I have to agree with the previous comment. I do not find this horrific or even disturbing, but very comforting.

Can you help us understand what aspects of this you feel some people might find discomforting?

It’s not a totally unreasonable impression, but no, this will not turn into a second civil war. The Guard units of each state can be called up for federal duty. The National Guard is part of the US Department of Defense and thus ultimately answers to the DoD and the US president as commander in chief. The US military has multiple components, including regular services (eg the full time Army), reserve components (eg US Army Reserve) and National Guard components. The latter two are part-time military with one weekend per month training duty plus an annual training. Guards members and Reservists hold regular full time jobs.

The Guard units are deployable by the governors of their respective states, and so can be used in emergency situations like natural disasters. They have also been deployed against what have been perceived as riots that threaten lives and properties of the individual states.

However, they are subject to activation by order of the US president and they fall under the national command authority. Guard personnel take the same oath to the constitution as other military personnel, and cannot legally refuse federal activation. Guards personnel would be subject to courts martial and face potentially extreme penalties including being discharged from service under criminal conditions, being stripped of rank and benefits, and jail time in federal prison. This would be what we call a career limiting rule.

So, if push comes to shove, Biden can activate the NG and order them to stand down or to implement policies to maintain order. Thinking the NG units and in particular their commanders would disobey a presidential order because they just love their state governor and hate the president so much is getting into Turner Diaries levels of right wing apocalyptic fantasy.

From America’s wang to Vera Wang in one easy step.

The bit that really irked me was that it was purely performative. It seemed like literally the exact same community that populated the_donald with memes and Trump train bots and the photoshopping of Trump’s pic onto Rambo. Their posts have fuck all to do with communism just like the trump posts had nothing to do with conservative politics. It was just edge faux-outrage and basically taking an opposite position for its own sake. They could simultaneously criticize Gov Newsom for not signing a trans rights bill while praising Putin who is doing his level best to make being gay illegal. It’s a mistake to see it as political discourse when it’s really just trolling. Like on the_donald, they egg each other on and have their in jokes and memes (in both the picture sense and in the actual meme sense) about walls the same way the trumpers did with helicopters.

Defederation is the best response imo.

I get that he’s proud of the strength of his cutlery drawer but most people won’t give a fork.

The fact that you would consider your counterfactual a mirror image is itself problematic.

In the case of the Foundation, it supports exactly what it purports to support. They’re like the EFF and other civil rights organizations. If you consider the EFF left wing, I think that says a bit more about where you stand.

The original article was outrage-bate blog spam, with random Capitalized Words and the prolific use of “scare quotes.” It doesn’t even say anything. No charges of misinformation. No citation of law. Just “They have a Billion Dollars!!” kinds of sentences.

On the other hand, the CEO of a company - particularly a small company - lends his personality to the company. It often makes sense to co-identify them, given that the CEO has an incredible amount of influence.

So if you are saying that libertarian software project : libertarian institutions :: conservative ideas : homophobic legislation, I guess you’re just really endorsing the position of judging the company by the politicians and politics it supports. If you see prop 8 as being as fundamental to the conservative position as internet freedom is to an organization specifically dedicated to preserving internet freedom, all I can say is that I hope more people start to see it that way.