Matthew Cebul

Truly unrivaled explanatory power

👀

Wow.

It will be an immense irony if, by forcing the Iranian regime to harden against an external threat, the US causes what might have been a tense battle over succession to instead unfold into the Khamenei dynasty

The only thing worse would be to crack open "The End of History" and nod vigorously after every page

Want to unplug from the Iran chaos for ~20 minutes?

Try listening to @chenoweth.bsky.social and I on the recent wave of Gen-Z protests (and see the accompanying @jodemocracy.bsky.social piece!)

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand

*Dog catches car*

Dog: "Wait wait wait wtf am I doing on this highway"

*Dog hit by 16 other cars*

🎙️ In our new podcast produced in collaboration with the @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @chenoweth.bsky.social and @matthewcebul.bsky.social discuss the political profile of Gen-Z protesters and what ignited their recent protests across the globe. ✊🪧

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/ypefjnjx

The "concept of a plan" presidency strikes again

The US / Israel might also manage to kill Khamenei. But even extensive regime decapitation does not necessarily mean “regime change“ if we ultimately wind up empowering some IRGC bigwig

Trump’s theory of coercion has always just been “bully weaker powers until I get what I want.“ But the Iranian regime was never going to cave to his extreme policy demands, let alone regime change.

Maybe strikes provoke major internal regime fractures. But I doubt it.

Tom hits on my main worry: Trump emboldens Iranians to renew protests, but strikes against missile launchers do not meaningfully degrade the regimes capacity brutally repress them, and we eventually get more repressive slaughter.

I unapologetically love this, give me all the mega-hyped public transit videos you've got

cc @dimension20.dropout.tv, you have *got* to rope Mamdani (aka your friendly neighborhood Paladin) into an Unsleeping City one-shot, that shit would put up Alysa Liu numbers

My gut reaction:

- Bad Bunny's halftime show probably made a difference (ironically, he supports independence)

- The DC statehood numbers, at least for Dems, are low and very movable. People haven't priced in what the inevitable demise of the filibuster will mean.

Dems are only +15 on DC statehood? Please. That is the most abject failure of party messaging I've ever seen.

If you are an elected Dem and your reaction to this is "Let's downplay DC statehood," let me suggest an alternative:

Do Your Job.

You have 3 years to build support for an institutional reform agenda that clearly must include DC statehood. Stop cowering in fear of a toss-up issue and get to work.

The Butlerian Crusade commences

Buckle up, folks.

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I suspect team Trump's honest answer to this line of Qs is: "Any of those sound great to us! What's the worst that could happen?"

I worry that the VZ success is fueling overconfidence that minor powers like Iran cannot impose meaningful retaliatory costs. So far, they haven't. But they could!

A few thoughts on possible US-Iran conflict (1/11):

the only place this should happen is academic conferences

The Democrats must address exactly this, head on, if they hope to have a future. Popular faith in governance, and therefore the Dems, is at a nadir because the American people correctly sense that their government tolerates, if not openly encourages endemic elite corruption.

Maybe I could see Iran making concessions under Trump and then reneging in 2029 -- as with VZ, I don't know how the US binds the Iranian regime to durable concessions.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not seeing a clear coercive theory of the case here aside from bombing for bombing's sake.

Trump has gotten away with one-sided belligerence so far, and the US does have leverage.

But that lever is likely weaker than Trump thinks. It's easier for me to imagine Iranian retaliation than Iran making agonizing concessions that allow the US to use them for target practice whenever we want.

Watching McGrath lose his mind after that second round DNF was the most relatable Olympics content I’ve seen in years

“Oh, nobody died during the downhill races? Well how about *this*”

This is the ultimate futility of Trumpism: in their desperation to exclude immigrants from some herrenvolk American society, MAGA ethnonationalists are in fact compelling everyday Americans to reaffirm and strengthen their communal bonds to immigrants.