Literally the first comment. Also, the fact that authoritarians *can* lose elections in some systems does not mean democracy is unaffected. Would Cowen prefer to live in an illiberal democracy or competitive authoritarian state? Are they really the same as, say, Canada?
josh’s comments here get at the truth of the trump cuts: democrats can’t just turn funding streams back on when in power. the infrastructure has been badly damaged—we’ll need a wholesale reimagining and reinvestment in the reconstruction of public media (as well as all our other public institutions)
If you need even more reason to watch this, it’s a collaboration between an embattled and storied public television station and one of the best news outlets in the hemisphere.
Fascinating reporting on dynamics in the Situation Room in the lead up to the war. Utterly depressing how most remained relatively silent when asked for their opinion on what to do. Sycophants doing what sycophants do.
Extremely relevant thoughts from @jamellebouie.net
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVnF...
Vought has in fact written about his belief that the president is an elected dictator.
Remember all this nonsense about the supposed inferiority of “third world” immigration? They really believed that and applied their theory to international relations and it failed. Racism makes you stupid.
The MAGA project is in a very real sense about undoing the 14th Amendment.
newrepublic.com/article/2084...
you don’t have to know much world history to look at this map and immediately see why the entire western hemisphere has birthright citizenship
i find myself genuinely shaken by the nihilism of it. "oh, if we can make up some half plausible alternative meaning and convince five people it is true, then that meaning can control the fates of millions of people"
there is no evidence for mail-in voting fraud. but there is the belief that mail-in votes somehow "change" the result, as if there is something illegitimate about counting all of the votes
I wrote about the Democrats' attempt to merge tax cut populism with social democratic social policy and why it's a bad idea publiccomment.blog/p/adventures...
Some entertaining solutions for a stupid problem.
Exhibit A
Curtis Yarvin * @curtis_yarvin X.com The Iranian Revolution was a diplomatic crime of the American left. The Islamic Republic, like its proxy Hamas, is a client power of the American left. Trump is only bombing Tehran because he can't bomb Brooklyn Kyle Orton @ @KyleWOrton • 20h The Shah's dream was to bring Iran up to a level with European States: the economic policies were in place, many social reforms done, and the political piece—an elected government with a constitutional Monarchy—was set for late 1979. The Revolution... 11:20 AM • 3/8/26 • 72K Views
Today I learned from JD Vance’s muse that Iran’s Islamic, fundamentalist regime is a manifestation of the same leftist political energies as those which animate Brooklyn leftism. Ok dude, sure, whatever
"As someone whose kids won’t die fighting in the war, it’s important that you understand the flimsy, morally bankrupt justifications for war, and why it’s vital for you to throw more of your children's lives at this one."
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
CRITICAL RACE THEORY? BROTHER, EVERY RACE IS CRITICAL
Saw this in Discord and it’s amazing
It’s this. It’s been this scene for a decade. It has been and remains Homer declaring he likes ballet because he thinks this is ballet.
I do not fully agree with its final conclusion that tenure line jobs (or “tenure as it has existed”) should be abandoned in favor of unions (I think we need both), it paints a sharp picture of an entire sector in a state of sclerotic attenuation and forced death. Its findings include:
Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance.
And you know why?
Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.
If you want to understand why rich guys are turning back to eugenics and recreating the rhetoric and theology of slavery, it’s because they know on some level this level of wealth inequality is unjustifiable bsky.app/profile/marl...
i think this is what drives me nuts. people talk about how, say, the UN was founded by "starry eyed idealists" who didn't understand "reality." the truth is that the UN was founded by those who had just fought and *won* the bloodiest war in human history.
CNN homepage: headline says Bondi Democrats trade insults during combative hearing
So grandma, when authoritarianism came, what did the media do?
Well, honey, they framed everything as a battle between two sides, and never actually said one side was undermining the rule of law, damaging institutions, and creating a new Fash Tech Oligarchy™️ that was unaccountable to the people.
This is torture. The US is torturing children. Children whose words and whose art contain infinitely more humanity than the people keeping them detained.
"It's OK to Be White" has been a slogan for literal Nazis for some time now, if you want to know where the Republican Party is at the moment
Springfield, too, has been given new life by immigrants. A once-thriving manufacturing hub, its fortunes so collapsed that in 2012 it was regularly called the unhappiest city in America. In 2014, seeking to stem population decline, the city launched its “Welcome Springfield” campaign to attract immigrants. Haitians, many of whom had been given T.P.S. status after a devastating 2010 earthquake, responded. As new manufacturing jobs were created in the city, more immigrants followed. Many Haitians who settled in Springfield had children. The city stopped shrinking; in 2023, there was a tiny population increase.
On Sunday evening, Rose Goute, a Haitian restaurant, was almost deserted. “People stay home,” said Jean Philistin, a 50-year-old who was there picking up takeout. “People are scared.” He said he was less frightened than many others because he became a citizen a few years ago, though he wasn’t sure how much that would matter. “The worst thing is, since you’ve got an accent, or since you’re Black, they can stop you for no reason.” Philistin had been a civil engineer back in Haiti and now worked refurbishing houses. He has two teenage children, both born in America. “I don’t know why they hate my community,” he said sadly.
MAGA is a movement of America haters who despise this country and are conspiring to destroy it
Anyway congrats to our Free Speech Champions(tm) who helped usher in the most censorious American government since the Palmer Raids
screenshot of text from Adam Serwer in The Atlantic: "The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive - because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force."
bars
Americans have a habit of trying to compare all authoritarianism to Nazi Germany. I think in some ways i think it is comforting to view authoritarianism as a foreign ideology. If you want to understand our current authoritarian moment, you need to look to our own past, not to Europe 1/x
Speaking in Paris at the Second International Writers Congress in 1937, Langston Hughes declared: “We Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know.”
Really hard to look at this and all the other examples of bravery and kindness from ordinary people in this moment not think also of the tremendous cowardice exhibited over the past year by some of the richest, most well-protected people in business, media and politics