My core belief is that all people are people. Reasonably well-informed, but not the arbiter of anything. I think lively debate in good faith makes us all better, but I don’t want to fight anyone on the internet. I’m gonna follow you if I like your dog. 🐶
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Yeah, and if you do want to be hyper-pedantic, there’s actually not a single generally-accepted definition of “fascism” among political scholars, so once could dodge the question for eternity if they chose. MAGA will likely get its own term after the fact. But as you said, it’s undeniably fascIST.
Please remind him that his ears are magnificent!
It only works if you’re looking strictly through the lens of nuclear second strike capabilities, which is… not great.
Yes, Trump only received 32% of the vote here, so it’s in no way a hotbed of support, but they do exist (and unfortunately 32% is more than he received in 2016 & 2020.)
Umm, nuance? On MY internet?!
So my immediate reaction to the announcement that the FDA will only be permitting vaccines for people over 65 was, “I’m going to die!” but perhaps my estate (the dog) can sue the administration for the Qatari jet.
VT is, weirdly, so one-party that it became a 3-party state again, at least at a state level. Except for the low-key power vacuum created by no one ever getting voted out of their Congressional seat, it’s pretty nice?
We should eat the small ones. -Jonathan Swift, 1729
Donald the Daoist spoke of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” He encouraged us to proceed through the gate of darkness to the origins. Donald the Nominalist wanted to “rectify the names.” “Tariffs,” he said, “a beautiful word.” “Groceries,” he intoned.
Guess someone read “Boomsday” back in ‘07. “…or even the new reality show, Green Card, in which illegal (but good-looking) Mexicans had to make it across the U.S. border, past the Border Patrol and minutemen and fifty miles of broiling desert, to the finish line.”
Grok has started to merge with Roy Batty in my heart 🥲
I got into an argument with my Dad recently where he said, “Just because someone is a paramilitary eugenicist doesn’t make them a neo-Nazi.” I’ll say the same thing to you that I said to him: terms matter, but that includes not getting so microscopic with definitions that you can’t use them at all.
"corruption requires explicit quid pro quo" is like something a baby with a law degree would say, perhaps as it toddled into a dingo den
It’s giving Pinochet’s Helicopter Rides
He strikes again! Gonna name my firstborn “Judge Sessions.”
Such a proud Vermonter rn 🥹
My *only* concern with this is that it might make CJC a government target. It’s a great organization!
Cassocks are red Conclaves are dope Wake up babe we got a
Pope Leo XIV: ‘There Couldn’t Be A Better Time To Get The Fuck Out Of America Forever’
It wasn’t anyone in my Top 10, but I don’t have to go back to Church!!!
Just look in the mirror, little buddy.
We are just lucky that all the air is not entirely incense right now
I’m low-key freaking out right now because I was raised very, very Catholic and lapsed, but when I found out the conclave started May 7, I made a Kate Bush-esque deal with God that I’d return to the Church if I got a Pope Pizzaballa on my birthday (which is today,) and now that might happen?
Fuuuuck. I ran up that hill and made a deal with God that if I got a Pope for my birthday (today) AND it was Pizzaballa, I would consider returning to the Church. We’re at one out of two… thoughts and prayers for me, please. I don’t want to go back.
Oh shit, oh shit. I got a birthday Pope, and now I might have to be Catholic again?!
Though I did, circa 2020, have a couple people try to buy green coffee from me for drinking purposes (both disgusting and not possible! It’s riddled with bacteria and fungus, and isn’t water soluble until it’s been roasted!) because cooking things makes them carcinogenic, so I may just be naive!
Oh, for sure, and I totally see it NOW, but I was in the organic, grass-fed shit too deep myself (albeit as a reality-based thinker) to have seen the local foods to dismantling the FDA pipeline coming before it was already here.
It makes sense in hindsight, but coming from VT (where people are crunchy as hell but also, like, get their shots and care about public health and shit,) the MAGAfication of our nation’s wellness hippies has been startling and bizarre to behold.
My birthday is tomorrow and if I get a Pope Pizzaballa (but specifically tomorrow,) I will consider returning to the Church. I don’t bet on sports, so this might be my first ever parlay.
I want to write a fanfic about this hearing where the judges are just like, “We’ll show you irreparable harm!” and throw Drew Ensign into a shark tank.
He’s a garbage lawyer, but he’d make an excellent garbage squid 🥹
“Losing my court case would be irreparable harm ☹️☹️” - Drew Ensign’s entire argument
Absolutely. But then it’s intriguing that even in cases like this where they seem to have technically figured it out in time(?) DoJ is still kicking up sand. I maintain the critical difference between this and Mahdawi is that ACLU worked faster than ICE and he never left VT.
It’s so outrageous that their entire case seems to hinge on the “loophole” that if they just keep rapidly shuffling people around and obscuring where they are, a habeas petition can’t be filed. Hope that is explicitly banned very soon!
Permission!
lying awake thinking about all of those dolls who bravely set sail on Chinese cargo ships, eager to start their new lives in America… but now, owing to the two-doll austerity program, may never find their forever homes 🥺
Okay, yeah, so I also heard tell that it was an absolutely terrible time to be a boy when I was college in 2007 because they had to do things like “stop having sex with unconscious people,” so my main takeaway is that holding them to ANY standard makes them cry that they’re being oppressed.
This is glorious. Thank you, Beryl Howell, and thank YOU for covering this!
Oof, I think my opinion that angers the most men on the internet is that Hayden Christensen wasn’t terrible in the Star Wars prequels. I’m not sure anyone could have pulled off that script.
IIRC from my time in grocery retail, holiday shippers and pre-seasons start arriving in May/June too. I’m excited to see how the American people react to having to put the Christ back in Christmas this year because there will be fuck-all else under the tree.
It is not particularly clear from the way I am talking about this, but I am, like, pretty far-left for the record! Most of my criticisms of any political or economic system come from trying to figure out if or how they could be improved.
I agree with that! But then it all goes back to Ed’s point: we just don’t know. I love having these kinds of conversations—it’s so fun to speculate—but in my experience, anyone who is fully confident that state-level Communism either does or does not work is cherry-picking to support their biases.
It’s tricky for me: I spent a lot of time in Nicaragua in during my most idealistic youth, and I PASSIONATELY supported the FSLN’s return to power after decades+ of US-backed rule… and then Ortega promptly became a despot himself. I’m wary of making excuses for any authoritarian.
Oh Patrice 😢 He wasn’t even a Communist, but it’s to the above point that his potential disruption of the colonialist world order by improving the lives of the Congolese merited assassination, whereas USA was fine tacitly propping up the Khmer Rouge while they were actively killing 1/3 of Cambodia 🎉
I know, right?! What a crazy random happenstance!
Not sure why everything must be framed as a total success or a perfect failure. Acknowledge flaws in something like public housing, and use that knowledge to make it better. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water (the pro-natalists will get ya.)
Yeah, I genuinely can’t think of any Communist regime that wasn’t also authoritarian (except perhaps in cases where the leader was assassinated?) but I’m not positive that’s an inherent failure of the philosophy. Presidential democracies rarely survive 200 years and we think they’re fine 🤷🏼♀️
I agree with all of this, though my ideal combination would be a mutualistic, anti-capitalist relationship with the land & modern regulations, because I believe even indigenous communities were impacted by ergot poisoning. I would like my grains free from seizure-inducing fungi, please 😭
There are some really solid domestic specialty instant options with no ingredients besides coffee! I’m not shilling for myself, but I do one that does not really taste like instant, and I am by no means the only roaster in that category!
Hey. Had a cool May Day. Went for a trip to an island. Some weird shit happened. Texting this from inside a big man made of straw lol
Conclave starts May 7th & my birthday’s May 8th, so I have decided if I get a Birthday Pope (who I don’t hate,) I will consider giving ol’ Mother Church another whirl. JD Vance can’t rewrite the catechism I was born to!
My fellow all-girls Catholic school friends were incredulous that I even still even bothered to identify as “lapsed Catholic” instead of “atheist,” but it’s more descriptive and encompasses so much more!
I just think it’s funny that the president thinks making everything more expensive will be no big deal in a nation that exists because its ancestors overthrew their government rather than pay an extra tax on tea
Cancel culture strikes again! Who will be canceled next in the War on Patriotism, James Madison for suggesting that Jefferson’s children were only 3/5 of a person?!
I can’t even get the gist of what he’s talking about from the word salad anymore. Just absolutely incoherent stream of consciousness.
Same thing with the level of internationalism that grew out of WWII, I think! That level of enmeshment was carefully and intentionally developed for actual reasons.
I love the framing of the development of modern civilization as an exercise in desperately trying to move humanity away from subsistence farming and a continuous struggle for survival. But sure, “The VVitch” was aesthetic, let’s all go back to that. It’ll be so much fun.
the only way the NSA news could get darker and funnier is if he's reappointing Mike Flynn
I would personally also love a “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” comeback. Van & Vance are just so temptingly close.
Yeah, I think there’s definitely overlap between Democratic electoral strategy and effectively resisting Trump, but they’re different things! The latter has to be a coalition movement. If Dems try to use the moment just to win back power, we probably won’t beat MAGA, even if they lose seats.
100%! I’m always conscious of the possibility that comparisons to the Nazis might lose their potency with very frequent use, but the French Resistance is absolutely the appropriate model. We don’t even have to work directly WITH neocons, but work in tandem towards the singular common goal.
@hhssecinsidesec.bsky.social - Please come collect your appendage.
Happy 80th anniversary of Hitler killing himself in his bunker to all who celebrate, which, as I now understand it, is not everybody
Yeah, I have only been here for… 100 days, I guess… and the first time someone I follow called out internet leftists for being Milosevic apologists, I (very naively, and being used to a climate where the left is accused of all kinds of fabrications) was like, “Pssh, that’s not real.” 😳
I buy all my Tylenol on the streets 💪🏻💪🏻
If you’re being a purist about it, the only regime everyone can agree was fascist was Mussolini (pretty good consensus on Franco.) Point being, no two dictatorships are *ever* identical, so as long as you’re comparing and contrasting, why are authoritarian left regimes off the table?
But what if you only have the ability to launch your annihilatory weapons very smöl distances? 👉🏻👈🏻
Elise Stefanik is my Stephen Lynch 💕
The OG orange menace
Me too! I’m not usually wrong about political outcomes (not that I’m uniquely gifted so much as I won’t venture a guess unless I’m pretty confident,) but I fumbled this so hard. Embarrassing. And yet… more embarrassing for the country than it is for me.
Sooo when Carney said Canada’s old relationship with the United States was OVER, Trump thought that meant they were going to become the 51st state?
Yeah, I am a bit older than this fabricated man, but my recollection was that, even in a blue state, everyone was patriotic to the point of absurdity after 9/11, and “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” was a pretty common refrain from the ruling GOP.
My FOMO is currently competing with my sciatica on this one (I cannot sit down *at all*) but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t considering going and just standing creepily in the back row. Please enjoy it enough for both yourself and this internet stranger!
Me? My reply (typed while his release was being announced) was meant to imply that I thought he *would* be released. I live in VT; I’m pretty on top of this.
100%, but because people interceded quickly enough, he was never whisked away to TX or LA. Most of DoJ’s defiance has been on those grounds (for instance, court just paused Oztürk’s transfer back to VT,) but I don’t think they have a playbook (yet) for “You can’t have the man who’s right here.”
Brave little state! Brave little state! Vermont is not fucking around (thank goodness.)
A VT State Sen. was present when Mahdawi was seized (she correctly feared the citizenship interview was a honey pot,) so everyone acted quickly enough that he was never removed from VT. Even the Republican Governor has come out swinging, so it will be the hardest case yet for the regime to disobey.
The Four Horsemen! (But Duffy is scared of the horse.)
I have, but I think mostly because I live in a part of VT where the two main political parties are the Democrats and the Progressives, so the former, as the “lesser of two lefts” attracts some of the more traditionally conservative viewpoints. I can’t speak to their prevalence elsewhere!
Honestly, as a spelling perfectionist, this lack of “edit” function will be the death of me, but if anyone deserves to have their name misspelled, it’s Poilievre.
See, I was thinking it was more of a bullet train, but at least we finally invested in mass public transit, even if the only route is a one-way express to Hell.
Having thoroughly vanquished Pierre Poilevre, it is now time to focus our attentions on the fun PP up for election: Pierbattista Pizzaballa.
very calming headline from bloomberg's evening newsletter
So much of Russian military strategy historically boils down to throwing bodies at trenches that they may just be sticking with ✨tradition✨
So similarly: didn’t guess this would work, (but also didn’t guess the descent into authoritarianism would play out like this,) glad it IS working, hope it lasts!
I rejected both the law and foreign service as career paths because I assumed at some point I’d need to zealously defend something with which I disagreed. Outside martial law, I never foresaw the Constitution being so fundamentally attacked that the competent lawyers were more or less on one side.
Making Nathan Fielder a Special Government Employee as a potential creative counter-measure to all this mess didn’t occur to me until just now! I’d love to see him interact with these guys.
I have a red gov—Phil Scott—and he’s been pretty non-confrontational so far, but I felt his condemnation of Mohsen Mahdawi’s seizure was sufficiently strong. I hate his fiscal policies, but I think I trust him more than, say, Kathy Hochul. But are there *any* other principled Republican governors?
I think the only move is to actively embrace the bastardization, a la “Obamacare.” Like if someone accuses you of being kind and considerate, it’s more powerful to say, “Yes! I am!” than, “No, I’m really tough actually. Watch me bully this child!”
So grateful that the ACLU has wilier lawyers & better-crafted arguments than the government right now!
If it helps: I am a coffee professional, and the industry standard way to taste for grading, flavor notes, purchasing decisions, etc. is mostly based on warm-ish to stone cold coffee. So you’re really just a subconscious gourmand ✨
I miss Mad Dog! The bar is in Hell. Actually… do you think if we told Hegseth that, he’d think he could get a drink there & go?
This isn’t a “1 in 8 men think they could score a point on Serena Williams thing”—I am in absolutely no way qualified—but *I* would be a better Secretary of Defense than Pete Hegseth because I would at least not be throwing my weight around because I’d be aware that I didn’t deserve to be there.
Yeah, well, Good Omens also failed to anticipate RFK Jr. and claimed Pestilence was retired, so I guess you really, REALLY cannot trust Neil Gaiman.
After the whole thing with the Pope, are we really going to let it slide that JD Vance has been in India this week?
The one Waymo symbolizes our unity (We the People can all share!) but the chickens are for rugged individuals.
The terror I felt after Trump’s ear assassination that the shooter would somehow wind up being affiliated with the Democratic Party was palpable, but this guy with the 47 face tat is probably fine! He’s just passionate and too socially awkward to know how to channel that non-violently!