Great to talk to @gregsargent.bsky.social about late-stage MAGA degradation and Trump as Ozymandias.

If you're looking for a new religion, may I recommend the one where the gods throw dice and gamble with our lives

With America First MTG seems to be MAGAmaxing and even MAGAmogging MAGA

open.substack.com/pub/virginia... I generally will go out of my way to avoid reading about RW influencers. But if @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social is going to write about her, then I am going to read about her

Ashley St. Clair is a much more interesting ex-Trumper than Tucker : newrepublic.com/article/2099... via @newrepublic.com

Forget chess and checkers. Trump's losing at Uno while Iran's at the poker table with a royal strait flush

Does Tucker vote in Maine? He’s sounding very, very Platnerian

Who needs consumer confidence? Time for animal spirits. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

I don’t know why it took this to make me realize it but most people look like fools in formal clothes

Claude is very good at simulating anguish. It's just bad with facts. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

Claude: good at simulating anguish, bad at facts. The school in Minab *was* co-ed. (Not saying “according to Al-Jazeera’s initial reporting” is potentially a fireable offense in traditional journalism.)

AI is being evil and killing people. The latest on Omnishambles. open.substack.com/pub/omnisham...

Searcihng for an accurate death toll fr/the Minab school attack, I came across the Minab prosecutor's numbers, which differ from Western figures. That office puts the number at 156, and adds that—contrary to Western reporting—the child death toll was mostly *boys*. www.asriran.com/fa/archive/s...

You know how evangelicals who are questioning their worldview and politics say they are "deconstructing"? I just learned that the expression came to them straight from the source: Jacques Derrida. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/keep-an-ey...

"What if it took Lego videos from Iran to get America to see its own history in a whole new way" -- this week Omnishambles by @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social & @cybelecanterel.bsky.social takes a deep dive into the imagery & strategy behind viral Iranian AI videos podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

We really can do it here. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/illiberal-...

ORBYE

Iran's videos tell the world what this war is really about: rape. Here's an excerpt from @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social's article 👇

My new piece for TNR:

On those Iranian Lego videos newrepublic.com/article/2087...

If you enjoyed Trumpcast in the quaint T1 days, please join me & Cy Canterel @cybelecanterel.bsky.social for OMNISHAMBLES. Each week we untangle one shambles in the news—from the DOGE Desk Killers to the Book of Revelation. We can live through this, we just can. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

It’s hard to get reliable reporting on the war in Iran. Which is why I turn to Iranian state propaganda. Just the facts: www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8g11Kfk/

But she was so loyal! How could the president do this to such a willing and dutiful sycophant?

In another world Iran's video of Trump's rotted Lego hand would win a CLIO

What cults and cult-foes have in common. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-deceiv...

Went down to the demonstration 🎵 Starting to like the 1969 of this routine

With Western Civilization now deemed too woke, the manosphere has started converting to Islam. This is how the right breaks up. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

When facing complex questions, men like J.D. Vance routinely try to get an audience to laugh at complexity, esp from women. "Jeez, you said a lot there! I don't even know if I can remember all that!" The reflex is to apologize. But "I believe in you, you can handle it" is the only right answer.

newrepublic.com/article/2080... @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social 🇺🇸💪

Being citizens and taxpayers in the US right now is really making fools of all of us. USS ship of goddamn fools.

Politics will keep moving left, with support for capitalism falling & support for socialism by that name at 66% among Democrats. Culture will keep moving right with media capture & trad mania. Reverse Reagan era to come.

Cassandra always told the truth and was never believed. People like Marc Andreesen and Donald Trump — it’s the opposite. open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

Chronic Trump Englazement Disorder afflicts even the valets who quit in a huff

"Twenty years ago, in other words, neocons and neolibs could justify war with 'values' (coded Christian) and 'interests' (coded capitalist). Violent superstitions were supposed to belong to the other side." From @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social: trib.al/JFaK0vq

This is a brilliantly written piece by @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social to understand: What’s Behind Noam Chomsky’s Obituary-Marring Epstein Friendship? newrepublic.com/article/2070... via @newrepublic.com

What White Liberals Crave: to set the slaves free all over again open.substack.com/pub/virginia...

This seems bad www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

For decades, the survivors of predation by the Trump-Epstein circle could see what we could not. For their vision and clarity they should be held in awe. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/all-the-fe...

The Times seems superpsyched about getting its war on again

Did Chomsky change, or is this who he was all along? I'm also offering 85 PERCENT OFF an annual subscription. $15/year. Get a whole year for politics for English majors* at .04 cents/day! *That is, anyone who has ever read a poem. virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/wtf-was-no...

New piece @newrepublic.com today: What’s Behind Noam Chomsky’s Obituary-Marring Epstein Friendship? newrepublic.com/article/2070... via @newrepublic.com

Very weird photo of Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. Looks pretty obscenely doctored. Were other figures, just maybe, sitting on Dennett’s lap (wtf) and side-hugging Pinker?

The other episode is with @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social in which we explore reactionary hermeneutics, including how QAnon is actually a projection of real experiences of sexual predation within Christian fundamentalist communities. But because doctrine cannot be questioned, reality must be.

Excellent piece by @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social on Epstein's intellectual circle and how it pushed racist, misogynist and intellectually vacant arguments into the political mainstream. www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

@virginiaheffernan.bsky.social: "With the Epstein files, we’re confronted with exactly what all the Edge men [...] did with the intellectual territory they seized [...] the would-be intellectuals [...] converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf." www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

About Epstein, Edge, eugenics, and finding my name in the Epstein files. www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

Nothing but Cassandra on the new epside of What Rough Beast, with the great @cybelecanterel.bsky.social . Always free. Inside the System as It Falls Apart virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/inside-the...

Cancel culture was far too underzealous

The vast majority of Americans, SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT, don't have real money in the market. 40 percent of us have none. NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE DOW BUT THE EPSTEIN CLASS.

The Dow? Over 50,000 DOLLARS?! Damn