One basic lesson from political research is that secret police generally rely on mediocre men willing to do the dirty work of authoritarian regimes in order to advance their careers.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-the-fb...
PhD social scientist here who uses surveys to collect data for my research. Would be glad to help you all with this process!
This really is painful to watch. I don’t know if they believe what they say or they believe they have to say it. Regardless, these are people opposed to American democracy who will be given a lifelong opportunity to corrupt it.
“We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing…false information. It might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again," says Ryan Goodman, law professor at New York University.
The Worst Way to Cut Government Spending - The Atlantic
Serious scholars have examined what happens when we change the number of H1-B visas issued.
Cities that get more H1-B immigrants subsequently see the wages of natives *rise* substantially.
Skilled immigrants bring new ideas, fill labor shortages and make us all more productive.
There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.
“Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in America today,” Arthur C. Brooks writes. The key to conquering it may be seeing your dread as part of “the great opportunity and adventure of life”:
“He said, ‘We’ll notify next of kin if she dies.’ And at that moment, I knew that I was no longer dealing with humans.” www.masslive.com/news/2025/08...
Essential reading (by @jasonstanley.bsky.social) for every American. The media, aided by a handful of reactionary academics and compliant university administrations, has sold the public a huge lie about wokeness on college campuses, enabling the extreme right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
If you see reactionary centrist takes that universities did this to themselves by being too woke, or not being friendly enough to conservatives, remember there are always people willing to make the arguments of the authoritarian respectable
How soon they forget.
In WWII, US Army hired sociologists to advise on how to integrate troops, improve morale, organize units & pay structures. Some current practices still based on this work.
In 1990s, West Point sent officers to Stanford to earn Sociology PhDs, then hired them as faculty/deans.
Even if you (wrongly) believe that some immigrants lack due process rights, what’s to stop the government from claiming that *you* are an undocumented immigrant; removing you to El Salvador; citing an “administrative error”; and refusing to do anything to bring you back?
The answer is due process.
The destruction of the US State is happening so fast, and being reported with such earnest pragmatism, I cannot fathom the capital it will cost to repair it, should we have the opportunity in my lifetime.
When I say you don’t have to worry about microplastics in your brain I mean that there is much stronger evidence that you should be worrying about other things that you don’t ever think about, like the draining of peatlands for agriculture, and things that you think about all the time, like fascism.
WOW. Watch a constitutional law expert completely DEBUNK Republicans’ censorship crusade, while articulating exactly how Donald Trump is threatening freedom of speech. 🔥
Can’t emphasize this enough: if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the debased assault on our country, the antidote is connecting with other people in the flesh who are feeling the same way. There are millions of us.
The “shutdown would have been worse” argument is only true if you assume oppositional forces are stagnant. Voting with the GOP to avoid shutdown is the embodiment of feeble opposition and it enables the GOP rampage to continue. If only the 10 could imagine an alternative, more assertive use of power
One columnist, a professional pundit, is living in a paranoid delusion. The other, a sociologist, is living in America.
The provision of the 14th amendment that the Supreme Court unanimously wrote out of the constitution existed for a reason. Its drafters knew what would happen if you allowed insurrectionists back into power.
When the history of this time is written down, the cowardice will be remembered as much as the fascism
Gosh this is just vile
My goodness what an incredible story.
Since Reagan, the US has intentionally undercounted homelessness and hidden its structural roots.
So, workers and their kids are sleeping in cars and motels but aren't officially counted as unhoused and are scorned for "bad choices" they're presumed to have made.
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/o...
"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." - Hannah Arendt
"officials at the Dept. of HHS... have pressed staff at the agency to ignore court orders, according to nearly a dozen former and current NIH officials I spoke with. Even advice from NIH lawyers to resume business as usual was dismissed by the agency’s acting director, those officials said."
