We are all susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. It’s a truism that people with wealth and power are loath to give up said wealth and power, but to go from that to thinking that there’s a master plan to wreak Fascism that’s been unfolding for decades is very likely wrong.

While the end result (wreaking Fascism) may be the same either way, IMO the slide to Fascism wasn’t planned, but emerged from the various incentives put in place. Wealthy people want to protect their wealth, and in doing so make a thousand selfish deals that cause a Fascist government to emerge.

Were there people who wanted a Fascist state? Sure. People like Newt Gingrich wanted a permanent single-party state. Project 2025 was an explicitly Fascist roadmap. Stephen Miller is our Goebbels. But these people got their chance to play Nazi because wealthy people felt that platforming them has a good return on investment.

There is no master plan. It’s all rich and powerful people not wanting to let go.

There is also a risk in conspiratorial thinking that can lead us to conclude that the enemy to a progressive society is a small cabal of shadowy lords with Hitler mustaches planning Fascism around the world, when the real enemy is actually a system that enables the hoarding of wealth and power. Fascism is only one symptom of this problem; other forms of subjugation may form that does the same job, including widespread serfdom in an otherwise democratic nation (which is what US capitalism and lack of national welfare basically is).

Attacking an imaginary cabal will not address the main problem; attacking wealth inequality will.

• #opinion
• #politics

I want a society that’s designed to make everyone moderately wealthy, and not only five people astronomically wealthy. The damage and misery caused by unmitigated inequality has been demonstrated over and over again, for millennia, yet we fall for the lie over and over again.

In the US, we choose inequality because we are taught to believe the blatant lie that we might one day be one of those five fabulously wealthy people. But look at the numbers: there are only five of them among millions; the odds are staggeringly against you.

It’s like a middle-school sports enthusiast thinking they will become a top-billing star in some major league, and make tens of millions of dollars a year: the numbers simply do not work out; there are only so many quarterback positions available, and tens of thousands of applicants. Yet they are raised to cling to that selfish “dream” instead of focusing on building something that everyone (including themselves) is likely to benefit from.

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• #opinion

Here’s how you can stop bridging your posts from Mastodon to Bluesky, and how you can stop seeing posts from Bluesky bridged to Mastodon.

To stop sharing your posts to Bluesky:

1. Find the user @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy (Type the user in the search box and click the Profiles matching… button)
2. Block the user @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy
3. Click the Preferences button on the sidebar
4. Go to Account/Authorized apps
5. Revoke access for Bridgy, if it exists.

To stop seeing posts from Bluesky:

1. Find any user whose address ends with …@bsky.brid.gy (You can type bsky.brid.gy in the search box and click the Profiles matching… button)
2. Click on the user name to reveal their profile page
3. Click the ••• button
4. Click Block domain bsky.brid.gy
5. Click Block server

To verify that you’ve done it, click the ••• More button on the right sidebar and click Blocked domains. You should see bsky.brid.gy there.

• #mastodon
• #howto

Someone recently cited “tall poppy syndrome” as an illustration of a person who resents someone who has more wealth than they do. The implication being: we shouldn’t resent rich people, but instead celebrate their wealth.

This principle is a good idea! You should be happy when your friends get wealthier, or do better than you, or accomplish tasks that you could never hope to achieve!

…to a point.

Deceptively, “tall poppy syndrome” is used to justify the existence of billionaires, and the analogy breaks down. Being happy if your friends do twice as well as you do, or even ten times, is one thing; but being told to be happy when someone does a thousand times better than you is not reasonable.

A median poppy is around 3 ft (1 m) tall. Say the US median household has $1M in assets (a generous overestimate). A billionaire poppy is not only a little taller than the average, it is a thousand times taller. That’s one poppy in a field of millions that stands 0.6 miles (1 km) tall, all by itself. Jeff Bezos, with a $237B net worth, will be a poppy 711,000 ft tall, or 134 miles (237 km) tall, its flower sitting well inside the darkness of space.

“Tall poppy syndrome” is for feeling happy when your friend gets a promotion. It’s not for when someone exploits ten thousand of your friends to get a thousand times richer than anyone can reasonably hope to be.

• #opinion

Religious babble

As we round the orbit to another season of Christmas, I’m once again bringing up as an ex-Christian that a lot of “Christian doctrine” that believers lay claim to was actually written by Paul, then expanded over time by countless Catholic expositions, Protestant philosophers, and modern-day Evangelical charlatans.

Almost everything that we know about what Jesus personally taught can be read in the three and a half gospels (the Gospel of John is less of a historical record and more a philosophical interpretation of what Jesus did from a certain religious perspective, but anyway), and when you focus only on what Jesus taught it’s…actually not that much.

Jesus taught that love for your fellow humans was more important than adherence to Law. He taught empathy for the misfit, the oppressed, and the marginalized. He despised relentless monetization. He fed the hungry, lifted the downtrodden, and “healed” without condition. He preached nonviolence and a separation of religion and power.

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• #opinion