Christopher Robichaud

18 months of bad press and Trump helps to rehabilitate us in the span of a week. Mr. Art of the Deal!

I’m locked out of my FB account because of a two -step authentication process that went amiss. I could spend a lot of energy trying to recover it, or…take it as a sign and just walk away. Leave it as is for posterity. Whatevs. But be free of it. I’m leaning towards freedom.

‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’
‘Do it again, Neil.’
‘But I’ve already said it 83 times.’
‘Do it again, Neil.’
- Kubrick filming the moon landing

Mood

Sorry not sorry.

Trump is buying a Tesla, which means owning one will soon become right-coded rather than left coded. Who knew that all it would take to get the right to become more environmentally conscious in their purchases was to have a clown president throw his weight behind a Nazi sympathizer?

Sins of the Father The United States is joining the ranks of patrimonial states. It’s nothing short of a revolution.

On Trumpian patrimonialism:

Jonathan Rauch: @jonrauch.bsky.social

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Stephen Hanson and Jeff Kopstein @jeffkopstein.bsky.social :

www.persuasion.community/p/sins-of-th...

Mood.

Mood.

MEUSER: You've got Trudeau saying how the president is making a dumb move. That's bad diplomacy.

SANCHEZ: I'm not sure how it's good diplomacy to say that a neighboring country should be the 51st state and that you're gonna impose economic hardship to achieve that goal.

Don’t tell me democracy is at risk and a constitutional crisis is unfolding and the best you got is a modified ping pong paddle.

Mood.

What can I do to fight this coup? If you look, there are people resisting at every level. Blockades of freeways. American Bar Association urging an end to...

Lots of folks are asking what they can do to be helpful in this moment. I like the short list of action items that @choosedemocracy.bsky.social lists on their site. Democratic civil society is about being stronger together. Any effective strategy flows from that. choosedemocracy.us/what-can-i-do/

Hegseth is no longer recruiting for an American military. He's recruiting for Trump's military. The former swears allegiance to the Constitution. The latter to Trump. It's that military that will be unleashed on us civilians, when the time is deemed right.

Hi Bluesky! Glad to be here.

Opinion | To Obey Trump or Not to Obey The voluntarily surrender of the public’s power is how autocracies are built.

“All I know is that it was, apparently, possible to maintain a sense of facts and values — not only not to obey in advance but not to obey at all. If that was possible in the Soviet Union half a century ago, then it is certainly possible in the United States today.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/o...

Always grateful for the fact that I get to be on the planet at the same time as @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social. Take a look at her new newsletter, with today’s column featuring an interview with yours truly.

Coalitions are everywhere Introduction to the psychology and game theory of coalitions

Coalitional psychology and game theory are rarely discussed together. In this post, I combine an introduction to both topics for anyone interested in understanding how we navigate the complex web of social interactions.
www.optimallyirrational.com/p/coalitions...

Why elections have surprised us in recent years On the instability of political coalitions

Perhaps we should not be so surprised by the recent electoral results in many Western democracies. A key insight from game theory is that political coalitions may be less stable in the long term than we often assume.
👇

With Trump taking over the Kennedy Center, I hear his first effort will be a remake of Triumph of the Will, directed by Elon Musk.

Victoria is really excited to jump into this Daredevil run. I am too.

YES! Chuck, where do you live? Can you call your Senator?

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.

Musk and his allies are ransacking the federal treasury, gaining access to closely guarded payment systems that disburse trillions of dollars and hold massive amounts of incredibly sensitive information—including Social Security numbers. Just a terrifying development. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02...

The Democrats are by their nature institutionalists. At least these days. They’ve long forgotten how to be rascals and rogues, how to gum up the system, how to start with an emphatic NO and stay there for a good long while.

They need to relearn this. Fast.

After teaching ethics to master's students in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School for the better part of twenty years, this is the first year that my core ethics course will have students reading a comic book--the first twelve issues of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther run.

DEI killed the dinosaurs, invented cancer, and is the reason for each and every problem in your life, past, present and future.

Trump blames DEI for the plane crash, which is fucking insane. Might as well tell us to go inject bleach. A fraud and a fool.

Dems can:

-oppose all Trump nominees until this EO is withdrawn
-deny unanimous consent to slow senate proceedings
-vote no on all cloture
-force quorum calls at every chance

It’s a constitutional crisis. There is absolutely no reason the Senate should be connecting business as usual.