Notices by Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ (petealexharris@mastodon.scot), page 3

@CloudyMrs I suppose what I'm saying is, an *allegation* is powerful. Spin that out as long as you like, no smoke without fire, the longer you can delay clearing the target's name, the longer they're placed in check.
But a *smear* isn't like that. The smoke dissipates quickly if nobody can say what fire there is even supposed to be.

@CloudyMrs But *what* becomes true? What *specifically*? A smear is an easy broad-brush campaigning tool but has a short half-life if no juicy details are forthcoming, and it's not as good as a concrete allegation, which there isn't.

@CloudyMrs They grabbed at something that looked like an opportunity, too late to discredit the FM, way too long before the next important election. They got one by-election result out of it maybe, but it's spent. The smear can only be smeared out so thin.

@CloudyMrs Just because something was imagined as a Machiavellian power move doesn't mean it wasn't in fact a Baldrick cunning plan when it met the light of day.

@CloudyMrs it's already boring though. It isn't news any more. And it's asymmetric: it can't be used to allege any particular wrongdoing because saying anything specific about an "ongoing" investigation isn't allowed.

But anyone can say "it's been all this time and money and they haven't found anything in their little forensic tents, it's pure theatre" and that's legally fine as well as having a ring of common sense and plain speaking.

@RhinosWorryMe @pikesley @inthehands @Adam_Cadmon1
Yeah. Protest isn't resistance. Unless protest credibly signals willingness to resist in a practical way (and voting does count as that), of course it will be ignored.

@grayface_ghost
Yeah. They got there by a different route tho, chasing the mythical "median voter" to the right without a scrap of principle holding them back, whereas the Tories got there by just taking the brakes off their already fashy instincts.

I agree it's a distinction with no practical difference if you can't pay your heating bill, want a gender recognition certificate, or if a cop is beating you up for protesting against climate change.

@goatsarah @johnmacintosh

I like that the heat ray is on a tripod. Big War of the Worlds vibes.

@your_huckleberry @futurebird
The French revolution ended badly for a lot of people, but it's hard to make the case that keeping the French aristocracy and absolute monarchy in place would have gone well for the vast majority of the population.

*The status quo was already violent*

You can't only look at the violence of change and ignore the violence of denying change.

@dpnash @JessTheUnstill @BlackAzizAnansi
"The two parties are the same" is one of those statements that always needs a "for whom?"

End-stage capitalism is turning mean and spiteful, shooting every messenger of bad news, apparently preferring all the bad news to arrive at the door soon and without warning.
Fine, so be it.

It's a game stacked so much against most of us that we can't win, in fact we can't even really play.
Fine, so be it.

If all you can do is survive another day, or help others around you to survive another day, do that.

If all you can do is walk away and let shit burn, do that, and say
Fine, so be it.