Kevin Elliott

Alan Moore is 72 years old now. Since the 1980s, he's been celebrated as the greatest writer in comics history. But he's done with all that. Full-time novelist now. Finally. Spends his days at home just writing, reading, and smoking "frightening," "staggering," "saturating" amounts of weed. "I use it to work," as he told Alex Musson. "Always have done." Except these days he does it without the weekly deadlines, the phone always ringing, questions and chitchat with illustrators, coauthors, publishers, press - none of it. Life of a novelist now. Solitude.

It seems impossible that Alan Moore actually exists but I am thankful that he does—and for this incredible piece, which, this is the opening www.metropolitanreview.org/p/giant-of-t...

It's the same dynamic!

Lol, no.

You call out racism and create a national identity narrative that includes immigrants & marginalizes the racists

Lol

December 18, 2025 Holiday Issue Table of Contents

Our Holiday Issue is now online, with Frances Wilson on Patricia Lockwood, @luxante.bsky.social on Joe Brainard’s comics, Susan Tallman on plundering museums, @paisleycurrah.com on the attack on trans rights, @agordonreed.bsky.social on Thomas Jefferson and liberty, and much more.

Right! If you understand politics as a matter of policy or compromise, you're going to misunderstand what's happening here & bring the wrong lens & sort of tools to bear—i.e. policy can't solve it; compromise is unavailable. You're in friend-enemy politics, & must reconstruct an inclusive demos

An incredible -and long overdue- pivot is happening this week: Trump is too old to be President.

Once again; you can't moderate your way to neutralizing an issue like immigration.

It's fundamentally just racist reaction. Nothing is ever enough because what's demanded—ethnonationalist homogeneity—is completely unavailable in modern conditions. There will *always* be a basis for more demagoguery

Got to love how much praise NYT gets for one article, 2+ years late, that literally just rehashes things we all knew already but NYT has spent the last 2 years ignoring & denying & obfuscating.

Most days, we doomscroll

Today, however, we foodscroll

What could be better in a time of democratic recession and autocratic advancement than cancelling the political science research that might illuminate it

LONG LIVE CHARTISM

We are taught that the Constitution cannot be amended without supermajorities in the House, Senate and states. But in Heller, a 5-4 SCOTUS struck the first 13 words of 2A. Much like in Anderson when they effectively struck section 3 of 14A. Nothing good comes from politics masquerading as justice

Today - and every day - is a good day to read Justice Stevens’ dissent in Heller v DC. The bonkers 5-4 decision that not only made it legal to carry firearms in DC but also declared that the first 13 words of 2A were “merely preferatory”. www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/0...

What if the things that are best in America are choked out and annihilated by the things that are wrong with it

But what if I put up a little screen inside it

I was among the very last cohorts of the Jacob K. Javits doctoral fellowship program. The only reason I got it was because Obama's stimulus program funded two additional fellowships in one of the last years; I was apparently right on the bubble.

Always extremely aware of my luck—& its unfairness

This means NSF dissertation improvement grants in the social sciences are simply...not happening.

If you don't approve of attempts to sanitize history on the US's 250th birthday but want to learn more about the founding era, the state of the field continues to innovate & there are new books coming out like John's on Washington, mine on migration & @gauthamrao.bsky.social's on policing slavery.

Shklar, Althusser, and Montesquieu's purported Liberalism I learned from Edward Hall’s Power and Powerlessness: The Liberalism of Fear in the Twenty-First Century (OUP 2025) that Judith Shklar uses the phrase ‘liberalism of fear’ already in her (1987) book, ...

I'm over 90% on board with @nescio13.bsky.social here, and (as often happens between us) I'm not sure whether the remaining 10% is substantive or a matter of phrasing. Anyway, recommended as usual.

digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/shklar-alt...

The Fear Taking Hold Among Indiana Republicans “I’d rather my house not get firebombed.”

“He isn’t worried about Trump’s political wrath; he doesn’t plan to run for reelection.

His fear of speaking out is much more personal: ‘I’d rather my house not get firebombed’”
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

DOJ Says Noem Made Final Decision on El Salvador Removals in Breach of Court Order Read more here.

This is a really big story that should not be missed. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Maybe Hegseth and Trump could also send 500 National Guard members to Kentucky, to help administer pertussis vaccines.

Since saving lives is their thing.

www.wlwt.com/article/kent...

The war will end when Russia stops fighting. Therefore, pressure has to be put on Russia, so that they stop believing that they will win. Why is that so hard to understand?

i've been wrestling with--on a theoretical-liberal-theorist level--the perennial tension between professionalization and accountability

technical competence requires professionalization... but strategic clarity requires accountability

www.liberalcurrents.com/good-governa...

I'm just about peeing myself here at the end

Literally rolling on the floor, laughing

"Do you remember anything?"

"Well...I remember the Alamo"

*cheers*

...DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS!

Just happened!

Oh shit

Went by just fine! Unless we're gonna see her again...