the most insidious propaganda by mainstream media is how it cheerfully chatters the days away as though we are living through ordinary times rather than a desperate national emergency.
@bigtuffal (there are just a few bright lights, sometimes from unexpected quarters, but i am grateful for them.)
@bigtuffal (princeton)
@bigtuffal not all universities have complied. it’d be an option for students. if they agree with you and no longer want the degree from the US institution, they can of course go elsewhere.
every university should offer students whose visas are arbitrarily rescinded pathways to complete their degrees via remote learning.
@Phil i spend much if my life thinking and writing about democracy, proposing reforms. but the administrative state we had was among the most transparent and accountable in all of history. it’s main flaw — a very serious flaw — was capture by monied interests. even as they burn it all down, that problem is exacerbated rather than remedied. freedom is high overdraft fees i guess.
@Phil i will concede that right now people who are not diehard MAGA are somewhat distressed and not in high spirits about things.
@Phil my kid was born in a country made unfree by plutocrats in 2013. i am no fan of the Obama administration, which saved the oligarchs and let regular people burn. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/11/30/obama-was-the-most-destructive-political-figure-of-my-lifetime/index.html
now my son lives in a country being burned to the ground by plutocrats who think they are geniuses, and people like you who see the sometimes very real warts of the administrative state but fail to realize its prerequisite role to a modern, free society.
@Phil the conspiracy must be large. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37486680/
i’ve had four or five mRNA shots. am very glad to get them annually.
@Phil the best thing Trump did was operation warp speed, accelerating the vaccine that might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives of people with your politics if they’d not been fatally misinformed.
@Phil of course, he’s just pushed out the people responsible for that miracle, his one real achievement last time around.
kind of surprised administration flunkies aren’t hawking tawking points about how interest rates are rising because markets can anticipate the huge boom the president’s policies will bring, but stocks are down because tariffs will cut into Wall Street fat cat margins.
it’s weird how the mishandling of COVID is so many people’s excuse for supporting the guy who mishandled COVID.
@Phil You, my friend, grew up in the freest, strongest, society in all of history and are supporting a rampage to tear it all apart because CDC was poorly run under the guy you support and you’re annoyed by taxes and free people could shame and exclude you when they didn’t like stuff you say. I wish no curse on you, only just a little bit of sense.
@Phil Our society has had many sources of authority, even when associated with government with a great deal of independence, like the independent agencies the Supreme Court and the Executive are collaborating to destroy. People went to CDCs website to learned about illnesses, and physicians took their advice, not because of any boot. Universities provided a scaffolding upon which tentatively authoritative consensus was widely adopted with no boot. All that is being destroyed.
no source of authority beyond a boot or a rifle, is what they are after. because they can persuade no one, but they know how to stomp.
is there a more banality-of-evil phrase than "ICE quota"?
you can just do things. stupid things.
policy uncertainty is a non-tariff barrier.
when norm violations become the norm, then whatever they are they are not norm violations.
The Trump Administration “is using this case to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop the Trump administration from imprisoning any people it wants anywhere else in the world.” #EriwnChemerinsky #LawrenceTribe https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-deportations-gulag-prison.html ht @ct_bergstrom