the porkulous is dead

thank social media

a funny thing happened on the way to the house floor, and that thing was social media. the godawful porkulous bill stuffed full of pay raises, biolab funding, pharma grabs and shields, the congress critter unaccountability act, and 400 other outrages ranging from the petty to the positively pernicious is DOA.

this was the old game with the old rules.

and it don’t work like that no more.

the media is predictably a bit behind the game and missing the key bits. (hey, they’re old media, what do you expect?)

their take is this:

but this is a small piece in the bigger mosaic. only social media made this possible.

the playbook was simple: wait until the feds are just about out of money (again) and then play chicken with the american people threatening to shut down government unless a 1500 page bill is passed without any chance to have read it. then you lard the bill up with money grabs and slide in multifarious malevolencies to grab power by sneak thieving.

but the days of “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” are over.

now we can know and know right quick.

how?

social media.

no congress critter (a phrase recently used to my great delight by TX congressman chip roy) can read 1500 pages thoroughly in 2 days and spot all the tricks and garbage secreted therein, but the internet can. twitter and substack can. and they did.

they tore the porkulous open like a tuna filled piñata tossed into a tiger cage.

and this is not just good fun, it’s good governance, governance for the people by the people.

the whole thing was vivisected and pinned to a table in 6 hours. i don’t think the house had any idea that this was a thing now.

but it is.

welcome to a brave new day.

social media is the confluence of three massive capabilities, a three legged stool where 1+1+1=everyhting. it works like this:

the world is full of smart, capable, informed and educated people. incisive people. people who know stuff. “every problem is shallow to someone,” the foundational mantra of the open source movement simply means that for 99% of problems, the best way to solve them is to show them to more people. one of them will say, “oh, look, it’s obvious, just turn it like this and look at it this way” or “oh, yeah, we have this issue in our field as well, here’s how we solved it.”

and many hands make light work, so showing it to more people gets you a sort of twofer as everyone pitches in. 1500 people can read 1500 pages in 5 minutes. 15 million can have it parsed, passed around, and rebutted. 150 million? yeah, best of luck congress. nothing gets past that.

and the best part on social media is following, upvoting, liking, and sharing retweeting restacking whatever. this is not just the underlying engine of the reputation economy, it’s a massive and highly effective sorting algo. that which people find useful or interesting gets passed on, seen by more people, dropped into group chats, discussed, seen from more angles, assessed and improved, rebutted and sharpened.

issues emerge near instantly, facts soon after.

2-3 days on the floor of the house is an impossible timeframe to parse a bill this size and in any event leaves the matter in the hands of the same swamp that wrote it horse trading and grifting over which awful offal to retain. but that timeframe is eons on social media. it took 6 hours to gut it like a trout and flag 400 kinds of malfeasance to the point where “everyone knew.” the social media hive mind was inflamed with it. the output was glorious. and a paradigm just shifted. big bill hide the ball is over.

the world has always had presidents disapproving of bills and threats to primary people. they never used to be credible. now they are. name and shame has a whole new reach and co-opting a few editors is no longer the road to untouchability. everyhting can be brought straight to the people in straight one to one talk. no more burying it in committee or media favoritism.

the congress people who have learned to use social media and the reputation economy have been unshackled and may now make moves on their own outside of party or propriety.

the gloves are off, the protection is gone, the analysis is thorough and instant. all the information surfaces and this leads to a newfound muscularity in wrangling the porkulus, the regulatasaurus, and the lechery of leviathan.

you can see why the state was so keen on controlling social media. it’s no coincidence that this newfound ability only occurred after turfing the 3 letter agencies out of the twitterverse.

substack is the salon, twitter the agora.

the two feed and serve one another.

and the result feeds and serves us. it is the weapon of choice, the weapon of change, the weapon of we the people as we seek to take back that which was taken from us.

the state fears this.

they are right to be afraid.

and it is right that they be afraid.

the just state should fear its people.

the people should never have to fear the state.

buckle up. the fun part is starting.

vámonos.