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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 7h

no I think Trump v US was pretty much the killing blow and it's just a matter of making the normies, including the electeds, understand that

Patrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 9h

When you say "the Supreme Court is no longer legitimate" it doesn't mean "I think they've seriously compromised their moral authority and credibility". It means "I don't believe their rulings are legally binding".

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 18h

given how bad this admin are at optics they're going to get into a fight with the catholics at some point i fear

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Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 7h

we do at least have this tweet out of it

Twitter post. Image is Lee Kuan Yew.
“We did it. We resurrected LKY. Father, tell us: what should we do to fix America?”
“Ten billion H1B Indians.”
“What? B–but—“
“Forced race mixing of neighborhoods.”
“Father, no—“
“Arrest anyone who disagrees.”

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 7h

My ideology is that we should give a super-competent guy lifetime dictatorial power so we can build a high-public-sector-capacity developmental state. Now to take a big sip of my coffee and see the competence level of the guy we've elevated to lead the country I live in.

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 7h

two thing that annoys me about Lee Kuan Yew worship is that nobody who does it seems to care about *modern* singaporean politicians and American right-wingers who do it would never accept LKY's policies of, e.g., massive public housing projects in a country that makes posting racism illegal

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Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢 @regimecpa.bsky.social · 8h

If you think voters are morons who only care about prices / the economy, the takeaway is that Dems should do as much damage to the economy as possible while Trump is in office because voters are too stupid to attribute the damage to Dems with Trump as POTUS

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

they believe “criminal” is a kind of person you are, not a status contingent upon actions you take. J6 rioters going to jail was not an outrage because there are no laws they could break that would make them criminals, whilst innocence or guilt have no bearing on if others are criminals or not

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

American conservatism is the latter currently, state violence is good right now because it is a means of preserving stability or any other goal, but because it is violence by the powerful, which makes it good.

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

sorta feel like the core central division in conservatism is "hierarchy is inevitable, so it must be made just and virtuous" and "hierarchy is inevitable, so all it does is just and virtuous"

Great Depression (nightcore remix) @bluespacecanary.bsky.social · 15h

It's tempting to treat "the American right is a death cult" as rhetorical hyperbole, but when you look at e.g. their enthusiasm for executing people who are *clearly* innocent, no actually these people really do just worship and revel in death and murder

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 12h

the only candidate, of either party, who followed the semi-official Consultant Playbook and won, within the last twenty full years, was joe biden in 2020. obama and trump both consistently "fuck you we're doing it my way" guys.

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

The most effective Democratic messenger of my lifetime is the guy who broke every single rule Democrats are currently trying to follow: Barack Hussein Obama, the guy with the weird name who talked like a professor, made sweeping appeals to higher principles, and never once appeared salt-of-the-earth

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Materialist Gnostic @walmsley.bsky.social · 9h

the implication of this belief is an ethical imperative to dissolve the United States

Matt @tiredgenerally.bsky.social · 10h

yeah, ezra basically believes that left-liberalism is doomed and we have to dislodge the current ruling party at whatever cost with whatever coalition we can piece together. its extrapolating way too much from 2024 which was more about the overarching landscape than the policy or messaging

Sam @samd.bsky.social · 10d

just my two cents on Ezra Klein: he is generally good on policy and his work on things like housing is helpful

the problem is that his punditry is misguided for two reasons:

1) he is not skeptical enough of right wing bad faith

2) he is acting like the U.S. is Hungary, where the right is popular

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 18h

Virginia State Senate Dems just brought down fire and fury regarding the “Compact,” notifying the President and Rector that UVA would lose ALL STATE APPROPRIATIONS if it signs and cedes the University to “federal political control.” Notably, their letter directly restates points made here by @siva.

Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 20h

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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Nick (derogatory) ✨ @slothropsmap.bsky.social · 11h

The frog suit completely neuters the lie the admin wants to tell of violent resistance. Want to see so much more of it.

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rimidar @rimidar.bsky.social · 12h

Europeans on their way to post about how reactionary Americans are before heading off to attend the weekly football-based race riot

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Diary of a Black Cat Crossing Your Path in Despair @jcc333.bsky.social · 18h

Deductions: a beneficence, a sign of generosity

Pigouvian taxes: an allegation, a condemnation of your burdensome sinful network traffic

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K. Chen @tznkai.bsky.social · 18h

I accept that every policy debate can easily turn into, maybe essentially is, really a plane of psychic warfare about who feels good and whose trauma is being centered but I reserve the right to be annoyed about it.

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K. Chen @tznkai.bsky.social · 18h

Something I've found is that people respond to this idea very differently depending on if you put any effort into hiding you're doing this. Broadly speaking, childless people are fine paying taxes for public schools and not fine paying a childlessness tax even though they're basically the same thing

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 20h

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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Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 13h

american labor liberalism just does not really chart onto european politics because its effectively a blended traffic light coalition

politiBOO! @politiburb.bsky.social · 16h

MAKE IT STOP

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Rhett Derrick @lawzag.bsky.social · 19h

Just 8 generations ago, our ancestors could have housing, heating coal, have 6 children, a Christmas goose, three supernatural encounters and then retire…. All on one middle class salary. What happened?

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 20h

A good example of why direct inflation adjustment of this sort is more deceptive than clarifying when applied over very long stretches of time where consumption patterns are very different.

Basic foods (bread/grain) probably devours a third of Cratchet's income, but not the modern worker's.

Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 21h

👇

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Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 13h

and notably the ones that have held power are, as previously mentioned, due to their policy being, in American terms “socialism for whites only”, so they have kept their hold on racist working class voters

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Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 13h

the problem isn’t as much policy alignment as just the fact that, outside of the Scandinavian social democratic strongholds (and those parties are all very racist), the center left has broadly seen major setbacks in the last decades, due to the right-wing shift of their traditional bases

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Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 15h

i think we are broadly in agreement about what needs to be done, i’m mainly an opponent of lying to ourselves and others about it—paying for social programs will require far more extensive taxation than we currently have, but we should do it anyway. and we also should seize Elon’s money, frankly.

Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 15h

/billionaires are not an infinite reserve of money. if you advocate taxing them out of existence for political reasons, that’s an entirely different proposal than expecting that taxation to actually fund programs—if you want to have a tax on Musk fund something, Musk still needs to have money to tax

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Wannabe Apparatchik @apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 15h

the reason we need broad taxation is scale and sustainability. If you tax all the billionaires dry, which is what’s implied by “elon’s wealth could buy this much”, then what do you do for the rest of time after you’ve run out of billionaires? they should absolutely be taxed on their wealth, but/

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