I'm becoming convinced that most emergent problems in the US and other wealthy democracies stem from extreme decadence in the face unlimited plenty and security.

The rich are bored, lawyers play word games all day, the average American has no idea how anything works. We're destroying ourselves.

That the UK is facing some kind of foreign-imposed crisis is the simplest & least challenging way to account for the UK's decade & a half of economic woe. It has to stay nebulous & inarticulate because it has no basis in reality

The "any other minority" game is rancid and not worth playing in most cases but I have to say that I would not fancy the job of explaining to a voter in Birmingham why the prime minister came out with a statement in five minutes for Israeli football hooligans but couldn't do the same for this

went to check in on this freak out of curiosity and, far from being a random, she's followed by lots of MPs current and former, journalists, think tankers, etc - once again! I feel like I'm losing my entire mind!

it has this PKD/David Cronenberg feel to it, the combination of the surreal and the utterly gross

tbt the time a drunk was trying to insult one of the bouncers on the high street and got the devastating response "oh look, someone who doesn't matter has said something that isn't true". I often think about this when not replying to tweets

'Neoreaction a Basilisk' by Elizabeth Sandifer features a fun exploration of some of his ideas, would highly recommend

Orwell was never a Soviet communist - see The Road to Wigan Pier - and went to Spain as a member of the Independent Labour Party, which is why he enlisted in the POUM and not one of the Soviet sponsored militias. Your wider point RE the calibre of Western defectors stands though

Sack him. I'm sure he's a nice bloke but he could be a nice bloke as an audit manager at NatWest and do the politics as a hobby. The senior political correspondent of the national broadcaster ought to be doing a better job than this

Nan’s Not Bankrupting Britain (But Politicians Might Be) Pensions, productivity, and the myth of the migrant “drain.”

Labour, Tories and Reform are talking about trying to shrink the UK’s working age population by curtailing immigration. Here’s an excellent summary of why this approach is catastrophic even solely on economic grounds. www.bearlypolitics.co.uk/p/nans-not-b...

the entire UK media, with a couple of exceptions, seems to have decided that the people *literally calling for refugees to be burnt out* are the good guys. it is shockingly evil.

A key feature of the Brit TERF Movement is the belief in the coming of "The Day of Apologies" where everyone reveals they were just pretending to support trans people & all those who ostracised them admit they were right all along, & when confronted with the fact that day is not coming, they break.

Here is the column I wrote on the theme "What I Would have liked to Know About Germany Earlier," along with the additional reflections I provided at Zeit Magazin's request. -A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgement, is more dangerous than one with none at all. -A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. -A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. -Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. -At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power's legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgement–or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. -When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism. -When the majority believe they live in a free society, it is often a sign that the society is not free. Freedom is not a gift; it must be wrestled from the hands of banality and the quiet complicity with power. -When people sense that power is beyond challenge, they redirect their energy into trivial disputes. And those trivialities, collectively, are enough to erode a society's very foundations of justice. -When public events of great consequence–such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing–are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb. -Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe–against and again, in cycles. -When the media becomes a servant of public opinion, or avoids conflict to maintain favour with existing powers, it becomes an accomplice to authority. What we call lies are not always distortions of fact.

-Political leaders make decisions steeped in fallacy & failure. This reflects the broader political condition of a society in which most people have surrendered their awareness & even their basic agency–allowing such leaders to enact their mistakes on their behalf -When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion–it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes -Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong & inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished -In the surrounding atmosphere, one sees not culture, but self-congratulation; not art, but insularity & collective reverence for power. What is missing is sincerity–honesty of emotion & of intention. In such an environment, art that grapples with true human feeling or moral reckoning is nearly impossible to produce. -A place that routinely discards self-awareness & erases individual agency is one that lives under iron walls of authoritarianism -I have no family, no fatherland, never known what it is to belong. I belong only to myself. In the best of circumstances, that self should belong to everyone. I still do not know what art is. I only hope that what I make might touch its edges while it seems unrelated to anything. & in truth, in the best of circumstances it is unrelated to me, for the "I" already melts into everything -Those things found in galleries, museums, & collectors' living room–are they art? Who has declared them so? On what basis? Why do I always feel suspicion in their presence? -Works that evade reality, that shy away from argument, from controversy, from debate–be they text, painting, or performance–are worthless.

-I understand now: people crave power and tyranny as they crave sunshine and rain, for the burden of self-awareness feels like pain. at times, even like catastrophe. -Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call "art" because that choice makes everyone feel safe. Additional reflections -In Berlin, I encounter the ever-present Schweinshaxe and Schnitzel, and I can hardly believe that such a highly developed, industrialised country offers such a monotonous selection of ingredients. Even more baffling is the sudden proliferation of Chinese restaurants–most of them noodle-based, and operating at a culinary level that any Chinese person could easily achieve at home. The variety of food and cooking methods is so limited here that people form all over the world feel compelled to open restaurants: Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish–you name it. -But the truly horrifying part? The sheer number of Chinese restaurants. I can only assume they believe that no matter what ends up on the plate, German customers will come running. In front of some of these establishments, there are even long queues–yet the food they serve bears little resemblance to anything recognisably Chinese. My favourite food in Germany is the bread and sausage–you simply can't find ones with such distinctive character anywhere else. -I'm puzzled by why so many people would willingly cram themselves into a small bar just to have a long conversation. Since I don't speak the language, I can only imagine that the young people coming to Berlin would talk about clubbing. This sort of thing was all the rage in the U.S. back in the '70s and '80s. -The Germans might be the only people who are truly the furthest from a sense of humour. This could be the result of their deep reverence for rationality. Just look at Berlin Airport or the advertisements for Mercedes-Benz cars–you start to feel that their lack of humour has become a kind of immense humour in itself

Ai Weiwei was invited to contribute short reflections on “What I would have liked to know about Germany earlier" for an upcoming issue of Zeit Magazin. His submission was first shortened and edited, then immediately cancelled after a review by the Executive Editor. Ai shared his reflections anyway:

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk Both the political parties and the media: Tired, jaded, checked out and exhausted, just desperate for a strongman to take the wheel, not even because they want the strongman (though many do), but because they, personally, just stopped caring.

In many ways, it's actually a salve to insist that these people pursue these wretched, violent politics based on genuine thought and feeling. In many cases, they don't think or feel anything at all. That's a much more terrifying prospect and what we should be tasked with confronting. 2 1 1 Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk What if the issue isn't that this is their vision, but rather, as we all can plainly see, that their entire political project is exhausted, they have no vision or ideas beyond sheer self-preservation, and this is the cost they are willing to pay to maintain their place on a sinking ship?

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk It ties back to this thread. If our discussions about an ascendant fascism are sincere, we should remember that one reason the Nazis were able to seize power was because the Germany's then-dominant political parties were exhausted, ideologically and politically, and wanted a way out of the crisis.

Any time I seem to get people’s attentions I am going to hammer the point home: the people in charge are both ideologically captured and exhausted, they agree with the fascists in practical terms, but they want someone with a nasty face to pull the lever to salvage their consciences.

The Battle for Mosul and the Genocide of Gaza: A Comparison One is war, one is genocide

In this new article, I compare the Battle for Mosul and the Genocide of Gaza, and conclude that ultimately the conditions for military victory do not exist for Israel as their actions create permanent resistance.

In short - Iraq is a legitimate state. Yasser Abu Shabab is not.

So you’ve probably seen parts of this floating around but I can’t recommend enough clicking this link and reading the thread from the start.

Comparisons Between Life in the UK and the USA For most of my life I have lived in the UK, but for six years I lived in the United States of America. Somewhat erratic and unpleasant polit...

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA.

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

What's astonishing about this is that "violence against a military force currently shelling civilians at food distribution points in the occupied territory they have been starving out" becomes equivalent to "calling for a genocide". It's just an insane moral reversal of the actual situation.

The Founding Myth of Morgan McSweeney Reports of Keir Starmer's chief adviser's supposed campaigning genius do not appear to match up with the facts

A good example here of how helpful it can be for understanding, if someone occasionally stops and asks “Wait: is all this stuff everyone has been agreeing about and repeating for years actually true”

i very much hope someone at the press conference challenged him on this "under the previous government" thing and asked him to say in words of one syllable whether he had supported the Ukraine refugee scheme and the Hong Kong scheme or not.

It's quite an uneven read at the beginning but Chapter 5 onwards is pretty good

Something we haven't really mentioned. Starmer's 2024 MP needed one qualification - be right wing.

What's stopping them from jumping ship to Reform when the grift is threatened?

This chode in particular is a former cop who claims Labour is seen negatively as 'the party of immigrants'

An underrated aspect of human colleagues is that they can tell you when you shouldn’t post something.

This is wild & gets to the patrician core continuing to drive British racism, exceptionalism, disdain for history [unless history is back slapping yarns of swashbuckling poshos being celebrated for atrocious things with no consequences or accountability]

“We are not monsters,” the officer told her after she asked if she was safe. “We do what the government tells us.”

Bookmarking this

I don't really have anything especially profound to say, but yeah man this is it. They won't obey even the most milquetoast SCOTUS orders and are talking about sending US citizens to foreign gulags. It's happened here.

Young men are not radicalizing towards the far right as though it were something unusual about young men, the far right *is all that remains of the right*. There is no universe where a young conservative man doesn’t marinate in pure 4chan derangement.

if these people wanted to take over the us government and weaponize it for their own aims they'd be taking a scalpel to key agencies. instead they're taking a chainsaw to it. it's very much a croissant dildo situation

I feel like it needs to be acknowledged more widely how fucking weird it is that one of the world's most powerful people has developed a whole alternate persona devoted to defending himself and people just pretend it's not him

I will never forget this. Starmer thinks transphobia is okie doke as long as its polite and you dont offend a cis woman. He has not once condemned the transphobia that killed Brianna outside this. Not once.