doing politics the right way, eh Ezra? @ezraklein.bsky.social

The all-time gold medal champions of stabbing themselves repeatedly. Insane inequality, virtually no investment in public goods, squandering of all natural and human resources, obsessed with resurrecting a dead white supremacist empire. Truly raised it to an art form.

There's no need for any replacement agencies. We shouldn't be removing people from the country, period, unless they've been extradited to another country or they've been convicted of a serious crime. Such functions can easily be handled by US Marshals and the FBI.

Can I just... write my ideas down? My historian/lawyer in training brain reels in horror at the thought. But that same brain is paralyzed by the fear of publishing without every single non-original thought or idea properly attributed.

it's important to point out social and political factors too, though! a bunch of premodern empires committed partial suicide/sped along other material processes or just straight-up stabbed themselves to death

bigotry, germs, and lack of fertilizer, the three horsemen of the premodern imperial apocalypse

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

they were *furious* about desegregation and Black political equality.

Any discussion of the transformation of the Democratic Party into a neoliberal hellscape has to seriously reckon with the fact that Nixon won reelection with 60% of the popular vote, and Reagan won reelection with 58%.

Public opinion is wildly malleable, but within the bounds of the few deeply held sentiments/preferences the public has. Boomers were in an advertising-fueled, individualist consumer-brained, "what's the worst that can happen if we abandon the regulatory state?" mood, and

For a lot of reasons, trans rights will be a more difficult row to hoe, but it can be done. Polling averages are not fundamental laws of the universe, they are subject to change. It's called 'doing politics.'

should it necessarily? wouldn't that put rules and traditions (is the law of impeachment actual law?) above the rulemaking clause?

the President and the governors of the several States shall have the authority to naturalize persons as citizens of the United States by proclamation.

The proclamation shall be public, and shall list the names of persons naturalized. The grant of citizenship by proclamation shall be irrevocable.

our behavior during the civil war doesn't help on this either

my kingdom for a post-scarcity utopia with both individual freedom and social obligation