Posted On: Monday - November 13th 2023 9:50AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 US Police State Trump Pundits Hildabeast US Feral Government Anarcho-tyranny
Doug Mackey of Vermont has been sentenced by the US Feral Government to 10 years in prison for forwarding humorous political memes during the '16 election. I urge you all to watch the full 26 minute video, kindly hosted on the Adam Smith YT* channel.
On the internet, at least during his heyday of political contributions to the internet, Mr. Mackey used the name Ricky Vaughan. So, even in '15-'16, he tried to be careful, as it was already easy to get cancelled from one's employment, social scene, etc. I do remember that pseudonym now but give credit to commenter Hail for the reminder and more memories. Mr. Hail notes that "Ricky Vaughan was the quintessential such figure."[big player in the meme wars]
I'll just put in a few comments, as the full details of this oppressive Banana Republic-style behavior are in the video, as Mr. Mackey is interviewed by pundit Tucker Carlson.
First off, the 7AM raid and arrest by the FBI was about the '16 election, not the '20 one, so the alleged "criminal" acts are from 7 years ago. Dough Mackey was indicted some time after that, but that one can be arrested and tried for crime done years back is a function of the Statute of Limitations for said crime, but these Statutes are being abused for absurd definitions of "crimes". The Police State mentality of law enforcement in this country goes hand in hand with this absurdity, as RICO, "terroristic threats", whatever big-name crimes that have been come up with since the Patriot Act. (Yeah, RICO and "wire fraud* - see the video regarding the latter, go way back.) They can put long SoL's on these "horrific" anti-Regime charges.
So, along with the old "show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" business, now comes "show me the date, and I'll find you the crime."
Next, note the meme in question:
Peak Stupidity has not been sure the Hildabeast was worth a topic key anymore, but, she's baaaackkk! Of course, to sane people who are not Regime enforcers, the joke there is that it was too easy to vote.** Texting some phrase to a 5 digit number was fairly new in '16, so this worked very well as a joke. As Mr. Mackey noted to Tucker Carlson, the FBI spent plenty of taxpayer money trying, but they could not find a victim alleging that he'd tried to vote that way and was therefore deprived of his vote. (It actually surprised me that they couldn't, even if they had to goad someone a bit. That anyone stupid or unaware enough to follow the meme's instructions SHOULD be voting is another story.)
The Anarcho-Tyranny here is in the sentencing. This is not just the jury who (as the discussion went) deciding for its own what this meme actually intended. The 10 year sentence is a warning from the Potomac Regime that you might better quit even sending these things, you know, just in case one were to get misconstrued. 10 years is the length of sentences given to murderers, and over half the sentence (19 years) given to the nutcase immigrant who threw a 5 y/o boy 40 ft down off a balcony at the Mall of America in Minneapolis***.
Finally, I will mention that Doug Mackey in this interview answered Tucker Carlson's question of whether he created this particular meme in the negative, but Mr. Mackey sure acted like that was an important point. It shouldn't be. Now, I'm gonna let Michael Scott of The Office attempt to explain.
Let me say state here that Peak Stupidity has our light hearted posts quite often, even amongst the massive evil and stupidity happening around us, but this surely wasn't one of them ... until just now. This scene from The Office is one I may have shown before and might again. Besides the few seconds highlighted, the rest makes some great points in a hilarious fashion.
No matter whether he somehow doesn't have the capability for strategy and tactics to get other things done, if Trump gets elected he surely must pardon Doug Mackey along with the over 1,000 J6 patriots and any other Political Prisoners there are (all of the right). Along with that, I say, screw it, this American Republic game is over for now - we should probably take our own Political Prisoners. That the ctrl-left is so afraid of a Trump victory is due to projection.
PS: When writing this post yesterday, I didn't know how big a shot in the meme-sending, pro-Trump political prop. world, Mr. Mackey, aka, Vaughan was. So, the Feds wanted to pick off one of the big shots. Still, it's a warning to anyone.
* That's WhiTey or YouTube, take your pick.
** Though voter fraud slanted toward the D-squad has been around since JF Kennedy, things have continually gotten worse - see November '20.
*** Here's a follow-up from a couple of years back.
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[UPDATED 11/14:] Added information about Mr. Mackey's internet name from his "forwarding" days." Also, I will have noted, per recent Mr. Hail comment, that this guy was big time in that world of memes/political prop of the mid-10s
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Comments:
Hail
Tuesday - November 14th 2023 7:25AM MST
PS
I guess it's obvious but the long-comment one below from here was me.
I guess it's obvious but the long-comment one below from here was me.
Hail
Tuesday - November 14th 2023 7:25AM MST
PS
-- Recollections of Ricky Vaughan ca. 2016, cont. --
Some more comments on recollections of Rick Vaughan and his iconic bespectacled 1950s-looking baseball-player with a red MAGA cap he used as his "avatar":
I remember a few times opening to Ricky Vaughan's main page, and almost any time of day I'd often find rapid-fire new tweets and retweets coming in. I remember seeing steady streams of these. Sort of as you describe, they would be in blasts lasting 10 minutes at a time, or even longer. He would clear out the Twitter equivalent of an "inbox" (notifications) and also do some crawls through his own "feed" to look for material, and just blast of hundreds a day.
The speed with which he did these things suggested to me he was using a desktop in stable conditions, not someone darting around the world with a mid-2010s smartphone. It would have been impossible to do what he did if so.
Ricky Vaughan was partially a meme-maker himself, sometimes an ironic commentator, but mostly he was a big nexus of people sending things to which he would magnify. He was also a "signaller" of which direction other pro-Trump Alt-Right-adjacent Twitter people would go. He would deliberately promote use of certain hashtags to his large number of followers, and often it worked to get them "trending."
In turn, people would tag him in memes they made or etc., and most of them he would retweet, as long as they were obviously anti-Wokeness and/or pro-Trump at the time. He was like a curator and a big-time propagandist of the mid-2010s Internet-era.
This was an era before an extreme form of discourse-control was imposed by Big Tech. Part of the tinkerings that Big Tech did beginning a bit in 2016 maybe, but definitely in 2017 and 2018 heavily, and beyond, was with the objective to never again allow a "Ricky Vaughan" to rise up. I've definitely noticed the same, with twelve years now of data from my Hail To You site.
Targeting Ricky Vaughan himself is like a real-world version of the late-2010s suppression. I don't known when the Ricky Vaughan account itself was banned. My memory now tells me he was banned several times but each time returned under a slightly different "handle" and within days had thousands of followers again. I don't know what his peak-follower-count was. But his influence, as described (the "nexus" thing) was measurable in the millions.
-- Recollections of Ricky Vaughan ca. 2016, cont. --
Some more comments on recollections of Rick Vaughan and his iconic bespectacled 1950s-looking baseball-player with a red MAGA cap he used as his "avatar":
I remember a few times opening to Ricky Vaughan's main page, and almost any time of day I'd often find rapid-fire new tweets and retweets coming in. I remember seeing steady streams of these. Sort of as you describe, they would be in blasts lasting 10 minutes at a time, or even longer. He would clear out the Twitter equivalent of an "inbox" (notifications) and also do some crawls through his own "feed" to look for material, and just blast of hundreds a day.
The speed with which he did these things suggested to me he was using a desktop in stable conditions, not someone darting around the world with a mid-2010s smartphone. It would have been impossible to do what he did if so.
Ricky Vaughan was partially a meme-maker himself, sometimes an ironic commentator, but mostly he was a big nexus of people sending things to which he would magnify. He was also a "signaller" of which direction other pro-Trump Alt-Right-adjacent Twitter people would go. He would deliberately promote use of certain hashtags to his large number of followers, and often it worked to get them "trending."
In turn, people would tag him in memes they made or etc., and most of them he would retweet, as long as they were obviously anti-Wokeness and/or pro-Trump at the time. He was like a curator and a big-time propagandist of the mid-2010s Internet-era.
This was an era before an extreme form of discourse-control was imposed by Big Tech. Part of the tinkerings that Big Tech did beginning a bit in 2016 maybe, but definitely in 2017 and 2018 heavily, and beyond, was with the objective to never again allow a "Ricky Vaughan" to rise up. I've definitely noticed the same, with twelve years now of data from my Hail To You site.
Targeting Ricky Vaughan himself is like a real-world version of the late-2010s suppression. I don't known when the Ricky Vaughan account itself was banned. My memory now tells me he was banned several times but each time returned under a slightly different "handle" and within days had thousands of followers again. I don't know what his peak-follower-count was. But his influence, as described (the "nexus" thing) was measurable in the millions.
Moderator
Tuesday - November 14th 2023 6:38AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, I'd heard/read the name Ricky Vaughan, but somehow thought he was a Wrastler or something... Thank you for this info - I'll put it up into this post later one.
That you were also "just forwarding" the tweets - hopefully you've seen the "Office" video - is something I won't put up, just out of mock concern, maybe a tiny bit real too about the treatment of Mackey, aka Vaughan. I mean, what's the difference between you and him in terms of "crimes" committed, when it comes down to it, just the particular one that might have mislead a D voter in '16? (I think their intention is to be able to drop the phony concern and just plain arrest people for forwarding disparaging memes period. We need to stop things before that point.)
Regarding your 2nd point, I had office jobs in the earlier days of the internet, which brings back reminiscing I'll put in a reply to your comments on x.com's below the next post (yesterday, Monday). I do remember checking yahoo mail 5 times a day, but luckily there was not so much else, especially political, that I was hooked on. It does impede the work. What I'm getting at is that Mr. Markey/Vaughan was likely doing a lot of this at work, an addiction, to be sure, but sometimes just a relief from boredom at work*. (Maybe a 10 minute internet break every hour will suffice - the smart phones make that a boss's dream nowadays, only 10 minutes wasting time!)
Yeah, the writing is all gone, from the computers of almost all the millions of people involved, true. However, I guess what Mr. Mackay, you, and others did had some long term affect. No, it can't be written into the history books like a description of the distribution of "Common Sense".
* I'm not claiming all office work is boring. I can't remember just now what Mr. Mackey said he did for a living in '16 or now...
That you were also "just forwarding" the tweets - hopefully you've seen the "Office" video - is something I won't put up, just out of mock concern, maybe a tiny bit real too about the treatment of Mackey, aka Vaughan. I mean, what's the difference between you and him in terms of "crimes" committed, when it comes down to it, just the particular one that might have mislead a D voter in '16? (I think their intention is to be able to drop the phony concern and just plain arrest people for forwarding disparaging memes period. We need to stop things before that point.)
Regarding your 2nd point, I had office jobs in the earlier days of the internet, which brings back reminiscing I'll put in a reply to your comments on x.com's below the next post (yesterday, Monday). I do remember checking yahoo mail 5 times a day, but luckily there was not so much else, especially political, that I was hooked on. It does impede the work. What I'm getting at is that Mr. Markey/Vaughan was likely doing a lot of this at work, an addiction, to be sure, but sometimes just a relief from boredom at work*. (Maybe a 10 minute internet break every hour will suffice - the smart phones make that a boss's dream nowadays, only 10 minutes wasting time!)
Yeah, the writing is all gone, from the computers of almost all the millions of people involved, true. However, I guess what Mr. Mackay, you, and others did had some long term affect. No, it can't be written into the history books like a description of the distribution of "Common Sense".
* I'm not claiming all office work is boring. I can't remember just now what Mr. Mackey said he did for a living in '16 or now...
Moderator
Tuesday - November 14th 2023 6:25AM MST
PS: "You laugh, but the only reason the RoK exists is because the USA realized that the commies would win peninsula-wide elections,...". OK, true, but once the Communists win one fair election, they don't see the need for any more after that. That seems to be the case almost always - Totalitarians of any soft that is - Nazis, Soviets, Chinese - even today, etc.
Hail
Monday - November 13th 2023 10:16PM MST
PS
I should add that Ricky Vaughan was the "handle" or nom-de-guerre of the man now being sent to prison for retweeting a "vote by text message" joke/
(the same or similar joke made by thousands of people, oft heard: "Remember folks, election day is Tuesday for Democrats and Wednesday for Republicans; make sure to show up on the right day to vote! It's your civic duty!" -- versions of this joke were common.)
I should add that Ricky Vaughan was the "handle" or nom-de-guerre of the man now being sent to prison for retweeting a "vote by text message" joke/
(the same or similar joke made by thousands of people, oft heard: "Remember folks, election day is Tuesday for Democrats and Wednesday for Republicans; make sure to show up on the right day to vote! It's your civic duty!" -- versions of this joke were common.)
Hail
Monday - November 13th 2023 10:13PM MST
PS
I have mentioned this before on these pages: as of 2016, I was retweeting and being retweeted by Ricky Vaughan many times. He was a major nexus of pro-Trump social-media people. He was identifiable with the Alt-Right, a term now in many years of disuse after the suppressions of 2017 and beyond. (Many are still today involved in humiliation-trials over carrying a torch around the General Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia.)
People later spoke ironically of a "meme war" of 2015-16 which, the true-believers had it, turned the tide and elected Trump. Ricky Vaughan was the quintessential such figure. It's a dubious honor because it also implied a kind of severe Internet-addiction, but "at least" (?) he was doing political-propaganda and not navel-gazing at Tik-Tok addiction-gruel or similar on Instagram.
The funny thing is, Ricky Vaughan's thousands of hours of net efforts back in those years, and the hundreds of thousands of people he influenced directly or first-order indirectly (and millions second-order indirectly), it's all gone, deleted, vanished. Such is the Internet. It would be a lot more useful to the historian if Ricky Vaughan had been a tract-propagandist like Thomas Paine, with vast, easy-to-find copies of his work in circulation...
I have mentioned this before on these pages: as of 2016, I was retweeting and being retweeted by Ricky Vaughan many times. He was a major nexus of pro-Trump social-media people. He was identifiable with the Alt-Right, a term now in many years of disuse after the suppressions of 2017 and beyond. (Many are still today involved in humiliation-trials over carrying a torch around the General Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia.)
People later spoke ironically of a "meme war" of 2015-16 which, the true-believers had it, turned the tide and elected Trump. Ricky Vaughan was the quintessential such figure. It's a dubious honor because it also implied a kind of severe Internet-addiction, but "at least" (?) he was doing political-propaganda and not navel-gazing at Tik-Tok addiction-gruel or similar on Instagram.
The funny thing is, Ricky Vaughan's thousands of hours of net efforts back in those years, and the hundreds of thousands of people he influenced directly or first-order indirectly (and millions second-order indirectly), it's all gone, deleted, vanished. Such is the Internet. It would be a lot more useful to the historian if Ricky Vaughan had been a tract-propagandist like Thomas Paine, with vast, easy-to-find copies of his work in circulation...
The Alarmist
Monday - November 13th 2023 5:53PM MST
PS
You laugh, but the only reason the RoK exists is because the USA realized that the commies would win peninsula-wide elections,
so they declared the RoK to be a thing and installed Syngman Rhee as its first leader.
You laugh, but the only reason the RoK exists is because the USA realized that the commies would win peninsula-wide elections,
so they declared the RoK to be a thing and installed Syngman Rhee as its first leader.
Moderator
Monday - November 13th 2023 3:19PM MST
PS: But, but ... the North Koreans have been having elections forever. They still are...
Bai Dien's in the basement, pretendin' to run the government ...
Bai Dien's in the basement, pretendin' to run the government ...
The Alarmist
Monday - November 13th 2023 11:19AM MST
PS
As if they’ll let Trump get to the next election ... if there is a next election.
I guess I shouldn’t be so sceptical; even the most repressive regimes hold or held periodic elections. Given last week’s “Red Wave,” expect Dear Leader Biden to garner 100 million votes this time around.
🕉
As if they’ll let Trump get to the next election ... if there is a next election.
I guess I shouldn’t be so sceptical; even the most repressive regimes hold or held periodic elections. Given last week’s “Red Wave,” expect Dear Leader Biden to garner 100 million votes this time around.
🕉
Mr. Moderator, about your comment yesterday...
"OK, well, I started over and let the whole thing run through the 26 minutes. Still "No Views" upon reloading that youtube page. Well, maybe it's a refresh thing. I went to this, another computer, started it up, and that page says "No Views". This is interesting." etc...
(Yes. I posted my PS comment with the link to the video just a few minutes after I was finished uploading it to youtube. As the video is "unlisted" no one will find it on youtube by searching. The only way people will find it is from the link in my comment or the video you embedded in this post.)
Yesterday after I read your comment youtube told me the video had 3 views. Shortly after that it told me there were 5 views. Today, (and as of now) it says there has been 1 view. I've never seen this happen before. I wonder why?
I'm watching the video now. Be back soon.
☮️