Wow. Hope you write about this at greater length.
Author, attorney, translator. Teaching law ~and society~ at NYU Gallatin. Make the Road NY legal alum.
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Wow. Hope you write about this at greater length.
I'm so glad you got this, bc I was less than articulate (I had literally been up for about 15m). A think I've been thinking about since this conversation is an AA principle: a policy of "attraction rather than promotion." You don't try to convince someone they're an alcoholic and thus need AA.
I couldn't quite nail why @anamariecox.bsky.social's comment resonated so much with me. But you did. I am not against persuading people. That's important. But many people invoking the word persuasion constantly are just status quo defenders. The term civility serves the same purpose.
And while I’m in favor of persuasion (see my linked essay) it has to be seen as a means rather than self-regarding end in itself, or else we get nowhere www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...
I like this. The drum beat for “persuasion” and “civility” serves as a demand for self-censorship and avoidance of important but divisive issues. The implicit demand to first ~persuade~ our way to total consensus before any political change serves only the status quo and those sitting pretty in it
Truly disgraceful move by Tina Kotek. No one should be murdered but there is zero excuse for giving high honors to a person who promoted hate and undermine the values of the people of Oregon. apps.oregon.gov/oregon-newsr...
Purging the military of anyone who would ideologically oppose a right wing coup seems to be Hegseths top priority
It is bad that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.That does not make him a good man. You don’t have to make him into a martyr just because he was a victim.Painting Kirk as a role model for political discourse requires either a staggering ignorance or intentional neglect ofwhat he actually stood for.
Untitled https://collections.artsmia.org/art/1958/
She's been very profitably saying this without variation since she arrived in college as a freshman and got the shock of her life: Other people weren't like her parents. Other people thought Zionism was deadly bunk and they didn't think little Bari was a genius www.tabletmag.com/sections/new...
From car sewer to avenue for the people Berges de Seine 7th Arrondissement, Paris America this could easily be us but you playin'
While parts of universities remain deeply invested in Zionism, for years most of those doing the actual teaching (adjuncts, grad students) are opposed to US policy Also, most legacy US media coverage of the siege of Gaza has still been very tilted to Israel – tho not TikTok, YouTube, etc.
Good line of inquiry. I will say that even before 10/7 the default setting among my undergrads has been to oppose US military aid to Israel rather than, as was the case 25 yrs ago, support it without question
Here’s a translation of Bari’s unhinged FP editorial: “I am FURIOUS that military aid to Israel is rapidly losing ground at our universities, and that it is to a large degree because of our universities that this policy is collapsing everywhere; this is my revenge”
Connecticut law does not require the governor to follow presidential proclamations for deaths of private citizens, so apparently Lamont thought this was a good idea ctmirror.org/2025/09/13/h...
The flag down the road from Sandy Hook flying at half staff for the man who demanded that conservatives defend Alex Jones after survivors' families prevailed in their lawsuit against him 🙃
More of that Free Speech I hear so much about (yes I know that joke is very worn out and unfunny by now) www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
Excellent that Martin Carthy’s “Transform Me Then Into A Fish” is shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. His fascinating book,written with Stephen Sedley, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment’ is in paperback from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social. (I helped publish it, btw).
Learn everything you need to know about Groypers and Charlie Kirk.
This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.
its like 9/11 but just for a third of the country, all crying and screaming and everybody else is just looking at each other going the hell they doin lol
A significant thing here: El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on migration, tells @alejacorazonhm.bsky.social he is questioning whether Catholics can, in good conscience, join ICE. religionnews.com/2025/09/12/c...
‘Some of the people valorizing Kirk insist that all of his toxicity was acceptable because at least he was open to debate—a bar so low, you’d have to dig into the Mariana Trench to get to it.’ This is a flamethrower of an article by @espiers.bsky.social and exactly right. Every word.
Conservatism is the Attorney General trying to fire teachers who were insufficiently nice about a racist youtuber online.
“.. I can’t remember anyone ever telling me we can’t say anything critical about a civilian like this. He was not in our chain of command or anything,” the officer said. @nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...
If there were liberal adjunct professors working the deep fryer to make rent, then yes by all means
“I would also like to praise Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines for simply getting their message out and not engaging in actual violence while sitting with their coffee in the broadcast booth. A lesson for us all, not least you Tutsis.”
The best article about what we know about the possible motives of Kirk’s homicide. I wish those calling for a “civil war” or blaming the “Left” did a bit of self-reflection (and maybe apologized), but I’m not holding my breath
Love how JLH strips down and Hooker-izes a standard with his austere grammar of riffs. Often labeled a “primitivist,” he is the blues’ great modernist #BluesBore open.spotify.com/track/7FizbL...
Seems like a pretty easy empirical question to answer: how many mass shooters/assassins had degrees in the liberal arts from such institutions?
Meu velho amigo @leoweller.bsky.social mandando a real. A comparação com a famigerada-porém-compreensível anistia de 1979 é completamente descabida. Uma coisa é fazer concessão pra negociar a saída de uma ditadura que está no poder; anistia a golpista fracassado é puro incentivo a golpes futuros.
“With all its flaws, Brazilian democracy is healthier today than America’s. Keenly aware of their country’s authoritarian past, Brazil’s judicial and political authorities did not take democracy for granted. Their U.S. counterparts, by contrast, fell down on the job.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/o...
It's "great" to see my employer releasing names and information about *alleged* behavior to the Trump admin, without even telling the people who've been accused what it is that they're accused of. Utterly reprehensible. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Thank you @raskin.house.gov for the endorsement — and your courageous fight in Congress against Trump's authoritarianism. “In these times, the Democratic Party needs to stick together with the maximum solidarity and focus."
If it feels like coffee is even more expensive than it usually is, that's because it is — coffee prices are up more than 20% because of Trump's tariffs. He's making your everyday life more expensive to help pay for his billionaire tax cuts, and he couldn't care less.
For my money, if you're a Democratic senator prone to giving earnest speeches about Trump being an existential threat to democracy, the bar for affirmatively voting to confirm one of his 2020 election-denying judicial nominees has to be higher than "I dunno, he seems fine?"
man they really didn't give a shit about that guy. as soon as it was clear they couldn't use his death to launch a purge they started to treat it like a nothingburger
The argument, genuinely, is that if you use words to convince people instead of trying to kill people, you're doing liberal democratic politics "exactly" right, even if the words you are saying are that the fairly elected government of your political opponents should be overthrown.
See, who says I’m not truly “liberal”
Condolences to all those frustratedly mourning their inability to blame this on an immigrant, Muslim, trans person or progressive
Yes but it’s ridiculous to give them “defensive weapons” if this is what you, and Bernie, truly believe
Yes, I’m looking forward to voting this November 4th 🙂🌈
US senators say 'America complicit' in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians after Israel visit - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-senators-america-complicit-ethnic-cleansing-palestinians-israel-visit
Update: Civil War cancelled due to shooter being demographically uncooperative
🚨 Publication Day 🚨 'The No-Fly Zone in US Foreign Policy' is now in (online) bookstores near you - check it out here: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-no-fly-z... 1/7
Utah has both one of the lower state homicide rates (by U.S. standards, mind) and a history of plentiful violence
The biggest threat to far-right extremists is further-right extremists. This murder story has the force of parable: www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/u...
lmao the Bulwark is calmer about Mamdani than the two top Congressional Democrats.
Specifically remember one of my history profs (moderate; not insane; brother of a Dem senator) touting him as such!
Iron law of American conservatism: no matter what, it’s the assistant professor of anthropology’s fault 🇺🇸
An hour before Charlie Kirk was shot, Nancy Mace told Jewish Democrat Sara Jacobs: “I have a good surgeon if you ever want to get your nose done.”
Yesterday, when the shooter was an imagined trans Muslim woke leftist, it was WAR. Today, when the shooter turns out to be a young, gun-toting white male and the son of a sheriff, it’s “pray.”
I watched the Vice President help uniformed members of the United States military carry the coffin of a podcaster and thought: what the hell is going on here
You can use ChatGPT instead of your own brain to write your paper if I can talk about ChatGPT instead of you in your letter of reference
There is precedent here at UC Berkeley: the 1950 McCarran Act which required among other things, faculty to sign a loyalty oath declaring they were not and never had been members of the Communist Party or lose their jobs. 15 years later, the Free Speech Movement was organized in reaction. 2/x
UC Berkeley releases names of 160 staff, faculty, and students to Trump administration for "“potential connection to reports of alleged antisemitism.” Including Professor Judith Butler, much of whose family was murdered by Nazi’s during the Holocaust. Shameful. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
Funnier in French somehow, was my thinking
“Mais où sont les ‘libertaires’ comme Rand Paul et Mike Lee?? Ha ha ha, c’est juste une plaisanterie.”
Rubio and a big chunk of southern Florida really want to turn the U.S. into a rightwing ~mano dura~ nation, just like their grandparents grew up in
Easy to imagine this administration imposing tariffs on Brazil even without the Bolsonaro prosecution, just as they’d be hammering our universities more or less the same way even without the Gaza protest wedge issue
How many people can name the attempted Trump assassin without looking it up? As soon as we found out he had a social media account with a bunch of anti-immigrant and antisemitic posts he poof’d out of public and media interest. Dog bites man.
Remember: If it turns out he’s a leftist, that indicates a pervasive problem of violence on the left. If it turns out he’s a groyper, that means nothing whatsoever and he will disappear from the news cycle immediately.
Don’t know if you’ve come across this recent oral history of Krautrock but it’s tons of fun www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/a...
This is the kind of personalization that will be very useful to a seasoned Death Penalty defense attorney.
genuinely shocked that the pritzker pushback was successful
Good writing on Popper’s paradox of liberal tolerance?
"Don't mock or you'll be deported" is the mark of a weak, decadent nation, a petty and insecure failure unworthy of respect.
Charlie Kirk was a martyr for free speech, which is why we're going to deport anyone who "makes light" of his death.
Reposting this.....
Any salsa macha recommendations? Stuff I can buy in the U.S.
Endorsed by FTC Chair Ferguson, who is very likely auditioning for a seat on the federal bench bsky.app/profile/look...
Wait. The same Clay Higgins who suggested Twitter execs would be investigated by the FBI and jailed for doing basic content moderation... is now demanding that social media accounts be banned for life?
Why do grown adults say “the American experiment.” Come on people
I will give a shiny new quarter to whomever comes up with the worst “Free Speech” condemnation of this verdict
Melissa Hortman practiced politics the right way.
The same people putting Bari Weiss in charge of CBS want to run CNN too www.theguardian.com/media/ng-int...
Come closer and I’ll whisper into your ear what it is today that this is about
Liberalism is at its purblind worst when it aspires to transcend all political-economic substance and enter a realm of pure process and procedure
“El Salvador is no longer a democracy but a state of institutionalized terror in which emergency powers have become permanent instruments of repression,” argue Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz.
A powerful essay from Joan Scott as universities become sites of fear.
Arvo Pärt - BOTD
Terrible that Kash Patel is turning the FBI into a personalized Deep State political police but at least he’s a strutting, incompetent goofball. I mean what if he wasn’t.
From today’s Bloomberg story on the Epstein - Maxwell emails
What if all this was – stay with me now – a “single life”
If you've experienced domestic violence or supported DV survivors, you'll recognize the walking on eggshells dynamic. SSHHHH be quiet, make yourself small, don't anger them so they don't lash out again or further...
This guy pushed Great Replacement Theory and explicitly pointed to Jews having a structural role in it. This was the motive for the Tree of Life shooting, which killed 11 congregants
"But while the government’s crackdown on universities has drawn widespread condemnation, a parallel campaign targeting specific faculty members has received far less attention. Often initiated by actors seizing on the political climate and the vulnerability of universities"
As a case in point: Reagan was shot by a guy trying to ‘impress’ Jodie Foster
Wild how political alliance with Zionism sweeps all sorts of wild statements about Jews under the table
I spoke recently with @nbcwashington.com about Trump's takeover. As I've noted here and elsewhere, federal support for local crimefighting is nothing new, but there's a right way and wrong way to go about it. www.nbcwashington.com/investigatio...
This is a great point. Klein’s article is driving everyone #onhere nuts for … all the high-info terminally-online arguments your timeline is filled with right now. But for the low-info normies? This is all they know. This op-ed is, really, disinformation.
Blech. I dislike ~bon enfant~ opinion journalism, and there’s a lot of it today.
Some "bulwark against antisemitism."
Ezra Klein is trying in this column to argue that Kirk was doing politics correctly if you just ignore the content of what he was advocating. That he was contributing to American democracy by arguing civilly for the subjugation of women, gay people, trans people. It simply doesn’t work.
Remembering MN house speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their beloved dog Gilbert. Murdered in June at their home by a rightwing Trump-voting evangelist, who also shot another MN lawmaker and his wife at THEIR home, 9 and 8 times, respectively (miraculously, they survived).
If the Trump administration had a good story to tell about this lethal attack in terms of either the facts or the law, they’d be telling it. The dearth of facts or detailed briefing by the Pentagon is telling.
I went to the opening of the Robert Longo show last night. Stunning, giant b&w images that look like photographs but are actually charcoal drawings. Well worth seeing if you are in NYC. www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/...
We don’t even have to worry about him being martyred by the right. Liberals are doing it for them already