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byrnesms.bsky.social
Professor of History at Wofford College. Author, _Radio and the Great Debate over US Involvement in World War II_ (2022)
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I’m not sure the world has seen a genuine supervillain until 2025. Of course there’ve been countless monsters: hitler, Stalin, pol pot. But a real life figure who fits the Gotham/Metropolis model. Plutocrat bigwig who is actually deeply evil & wants to run the world for cartoonishly stupid reasons.

This is what ignorant and uninformed Americans who whine about aid to Ukraine don’t know or ignore. The money mostly got spent on American businesses and employed American workers.

His goal was always full-on, permanent dictatorship. Now he’s repeating a quotation attributed to Napoleon, who crowned himself emperor after posing as the champion of the French Revolution. In the name of “saving“ the country, he is going to continue to do things that are unequivocally illegal.

Also, while it is hardly the worst aspect of the faux macho posturing by Vance and Hegseth this week, Vance emphasizing “values” while Hegseth went out of his way to say “you can’t shoot values” makes the administration’s overall message to Europeans completely incoherent.

The debasement of what it means to be “masculine“ began long before Trump, but he has certainly exaggerated and accelerated it.

Dachau was the first camp establish by Hitler when he came to power. It wasn’t an extermination camp like Auschwitz. It was meant for his political opponents. It wasn’t secret. It was well known, because it’s existence was meant to cow the opposition into silence. No wonder Vance wanted to go there.

This is classic America First rhetoric circa 1941. The idea that Europeans take advantage of Americans blinded them to Hitler’s evil. Today, Trump admires Putin’s evil.

Given the current Republican president and Secretary of Defense, this is hardly surprising. www.thestate.com/news/politic...

I’m seeing a lot of soft takes from industry mutuals at the moment that we shouldn’t be so hard on those who use generative AI because it’s becoming harder and harder to resist. Wrong. Betraying your ethics (and your peers) because ‘everyone else is doing it’ does not suddenly make it acceptable.

Fine, but how batters have to take a fastball to the head before you rush the mound?

He’s basically saying he can make the same kind of deal with the “US” brand as he has with “Trump”: slap the “US” name on it while others put up all the money and take all the risk. Monumentally stupid.

This. Make it hard for the Republicans to destroy the country.

Murphy: "We need to act like a real opposition party in the middle of a constitutional and democracy crisis. That means we should not be moving forward nominees or legislation in the Senate. Ds should not be giving votes to nominee or legislation in the Senate until Rs get serious about this crisis"

I would really love to see the NYT & WaPo treat the current political situation with even half the level of alarm they used last year in reporting that Biden was old

Anyone surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention. Jared Kushner said back in May that Gaza’ s “waterfront property could be very valuable.” Trump said in October Gaza could be “better than Monaco.” Bibi probably told Trump he’d give him the rights to open resorts.

This is exactly right. This supremely ignorant and glib assumption that you can just add back a regulation later ignores the predictable and preventable damage that will be done in the interim. Musk is an idiot.

I just spent January term teaching a World War II film interim, and I think there’s a decent chance that opening sequence set a record for bodies flying through the air. #HATM

It is also worth noting that he has never suggested the same for Mexico, for some reason. I am certain it is not because he is familiar with the failure of the “all Mexico” movement during the Mexican-American war. 

Authors, post the first line of your book: “Franklin Roosevelt was worried.” (Radio and the Great Debate over US Involvement in World War II, 2022)

And he said it without a scintilla of evidence. When challenged on that by a reporter who probably won’t be allowed back in the Press room, he said it was “common sense.“ What that really means is that it makes sense to him due to the nasty, bigoted lens through which he looks at the entire world.

More than our share.

This blatantly illegal move by the Trump Administration should have severe consequences. None of his remaining cabinet picks should receive a single Democratic vote until all is remedied and we can ensure this won’t happen again. Congress holds the power of spending, not him.

Boy, these last eight days feel like a good reminder why democracies generally avoid letting people who attempt a coup come back to power….

There should be political ads with pictures of the most violent perpetrators, descriptions of their crimes, and the continual repetition that Trump gave each of them a full unconditional pardon.

This is the very definition of speaking truth to power. I would like to think that if there is some remnant of a soul in that depraved man, he felt at least some twinge of shame at being confronted by a true Christian calling on him to walk the walk.

GOP Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) told Fox Business Network Tuesday that the U.S. has the right to "acquire" Greenland because, "We are, quite frankly, the dominant predator." 1

Exactly. Whatever it once was, everyone knows what that means now. The very *best* interpretation for Musk is that he was just trolling for this reaction, which still makes him an asshole who thinks Fascist salutes are a funny joke. 

Precisely why I cannot bring myself to participate in even a minimal way.

“The politicans that professed For base and worldly ends Do now appear to us at best But Machiavellian friends... Here we see also who turns round Like weathercocks with wind” John Bunyan, 1663– criticizing people who had supported the Republic and now turned on a dime to support the Restoration.

Would probably really terrified him was that everyone would see how few people would show up to hear him blather on incoherently in frigid weather.

The whole thing is great, but I love the first line: “This is important.”

Interesting analysis of the common ground shared by evangelical men and bros.

Yes, but Reagan’s dog whistle made Trump’s bullhorn nearly inevitable. Eventually the people Tom Nichols calls the “rubes” got tired of the whistle. Trump saw they wanted the bullhorn. GOP elites thought they could con the “rubes” forever. Trump showed the elites would fall in line for tax cuts.

When will Trump order the forecast changed?

Unfortunately, the prerequisite for successful blackmail is that the target can be either held legally accountable or shamed and neither of those things happen in Trumpworld. 

If the idea is that being a good commander (even if your goal was killing US soldiers) is the major criteria, why not take it all the way? I hear Rommel in World War II was pretty able, so how about Fort Rommel? And for North Vietnam, Fort Giáp? No less ridiculous than honoring Confederates.