A country where lying is key to success and brutality is celebrated is not one that can sustain liberal democratic life. www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
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A country where lying is key to success and brutality is celebrated is not one that can sustain liberal democratic life. www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
Cringe is cringe š
Down by the Bay teaches kids an important lesson: avoid your parents because they are always saying cringe things that will embarrass you
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nationās public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
this is also the premise of US national security policy
Some classic projection here lol
the plan is to behave like you are a free citizen
Useful frame for understanding Trumpism from @aselrod.bsky.social: "Itās not merely rule by the worst but an active assault on virtue wherever it exists. Trump/MAGA have turned the country over to the cruelest, most rapacious, and least honorable among us." www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
Trump/RFK are decapitating our public health system, a pillar of American greatness. So Dem Govs should scour every corner of the law for creative new ways to defend their people from this madness. Dems should polarize this debate to the max. Thoughts on this here: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
THE ur-revolutionary riot, the one that led straight to taking down the Bastille, was pretty much this lol. They were SURE the army was coming to mow them down and decided to Take Steps. And so on.
I think the professions must always strike a balance between internally policing/organizing themselves and becoming too insular. But their natural tendency towards insulation does afford certain protections when the overall info environment sucks
bsky.app/profile/andy...
The information environment can be an upstream cause of some of the more immediate issues -- mostly around losing funding and jobs -- electorally. But I'd say the poor info environment stops the science from being applied moreso than stopping researchers themselves from doing science.
And the founding generation swam in those currents!
Spend any time with 18th C. popular pamphlets (I can speak to American ones in particular) and you quickly realize itās ~90% deranged conspiracy theory slop and histrionic screeds thatād be at home on social media. We only remember the greatest and most eloquent examples. It was mostly gutter trash.
We need to stop trusting experts - the Secretary of Heath and Human Services
I donāt have a big conclusion from that except that scientific advancement is very much possible even in an atrocious mass information environment.
OK at the risk of making too much of this: one thing I like to say is that the scientific revolution and the republic of letters was a small island (large relative to history mind you) in a larger ocean that was, as an information environment, absolute shit
Neon Liberalism #41: Join Samantha and guest Maia Mindel as they talk about Trump's latest attack on the Federal Reserve, give some historical context for central bank independence, and struggle with the difficult question of how to balance technocratic expertise with democratic accountability.
Emphasis on high
FUCK YEAH SCIENCE arstechnica.com/science/2025...
There was a really good essay about the politics of humiliation and how it's key to understanding why conservatives are not content with just having total control of the government, they also need people gassing them up like they organically do celebrities, www.liberalcurrents.com/the-politi/
Vance's entire career is white grievance as politics. Foreigners and non-whites must show constant gratitude or be subject to (benevolent) white wrath. It's identical to the "slaves were given job opportunities and learned valuable skills" rhetoric.
The hospitalizations will continue until morality improves
Hasnāt he been hospitalized multiple times?
As a Cuban American whose family phone ringed off the hook every time Fidel Castro so much as sneezed, I can say itās a real mindset lol
someone should put together a "kennedy death count" for everyone who dies of a preventable disease and just plaster it everywhere www.statnews.com/2025/08/28/c...
āā¦I am infuriated that the Air Force plans to grant military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.ā My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
ICE forcing firefighters to stop battling a wildfire and make them all show their papers, then arresting some active firefighters and pulling them off the line shows there's no bottom. As @aselrod.bsky.social pointedly argues, it's nothing less than an "active assault on virtue wherever it exists."
I think Vance should show more gratitude to the university system and all the liberal programs that allowed him to get where he is
Mamdaniās campaign is a hopeful one, not one that shits on America or something. And Zelensky *did* thank America, he just didnāt thank Trump personally, because wtf had Trump ever done to deserve thanks
This is literally his only line about anything, regardless of what the person in question has actually said or done
In Which Nadine Amuses a Dragon and Makes Autumn Happen
That elides quite a bit of history. Trust did take a hit during Vietnam and Watergate, but it fluctuated after that for a few decades and then spiked after 9/11. It was Iraq, Katrina, and 2008 that caused it to fall off the cliff.
Someone really needs to point out to Bret Stephens types that burning down the entire university to get to the ethnic studies department is unlikely to work, because lots of people who would otherwise throw them to the wolves now see themselves as de facto on the same side as them.
The producers of this movie asked if they could, but never bothered to ask if they should
These people would rather let wildfires kill us than miss a chance to deport some people. They explicitly target immigrants following the rules and on their way to court appointments. Read @aselrod.bsky.social on it today
The mobsterās girlfriend does what now
Iāve never actually watched Weekend at Bernieās, just read the plot and
Hello, I am furious www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
āAn active assault on virtue wherever it existsā www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
"Trump and MAGA have turned the country over to the cruelest, most rapacious, and least honorable among us and directed the force of the state against firefighters, aid workers, civil servants, and children." good piece from @aselrod.bsky.social www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
š¤ bsky.app/profile/adam...
That is not Mary Trump in 1997 that is Donal Trump in 2025 in drag
Is this real
No Iām assuming it wouldāve been a hilarious shitshow
If Stalin died today theyād keep posting to his social media feeds to see if they could avoid it getting out
Trump has been president for 8 months. There is no need for any emergency tariff to last longer than 3, because if the country really needs that particular tax congress will pass it. All emergency tariffs should be moot after 90 days.
Itās not me that needs to be convinced but also donāt think weāre going to go to the trouble of setting up an account
We have not, not sure thatās going to happen lol
I havenāt seen them in any other city Iāve been to
In SF for the first time in 14 years and seen an absolute ton of Waymo cars, a jarring sight my kids have come to enjoy
Thanks. It literally didnāt occur to me to read it the obvious way until after we published and people like you pointed it out š©
This came to me in a vision
oh come on www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
Editor hereāheadline was my bad. Fixed
Just spittballing, but maybe the guns are the problem? www.liberalcurrents.com/a-canadian-p...
yeah i don't think people really clock what we think of as the German popular response to the Reich wasn't so much the generation who fought the war but their kids going "what the actual fuck"
The Germans a generation after the Reich consciously made sure to tell history the right way. The Japanese did the opposite. Thereās no right side of history, history has got to be made.
Itās not just immigrants who pay the price www.liberalcurrents.com/the-totalita...
āFederal law enforcement asked the crews to line up to check their IDs, according to the firefighters. One of the firefighters said members of the crew were told not to take video of the incident.ā DHS did this as flames actively raged. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns donāt kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
one thing i've taken away from surveys asking the public to evaluate trump's most authoritarian moves is that the ordinary americans have a much clearer sense of what's happening than most professional political observers
Had to check X because the guy who keeps impersonating me has been leaving racist replies again. Checked my mentions, and as a white guy from rural Indiana, I can honestly say this is the first time someone has insulted me anti-Semitically. Musk has really built something special over there.
Iām not saying weād accept money from a Democratic dark money group, but Iām not not saying that either www.wired.com/story/dark-m...
I donātāmy argument is almost entirely about the challenges of coordinating against a network effect and the imperative of reducing Muskās influence
100% true from @jhweissmann.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theargum...
This is a good way to ask the question. VSG polled party lists in 2018 and, IIRC, they didnāt do as well.
The Richard Epstein interview remains a personal fav. āWould you like to compare your rĆ©sumĆ© to mine?ā Lmao
"To the extent the rich kid thinks about those peers who aren't his hangers-on, he thinks they are suckers, oppressed by this fraudulent scheme of rules, who need only follow him to cast it off." www.liberalcurrents.com/a-rich-kid-t...
āIām just going in to talk about Gaza, how hostile could it possibly beā
The thing with Chotiner is that if you go into an interview with him not realizing he's going to be hostile and actually use follow-ups you were too dumb to have whatever job brought you to his attention anyways. If you go in knowing you're twice as stupid
Thinking about how the Times would have covered Joe Biden doing this and feeling calm, serene, like I'm floating in a vast warm ocean
One of the border patrol/ICE agents who terrorized Los Angelesā including kidnapping American citizen Job Garcia, and drunkenly approaching a woman with a firearm in a restaurant bathroomā- is dead. He was facing seven felonies for his illegal actions: lataco.com/isaiah-antho...
Wut
Americaās political elites when you ask them a follow up question
in the UK Chotiner would be a good, competent interviewer; the incredible skill void of interviewers in U.S. journalism makes him stand out because his subjects are unused to such brutal innovations as 'challenging false claims' or 'follow-up questions'
Excellent piece in Liberal Currents today on how we can reconstruct a more democracy friendly public sphere. The emphasis on how these investments can help promote more engaged communities is incredibly important in our socially atomized time. www.liberalcurrents.com/a-renewal-of...
Yes Chotiner actually listens and doesnāt let things slip by uncommented
Also, Chotiner does this (should not be but is) revolutionary move where he listens to the answer instead of focusing intently on his next question, and occasionally repeats the answer back with a question mark at the end. It is incredibly effective. More interviewers should try it.
Chotiner isnāt even like, some kind of gotcha attack guy, his interview subjects are just a bunch of guys who have been told their whole lives that theyāre the brightest boys who can do no wrong
NINE rural hospitals may close. MSU's SNAP-Ed program, which provides some schools with their ONLY phys ed program or ONLY school nurse, will be cancelled as of October 1st of THIS YEAR. Here's more:
As Michigan Senate Majority Whip and member of the state Senate Appropriations committee, I see the devastating impacts of federal One Big Horrible Bill first-hand. And it's a lot worse than we could have imagined.
Hereās @huqyeah.bsky.socialās www.liberalcurrents.com/abundance-an...
I found this passing remark from @samd.bsky.social especially interesting in light of @huqyeah.bsky.socialās recent essay on unions www.liberalcurrents.com/zohrans-5-st...
There is no sadder, more pathetic group of people than Trumpās second Cabinet.
He wants to eradicate people with ASD. This is a throughline from the American eugenicist ideas about mental health to Hans Aspergerās work with autistic children in Nazi Vienna. I wrote about the latter for @liberalcurrents.com www.liberalcurrents.com/degenerate-n...
nice of the president to provide the perfect quote for me to use in a column
I am also that same kind of weirdo. The world is cruel to us, the keepers of the true doctrine
Itās funny how Reddit just keeps chugging along and hardly anyone talks about it in the context of the platform wars
between my youtube/instagram/tiktok i have hundreds of thousands of people following my video stuff. much bigger impact than twitter or here
