#ideologues

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*.

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

Moreover, “He [#Trump] fills positions in federal #science & other agencies w/ #unqualified #ideologues. He goads people into #hate & #division, & he inspires #extremists at state & local levels to pass laws that disrupt #education & make it harder to earn a living.”

#weird #insane #Nonsense
#WeAreNotGoingBack
#CommonSense #sanity #Reality #HarrisWalz2024

Immunity Immunity Immunity
https://medium.com/@silkester/immunity-immunity-immunity-063ec56afd83

Is previous inaction just a difference without distinction, or what? And is there a greater plan at work with SCOTUS rulings, since an ideologue majority was achieved by billionaires?

#law #SCOTUS #Immunity #Project2025 #Ideologues #NeoFascism

#Quotes #Wealth #Luck #Ideologues

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. -Sarah Kendzior, journalist and author (b. 1 Sep 1978)

#FarRight #Catholic leaders and believers in the American #church have gone “backwards” in their “understanding of questions of #faith and #morals,” according to the church leader. #Pope Francis blasted them as reactionary #ideologues during a meeting, insisting that American #conservatives have lost their way. #Hate #Evangelicals #Religion

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/08/pope-rips-rightwing-american-catholics-as-useless-idealogues-who-have-lost-the-faith/

#Ideologues

https://archive.ph/NbkJz
#SCOTUS #ExpandTheCourt
I grew up w/Gorsuch, Barrett & Kavanaugh types..religious #zealots at core despite what education & outer #decorum might say otherwise. These are very scary #ideologues that want to impose their #religious beliefs on all of us. Believe whatever you want, but don’t impose it on 330 million+people

w/out separation of #church & state…we’re no longer a #democracy
#supremecourt has been captured & we are all #hostage to this #atrocity #VoteBlue

@clintwatts I don't think you should feel pressured to say #Mastodon is "better." The #federated nature is (in my opinion) better than the #centralized/corporate nature of #Twitter, which we've seen is fragile in the face of #ideologues with enough money, but the #Fediverse is only as good as we make it.

Mastodon isn't a silver bullet, just like Twitter wasn't. At least with the Fediverse, if it sucks, it's our own fault, instead of being the fault of some silly billionaire.

The Strange Death of Conservatism https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-strange-death-of-conservatism_07262019 #deathofconservatism #internationalpeace #radicaldemocrats #smallgovernment #foreignpolicy #HeadlineNews #unitedstates #CharlesKoch #georgesoros #nationalism #PatBuchanan #republicans #saudiarabia #ideologues #prosperity #DavidBorg #reinvent #america #israel #speach #turkey