Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 2h

Ethical reporting should do 3 things: Quote; Contextualize; Clarify. So, if a billionaire implicates human rights activists as the Antichrist, Journalism’s job isn’t to marvel at eccentricity. It’s to note demonization precedes dehumanization, which precedes and justifies any violence that follows.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 17h

The most fascinating part to me isn't the falsehood, but diagnosing its origin. Is it a lie, a delusion, or performative politics? Or is it simply part of an intentional narrative strategy to justify ratcheting up control and preemptively sanctioning violence?

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

This is how we take Pepe back from the nazis.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

We've fallen down the rabbit hole. A Mad Red Hatter throws a Tea party; a Dodo caucuses a Mock Congress; a diapered Queen of Golf Carts screams for heads from the royal green. If this is Wonderland, there's no place I'd rather be than Portland.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

"No one is above the law" is the promise of a just society. But when the powerful & petty write and wield the laws in their own favor, justice is inverted, and it becomes their greatest weapon.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

When one party holds power, the other must show ethical contrast. The Constitution’s strength isn’t procedural; it’s moral integrity. Antifa leaders should signal restraint and accountability. Tell your donors: us or them; so that we can explain to voters who bought who.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

Because if this case collapses, the DOJ will have accidentally created an angry martyr with subpoena power. One can only hope.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

ABC is wrong about which News is breaking, tho. The real story isn’t the indictment itself but the unintentional inversion of power it creates. Trump just gave one of the smartest, most strategic attorneys in New York another opportunity to prosecute him, only this time from the defendant’s bench.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

Currencies may change hands, but the exchange rate on integrity keeps dropping.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

Make noise. Flatter power. Promise alignment. Take the money.
Milei might be the first person who actually read The Art of the Deal and used it against its author.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 1d

Just a guess, but the extrajudicial killings of individuals on the high seas is an act so extreme that it arguably falls outside the plausible scope of official acts. Maybe?

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 2d

The entire digital economy is built on this foundation. The fusion of billionaire narcissism and Silicon Valley's comic-book-villain ambition isn't a unique AI problem; it's the logical endpoint of a systemic economic disease.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 2d

The post WW-II foundational political identity of modern America and its allies is anti-fascist. So if the United States Attorney General vows to destroy 'antifa', it means her intent is to exercise the discretion to come for any and all of us.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 2d

Name someone who read the CliffNotes but still failed the test.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 3d

The unspoken equation: My commercial gain = The correct outcome.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 3d

Imagine being a news organization and editing out the most newsworthy part of an article or video. 🙄

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 3d

Debating whether we’re in a crisis yet is like deciding between a hike or the beach when a storm is fast approaching the shore. The adult move is: evidence → forecast → plan. If the wind is already shifting in your direction, what’s the next move?

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 3d

It's not new. In Elizabethan England, a courtier would wait all alone in the royal chambers, and upon seeing the face of a noble figure, identify them by name, and then say, "How may I assist you today, my liege?" 😁

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 5d

The "both sides" rhetoric mistakes a moral conflict for a partisan one. There's no middle ground between democracy & autocracy, or between justice and injustice. The call to abandon an "us vs. them" frame is an oligarchical demand that we stop identifying the "them" who are actively breaking things.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 5d

The most successful coup is one that convinces its targets that self-defense is an act of violence. Failing to prosecute those who attempt to dismantle the republic isn't avoiding retaliation; it's granting them immunity for crimes against the state.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 5d

Beware the little gnat that can lift up a 300lb man and carry him all the way from the National Mall to Guantanamo Bay.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 5d

To confuse having the power to do a thing with having the authority to do a thing is exactly the kind of comic relief that military courts will appreciate in years to come.

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Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 5d

He knows exactly what it is and who he's talking about. And he's not landing on a question; he's planting a seed of cognitive dissonance in barren soil. And the seed is made of dynamite. The real test of faith is whether it will grow or detonate. Nation states have pivoted on less.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 6d

A system that betrays the social contract and engineers economic despair will always find people desperate enough to abandon their moral compass and do its brutality for a price. Such a system first betrays its people, then it pays them to betray each other.

Terry O’Gara @terryogara.bsky.social · 7d

Ours is an era of skibidi empire.

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