At least 25 per cent of Canada’s domestic internet traffic “unnecessarily routed through the U.S., where it loses Canadian control and protections and is subject to U.S. surveillance and other forms of interference.” www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...
Fox News is so bad for American democracy
Good piece from @ronmknox.bsky.social on how anti-monopoly fights are moving to the state and local level, in the absence of a reliable partner in Washington. prospect.org/economy/2025...
The SCOTUS has been captured by right wing fanatics.
Billionaires should not be allowed to have a controlling stake, directly or indirectly, in a news media outlet or conglomerate. Just a thought on protecting a free and democratic society.
a society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
Lutnick Family Angling To Make Astronomical Sums Off Court Nixing Tariffs talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lutni...
Have any of the pundits who wrote “How the GOP has become pro-worker” think pieces followed up with reflections about how (predictably) wrong they were? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Hurling looks pretty awesome! Still don’t understand the rules. But very cool.
What if the point in time when football overtook baseball as America’s sport marked the beginning of America’s decline? To my knowledge it was the start of neoliberalism rise. [There’s also an argument that 1996/Fox News marked the start of American decline.]
Why do small dick losers post abusive shit about female athletes on social media?! Why attract attention to you being a virgin asshole?!
not gonna lie, this framing hit me hard
For lynch mobs in the "redeemed" south, lynching was a means of securing (white) freedom from Black domination and enforcing a (white supremacist) constitution. That is what they believed.
Getting yelled at on the internet is not what turns people into fascists.
In fairness, my friends and I don’t know how to reproduce social democrat or socialist thought. A little off topic but kinda wish we knew.
The SCOTUS in Heller permitted gun manufacturers and the GOP to create such a toxic culture thereby endangering children.
Please take a look at this thread! It draws attention to a few long hard won victories taking generations that we tend to take for granted.
Anyway...Dems need to break out of the impulse to see 200 white people protesting against Covid restrictions as "the voice of the people which we must heed" while seeing 10X as many people protesting racist police violence as "a niche special interest group that's out of step with real Americans."
The Tea Party was covered in the press like it was a spontaneous eruption of populist anger, but those protests drew far fewer people than the recent protests against Trump's administration. The "Tea Party" was just a well-funded organized, right wing movement promoted by friendly media outlets.
This is "the one big trick" that the right has mastered. They present their movement as just "the authentic voice of the volk outraged by Democratic overreach," when really what they're doing is just old fashioned political mobilization. Organize a passle of pissed off people & call it a movement.
Thanks
Thanks for specifying the provision. To use this section the govt usually needs to bring evidence of harm. So I wonder whether it might be challenging to make a causal link. Regardless, thanks for clarifying your thought. Appreciated.
I don’t know what clause you’re referring to (notwithstanding clause?). Freedom of expression has pretty broad application although there are some limits. Maybe we’re saying something similar or are in the same ballpark? www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/...
Churchill delivered victory in the Second World War only to lose the 1945 election. Clement Attlee delivered the National Health Service only to lose the 1950 election.
Right wing propaganda seems like a difficult problem to address given the importance of “freedom of expression” and the Charter. I wonder if a potentially viable solution might be in respect of regulating the funding of it.
Maybe Mexico is on to something. Maybe Canadian provinces should think about something directionally similar.
The issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous people, especially women, is one that continues to get less action than it demands. Both here, from Alaska to other states, and in Canada. And feckess Murkowski is again, feckless. If these were white women... www.propublica.org/article/alas...
You don’t need a pretext. Follow the money. The article alludes to him being dirty. But then again I don’t know American law re foreign interference and associations with authoritarian regimes.
As someone who travels to the USA for its National Parks (but not since Trump’s threats to Canada), it makes me sad for future generations that will miss out because MAGA and Trump sold them out. youtube.com/shorts/_sFOq...
Marketcrafters youtube.com/shorts/YBKa1...
I really hope this becomes the black eye it deserves to be www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
TIL about Fred Hampton
This assessment seems to be based on pervasive, but wildly ahistorical assumptions about fascism. There is the idea that fascism wasn’t superstitious and "criminally mad" - yet many of the leading fascists were crooks, quacks, and charlatans who believed in pseudo-science and Volkish hocus-pocus.
Fucking Maple MAGA using Orwellian doublespeak to describe what they’re doing.
"Trump’s job approval rating has settled at 40%, held up by near-unanimous Republican support that is offsetting a near-total absence of Democratic support and weak support from independents." news.gallup.com/poll/694370/...
CW: Sexual assault Women are being kidnapped and assaulted by men who impersonate ICE agents. This is one of many reasons why we can’t have a masked, unaccountable secret police force roaming the streets. Urge your elected officials to take action today: www.bluestatedefianc...
www.bbc.com/news/article...
This is a very well written piece.
I wrote about this in more detail here: The Trumpists didn’t depart from a previously stable democratic consensus. They represent the radical wing of a rightwing coalition that was never on board with egalitarian principles and democratic pluralism.
The cruelty, the white nationalist ideology, the unprecedented self-sabotage, the outrageous ridiculousness: The defining characteristics of this government and the inhuman, destructive policies it is pursuing, all captured perfectly here. America is now ruled by cruel, authoritarian clowns.
Call me crazy but I don’t love the idea of them controlling ways to escape.
This is so fucked up!
More billionaire hate please.
We, as a species, are too fucking stupid to save ourselves. 🤦♀️🤦♂️ www.theguardian.com/environment/...
If you want to build a society around solidarity & non-zero-sum cooperation, you have to find a way to go around these folks, to deny them power, to develop social norms that marginalize them. You're not going to persuade or convert them.
I know everyone already know this but it must be said out loud: MAGA wants its symbols of white supremacy.
Remember this idiot union leader.
Symbols of white supremacy like when the KKK and the Daughters of the Confederacy put up statues of Confederate soldiers.
Kinda like when the KKK and the Daughters of the Confederacy put up statues of Confederate soldiers.
This is an important point that really needs to be repeated by ppl with broader public reach. Like a politician or pundit.
ICE and the broader MAGA movement do not care about whether brown people have legal status or are citizens. This is not law enforcement. It’s fascism.
Courage and fear are both contagious
God, I hope you’re right 🤞
An insurrectionist too cowardly to stand of for his professed beliefs.
This ☝️! Why is NBC credulously repeating lies?! Please stop the “he said” reporting. This is not a horse race. There are real world stakes.
Truly grateful to everyone just trying stuff right now. Thanks to those who organized the CDC walkout.
Important clarification, multiple CDC sources tell me: Federal employees are not allowed to strike/walk out, so this is *not* a walkout but a "clap out" to show support for departing leadership. Current employees were either given permission to attend by a supervisor or used leave time to attend.
I am very well aware — likely more than most people — how bad things are! That I do not just accept that bad things will happen or take bad actors' claims as fact — forcing them to take the steps themselves in order to ensure that they will be publicly accountable for those steps — is not "hopium."
There’s a lot in this thread but this point stuck out to me
This thread is pretty damn incisive and pithy.
Random: Muffin = little cake you eat for breakfast.
A new piece I wrote appearing in FOREIGN AFFAIRS today www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/warn...
Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Even if we get a competent and trustworthy government again for some period, everyone should know that it can’t last unless structural and constitutional reforms are made. The fascists are among us and unless they are structurally disempowered, they’ll be back.
Right wing extremists purposely conflate accountability of law enforcement with doxxing. Their claim is completely without merit. It is an integral part of the justice system that LEOs identify themselves and has been common for generations. This is just thinly veiled bullshit.
The human cost of the SCOTUS opinion in Heller is horrific!
As Jefferson Cowie brilliantly demonstrates in this book, there's a long tradition of white Americans defining "freedom" as "the freedom to dominate others." That tradition has usually viewed the federal government as the enemy. Now it seeks to capture it. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jeffe...
The way I describe it is: we are under an authoritarian regime, but we don't know that it has consolidated -- for all we know, it could still be thrown out via elections.
New, from me: America is no longer a functioning democracy. It is a competitive authoritarian system, hurtling rapidly toward authoritarianism. This was a hard piece to write but we can't move forward if we don’t acknowledge where we are. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...
Adding the post below to this tread, because Jamelle Bouie states very concisely what other sources in this thread have alluded to or state in far more words. bsky.app/profile/jame...
all of this makes total sense when you recognize that “freedom” here means the freedom to dominate those you view as your subordinates and “tyranny” is when someone threatens that “freedom” or worse, when those subordinates try to claim power as political equals
Parties in power (fed & prov) like to ensure that the public service doesn’t affect their narrative/messaging. Enabling, thru legislation, public servants to communicate publicly at a lower threshold than whistleblower and more frequently than consultations might help achieve greater transparency?
They don't feel shame, but they care deeply about status. Wanting to be liked--or at least envied--is their Achilles heel. We can use that against them:it's cheap, non-violent & effective. Social shunning of elites supporting Pinochet helped bring down the Chilean dictator: it can work here too.
Right wing reactionaries really don’t like social consequences for expressing abhorrent views
I really hate how credulous and naive the news media is.
It's called fascism. Fascist regimes, like Mussolini's Italy, directly nationalized some businesses. American journalists need reminding that this isn't necessarily a 'socialist' thing. Articles like this don't help the public interpret what's happening in the US. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
“The left needs to stop attacking the right as though they’re free market fundamentalists and recognize that they are charlatans who will sacrifice any ideological commitment to maintain their own wealth and power.” @graceblakeley.substack.com on why the right never really cared about free markets.
Camus: Under conditions so desperate, the hard, marvelous task of this century is to create justice in the most unjust of worlds, and to protect freedom from those souls who, out of principle, choose servitude. If we fail, man will return to darkness. But at least we will have fought to find light.
Thanks for describing fascist econ. Although it would’ve been faster to just say that.
Euf 😤
every day is a new experience in cruelty and people's gleeful attachment to cruelty
Trump loves his taxes on working ppl! They’re also definitely, 100% do not cause inflation. Trust him.
This is a sign of a sick, declining society. Children recounting traumatic events in which other kids die, all because politicians and judges won’t do shit to prevent this from happening.
It’s abhorrent how the Right abuses language and I wish the press wasn’t so credulous. Maybe question if it’s actually a “right” to control another person. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Please primary every one of these Democrats. Win or lose, a wave of primary contests should send a message to the establishment that they need to change.
Please stop the “he said”/hearsay based reporting. This isn’t a horse race and rumours are not news.
* It seems truthiness might have been coined in 2008.
It’s not a coincidence.
It’s also interesting that a Fox News grandpa is President and has appointed ppl from Fox to join his regime.
Just read Strangers In Their Own Land. The “deep story”, which is the key insight of the book, is not limited to a given geographic community. It’s consistent with the “truthiness” that Stephen Colbert identified more than a decade ago regarding Fox News content.
Based on what I’ve witnessed, it’s one big circlejerk. Appreciate this person calling out the other side of it. Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.
Democrats sound like they are poll-testing everything they say because too often they are, treating public opinion as fixed rather than something to move in your direction.
Two out of every five people arrested after participating in anti-immigration riots had been previously reported to the police for domestic.😡 Well that blows their screaming dribble out the water with their signs shouting protect our women and children 🤔🤦 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
This totally wouldn’t hurt the defense/arms industry, especially not their exports to other countries. This would definitely strengthen alliances with other countries. This certainly couldn’t hurt American soft power and influence. Go for it!
Nutlick is such a tool
Trump keeps telling us what he is
It was never about free speech
Large swaths of Trump's agenda are bad for capital, yet despite strong incentives to collectively mobilize AND significant power to exert their will, we have seen very little resistance from big business interests. Why? Below, five non-mutually exclusive possibilities that have occurred to me:
Reading an article titled "Why didn't Brazilian democracy die?" and a key part of the story is a Supreme Court that actually did its job
If you think the attack on the Fed's Lisa Cook has nothing to do with you, you're wrong — any one of us may be next paulkrugman.substack.com/p/we-are-all...