i have a passage about centrism, and its slippery dual meaning, in this one. drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/03/28/h...

whatever “centrist” conveys, it has nothing to do with supporting enlightenment ideas. maybe liberal, in its original sense. or progressive in its original sense. but all these words get tainted by use, come to refer to things other than what you might mean them to.

i think it is kind of a permanent feature unless we change something. didn’t used to be, but that’s because “all politics was local” and the parties weren’t ideologically sorted. but are nationalization and sorting are likely to reverse under current institutions? www.interfluidity.com/v2/7687.html

(i guess the closest “on the left”would be Bernie/Warren/Lina-Khan/Katie-Porter-style identification of oligarchs and corporations as conspiratorial enemies, “left populism”. stories which are often pretty true!)

right. i don’t think adopting an “infowars” model is ever going to work for the pro civilization side of things. the way is to create an ecosystem in which the infowars model just comes off as the propaganda that it is and so becomes ineffective.

i think it ought to be a public project. the idea that liberalism requires ceding the information sphere to private actors in the name of neutrality in practice means ceding the information sphere to oligarchs, under contemporary levels of wealth concentr8n. drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/03/09/v...

“Until someone, be it progressives or centrists, can build a media apparatus to counter right-wing agitprop and make a case for humane immigration policy, this cycle is likely going to repeat.”

govern so incompetently you create a real emergency, then assume extraordinary powers by declaring a state of emergency.

despite a perfectly reasonable inference. that’s okay. it’s the first good news i’ve seen today.

i thought this was parody, teasing the author. no, it is a direct quote from David Brooks.

“ICE detainer” on a US citizen whose mom has presented his birth certificate to a judge. The judge acknowledges the birth certificate and its authenticity, but claims she lacks jurisdiction to release him. Presumably ICE releases him when they review the certificate. But it’s hard now to presume.

all so-called independent agencies are fully accountable to Congress, the only meaningfully democratic branch of our govt. also the most dysfunctional branch of our govt. but there’s no saving American democracy without curing that dysfunction. see David Andolfatto xcancel.com/dandolfa/sta...

kind of emblematic of what DeSantis and Rufo have done to New College.

if the Supreme Court really wanted to encourage compliance by the Trump Administration, it might in a majority opinion include, Clarence-Thomas-style, an off-hand remark about how perhaps the Court's reasoning in Trump v United States bears a second look in light of more recent jurisprudence.

from @buddyyakov.bsky.social building-a-ruin.ghost.io/tariffs-ideo...

very much agreed.

yes. it can simultaneously be true that good things could potentially be done by developing Federal land, and there’s no reason to imagine this administration would do anything good.

or rather the oldest.