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Eristics Destroyed Democracy

@eristicsmustdie.bsky.social

600 followers 750 following 1.3K posts

The right wing embrace of pure eristics has made political discourse useless.

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · Apr 25

Everything now depends on speedy organization of general strikes, uniting grassroots, (ex)military, blue state governments, federal workers in a position to monkey wrench state action, and Dems drafting new rules and prepping trials… violence would backfire but a lasting strike would hit brakes some

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 18h

“With your patient and rigorous work, you can act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing,” he said. “You can be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth...”

apnews.com/article/pope...

Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation.

apnews.com

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 7h

the boys who landed at Normandy or fought in Stalingrad couldn't have imagined the horrors of 21st century war

A picture and headline from an article: Unicorn bride marries Kenny from south park at Portland ICE protest

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 2h

Winning, bullying, that is their official language. Lies and gaslighting are just a few of their many irrationalist tactics in their overall eristic strategy to neutralize their opponents.

Actually transactionalism (corruption) is their official language.

Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 2h

They lie and will say inconsistent things but they are not inconsistent or incoherent. They fail to coherent with facts and say contradictory things, but their will to power is perfectly consistent with each move they make. They want to win/rule, not govern, so truth matters little if at all

Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 2h

The Republican Party shifted to a position where they decided to replace debate with eristics. So debate/argumentation became a weapon strictly for verbal bullying. Having sacrificed rationality to eristics, they then selected a non-rational basis for governance: the transaction. Pure irrationalism

Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 2h

It’s not just lying, it’s eristics. They think debate is *for* winning/losing… it’s PR not governance. They are doing eristics. When challenged, all that matters is clocking a “W” for the cameras. They think that’s what debate/reasoning *is*! For them, governance is transactional not rational

Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 2h

They’ve abandoned reason for eristics.

Eristics.

It’s an important word. We need it.

When we do an audit of policies from this era of absurdity and obscenity, we’ll be looking for policies backed by eristics instead of reasoning. We have to excise those policies. They’ll have no basis in reality.

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 12h

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.

The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.

Read that back.

When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

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nathhelala.bsky.social @nathhelala.bsky.social · 2h

youtu.be/811H-W9gKHU?...

It is now urgent to protect our natural resources. If the US does not take our resources by force, they will interfere through investments. Canada must put protections in place against this.

US makes major move on Canadian critical minerals

YouTube video by Global News

youtu.be

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Kat Abughazaleh @katmabu.bsky.social · 16h

I’m horrified to hear that two people were kidnapped by ICE in Evanston this morning.

There’s a protest at Home Depot shortly. We’ll be delivering water and supplies to protesters — I hope you’ll join us in standing with our community.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12h

federal agents stealing children and sending them south. where have i heard about that before?

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 14h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 21h

A reason why we got here is that the media stopped reporting facts and replaced reporting with making everything a reality tv show where contestants fight one another. It turned lying from a liability into an advantage since it would no longer be punished

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 21h

Eristics destroyed democracy

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Joe Walsh @walshfreedom.bsky.social · 21h

One more time: As it’s not “weaponization of justice” for law enforcement to prosecute someone who committed crimes trying to rob a bank, it’s also not weaponization of justice for law enforcement to prosecute someone who committed crimes trying to overthrow an American election.

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Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 23h

History warned us about tyrants. Nobody warned us they’d be this dumb.

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 21h

They hire Bond villains sometimes, if you look down the ladder a bit. But they’re always dumb because they believe their own supremacist propaganda, and so simply cannot properly assess costs and risks. They must deny reality for in-group signalling, which trips them up constantly

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 21h

I’m often surprised personally when reading about most populist tyrannies at how dumb the educated classes found the whole thing. We need an Umberto-Eco-like set of rules of the stupidity of Ur-Fascism… to be on alert for stupidification because it’s right up there with xenophobia as a driver

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Transphobes Can't Read @lordaslan.bsky.social · 1d

Wait, don't they control all branches of government?

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 21h

This is why they have the panic around schools and LGBTQ+ issues too. They are more blank-slate-ist than right wing critics think. They imagine *teachers* impress LGBTQ+ impulses into innocent cishet kids & also think top-down telling kids they’re not trans will make them cis by fiat. Author-itarian

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whet moser @whetmoser.com · 1d

one thing that’s definitely new over the past decade or so is the number of bumper stickers and signs threatening to kill you

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Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 1d

Some weirdo on Twitter has been absolutely melting down for like 36 straight hours because I posted:

When this is over, do not forget what ICE did, and what ICE is. And do not make room for them in society. Make sure they know that they are, and will continue to be, reviled and beneath contempt.

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Khashoggi's Ghost @urocklive1.bsky.social · 1d

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Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 1d

“No, Speaker Johnson — the No Kings rally on October 18 is not a hate America rally. In fact, it’s quite the contrary: It’s a love America rally.” #NoKings

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Eristics Destroyed Democracy @eristicsmustdie.bsky.social · 1d

I think some serious historical & sociological analysis needs to be put into delineating the “post-truth era”, determining when it was that pure eristics largely displaced reasoned discourse, determining which social policies and decisions were distorted by pure eristics, and revisiting them all

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 2d

More judges speak to the press (the NYT) about what a disaster the Supreme Court (specifically the shadow docket) has been - “incredibly demoralizing & troubling”; a “judicial crisis”; a “slap in the face to district courts.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

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