bensandny.bsky.social

Do you even hear yourselves?

John Roberts’ Constitution: The federal government protecting people’s right to vote or giving them health care violates the sacred principle of state sovereignty but if the deranged POTUS and his bloodthirsty advisers want to use the military to invade other states for being too liberal that’s fine

I continue to think that one of the reasons this country is falling apart is the wholesale abandonment of public virtue as a broadly shared aspiration. Or even something people should be embarrassed about if they don’t have it.

Trump obtains another settlement as YouTube agrees to pay $24.5 million Alphabet settles with Trump instead of fighting lawsuit over January 6 suspension.

would love to hear more congressional democrats say "should we win power next year we are going to treat every one of these as bribes and act accordingly" arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

i think one thing people have a hard time grasping is that the central figures of the trump administration are not bad as in "the worst republican blowhard you know," but bad as in "the worst people you have ever heard of." donald trump is a serial rapist whose best friend was a pedophile.

Did Trump win in November because he showed grace and empathy to people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020? Politics is not an Afterschool Special. You put out a strong message about what's wrong, propose a compelling policy agenda, hope the economy cooperates and that's it. None of this mush.

The Republican Party as it is currently constituted will destroy the United States — politically, economically, socially and culturally. The democratic reform of our federal system isn't only justified in itself, but necessary to force its moderation into a party compatible with liberal democracy.

Hold on, these are the "we don't have to bake your gay wedding cake" people?

Have no fear, Republicans will bail you out at some point with a huge chunk of taxpayer money to pay you for not being able to sell your products because of their policies. Then you can post on social media that you’re voting for them because you are against socialism.

People missing an important point about folks getting fired for whatever they said about Charlie Kirk: Americans are being conditioned to be snitches on their fellow citizens who don’t toe a party line on what is “allowed” to be expressed. And employers are going along. It’s the new secret police

Feel like I’m going insane with the revisionist history that Charlie Kirk fostered open debate. He chilled speech and his targeting of professors for wrongthink led to threats, harassment, and being forced out of their jobs. His legacy is chilling speech right now, about him

Just thinking about how the right made up an entirely fictional left wing character that resulted in so many bomb threats and the like and nobody will face consequences. But people on the left who accurately clocked the victim’s life work lost jobs.

screenshot of the post: "I thought my capacity for shock had been completely lost. But I have to admit, reading this message, which went out this morning to all public employees of the State of Virginia, stunned me: "Good morning, State Colleagues: Many of you saw the Proclamation issued by the Governor last night asking Virginians to pause at noon today to reflect and pray for Charlie Kirk’s family, to reject all forms of violence, and for our Commonwealth and Nation to stand together. (You may find the Official Proclamation here.) Just as our Nation joined together after September 11th, so too must we make a similar and lasting commitment to defeat the evils that harm our democracy." Over the years, I've read countless articles and books about the Redemption period after Reconstruction, how previously reviled and odious figures—slave masters, Confederate politicians, southern generals—were canonized by, first, the white South and ultimately the white power elite of the nation as a whole. I suddenly have such a visceral sense of what it must have felt like to be a formerly enslaved person, an abolitionist, a Union soldier, the families of Union soldiers who lost their sons or husbands or brothers, a radical founder of the Republican Party, to see this happening. It's stupefying, shocking, as I said, to see a version of it now, in real time, right before my eyes. It's like I'm seeing Birth of a Nation getting made right in front of me. After 9/11, Susan Sontag pleaded to a nation that had completely lost its mind, its sense of reality and proportion, any and every sense of history at all, "let's not be stupid together." I know it's a lot to ask of this country, but, please, let's not be stupid together."

from Corey Robin on FB:

It shows once again that as long as they’re not the ones being affected / talked about, it all boils down to civility and process vs content for them. That Klein op ed is mind boggling in its myopia

Just remember that even saying the most obvious things about how dude lived his life has gotten a number of people fired this week. And this is the normal course of things. Ain’t no backup.

One thing the media's reticence to label Kirk an extremist has made jarringly clear is how scared they are of the people in power now who share his extremist beliefs.

In the space of nine months, they have internalized a fear of condemning racism, misogyny, homophobia and antisemiticism.

You can write this only if, by virtue of your income, identity, or both, you are utterly removed from the consequences of politics. To pretend that the racist, misogynistic, anti-gay vileness that Kirk spent his life spreading is secondary to the fact that he spread it "the right way" is appalling.

A tweet, in which Noah Smith asserts, "Remember: Before social media, you would never have seen people saying things like this, or seen people approving of it. It would all be official condemnations and condolences. Social media is what unleashed the hate and chaos from the lowest depths of our society." in response to a tweet which says, "Maybe Charlie Kirk shouldn’t have spent years being a hateful demagogic fascist and this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he should take some personal responsibility."

Unsurprisingly, the thing Noah Smith is saying is obviously not true.

Look at reports on the reaction to the assassination of MLK... "glee, satisfaction and weeping in equal parts" (www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/r...) as the Smithsonian notes "some actually celebrated" (nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stor...).

Even as I write this, I’m reminded that this country is so inured to violence—particularly against black men—that the man who literally strangled Jordan Neely to death on the subway was not only found not guilty, but rewarded with a job in Silicon Valley and a box seat at the Army-Navy game.

Which work? Calling for gay people to be stoned to death? Blaming airplane crashes on black pilots? Anti-vax bullshit? Election denialism? Pushing Great Replacement Theory?

Kirk’s murder is awful and ominous for this country. But no, we don’t need to honor him or “continue his work.”

Many official communications channels of the US government are controlled by people who celebrate the Nazi party and the response of our elite news and political institutions has been to look the other way and not say anything about it.

Democrats are actively refusing to treat Trump’s military campaign against American cities as a crisis, because they’re in thrall to a bunch of idiot pollsters who tell them to only ever react to Trump across a tiny range of kitchen-table issues. The Democratic Party is a huge part of the problem.

It appears many American business, political, & media elites will only realize “it can happen here, too” *after Trump’s consolidation of power & au*thoritarian takeover is followed by state violence, conviction of opponents & dissidents on bogus pretexts, & rigged elections.

💯

the purpose of this is to make racism not just acceptable but mandatory. nationwide Jim Crow, controlled by a network of neo-Nazi political commisars who report directly to the executive.

My theory of Trumpism has crystallized into two things:

1.) The end of the Cold War, basically having the same end effect on our constitutional order as the fall of Carthage had on the Roman Republic, and

2.) Phones and social media, cooking all our brains.

Cuts across education, class, and race.

Lemme just say if President Bernie Sanders had unilaterally imposed, by executive fiat, hundreds of billions of new taxes, personally browbeat executives about job cuts and investments and then fired the head of BLS, the Chamber of Commerce and the business orgs would not be sitting idly by.

if i were a pro-trump financial type i might view the destruction of reliable government data with the kind of anger and apprehension that might lead me to reevaluate my politics, but then if i’m a financial guy throwing my weight behind strongman rule, i’m already too stupid to breathe

US economic growth in the tech sector has consistently relied on that stability, from Compaq being funded by dentists through to the huge capital influx from global looting and money laundering over the last decade.

It’s relied on the principle that the casino always meets its debts.