BetsyBel

@betsybel.bsky.social

Paint and draw and sleep and read and such like

I received a crazy-eyed, unhinged anti-Jasmine Crockett flier from Hillsdale College yesterday (unsolicited). Yes, I am in the district she may run in after Texas redistricting. These people are unhinged, linking her to Kirk’s killer, Luigi Mangione, Jimmy Kimmel, sandwich throwers, etc.

For those new here, I spent last year writing for @newrepublic.com about an extremist tech ideology. It calls for tech elites to control governments and/or create new ones. It seeks to dismantle nations and destroy democracy. Some call it the "Network State," and it may now seem familiar to you 🧵

From New Republic piece by Gil Duran: Vance has not advocated for realms—yet—but some of his most extreme ideas echo Yarvin. They’re both fond of political purges, for instance. In a 2021 podcast interview, Vance was asked how to get liberals out of government institutions. “De-Nazification, De-Baathification,” he replied. “I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left. And turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.”

He predicted Trump would run again and win, then offered some advice: “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” He added that Trump should defy any court orders that tried to halt this partisan purge of the civil service.

Allow your feelings. Speak your fears, record the minutiae of changes locally as well as nationally. The state I live in has drastically changed in the last 10 years. I need to remember the events, people and sequence of changes.

I urge everyone to keep a personal record of their experiences, observations and reflections of this time in our disordered history. Some of the most potent history has come from diaries, journals and personal letters. The detail you include is a measure of how changes happen and at what pace.