we need to recover Popeye masculinity.

It is how we express our values as a community.

the state must provide services to help reintegrate the formerly empowered. they could receive training, learn useful skills, lead something quite close to ordinary, independent lives.

@gabrielu.bsky.social offers fascinating, surprising history of Peronism, coups, and complexities of actual organization and activism in Argentina that didn’t fall neatly along ideological or social-class lines.

promote aspirational versions of efficient lifestyles.

“That is the logic of virtuous violence. Violence comes to feel not merely expedient but righteous because it is cast as protecting one’s own side, restoring order, and ending chaos. In doing so, however, it denies the humanity of those being attacked.”

(congrats!)

efficient markets.

the vibe part of vibecession is just the knowledge that we aren’t in it together any more. the seventies were tough, sure, but we understood we were collectively undergoing a trauma, together. now we fail individually while the glittering party goes on.

if you are a parent in the US, do you have a plan for how your kid goes to college without taking on a lot of debt, do you believe he or she has a high probability of an economically secure future if the child does go to college, are you confident housing and health care will be affordable?

i love how people say the stock market is booming and inequality is falling, choosing measures inconsistently only to consistently make the point the economy is “objectively” great.

only nixon could go to china. by drunkenly stepping onto the wrong plane!

"This is the era of the hollowed-out government… We did not just outsource the janitorial services or the cafeteria. Instead, we outsourced the thinking… The result is not a 'leaner' government. It is a government that has forgotten how to learn." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-empty-ar...

as a present!

i think that’s right about the mass public, but wrong about wealthy donors and professional lobbies. and D politicians think that wealthy donors and professional lobbies are capable of sabotaging politicians who would be otherwise popular, so ignoring or defying them is not an option.

a lot of the problem with contentious posts is not that they are wrong — they might or might not be! — but that they arrogate a tone of certainty that goes far beyond what the sort of evidence they cite could possibly provide.

i’m with brian, but the democratic party will struggle to do it. values and interests within so broad a coalition conflict too much. campaign strategies like what Kamala adopted (cautious, focused on personal biography and vague values) are endogenous. we need more, more coherent parties.

by sabotaging the government, we prove that government could never work. by inflaming petty nationalisms, we prove an integrated society is a pipe dream.