democracywork.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The conditions that have led to what’s happening in the US today exist in democracies around the world. They are an inevitable outcome of our collective failure to adapt to fundamental changes in the information ecosystem on which our democracies were originally built.

submitted 16 days ago • 171 comments

It’s truly a wretched, feckless editorial. But it has the virtue of offering a window into the institutional mindset that engenders NYT‘s mealy-mouthed, collaborationist coverage of Trump on both news and editorial pages. 1/2

submitted 53 days ago • 2 comments

If @nytimes.com reporters didn’t have liberals to kick around, how would they fill the empty spot in the pit of their souls? As a survey of what’s happening, it’s a decent piece. But NYT can’t help but frame it in terms of how libs and Dems are doing it wrong. 1/2 www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/u...

submitted 53 days ago • 1 comment

Incisive, useful effort to convert general, angst-ridden despair over [gesticulates manically] all this into a review of specific unconstitutional and anti-constitutional steps taken by Trump and his regime.

submitted 53 days ago • 0 comments

To paraphrase Churchill, we're nowhere near the beginning of the end—but we are at the end of the beginning. Trump has wrought immense damage, and it will get much worse. But, as @joshtpm.bsky.social says, DJT has largely spoiled his bid for autocratic lock-in. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump...

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

No doubt Trump will love this move, since “tariff“ is the most beautiful word in English language. Tariff, tariff, tariff.

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

Bookmark: timely (in more ways than one) warnings from dissidents in other countries. Autocrats use time and uncertainty to their advantage. The trick—so difficult, so necessary—is to be paranoid without being fearful. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

For Donald at 100 Days, Avoiding Waterloo Is the Name of the Game Trump told voters to “take a chance on me,” promising to put more money, money, money in their pockets. Now, wondering whether the winner takes it all, he’s sending out an S.O.S. Momma mia! (Apologies to @nytpitchbot.bsky.social.)

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

Bookmark: Here is a useful, trenchant overview of a Trump regime trend that’s mistakenly treated as a sideshow. In fact, the Trump cultural project signals that a deeper, more dangerous game is afoot. hyperallergic.com/991223/donal...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

Great column. And an epic subtweet (or “subskeet,” I guess?) from @michellegoldberg.bsky.social, in that NYT notoriously takes the regime’s spurious claims about antisemitism at face value in heds and ledes.

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

Look forward to seeing this film. I took a class (“Political Economy of Inequality”) from @rbreich.bsky.social at Berkeley, and it was a highlight of my time there.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

Fun, and disturbingly prophetic: an op-ed cobbled from Twain's actual writing. Highlight: "Here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it. ... This is patriotism on the Russian plan." www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Okay, then! The big fascist guns are coming out, and it should be nigh impossible for any part of civil society to proceed as if it will be safe from their fire.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Per usual, it’s worth sticking a pin in this messaging guidance from @anatosaurus.bsky.social. I’d add (and I hope she wouldn’t disagree) that the language of “no kings, no dictatorship” fits this model.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

I envision the tapping of a rich new vein of sign messaging material at future #TeslaTakedown events. “Hey, Elon, go back to your compound.” “Your family is WEIRD. Leave our families alone.” That sort of thing.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Yes, this is so very apt. As a default stance, liberals should respect the privacy of people’s private lives. But Musk is conducting his family life as an explicitly political project—a creepy, authoritarian, natalist project at that. As always, extreme misogyny is a strong predictor of fascism.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

It’s a great point! Recognizing that the regime is failing to provide even Stalinist-level legal process clarifies the enormity of it all. That said, this particular kind of tyranny reflects the fact that the regime has not yet fully corrupted the judicial system.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

I’ve noticed this too. The toggle switch between “plugged in” and “tuned out” is weirdly easy to flip. Suddenly, you enter a parallel dimension where nothing important or abnormal is really happening. For those who don’t want to know too much, mainstream media offers a towering edifice of illusion.

submitted 69 days ago • 1 comment

Yesterday, @danpfeiffer.bsky.social did a striking thing on his Substack page. He showed himself changing his theory of the case about US politics under Trump 2.0 in something like real time. 1/3 www.messageboxnews.com/p/authoritar...

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

Yes. Institutions will not “save us.“ But the people just might say the institutions.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

Trump is now Leader of the Unfree World. Alas, the position of Leader of the Free World remains open.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

What a difference a year makes! It was around this time last year that a New York state judge imposed a gag order on Trump. Now Trump is imposing a gulag order on the entire country. www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/n...

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

“That could be me.“ A rift has opened, and is getting wider, between Americans who see a man whisked off to an El Salvadoran prison and think that they could be him, and those who assume that they would never be in that position. 1/2

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

In fact, the Trump regime has replaced the US Constitution with Wilhoit’s Law. It’s a simple as that.

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

Here we go. Infantile projection (“You’re weaponizing the law!“), fascist repression, and Stalinist rewriting of history—the whole bloodcurdling package. The Big Lie begets the Big Purge. I’m sure the Bondi Justice Dept. will respond to this order in a way that would make Merrick Garland proud.

submitted 74 days ago • 0 comments

It really isn't that hard. Just say: We Dems have a plan to bring back middle-class mfg jobs and real prosperity. (Cf. CHIPS Act, etc.) Trump is creating chaos, raising prices, and causing a recession with his crazy extreme trade policy. 1/2 www.thebulwark.com/p/democrats-...

submitted 74 days ago • 1 comment

Excellent summary of the Pravda-level anti-journalism that followed—er, didn’t follow the huge Hands Off! protests. newrepublic.com/article/1936...

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment

Great thread on one technique by which Roberts et al will steadily and all but silently ratify a Trump dictatorship. This is the constitutional crisis. It’s happening not with a single-decision bang but with a cleverly lawyered whimper.

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

The wave of anti-Trump rallies this past weekend cohered around the message “Hands Off!”—which made sense. But one of the original messages for that big day was “No Kings.” But as @brianbeutler.bsky.social argue today, we must’ not abandoned this message. www.offmessage.net/p/we-dont-ha...

submitted 75 days ago • 2 comments

Yes. And, too, this gambit is another form of obeying in advance.

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

Right. Too many people have been asking this question: Will Trump obey the Court? But the more relevant, and more disturbing, question is this: What happens when the Court obeys Trump?

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

Indeed! How long before the regime pressures universities to stock their law faculties with FedSoc-approved Actualists who understand the true, monarchical intent of the Founders?

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

In the after time, chroniclers will be able to recount the history of this era largely through Sotomayor dissents.

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

And from the look of things, the right-wing SCOTUS majority won’t clearly say yes to this horrifying proposition, but neither will it say no in a meaningful way. We are on our way to living under a ghost constitution.

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

pretty extraordinary

submitted 77 days ago • 20 comments

Call of (Import) Duty. “You’ll have to pry this tax stamp from my cold, dead hands.”

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

Maybe we should call it “smart-washing” (def.: the act of describing abjectly stupid behavior as though it were the result of a rational thought process). www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/the-...

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

The destruction of a secure and stable middle class—i.e., creating a system of social insecurity—is a major prerequisite for solidifying an authoritarian regime. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/the-...

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments