"It's okay if the president ignores the law, because he's on my side" is the most dangeruous, ignorant, solipsistic thing any American has said, ever.

Values may be an Us problem, but we can only deal with it on a Me basis. Here's me. brokenhand.substack.com/p/seven-habi...

An American politician's belief that his personal opinion must become federal law should, all by itself, disqualify him from office.

A gentle reminder, as you think about your holiday book shopping, that my three mystery novels, my two play collections, and my AI-nightmare suspense novel are all available on Amazon. www.amazon.com/s?k=andrew+o...

No advise, no consent, no checks, no balances, no representation, no accountability. Donald Trump and his cabinet do as they please. This is the unitary executive he Republicans have been fighting for, for decades: One man is the law.

Elevate the worst of us to give permission to the rest of us to stop trying to be better. Great plan

Great piece. medium.com/@annforderer...

This is a disgusting thing for any American to day, much less a descendant of immigrants himself, much less a descendant of immigrants who were ghettoized and shunned in every country they lived in until they were allowed to assimilate here.

Teaching is unlike other adult jobs, and that makes it very difficult to change or improve. open.substack.com/pub/brokenha... #blueskyeducationpeeps

Making life intolerable for those you dislike is no sign of greatness

Always perfect.

Pete Hegseth is not the "secretary of war" just because he keeps using the term, any more than the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America or Donald Trump is a great American. Saying so don't make it so.

The reason Trump and his minions are so upset about the "illegal orders" video has nothing to do with the military code. It has to do with the authoritarian code. Your job is to obey. Not to decide to obey, not to weigh when to obey, just...to obey.

It's foolish to expect people to make plans and policies that might mitigate damage and harm, when those people have spent their entire lives creating damage and harm for their own benefit.

It's not enough that he gropes and takes and uses and squanders and dismisses; he wants us all to be grateful for it, too.

Gentle reminder from Mr. Jefferson and friends: Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.~Jiddu Krishnamurti

Me, on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/brokenha... This mockery of the idea of "strength" is not just wrong; it's increasingly dangerous. 2/2

@radiofreetom.bsky.social in The Atlantic: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202... 1/2

Knowledge is power. open.substack.com/pub/initfort...

When ignorance is allowed to wander outside without a leash in search of things to hate.

The most important thing to remember about all this fantasy-engineering of the Constitution is Madison's warning: If we suck as a people, no clever constitutional schemes will save us.

What do we really mean when we obsess about strength? brokenhand.substack.com/p/inflatable...

For us, the living. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law

Is it not time for reporters to start telling the president to go fuck himself?

Our furious and self-righteous refusal to cough up a few extra cents to make life better for our fellow citizens--or even ourselves--because that money is OURS AND HOW DARE YOU TOUCH IT--is sometimes mind-boggling to me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknM...

The 🇺🇸 American pre-Code  musical black comedy film "DUCK SOUP" directed by Leo McCarey and starring the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo in his final film appearance) was released in the U.S. #OnThisDay in 1933 🎬 Paramount Pictures

The moment King Rat starts to look weak, his sycophants and supporters all turn against him and return him to the little nobody he once was. Nothing relevant here. Just reminiscing about an old movie.

Our founders did their homework and tried to avoid having us end up with someone like Caligula, whom Seneca said, “nature produced in order to show what unlimited vice would be capable of when combined with unlimited power." But we don't learn from history--anyone else's or our own.

3. none of it registered as important; none of it said, “this is what made us different; this is hard won and easily lost; this is what must be protected.” And now, when wealth and power flex their muscles to rid themselves of the last vestiges of chains of accountability, we react with a shrug.

2. The wisdom of the founders, the deep research they did into various republics and what worked and didn’t work, the long history of trying to hold wealth and power accountable to the rule of law—a set of laws that bound all citizens equally—none of that got through.

1. We undermined civics education for multiple generations, and when we taught it at all, we taught facts and figures and processes divorced from any meaningful context, letting kids assume that this was all just business-as-usual for countries across the planet and throughout history.

Some thoughts on the road behind me. brokenhand.substack.com/p/we-make-th...

Laughing at the victim and applauding the bully won't stop the bully from targeting you next.

40 men Trump sent to CECOT tell the NYT they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted. The details are worse than you can imagine. We can’t let them get away with this. Miller and the other architects of this sadism need to go to prison. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...

From "Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely - "Descartes said, Cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?"

Carving out space for something smaller and closer than superheroes and monsters. open.substack.com/pub/brokenha...

To those who have much, so much more must be given. To those who have little, a little bit more must be taken. Lovely

Saddam 2.0

I love this, not least because the original context is almost certainly a take-down of some German professor's conjecture at Manilius 4.507.

Ken Burns on Rogan's podcast to promote "The American Revolution"; they reportedly "talked about the need for heroes." Which put me in mind of Brecht’s comment: “Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.” Also Anaïs Nin: "Those who see giants are still looking at the world through the eyes of a child."

I'm sure historians will have their own take, but as far as I'm concerned, it was the blithe acceptance of "me and him" as subjects of a sentence that signaled the beginning of the end of everything good.

What are we talking about when we talk about academic rigor? open.substack.com/pub/brokenha... #edusky

There's nothing more bewildering and paralyzing to the norms-and-rules mindset than a guy who said, "I'm just going to do things, and if you want to stop me, go ahead and try."

Stop asking what right he has. He doesn't feel bound by laws or or conventions or morals, and never has. He just does things, and he does them until somebody stops him. Stalin probably never said, "Fuck the pope; how many divisions does he have?" But I bet he thought it. And so does this guy.