Author | Lightnews

Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 11h

This for me is the problem with Klein's comments on abortion moderation in red states. There is exactly one set of social issues where the public is rapidly trending in a problematic direction and on which it is possible to outflank establishment Republicans. And we should definitely not go there.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 1d

By the time Michaud made it to the U.S. House he had been a professional politician for 20 years. He continued working at the steel mill because state legislative seats pay terribly and in Maine it seems particularly bad, but he wasn't living a typical working class life either.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 1d

This is without even getting into the fact that it is not actually possible to be both a viable candidate for U.S. Senate and a working class person, so by the time people get to this point whether the identity was originally authentic or not it has become a performance.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 1d

All the evidence suggests that legitimately working class people are not actually all that good at performing being working class for an audience. What working class people really want to see is a sort of elevated performance of being working class from a high status person.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 1d

It's sort of like driving a mom car. Yeah it's a little emasculating for him/other presidents that the Whitehouse is small relative to other presidential buildings in the world, but if you do something about it like build a giant extension or buying a sports car it just looks like your compensating.

Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 1d

This feels sort of like Trump's comments on 9/11 (that the World Trade Center was ugly), there are things (the Whitehouse is architecturally underwhelming) that you aren't supposed to say in public because they strike at the core of the U.S. national myth, but that he can't resist saying anyway.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 1d

The National Trust for Historic Preservation warned that President Trump’s planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself,” which spans just 55,000 square feet. https://wapo.st/4hmL8rC

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 3d

You could imagine a version of ICE that operated like the Guardian Angels, flashy set piece ops, no masks, bright identifiable uniforms, and there are moments where they seem to want to do that, but they overwhelmingly go in a shabbier, more menacing direction.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 3d

One of the weirder things about Sliwa is that he is an OG right wing paramilitary operative in ways that Trump is at least in theory trying to emulate with the current iteration of ICE and violent currents within MAGA but neither recognizes any kind of kinship with the other.

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 4d

have bizarrely gotten a grudging respect for Curtis Sliwa, who is an insane person who talks like one of the Penguin's henchmen

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 3d

Eh, Danielle Allen did this at Harvard and it seemed like it was mostly a wash but hurt her reputation more than it hurt his. Yarvin is not going to look good here, but he can absolutely create a spectacle that is embarrassing for everyone involved.

Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 6d

It feels like a lot of these people would have or did understand that televised debate is a deeply stilted and vaguely embarrassing performance in 2024. We cannot and should not rehabilitate the concept of televised debates just because a candidate we like is good at them.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 6d

More broadly, I think you're making an assumption that people can be inherently talented at televised debate that I think is wrong. Contemporary televised political debates are a deeply stilted and weird piece of performance art. It is more like training to be on reality TV then just being eloquent.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 6d

'Trained' is admittedly a bit of a weird word to use in the context of rap, but it is the word that people use for most demanding physical performances including specifically debate. Would it have been weird to say he was a trained debater or trained acrobat?

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 6d

All of these pols will talk about how their musical careers paved the way for their political ones, and reporters love to ask about it, Mamdani has leaned into these questions for years: indypendent.org/2020/06/how-...

How Zohran Mamdani’s Rap Career Taught Him to Campaign as a Socialist

The arts have a role in the future of American socialism and a slate of candidates backed by the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America is demonstrating what music and culture can d...

indypendent.org

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 6d

I think you are missing the point, he was a rapper, he trained to ‘perform’ rap. You could say the same thing about Beto O’Rourke or Martin O’Malley, although rap is probably a more equivalent performance to politics and especially debate.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 9d

I mean, for decades even when Republicans were genuinely much more popular among the youth 'young conservatism' was largely a grift to get money out of rich old people. I wonder if what's happened here is that the RW grifting space has become so saturated you genuinely have to believe it now.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 15d

You see this particularly with the death penalty where executing an innocent person because the process that led to their conviction was technically correct is actually a much more potent way of sacralizing state violence then executing a guilty person.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 15d

Like it's easy to say more children == more money for pensions but in practice it's more like the parents of those children and their pensioner parents (who themselves did a bunch of pro-social child rearing with no incentives) fighting over who are the ultimate pro-social good boys.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 15d

Everyone already implicitly believes the tax code should hose wealthy DINKs who rent bougie apartments. The potent distributional question right now is whether the tax code should favor working parents with young children trying to buy a home or their empty nester parents with paid off houses.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 15d

My most controversial take on this is probably that while I think reproductive freedom should be sacrosanct, I don’t really have any problem with additional taxes on (high income) childless people. Someone gotta pay into the pensions!

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 16d

I mean, government shut downs have always been performative, what is happening with Trump just ignoring all the conventions of shutdown procedure is that they are ceasing to be a compelling performance.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 17d

Trumpism in general really feels like the last days of an authoritarian regime where the leader has fully internalized his own propaganda about being a karate master and saving the capitol from evil supersoldiers, not a regime consolidating by strong-arming media into spreading these lies.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 17d

I feel like the basic problem is that any money you leave on the table by not compulsively attention seeking is the difference for your most marginal sycophant/personal assistant/roadie between affording a house and being poor for the rest of their life.

Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 19d

Which is mostly just to say, in most democracies popular fronts are rarely needed and not a huge imposition when they are necessary. The U.S. requiring a popular front for most of the last 10 years is a structural issue.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 19d

Fundamentally I think if you have institutions that create real political equality and a multi party democracy it is very difficult for the fascists to actually take power. Particularly in an age with much less street violence. The problem is the U.S presidency has become structurally fascist.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 20d

Basically we return to the pre-Carter SQ where not passing a budget was weird and uncomfortable but was understood to be the equivalent to passing an indefinite length CR.

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Theo Landsman @ordinalandsman.bsky.social · 20d

I think an underrated possibility here is that they keep the filibuster, Trump lets Vought run rampant and then reins him in and reinstates a lot of funding when he starts to get pushback, and the ultimate result is that being or not being in a shutdown no longer means anything.

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