Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. —Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
political theologian at the ministry for the future interests: classics, history, philosophy, conflict + IR, economics, foreign policy, climate change, east asia (korea + japan) words: Foreign Policy + LiberalCurrents
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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. —Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
man i can't stop staring into the abyss (i should probably install one of those apps to prevent you from seeing a website)
I'm going back to being logged off
okay i should be logged off but incredible things are happening on the other site
okay, doing this please yell at me if i post anything in the next week
Did RFK try pushing out Monarez to push anti-vax things?
...what?
No you should not use your phone while driving. That said it boggles my mind people who are still driving and holding the phone to their ear. Not every car has a phone routing system to audio but nearly every phone has speaker.
yeah i think i might log off for a bit and go back to reading Strauss
Fox News guest blaming murders on parents who permit kids to change names; host links murders to “illegals” and Black Lives Matter in Minnesota that created atmosphere of evil that causes murder.
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
it makes you question everything that came before if she thinks this speech, which she claims she didn't write down but has somehow transcribed in perfect paragraphs, is what this has been building to I'm still struggling with how to understand it all it kind of circles back around to being art
former
For those “he’s still in the awful but lawful” stage people, the “we’re going to send the regular army into Chicago because I’m the president and I can do whatever I want” should be enough to make at least one general say “the fuck you can.”
UPDATE: At least four top CDC officials submit resignations in the wake of the agency director's firing.
what makes it so good is that most of the story is actually quite beautiful Gilbert can really write, the story is compelling and wild, and her writing seems to have real empathy and self-reflection and then, oh my god, the seven paragraphs of unreadable, therapized bullshit of her breakup speech
What this excerpt doesn't mention (but the longer article does) is that Gilbert had been enabling the drug use for a while (although IIRC by this point she had stopped?)
I also want to make it clear that even setting aside the literal attempted murder, basically everything Gilbert did here was fucking awful and I am not defending her one iota. I simply want to make sure people understand that this isn't her dumping her girlfriend for having terminal cancer.
having an intraparty debate about support for a group’s rights is already fucked as is
this is what a labor action looks like. (or one thing it looks like.)
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even the lysenko comparison is at this point an insult to lysenko
Whether you want to believe Gilbert or not, I do think that it's relevant context that immediately before this Rayya had to shoot up in order to be able to have a conversation. I think people are reading this as her dumping her for having cancer
jesus, man
important note is that the coke use got out of hand when gilbert started going out and buying a bunch of coke to give rayya!!
You know, a friend of mine, his sister-in-law is a doctor in Toronto. Anyways, I feel like I’m gonna go have a nice dinner in Toronto in the next couple weeks, always wanted to try some of the restaurants up there. Absolutely no other reasons
I feel like it's important to note that gilbert ran headlong into drinking & drug use with her partner, a former addict, when their relationship started, and is the one *actually providing rayya with the drugs* when the relapse becomes catastrophic
Every person in the replies should read the article before commenting. The story overall is still really messed up, but (imo) judgement should kept at a minimum when there is the level of addiction that was going on here.
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got my annual "flu vaccine available!" text from my pharmacy and it concludes with "Which vaccines you get is a personal decision. Your health, your way." cool
you cannot possibly imagine how bad it is without reading the full except essay AND the review
I can’t imagine letting anyone on earth know I said it, let alone publish those words in exchange for money.
i cannot imagine, in a million years, admitting that aloud. i would die first. i would literally die rather than admit that i had said that, if i did say it, let alone??????????????????? publish???????????????????? it???????????????????? in a memoir????????????????????????????????
“But a reasonable person wouldn’t notice at all” There’s humvees parked a block away from my apartment Matthew
The review of her book, because she describes her attempted murder of her partner who she was also supplying and nursing with every controlled substance she could get (most of which she was also taking herself) in her book, somehow.
he is not exaggerating
…the Eat, Pray, Love author tried to murder someone? & we’re learning about it in an article about her new book?
You REALLY SHOULD read the article. It doesn't exonerate her in any way (if anything it paints her as someone who's basically a terrifying social chaos agent) but it does give context to what is truly a wild situation
no, this is real
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she also tried to murder this lady at one point
It’s not leaving your partner with cancer that makes this S-tier bullshit. It’s the part where she also insists she feels a genuine, supernatural love enough for a thousand lifetimes. That’s the part I can’t bear
Aha, but what is speculation, now that’s an interesting — hey, let go of me, I’m just asking a (is sent to theology jail)
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.thecut.com/article/eliz...
the Eat Pray Love lady saying this to her cancer-afflicted lesbian partner is wild to me
I’m basically a Thomist myself, but “Thomas against liberalism” has been that crowd’s program from the beginning www.vatican.va/content/leo-...
We've tried this several times with Grand Bargains and Rubio famously voted against his own version. It's doable once you shatter the filibuster but not really before
Increasing the number of immigration judges alone so that people get promptly processed is a lot of the problem. People slide into grey area during court proceedings.
Yeah. There really is a lack of grounded imagination here. People either fantasize about open borders or imagine a system that’s what we have now, but just like, less mean. Unfucking legal immigration is extraordinarily difficult but doable and would be an enormous accomplishment.
Like, the man who ate his book was a small c conservative eurosceptic who has been love bombed into neo-fascism.
angelanagle.substack.com
So fucking tired of living in an absolute SWAMP of Christian theology, the most straightforwardly easy moral conception of the universe, and still being surrounded by motherfuckers who don't understand it.
"Jesus asks us to sacrifice of ourselves for the good of others, just as he sacrificed of himself for our sake. But my thesis is -- what if he didn't?"
I'm increasingly of the view that the primary enemy of all of us who care about society is Internet driven nihilism. Facism is broadly its political expression, but it's not the only risk. It affects everything, sapping out collective humanity.
I just cannot get over two Americans in SF being Japan's most influential voices according to the host.
Nihilism is the death of joy and meaning because it seeks to crush even small moments of happiness and break down community for the dark selfish desire for petty gratification in tearing things down. Anyone pushing it needs to be brought away from it and be reminded unironic joy and whimsy exist.
I watched this today, by the excellent Lindsay Ellis, and was struck by how much of the right is now gleefully without empathy, which I think echoes what James is saying here. We have a duty to recognise the humanity in others, far too many have gleefully abandoned that. youtu.be/QwpanShgOp4?...
Update: At least three other high-ranking officials in CDC have also resigned. “I am not able to serve in this role any longer because of the ongoing weaponization of public health,” one of the officials said in a note to staff.
it's weird because (A) doesn't show up in New British Fascism (the BNP book) at all
First two names into the NDP race are likely to be McPherson and Lewis
wait are you in Tokyo?
www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
jake adelstein doing a bit with noah should probably tell you a lot about jake
I kind of think all the immigration hate is kind of a reaction to crisis generally. Like theres some kind of theory that people face natural pressures to leave during crisis which stabilizes for those who remain. I worry immigration is kind of like that but the other way
Adorno: "The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them."
he's pathetic enough that this is plausible
lmao of course
I don't know that works but we've clearly got a fucking problem.
I'm coming to the very uncomfortable conclusion that the small-c-catholic church needs to have wide latitude in interpretation of Christian belief and also to aggressively discipline heretical ordained ministry.
Any church in the US holding services in a language other than English is subverting the nation, COMPLIMENTARY.
kev's right
“look i balanced my ps and qs, that’s all that matters” i hate speculative theology
he wrote a book against the BNP and is now adopting politics to the right of them
this is basically what happened to matthew goodwin
yeah but something tells me fr mulcahy is unhappy that the vatican line on immigration and right-wing populism is critical
Earnestness and sincerity, now, are the greatest acts of rebellion and your duty is to do them.
I do genuinely think if we're going to pull out of this, it will require a massive cultural shift to honor as something cultivated and maintained rather than dignity as something to which one is ineffably entitled.
My posts (rants) about the social contract and the necessary vitality of honor and shame as more important than dignity and guilt always do well, but I do worry people don't connect that to the idea that puts a significantly greater burden on the individual. Of which they are one.
“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.
After 60 years of trying to electrify populations with fossil fuels, people finally figured out there was a much better way. One with less corruption. Electricity poverty is real and clean energy is now at scale to solve it. This will unleash human flourishing.
i will never understand why online Thomists are so addicted to rationalize every single piece of conservatism
another day picking at the moral theology of immigration. everyone keeps asking me if they can hate immigrants. buddy, jesus wont even let me hate immigrants
The American Years of Lead have already been here, just unevenly distributed.
The nicest thing I can say here is that it’s good that the story starts with her getting a divorce because it was probably a good way of limiting the damage
thinking once again about these words from pope francis about the 2018 stampede in an italian nightclub that killed five young teenagers and a mother.
There is no such thing as 'right wing socialism' - and the lens of hypocrisy and emphasis on Democrats having tried to do the 'same thing' assumes he is borrowing a left wing act - that frame is completely misleading. There's a clear pattern from right wing history to point to here.
People are bewildered and failing to understand what they are seeing because they have been conditioned through repetition to associate state control of business with socialism. It's vital journalists draw the right comparisons here.
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/...
I mean, yes to all this, but also just low-key think there is no way out of this mess without the center left (and the center right ideally too, but at minimum one of them) going on the offensive on the positive economic and moral case for immigration
" and to become a citizen you have to apply and pass background checks and pass a test and pay all this money and live here for 5 years without doing anything remotely bad hahahaha" {In fact a massive expansion in immigration}
You could loudly make immigration rules that sounded incredibly tough, with forms and checks and all the rest and it would still be a huge liberalization of immigration.
getting a lot of very serious followers but let me be clear i try to keep it Cool around here because this is the account OF a very serious analyst and not an account FOR very serious analysis
I do not understand a priest who sees Venezuelans & Salvadoreans & Mexicans & thinks anything other than "these are my Christian brethren, this is my flock". What is that collar even for
immigration genuinely seems to be becoming the dividing line of the 21st century
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it really could have made a pretty good franchise
