Sordish blood. While Kibener won, Holsord’s subsequent defection and creation of the wildly unsuccessful True Sordland Party spelled the end of the NFP’s mainstream credibility.
The People’s Freedom and Justice Party had almost been wiped out in the elections, many of their liberal urban voting base defecting to Rayne’s USP and the small core of radically pro-Arcasian voters being lured towards the anti-Communist NFP. Frens Ricter was pressured into resigning as the extent of the losses became clear. Manoly Suheil was widely tipped to be his replacement, but her position as Ricter’s deputy left the stink of failure on her, and she was unexpectedly beaten by Julia Anawalda, a fervent human rights campaigner who had been working for years to expose abuses by United Contana. Under her leadership the PFJP began to claw back their power base, although many pointed out that it would be hard for them to have done worse without the party collapsing altogether. As the NFP descended into drama and infighting, protest voters against the USP shifted their focus back towards a party that was seen as more stable and professional. Their stock rose further when Gus Manger and Symon Holl, who had been making noises about forming their own centrist party, were convinced to join the PFJP instead. The Anawalda/Manger ticket were able to capitalise on the USP’s attempt to poach socially conservative voters from the NFP, advocating for a softening of state control over the economy, more radical social change, and a shift towards the recently-formed Intermerkopum alliance instead of the distant CSP.
The Worker’s Party of Bludia and the Communist Party of Sordland, the groups who initially seemed most likely to benefit from the lowering of the electoral threshold, found themselves initially unable to capitalise on the situation. The shift of the USP to overt Socialism meant that many potential CPS voters saw no need to vote for the smaller party, instead throwing their weight behind Anton Rayne. The WPB was in a similar bind, with Rayne’s ousting of Governor Bron and amendment of Articles 6 and 7 of the constitution giving him a great deal of popularity among the Bludish community. However, Leke and the WPB were still able to retain enough of their voting base to enter the Assembly. The dream of a semi-autonomous Bergia was still alive, and many still carried grudges surrounding the destruction of the Bludish Freedom Front. While the mainstream Bludish movement had begun to distance themselves from the BFF, the fact remains that the fighters who had caused so much trouble were still people with lives, families and community ties. While they remained a fringe party who had no expectation of ever forming a government outside of a coalition, the WPB would remain a fixture of Sordish politics for decades to come. The CPS would not, and after a period of negotiation the party officially merged with the USP in time for the ‘61 elections.
The structure of the GNA came under heavy scrutiny in Rayne’s second term. The President began making noises about adding a second chamber for oversight and revision purposes, taking up the functions once given to the Supreme Court. His initial goal was to institute a Valgslandian chamber of delegates appointed by various trade unions, a notion which the unions themselves enthusiastically backed. The main chamber itself was significantly divided over this issue. Some conservatives disliked the power being given to the unions, some were wary of watering down their legislative power, and many were okay with a second chamber in principle but disagreed with its makeup. In the end, wrangling over this project took up most of the next four years. Rayne mostly got his wish, although as a compromise multiple other non-union professional bodies such as the Sordish Bar Association and the Sordish Medical Council were permitted to elect representatives as well. Some commentators speculated that this was a political ploy by Vice-President Galade to take control of the government by diverting the President’s focus onto a single time-consuming project, preventing him from making any radical policy decisions without consulting anyone. Nothing was ever proven either way.
THE WIDER WORLD
The most seismic change for Sordland came not from the ATO or the CSP, but from the formation of the Intermerkopum alliance right on their doorstep. The sudden shift to a tripolar world would have long-running effects on the global balance of power. Despite this, the biggest change for Sordland came from a somewhat different angle.
Queen Beatrice Livingstone had almost bankrupted her country building up the army. She had riled her population up to prepare for a war with Sordland. Strict authoritarian measures, draconian even by the standards of the monarchy, had been put in place to prepare for the conflict to come. Then Rumburg was ejected from OMEC and sanctioned by the Alliance of Nations. War with Sordland went from inevitable to a near-suicidal mistake. So when parts of the army under the command of Count Roderick Livingstone, the Queen’s cousin, launched a coup, many were shocked but nobody was surprised. Sords saw their own country’s history repeating itself as the newly-crowned King Roderick launched a brutal military crackdown, only to face a civil war as a faction of the army led by Duke Sebastian of Ironsrad revolted. The Ironsrad faction sought to reduce the monarch to the status of a figurehead, transferring the power of the crown to a joint government split between the nobility and military veterans of common birth.
As the country was plunged into brutal war with terrible atrocities committed by both sides, Queen Livingstone’s chickens unexpectedly came home to roost. The BFF, crippled by Operation Bear Trap in Wehlen and by the actions of the police in Sordland, had largely fled into southern Rumburg. As violence began to spread across the north of the country, with the heaviest fighting happening between Thornbourgh and Ironsrad, BFF fighters seized control of the city of Datefort. While their previous attempts in other countries had failed as soon as the regular army showed up, the Bluds found themselves the beneficiaries of a most unlikely alliance: the Nurist Republic of Derdia and the Republic of Wehlen. Newly bound together in the Intermerkopum alliance, the two nations began to funnel weapons, resources and volunteer fighters to the BFF. While the Supreme Wiseman’s involvement was fully consistent with his often-stated principles, President Smolak’s decision to throw his weight behind the Bludish cause utterly baffled anyone who had observed his actions in the past. Ultimately a consensus emerged: that Wiktor Smolak didn’t give a damn about Bluds, Rums, or even his own people, unless they affected his power in some way. To him, the BFF were a weapon. If they were pointed at him he would destroy them, if they were pointed at someone else he would happily load them and pull the trigger.
The Sordish government were torn on how to respond to the civil war. Some wanted to leave Rumburg to its own devices, closing the border and waiting to see what happened. Some, most notably President Rayne, wanted to offer assistance, either by providing relief to refugees or even locating and funding a hypothetical faction of Socialist revolutionaries that they assumed had to exist somewhere. A small but vocal cross-party faction wanted to launch an invasion to seize territory and natural resources, or at the very least to return Dome to Agnolia. In the end, inertia proved to be the deciding factor. With the resources of the Sordish state directed firmly inward, the appetite for getting involved in a foreign civil war was low. Humanitarian aid stations were set up at the borders and an expedited asylum program was put in place, but the government’s stance remained broadly neutral.
The war dragged on for almost two years, only breaking when negotiations between the democratic forces and the Bludish liberationists finally bore fruit. Rumburg transitioned into a federal constitutional monarchy, with different regions allowed to operate under locally-elected governments while sending representatives to the central parliament. The southern-most province was named Bludia, a controversial move which was imposed as part of the alliance negotiations. The newly-reorganised nation, devastated by the massive fighting, promptly found itself at the centre of a diplomatic free-for-all between the superpowers to bring it into their spheres of influence. After significant negotiations which grew so heated that accusations of corruption were thrown around in the AN, Rumburg officially joined Intermerkopum – though not before accepting significant international development aid from the ATO.
Outside of Merkopa, the biggest international development came when United Contana announced that Comrade Malenyev had died peacefully in his sleep. While tributes came from around the world, a diplomatic power struggle quickly sprung up among the communist nations of the world. Chairman Hegel began an international charm offensive to establish himself as the natural successor to Malenyev as the first-among-equals among the leaders of the CSP. He was opposed in this by two other main figures: Vyacheslav Zaitsev, the newly-elected Chairman of the Contanan Communist Party, and Ifeoma Ogedegbe, a Rikan revolutionary leader who had helped to establish numerous Communist paramilitary groups across their home continent. Anton Rayne and the Sordish state in general threw their diplomatic support behind Chairman Hegel, who comfortably cemented his authority within the Pact. Under his guidance the CSP shifted its focus from sponsoring revolutionary movements across the world to offering massive economic incentives to any country that would either join or at least align more closely with their interests. While Hegel himself would die less than ten years later, his strategy of outspending the ATO rather than relying on military force would cause long-lasting shifts in the nature of the cold war between the superpowers.
THE FUTURE
While Sordish politics continued to evolve, Sordish culture also began to evolve in the years after the ‘57 election. Comedic radio personality Erzen Vectern (no relation to the Vice President) shocked the nation and tested the boundaries of the Media Council’s rules on appropriate content when he performed a series of comedy sketches entitled ‘Baby Anton’s Playtime’. In these, the President was cast as an excitable child constantly being distracted by new ideas while his long-suffering nanny Lucian Galade tried to rein him in. While many people found the open disrespect to the highest office in the land deeply shocking, there was no response from the Maroon Palace. Emboldened, Erzen turned these impressions into an entire light entertainment show, featuring other performances such as Storytime With Grandpa Soll and the raunchy (for the time) Adventures In Fairyland, which lampooned public figures suspected of being gay. Erzen’s greatest triumph came when Kesaro Kibener sued him for slander after being featured on Adventures In Fairyland. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled that the show, which advertised itself as political satire rather than factual reporting, could not be construed as a lie and therefore failed to reach the legal bar to prove slander. This ruling led to a flowering of political comedy and the beginning of what became known as the Golden Age of Satire. This was compounded when, in 1970, Anton Rayne appeared in a TV special with Erzen Vectern. Rayne openly stated that he had found Baby Anton’s Playtime hilarious, before acting out one of the classic sketches, playing the role of Lucian Galade alongside Erzen playing Baby Anton.
In 1961, Anton Rayne retired as the first President not to be forcibly ousted from office since the fall of the monarchy. Surprisingly, he endorsed Gloria Tory as his successor instead of Albin Clavin or Ciara Walda, both of whom were running for party leader on a much more progressive platform. The nature of the fix became clear when Ciara Walda dropped out shortly thereafter, endorsing Gloria Tory and being offered a position as her potential Vice-President. The ‘61 election is still taught in Sordish universities to this day as an example of wide-scale political reorganisation. Moderate conservative voters who were turned off by the rhetoric of the NFP returned to the USP, except for those for whom a female President was a bridge too far, who instead switched from the USP to the NFP. Tory’s credentials as a social conservative alienated many progressive voters, who returned to the PFJP, but her stated intention to continue with the Socialist policies of her predecessor drew voters more concerned with economic redistribution from the pro-capitalist PFJP to the USP. The former voting base of the CPS had mostly joined their leader in returning to the USP, but many Bluds who had lent Rayne their votes in the previous election returned to the WPB, not trusting a woman in whom they had no real confidence. The media predicted everything from a record victory for the USP to a hung Assembly to the first ever government of a second party. The one thing everyone could agree on was that Frens Ricter’s Human Dignity Party, whose policy seemed to be the same as the PFJP but with a disgraced former leader in charge, was a vanity project that would get nowhere. In the end, the results were less seismic than many had predicted. The NFP lost some seats, the PFJP and the WPB gained some, and while the USP suffered losses, they did not extend beyond single digits. These losses, however, proved to be only the first cracks in the dominance of the monolithic USP.
Insider gossip claimed that the Tory/Walda ticket was masterminded by former Vice President Lucian Galade in an attempt to hold together the party’s ‘big tent’ coalition of liberal and conservative voters. This plan had one fatal flaw: Gloria Tory and Ciara Walda absolutely hated one another. The two women had previously maintained a frosty but respectful relationship, a state of affairs that they maintained by never talking to one another. Forced to work together closely, the personality clashes escalated quickly. The two broadly agreed to leave the economy to van den Bergh, retained from Rayne’s cabinet, but around areas of social policy, the differences became irreconcilable. While many areas of discrimination under the law had been tackled in previous administrations, discrimination by private citizens was still rampant across Sordland. The right of businesses to refuse to serve Bluds, homosexuals, or members of any other group they disliked came under strong public debate, which the government was forced to respond to. President Tory publicly decried all forms of prejudice, but maintained that it was the right of each individual to associate or not associate with other people as they chose. Vice President Walda argued that there were some reasons to discriminate that were invalid by definition, and that permitting these was an affront to human dignity. As the two most powerful people in the country did everything up to openly insulting one another in their speeches, the press had a field day with what the Holsord Post called ‘the most consequential attack of hysteria in Sordish history.’
The dysfunction within the government led to a great deal of speculation about the ‘65 elections, and who would win the power struggle within the party. Sadly, the conflict was resolved in a way that nobody expected. In the October of 1964, Gloria Tory announced to the nation that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and intended to retire from politics at the end of her term to focus on her health. This threw the party into chaos once again, as an unexpected leadership contest emerged. Ciara Walda refused to stand for President, allegedly on the advice of Lucian Galade, who supposedly told her that her public fights with President Tory had severely harmed her electoral prospects. Instead she endorsed veteran statesman Paskal Beniwoll as the progressive candidate for party leadership, facing off against Tory’s preferred successor, rising conservative star Abrasha Becker. However, the race was thrown into chaos by Anton Rayne unexpectedly throwing his considerable political capital behind Sivan Barhani, a Bludish Representative who had only joined the USP in 1956. Rayne made a series of speeches in which he claimed that it was finally time for Sordland to heal the wounds of the past by electing its first Bludish President. These speeches swayed enough of the party’s membership that Sivan won with a small plurality of the vote.
Ultimately, Rayne’s intervention sounded the death knell for decades of dominance of the party of Tarquin Soll. Mere months before the election, conservative Representatives from the USP defected en masse and announced the formation of a new party, the Sordish Conservative Party. The SCP’s ranks were swelled a mere week later by further defections, this time from the moderate wing of the NFP. The election was somehow even more chaotic than the last one, and when the dust had settled, no party held an overall majority in the GNA. The USP, still the largest party by a narrow margin, sought to form a government, only for the SCP and the PFJP to state their intention to form a coalition government. After the Supreme Court ruled that doing so did not contradict the constitution, Sordland witnessed the end of an era. For the first time since its foundation, the USP no longer occupied the Maroon Palace.
THE RAYNE FAMILY
While Anton Rayne worked hard at his second term in office, his wife Monica continued her development as a public figure. The Sordish League of Women overwhelmingly elected Monica Rayne as their President shortly after her husband’s re-election. The growing women’s movement had reaped great benefits from having the President’s wife as a figurehead, and those gains were only compounded by being linked to a popular President in his second term. Further amendments to the Women’s Liberation Act were passed through the Assembly, banning discrimination in employment, housing and healthcare provision on grounds of sex. Monica also fronted a high-profile campaign to bring more women into public roles within Sordish state media, citing the need for positive role models for young girls. After his retirement, Anton would joke that he was best known as Monica Rayne’s husband. While this was obviously not true, Monica did maintain her high public profile after her husband’s retirement. She tried her best to keep the momentum of the movement up during the turbulent years of the Tory administration, although this was not without cost.
Monica tried her hardest to stay neutral in the widely-publicised split between Tory and Walda, projecting the image of someone more interested in grand unifying projects than political disputes. Sadly, this led to her falling out of touch with the mainstream of the movement she had helped to start. As a new generation of young women took up the task of changing the world, they began to level a more critical eye at their former idol. Despite having been close to Ciara Walda from the beginning Monica had maintained close ties with Gloria Tory, often describing her as a respected colleague and even a friend. This did not sit well with the young women who sympathised with Walda’s more radical reformist tendencies. On top of this, Monica had shown some sympathy for the goal of stamping out prostitution, and had expressed her discomfort with the idea of legalising abortion. While her remarks on the sex trade were rooted in the exploitation inherent to the system and were often taken out of context by her detractors, her stance on abortion was a controversy too far. A mere decade after becoming the face of the women’s movement, Monica Rayne was already viewed as a product of a bygone era. She announced her retirement from the position of President of the SLW, citing a desire to open the role to somebody younger. In her later years she would talk openly of the strain that her public life had placed her under, forcing her to play the role of ‘mother of the nation’, an unrealistic standard of perfection that she could never fully be able to live up to.
Franc Rayne returned from United Contana as a qualified doctor with a specialism in cardiac medicine. Despite the ongoing government incentives to move to a more rural area, he chose to begin working at Holsord University Hospital in order to remain close to his parents. Shunning the example of the rest of his family he chose to stay out of the public eye, refusing all requests for interviews and going out of his way to avoid drawing attention to himself. He was nonetheless active within the Sordish Medical Council, being elected to its executive board in 1972 and eventually being elected as its President in 1981.
Deana Rayne proved to be as comfortable in the spotlight as her parents. After achieving a degree in biomedical science from Holsord State University she went on to work for several medical and pharmaceutical companies in the years that followed. Her life took a significant turn, however, when she published her first collection of poetry. ‘Pictures Of Lilies’, published under the pseudonym ‘A Sordish Daughter’, took the literary world by storm with a combination of romantic longing and stinging social criticism rooted in an all-but-explicitly sapphic viewpoint. While the intelligentsia of Sordland clamoured to know the identity of A Sordish Daughter, Deana initially chose to remain anonymous for fear of damaging the reputation of her parents. This fear was eventually quashed when she came out to her parents, who pledged their unconditional support. Deana gave several public interviews discussing her life and became a noted public figure in the Sordish arts. In her later years she would settle down with journalist Darina Lachav, and adopt two children.
After the end of his second term, Anton Rayne tried and failed to stay out of politics. While he had a stated policy of not commenting on the policies of the governments that followed his, he was never able to stick to it and was always an easy source of quotes for any journalist who could take him by surprise. He was often asked to participate in diplomatic missions on behalf of the government, a fact that some humorists attributed to the desire to get him out of the way so he would stop interfering. Despite this he remained a popular public figure, his constitutional reforms, involvement in the Great Sordish Recovery, and advocacy for social justice within the nation leaving voters with positive memories of him. This was further compounded by the dysfunction of the Tory administration, with some commentators demanding that the GNA repeal term limits to allow Rayne to come back. Rayne categorically stated that he would never run for President again even if he could, but the nostalgia among the general public remained strong.
Nonetheless, the golden age could not last forever. As the USP lost power and the coalition took office, public opinion slowly started to shift. It was hard not to notice Rayne’s role in splitting his own party, especially with the numerous public pronouncements he had made on how this would save United Sordland. This drew more public attention to the assorted false claims he had made at various points in his career, and the public’s opinion started to shift from the man who saved Sordland to a consummate bullshitter who would say anything to convince people to do what he wanted. Satirists and critical journalists alike took great delight in picking apart Rayne’s exaggerations, misinterpretations and flat-out lies, a fact that did not stop him compulsively making things up whenever he was challenged. Sadly, his declining popularity complicated the cause that would define the late stages of his life: gay rights.
Homosexuality had been legalised under Tarquin Soll, alongside divorce and interracial relationships, as part of sweeping measures to secularise the state. Despite this, homophobia remained a significant part of Sordish culture. While homosexuals might no longer face arrest, any with the temerity to be open about their sexuality faced discrimination and even violence outside any but the most cosmopolitan of circles. This led to the formation in 1966 of the Sordish Homosexuals Association for Rights and Equality, or SHARE for short. While smaller groups had existed previously, this took the struggle to the cultural mainstream. Following his daughter’s coming out in 1969, Anton Rayne publicly made a large donation to SHARE, and offered to speak at their next conference. Sadly, this would prove to be a disaster. Rayne’s once-untouchable public speaking abilities had declined as he grew older, tending to slip into rambling and self-aggrandising monologues filled with blatant lies. This meant that the most personal speech Rayne had ever given, in which he admitted to having had homosexual experiences himself and spoke of the guilt and shame he had felt growing up, was met with ridicule and mockery. The tabloid press engaged in lurid speculation about his personal life, insinuating that he had been intimate with lifelong bachelor Lucian Galade, and that his wife was also a lesbian, the two having entered into a so-called ‘lavender marriage’. This had devastating effects on Anton’s mental health. Friends would report that while he was hurt by the personal speculation, he was more worried that he had set back the movement for equality and subjected another generation of young men and women to the same oppression he had once faced.
While he was unable to fully stop himself from making public appearances, Rayne took a step back from the spotlight. By the time of his death in 1980, the result of a heart attack brought on by his terrible diet, he left behind the legacy of a complicated, idealistic man who was constitutionally incapable of getting out of his own way. Nonetheless, his death led to a softening of public opinion. When The Radical published ‘The Dirt On The Gardener’s Hands’, a look back at the life and career of President Rayne, their warts-and-all profile was shot through with a sense of deep affection. When Petr Vectern spoke at Rayne’s funeral, an excerpt from his eulogy summed up the feelings of many:
“Anton Rayne was, to me, the truest expression of the man who tells you ‘I always lie’. I was never sure whether to believe what he said, but I always knew what he meant. I knew I couldn’t rely on him, and I knew that I could trust him with my life. He only ever did what he thought was best, for better or for worse. We could all use a friend like that in our lives.”

I've been banned for being annoying, I guess. It's no surprise. I just would like to know if there is an addon that can censor my words after I say them, if they are inappropriate? In the past we've had a simple word filter, but now we get banned for saying things outside of a normal filter.
So, can I install an addon that censors any anti-liberal rhetoric I might say? Not joking, just wondering if something can spare me from MYSELF. It's no one elses fault but my own. However, I like to be the way I am so I need some kind of moderation before Blizzard's. Thank you!
edit: I dont want to play an account with a strike before cata. I would rather make a new account for cata, and have no penalty strikes for making jokes about our Lord and Savior, Biden. That's all

Order!
Our first item of business today is a vote on bill SB253, in the name of Forward. The question is that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Anti-Radicalisation (Education) Bill.

Anti-Radicalisation (Education) Bill

An Act of the Scottish Parliament to mandate the teaching of the Fundamental British Values, to codify anti-radicalisation guidance into statute, and for connected purposes.
Section 1: Definitions
(1) In this Act, unless specified otherwise;
(2) The ‘Fundamental British Values’ refers to the values set out as part of the anti-terror Prevent strategy, as below:

(a) Democracy
(b) Rule of Law
(c) Individual Liberty
(d) Tolerance
(e) Mutual Respect

(3) ‘School’ or derivatives refers to any education institution in Scotland.
(4) ‘Secondary School’ or derivatives refers to institutions that teach the years S1 to S6
Section 2: Requirement to teach the Fundamental British Values
(1) Secondary schools in Scotland must ensure that pupils are aware of the Fundamental British Values
(2) Secondary schools must develop a comprehensive and age-appropriate strategy to teach the Fundamental British Values, including (but not limited to):

(a) The strengths and limitations of democracy, including;

(i) The national British democracy
(ii) The Scottish democracy
(iii) International democracy
(iv) International non-democratic processes for governance

(b) How the rule of law operates in Scotland, including;

(i) The functions of the police in investigating and deterring crime
(ii) How the rule of law protects citizens equally
(iii) The implicit separation of powers and how institutions are kept accountable

(3) Schools are to promote individual liberty and independence inside and outside of school as part of their normal functions
(4) Schools are to encourage and develop free thinking and the autonomous development of ideas in their students, including;

(a) How to effectively debate ideas
(b) How to determine right from wrong
(c) How to show responsibility for their actions

(5) Schools are to promote mutual respect and tolerance of different values and ideas.
Section 3: Anti-Radicalisation Measures
(1) Schools are to take appropriate action against a student when they display such values that:

(a) Directly and seriously go against one or more of the Fundamental British Values, including;

(i) Seeking to promote ideologies that would overturn democracy
(ii) Seeking to promote ideologies that would undermine the rule of law in Scotland and the United Kingdom
(iii) Obsessive or extreme disregard for tolerating those with differing views to them
(iv) Constraining the development of individual liberty to such a degree that legitimate debate is unable to occur

(b) Suggest the student is at risk of radicalisation
(c) Suggest that the student has been radicalised

(2) Secondary schools are to take measures to educate students on radicalisation, including but not limited to;

(a) How people may be radicalised, including;

(i) The common signs that place people at risk of radicalisation
(ii) The common backgrounds of those at risk of radicalisation
(iii) Who is considered a person vulnerable to radicalisation

(b) The risks associated with radicalisation
(c) Recognising the signs of radicalisation in yourself and in others
(d) Who to report any concerns to
(e) How to support those who may be undergoing radicalisation

(3) Secondary schools must, where possible, ensure that the most up-to-date information on radicalisation and anti-radicalisation processes is delivered to students and that this knowledge is regularly disseminated to students.
(4) Schools must ensure that their staff are aware of all of the criteria in Section 3(2) and that training is regularly given to refresh this knowledge.

(a) The maximum gap between training may be no more than four years

Section 4: Short Title and Commencement
(1) This Bill may be cited as the Anti-Radicalisation (Education) Act 2024
(2) This Bill shall come into force on the 1st August 2025
This Bill was written by the Rt. Hon. Sir Frost_Walker2017, Duke of the Suffolk Coasts, as a member of Forward.
Opening Speech:
Presiding Officer,
I rise in support of this bill. While national security and counter-terrorism is reserved to Westminster, education is entirely devolved to Scotland, and it is through this lens that I have written this bill.
I think we can all agree that we should not allow our youth to be radicalised. We should not allow our youth to fall for ideologies actively harmful to a liberal democratic society, the likes of which we in the UK and her constituent regions operate in. Such radicalisation puts our society at risk at multiple levels - not only from a security point of view, if such individuals begin to threaten mass violence to get their way, but also from a social point of view as relationships between individuals and also between the individual and the state begin to break down.
The Fundamental British Values form a key part of these measures. This is a well known term south of the border, in England, and I seek to transpose them into our legislation here. The values of democracy, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance, and the rule of law form the backbone of civic society, and by respecting these values we hold respect for our country and for one another. It is important, in my view, that students are made aware of this to gain that respect early, especially considering they are at a key part of their life where small actions can have a great impact.
Presiding Officer, I recently sat through some safeguarding training. In it, we were told how to identify the common signs of radicalisation (alongside the common signs of abuse) and the importance of catching things early and taking it seriously. While social media has led to an alarming rise in the number of inappropriate “jokes” among young people, it is essential that students and staff alike are to recognise the signs of radicalisation. Off the top of my head, this can include sudden behavioural changes, isolation from family and friends, and dangerous rhetoric. Hand in hand with it is how to recognise when people are at risk of radicalisation. Such common signs for this include a recent death in the family, a loss of a support network, and mental health issues. The list of common signs for both could go on - but I feel I have made my point. Both student and staff being aware of these mean that those who are best placed to recognise the signs can report any concerns they have to catch it quickly, before it spirals out of control.
This legislation is designed to protect our young people, Presiding Officer. I commend this bill to this Parliament.
Voting on this bill will end with the close of business at 10pm BST on the 27th of April 2024.