signifiant other

A lot of people think that every international student admitted means one fewer spot for domestic students, when the opposite is more likely true - the tuition revenue international students bring allows public universities to provide substantial discounts to domestic students, improving access.

Just to take stock: the first claim was that there was an entire literature supporting the anti-birthright position. Then, *after* that claim, scholars emerged to post drafts on SSRN. And *now* the government points to a "growing body of modern scholarship" all drafted after the initial claim.

Kavanaugh stops

nice thread, I think a lot of the difficulty in parsing the transitional flux is that these events have yet to have clear narratives around them yet. once people start to claim ownership, perform some hagiography, intentions and desires become more clear

they are fodder for ideological negotiation

wtf they use the image of a car crashed by its driver because ICE agents shot him to death. the ice agent was not "dragged" by the car

they have mistaken controversy for wisdom! Said's controversy came from the depth of his ideas, not the shallowness of his performance

just checked in on them again, now there's a different post where it's back to "well, looks like Robinson was indoctrinated into violence by his trans lover, time to hate them again"

the irony is that dems treat them as "simple policy debates" and are willing to do "politics as normal"—compromises that inch us closer to fascism despite sounding the alarm for "attacks on democracy." the disjunct is the problem for dems, whereas reps have enlisted voters in an existential crusade

equally frustrating is that some right-wing spaces (r/Conservative) are now patting themselves on the back for their tolerance of trans people because "this one" helped out. no apologies, no introspection, just a feigned "genderblindness": e.g., whoever they are, they helped us out today

What happened to Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez Immigration agents shot and killed an unarmed 38-year-old father outside Chicago on Friday—and their initial narrative of events was quickly disproven by videos captured by witnesses.

New, w/ @mulchy.bsky.social & @djbyrnes1.bsky.social:

ICE shot & killed an immigrant in the Chicago suburbs yesterday.

Then they immediately gave a misleading account of events.

Chicago erupted in chaos and a father who lived here for decades is dead. This is what really happened:

yeah but if you make judgments about the values you're biased, at least we can all agree on the aesthetics...

@jamellebouie.net is really on point with this one. I would add: when we accept that the pundits and propagandists are not just putting on a show, we laud them for simply having convictions, as if to articulate your values is noble in and of itself. it's an intellectual fetish

as someone who teaches the youth marxist theory i am, if anything, de-radicalizing them from the utterly unhinged, almost paranoiac default state of online political discourse

trying at least

great thread. once again, the hegemony of the First Amendment and free speech within American political consciousness means that we cannot confront hatred as a social force that disrupts order, as it must be treated with respect, just like all "ideas." we should condemn those that abuse this value

"this is an AI video, the AI chatbot me it isn't real" wow

people now know that it's real, but it was stunning how many initial posts I saw from the right (Twitter) and left (TikTok) about how they first thought it was AI, followed by conspiracy theories about who planned it

related, I'm curious to see opinion polls that assess who is "responsible" for political violence. we know that it is unpopular, but given the info environment, will more people begin blaming the left/right?

I have to imagine there's a centrist strain that will generally blame whoever is in charge

as we've seen with the "who was president in 2020?" discourse, one of the major tools of the right is the capacity to play with collective memory and therefore causality

any political violence that follows Kirk will have its genesis in the Kirk shooting. or Luigi. or Trump. the left will be blamed.

and this dialogue is necessary for the right, because they cannot understand political violence as the outgrowth of any of the many issues affecting real people. political violence is the expression of ideology, and you do not analyze the cause of ideology, you blame the ideologues.

should a right-wing attack occur, it'll be the fault of the baseball field shooter or the Kirk shooter. by controlling the backdating and sequencing, the right can ward off accountability: "you started this when you killed Kirk, it's the left's fault."

as we've seen with the "who was president in 2020?" discourse, one of the major tools of the right is the capacity to play with collective memory and therefore causality

any political violence that follows Kirk will have its genesis in the Kirk shooting. or Luigi. or Trump. the left will be blamed.

Re: the crime drop, I think it's important to think about his audience. It's difficult: there are communities in Chicago which Pritzker needs for support, some of whom strongly endorse tougher crime. They require different messaging than more "swing" voters outside of Chicago. But he has to do both.

He has never been the most charismatic speaker. He flubbed miserably in 2018, often awkward, especially in his appeals to "regular folk" and was memed for it. Like Waltz, folksy earnestness/emotionality are his strong suit, which he needs to put into attack mode without becoming smarmy (aka Newsom).

I voted for Pritzker (2x) and would support him for president, but: I wouldn't call this a masterclass, he defers to legalese and needs to explicitly address the purported crime drop with stronger language that appeals to commonsense values: this is a police state, "safety" at the cost of freedom.

not trying to call out OP, i think this was a similar case to the JD Vance pope/couch stuff, but just thought it interesting that OP used the exact defense conspiracy theorists use!

lots of people within conspiratorial movements talk about how they're fun and just games, which, yeah, theorizing about JFK's assassin can be a fun little hobby. also, that sense of fun can be weaponized, especially against people who have good reason to be invested in a theory being true

Sign the Petition Demand RFK Jr. Resign: Petition for a Healthy America

The MAHA assault on vaccines will kill people & usher in a scientific Dark Age. RFK Jr has got to go. Please join me, my fellow @accountabilityji.bsky.social advisory board members, Nobel laureates, National Academy members, & colleagues calling for his resignation.

www.change.org/p/demand-rfk...

real "nothing ever happens" energy

also, the "we must repeat Trump's claim and prove that it is false" may be the way you were trained to do debate in HS or write an argumentative essay, but that is not how you do effective messaging

not only is this an incredibly naive way of approaching opinion formation, but just look at how TERRIBLE the Dem messages are vs the Rep messages. it's "the left can't meme" all over again. "Trump has saved the day!" vs "Trump is overstepping his authority based to do protocol violation"