Bobson Dugnutt 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The Tyrant In The White House

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2025 @ 10:47pm

    There's Always a Bigger Fish

    What has me frightened of Donald Trump is two things: Either he is successful in doing evil right now, or he fails badly right now but has set the table for a more capable Republican tyrant to achieve evil successfully. By successfully, I mean: a motivated and capable law enforcement and military cadre, majority public support, elites condoning or providing material and support or mutual aid to the government, and a robust economy. Trump does not have the support of the uniformed, is at the floor of his 45% ride-or-die support, and he's wrecked the economy. Trump does have the full support of economic elites, particularly in tech and media, which can be his force multiplier (surveillance masquerading as communication).

  • On the post: The Tyrant In The White House

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2025 @ 10:36pm

    Fashoid

    I've mentioned this on John Ganz's Substack. We should stop using the word "fascism" because of this precise litigation of the meaning of the word and the need to appeal to intellectuals, who will eventually render a verdict of "No, this isn't fascism". To get around this problem, I propose the word fashoid. Much like how opioid is a synthetic copy of naturally derived opium, fashoid is a 21st century synthesis of the fascisms of the 21st century. Fascism is hung up on the nation, however the identity was constructed after World War I, as the motive force of the ideology in practice. If the idea of the nation doesn't animate the individual, then under the "rules" no nation, no fascism. Fashoid gets around that problem because we non-fascists are free to accuse and label opponents, who must remove the label from themselves. Also for us, it escapes the precision trap. Fashoid is also correct because there are non-national groups of people who contain the necessary and sufficient elements to be and act fascist, by such standards as Umberto Eco's 14 points of "Ur-Fascism", Roger Griffin's palingenetic ultranationalism thesis, or Robert Paxton's genealogy approach, which is sort of like a "5 stages of grief" for transforming into a fascist polity. Some of the 21st century fashoid groups are: theocrats (any fundamentalist religious sect making a claim for political power), masculinists (the reverse of feminists), white supremacists (race substituting for nation), and since 2020, diagonalists (people not on the right radicalized by the belief that knowledge is power and power is conspiratorial).

  • On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 04:32pm

    That is baked into the design. Paul Krugman coined something called Arendt's Law, naming it after Hannah Arendt who noted that authoritarian governments discourage talent and expertise and want gaggles of loyal fools whose foolishness and loyalty are their only assets. The Krugman variant of it is that loyal fools are the only people Trump wants because no one can be better at anything than the supreme leader.

  • On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 04:27pm

    Sadly, it would power data centers and crypto mines and the rest of the state would go dark.

  • On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 03:43pm

    Daniel Jonah Goldhagen enters the chat

    Hitler's willing executioners were willing.

  • On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 03:42pm

    America does have a divorced dad problem.

  • On the post: The People Applying For ICE Jobs Are Exactly Who You Think They Are

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2025 @ 03:41pm

    That kind of stupidity might be de rigueur for Trump, but typically a signing bonus is granted after completion of a probationary period. HR does anticipate that kind of thing happening so will demand a period of service.

  • On the post: The Mainstream Media Is Catastrophically Failing To Meet The Moment

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2025 @ 03:25pm

    If you want to talk about newspapers, even in their diminished financial and relevancy states, about 2/3 of paid newspaper circulation is going to three hedge funds. Most people cannot name them, although they could probably name the institutions they own. Gannett-Gatehouse: USA Today and several statehouse papers including the Tennesseean in Nashville, the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida, the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, the Indianapolis Star, the American-Statesman in Austin, the Oklahoman in Oklahoma City and the Des Moines Register in Iowa. Alden: Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News and East Bay Times in the Bay Area, all of the suburban Southern California newspapers around the L.A. Times including the Orange County Register, the San Diego Union Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Boston Herald and Hartford Courant. Chatham: The National Enquirer owner took possession of McClatchy via a bankruptcy auction and now owns the Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto Bees, the Miami Herald, Raleigh News & Observer, Charlotte Observer, the Olympian in Washington's state capital, Idaho Statesman in Boise, Tacoma News Tribune (and nearly half of the Seattle Times not controlled by the Blethen family), Kansas City Star.

  • On the post: SCOTUS Says ICE Can Use The Family Guy Skin Color Chart For Arrests (But Won’t Explain Why)

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2025 @ 02:58pm

    Six of the justices should just stop wearing robes and opt for sweaty military uniforms and mirrored sunglasses.

  • On the post: National Guard Troops Aren’t Happy They’re Just Trump’s Toy Soldiers

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2025 @ 03:26pm

    Among a growing number of Republicans, they sadly think the good guys lost in World War II. There was some guy in Utah who sought a "balanced" and "objective" treatment of World War II for school history textbooks. He seems to feel the U.S. did Hitler dirty.

  • On the post: 1,000+ HHS Staffers Send Letter To Congress, RFK Jr. Demanding His Resignation

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2025 @ 02:46pm

    Someone's been mainlining the Slate Star Codex.

    “From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door—and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same,” Nixon continued.
    This is a gambit from self-proclaimed Rationalists (the same tech bro mofos who are overrepresented in building out AI). This community does PhD dissertation cosplay, and they fancy themselves as smart by believing everything is up for debate, right down to the first principles of modes of knowledge like philosophies and sciences. Nixon's making a special plea for Kennedy, saying that it's only reasonable and fair for both sides to rebuild established theories of medicine by starting from a blank slate. This is nuts because RFK Jr. is a believer in miasma theory and he believes germ theory, by being proved in the real world through research and treatment that have actually made populations healthier, has an unfair advantage in debate. It's a grown-up way of saying the schoolyard taunt of, "If you're so smart, prove it."

  • On the post: The Inversion Of American Values

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2025 @ 11:04pm

    True. The more you hear a person use the word "freedom", "free speech", "liberty", etc., the more they hate the actual concepts of those words. They say "freedom" so much because they are unsure and are trying to convince themselves.

  • On the post: House Republicans Want To Doxx Wikipedia Editors Over Bogus ‘Bias’ Complaints

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2025 @ 02:17pm

    Moral hostage takers

    The "free speech absolutists" went quiet because they killed their hostage. To them, "free speech" means, "Oh shit, someone is talking about privilege and power dynamics and they must be silenced!"

  • On the post: Trump Stooges Keep Helping The President Indulge In His Vindictive Crime Fantasies

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2025 @ 07:54pm

    Trump is scary because even when he does something like deploy the military to cities to find that they have nothing really to do and fails, he's setting the table for a more capable successor to escalate into siege warfare.

  • On the post: Politico Management Insists “AI” Shouldn’t Be Held To Any Sort Of Human Editorial Standards Because It’s Built By Coders, Not Journalists

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2025 @ 07:46pm

    Catch-22

    The CEO of Politico Owner Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner, recently introduced a company wide mandate that every single employee in the organization has to not only use AI, but consistently file reports justifying why they don’t.
    I wonder, can a Politico employee just prompt the AI to file the report justifying why they don't use AI? I mean, they'd still be in compliance, right?

  • On the post: Politico Management Insists “AI” Shouldn’t Be Held To Any Sort Of Human Editorial Standards Because It’s Built By Coders, Not Journalists

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2025 @ 07:41pm

    Calvinball, but make it ethics.

  • On the post: Politico Management Insists “AI” Shouldn’t Be Held To Any Sort Of Human Editorial Standards Because It’s Built By Coders, Not Journalists

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2025 @ 07:40pm

    If the AI can be held outside and above editorial standards and still be trusted with its outcomes, why not replace management with AI?

  • On the post: One Country For Old Men: Desperate ICE Drops Age Cap For New Hires

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2025 @ 08:59pm

    Dean Cain has Daddy Issues. Apparently, he has never met his Japanese father. Cain is the surname of his stepfather.

  • On the post: Trump’s Military Campaign Against American Cities Expands

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2025 @ 07:44pm

    Suburbs and exurbs (formerly rural areas drawn into metropolitan areas' economic orbit) have already taken the cities back without even having to maintain a physical presence within city limits. One goes back to Homer Hoyt's favored quarter thesis, that local economic elites tend to physically cluster together and property values graduate toward proximity toward this residential quarter; poors live opposite this quarter (if the poorest area is "the south side" then wealth is clustered in the north). There is also Joe Minicozzi, who founded the planning firm Urban3, who has actually visualized a form of urban feudalism and showed how, in several cities, that older, poorer parts of cities are actually more prosperous for their communities and that newer, wealthier outer sections take more in government resources than they put back. Here are the pages of the maps Urban3 produced for redlining, cost of services and revenues: https://www.urbanthree.com/services/

  • On the post: Trump Administration Says It’s Going To Start Locking Up Homeless People

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2025 @ 03:15pm

    The hitch in that plan is that the vaunted American work ethic is vastly overrated. Even the Trump-aligned factory owner who hired the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, wanted immigration policy changed so that he could hire more Haitians because they do the work. In Springfield, Haitians are laying pipe while Americans are smoking pipe. Molson Hart, yes that's his real name and he's owned factories, said this about why America's goal of making manufacturing great again is quixotic:

    Chinese manufacturing labor isn’t just cheaper. It’s better. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do. Chinese workers are much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills. And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.
    An American factory owner talking about America's working class.

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