#1: There’s no such thing as a good Republican.
On January 6th, 2021, as Congress was in the process of certifying Republican President Donald Trump’s defeat, thousands of Republicans attacked the capital resulting in a lockdown, delay, and four deaths.
For months prior to this, Republican politicians openly supported the idea of contesting the election results to prevent Trump from leaving office, while dozens of Republican attorneys, legislators, and donors actively campaigned to change the outcome of the election.
For decades prior to this, Republicans have courted white supremacy, adopted fascist foreign policy programs, and worked to undermine democracy. In 2000, Republican President Bush came to power on a…
A Story in 6 Graphs
This February, the New York City Police Department lost an appeal to keep thousands of disciplinary records hidden.
While there is no way of knowing exactly what will be found in those records once they are released, the NYPD review board complaint data leaked to ProPublica last year gives us some idea. …
Our political future depends on it.
If you’ve ever chafed at an Aunt’s casual racism, attacked a Grandfather’s sexist commentary, or pointed out a historical figure’s moral depravity, you’ve likely heard the refrain: “they were from a different time.” This argument — that morality is somehow time-barred — not only obscures historical crimes, but misses the point of criticizing people altogether.
As I discussed recently, we have become obsessed with judging by intentions rather than by actions. Criticism of Joe Biden in America, even in the most concrete and data-grounded terms, is seen as an attack on his moral character. Consequently, people feel a need to…
If I were president, I would use my bully pulpit in combination with control of both houses and my ability to enact executive orders to manipulate congress into passing laws. If that failed, I would at the very least use my sole control over student loan debt to forgive that and my sole control over the justice department to prosecute Trump.
Trump managed to push through his agenda despite much more popular opposition, and got the Democratic House to vote for more funding for his wall. …
Biden’s “good intentions” are meaningless to the lives he destroys.
February was not a good month for President Biden.
In the last 30 days, Biden has illegally murdered 22 Syrians, broken his promise to halt deportations, opened a new facility to keep children detained without their families and with dim legal prospects, abandoned his promise for a $15 minimum wage, and failed to deliver the $2000 (read: $1400) check he promised would pass “immediately.”
In a time of immense suffering for millions Americans — from children freezing in Texas, to families without clean water in Mississippi, to all those enduring…
A story of civility, kindness, and absolute incompetence.
Some years ago, we at Perfect Social Movement (PSM) noticed that Problem was ravaging our nation, and decided to band together to promote Solution.
We started by calling our Congressman and Senators — they assured us they were listening, but asked that we write letters instead (so that we didn’t disturb them). After a year of letter writing, they kindly asked us to talk to corporations instead, as they thought Problem should be solved by the private sector instead of through big government.
For the next few years, we called corporations and asked them to fix Problem. Their media teams…
Individualism is in the air we breathe.
We watch movies about individual heroes saving the day, read history books in which individual men build empires, and read think pieces about how individuals in poverty make good (or bad) choices. Because this ideology is so universally accepted, it has become “common sense.” Even suggesting that individuals may not be primarily, much less entirely, responsible for their circumstances is mocked and dismissed out of hand. To blame structures, or systems, or society is seen as childish weakness — as an attempt to shield yourself or others from accountability.
The trouble is that individualism is an utterly absurd way of…
Or: How Your Son became a Socialist.
Over the last decade, there has been a massive generational shift in American politics. Where in 2010 it appeared that the future of the Democratic party was a wave of young Obama-loving liberals, today essays and articles are being written to explain how a generation of far-left progressives, socialist, and anarchists sprouted from the harsh soils of American capitalism.
I suspect that once Biden takes office, and once the tide of climate, BLM, and economic protests continues to rise in spite of a Democratic victory, there will be renewed interest in this question…
Part 3: “common sense” and the escalating narrative.
This is the second part of an ongoing series on defeating conservative arguments. Read the introduction and Part 2: Argument ad Hypocrisy.
A key part of modern conservatism’s success is the creation and weaponization of “common sense.”
Used by Antonio Gramsci to describe a set of political and ethical values which have become so widespread that they are accepted as fact, “common sense” allows the most powerful ideology to dismiss facts outright if they oppose a widely accepted belief.
Police and prison abolition, for example, are seen by America’s political mainstream as absurd and dangerous ideas with no basis in…
The fight of our lives.
A few weeks ago, a landlord in Colorado sent his tenants a letter threatening to raise their rent should Trump lose the election, and promising to freeze it if he wins. As shockingly undemocratic as it may seem, a quick Google search tells us that this is not a rare phenomenon. Whether it’s bosses telling their employees to vote Trump in 2016, or threatening layoff if Obama wins re-election in 2012, using ones’ wealth and capital to coerce how other people vote is as old as American democracy.
Some of these tactics are transparently illegal — a number of states…
