Agent 00Soul

The majority of Elon's current alt-right fans probably have never owned a Tesla and never will. Ironic.

I wouldn’t do it myself, but I’m not surprised. As I mentioned in a previous post, I lived in the US for decades and since around 2000, I would say the standard of living has dropped a little bit every year. It’s really noticeable now. Even the middle-class NYC suburb I lived in as a teenager now has roads that haven’t been repaved in years (I imagine it’s like driving on the moon.) and street lamps haven’t had their bulbs replaced. Visiting the US now is like when I visited Mexico or Brazil when I was a kid. It’s no wonder people have been radicalised. They were ready for a strongman to step in and say only he can fix things. Textbook.

that will probably take a generational shift. Basically the road that took us to this point but in reverse. Although it’s harder to displace authoritarians due to their police apparatus. But the overthrow of the Latin American dictatorships in the 1990s and 2000s shows it can be done when a tipping point is reached. But that takes decades usually.

That hasn’t been the case for a while. Haven’t you seen the photos of the guys at the MAGA rally in the first term wearing T-shirts that say something like “I’d rather be ruled by Russia than the Democrats!”.

It didn't happen last time. His response to Covid-19 was awful and the USA wracked up a massive bodycount. His followers dug in and doubled-down rather than turn against him. They also made common cause with the New Age health community and the anti-vaxxers which tended to be on the left until this point but became massively MAGA and still are. So he actually got a new base for the future. Canadian political analyst Naomi Klein refers to that kind of shift as "diagonalism."

They are blaming it on Biden. Just this morning I was reading an article on PlanetF1.com about racing and the first person who left a comment in the have your say section at the bottom was someone who said they looked the article's author up on Wikipedia, found out she is a Democrat, and then essentially tried to shame her by saying her vote for Kamala helped perpetuate the egg price crisis. I just went to look it up, but the moderators of PlanetF1 have taken the comment down.

He’s in his honeymoon period after the election and his voters are delirious with joy. The same way Obama supporters were after he got elected the first time. Either that or it really is the Beatlemania I mentioned a few days ago here. No matter; they’ll learn… https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/trump-birthday-holiday-republican-bill

How did you do that? Ebay/Reverb/Facebook, consignment/sale to a shop, private sale?

Good point - the generations who were really into gear are in the downsizing era of their lives now, or soon will be. And the younger ones don’t fetishise gear as much (a good thing IMHO) and could never afford this stuff anyway so never developed as strong an attachment maybe. Either way, it sounds like the numbers of market value are hugely inflated. And they don’t tell you how long an item was for sale before some person with money showed up.

Sounds like market value means much less than it did.

To be fair, insurance companies do that to gainfully employed middle-class people these days too. Luigi Mangione came from an elite background.

In an instance like that, do you think it would be better to find a vintage guitar shop that takes commission and suck up the lower price just to get it into as many more serious eyes/testing hands as possible?

Reverb etc are loaded with cool old/vintage instruments, some priced to "market value" (which is still a lot of money - like a 1990s ES-335 for 2500GPB or a Rick 330-12 from the same decade at 2100GBP) and others at rock star-only prices (1964 Fender Jag for 6000GBP). Yet neither seem to sell very often. I have several instruments and also amps in my feed that I've been watching for years out of interest without a bite among them. What's going on? Are people hoping that one of the few rich musicians left is going to see that your item is "the one" and buy it? How long do you expect to list high-dollar, but still market value, stuff before it sells? Is the term market value even legit these days? I ask because I have a decent collection myself of instruments and boutique amps that are worth something on paper, some of which were new when I bought them but are vintage now, that I imagine I'm going to have to start downsizing within the next decade.

In retrospect, one of the big things that the EU got wrong as it evolved is not developing its own military separate from NATO.

The UK and France also are nuclear powers and that seems to be the biggest insurance policy of all. Once you are in the nuclear club no one is going to attack you directly. Proxy wars yes, an invasion no.

Isn't the standard of living conditions for troops already higher in the UK armed forces compared to the US troops'? Same with Germany and France. The reason I ask is because, while the US has been experiencing real problems in recruitment for about a decade now (and some who do volunteer are being rejected because they are too fat btw), but it's nothing like the recruitment shortfall in western European countries.

Their C-suite has some pretty out there characters. Crypto-bros at their most religious zeal. I never thought that these kinds of guys would ever get so much political power or be held up by the young as aspirational.

It couldn’t now. It gets everything imported from the mainland. All the natural resources that made it self-sufficient were stripped to make plantations in the early 20th century. They do have the nuttiest flag of any US state. It’s a colorful version of the stripes from the American flag with a Union Jack in the field above. I had a Hawaiian friend and he said it’s basically because the king of Hawaii didn’t want to offend either of the colonial powers, the UK and USA, who kept claiming it. That’s not exactly true according to Wiki, but almost. What a nice history we have. Wikipedia: Flag of Hawaii

That's my impression also. I've spent multiple visits to the heart of Trumpland and I was quite amazed at how much everyone there worships him like a messiah. It didn't matter what race, economic strata or sex they were either - it was a vast majority. I was surprised. My colleague started calling it Beatlemania.

How could the USA break up? None of the 50 states, except for possibly Texas, could exist without the others. California would, except it is beholden to the western states for its water. As for a proper civil war, that canard has been dangled in front of our eyes for most of my life. Unless you speaking about random militia or terrorist acts, how could it happen nationally? The most would be a localised hotspot that I imagine would be somewhat analogous to the former Yugoslavia in 1994, but much smaller. The US might change into some kind of GOP dictatorship, but it'll probably be mostly bloodless.

I stand corrected! But my main point is still valid: that’s a real band. They’ve surely been together longer than the Beatles and Wings put together by now I imagine. Wings is actually a good example of “What is a band?” Colloquially, they were a proper band not the back-up of a single artist. But they changed members all the time and were always on Paul & Linda’s payroll. Then there was his 1989(?) Flowers In The Dirt band, released two albums and toured the world for a few years without being officially given a name. Band or no band? It’s a hugely grey area defined by semantics. And I think the audience and the people involved in/with the group can see different ones.

He only asked for a 2% cut for all that merchandise released in the US during the height of Beatlemania in 1964 (wigs, colouring books, toys, etc). I was just reading about it yesterday. One of the licensors was interviewed and he couldn’t believe his luck. He was laughing all the way to the bank.

Can the US actually do anything to Canada militarily? They’d be retaliated against by all of NATO surely. Economics are another matter of course.

If you are into following non-mainstream music, especially bands, the easiest way to do I’ve found is to join the mailing list of some of the few remaining indie stores left. I especially recommend https://www.resident-music.com in Brighton for this.