Hatcheting every renewable energy project you can imagine and then causing a major oil crises for no reason is some real 3-D chess. Monty Burns aside, the sun (and wind) is famously difficult to blockade.

Honestly, our Iranian adventure is a perfect parable for Trump's governance at home: build nothing and wantonly destroy everything, all the while skimming as much off the top as possible.

To make institutions work, you need people who are willing to do the right thing even when there are very real costs involved in doing so.

This is like getting your golden retriever's thoughts on thermodynamics.

At a fundamental level Trump doesn’t believe he has to sell anything to anyone. Not to Congress, not to the voters, not to other world leaders. He really believes he can do whatever he wants and fuck anyone who disagrees.

Being a Jewish person in America right now is a wild experience.

Wars: famous for never generating unintended consequences that spiral out of control.

Somewhere out there, a university president is thinking "we could achieve some really top notch brand differentiation if we just Surrendered Harder. Lets put this in the next Strategic Plan"

"Stop the Mad King" seems like pretty good Midterm campaign slogan for the Dems and one that will play well coast to coast, given the Congressional majority has shown any signs of life for the better part of a year. Mike Johnson and John Thune's families should probably perform a welfare check.

Some days I'll be in my office and think about how political system decided to shred the constitution for *this guy*, and then stare blankly out the window for 15 minutes.

The international system cannot function as designed as long as the US operates as a rogue state. Either the US gets its domestic house in order and we get some adults in charge that can try to repair the damage, or the international system will rebalance against us.

Timeline cleanse

Timeline cleanse

It’s all gallows humor from here on out bc that’s just about all we’ve got left

They told me if I voted for Kamala we’d get a war in the Middle East, and they were right!

“Look folks, we’ve got nothing to worry about. President Crimes put on his bombing trucker hat, which the HHS secretary told Us increases blood flow to the brain and gives the wearer cat like reflexes.”

Kamala Harris could be president right now and we could be dealing with actual problems but instead every major institution decided to gaslight us and convinced people this malignant criminal authoritarian would bring down prices and prevent wars.

Someday they'll be almost 40 and President Mr Beast will run Operation Sigma Mogged.

It's hard to choose any one singular existential crisis that is the actual worst of the several existential crises in this regime. That's probably bad!

Our foolproof plan of electing a big dumb criminal has hit a bit of a snag.

🧵👇🎯

CC the media in New Zealand who just keep on pretending everything is normal and platforming the people who would happily destroy them #nzpol

So very much this! Institutions that are existentially downstream of liberalism are acting like they are outside or above the system, and they are helping destroy the epistemic basis of civil society.

I re-read “Science as Vocation” the other day and really chaffed at his assertion that politics do not belong in the classroom, a space exclusively for knowledge acquisition. The Beer Hall Putsch was just 5 years later and only a few blocks from where Weber’s lecture was delivered.

This is what resistance looks like

The media and academia have an obligation to not remain neutral in the face of authoritarianism. These institutions need liberal institutions to exist in any meaningful way. Authoritarianism is an existential threat. Our devotion to "neutrality" will keep us from fighting for our own survival.

Great thread. FWIW not a single student ever found out my party affiliation until one party decided it didn't necessarily believe in democracy anymore.

I have been the same in the classroom for 20 years. Unabashedly advocating for democratic values, processes, and institutions. Only recently did that become partisan. And I'm not changing my values because one party decided to go fash.

For 15+ years in the classroom when I talk about the idea of neutrality in history I say that I'm not "objective." My bias is in favor of human freedom and dignity. I'm not on the side of Nazis. I'm not on the side of slaveowners. And I'm not the one who suddenly made those statements controversial.

The media and academia have an obligation to not remain neutral in the face of authoritarianism. These institutions need liberal institutions to exist in any meaningful way. Authoritarianism is an existential threat. Our devotion to "neutrality" will keep us from fighting for our own survival.

much like matter and anti-matter, there is charisma and JD Vance.

I think the lesson in all this is that authoritarian movements succeed because they convince people they're inevitable. The reality is authoritarianism is a hollow ideology that attracts mediocrities and doesn't fully take root in the face of stiff resistance. Fight back is the only viable strategy

🚨 Please share widely! 🚨 I'm hiring a postdoc (from Aug 1) to help build a new research program on politically sustainable immigration policies at Notre Dame. Looking for a social scientist with strong quant skills, familiarity with new computational tools, and interest in public-facing research.

If the fallout over 2020 taught us anything, people like Tuberville change their tune real quick when they are under oath where their are real legal consequences for lying. The difference between what these people will say on Newsmax versus what they will say in a court of law is night and day.

If the fallout over 2020 taught us anything, people like Tuberville change their tune real quick when they are under oath where their are real legal consequences for lying. The difference between what these people will say on Newsmax versus what they will say in a court of law is night and day.

Who needs "medicines" and "vaccines" when we have crystals and powdered rhino horn?

Accusing other people of being crazy in the middle of a three hour gaslighting rant is how you really win hearts and minds.

When Trump first got into office they had a focused plan on what they wanted to do and how they aimed to accomplish their goals. However, as the months have dragged on they exhausted their initial plan and they don't seem to have a second act, because they've been absolutely flailing lately. 1/2

When Trump first got into office they had a focused plan on what they wanted to do and how they aimed to accomplish their goals. However, as the months have dragged on they exhausted their initial plan and they don't seem to have a second act, because they've been absolutely flailing lately. 1/2

Me, with my 2k tariff rebate check in hand "I wonder which of these very real new factories I should purchase some very real products from?"

License, a very powerful word.

I should note, you do all this with the aim of getting unified government in 2028 and enacting major institutional reform that limits future authoritarian movements. As @mcopelov.bsky.social said the other day, you get to do one thing and this has to be it.

Trump won because people wanted prices to come down and he went ahead and adopted inflationary tariffs as his signature economic policy. There’s a reason why he’s alienated the independents and low engagement folks.

Special Forces and Air Strikes are 21st Century versions of colonial-era punitive missions and gun boat diplomacy. They work when the Anglo-French are dominant. They are unsuited for industrial warfare and take away human, material, financial resources; and create an illusion of superiority.

Two simultaneous things going on 1) administration trying to consolidate an authoritarian regime, and 2) the normal weight of political gravity dragging down the administration. Fight to a draw on #1 and let thermostatic politics do its work.

“The president proved once again that he is both frighteningly ignorant & thoroughly insane” may be an entirely factual sentence but it sounds sensational and biased and about any past president it would be. That’s just too much for our tepid mainstream media to overcome.

Trump's press conference yesterday was one of the most unhinged moments of his second term, but you'd never know it from reading the news headlines. The AP story, while still nodding to his norm violations, does a ton of sanewashing. It's partly why we are in this mess. apnews.com/article/supr...

Exhibit A of what @zingherpolisci.bsky.social is talking about. Here is the @nytimes.com today: Not a single word in the headlines (or in some of these articles) about how extraordinarily unhinged that press conf was. It’s not just sanewashing. It’s straight up lying to the American people.

Sanewashing. Yes that's the word I was looking for.

Trump's press conference yesterday was one of the most unhinged moments of his second term, but you'd never know it from reading the news headlines. The AP story, while still nodding to his norm violations, does a ton of sanewashing. It's partly why we are in this mess. apnews.com/article/supr...