Not only has the United States of America abandoned its moral role in confronting evil around the world, Donald Trump's derangement and depravity are swiftly making us the principal planetary force promoting evil.

- become leader of a declining superpower - promise major changes - dumb policies make the economy worse - allies start to leave the empire - be donald trump - pic unrelated

Everyone teaching IR and American right now

On this MLK Day, one particular passage from his address at the March on Washington seems especially relevant.

this is real, from the bbc news website www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx...

Neither America nor the rest of the world is prepared for how the dismantling of Pax Americana by Trump will eventually impact American soft power in culture and entertainment. A lot of things will change.

It is incredibly frustrating that all I can do is scream at my two perfectly useless senators while these MAGA fools go out of their way to inaugurate a truly chaotic multipolar era that has a decent chance of killing all of our children. It's just madness. Absolute madness.

He gave the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech the night before he was killed not because he had some premonition or vision but because but because people had been threatening, and trying, to kill him for more than a decade… but he kept at it. There are people right now making the same choice.

He was a member of the Southern Black aristocracy of the time. He had a guaranteed path to relative ease and wealth. Instead, he chose again and again to put his own life and his family at risk for a cause, a risk he understood all too well.

Today is yet another opportunity to urge you to read Jonathan Eig’s Pulitzer-winning “King: A Life.” It is a corrective to the idea of him as an icon or symbol. He was a gifted young (!) man who had to choose, again and again, not to give up when doing so would have been easy and rewarding…

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

Fundamentally the lesson American voters took from Trump I and Stop the Steal is that Worse Things Aren't Possible imo

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Fred is a great American with an extremely impressive resume that reflects a genuine lifelong commitment to serving others and he's running in a very flippable district. Lovely to see that he's running.

His remains a strong contender for Most Punchable Face in American Politics, and this kind of spineless bootlicking for the destruction of NATO and American global influence makes it more so. But sadly for him, I still think he's beat out by the likes of Miller, Vance, and Kushner.

There are not two kinds of citizens, 'naturalized' and 'born' or 'heritage' or whatever bigoted nonsense they have. There is one kind of citizen: citizen. That's it. We're one group. You wrongly arrested a citizen. You fuckwits.

Of course, because DHS is now staffed by neo-Nazi bigots, they assume that by noting that the fellow spoke Spanish and is merely a 'naturalized' citizen, people will be like, "oh, yeah, that's a person it is OK to terrorize" but, uh, no, in fact. Most people do not think that's OK.

Nuanced take: I think it's really important to give *normal citizens* who supported Trump and off-ramp and *professional writers, pundits and politicians* who supported Trump should have to wear it like a scarlet letter for the rest of their lives

The resistlibs called exactly one shot - 'this Trump fellow looks like a fascist' - and they were right. But I guess admitting the mistake means admitting you replayed exactly the same mistake as KPD did in the 30s, despite knowing that could happen, so I guess they've gotta lie instead.

LOL at characterization that this is like calling a home run for every at bat, as opposed to the liberals correctly identifying *this one guy* as the fascist. Not Babe Ruth calling a homer for every at-bat, but someone looking at the bullpen and saying, "Babe Ruth, that's the guy to worry about."

which is why if you're a specific kind of person who can't engage in self-criticism and who views the possibility of someone else making an intelligible, valid point critical of you as a danger to your self concept and social standing, you'd harass someone who was visibly putting the work in

Moar

Breaking | Syria The Syrian Ministry of Defense announces a nationwide ceasefire and the complete suspension of military operations on all fronts, in accordance with the agreement between the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Damn bro, that’s crazy, can we get another ten articles about the scary Azoz regiment dombing Bombass though? I’m concerned about the far-right in Ukraine

Ukrainian resilience is not exceptional, this narrative only creates the illusion that we can withstand anything. In reality, we are just normal people caught in an awful situation, who needs help, not a pat on the shoulder.

We are no more resilient than any other nation. You cannot expect us to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders while being bombed and burying our friends, only to pat us on the back for how well we take the hit. ​

The narrative of exceptional Ukrainian resilience is one of the most harmful tropes I’ve seen during this war. ​Yes, we refuse to give up. Yes, we have picnics in -15°C. Yes, we keep living, drinking coffee, and even laughing occasionally, but all of this stems from a lack of choice.

Yes. Do you know how many families are being supported by their neighbors right now? Families afraid to leave home being fed by their neighborhoods; immigrant communities feeding the old hippies standing on their street corners with whistles in 10-degree snowstorms. They cannot break us

Any DoJ attorney who participates in this investigation should suffer professional and social shunning that makes it effectively impossible to continue to work as an attorney.

On the other hand if we see MN employers who SUPPORTED their employees, protected them from ICE, and defied the loathsome administration’s authoritarian efforts to get them fired, I would find a way to support those businesses. I would order one-day delivery of your hot dish RIGHT INTO MAH BELLY.

The actual story is that a family of American citizens trying to evacuate from a neighborhood that ICE had made unsafe, and then ICE tossed munitions into the car, causing three kids to be hospitalized and a six month old to stop breathing. DHS called the family “radical agitators”

The 6-month-old that DHS is tweeting about here lived in the neighborhood and the baby’s father was just trying to evacuate his family after federal agents had shot someone.

Unprecedented presidency-ending corruption for anyone from Truman to Obama.

"ICE operates under authorities granted and defined by Congress. It uses funds appropriated by Congress. So it’s Democrats in Congress who need to do their best to stop it. Which does not mean going on to approve government funding as usual." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

i’ll say it again, jennings is a contemptible liar and it is a disgrace that CNN puts him on television every night to spread bullshit

At one point today, there were 283 Minnesota attorneys doing a training on how to file emergency habeas petitions to keep our neighbors from being shipped out of state and held indefinitely. That would be the second largest law firm in the state. And that training was just put together this week.

I think there are still a few other options left in between "give up its joever" and "turn the entire country into sadr city" bsky.app/profile/laur...

Checking in on the GOP Overton Window: ⬇️ bsky.app/profile/drea...

Whether it’s Democratic megadonor Jeffrey Katzenberg distributing Dreamworks Animation films or Republican megadonor Elon Musk distributing child pornography on X, both parties’ donors have distributed content linked to children.

Among the Jan 6 rioters who have been hired by Kristi Noem and appointed as ICE officers is Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and violent assault, who led and directed attacks on police officers.

/7 Doing so is not inconceivable because we did it 23 years ago when we perceived the existing entities didn’t work. Being brutal and lawless to Americans is as much of a problem, if not more, than failing to protect Americans. ICE is infested with lawless bigoted anti-Americanism.

/6 ICE is a monument to totalitarianism, lawlessness, and bigotry. It should be ripped out and woodchippered root and branch and replaced with something focused on the concept that you can’t defend the rule of law by burning it down.

/4 That’s because, in part, catastrophic events had completely deprived existing structures of credibility, rightly or wrongly. Of course, that’s because of evil being done to us by outsiders, not because of evil we were doing to each other; perhaps that’s different.

/5 But it’s true that sometimes entities and agencies are irretrievable because their culture is so enmeshed in complacency or infighting or incompetence. Or, I argue, in bigotry and contempt for the rule of law and thuggish entitlement.

/3 Nobody had patience in 2003 for the concept “maybe we should reform existing entities rather than dramatically eliminating and reorganizing and renaming.” Nobody had patience for the “sensible reform, modest oversight” message some are now pushing over “abolish ICE.”

/2 We created ICE in a flurry of post-9/11 enthusiasm for muscular terminology and reorganization, as part of creating the Department of Homeland Security. Recall being sneered at by conservative and centrist bien-pensants if you thought “Homeland Security” was ominous?

Let’s talk about abolishing ICE. Very few people who say “abolish ICE” mean “abandon all immigration enforcement.” Rather, they mean “the structure of immigration enforcement is irretrievably broken and needs to be reorganized, just like we did 23 years ago when we created ICE.” /1

The Hmong are here because they fought for the US in a war we lost.

A great deal of what ails us is exactly this. This undergirds a lot of the "lol nothing matters" cynicism among Gen Zs & the heads in the sand among all age groups. If people recognized reality, they might have to do something about it. Though to be clear a lot of it is also down to elite cowardice.

if people hadn’t treated trump like a little kid who gets to play with his toys before jan 6, they could have avoided the spectacle of troops sleeping in government buildings and an informal junta taking over the presidency until jan 21