#CivMil relations; Director, @CdsnRcds; saideman.blogspot.com; Co-host, Battle Rhythm podcast cdsn-rcds.com/battlerhythm, International Relations professor. Used to study nationalism/ethnic conflict.
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I was fortunate to get to visit Australia last week for a meeting on the future of cross-regional security cooperation, and afterwards had the opportunity to share some observations with @emmashortis.bsky.social @australiainstitute.org.au, through the lens of my @foreignaffairs.com piece. 1/
Compartmentalization is a survival skill
#BeardPrivilege
I am 59, this is my 32nd year teaching somewhere, but I have had four jobs. So, only 13 at Carleton, and I will stop when I hit 20. Still, this is the place I have been the longest in my life. Took me several times to get it right, but it worked out in the end.
Trump’s mysterious disappearance from public raises new questions about Joe Biden’s advanced age
Hold me back
Pierre seems to think that appealing to the looney far right is the way to go. He could say it almost worked last time, but it helped to drive the left wing parties to support a very conservative Liberal. But then again, who accused PP of having a learning curve?
awwwwwwwwwwwwwww
I am amused that Mamdani is seen as a raving communist for suggesting mid-tier FDR type reforms and there's an actual Eugene Debs dude running for Senate in Maine and he's not freaking out anybodyyyy oh yes. Shit. He's white. Sorry, I just got it. Go about your business.
“bone-petite” - title of your sex tape
Congrats to y'all! Looks like very important, very interesting work!
I’m sorry but facts don’t care about your feelings. If you are blaming Democrats in 2025 for COVID policy in 2020 you have been brainwashed by Trumpism and the death of expertise. The basic point is that Trump associated COVID with his fate in office. That’s it. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
Eric puts the fail into failson.
This is a country living in terror of a non-existent crime wave, getting rid of vaccines which saved millions of lives, and indulging in economic policies which we saw fail 100 years ago. It's a deeply disordered place.
One research tip: make sure you write down who helps as you go along so that the acknowledgement section is easy to write. Or do what I am doing now and go through old emails. #OverlyHonestAcademic
"There is probably a large lit on exactly this, but given my limited time, I will just hope that the discussant does not mind me omitting their work and that of all of their friends/mentors/students." On the bright side, I finished my APSA paper just before classes start. #OverlyHonestProf 2/2
Ever write a paper and realize while writing the conclusion that there is probably a massive literature on this? Oh, just me? So, I just added this footnote at the bottom of the paper: 1/2
Someone please kill me right now.
This is what a united front looks like -- nine former CDC directors who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents explain what's not normal about RFK Jr and how we all lose when he attacks science. Leaders in other fields need to unite against autocratic capture of their institutions.
Ok, everything is awful, but a 25th amendment fight between Vance and whoever would be pro-demented President would be spectacular as both sides would leak and leak.
Happy Labor Day everyone! A reminder that Trump has just about decimated the federal workforce. Nearly 10% of all federal workers forced out of their jobs since Jan. "We’re seeing the arson of our government." www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
You can now order my latest edited book, "Rights and Parliamentary Systems in Canada and Beyond." Check out the amazing table of contents here: utppublishing.com/doi/book/10....
A reminder on this Labor Day: Slavery still exists in the form of incarcerated labor. It’s long overdue to end forced labor in prisons.
Just the 90 day freeze on funds was staggering, with tens of thousands of excess deaths.
Ottawa’s neoliberal mayor Mark Sutcliffe has done nothing but made Ottawa worse off the backs of vulnerable people. He is looking like a disgrace. Imaging raising police budget by 4.4% and to pay for that you’re making services more expensive. Taking away student discounts is swirling the bowl
But our mayor has decided to give the police gobs of money
45 years ago today Terry Fox was forced to call off the Marathon of Hope at Thunder Bay. He showed a nation what determination and leadership meant. Terry has stayed in our hearts ever since. We carry his spirit in these troubled times.
Creative writing prompt: Make a simple press statement about a car accident sound suspicious on at least three different levels.
Not a good way to build a loyal presidential guard
considering republicans are trying to traffic children literally as we speak, “we will protect your children from republicans” is a broadly applicable goal that seems easy to sell but i guess we don’t talk about child safety at the kitchen table?
this is evil
Trump engages in negative-sum warfare because leader won’t share in his fantasy world
Okay. I just came back to this and you aren’t calling these efforts resegregation yet, you absolutely should be
Sad this has to be said:"I understand that there may be...Afghans in the U.S. who are at risk of being sent back to Afghanistan. & Afghanistan is not a safe, secure place for anyone, especially for women & girls, or for those Afghans who served in support of the international mission in Afghanistan"
Once more for those in back: They were never going to be able to implement a mass deportation program without prioritizing people like this. Criminals and gang members are too hard to find and apprehend. Regular folks who show up to work, church, and their scheduled immigration appointments are not.
lol bsky.app/profile/cram...
These people need to go to jail forever. Imagine thinking that’s ok.
Great day for some bice cream...and hints of fall
There is no explicit prohibition against the President cancelling elections, so it's hard to see why liberals think they are entitled to elections in 2026 and 2028. by Jonathan Turley
Wonder if anyone at the Times feels they owe Claudine Gay an apology yet, no I’m not going to stop bringing this up
I've been pondering for a while what the "humiliation" at the root of our fascist moment would most accurately be identified as, and "trauma of desegregation" captures it as well as anything
It took cops three hours to finally go into the Pulse nightclub the night of the shooting. If you wander near a crosswalk in Florida with a piece of chalk right now you'll have four cops on you in under five seconds.🤷♂️
If you say 'heteronormative' or 'unhoused person' or 'food insecurity' you're basically talking gibberish and nobody can understand you but if you say you can see inflammation in children at the airport and that vaccines lower IQ or that germs are a myth you get to fire all the scientists.
Another prof from that place seemed normal, if maybe on the spectrum, got into trouble for carrying a grenade (souvenir, I guess) into an airport.
The lies' laughable implausibility is a feature, not a bug. They're not trying to convince discerning, skeptical, fact-based people. They're trying to give supporters a fantasy that validates their feelings and creates a sort of loyalty test, while flaunting the absurdity in everyone else's faces.
I am preparing for APSA which means both finishing a paper and reading a book for a roundtable (I haven't even thought about presentations yet) plus revising docs for a SSHRC Partnership Grant. Good thing I remembered to do the course management stuff last week.
The destruction of public health in the United States is Bill Cassidy’s legacy. Never forget.
600 children. I am constantly astonished by just how evil this administration is.
This inspired me to check the place's webpage. Nothing will make you feel like a very senior scholar than checking out your grad school's webpage and finding just a couple of people who are still around. The emerti page, is on the other hand, chock full of profs who were there in my time.
I remember well one prof in grad school that we suspected of being a vampire, if vampires chain smoked.
Hey #CivMilSky, the annual APSA Hangout will be at 5pm on Friday, September 12 at the Tap and Barrel. I got a place there under my name. Hope to see you there! Spread the word!
To be clear, the argument in the book is against secession. Griffiths builds on the work in the area, a place I used to dwell, that shows how violent, how destructive, how unnecessary such a civil war would be.
I almost teared up. If I lived in Iowa, I'd volunteer for this guy.
This ad goes HARD! I hope his policy chops are as strong as his ad game.
CNN platforming Seb Gorka Martha Raddatz at ABC Interviewing Gov Wes Moore & being unhinged. Wes Moore needs to ask why she’s defending a rapist. Ask if her questions were written by Stephen Miller. Wes needs to pushback on a bought off press. I don’t get the constant defense mode. Offense only.
Adventures in Typos: "autocrazies" Which, for some reason, Word did not recognize as a typo.
I am reading Ryan Griffth's book, the Disunited States, that takes seriously the possibilty of red/blue secession, for an APSA roundtable. He links to a redstate site that imagines all kinds of new maps. Good thing Canadians haven't seen it, because, yeah, the red-state nuts have eyes on Canada.
trump can issue as many executive orders as he wants, perhaps coverage should reflect the fact that a lot of these have the legal force of a child's wishlist for santa
that is the joy of RFK Jr--he is ignorant about everything--health care, governance, democracy, decency. His combination of arrogance and ignorance makes him perhaps the Trumpiest Trump official.
It has always been projection. A key element of the right wing's of US and Canada is how thin-skinned they are. So very sensitive, yet accuse everyone else of overreacting to stuff.
But *we’re* the snowflakes… Christ alive this is stupid.
The National Guard was built for disasters and emergencies. Now it’s being turned into a domestic police force. From Iraq War and Army National Guard veteran @itsapurdy.bsky.social Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
Given the stakes, it seems self-evident that Dems should go with someone who’s at least acceptable to the entire coalition. Sorting that out is what primaries are for.
There's a whole book to be written about the deliberate use of Third Reich-style posters by Trump and the GOP's official social media accounts. They know exactly what they're doing.
Not sure whose fault it is primarily that most people don't seem to know that the president is basically a manager whose job is to carry out the will of Congress, and not The Country's Boss
It’s all so stupid and evil, developed by the worst people for the worst reasons.
👇
Just because you feel like your day to day life may have not changed that much much doesn't mean that America hasn't changed dramatically under Trump. Authoritarianism is here, right now. We all need to be as clear eyed about it as @vermontgmg.bsky.social: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Having no empathy and no expertise makes it easy to make outlandish, contradictory recommendations.
Congrats, that looks great and sounds fascinating!
New: An immigration judge ordered a New York waiter released on bond. ICE is refusing to release him. How the Trump admin is taking advantage of a rarely used rule to keep people detained when judges grant them bond www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
The thing the mainstream media is not remembering about Hurricane Katrina is their own lethal, racist contribution to treating rumors as facts used to demonize the stranded in New Orleans, turning them from victims to be aided to enemies to be contained.
a good example of an executive decree, not order, and if anyone follows it, it displays the magic of autocracy--obedience without legitimacy/legality
The current official position of the Trump administration is that all Palestinians, including wounded children, are presumptive terrorists and also that Jordan and Egypt should welcome millions of them.
It’s really hard to do insightful satire of right-wing weirdos because almost any ridiculous stance you can come up with, they’ll just express freely without a shred of irony.
Here's a clue--if a CEO says that they will do nice stuff for workers, such as 4 day weeks, but still have astronomical pay compared to those workers, they might just be full of shit.
and, yes, since I posted last week about the US being an autocracy, I am adopting regime (also for word count reduction). If the autocratic shoe fits, I am going to notice it. saideman.blogspot.com/2025/08/was-... 4/4
The one exception that proves the rule is Fallujah, but that is because the dead PMCs were hung and displayed. PMCs provide neither deterrence to the Russians as they would write them off nor to the Ukrainians because they are not dumb. But more graft for Trump regime? why the fuck not? 3/3
and the whole idea of PMCs or mercs is that publics don't care about them. During a conflict, a public will know to some degree how many troops died. But PMC personnel, no idea. The media and the public and pols have no idea how many PMC personnel died in Iraq or Afghanistan 2/x
It is very basic: mercenaries or PMCs are not valid security guarantors precisely because their lives are irrelevant for domestic audiences. The whole idea of having foreign troops in Ukraine to guarantee security is that their deaths would force the hands of the country deploying them 1/x
“Trump once said he wanted the generals that Hitler had,” Dr. Paul Josephson wrote. “He’s certainly working on getting the science that Hitler and Stalin had.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/s...
This is beyond hypocrisy. This is why I call them the Party of Bad Faith. They have no values but the pursuit of power and domination. Oh and maybe resentment.
Thread
There are virtues to working with people you otherwise disagree with. It's much harder, for example, for people to "other" religious, sexual, ethnic, & racial minorities when they spend time working with them as allies. It's no accident that the authoritarian right now wages a war against empathy.
Wait, Paxton thought he was above the law? Where did he get that idea?
I wish AI was smart enough so that I could tell my phone and computer just once: I don't want any AI help on anything.
I'd say that a distracted Trump is a good thing except that the people below him are deliberately evil. Trump's evil is more random--he is hateful, awful, resentful, but he is inconsistent, lazy, incurious.
I think it's a wide-open question whether the people who have been making exceptions for Trump will continue to do so for a less-charismatic successor who will not be able to control the base in the same way. My instinct is that things would get better in his absence but not return to "normal."
His version of proof of life.
But I thought the white supremacist party of Great Replacement Theory was just going to chase after the most violent undocumented immigrants!
What are we even doing?
As we all know, the American Revolution was fought to ensure the chief executive could impose taxes without representation.
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
100%.
There aren't many stories that prompt gasps at our editors' daily budget meeting. But this was one.
The things that Trump is ignorant about is astounding. He is the epitome of the thoroughly mediocre white man.