Since when is gathering all the generals together for a partisan speech about how you hope your entire opposition disappears remotely OK?

you know what probably isn't great for military readiness? turning a blind eye to violent hazing, sexual assault and bigotry, while purging leaders on the basis of race and gender.

This is after a 2022 policy change had started to increase convictions for domestic violence by removing commanders from the process. They had started to have more real consequences for domestic violence and now Hegseth is working to reverse it. www.military.com/daily-news/i...

pete hegseth, who you will recall has been accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault, has announced a new policy by which you cannot file anonymous complaints of mistreatment. sex criminal solidarity.

The endgame for all of this is constructing a military that will obey orders when ordered to fire on citizens. That's the throughline to half of what Trump is doing.

So a Trumper with an assault rifle massacred people in a church and burned it down because he hated Mormons. But we're so used to seeing THAT, it'll be out of the news by the end of the week. No flags at half staff for the slain worshippers I guess.

the one constant in mass shootings is the prevalence of misogyny/domestic violence/hatred toward women: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

hey @nytimes.com: there is no counterpoint here. There are no credible legal experts who would EVER say that the US military has any right or authority to blow civilian craft out of the Caribbean and kill their crews from afar without any provocation. There is no other side to this question.

Service guarantees citizenship!

Doubt the Claim – Even when evidence, sources, and processes hold, the claim itself is reframed as impossible. “That could never happen.” This is denial dressed up as common sense.

Doubt the Process – Undermine the mechanisms of validation. Courts are rigged, investigations are politicised, science is captured. If the process itself is illegitimate, no conclusion can ever be trusted.

Doubt the Source – Attack the messenger instead of the message. Journalists are corrupt, experts are biased, witnesses are actors. Once the source is discredited, the content is dismissed without review.

Doubt the Evidence – Every fact can be framed as incomplete, faked, or manipulated. Or worse, reinterpreted to mean the opposite of what it shows. A bombing becomes “staged,” a victim “an actor.”

The four pillars of disordered doubt: Doubt the Evidence Doubt the Source Doubt the Process Doubt the Claim Each pillar corrodes truth validation in a different way, but together they build epistemic collapse.

Disordered doubt isn’t about healthy scepticism. It’s a systematic effort to break trust in evidence, institutions, and truth itself. It thrives by creating confusion rather than clarity.

I've written a lot about disordered discourse and counterpublics, but given recent events I want to cover a key part of disordered discourse, which I call the four pillars of disordered doubt.

this is, no exaggeration, some of the most loser shit i have ever seen in my life

In the wake of the president’s abuses of power, it won’t be enough for politicians to merely orate about restoring the rule of law. The only way to overcome that skepticism is with action. bit.ly/3W5Aw6J

I feel like this whole "Uncle Sam wants to hit YOU" arc isn't going to help recruiting.

I remind you that this man has been accused of domestic violence by the women in his life.

Right, to clear up this 'FBI hacked Telegram' narrative. Here's the snippet from the warrant that shows it's using access to the subject device and the relevant passwords to get info from the account. cc @seamushughes.bsky.social @vxundergroundre.bsky.social @zackwhittaker.com

The top achievers in the military (leaving aside their profession, these are typically highly intelligent and educated people) are being lectured by the equivalent of a fresh-from-ROTC trust fund O-1 who was detained by the MPs for drinking too much gin on leave

yeah they're just murdering random people on these boats

fun fact that while trump v. us says that the president cannot be held criminally liable for using his core powers, this does not extend to his officers

Like, a "go to prison for murders" kind of price, mayhaps??

I fully understand how difficult it is to remain focused on any one particular atrocity but this really ought to be a serious scandal and people need to pay heavy prices for this

When Trump refused to send the National Guard on Jan 6, 2021 to stop rioters who stormed the Capitol, wounded 140 officers, and tried to block the transfer of power, he set his standard. Anything LESS than those bloody insurrectionary riots won’t trigger Guard deployment. Right?

This is morally bad advice in several ways. It's also stupid practically. Imagine waiting five years to become a parent with someone you love—only to lose that possibility for some reason while you awaited the arrival of tech promising you a more-perfect child. (O. Henry could write that up nicely.)

This isn't freedom.

This is dangerous. We cannot normalize threats of political violence.

Yes, we need to be in coalitions with those we disagree with. But the “correction” many liberals make is to go further right. That’s not making space for others, it’s *becoming* them. We can bring people in while remaining firmly rooted in who you are and what you’re fighting for.

Yes, although if travel services shut down (as some of them will), the snarling anger from lots of marooned and pissed off GO/FOs will be a majestic thing to behold

Russia already has its hands full with the one invasion it can't complete, and the USSR observed Great October Revolution Day in November, not October

One thing Americans should be able to agree on - no president from *the other party* should have the powers that Trump claims www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/u... My comments to the NYT on why Republicans should worry too:

A president threatening to withhold from an American city any federal funding if that city elects someone he doesn’t like. We’ve so normalized his abusing the powers of his office. Any other president before Trump would’ve been impeached for making such a threat.

So what he’s saying is that he’s completely incompetent and incapable of governing his own state so he wants Orange Daddy to send troops. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Republicans always said they believed in individual responsibility. Until Trump. So every time Trump lies or is cruel, bigoted, or ignorant, Republicans blame the media, or “that’s just Trump being Trump,” or he was just trolling, or don’t take him literally. Trump is held to the lowest standard.

So…let me see if I have this right. The federal government is gonna shut down in 30hrs, and the party that controls the ENTIRE federal government is trying to blame the party that controls NONE of the federal government for the looming shutdown?

The reason we're rounding up grandmothers and shoving them onto concrete floors for months at a time with no habeas corpus is in part because soft human trafficking is an incredibly lucrative business for some people in this administration.

The rate of sepsis in Houston surged 63% after Texas banned abortion. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where hospital leaders empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, it rose 29%. (Published May)

Accurate

president's aren't in charge of domestic furniture policy what does he think this is the ottoman empire?

"Dems will get blamed for a shutdown" as opposed to what, all the friendly coverage and positive credit they'd get for caving yet again? This whole premise is built on a delusion about what the alternative is. There's no cowering in the corner and being so inoffensive they won't still attack you.

Even if it isn't untrue, "senior staffer" can mean a lot of things. Like, one Florida congressman's chief of staff might think this, but that doesn't mean most Democratic members are going to listen to him.

It certainly appears the United States murdered an innocent fisherman who was a husband and father to four children, claimed he was a "narco-terrorist," posted a video of the execution, and then made jokes about it

It’s almost as if the Framers, for all their fuckups, foresaw such a possibility & this rooted this power elsewhere 🤔

Always remember that Starship Troopers got TORCHED in initial reviews because no one could figure out Verhoven was making fun of fascism. Like, NPH wears a *literal* Waffen SS uniform, and people thought it was a run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick.