one of the many ironies of the moment is it's the people who style themselves defenders of western civilization that are the greatest threats to the achievements of western civilization.

@Phil We can agree on the claim, "You are probably one of the most credulous people I have ever encountered." But we probably disagree on the referents.

@Phil He said he returned them all! And then he hadn't! He was caught in subterfuge. He wasn't negotiating. Gore did not privately ask to find votes. He asked for public recounts. So did Trump! Nobody prosecuted Trump for that. It was desperate, but fine, entrely appropriate.

@Phil Come on. The classified documents case was a slam dunk, anyone who was asked for return of classified docs and refused and lied about it would be convicted. Yes, others, including Biden, were sloppy, but always cooperated. The Georgia case was also a slam dunk, literally asking a governor to find votes. It's hard to find comparables because no one has been so brazen. Some of the J6ers may have been overprosecuted, but the violent ones certainly were not.

if you call it lawfare without making a persuasive, affirmative case for why others whose similar behavior came to public and prosecutorial light wouldn't be pursued, then you are just in favor of elite impunity.

seems kind of gratuitous to have gone through so much trouble to kill affirmative action in the university when you're just going to kill off the university.

“Right wing accelerationism is not a backlash *against* globalization and its combination of exit and constraint, but an argument that its logic should be extended downwards into the nation state.” @henryfarrell https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-reactionary-right-is-not-a-monolith ht #WilliamCullerneBown

the law in its majesty permits rich and poor alike to hand out million dollar checks to buy votes.

Elon Musk is a man who cheats at everything, and so presumes any adversary is cheating extravagantly against him, and he's fucking morally outraged about it.

Wilhoit's Law to him is not merely descriptive. It is the first and only commandment on a tablet set down by God. And he is the definition of the in-group.

a silver lining of Trump’s election is they can’t call you antisemitic or accuse you of a double standard for (correctly) describing Israel’s current government as fascist when you are also (correctly) describing America’s government as fascist.

there are the alarmists and "everything's probably fine" types. the "probably fine" types have the better track record in retrospect. but that's largely because of the work of the alarmists.

relying on empirical track record to decide which attitude to take may not be wise. depending on ones goals.

it's remarkable how quickly "tren de aragua" went from something i had never heard of to a crisis so urgent centuries-old safeguards of liberty and due process had to be cast aside, even at the acknowledged cost of some innocents getting pressed into indefinite detention and enslavement.

a firm is a human organization to accomplish something. recruiting and appeasing all stakeholders, generating cash flow sufficient to pay the bills, these are *constraints* a firm faces, not the goal or function or purpose of the firm.

the people who wanted "everything run like a business" also transformed how businesses were run, and it broke those too.

(they transformed businesses into the idiot share-price maximizers of pathetically stylized economic models, which is not how most businesses actually functioned before 1970!)

this is an administration that "reforms" imperfect but somewhat functional institutions into cargo-cultish mimics of what those institutions once were. https://www.thedailybeast.com/tim-pool-was-paid-by-russia-but-will-joins-white-house-press-pool/ ht @RunRichRun @thetnholler.bsky.social

@muzicofiel @resnikoff Arendt was writing about Nazi Germany. the legal regime may not have been precisely the same. she is also agreeing with your point, saying being asked to do something is not the same as being compelled to do it, and people have responsibility to resist.

"I was proud to reintroduce…the No Dollars for Dictators Act to ensure tax dollars aren't being funneled…to dictators, terrorists and other evil regimes." ~Florida Senator Rick Scott, from his e-mail newsletter.

I guess he really does believe in tax cuts.

@Phil you listen to the one pollster who tells you what you want to hear, and call it accurate because the election went your and its way, but really because if you narrow your view only to it, you needn’t challenge your priors.

and even that one, just two months into an administration, well within the traditional honeymoon window, only shows 45% right track as of now. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/right_direction_or_wrong_track

@louis maybe i’d say that the shitty elsewhere was too garishly advertised by adversaries and fellow travelers and Americans failed to realize and so have an opportunity to take pride in how much good we quietly, routinely did in the world.

@Phil “Wrong Track has a 33.1% lead based on 439 polls.” — Mar 29, 2025 https://elections2024.thehill.com/national/right-wrong-track/ you live in a fantasy land, like a drug addict hallucinating pleasure while his body atrophies and starves.