#oliver klein

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

[tlj1988]

[hainethehero]

I'm sorry!!! But the way Eddie is EATING everyone up in this photo??!!!!

[ashethewitch]

Wiatt when oliver confessed be like:

[lorei-writes]

Tell Me Why You Love Me Story Event; Nokto's Route; Chapter 2

All I could think about while reading this was @olivermorningstar 's Oliver being real in canon universe and having biographies written about him.

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Distorted 2018

[thinktankbigmt]

Klein I’ve got the perfect person for you to get a brain from. He’s practically already brainless since he doesn’t seem to use it in the first place. All you need to do is beam him away. His name is general Oliver. Also how do you like the mentat wine?

OLIVER? I KNEW AN OLIVER ONCE. THE ONLY BRAIN LESS BRAINLESS THAN THAT OLIVER’S IS THE BRAINLESS BRAIN OF MOBIUS. ALSO, THE MENTAT WINE IS EXCEPTIONAL, BUT DO NOT TELL HIM THAT. I SHALL GO PROCEED, I SUPPOSE.

[5eyed]

realized i never posted her.. this is soona xeres's best friend :)

[screamsofanoutlawbrain]

Welcome to Dreamworld but they're on a roadtrip. (set inbetween the arg game and s2, so spoilers)

Group 1. Wiatt, Starlight, Masquerade, Nightlight.

Wiatt's half-heartedly wondering to himself how he got in this situation, but is enjoying being able to spend time Slarlight. (driver seat)

Starlight's switches between endlessly talking with Wiatt and staring in silence out the car window. (passenger seat)

Masquerade's asking questions and happily socializing with Nightlight. (behind starlight)

Nightlight is confused and is ether silently staring at Starlight or nervously talking. (behind wiatt)

Group 2. Damian, Oliver, Melody, LolliPop.

Damian is mostly paying attention to the road while partially talking with the others. (driver seat)

Oliver's comforting LolliPop and mentally sobbing on the inside, kinda off put by Melody's questions though. (passenger seat)

Melody's asking Damian and Oliver a barrage of questions mixed with the occasional "are we there yet?" (behind oliver)

LolliPop are both having a crisis due to quickly regaining their memories by realizing that Oliver was the guy in the passenger's seat, after they calm down they're quick to participate in conversation with everyone. (behind damian)

I know in sense of cannon this could never happen due to multiple reasons but shhhhhhh

[eucanthos]

Klein Collective

Choreography: Erica Klein

Music: Last Night I Heard Everything in Slow Motion by Oliver Tank

Klein Collective, Dance for Life Festival, July 2024

Dancers:

Davyd Treasure, Braylon Browner, Trey Barrett, Dawson Jackson, Easton Mags, Hylee Whitley, Miabella Gonzalez, Coco Joelle, Jamie Meyer, Mikaela Meyer, Cienna Hintz, Sydney Latimer, Kaya McAfee, Megan Thomas, Erica Klein

[tlj1988]

[camprell-art]

Redrew some old Ocs!

They're from a story that I started to write when I was 14. :)

(Which is actually 2 stories that I made into only one, the first being "Edgar Mouret (2014-15)" the life of a 27 year old schizophrenic gravedigger and "Flowers of a Blood Garden (2016-17)", a story told by a serial killer who thinks that he should kill everyone he loves).

It got a lot of changes as the years passed, creating "The Gentleman of the East End", which kept the whole serial killer thing, but instead of his loved ones now he kills prostitutes to write their stories as crime novels + Edgar's story that would show the sadness of living with a mental illness so painful as schizophrenia in a time that didn't have all the advancements needed to fully treat it.

And as I never really did a lot with it I was thinking about changing the plot again.

Now it's technically a Victorian Era sitcom (and I won't actually make it accurate, me and my sister were joking about Violetta liking Britney Spears skjadh)

Here's a brief summary of the "start" of the story:

"Vinicio and Violetta are twins and they're from a wealthy family, the Bianchi, their father has a textile factory and wants Vinicio to be the heir to it, but wanting to become a writer he decides to run away and start living in a very poor part of London, where no one would find him.

One day he meets Emily and Oliver, who are orphans, the two found his house when running through the alleys near the docks, and after thinking it was abandoned, they decided to try and make that their new home. Vinicio finds them in the piano room, the children were already terrified by the thought of him kicking them out, but to their surprise, he just stares and declares that there's nothing there for them to steal, Oliver not wanting to be associated to a burglar is infuriated, but Emily, noticing that Vinicio means no harm, tries to explain why they entered his house uninvited.

After hearing their story and noticing how fragile they seemed, he leads the children to the kitchen, where he prepares a simple soup for them. Emily and Oliver do notice that his plates and silverware are really pretty and expensive looking, and both of them start speculating that he's a rich man in disguise, keeping this thought to themselves they just ask for his name.

"Leonard", he says, and nothing more. The girl could tell he was a very cold man, but more than anything, a little shy.

After finishing their lunch, they're ready to leave the house, Emily's last wish, however, is to hear the man playing the piano, Vinicio asks her what song she wanted to hear, she is reminded of when her mother used to sing for them to sleep, not knowing the name of the song, she decides to sing for the man.

As she sings the first notes, his eyes close, and sooner than expected he calls the children to the room they once were. Vinicio sits on the stool and prepares himself, playing Chopin's Nocturne opus 9, number 2. He plays with emotion, which makes the children wonder what was in his mind, this is intensified by his silence when finishing the song.

Emily thanks him, saying that if their mother was there she would have loved listening to it, and then the children decide to leave. Vinicio stops them, telling the name of the song, so that they can ask for it when they return. Both of them are surprised by what they hear, asking happily "We can return"?!, to which Vinicio confirms that yes, they can return to his house, but they need to knock before entering and don't abuse of his hospitality, he would feed them and let them sleep there, but mostly important, he would try to find a family for them, as children should not live by themselves in the streets like stray dogs. He also gives them some money, so they can go out and buy some fruits and maybe candy. They give him a big hug for his generosity, Vinicio doesn't really know how to react to this, receiving their affection with a somewhat tense body, but gives them a pat to the head, after that Emily and Oliver leave his house.

Now alone with his thoughts, the man sits in an armchair and a tad nervous, thinks about his decision, now he had some serious responsibilities, despite that, it was the right thing to do, after all, that's what Violetta would do if she was in his place".

[ashethewitch]

Is Damien klein autistic?

K this is probably a HUUGE strech and probably just me projecting but is anyone else getting autistic vibes from Damien?

Hear me out: he constantly speaks in a quite monotone voice even in moments where it’s clear he wants to raise his voice, it’s like he can’t

(These two moments are good examples, his body language shows that he’s very angry but he still speaks very quietly, I’m aware the left one is in oliver’s dream so I wonder what that means)

He generally has weird ways of showing effection that others interpret as creepy

People generally interpret his existence and presence as threatening even when he dosent mean to come off that way and that’s probably because of his crazy case of resting bitch face

When he first arrives at the facility, everyone is scared of him for literally no reason except that he just unintentionally gives off those vibes which is so relatable to me

(Spoiler territory)

Also he has a very strong sense of justice, it’s why he left the law firm and like, starting your own business is hard for anyone but he did it anyway because he didn’t like the practices of the old law firm he worked in, that’s a huge move in the name of justice and I love him for it

Also id like to think oliver is autistic too (I’m pretty sure that’s a more popular headcanon) and that’s why they have such a strong connection, it’s why he’s one of the only people not threatened by him at first sight because he just understands him yknow? It’s autism to autism communication

Anyway that’s probably just my autistic ass projecting onto a character but it’s fun ok???

[autumnbell32]

my FAVORITE h3 podcast oliver tree moments

[watchingalotofmovies]

Terror's Advocate

Terror's Advocate    [trailer]

A documentary on Jacques Vergès, the controversial lawyer and former Free French Forces guerrilla who has defending unpopular figures such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

I can only repeat what everyone else says who has written about the doc, Vergès was a fascinating figure.

He was involved in so much history, and the film covers so much ground, it's kind of insane. There's material for three or four full-length documentaries. French colonialism in Algeria, antisemitism, the PLO, German and international left-wing terrorism, ... A gripping watch, more involving than many fictional movies.

While everyone is entitled to have a defender in court, the doc shows that he often was a little too close to the people he defended. He downplays the actions of his clients, and there's also the cultivated mystery surrounding his disappearance for eight years.

[tonguesofdestruction]

ACH DU SCHEISSE! -Film kommt in die Kinos

ACH DU SCHEISSE! -Film kommt in die Kinos

Am 20. Oktober 2022 kommt der Film “Ach du Scheisse!” in die Kinos. Auch bekannt als “Holy Shit”. Regie führte Lukas Rinker bei dem 90-minütigen Film. Den Publikumspreis konnte dieses Werk beim Hard:Line Festival 2022 abräumen. Doch: Was ist die Handlung? “Architekt Frank erwacht aus der Ohnmacht – blutig eingequetscht in einem Baustellen-Klo. Verschlossen und verrammelt – kein Entkommen. Und…