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Osita Nwanevu

@ositanwanevu.com

I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives.

Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil.

It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago.

It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”.

It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing.

The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States.

Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all.

As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.

January 14, 2026 at 3:26 PM

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Ken Jennings

@kenjennings.bsky.social

The “prosecute the former regime at every level” candidate has my vote in 2028.

January 7, 2026 at 8:26 PM

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Lynda Lopez

@lyndab08.bsky.social

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

November 7, 2025 at 3:08 AM

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Ryan Nanni

@celebrityhottub.bsky.social

baseball is the best preparation for death because it does not come with a clock that tells you when your suffering will end one way or the other

October 11, 2025 at 3:04 AM

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Amanda Katz

@katzish.bsky.social

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

October 8, 2025 at 10:41 AM

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ceej

@ceej.online

the new pope must announce SuperHell

April 28, 2025 at 2:54 AM

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Mr. Joshua

@pantspants.bsky.social

February 22, 2025 at 10:36 PM

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Lex McMenamin (they/them)

@lexmcmenamin.com

The Giant from Twin Peaks in front of red curtains, captioned IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN.

January 20, 2025 at 4:40 AM

rankignorance.bsky.social

@rankignorance.bsky.social

This mfer not even gonna bring a flute in

The cover of Paul Horn’s “Inside the Great Pyramid” LP depicting a gold pyramid and flute against a dark blue background

December 18, 2024 at 7:16 PM

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Carter Amelia Davis

@sweetstench.bsky.social

The Forum Boy

October 28, 2024 at 10:03 PM

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jamelle

@jamellebouie.net

so far the only explanation i've seen that doesn't smack of "if only she'd listen to me she would have won" is "global discontent with incumbents because of inflation and post-pandemic malaise + toxic information environments"

November 7, 2024 at 3:00 PM

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Ryan Nanni

@celebrityhottub.bsky.social

well on the plus side I'm very accustomed to feeling like a dumbass

November 6, 2024 at 11:23 AM

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Baudrillard Warned Us

@baudrillardwarned.us

"Our culture of meaning is collapsing beneath the excess of meaning, the culture of reality collapsing beneath the excess of reality, the information culture collapsing beneath the excess of information -- the sign and reality sharing a single shroud."
- The Perfect Crime

January 22, 2024 at 7:36 PM

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Menzoberranzan Urbanist Society 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@dov.bsky.social

I remain broadly convinced the problem is the Internet.

November 6, 2024 at 6:14 AM

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southpaw

@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

This is the Republican Party trying to secure the fruits of a Russian terrorist attack on the American election system.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · Nov 6

The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party have filed a motion to halt a judge’s order allowing extended hours at six DeKalb County, Georgia, polling sites after they were evacuated earlier tonight because of bomb threats.

www.washingtonpost.com/elections/20...