I keep thinking to myself - how can they possibly support this? How, by their own lights, can the right, the worshippers of national power and martial glory, wilfully destroy their own empire? It's so obviously stupid, it honestly feels like madness to me, people who have just departed all sense.

Previous generations, who witnessed the rise of early 20th century fascism, had already documented for us the fascists' inability to comprehend their strategic position and hence inevitable ineptitude. I knew this theoretically. But it has still been remarkable to witness it in real life.

Everyone involved in this "discourse" is stupid; the panicked response to it and the soapboxing is pointless, the original interview was just boring, sophomoric philosophizing, the people pretending to not understand that are pretending to be idiots, and we're all stupider for being exposed to it.

One of the worst sins in public discussions of history is the idea of "inevitability". In a sense alternate history is actually a theoretically welcome panacea to it though rarely does it actually approach its potential

junker’s capacity for jackassery knows no limitations

being attracted to your wife is woke

literally every day my wife or I go outside with our daughter people go out of their way to be friendly, offer aid or a kind word, no matter where we've traveled. it's nice to remember that hostility as default mode of interaction is not destiny, much as it benefits some to pretend it is

beginning to understand why people say this place is spiritually tumblr

I increasingly think that the political-economy/political-psychology way around people being furious about 'freeloaders' is trivial charge at point of service rather than free at point of service for universal services. like it costing $10 to go to the doctor, that kind of thing.

A couple of people are saying this explains the vibecession. It doesn't. The CTC expiration caused a 1.7 point drop in sentiment per $1000 (max benefit was $3600). The vibecession is a ~40 point drop.

downwardly mobile gentrifiers want riding the subway to be Cool, urbanists want the least cool person you know to prefer riding the subway to owning a car

We should let private equity buy up as many homes as they can because renters have a class interest towards more home construction

Nope, homeownership is everything wrong with American society, and healthy YIMBYism flourishes where more voters rent. Let large companies own homes so we can screw them together

Generational transfer of property is one of my least favorite things in the entire world. It's inherently reactionary. I also hate small businesses

This is what constitutes politics for the rest of our lives. Scams nested on scams nested on top of half trillion dollar corporations running services that serve as fronts for more scams and the trans national fascists of the entire planet.

The thing about hell is that there is a kind of relief in knowing why you are there. There is no such relief here.

Always drives me up a wall that people portray China as some champion of oppressed peoples across the world when in reality, their foreign policy consists mostly of taking the le enlightened centrist position on every international issue that doesn't directly involve them.

Luddites got their negative rep largely via American trade unionists

"There is no room for Luddites in the Socialist Party" is a great line that will break many people's brains

cannot wait for the trend of the race-science curious pundit to end

First time a woman told them ”no” seared into their minds like PTSD

this is my most strongly held political belief

unironically WPA we can just have a writers job program if we want to. one of the products of the last time we did it was the slave narratives

kinda funny how Republican voters are inarguably happier when a Dem is president. they don’t actually want to be in charge of shit, they want to roll coal and whip themselves into a frenzy over wholly imaginary liberal tyranny. now they’ve caught the car and it fuckin sucks

It’s closer than you think This is the position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on liberal democracy

One of the earliest symptoms of Empire brain is the belief that only empires have agency.

do you want "Catholicism but american" we invented that, it's called Episcopalianism and it's even more woke. all the priests are lesbians. good luck

I am all in favor of any rich asshole tax we can think of, honestly

it turns out that you can shoot and kill an idea

I wrote up my response. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2026/04/ther...

This is NUTS www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

superdole and stimmies are beyond a doubt the most progressive policies in US history. broke like a dozen hitherto ironclad taboos, which is maybe part of why everyone is so desperate to memory hole them

Trump could not be setting the stage for her more perfectly if he tried

"Let’s not think any more so much about punishing, blaming and improving! We will rarely change an individual; and if we should succeed at it, then perhaps something else succeeded inadvertently at the same time: we were changed by them!" 1/3

No shade to the OP for admitting this, but it shocks me that people my age don’t know this. You fundamentally cannot understand how the world functions, how power works, if you don’t know history.

I think it's dumb to despise people for wanting to do a job that needs to be filled

This is like the armchair generals that love Napoleon but don't realize he spent like 98% of his time (especially when he was successful) fucking with the 1800's equivalent of Excel and Access

the core tenet of white supremacy is that you must get permission of “white people” in order to enact change in society. that gets distilled down into requiring to be polite around white people no matter the circumstances. to be white and against WS one must reject polite culture entirely

i think a cool thing is that every time some right winger is revealed to have, let’s say, a non-normative sexuality, i get to hear what liberals really think about me but feel they can’t voice :)

I mean they always did do this but as this all becomes more untenable, the media will continue to promote antisemitism over principled antizionism. The "it's all Israel's fault" is coming from more and more previously committed zionist politicians—they will paint American zionism as a Jewish Problem

Have you tried putting the head off and on again

"When human cultures considered something to be necessary to remember, they did so with the most horrific sacrifices and pledges — all of this has its origin in that instinct that intuited pain to be the most powerful mnemonic aid." 1/4

I think this is true, and part of the Everything is Gender theory. We are governed by that section of the populace that believes that Father having violent tantrums until everyone else cowers, even as his life falls apart around him, was an aspirational display of power and mastery.

we had this already it was called “the entirety of fantasy, SF, and horror” (also I will reiterate for the thousandth time that MORE DUDES SHOULD READ ROMANCE, you are missing out)

Fun fact, maintaining the naval blockade through the armistice until the final peace treaty was signed was also what the Allies did to Germany after WWI, so there's real precedent for.

Everybody could become everybody else. To believe otherwise is calvinist.

Confident in my ability to properly ship, I take the strait. I smile at my opponent. Supreme Leader Khamenei does not return the gesture. He’d be prettier if he did, I think. He fires. The rocket passes cleanly through my bridge, killing me instantly

A wave of AI-generated images and video has emerged from the Iran war. But a new phenomenon is also observable, write shirin anlen and Mahsa Alimardani from WITNESS: the spread of technical-looking analyses used to discredit authentic evidence.

We didn't deserve this day.