Will G

I mean, in light of the catholic church’s extensive real estate holdings and long history of sexual assault, it’s a much better fit than his current job.

Elon Musk’s Cruel Moral Sentiments - Public Seminar David Lay Williams comments on Elon Musk's wrongful pride in lack of empathy.

My latest piece for @publicseminar.bsky.social on why the so-called “defenders of Western civilization” are defending no such thing. I discuss this and related themes throughout my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book, The Greatest of All Plagues.

Things we could well lose in the next 4 years now include: NATO, Taiwan, the rule-based international system, a university-driven research system that is the envy of the world, USAID, the Washington Post, EVERYONE’s tax and social security data, and now…the US Dollar as global reserve currency.

If Trump truly is following Putin’s lead (and there’s no better, more predictive theory of his behavior out there), then is Musk the new Mikhail Khodorkovsky? which means he has 10 years in the Gulag coming? I don’t want to live in a world where Trump can jail his enemies, but THAT would be neat.

Forget it Jake, it’s JA BIZTOWN

It was - I think he mentioned 3 month intervals? It sounds EXHAUSTING, and soon it will just be par for the course.

Oh man, he was the BEST. And by that, I mean we built an entire Iraqi democratization policy around the guidance of a guy that OUR OWN SPIES code named “curveball”, which was apparently too subtle of a hint that he might not, you know, be a straight shooter.

In all fairness, it seems to be working pretty well for some.

It wasn’t just through op-ed pieces - their half baked intel was laundered through anonymously sourced Judith Miller authored pieces that appeared on the front page. Which they would then cite.

You huff your farts as hard as you do epistemic closure?

OH COME ON

Maybe you’re lucky and you’ve never experienced that moment when you realize that something awful and irreversible has happened. You would give anything to undo it, but you can’t. Tepid and ineffective, perhaps, but I won’t be a partner in the destruction just so I can claim i did something.

Violence doesn’t defeat fascism, that’s their lifeblood. Neither does rejecting the constitution - that just gives them a partner in destroying it.

I wish there were better options, ones that didn’t involve massive damage - potentially fatal - to our country and its constitution.

There’s going to be a moment that demands large scale protests, and Trump will try to use violence to put them down. That will be the last test. I dunno how we’re gonna do. Feels silly to be hopeful.

Or he could just die, that fat old false idol hatebag.

Democrats just have limited options right now. They can elevate the political price for this maleficent nincompoopery, maybe block a particularly awful cabinet nominee (53+1 is pretty tough). Otherwise all any of us can do is push back as best we can against the vandals.

As for what to do - I remind myself that the only popular votes that the GOP has won in my adult lifetime (I’m 44) were right after 9/11, when everyone went batshit bonkers, and the harshest incumbent climate in the postwar history of democracies. They aren’t popular. This isn’t popular.

I feel you on that. But if we give up the constitution, the whole thing is lost. The GOP sure as shit ain’t willing or able to save it.

In the meantime, magical, impotent, aconstitutional rage only makes these fascist clowns seem more powerful than they actually are. Hard pass.

To be clear, do I wish Americans remembered this bigotry and incompetence from the last time around? I do.

Fickle fucking thing, democracy.

And how’d that work out for them? (I’ll give you a hint: Obamacare became the law of the land about 3 months later and Obama was decisively reelected in 2012.)

If the GOP starts trying to pass bills - unclear if they will - then seasoned senate leadership is exactly what we’ll want to stop them.

(Ftr, during Trump 1, I made a mid-life career pivot to go back to school and get a PhD in political communication; I study how morality and politics shape communities, and how they curdle. I live and research and teach the source code of fascism every day. Please don’t tell me to do something.)

I don’t care how many followers you have; I don’t think I have many more.

But I’d go back to the original question: what, exactly, would you have them do?

My argument that abandoning the constitution is “specious”, but you’re calling for Chuck Schumer to climb over the walls of buildings he hasn’t been locked out of. Or to…physically assault the president?

I’m sorry that you don’t like your apparent strategic alignment with Trump and his ilk, but those who champion the US constitution understand that that isn’t a selective exercise.

Well, so long as you’re clear about that, you can start working for the Trump administration asap.

Great. The South Korean opposition pushed back CONSTITUTIONALLY, first by rejecting the imposition of martial law and then by impeaching him. Through the constitution. So what, exactly, would you have Chuck Schumer do…constitutionally?

What is Chuck Schumer supposed to do, exactly?

Truly academic values suggest the exact opposite: we should presume that all academics DONT have integrity, because assuming the opposite is absurd. This leaves us with a single option: evaluate the argument on its merits. Which are, in this case, laughable, cynical, and frumious.

This framing is a straw man: either we assume the integrity of every academic, or the academic project isn’t worth protecting.

Of course we don’t have to presume integrity; we can simply assess the quality of the argument. And the stakes of that assessment carry true reputational risk: the academic project allows him to make an argument, it doesn’t protect his reputation from his prima facie cravenness.

But the real question remains: is the first section optional like the 3rd one is?