Referring to his plan to "liberate Chicago" by sending armed members of the military there against the wishes of the Governor, Mayor, and people of Chicago as a "blitz" isn't creepy at all!
I'm a poet & media critic who is highly educated, a bisexual, cisgender mother of 2, an intersectional feminist, a vegetarian animal lover, & a tv fan (Star Trek, Buddy Romances, Horror) who is living with ADHD, GAD, Depression, & Dyscalculia.
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Referring to his plan to "liberate Chicago" by sending armed members of the military there against the wishes of the Governor, Mayor, and people of Chicago as a "blitz" isn't creepy at all!
Understanding coalitions of hate takes effort. But it’s well worth it if you want to understand how American Evangelical Christians fit into this oddlot of people supporting the Israeli government’s genocidal politics.
The irony here is that it was not until the late 1930s that people in the US began describing the country as based on "Judeo-Christian values." Anti-fascist Jews were often the ones promoting that invented "heritage," hoping to staunch the rise of far right populist Christian nationalism in the US.
Oh, Idk, Trump seems very aware of what happened….
A good thread.
Huge.
So...I think the left sometimes feels like saying, "I won't vote for this person in the general election" is a way to push other Ds not to support that candidate. "if you nominate this person we'll walk and you'll lose!" I think that strategy really backfires though. 1
Meanwhile, DSA & Bernie & the like don’t adequately address the ties that bind the RW Volk. bsky.app/profile/miri...
I’d say the Left’s big problem is that it responds to the Republican Party’s invocation of “das Volk” politics by ignoring the racism & ethnonationalism and insisting that “das Volk” is really unified by class.
A good test case is The Level’s “Is Trump actually dying? Unpacking the spin” by Stephen Smysnuik. It’s two pages. The first begins with “NO POV.” The second begins with “YES POV.” Both end with “READ OTHER SIDE.” The YES/ NO framing was a direct result of beginning with a YES/No question.
Arguably, all rhetoric is insincere (impure, unclean), as it’s crafted. Teaching people to deconstruct & ID pathos, logos, ethos lets them see how even “informative” writing like journalism works.
What these Schatz posts say to me is that Dem elected officials like him seem incapable of perceiving the right as a *political movement.* The response to Covid mitigation and the Floyd protests was not a spontaneous reaction...it was a right wing backlash organized by a reactionary movement.
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
I mean … it’s a Lot
@airbagmoments.bsky.social wrote: “Journalism is not a real profession with enforceable standards. ” Are there any professions that consistently and ethically enforce their “enforceable standards”? One of the signposts of fascism is that “standards”—like guide rails—mean nothing.
The @status.news newsletter looks into the current president's "visible bruises" and asks: Why are the country’s biggest newsrooms silent? www.status.news/p/trump-heal... [paywall likely]
Figgy Cool Science and Cool Norwegian Movie🙃 Music: 🎵 I Am A Rock (Simon & Garfunkel) Stone Trees: scitechdaily.com/these-fruit-... Stone Giants: www.imdb.com/title/tt1111...
Symmetry is overrated. Medical ethics are not.
I left a writing group in 2016 when I found out the leader of it voted for Trump. I just don’t understand how people can trust anyone who’s voted for him.
I'm thankful Don took the time to make this case in such a methodical fashion. I found it very convincing.
Good to see someone defying Murc’s Law.
If the GOP-led Congress won’t do anything to stop Trump’s dictator moves, it should stay home. In Hitler’s reign, rubber-stamp legislators met only 20 times in 12 years. They sang the national anthem at those rare sessions, and were known derisively as “the most expensive singing club in Germany.”
Maybe the only good use of AI Chat.
this stuff is such a disgrace. a free citizen of a free country should be ashamed to engage in it.
MADDOW: “Watch what he does, not what he says.” @maddow.msnbc.com asks the media to zoom out and see Trump firing professionals in law enforcement and the military as a precursor for what he’s planning to ask them to do — and imagine if it was happening in another country.
The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state. presswatchers.org/2025/08/we-h...
The most revealing thing about this is not that Trump is too dumb to understand the mistake he's making, but that he keeps saying it and no one around him has the guts to tell him he's making himself look like an idiot
I cannot type the words I actually want to say, so for now I’ll just hope these people are haunted forever.
Trumps executive order looks to be establishing not just fascist shock troop corps. But a way for white power and fascist groups to apply to work with the government as ground troops in his war against America.
I keep looking at Nazi propaganda because the GOP learned from it, both in form and content. bsky.app/profile/miri...
Fascism: Sealed with a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). bsky.app/profile/miri...
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)? First, you need to gut the country’s educational system. Then revise history. Destroy art. Imprison dissent. Corrupt the Vote. The Republican Agenda, basically.
Obviously, SIMPLICITY in language & messaging is useful if your target demographic is kids. Should Dems take cues from the Propaganda Office of the HITLER YOUTH? How long before Republicans do so? Will CONCERN TROLLS like THIRD WAY, et al, worry when they do? research.calvin.edu/german-propa...
If Third Way or Tom Nichols & co. cared about evidence… but they really don’t. They’re driven, as always, by a need to avoid taking any responsibility for enabling Republican Fascism .
Like if you don't think centrists use their own impenetrable jargon that nobody likes then I have a commonsense bipartisan opportunity economy where existential threats to fair trade are a national security threat to sell you
Tom Nichols, and Republicans like him, are deeply invested in the idea that Democrats sound too educated. Better we should parrot Nazi terminology like vermin, Unified Reich, poisoning the blood of our country, replacement theory, ad nauseum.
I’ve confirmed with a person in the neighborhood where the truck crashed that the two men were *not* “El Salvadoran gang members” as the ICE thug so confidently asserted. They’re from Guatemala and Honduras, and one of them has lived here for 15 years and has multiple children.
Wonder how we got into this mess? It’s stories like these that normalize authoritarianism with “fun” takes on Trump taking on “dream” roles. Major media fail. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
After this last month, killing the filibuster to make DC a state as soon as Dems hold the requisite majorities should be an iron-bar grassroots demand of all Democratic candidates for federal office.
i think comparing vote blue no matter who type democrat stans to sport fans isn't especially apt because if a sports team's GM was always making the roster worse on purpose in an attempt to win over fans of their most bitter rival, that man would be killed
ICE is ramping up its hiring efforts to support President Donald Trump's mass deportation goals. Here's a look inside the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia preparing these new #ICE recruits for the Trump administration's war on immigrants. Photos via @apnews.com
A New York Times real estate reporter interviewed the founder of an Arkansas housing development that admits only white, heterosexual people. “I treated him like a human,” she said. “He invited me in.” Here's a gift link to the story: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/r...
"The challenge is not to stay in business; it is to stay in journalism.”
The "Battle of Liberty Place" monument in New Orleans had an inscription (added in 1932) that said "the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state."
“Trump Is Inflicting More Damage Than Even the Pessimists Anticipated" Impossible. He just didn’t talk to the right pessimists.
Republican Sociopaths. Or is that now redundant? apnews.com/article/cons...
"partisan gerrymandering was with us when women couldn't vote and during slavery and Jim Crow, which accounts for the vast majority of our country's history; ergo, it's not a threat to democracy"
Shut up and dribble?
Something you do when you think slavery is good.
This made the expectations for her younger sister unbearable.
Bill Kristol risks nothing now. And he did a tremendous amount of damage when he was still considered relevant by the GOP. Why measure him against anyone?
I have a towel. I’m ready.
1.
Linear Time or FASCISM. One of them has to give.
This should be a major story and it Isn’t even a blip. newrepublic.com/post/199027/...
The timing was right for my interview with Jay Rosen in which he talked about “verification in reverse” and “nullifying the real.” That’s exactly what Trump is doing by rejecting documented facts about DC crime in favor of crap he just made up.
“Facebook parent company Meta has reportedly tapped conservative, anti-diversity activist Robby Starbuck as an artificial intelligence ‘bias’ advisor.”🤔 PSA: Ask someone from Tennessee how absurd this is. www.kron4.com/news/technol...
What an absolute disgrace. The desire of this man to denigrate, to drag through the mud everything that is respected or respectable. The project of degradation is really something else.
This is by design. This is the realization of the GOP's decades-long campaign to gain sole control of all the levers of government in order to turn the "government can't do anything right" ideology into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's exactly what they've done. Everything is broken.
I remember as a kid, going to the M.A.S.H. TV exhibit. I suspect that wouldn’t pass Trump’s Fascism test. The whole show demanded we question authority. siarchives.si.edu/blog/mash-bi...
I haven’t read the whole piece, but, I married a man long before I realized I was (or could be) bi. But doing it over? I’d definitely seek out women. Some of us now look at the very real dangers of being an out lesbian and weight them against the dangers and agita of men. It’s no contest.
More of that Big Strong Army Men Stomping Out Urban (ahem) Disorder that you just know the base love so much. The psychology of this ain't particularly subtle imo.
“Trump’s Fascism is just a distraction for his Pedophilia.” Sounds foolish when you say it, no?
Trump has definitely made DOOMSCROLLING more efficient. More DOOM per screen. Easier on the thumbs. 👍🏻 MAGATS should be pleased.
May their memory be for a blessing.
Not enough people are talking about the chilling subtext and imagery in the messages being sent by the official DHS accounts
They are going to burn up billions in taxpayer funded equipment because they don’t want Americans to have access to scientific proof
Why @nberlat.bsky.social is important. He stands up to the persistent nonsense that accompanies Murc's Law.
If you think the Polari Prize were right to nominate J*** B**** for their award because the book might stand up on its own merits in spite of its author's views, then you might be interested in this recent chat I had with a reader.
The Polari Prize issued a statement saying it believes its longlistees can hold “different positions on substantive issues.” This is like long listing a racist with authors of color then telling everyone it’s a mere “different position on a substantive issue”. Trans people are a fact. Not an “issue”
this is terrifying
it's really hard to make a case that you're doing inspections on kids' genitals and kicking trans people off teams out of an abundance of respect and concern for women's sports when there are knuckleheads throwing dildos on WNBA courts and none (0) of the terfs are up in arms about that
This explains the MAGA crowd.
If you're still on substack, you are letting techbro dildos use your left-leaning journalism to launder right-wing extremism and it's just a terrible idea. You should stop doing that
Keep your eye on what's happening in Texas.
Again, it’s not “a tad rich” or “ironic” when someone’s “solution” to “survival” is genocide. Genocidal leaders and their supporters have, historically, used the rhetoric of “we must protect ourselves” as justification for the elimination of groups of people. ICE is doing it right now.
Ah, Chapter 4 of The Originalism Trap, "Stealing the Census" (I figured we'd get here) The census counts *people* Despite the GOP's insistence otherwise, undocumented people are *people* And the census and the Constitution reject this kind of degradation www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735353...
It’s not ironic for a Jewish person to commit genocide. It’s just horrifying when anyone of any faith or culture does it.
Being Jewish is, here, incidental to Netanyahu’s guilt. Being Jewish doesn’t mean you’re a good person or a bad person.
Men like Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain really seem to like the idea of leaders and heroes as “strongmen” in the fascist sense.
Your writers and editors need to spend more time with historians and less time with people trying to salvage the Republican Party.
Gov. Greg Abbott invoked a rarely used legal maneuver with the Texas Supreme Court to forcibly remove state House Rep. Gene Wu (D) from office. The court ordered Wu to file a response by tomorrow afternoon. Follow us for more updates:
“I can’t think of any other thing that would pull me away from my kid right now, but this is important — she needs to have a democracy to grow up in," Texas Rep. Erin Zwiener said of Democrats' walkout to protest a Trump-requested GOP-favored voting map: 19thnews.org/2025/08/texa... @19thnews.org
Tipping point tipping point Too little too late Except that tomorrow is not yet written
“As Silicon Valley swings right, a shift led in part by major Substack investor Marc Andreessen, Substack will only expand its role as a clearinghouse for the far-right, funded and legitimized by the non-fascists who remain on the platform.”
Surprised that's only 10 words instead of 14
There’s something about the way men like Nathan J Robinson become so convinced that they’re not mediocre that they feel no worry about asking questions that seem to reveal their profound ignorance.
The historical cognate for what is happening in the United States right now is the period known as the Redemption. And the restoration of Confederate iconography, just like when they were originally installed, is to signal to the nation the return of white power.
again, Rowling isn't just problematic; she doesn't just have ugly ideas. she's made herself the leader of an international hate movement, and regularly (and successfully) pusheslegislative changes and leads stochastic mobs.
old enough to remember when people said we shouldn’t host the Olympics because it was an invitation for civil liberties to be trampled & our local tax dollars to be wasted with no benefit to the average Angeleno, and the city council was like THAT’S RIDICULOUS NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN
It seems fairly clear that Donald Trump thinks gravity makes water flow "down" from the Pacific Northwest to California, because there is absolutely no system that connects the water in Oregon and Washington to Southern California.
This is not meritocracy, it's white supremacy.
Evergreen. Daily.
My take away from this interview [gift link] is that Vance's "National Conservatism" is a form of blood and soil nationalism that is deeply invested in claiming (and possibly actually believing) that it is NOT a form of blood and soil nationalism. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/o...
Orange Monday. Acrylic on canvas. 🍊
They said they intend to repeal the 20th century and they meant the 19th too
Fewer than 3% of Americans are Jews and Zionism polls at 30% which pretty much shows you that even if every American Jew were Zionist (we're fucking not), more than 90% of American Zionists are still Christians. Christians, btw, who have not been asked to answer for *any* of this bullshit.
Jamison Foser 