You know, as bad as this is - and it's really, really bad - I'm kind of relieved that it's out in the open now, and we don't have to pretend this was headed anywhere different. The stakes are obvious and anybody choosing not to see them now is a quisling at best.

The American right has picked, or more accurately invented, enemies on the left: blue-haired baristas, “Antifa,” Soros. In the interest of equity, I’m declaring war on suburban Golf Guys, electricians with four poorly paid employees, and MAHA moms. That’s fair, I think.

There are a lot of downsides to living in a swing state, like the constant barrage of fundraising texts, but one of the real benefits is that you can’t pretend people who disagree with you politically - even in horrific ways - are idiots, rubes, or sheep. They believe what they do for real reasons.

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it? If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say? Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

Just some thoughts on doing politics with real people, whose views are idiosyncratic but no less real. I know a guy whose worldview is “gay married couples should be allowed to open carry while smoking weed in public” and another who is skeptical of vaccines but supports universal healthcare.

Oh shit thanks to @patrickwyman.bsky.social I understand this reference 😂

Any of those public figures who say the words "Western civilization" all the time now should be immediately disregarded and also has a type of porn on their laptop that cannot be legally described in any known human language.

Worked at a grocery store in the nice part of Yakima (I know). I'll never forget the absolute contempt that the wealthy customers had for the employees, and basically everyone else as well. The store's owner was a failson who had inherited the business and was doing a great job of mismanaging it.

Francis Fukuyama: ‘The neoliberals went too far. Now, we need more social democratic policies’ english.elpais.com/culture/2022...

I've been waiting for clarification from Wondery, but here's what I can say about Tides of History moving forward: -Audible will be its home -Our run of new episodes will end in April 2026, after nine years -Tides will continue to be available freely through April -I will be starting a new show!

I've been waiting for clarification from Wondery, but here's what I can say about Tides of History moving forward: -Audible will be its home -Our run of new episodes will end in April 2026, after nine years -Tides will continue to be available freely through April -I will be starting a new show!

If you spend your time beating people up, at some point, someone's going to swing back at you. That's the nature of authoritarian systems: They create their own opposition.

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

NEW SEASON of Tides of History starting soon, so stoked! Oct 9: The Ancient Economy from Assyria to Augustus Oct 16: Living and Working in Imperial Babylon Oct 23: Interview with @peterbrannen.bsky.social on his new book Oct 30: The Ancient Egyptian Economy Nov 6: Interview with Eric Cline

I missed this when it came out, but this is an interesting comparative study of where the US stands in terms of demoratic backsliding right now

The suburban millionaires who serve as, as @patrickwyman.bsky.social put it, American gentry and often are the car dealership owners, are a plague on this country. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This is basic but I'm doing a lot of economic history right now for Tides of History and the reason prosperity and growth matter is because they usually make people's lives better: having enough to eat, access to shelter, avoidance of violence and massive stress, that's what economies are for.

Taking a few Tylenol and firing up the Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel to learn about the development of a 19th-century revolver design popular only in Montenegro and adjoining Balkans countries

Rainy day movies I’ve been saving: Chinatown, Glengarry Glen Ross, Mulholland Drive, Parasite

Strongly considering buying a Kawhi Clippers jersey to express my solidarity with salary-cap circumvention

a few thoughts (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

One thing that's absolutely f---ing unbearable on this site is that if you dare to point out that Trump is not actually successfully oppressing all of us on every conceivable front, that not *all* is irretrievably lost, a parade of doomers materializes to denounce you. It's counterproductive. Stop.

This image came to me and now you’re all stuck with it too: an influencer talking about the hot new Toyota/Browning collab and all the sick features of the M2 in the Hilux

ME: wanna hear a joke BSKY REPLY PERSON: a what

Something the man @mikeduncan.bsky.social will tell you at great and entertaining length is how long it takes for revolts to get off the ground, how often they fail, and how hard it is to predict exactly when they’ll pop off. Slowly and then all at once is a good rule.

ah, well

I'm going to start demanding that everyone refer to me as a "gravity skeptic" instead of "a fucking idiot who refuses to believe he'll fall when he jumps out of a plane"

I think there's a legitimate argument that the Columbian Exchange was a necessary precursor to the Industrial Revolution because before then the stimulants available to Europe were pretty mid

The gap between what the right thinks happens on college campuses and what actually happens is absurd. I had some great students and some awful ones; we talked about some difficult topics, from sexual violence to capitalism to exploitation; it was fine. Nobody lost their shit, because we're adults.

Any morning flight out of Las Vegas fits this bill, but I once flew Spirit there and back from LA and it was the lowest level of hell.

The times are incredibly precedented, it’s just that they have typically preceded even worse times

If you're ever worried that your work is too niche, just know that I read all the book reviews on the medieval history listserv, and today saw one about crusader rhetoric contained within inscriptions on Baltic baptismal fonts. Get on with your bad selves out there.

Use of the word "evil" in official congressional e-newsletters, over time, by party

idk if you've seen this south korean editorial that ran a few days ago. google translate version scorched my eyebrows www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion...

Paging @patrickwyman.bsky.social

Warhammer is harm reduction

Following up on this from yesterday: If you'd be interested in a history podcast for kids (7-14ish?) for your kids/family/students, or know people who would be into it, just shoot a little reply here! Trying to gauge interest.

I can only really speak to how I'm teaching my own kids, and that's to follow their curiosity where it leads. My kids ask me one question before bed every night about any topic they want; if I know about it, I tell a story and we discuss, and if not, we talk about how we'd find the answer.

I did a bunch of work on civil conflict over the past couple of years and one of the long-term predictors of violence is the combination of availability of weapons and high social friction. You're armed, you see someone you don't like, and the chances of somebody getting killed are high.

During the Spanish Civil War it was common for people to use the war as a convenient excuse to permanently settle grievances or just straight up steal their neighbor's property. Same in Afghanistan. An environment in which someone informs on you because they covet your wife or truck...very very bad

We cannot move forward or escape this nightmare until mainstream figures finally admit that there are many, many people on the right - including some of its most powerful voices - who are openly seeking violence and tyranny and exploit every situation to move it closer.

Remembering MN house speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their beloved dog Gilbert. Murdered in June at their home by a rightwing Trump-voting evangelist, who also shot another MN lawmaker and his wife at THEIR home, 9 and 8 times, respectively (miraculously, they survived).

People don't understand that civil conflict looks like your neighbors dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night and executing you in your living room simply because they're suspicious you might be a political enemy, and it really shows sometimes.

The big reason I'm trying to hammer "civil conflict/political violence" here is because I've spent a substantial chunk of the last five years looking at mass graves. I want a society where people aren't plotting to kill their neighbors and throw them into one. That's where all this can lead.

I’ve gotten some good responses to this, mostly along the lines of: what the fuck has been happening in the last few decades, if not political violence? And that’s a totally fair point. At no point did I say that we’ve been absent violence or that we were peaceful during that time.

The problem with stopping escalatory violence is that it requires political factions to see the other side as not an enemy. You can't only find violence targeted at yourself as abhorrent. Which is difficult to square with months of cheerleading for deploying the military to Democratic-run cities.

My best friend's dad is Argentinian. He fled the country because most of his close friends were disappeared, and he still has terrible PTSD and survivor's guilt today. Ask someone who grew up during the Years of Lead whether that was fun. That's where civil conflict gets you.

No, I don't want my kids to grow up in a country where bombings, assassinations, beatings, and all of that are part of the expected course of social and political life. You can feel however you want about the guy, but you have to be a truly spectacular dumbass to not see how this leads to bad places

It's worth mourning the end of a 40ish-year-long broad American consensus that political violence is a bad thing, one that leads to lots of innocent people getting hurt and killed. We've been watching that consensus erode consistently since 2016 at the latest and now it's fully gone.