Ben Alpers

I'd add that, given the circumstances under which he became president and the platform on which he ran, Biden spectacularly over-performed during the first two years of his presidency imo.

But, in fact, Democratic primary voters and, then, the general electorate voted for a candidate who didn't remotely run on these things.

Protecting the country from a fascist party with c. 35% hardcore support is incredibly difficult and I'm not convinced any president could have done anything to make the 2024 election impossible.

Warren would have almost certainly had a more aggressive attorney general....but the Supreme Court would have limited their ability to prosecute Trump.

Not at all. To begin with, I was addressing the structural reform bit.

And the incredibly narrow Senate majority would have made structural reform very difficult, if not impossible (though during the campaign one didn't know what what Congress would look like).

But I sure as hell didn't expect big structural reform from Joe Biden.

I'll add that, as a Warren primary voter, this isn't what I wanted. But I (correctly) understood that what Biden was offering, though woefully insufficient to meet the moment, was still infinitely better than four more years of Donald Trump. So I have no regrets about my November vote.

You know how we're telling Trump voters who are saying "I didn't vote for this" that, well, yes, you did? Well, what we voted for when we voted for Biden was (the fantasy of) a simple return to normalcy, not big structural reform.

Candidates from across the spectrum who promised big structural reforms -- from Buttigieg to Warren to Sanders -- were pretty handily beaten by Biden in the primaries.

I half agree with this. This should have been the single most important task of the person who beat Trump in 2020. However, Biden was one of a number of Democratic primary candidates who ran on an "elect me and things will return to normal platform."

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

Belafonte was a simply extraordinary person. About fifteen years ago, I saw him give a talk, here at the University of Oklahoma, about his life. I left feeling honored to have shared the planet with him for the first half century or so of my life.

I think there has to be a middle ground between acknowledging that a lot of people without privilege in the US are pushed into military service for lack of better options, and trying to do a preemptive Clean Wehrmacht in advance

Operation Epstein Fury

I'm seriously starting to question the credibility of the FIFA Peace Prize.

I am sure JD Vance will resign in protest, right?

Or "Department of War," as Altman slavishly called it.

Tired: Good Billionaires vs. Bad Billionaires

Wired: Good AI vs. Bad AI

Inspired: A world without billionaires or AI

This is one of my pettier impulses but I want the record to reflect just how often this motherfucker said that Kamala Harris was the pro-war candidate in 2024.

Can’t get stuck in a quagmire if you don’t have boots on the ground, but you also don’t really do anything other than kill a bunch of people to no real end if you’re just dropping bombs, no matter how “strategic” you’re being with them. We’re doing the Dumb Battle of Britain now.

A screenshot of Brooks’s most recent Atlantic headline

As we embark on another round of imperial warmongering, it’s a funny day to remember that David Brooks’ just wrote a piece trying to rehabilitate the neocons as Trump correctives.

The comparative fates of Lawrence Summers and Claudine Gay are an excellent measure of the misogyny and racism that currently dominate our country and are supported by
much of our nation's elite, and tolerated by the rest of it.

Each of Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias novels has one or more characters who practice history. And in each case, doing history is of absolutely critical importance, as an important source of meaning in each of the novels' three very different future Orange Counties.

That's a really insightful essay. I've become fascinated by the appearance of historians (professional or otherwise) in SFF novels. Though the most famous example is probably Asimov's Hari Seldon, he's far from the most interesting.

Academics who risk everything by speaking out against the Regime, under the very real threat of being defunded or fired for speaking out against them, are way more patriotic than these corrupt authoritarians who wrap themselves in the flag while robbing our freedom and future.

I made this point in class the other day. Until Congress changes the name, it's the Department of Defense. It's not hard.

Pete Hegseth can call it whatever he wants. Uncle Drunky's Funtown or the He-Man Warfighters Secret Clubhouse or whatever. No one else should feel the need to follow him.

the fact the president of the united states is even thinking about asserting emergency powers to disrupt an election - just a few years after he incited an armed coup attempt - should be the top issue. but the media mostly shrugs and the opposition doesnt focus on it.

The entire Democratic strategy debate — "moderate" or move left? fight or compromise? — is based on a misreading of data. Voters don't think Dems are too progressive; they think Dems are weak. The actual math on what to do about this isn't even close!
New: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/new-poll-d...

The dominant firms in our economy clearly think that free enterprise is for suckers.

It’s not funny that the new advice in surviving high food costs is “stop complaining and eat this liver here,” but if it were hypothetically happening instead of actually happening, it would be VERY funny.