Adam A. Blackler

Article submitted.

I am more productive when my editor lets me write in peace 🐈‍⬛

“Surely no one will find me on the basement steps.”

"Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill."

Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here (1935)

"[He] was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. …"

For anyone who has lived through syllabus wars over whether Western Civ should exist in a history department:

My editors and I are working overtime.

Opinion | ‘Checkgate,’ primary day and sharp Wyoming elbows The performance of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus has been an embarrassment for the Big Empty. Let’s usher them out the door come August, writes columnist Rod Miller.

"If a list of the 'achievements' of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is compiled early in our legislative budget session, it would read as a litany of failure, embarrassment, venality, hubris, deceit, greed, shame, and outright idiocy."

First she came for the puppy dogs, and I did not speak out, because I was not a puppy dog.

"If there be nothing new ..."

**Thrilled** to learn that the most corrupt administration in U.S. history now has all of my information. What could go wrong?!

No better way to spend a Friday.

Anger and despair.

The scholar at work.

Umgekehrt @dkrappe.bsky.social :)

The Power of Grievance What history reveals about authoritarianism’s animating force.

An exceptional piece by my good friend
@benjamincarterhett.bsky.social

"The failure of Western leaders to recognize and address sources of humiliation a century ago led to global cataclysm. Without a plan to address the grievances festering today, the world could be headed down a similar path."

Proud of Minnesota!

"if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road to turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass – then they clearly deserve their downfall."

(Source: White Rose, "Leaflet I")

"if they abandon the determination to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; ..."

"If German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in the lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; ..."

"Is it not true that every honest German today is ashamed of his government? And who among us can sense the dimensions of the dishonor that will lie upon us and our children once the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrid and extravagant crimes come to light? ..."

"Nothing is more dishonorable for a civilized people than to let itself be 'governed' without resistance by an irresponsible clique of rulers devoted to dark instincts...."

"If the German people is already so cor­rupted and decayed to the very depths of its soul that it surrenders the highest good that man possesses and that raises him above every other creature, namely, his free will, without lifting a hand, ..."

"Is it not the case that every honest German today is ashamed of his government, and which of us can judge the extent of the shame that will come over us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the cruelest crimes, infinitely exceeding all measure, come to light?..."

My editors patiently await my pending draft.

Now: With double digit windchill, thousands marching in Downtown Minneapolis during a general strike. Marching and protest against the actions of ICE. Prince dance party outside First Avenue and the Prince mural - where there’s been many Prince dance parties before.

Minneapolis January 23, 2026

I did! Thanks for sharing it here!

"...full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother."

(Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918. vol. 2: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie (1992), 421.)

"...romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers’ mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, ..."

"... without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success — as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—..."