Counterpoint: The story of the Trump era is in part a story of the collapse of any idea of public civic virtue, and the left needs to respond by reclaiming the language of character and morality. For many, this moral language is going to come from religion, and we need to be comfortable with that.

So dangerous. It's one thing for these people to try to harm or kill their own children, but it's really another for them to insist that they be allowed to harm or kill our kids, too.

What happened in November 2024 was one of the great acts of collective stupidity in American history—and the almost hourly reminders of just how catastrophic it was make me wonder if there’s anything that can even be “recovered” (whatever that may mean) or if America is just permanently fucked.

A lot of parents, too! Summed up by this sketch. youtu.be/-wQhY5CMMl4?...

I genuinely do not have strong feelings about Will Stancil except I am now strongly negatively polarized against his most vociferous haters

this one hit too close to home

He’s just describing The American Dream but you’re supposed to hate it for some reason

the people at the top have been exposed. now we watch as the whole system comes crumbling down. i said, now we watch as the whole system comes crumbling down *kicks system* stupid system. start crumbling

I’m just so impressed with Minnesota. Both how sustained their pushback has been and the fact that they’re doing all this in arctic cold. Setting a high bar for the rest of us.

Huh, to me it feels like 7 maybe even 8.

It's terrific and prescient in so many ways, particularly the parts of the book centering on addiction. Even the more ridiculous stuff, e.g. renaming years with corporate sponsors, feels increasingly less ridiculous.

This is an absurd thing to say when Renee Good and Alex Pretti would be alive right now if Harris had won

The inability to celebrate any win unless it's a complete and total victory is bad tactics imo and found in a lot of left-y spaces (particularly in climate change advocacy). It's very hard to rally people to a cause if it feels sisyphean. You * need* these little wins/success stories to point to.

I'm generally very happy as a NYC public school parent, but the way they handle snow days—i.e. "remote learning" days no one can access because the site is so throttled—is absurd. They simply need to build at least a day of wiggle room into the calendar, even if it means losing a holiday day off.

When you've lost Middle America

Dems should introduce legislation now defunding ICE and CBP operations in Minnesota, so they have to leave the state. One sentence bill. Demand an immediate vote. Maybe refuse to vote for cloture on any funding bills (or other bills) until a vote. Make the GOP Congress break w/ Trump or own it all.

say something worth saying or don’t waste everyone’s time. tired of these mealymouthed sound bites that don’t feel like anything more than plausible deniability that lets you pretend you were part of the fight in the (hopeful) future

It’s maybe an obvious thing to say to people on here, but this is EXACTLY the kind of argument that might give your right-leaning, not-online uncle pause ⤵️

Clarissa explains it all to the DHS Instagram account

If anyone expects anything to change at this point, it’s not going to happen without changes across the board and that includes Chuck Schumer. We have real Democrats in the Senate. They have the power to change leadership at any time, and that needs to happen immediately.

I really thought Covid would be the defining issue or our time—until half the country thought it would be a good idea to reelect the person that led an attempted coup of the US Govt, leading to a seemingly unending series of Kent State-level catastrophes with no end in sight.

I absolutely believe 7th grade civics-class ideas about America as a nation of immigrants and free people

Democratic leadership is terrified of being seen on the side of the people of Minneapolis, least they lose the potential future support of pro-cop people whose support they do not and never will have.

There is no breaking point. They’ve been talking about [x] a breaking point for ten years an it’s never happened. The only people that broke are the ones with genuine principles, e.g. Kristol, and they did so years ago.

I do not understand why every Democrat isn’t hammering away at the clear mental decline of the president. He couldn’t even get right the name of the country he’s trying to seize today on the biggest stage in the world. Everyone else is talking about it. Why isn’t the US?

It would take a Clockwork Orange style set-up to get me to watch this.

I'm not saying the rest of the country is heaven-on-earth, but this is definitely the time of year when I feel a bit dumb for living in a location that gets this cold. www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026...

For your Consideration, Best Supporting Actor (One Battle After Another, 2025)

Reporting on Homeland Security’s seige of Minneapolis. “No one…is even really bothering with the pretext that they’re here to make the city safer. This is Donald Trump’s revenge campaign, and they’re the foot soldiers.” [theverge.com]

The 25th Amendment must be invoked by the cabinet. I’m all for pressuring them. Congressional Dems should lead the charge. Not on Bluesky or Threads. Let’s do it.

The NBC audio messed up and Mevis sounded like Boomhauer for a little bit.

Wanna write a book? This book will help. With practical information, real advice, and frequent jokes, WRITE THROUGH IT will hold your hand from editing, query, publishing and more. bookshop.org/p/books/writ...

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”

Not even Veep would have done something this embarrassing.

Schumer is an anti-Churchill: the absolute worst man for this time in history.

The complicated reality is there are 3 things happening simultaneously: -Trump preternaturally understands the ebb and flow of the media and does perform for it -His inner circle is in a mad dash to turn the US into a fascist ethnostate -Like all authoritarian regimes, they're grossly incompetent

ICE is now behaving in such a way that even Tucker Carlson’s favorite Holocaust minimizing, Hitler-apologist “historian” is like “hey now guys, this is getting a little out of hand.”

The 49ers got their current name in 2017 as a cross-promotion for BLADE RUNNER 2049. Before that, they were known as the San Francisco Gold Rush, The San Francisco Streetcars, the San Francisco Californians, and - for a single season in 1978 - the San Francisco Treat.

The message from the White House this morning is that, once again, it falls on ordinary American citizens to remain calm and professional when dealing with the heavily armed agents of the government because they are very emotional and might fly off into a murderous rage at the slightest insult.

RIP Bobby 💔

We’re not quite there because of the patina of legitimacy around Musk by way of his wealth, the Isaacson bio etc but we’re fast approaching the Kanye West Zone where it’s universally understood by everyone that everything he says are the ravings of a person who has lost their mind.

perfect, Louvre this thing now

This puts me out of step with a lot of BlueSky, but I don’t personally need “…and that is bad” appended to every newspaper headline.

I want to read a full interview of just Stevie Nicks describing her song titles.

Superstition xkcd.com/3191/

Out: “Why I’m leaving New York” In: “New York is a totally solid 6.5”

Great stuff from Ganz, who I find v helpful when I need a little intellectual/historical grounding for the current moment: open.substack.com/pub/johnganz...