i hope not.
kind of surprised administration flunkies aren’t hawking tawking points about how interest rates are rising because markets can anticipate the huge boom the president’s policies will bring, but stocks are down because tariffs will cut into Wall Street fat cat margins.
the thing about Chris Rufo is, okay, there were Institutions he didn’t like. i get it. we all have institutions we don’t like that are nevertheless “important”, so seem oppressive. 1/
he could have, like, built new ones! tried to compete! persuaded people his were better! he’s good at getting millions and millions from Ron DeSantis and ideological fellow travelers. 2/
but he knows his positive program is paper thin. it could never compete. so he takes over institutions other people built, runs them into the dust but lives for a brief while off the inertial reputation and prestige that were the life’s work of other people. /fin
some of us might describe this as the work of the “neo” prefix liberalism picked up for a while. if you let liberalism collapse into exaltation of market logics, then you sell out when the price is right.
“move fast and break things” is good strategy to gain first-mover advantage in winner-take-all markets. it’s not a good strategy for developing high quality goods. (winner-take-all markets do not reliably reward quality. they reward speed, subject to some minimal quality constraint.)
it’s weird how the mishandling of COVID is so many people’s excuse for supporting the guy who mishandled COVID.
no source of authority beyond a boot or a rifle, is what they are after. because they can persuade no one, but they know how to stomp.
i mean, how does reducing civilian deaths "facilitate lethality"?
right. the US in Indochina and Korea was pretty awful about this stuff! we had, in recent memory, fought and won a "total war", whose totality seemed to leave little moral stain. that taught our military bad lessons. "Vietnam syndrome" taught different lessons. that made a real difference!
was just today discussing that exceptional scrupularity. on the one hand, these were awful wars, lots of death and destruction! on the hand, i maintain there is a real difference in character between the US in those wars and Russia or Israel. (but drone assassinations were a moral calamity!)
"His entire project has been that of imposing strict limits on the remedial power of the courts." I am haunted by this piece by @hurricanexyz.bsky.social on John Roberts eveningconstitutional.net/john-roberts... 1/
if they openly “ask”, and the Salvadorean government says “no”, then they claim exerting pressure on this “helpful, friendly partner” would be contrary to US foreign policy interests, are they in contempt? if “effectuate” is too strong, what obligation does the government actually have?
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death cult. ht @hyperplanes.bsky.social @lethalityjane.bsky.social
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i don’t understand how US firms can continue to enable and offer for download Tiktok once the 90-day extension foreseen by the law potentially banning the service (and already an overstretch in its application) has passed. (this is independent of any views on whether that law was a good idea.)
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