“restoring faith that better is possible” is maybe the most important thing in politics right now outside of imposing consequences on the bad people (and imposing consequences would help restore faith) we have seen what cynical, “lol nothing matters” politics leads to and it leads to Donald Trump

kyle tear down that highway lucas 🏳️‍🌈@itskylelucas.com · last mo.

My not-so-hot take is that what Mamdani is doing *IS* incrementalism, and the bar is so deeply in hell that a politician just doing *anything* good consistently is a total anomaly for people. And I think for now that is good and fine, because it is restoring people’s faith that better is possible.

After a bit of a break, I've got a new post up at the blog that I think you'll want to read—especially if you could use a dose of well-grounded hope, a feeling of being part of something great, and/or a compass to check that you're heading in the right direction in these crazy days.

How To Live Through Interesting Times

Recent writings locate the source of our megacrises in map-metaphysics and point ways forward.

how-to-get-things-less-wrong.ghost.io

Transphobia is the greatest lodestone for today's far-right, because it embodies the far-right desire to claim all identities are natural and biological. Today's fascists hate trans people for the same reason interwar fascists hated diasporic Jews - because they hate fluidity and border crossing.

Elad Nehorai@eladn.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The people you can most reliably track as "anti-Zionist who is also antisemitic" are the folks who have also been openly transphobic. Kasparian, Greenwald, Carlson. Left and right, this is the common thread for many.

If you’re against DEI, you’re a segregationist and I’m tired of folks, for the sake of politeness and naïveté, pretending the discussion is anything but that.

the way this makes sense for RFK is that "healthy people" and "sick people" are ontological categories.

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“This was not a disease that was killing healthy people. It was killing sick people”. RFK Jr. lying about the COVID19 pandemic.

I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals

Ari Berman@ariberman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

So much false equivalence in media on gerrymandering in Texas vs California & Virginia. California and Virginia maps approved by the voters. That's a huge difference not enough people pointing out

Illiberal actors like Palantir weaponize Karl Popper's tolerance paradox, insisting liberal societies accommodate viewpoints that seek to undermine or oppose pluralism. But equality and democracy demand that tolerance and pluralism be regarded as *normative*, not merely descriptive, traits.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

personally I agree that we should indeed reject the hollow pluralism of pretending that we shouldn't judge Klan, Nazi, and sparkling eugenicist subcultures according to what they have historically produced, and would enthusiastically endorse rejecting inclusion of them in public life

The singular goal of all future US politics is to ensure Trumpism is defeated and cannot again take root here, and everything that serves that end is to be considered and prioritized. It's a holistic organizing principle, from a Green New Deal to Nuremberg 2 to expanding the court to Reconstruction.

some people you can recruit, other people you have to simply defeat. politics makes more sense when you accept this

Chad Loder@chadloder.dev · 4mo ago

The "duped voter" narrative is a comforting myth. If only we had better messaging. The reality is tens of millions of voters looked at a platform of mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, state violence, and the dismantling of civil rights, clearly understood it, and said, "Yes, that is what I want."

I’ve typed and deleted this post many times over the years, but: there is no type of death I don’t wish on every person who brought Trump to power because there is no type of death they don’t wish on others. They have always been pro-war, pro-cancer, pro-plague, pro-disaster, profoundly anti-life.

The thing about white supremacy is that it’s a receding horizon—it can never be accomplished and maintained. So what you’ll get is increasing infighting among the elites of this sect as to who’s truly white, who’s the right kind of Christian, who’s a real man, that will exclude more and more people.

Jen Bendery@jbendery.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NEW: The Pentagon today invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel. Except it’s only for Protestants, not Catholics. www.huffpost.com/entry/news-l...

I'm a bit of a broken record on this, but usurping the power of the purse isn't just one constitutional violation among all the many others. It is, uniquely and singularly, the death of constitutional government altogether. Game over, end of story, you now live in an autocracy.

Jacob T. Levy@jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 4mo ago

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/u... So, we're just not doing that whole Article 1 thing anymore, is that it?

I don't know what SCOTUS will do on birthright citizenship case, it's anybody's guess. But if they endorse Trump's diktat, the only response is defiance. Outright, open defiance by the states. A decision not just erroneous but illegitimate, beyond their power, null and void from the day it's issued.

The logic of the Trump regime is grounded in the right-wing’s desire to establish the US as a petro-empire that manages the impacts of climate change w fascism: fake elections, disinformation as common sense, concentration camps for migrants, & the destruction of blue states by extreme weather. 1/n

Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)@doctorvive.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I don’t love being in a society where you can sell enough pillows to do meaningful damage to democracy or sell enough children’s books to do a genocide or sell enough chicken sandwiches to abolish gay marriage That all seems like a ridiculous way to do society to me

This is so vital. AI — like the internet — benefits when we refuse to consider its materiality.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4mo ago

“Many discussions still approach AI primarily as a digital technology, but in many of these countries, AI is becoming visible through the infrastructures that sustain it: data centers, mineral extraction, energy demand, water-intensive cooling systems, and digital labor chains…”

Today’s dose of anti-cynicism.

Janne M. Korhonen@jmkorhonen.fi · 4mo ago

Found this 1969 #Earth Day poster. The message remains very relevant. Our #environmental problems are serious and our societies remain unsustainable. But it also inadvertently shows that we've made A LOT of progress too. Consider the smoke trails. They are not an exaggeration.

These are the old inherited foundational lies of whiteness in the United States. 1) we bear no relation to one another 2) life must be earned 3) violence is redemptive therefore; 4) those who have not earned life must die 5) but first they must be used 6) and in the meanwhile, they must suffer

I've been told this one is "a fun one" and "thoroughly mogged." (It's also short!)

Map-maxxing: The Metaphysics of Right-Wing Aesthetics

Reality-mogging: Maps are pretty, but reality's complex relational terrain is where true beauty lies.

how-to-get-things-less-wrong.ghost.io

"the precursor to Doing is Saying" is an admirably precise way of explaining why more Dems need to be Saying, loudly, even if they do not currently have the power to Do

Better Things Are Possible@internethippo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I *really* don't want to be a downer but to me the precursor to Doing is Saying, and not nearly enough of this Party is saying what needs to be said. About punishing the villains, about abolishing billionaires, about ending elite impunity. Too many want to leave the rot but change the branding

I've been told this one is "a fun one" and "thoroughly mogged." (It's also short!)

Map-maxxing: The Metaphysics of Right-Wing Aesthetics

Reality-mogging: Maps are pretty, but reality's complex relational terrain is where true beauty lies.

how-to-get-things-less-wrong.ghost.io

every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat

It is the defining project of today’s Right: To vanquish the very idea that America should aspire to be a nation defined by equal citizenship in a pluralistic, multiracial society - and to fight instead for white Christian male supremacy at home and in the world.

It's really remarkable the degree to which stupids think the only "government power" that counts is *adding* regulation

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · 5mo ago

i feel like one problem here is that so many writers take Germany instead of Italy has their model of what it looks like

my brain is at the mr burns oversized novelty germ door stage of near catastrophe every time i look at news of any kind

a cartoon of a man opening a door with a bunch of monsters inside of it

ALT: a cartoon of a man opening a door with a bunch of monsters inside of it

media.tenor.com

The catastrophic impact to local health where the air is poisoned, as well as to our global ecosystem as they literally set the planet on fire and fill the atmosphere with pollutants

Leila Molana-Allen@leilama.bsky.social · 5mo ago

North Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh oil depot is ablaze tonight after it was targeted by multiple US-Israeli airstrikes. Apocalyptic scenes filmed by Iranians driving on the nearby highway. Local reporters saying firefighters can’t put it out. This depot is critical energy infrastructure for Iran.

No such thing at this point as a Republican who isn’t deeply damaged, anti-human, anti-life, and an active threat to society. Kind of a problem.

“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

The rise of end times fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

theguardian.com

Paul Duane 🥔@paulduane.bsky.social · last yr.

The key paragraph from @naomiaklein.bsky.social & @astra.bsky.social's powerful piece describing the urgency of our present moment. They are right, and we better move quickly.

This is completely correct but it doesn’t make me worry a whole lot less about 5 wingnut justices.

Raffi Melkonian@rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 5mo ago

At the risk of having this skeet blopped on my head in a couple of months, the birthright citizenship case is an incredibly easy case decided by straightforward text, and that’s part of why these amicus briefs are all such dunks.