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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 8m

well, let me try an exercise. plz ignore at will. who would i be if i did not have the language structures indicated by the term 'natural rights'? idk who or what i am anyway, but perhaps that would be a big enuf difference to bring in a fraught term like 'essential'.

svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 14m

if i am getting tiresome, np. we can just let it rest at down w maga! a fine place to stand together.

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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 16m

some folks have it pretty easy regarding language. like Quine. i am usually more unsettled. like Quine i have a universal humanity. but it is considerably more difficult to get at because history and language are part of the ingredients, despite shared physics.

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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 22m

does English exist? only in certain speakers? otoh, not for Chomsky. is old english an english? what are pidgeons and argots? does Hong Kong include english? why does it matter that DuBois spoke it? what is particularity? can Appiah's bk on lies that bind fit w bk on DuBois & lines of descent? idk.

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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 24m

i am confident neither of us is interested in immutable traditions (maybe Gadamer here on tradition vs tradtionalism). much less biological determinisms. but what is ethnos? i often find the easiest model is language. a synecdoche! surely ethnos is a function of language, but what is language? +

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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 35m

i had several long threads at the old place sparring w Appiah's stuff on lies that bind. all lost to the ether waves of history now. ha!

what would be nice is a good study on what Voegelin's critique of Toynbee could yield for Arnason's defense of 'civilization'

svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 38m

think i'm following. all fair. fwiw, i don't want to cede McNeill's "civilization" to maga. i don't want to cede my own self-interpretation, which does include "culture" (and maybe even "civilization") to them. i understand i am off the charts for many.

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Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 2h

Trump fired a bunch of Immigration Judges + Board of Immigration Appeals members so that he could stack those orgs with loyalists. Our NSF funded research confirms the work background of IJs and BIA members predict their rate of asylum denial. See also our description of the immigration bureaucracy.

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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 1h

"This is where we’ve been headed since Jan. 6.

The man who fomented an actual insurrection will invent a fantasy insurrection to justify overturning the rule of law & deploying the military against civilians.

The thing about Rubicons is they can’t be uncrossed."

www.thebulwark.com/p/emergency-...

Emergency Triad: The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next

We aren’t at the worst-case scenario yet. But if you squint, you can see it looming out there, just over the horizon.

www.thebulwark.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 2h

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 2h

The situation in America is not great. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2h

Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers.

Invading our state with military troops.

Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night.

Arresting elected officials asking questions.

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2h

His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street.

Separating children from their parents.

Creating fear.

Taking people for “how they look.”

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 2h

I think there's something that lies between acting purely on instinct/hate, on one hand, and the level of theoretical elaboration you're envisioning, on the other. I think he probably is something like a right-Gramscian, and understands what he's doing in those terms to some extent or other.

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 4h

Good morning from the line outside the courthouse in the Eastern District of Virginia, where former FBI director James Comey is set to be arraigned on federal charges.

I’m here for @lawfaremedia.org.

Follow along for updates ⬇️

Federal courthouse in EDVA, with line of people out front and a guy holding a “show trial” sign

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 12h

Monstrous.

"federal agents detained nearly every resident of the 130-unit building—including children and babies—placing them in zip ties and separating them by race into vans for more than two hours early Tuesday morning."

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 15h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2h

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

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Matthew Stiegler @matthewstiegler.bsky.social · 2h

I’m not a political strategist or a social psychologist, but to me this seems true and important. Values must be activated. Surviving a real crisis takes real leadership.

Highlighted: “We've learned, hearteningly, that majorities seem to harbor a deep attachment to liberal rights and liberties, one that instinctively recoils at masked kidnappings, at hypermilitarized vehicles on urban boulevards, at the trappings of totalitarian dictatorship. But this must be activated. That takes conflict and controversy-powerful imagery and language that rivets attention.”

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Benjamin Norris @benjaminnorris.bsky.social · 2h

5 pm today!

Benjamin Norris @benjaminnorris.bsky.social · 10d

I'm doing a thing at Rowan on October 8th. If you're in the area and want to hear me talk about miracles and the politics of sufficient reason in Spinoza and Schelling come by!

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E.J. Fagan @ejfagan.com · 2h

In most cases, a party out of power makes promises about macroeconomics that it can't really deliver on. Prices, economic growth, unemployment etc are mostly out of the control of policymakers.

Democrats in 2029 are going to be able to lift tariffs and pretty quickly lower the cost of living.

Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov · 2h

Housing is too expensive to build and too expensive to afford.

Donald Trump's solution? Make it even MORE expensive with his chaotic tariffs.

Americans can't afford Donald Trump's housing market.

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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 2h

We (Democrats, reporters, society in general) should and should be able to make this into a big story.

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 2h

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 4h

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 2h

Steve Brodner

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svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 2h

we can then say that mutual self-interpretation is fluid and turn to things like Eisenstadt's multiple modernities. idk.maybe no fun after all? just playing around.

svateboje.bsky.social @svateboje.bsky.social · 2h

if we start from a superficiality like "plato to nato" we can at least recognize nato as a self defined social structure of mutual identification. ofc, we can question any attempt at genealogy. or typology (are civilizations real?). but we can't say Plato has no place in that mutual identification.

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