Paul St-Pierre Plamondon
@PaulPlamondon
Mark #Wiseman, engagé comme conseiller de Mark #Carney pour siéger sur son Conseil des relations canado-américaines, est le co-fondateur de l’Initiative du siècle, ce groupe d' #idéologues qui sont les artisans de la politique d' #immigration délirante qu'a appliquée le gouvernement libéral de Justin #Trudeau dans les dernières années.

Voici ce que Mark Wiseman pense du #Québec : « L'objectif d'atteindre 100 millions de Canadiens..
https://x.com/PaulPlamondon/status/1903159007168319635

Sometimes an Ideologue Needs to Break Through to Spur Change! 🚨⚖️

In this clip from my LIVE Sharpe Way show, I discuss why ideologues are sometimes necessary to create real change. Unlike career politicians, they aren’t motivated by money and are less likely to be corrupted by the establishment. While they can be radical, they at least push the system forward.

#RFKJr #DeepState #GovernmentReform #Ideologues #JimmyDore #BreakingPoints #TYT

More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday
from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency,
saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,”
the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
“However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were #political #ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.

The mass resignation of engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers is a temporary setback for Musk and the Republican president’s tech-driven purge of the federal workforce.
It comes amid a flurry of #court #challenges that have sought to stall, stop or unwind their efforts to fire or coerce thousands of government workers out of jobs.

https://apnews.com/article/doge-elon-musk-federal-government-resignations-usds-6b7e9b7022e6d89d69305e9510f2a43c

I'm trying to concentrate on my #work, but I keep getting pulled away by #doomscrolling. There's even more doom to scroll these days than usual, it seems.

Much of what I'm scrolling is discussions in #science-focused spaces, started and (somewhat) moderated by people who want thoughtful and informed discussion. Often they stay that way for quite a while. But the loons always find them, and descend in hordes. Like locusts without the charisma.

#Antivax is the most common, but #creationism and #climate change denial always put in a good showing. More recent crankeries like the explosion of flat-Earthers: please don't try to tell me they're all "just trolling." Others too numerous to list.

There are the hardcore #ideologues who don't try to mask it, and the "just asking questions" crowd who are just as much true believers, minus the honesty. And another circle beyond that, people who genuinely don't know enough to know what questions to ask. Some of them might still be reachable—

—if you have the time and patience. Which I no longer do.

I did, you know, for much of my life. I'd give clear explanations, "as simple as possible but no simpler," and I've been told I was pretty good at it. Hell, I *enjoyed* doing it, and maybe still would. Answer questions. Smooth out sticking points. Engage with anyone, any time, anywhere.

I just can't anymore. And I hate that.

More and more of the people who look like they might want to learn, who can at least be given what they need to know to *start* asking the right questions, are really clever ideologues. Or they're just happy in their #ignorance. It's a trap either way.

Like I've said before: nearly everyone is ignorant about nearly everything. The sum of human #knowledge is too vast for anyone to learn more than a sliver of it in a lifetime. This is nobody's fault.

Science is fractally complicated. Each field is complicated, and each subfield is equally complicated, and each sub-sub-field ... you get the idea. No matter how much you know, you still have just as much to learn as you did at the start.

Maybe everything worth knowing is like this. Again, nobody is to blame.

But it is your fault, very much so, if you don't know anything about the subject at hand—and insist on spouting off anyway. If you react to those who know more with anger or mockery or baffled rage. If your deliberate, willful ignorance gets you and people around you killed.

So you know what? It's not my fault if I can no longer make myself care.

I'll keep on answering questions, and asking them too—and *listening* to both the questions and the answers. That's in my blood. I know there are many, many people in the world who do want to know more than they do now, and if you're still reading this, there's a fair chance you're one of them.

Everyone else can go to hell. That's where they're headed anyway, a hell they make for themselves, and the only remaining reason to try to get through is that they'll drag the rest of us with them. When that effort fails, as at the moment it manifestly is ...

Back to work. That may still be one place I can do *something*.

(10/N) A third category of adversaries:

Ideologues

#Ideologues want to push you to do the right thing, or to punish you for doing the wrong thing. They may also want to eliminate you, physically or metaphorically, when they can't achieve their goal: Maybe you just won't learn, or are incorrigible, as such.

The assets that you are "entitled" to are considered a reward, for conforming to the respective ideology. The portion of your assets that you aren't "entitled" to is usually the target of relentless denial, even destruction.

Entitlement is always conditional, and temporary: In case you seem to be going astray, and appeals to your conscience do not seem to have enough effect, your assets may be withdrawn or destroyed.

Hacktivists, campaigners, protagonists or minions of gender-based violence, lobbyists, racists, and terrorists fall into this category.

Note: I am not judging how "just" the respective "causes" are, I'm talking about behaviors.

(to be continued)

Start of this thread:
https://mastodon.de/@tuxwise/113503228291818865

#ThreatModeling #4D

Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy
-- in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.

Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy:

if Donald #Trump, rightwing courts, #gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican #caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional #chaos over the certification of this presidential election, 👉two men cleared the path.

The single-minded determination of #Leonard #Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US #supreme #court and ♦️stacked lower and state courts with Republican #ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.

#Chris #Jankowski masterminded the partisan #gerrymanders that ♦️tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans,
♦️ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and ♦️rendered elections in Wisconsinand North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.

Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar.

They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.

What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice #John #Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and 💥making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/04/electoral-college-map-gerrymandering?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other