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Geoff NoKings

@dontinnovate.bsky.social

Reluctant Radical. Sometimes Professor, sometimes entrepreneur, always a dad, avoiding Covid like the plague (it is), passionate about learning. Did some things in SaaS pre-acronym. Want to bend that arc.

2,190 Followers  |  3,604 Following  |  5,117 Posts  |  Joined: 19.10.2023  |  2.2519

Latest posts by dontinnovate.bsky.social on Bluesky

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This sadly demented man doesn't realize *he* was president on Jan 6, 2021. Get him in an assisted living facility ASAP.

12.10.2025 13:58 — 👍 9893    🔁 3426    💬 761    📌 251

Every time someone makes me read something Peter Thiel said it’s like “Scrooge McDuck is Jesus Christ and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel and Daisy is Mary Magdalene and that’s why women voting has lowered American sperm count.”

12.10.2025 16:05 — 👍 4376    🔁 969    💬 118    📌 43
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Onward. Forward. Steady. Things have really changed. Now I need your help.

Some major personal news:
 
Things have really changed. Now I need your help.
 
On why I left academia, why I left America, and why I need your support as I am starting over as a full-time independent writer:
 
Onward. Forward. Steady:

24.09.2025 12:06 — 👍 471    🔁 139    💬 14    📌 14
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Democracy Americana A newsletter on U.S. politics and history - and the ongoing struggle over how much democracy, and for whom, there should be in America

Democracy Americana is a publication solely funded by readers. If you find pieces like this one helpful, you can subscribe for free – or, better yet: If you can, consider becoming a paid member. As an independent writer, I fully rely on your help to make this work possible. Thank you!🙏

12.10.2025 13:59 — 👍 350    🔁 40    💬 4    📌 2

The Daily’s credulous/willfully ignorant/deliberately misleading portrait of Vought matters because it is indicative of a much broader tendency to normalize the assault on the constitutional order - to sanitize those who are responsible for it and the extremist ideas that are animating them.

12.10.2025 13:41 — 👍 727    🔁 101    💬 6    📌 5

Vought is at war with large swaths of the population, with the very idea of a society defined by democratic pluralism. If you have correctly identified that this guy is now in a really powerful position, that people like him are in control of the government, how is that not the main story?

12.10.2025 13:38 — 👍 823    🔁 148    💬 5    📌 3

Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: “The Left,” he believes, has command of America, there is nothing left to conserve, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.

12.10.2025 13:37 — 👍 550    🔁 60    💬 2    📌 4

Vought is not interested in “normal” democratic politics: He seeks to “traumatize” civil servants, use the military to suppress protests, and sees Trump as an agent of God’s will. He is convinced to be fighting a noble war to defend his “real America” of white Christian patriarchal rule.

12.10.2025 13:35 — 👍 840    🔁 161    💬 5    📌 4

While Vought traces the “leftwing revolution” back a hundred years, to the progressive era, there is no question that the election of Barack Obama was a radicalizing moment for him and many key thinkers on the radical Right - as were the multiracial protests in the summer of 2020.

12.10.2025 13:30 — 👍 742    🔁 76    💬 7    📌 9

Power, Vought claims, now lies with a “permanent ruling class” of leftist elites who control all major institutions and especially the “woke and weaponized” agencies of the state. In order to defeat them, conservatives must become “radical constitutionalists” - and take radical action.

12.10.2025 13:29 — 👍 512    🔁 46    💬 7    📌 8

Key to understanding Vought’s worldview is the idea that the constitutional order - and with it the “natural” order itself - has been destroyed: The revolution has already happened, “the Left” won. Therefore, conservatives categorically err when they try to preserve what is no more.

12.10.2025 13:27 — 👍 586    🔁 60    💬 3    📌 3

Vought is singularly focused on bending the entire government machine to Trump’s will. He believes that any check on the power of Donald Trump, who Vought literally describes as a “gift of God,” is illegitimate. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.

12.10.2025 13:26 — 👍 684    🔁 105    💬 4    📌 5

Russell Vought embodies the radicalization of the conservative movement; his example captures how far removed from democratic politics the Trumpist Right is. Vought is convinced to be fighting a noble war against a vast leftist conspiracy that has supposedly taken over the country.

12.10.2025 13:21 — 👍 683    🔁 105    💬 4    📌 4

But there is nothing noble or respectable about what Vought is doing, about his vision for the country. He is a fully competent, utterly committed radical ideologue. He lusts for counter-revolution and radical measures. There is no line he doesn’t feel justified to cross.

12.10.2025 13:20 — 👍 784    🔁 95    💬 1    📌 1

It is October 2025, the assault on what is left of American democracy is escalating, and one of the New York Times’ most influential formats insists on presenting one of the Trumpist regime’s leaders as a devout “small government” conservative with a great work ethic.

12.10.2025 13:19 — 👍 727    🔁 101    💬 1    📌 3

The overriding goal of too many journalists is to provide “balanced” coverage from a “neutral” position in equidistance to both sides. That framework is much easier to justify if you pretend to be dealing with “normal” politicians – as opposed to committed ideologues pursuing an extreme project.

12.10.2025 13:18 — 👍 886    🔁 142    💬 7    📌 7

The Daily is committed to sanitizing Vought and ignoring what they regard as unsavory ideology. Because engaging with what is actually animating Vought would make it very hard to uphold the “normal politics” framework that defines much of mainstream political journalism.

12.10.2025 13:16 — 👍 815    🔁 107    💬 1    📌 2

Vought, we are told, is a pious man who never curses. Ok! Not a word about his Christian nationalism; instead, one of the most influential political platforms in the world chooses to perpetuate the number one fallacy about the modern Right: That this is all about “small government.”

12.10.2025 13:12 — 👍 816    🔁 90    💬 5    📌 5

Vought is a key figure in the world of Trumpism, with a rare – and dangerous – combination of ideological zeal and operative competence, a fully committed extremist causing massive harm to millions of people.

But if you only listened to The Daily, you wouldn’t get any of that.

12.10.2025 13:11 — 👍 842    🔁 137    💬 5    📌 6

About a week ago, the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast portrayed Russell Vought as a devout Christian, a true “small government” conservative who loves the free market, and a man with a great work ethic. A remarkable combination of credulousness and deliberate whitewashing.

12.10.2025 13:09 — 👍 882    🔁 111    💬 11    📌 20
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We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

12.10.2025 13:08 — 👍 2244    🔁 964    💬 44    📌 101

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

12.10.2025 13:34 — 👍 1289    🔁 146    💬 15    📌 12

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

12.10.2025 14:17 — 👍 9254    🔁 2171    💬 204    📌 109
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Renewables overtake coal as global electricity leader It's the first time sources like wind and solar generated more power than coal over a six-month period.

As the current national administration seeks to prop up coal -- a highly polluting and uneconomic technology of the past -- the global economy and investors are sending a very different signal about where the future of energy is headed:
www.eenews.net/articles/ren...

12.10.2025 15:17 — 👍 36    🔁 17    💬 2    📌 0

He is the wrongest data scientist though

12.10.2025 15:36 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

“My programming needs are somewhat unusual” is very funny and also totally false. For better or worse, he’s not the only data scientist in the world.

12.10.2025 02:41 — 👍 35    🔁 2    💬 3    📌 0

Grotesque

12.10.2025 14:31 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

11.10.2025 14:57 — 👍 92    🔁 24    💬 0    📌 0
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He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

The deportation order derives from the crime of which he has now been exonerated.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

12.10.2025 12:26 — 👍 2205    🔁 968    💬 95    📌 58

Yeah, this CNN framing is bullshit. I would tell pollsters that Trump is doing what he promised. Sure as hell doesn’t mean I support him.

12.10.2025 12:21 — 👍 192    🔁 26    💬 15    📌 1

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