Connor Stedman

I find I am honestly unsure what the long term implications are of the United States demonstrating twice in three months that its new preferred way of war is to engage in bolt-from-the-blue decapitation strikes with no obvious follow-up plan.

My instinct is that it will not turn out well.

So, so instructive to compare media response to Afghanistan withdrawal -- months of hysterical garment-rending & catastrophizing, relentless criticism of the admin -- with the response to an unprovoked, unmotivated, illegal war of aggression, ie, "some critics say maybe Trump should have reasons."

Good thread.

it is important to hear people out. that's a valid goal of journalism. it is not important to hear people out again, and again, and again, when they have, variously, been consistently disproven or shown themselves to be concertedly opposed to pluralistic democratic government

maybe the media can take five minutes off from warhumping to register that the president could very obviously not give less of a shit about The Troops

this is fucking shocking, and while i know politics journalists think it's cliché to point this out, a democratic president would be impeached for delivering this speech in this way, and rightly so.

yes, I've been saying this for a year: we could potentially be sleepwalking straight into another 9/11-level event, and we'd *never fuckin know until it happens* because the capacity of the state to monitor for & prevent something like that has been almost entirely eliminated.

‘The Worst-Case Outcome Is Complete Chaos’ Donald Trump’s plans to oust the Iranian regime, which led to the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made some of his advisers nervous, The Atlantic reports. Read about what went into the decision to at...

This is an analysis very much worth a read: www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

I think bluesky would be roughly 300% better if people here were capable of reading “this is an assessment of the empirical reality of a situation” without assuming it comes with an implicit “and therefore I endorse the reality of that situation”

Cannot recommend highly enough making something with your hands to keep the despair at manageable levels

Social media erodes and threatens democracy worldwide, and it also gives us a venue for beautiful, amazing stuff like this:

We are only alive today to debate the Anthropic case because Stanislav Petrov decided to overrule a computer.🫡

We are really going to regret the technology we have built.

This helped me put it together

Prediction markets are distributed bribery

Opinion | There is no reason to think this war with Iran is necessary Trump criticized the Iraq War. Now he’s making the same mistakes.

JD Vance said there is “no chance” the US would be drawn into a lengthy war. But isn’t that what Bush thought before Iraq & LBJ before Vietnam? Wars are risky & unpredictable.The US should engage in them only if it absolutely has to. There is no reason to think this war is necessary. wapo.st/4seF5K1

Ah yeah, and as another reply said, the fact that they’re 15-20 y.o. does underline the point you’re making.

The "this is just a distraction!" thought-terminating brainworm is one of the most infuriating holdovers from Trump's first term.

Nothing is a distraction; they're not that disciplined or clever. Everything is important; their one strategy is to DDOS democracy and its mechanisms of accountability.

KOTOR?

OCASIO-CORTEZ STATEMENT ON TRUMP'S COMBAT OPERATIONS IN IRAN "The American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions. This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic. "Just this week, Iran and the United States were negotiating key measures that could have staved off war. The President walked away from these discussions and chose war instead.President Trump flippantly acknowledged the possibility of American casualties, stating "that often happens in war.' "Mr. President: this was not an inevitability. This is a deliberate choice of aggression when diplomacy and security were within reach. Stop lying to the American people. "Violence begets violence. We learned this lesson in Iraq. We learned this lesson in Afghanistan. And we are about to learn it again in Iran. Bombs have yet to create enduring democracies in the region and this will be no different. "In moments of war, our Constitution is unambiguous: Congress authorizes war. The President does not. I will do my part to uphold our Constitution by voting YES on Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie's War Powers Resolution. Every member of Congress must join us in rejecting this aimless war.

My statement on President Trump’s combat operations in Iran⬇️

free note to everyone: you can just say we shouldn’t be bombing Iran rather than pretending this would be fine if Trump explained himself better

What OpenAI just agreed to is positively horrifying, on an unimaginable scale actually

-Zero Congressional consultation or approval.
-Zero preparation of public for need/consequences of war.
-Zero evidence of thought about "OK, what might the other side do?" Next month. Next year.
-Zero mention of anti-nuke agreement Trump voided, or Trump claim last year that nukes "obliterated."

Very very good important thread.

imo the threat posed by CBS News and CNN getting absorbed by pro-regime billionaires isn't that they're going to produce right-wing slop that convinces people to be right-wing, it's the dismantling of newsrooms capable of doing investigative reporting on the administration. Fewer eyes on the street.

That’s the problem, you can’t be, what we fight for compounds in ways we cannot even comprehend. This is the moment. And if it is not, then the next one. And if not, then the one after that. And so on, forever. Always has been, always will be. We’re stuck in this cage together until we’re free.

Good provocative thread and this is the key point at the heart of all of it. It’s epistemology, ethics, and political economy all wrapped together.

But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

this is a great brief and it appropriately ends with a killshot: the simple observation that if trump's meaning held, the birthright clause would not have overturned dred scott, the one thing it was absolutely meant to do.

The only joy in witnessing the billionaire coup of our media sphere is knowing how completely it will backfire.

They can destroy WaPo, CNN, CBS & Twitter, fire truth-tellers, nazify entertainment, redpill our feeds...

But culture will out. We'll tell new stories, write new songs, build new tech.