I'm not qualified to speak for anyone but myself. But before you accuse the woman of lying because she didn't leave immediately, remember: your understanding of trauma =! anyone else's understanding/ ability to process trauma. Power especially has a weird way of messing with you.

This is why you should never, ever stan a politician. Also: there are a lot of disturbing replies challenging the integrity of the woman who has come forward, and I really want to urge all of you to remember: People you love, who have been in similar situations, can see your replies.

I think we have to face up to the fact that no healthy country re-elects a man like Trump And that problem goes beyond the people who cast a vote for him bsky.app/profile/asel...

It’s been a dark week. Our president is mentally and morally deranged. But the truth is we put him there. In this moment, Americans need to face hard truths. And that’s what Jimmy Carter tried to offer back in 1979. Maybe this time, we’ll listen. My latest: www.liberalcurrents.com/after-a-dark...

Carter was an absolute gem!

We didn’t plan it this way, but we planted this young maple tree right outside the window of our nursery/what will remain our daughter’s room. I love that they’ll grow together.

“We have become a morally insane, civically disordered, and self-regardingly decadent country.”

We’re rocking cardigans for clout.

Getting out our Startagin' Cardigans.

Nothing relieves status anxiety as surely as giving the nuclear codes to a lounge lizard with a bad temper.

While we’re talking about Carter, he was also much cooler than people realize www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfFF...

This is a great read

‘men aged 18 to 29 who agreed with the statement “I do not feel financially stable”—that is, men experiencing acute economic anxiety—favored Harris by 10 points. Meanwhile, those who agreed with the statement “society looks down on men who are masculine” leaned +32 for Trump’

This is a huge issue in local politics too tbh

Exactly the 🍊🤡 isn't the problem with our society he is a symptom of our society 🪞

Cormac McCarthy's NO HEALTHY COUNTRY WITH OLD PRESIDENTS? Seriously, while I disagree with him sometimes, this thread proves that Alan Elrod is a solid and fair-minded thinker.

You don't have to go full Nate Silver false precision, but it's a basic skill to be able to think in probabilistic terms about how something can be likely but not certain, or unlikely but not impossible. A decent chunk of dumb dogpiles often involve getting irrationally angry at such an observation.

He's referring to his @liberalcurrents.com Carter retrospective We need to start wrapping our heads around ourselves the way Carter did in his Malaise Speech. And thinking about what a presidency and reform will be in '29. A redux of Biden, Obama, or Clinton it can't be. That would be a disaster

We’re Plainsmogging the kleptocrats. We’re solarmaxxing

I'm pro-Crisis of Confidence Speech, turning down the thermostat, putting solar panels on the White House and wearing cardigans, but wish Carter had been a little less stubborn, less vocally Evangelical, and way less de-regulatory.

Plainsmogging

Today, we're Cartermaxxing. We're peanut pilled.

Thinking about Alan's recent writing about embracing cringe.

Some light reading I recommend to help understand how it all works.

Today, we're Cartermaxxing. We're peanut pilled.

This is what all those "I won't sully myself by voting for the lesser evil" dipshits are unable to understand. You're already responsible for it no matter how pure you solipsisticly try and keep yourself.

Decades' worth of social science research--even in some branches of economics (cf. the work of Robert H. Frank, now emeritus at Cornell)--suggest that "economic anxiety" IS a component of status anxiety in the sense that, above subsistence level, people strive for $ *because* it buys them status.

One of Frank's key arguments, which he backs up with data from as far afield as primate studies and neuroscience, is that people (& primates) will work MUCH harder for status ("positional goods" like a corner office, employee-of-the-month plaque, superyacht, trophy wife) than they will for mere $.

yes-- the depopulation/impoverishment of the rurals is real and widespread across virtually all the industrialized democracies. hardly the only cause of right populism, but a huge driver

Excellent thread.

To clarify, though, I do see economic anxiety as sometimes a component of status anxiety. But it's not the whole picture, and it frequently is about marginal differences rather than subsistence.

"If we can improve our facility with large numbers, we can be more confident and thus effective in speaking about the worthiness of public investments." www.liberalcurrents.com/how-to-divid...

did a one-time amnesty & removed all my blocks

This strikes me as really astute. You know who else really got this? Peter Maurin.

Liberals usually avoid moral judgments. We are supposed believe in the inherent goodness of the American people. We are supposed to believe that if voters had good choices, they would make the right one. That’s all propaganda. Alan is there with real talk.

I feel this in the depths of my soul.

Not just isolated from their neighbors but the world. So many folks I know don't even know the broad strokes of Iran conflict, ICE, Trump corruption. Captive to endless microstories on their phone-trough selected by corporate algos like Mildred in Fahrenheit 451 desperate for another video wall

Carter was given insurmountable problems, and showed insight and grace. Unlike Trump, he had genuine accomplishments. He embodied the best of America. And he was right.

When will the nanny state of Winnipeg be overthrown?

"At some level you cannot have a functioning democracy where both parties presuppose an electorate of selfish, ignorant louts and compete to offer them the best array of goodies, which is more or less what 'focus on kitchen table issues' means. You have to activate some kind of civic impulse."

"Even as Americans grow, for the second time, disillusioned with a Trump presidency, we have put drapes over all the mirrors." 🔥

This is the @radiofreetom.bsky.social you own a boat story

When I say this, what I’m trying to get at is that breakdown in democratic society is about a lot more than voting. I don’t think any of us can escape some responsibility for a country where 50% say they feel isolated and 74% say they barely know their neighbors.

I believe a part of this is an inability to accept and live within reality, and opting instead to exist in a fantasy where there's no gray and everything can be fixed with one simple trick. Deport immigrants and we'll all have great jobs and resources. Tax billionaires and we can fund everything.

Agree🤦💔🇨🇦

T W I C E

I found this thread interesting, worth some time.

I guess this was the Biden gamble. But taking that gamble was another sign of deep cancer in the USA. Post coup, Trumpofascism was a natsec problem. The public should never have had the option to re-elect him. But the prospect of elite accountability was so horrifying that anything else was better