they always accused democrats of not being proud americans, of going on apology tours, but i don't think i could support anyone who isn't planning an apology tour.

all production requires financial risk bearing. (assuming even labor has a financial opportunity cost.) not all financial risk bearing finances production. when it finances a trade deficit, it may finance consumption.

defcon.social/@tprophet/11... Note: TProphet is providing the words of a Canadian friend who prefers to remain anonymous. Scroll to the beginning of the thread.

i'd take issue with "depend" (exorbitant privilege or exorbitant burden?) but our perhaps erstwhile global regime did involve foreigners continuously increasing the US financial risk they bore (in absolute terms, not relative to GDP, their economies may have grown faster than our trade deficits).

jfc.

cc @steveroth.bsky.social

when this is all done, the United States will be the 20th census division of Alberta.

it will be kind of ironic when climate nonprofits migrate their finances to crypto. (it won’t be hypocritical — it’ll be proof-of-stake crypto rather than the burn-down-the-world kind.)

it is ridiculous how difficult members of Congress have now made it to meaningfully provide feedback. (and they almost never respond. back in the day, if i wrote them i’d at least get a form letter on some adjacent issue.) i’m keeping at it, overcoming the hurdles. i hope you do too.

Regulating to favor density would helpfully reduce the option value in farmland that it might convert to cul-de-sac.

i guess like most things i think it, or a lack of it, is a product of our institutions, so if we sustain rather than undermine institutions of solidarity and accountability, it wouldn’t have to be so thin and fragile a thing. instead we tax virtue. www.interfluidity.com/v2/5031.html

You can make the case that shutting down the government is contrary to our aspirations, so you vote to pass the CR and choose other battlefields. But if you vote yes on overcoming the filibuster then symbolically vote no on the actual thing, all you stand for is cowardice. You are feckless.

and civic virtue is downstream from policy. when we collapsed high marginal tax rates and encouraged inequality as incentive, we made a world where my welfare stands in competition with yours rather than boats rising or falling together. we put our families’ well being and civic virtue in conflict.

“some influencers remain concerned to ensure that what they are sharing is true, others have gradually lost all qualms. We call these networks left and right, but these political positions seem to me less determinate than the epistemic positions.”

i do think it’s not a coincidence that going after Canada, whether seriously or performatively, undermined the possibility of maintaining a principled stand against Russia for Ukraine on Westphalian / we-enforce-territorial-integrity grounds. i think there was some encouragement of some sort.

ambitious sociopaths are drawn to MAGA. rule by unvarnished, unapologetic exercise of power is their highest ambition made real. there are plenty of ambitious sociopaths among democrats. you can see them. they feign disdain but they slip, pulled toward that bright light of ruthless control.

(and she's broadcasting it!)

if a tree falls in the forest and there isn’t a right-wing ecosystem to shout about it, does it make a sound? the public is informed, and “mainstream media” cowed, by Fox News and its counterparts. when rightwing media adopt a see-no-evil posture, the only ones shouting are hair-on-fire liberals.

mastodon.social/@alexlunavie...