I mined some bitcoins over a decade ago more or less to see what it was about and sold them at around $12k. It netted enough to buy 160 acres of farmland at the time.
I stopped buying guns in 2020 and it's ammo and additional AR parts now that they are back down in price at or near pre-covid prices. I'm talking extra firing pins, etc..
Every doubling of the price of fertilizer = 40% increase in overall food prices. 2020 we paid $350 a ton. Last year it was $750 a ton. We booked what we could at $900 a ton it's currently $1500 a ton and likely to see $2000 by the time we need nitrogen flown on the rice this summer. They won't even let us buy in advance anymore...
Problem is that fascism and national socialism are two different things. Similar, but not the same and no one teaches those differences until you're at the college level...or at least they did when I was in college 25 years ago.
What we have today is the coupling of corporations and government of Fascism, mixed with the internationalism of communism infused with a racial ideology like national socialism, mix those together and you have wokism. It's as if someone said, "Hey lets take the worst of the worst of 20th century ideologies and put them together..."
This is who Ted Cruz has always been. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. What needs to happen is there be a MAGA party that steels 60% of the GOP base for an election cycle. Yeah, sure the GOP would lose, but that's what it takes for the GOP to actually form an agenda and do something. Ross Perot led to the Contract with America....the one and only time the GOPe pushed back at anything...
Websites are the dead trees business (like newspapers) of the 21st century unfortunately. The internet has been appified and social media'd to the point where a lot of smaller businesses I work with have pretty much done away with their websites. We may lambast that as short sighted, but several times over the last few years I've seen their numbers and it's clear. Even if they work SEO et. al. they'd get dozens of hits per day to their site. They can make 1 post to their facebook group and get 200 responses from their customers and 2500 views and most importantly 30 people to come into their store and spend money. Not only that but they can run their social media shit from their phones. Even with things like the wordpress app its not as easy to maintain an active website for most businesses. And the facebook group doesn't cost them $100 a year for a domain and hosting and more than that every few years to keep up with the latest website design trends. Most small businesses are using Gmail for email anyway these days so the [email protected] thing doesn't matter as [email protected] works just as well for most people.
We can say how bad this is etc. but that's the reality.
It’s exceedingly effective. When someone calls you an alt right nazi reply, “ya so I guess I am. Now what are going to do about it?”. Then watch as their programming short circuits as they do not expect anyone to embrace it. They expect people to recoil in horror and submit.
Now it helps to be rich enough that they can’t really threaten you because usually the next retort is “where do you work I’ll call your boss…”
That doesn’t work with me at least because I can retort that rice and soybeans don’t give a fuck about your politics.
That’s why I got more involved in the last year in county politics and school board meetings, etc.. Many can’t stand up. I can.
It's now easier to vote than to dine out in DC...