Bill Russo

Bill Russo

@ibrusso.bsky.social

My views vary by issue but lean progressive. I’m open to compromise to restore balance and get legislation passed.

70 followers56 following344 posts

4 PG&E outages in 2 days. 102° in Bakersfield is mild, stop blaming weather. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the business. I’m not paying premium rates to sit in the dark and swelter—while my solar sits useless thanks to weak U.S. battery tech.

As I prepare for another night of swelter, watching what I could quickly download and hoping my battery last longer that I do, I think PG&E for considering me a valued customer. Although I think I’ve fallen for that trick too many times. Pg&E don’t give a shit about its customers

To every Dem campaign flooding my inbox: Stop begging for $$ and start pitching a plan. I’m not an ATM—I’m a voter with a brain. Show me a strategy, then maybe you’ll get the swipe.

Progress isn’t over—it’s just being challenged. As Pinker says in Enlightenment Now, reason, science & humanism have moved humanity forward. Trump is just a bump in the road. Our job now? Defend those values, push through the noise, and keep progress on track. The future is still ours to shape.

Some of our biggest challenges come from systems we invented—capitalism, religion, even nationhood. They’re imagined realities we’ve agreed to believe. The good news? What we imagine, we can also reimagine. That’s where real change begins.

Most political fights today are really about economic pain. But shout “capitalism’s broken” and the right yells “socialism!” Truth is, no country runs on pure capitalism or socialism—we’ve always lived in the mix. Time to debate fixes, not fear words.

If “AOC to Buttigieg” is the barometer of progressive thought, most Americans already agree with the values that span that range. They differ in style, not in purpose. So why can’t Dems build a platform that bridges that spectrum and wins big?

Trump’s fossil-fuel noise is mostly bluster—what really matters is whether we cede the race with China. Short‑term: use courts & protests to stall. Long‑term: focus on winning the House in 2026. That’s how we keep the edge. The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones- green will win

Bill Russo reposted

Kristi Noem and Kash Patel are cunts. #elbowsup

Charlie Angus@charlieangus104.bsky.social

Kristi Noem says the Canadian border is swamping the US with El Salvadorean gangs. Kash Patel claims terrorists are based in Canada. And a Canadian died in ICE Captivity. South Park was a funny movie. It's a dismal regime. Please watch my latest press conference. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhWN...

With NIH funding getting chopped, who needs science? Just pee under a tree: 🐜 Ants = diabetes 🌾 Dead grass = high salt 🔥 BBQ smell = cholesterol 👖 Forgot your pants? Sorry, it’s Alzheimer’s. Modern medicine, GOP edition.

When the far left and far right agree on something—like the recent backlash on Iran—it’s often a red flag, not a breakthrough. Extremes rarely offer real solutions. Progress comes from pragmatists willing to work the middle and face complexity head-on.

Just keep sharing until it breaks the internet and right wing media is forced to take notice. No words are necessary

The Shallow State@ourshallowstate.bsky.social

THEY F*CKING TOOK THE ICE CREAM MAN! The photo says it all. Masked ICE goons grabbed Enrique Lozano in front of a Culver City, CA church. A Community Coalition helped the family identify the abandoned cart, locate his belongings. For 20 years, loved in the community. "Hardened criminals" - my ass.

Trump’s MAGA ticket ran on “crime, immigration & waste”—but ICE data shows <10% had violent records, DOGGE found zero fraud, and now the Iran “crisis” is just more empty rhetoric. No more fake wars. When the facts collapse, what will they go to war with next? #NoMoreWars #FactsMatter

Trump’s team gambled on the lie that most undocumented immigrants are criminals. Reality didn’t back them up—so now they’re going after the innocent and inventing stories to keep fear alive.

No Kings will rise—and we won’t bow. The protest brings mass, but mass isn’t a mission. Trump plays a weak hand in LA. This is our opening—not for more whining, but defining. Let’s rise not just in fury, but with vision, with purpose, with a future worth fighting for.

Trump has no clue about California—how our water flows, why we fight for clean air, or why we stand up for hardworking people, legal or not. He sure doesn’t get climate change. We do things different out here. California, time to rise up.

Bill Russo reposted

Everyone should say it: The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism. Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy. But that's not what's interesting about Miller. It's not brains. It's bile.

Musk knew what was in the bill. His split with Trump isn’t about EV credits—it’s about power. As Trump’s circle tightens around loyalty and culture war populism, Musk sees his technocratic influence fading. His call to replace Trump with Vance reveals the real game: control.

The Trump–Musk split exposes a rift in Project 2025: populist dominance vs. technocratic control rooted in Dark Enlightenment thought. Both sought to weaken democracy, but their fallout creates a strategic opening to push back and defend democratic norms.

Project 2025 shows how two right-wing movements have merged: Christian nationalism and the Dark Enlightenment. One seeks moral rule by divine order, the other seeks elite rule by hierarchy. Together, they aim to dismantle democracy and replace it with obedience—spiritual and structural.

The Illusion of Lawfulness The threat isn’t the law—it’s how it’s enforced. Citing crime to deport moms, keeping Medicaid “intact” while cutting care—this is governance by distortion. Extrapolate this: if enforcement can ignore intent, no right is safe. That’s the real danger.

This is my conundrum: I consider myself a progressive and support most of the liberal platform. But I often find it easier to debate with conservatives—their arguments feel more structured. I don’t always agree, but I empathize with many of their concerns. Dialogue matters.

Listen and read what this guy guy has said and is saying and then look closely at what’s happening now. It’s not some fringe Techie cult mind game, the money controlling things now, Trump’s just a useful idiot, are executing his vision.

Gil Durán@gilduran.com

Curtis Yarvin goes on @cnn.com, confirms that he wants a monarchy to replace democracy, says racist things and informs @hadasgold.bsky.social that he's in touch with Trump staffers. Nice to see the mainstream press catch up on this dangerously weird ideology. www.cnn.com/2025/05/31/p...

Prudent risk management dictates that management of uncertainty demands action. COVID and climate change both prove this: hedge against worst-case outcomes or risk losing everything. Overreacting may cost a little short term—but underreacting can cost it all. History rewards caution, not denial.

Our predecessors failed to control Gilded Age elites and got the Great Depression. If we fail to control today’s digital elites, we risk something worse: a collapse of shared reality. When truth breaks, democracy follows. The next crash might not be economic—it might be cognitive.

The Trump admin’s attack on media, academia, and bureaucracy mirrors Yarvin’s “Cathedral” theory—and DOGE echoes his RAGE plan to dismantle the state. This isn’t fringe, it’s a blueprint. The silence around it reveals more about media blind spots than his lack of influence.

How do we build a political culture that unites around the 90% most people agree on—and creates a fair, functional process to compromise on the 10%? We can’t keep letting the extremes hijack progress.

I reject the label “liberal”—it’s too subjective. Compared to what? Reagan? Roosevelt? Progressivism, to me, is a spectrum rooted in Enlightenment ideals: reason, cooperation, and justice. It’s not about purity or pace, but moving forward together toward a better future.

If the Renaissance was the rediscovery of human brilliance, and the Enlightenment was the assertion of human reason, then the AI era may be the redefinition of what it means to be human. Whether it becomes a third wave of progress—or a warning—depends on the choices we make right now. Choose well!

I think about the Enlightenment a lot because I truly believe in its core ideas: challenge kings, question dogma, and seek truth—truth as tested, reasoned, and shared without bias. It gave us rights, science, and democracy. Please, we must not lose sight of how vital it was to human progress.

The more I witness, the more I know—it’s not just politics anymore. Threads of Dark Enlightenment, Christian nationalism, and tech elitism are converging. What’s unfolding is a rejection of the Enlightenment itself. We’re living through a civilizational pivot.

The Enlightenment taught us to question authority in pursuit of truth. Today’s youth are socialized to “resist conformity” by rejecting all consensus. It’s not reason—it’s reflex. And it’s how authoritarians now pose as rebels while dismantling Enlightenment democracy.

The goal isn’t just power—it’s to dismantle the Enlightenment itself. Trump, the GOP, and a hard-right court are advancing an agenda shaped by the Dark Enlightenment, white nationalism, and the religious right. What they seek to erase is the foundation of democracy.

People listen up! They want us arguing over Medicaid and immigration while a deeper threat rises: the Dark Enlightenment—a growing philosophy that sees democracy as chaos and calls for elite rule and strict hierarchy. Once fringe, it now echoes through MAGA, tech elites, and global authoritarianism.

To my neighbors who fly the flag every day—what are you trying to say? Because to me, it doesn’t feel like patriotism. It feels like something else. Maybe it’s time we talk about what that flag means today—and why it no longer feels like a shared symbol for all of us.

Clausewitz said war is politics by other means. Trump flips it: politics is just war waiting to happen. Why talk when you can plan for the end of the world? His nuclear shield isn’t about peace—it’s about assuming war is coming and calling it leadership.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

REPORTER: Critics said a golden dome would be prohibitively expensive TRUMP: We can afford to do it. You know, we took in $5.1 trillion in the last four days in the Middle East (This is a lie, as we detailed today in Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-fake...)