it's all "hard data", but up is down, depending on the deflator you use. "hard data" can't speak for itself, but it can whisper lies and pretend it does. @ernietedeschi.bsky.social and @ericvannostrand.bsky.social make a strong case that up is in fact up. ht @mtkonczal.bsky.social
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Fukuyama's end of history was kind of the magazine cover curse, but for a centuries-long historical cycle rather than years-long business cycle. It marked a top. I hope we don't have to wait centuries for the bottom.
“Law always points beyond itself, toward the principle of justice, and that principle means that law can always be called into question. When law claims to be fully self-sufficient, it betrays itself and becomes a tool of injustice” // excellent and true
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a polity that periodically elects a king is no democracy, even if the elections are competitive. it’s not a state in a meaningful sense. either it devolves to “competitive authoritarianism” (one king always wins), or it falls to waste due to vertiginous schizophrenic reversals.
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hospitalized for cancer, waiting to see which of your caregivers will survive the random firings and whether there will still be care to be given. everything our new, um, competent leadership does everything they do with professionalism and kindness.
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from Hannah Arendt, via @eliasisquith.blog, via @resnikoff.bsky.social grattoncourses.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...
Text: In these terms, the nonparticipators in public life under a dictatorship are those who have refused their support by shunning those places of "responsibility" where such support, under the name of obedience, is required. And we have only for a moment to imagine what would happen to any of these forms of government if enough people would act "irresponsibly" and refuse sup-port, even without active resistance and rebellion, to see how effective a weapon this could be. It is in fact one of the many variations of nonviolent action and resistance-for instance the power that is potential in civil disobedience—which are being discovered in our century. The reason, however, that we can hold these new criminals, who never committed a crime out of their own initiative, nevertheless responsible for what they did is that there is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters. The only domain where the word could possibly apply to adults who are not slaves is the domain of religion, in which people say that they obey the word or the command of God because the relationship between God and man can rightly be seen in terms similar to the relation between adult and child. Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be, "Why did you obey?" but "Why did you support?" This change of words is no semantic irrelevancy for those who know the strange and powerful influence mere "words" have over the minds of men who, first of all, are speaking animals. Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word "obedience" from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.
sometimes i wonder about the inner life of Lindsay Graham.
“The dismantling of Delaware’s corporate code in service of billionaires took a great leap forward today when state senate Democrats unveiled proposed legislation that will dramatically alter corporate governance with national implications.”
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they found a man starving and pulled out a machete to remove the tumor.
now we only clap if the plane does tricks when it lands.
“the penalty for not complying is simply that you are ordered to comply.” @mattbruenig.bsky.social www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-futili...
they believe the conspiracy theories and now that it’s their turn they try to run the world like their conspiracy theories, put in service new ends. except the world can’t be run like the conspiracy theories pretend it is run.
all these people got fired but nobody is responsible for firing them.
what Musk has done is turn Twitter into 14chan.
if i had a heart attack right here, it might mean good compost for the garden.
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moral of the Musk administration gonna be it’s hard to unscramble an egg.
i used to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, in sasquatches and chupacabra, in Republican congresspeople.
do we believe this "unitary executive" wouldn't abuse NSA's capabilities to routinely spy on domestic enemies? what constraints would prevent or even mildly discourage even the most plainly illegal surveillance?
a "unitary executive" is an untrustworthy executive. how are we expected to be candid on our tax returns if the IRS can't credibly offer confidentiality? masto.ai/@unusual_wha...