Hadn’t come across this sense of “ablative” before: “Sacrificial, wearing away or being destroyed in order to protect the underlying material, as in ablative paints used for antifouling, or ablative heat shields used to protect spacecraft during reentry.”
Tweeted earlier by Noah Smith: “The Tech Right is ablative armor for the Hard Right. The Hard Right put on the Tech Right like an armored suit in order to win the 2024 election without just looking like the same old 2017-era tiki torch bullshit. Then the Tech Right absorbed all of the post-election backlash.”
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 