Matthew Downhour

The thing is - they feel like James Cameron *believes* they are important films, which doesn’t in itself make them important but does make them more interesting than a similar spectacle

You can pour egg nog on you oatmeal there’s actually no rule against it

The Lost Opportunity in Iran The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani by US drone strikes on Friday, the third of January, sent a shockwave across the world. The United States, leading superpower in the world, had mu...

A Trump I essay particularly relevant in the Trump II era: The second major lost opportunity with Iran of my lifetime (the first I would argue was with George W Bush), a mistake we and the Iranian people are still paying for

Nah, I'm a contributing editor so mostly just when something comes up that's in my realm of immediate interest, or when the others are busy!

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In addition to writing for Liberal Currents, I've had the privilege of editing a few pieces for them over the years. Here are a few of my favorites - with the caveat that I'm not a professional editor, so future articles will, if this start up fund is successful, be better edited!

Trump's current posture towards Venezuela is a good example: what is the grand strategy here? How does it fit into an overall imperial logic?

No one knows, no one has thought about it or, if they have, they've thought about it in the most asinine way possible (strategy cheese)

The ecology of the Elburz mountains is apparently really interesting generally!

I dream of seeing Isfahan

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Anyway, if you like these articles and think they should have a better editor than me working for free, here's how you can help make that happen!

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A great deal of the mass death we've seen in the Middle East in the past couple years can be directly traced to Trump's decision to end the Iran deal, and before that, to Bush's decision to include Iran in the 'axis of evil'

Leftist Revolutionary Daniel Ortega can sit down with post Soviet billionaire Bidzina Ivanshvili and disagree about a lot of things, but at least they can agree on hating trans people

Patrick Mahomes Said 'Black Lives Matter,' Then The NFL And Kansas City Chiefs Changed Positions On Player Protest Mahomes vocal support of the protest movement is stark contrast to how former Chiefs star Marcus Peters was treated after he silently protested in 2017.

He did!

Democracy vs Liberty in Annelien De Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History It is nearly always productive to explore the tension between democracy and liberty, as this is not a tension that any society resolves on a lasting basis. Resolutions are by nature temporary and tenu...

This book review was really good and brought up interesting questions of liberty vs democracy - one where I hope I contributed some interesting ideas about cases where our individual civil liberties may clash with societal 'liberty' to impose democratic will

And the winner of the internet today is:

Search your heart @utopia-defer.red, you know this to be true.

Family holding up an umbrella shielding kids from gay rainbow

Yeah the LGBT component has become a stand in for all the rest of it. I associate it with this

There’s an international elite cabal pushing a queer agenda ‘down our throats’ all around the world, spearheaded either by the UN or US State Department

Look we’re all thinking it - Harrison Butker has cost Kansas City the Mandate of Heaven they gained when Mahomes said ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Kelce endorsed the vaccine

The authoritarian right : color revolution :: 18th century plantation owner : slave uprising

The idea that professional soldiers would refuse to fire on a crowd of their countrymen is viscerally upsetting to them.

Need somebody to write about this for LC

Everyone immediately sees queer people as a threat to patrimonialism. A threat to patrimonialism is a threat to those who enjoy de facto power in many different de jure social systems. That is, basically all of the ones that lack the state capacity to exclude patrimonialism.

Because there is no real 'left' party in the US. Globally, you've got everyone from Robert Fico and Daniel Ortega to Viktor Orban and Jair Bolsonaro.

Indeed, they manage to get the anti-elitism of the anti-Masons without realllly getting the pro-worker elements (there is some of that in their ramblings but none in their actions)

Leftist Revolutionary Daniel Ortega can sit down with post Soviet billionaire Bidzina Ivanshvili and disagree about a lot of things, but at least they can agree on hating trans people

In fact it's even better than class solidarity/internationalism because a) it gets to imbibe that sweet billionaire nectar and b) every society has gender issues, whereas the precise contours of class conflict differ substantially around the world

There's a real sense in which Globohomo conspiricism/protect family values movement is a substitute for class analysis in an increasingly globalized media and discourse environment

The three of them really, truly believe in Globohomo conspiracies I'm pretty sure. It's the only reasonable explanation for their bizarre behavior

What's happening in Venezuela is like a tankie caricature of a color revolution, basically the US showing up as air support for anyone who wants to revolt

The Most Childish Imperialism How Trump is different from the old imperialists, and how the liberal world must respond.

And more recently, directly addressing Trump II - this very well researched article addressing Trump's departures even from classic imperialism. Even 19th century colonization had its own horrific logic, which differentiates it from Trump's capricious imperialism

The Lost Opportunity in Iran The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani by US drone strikes on Friday, the third of January, sent a shockwave across the world. The United States, leading superpower in the world, had mu...

A Trump I essay particularly relevant in the Trump II era: The second major lost opportunity with Iran of my lifetime (the first I would argue was with George W Bush), a mistake we and the Iranian people are still paying for