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

The arc of history is too damn long.

submitted 18 days ago • 31 comments

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." - Hannah Arendt

submitted 18 days ago • 98 comments

Mom, come pick me up, they're coming up with the silliest possible version of the Great Man Theory of History

submitted 26 days ago • 149 comments

A question for scholars at the intersection of history and international politics: I can’t help but feel like this is one of those “weeks where decades happen” and that the stage is being set for a global conflict. Am I overreacting/falling victim to sensationalism, or is this really happening?

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

the “make america healthy again” agenda appears to be an elaborate op conjured up by sentient strains of listeria and salmonella www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/u...

submitted 28 days ago • 568 comments

The United States is joining an international fascist network before our very eyes.

submitted 28 days ago • 78 comments

taking black kids away from their parents and putting them on farms seems really familiar to me! what could it be?

submitted 29 days ago • 2079 comments

A star burns the brightest rIght before it dies.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Given the comical mistakes of early models and the technology’s indelible association with the emergent techno-fascist class, academics have generally been dismissive about the near term socioeconomic disruption of AI. This needs to change, and fast.

submitted 30 days ago • 2 comments

So you'd rather acquiesce to living under de facto martial law? Give me a break. Force his hand, make him declare it, and let him and his goons suffer the political consequences of doing so.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Our military will soon be asked to make a very stark choice. There will be mass unrest in this country as these disastrous changes take effect. Trump will invoke the insurrection act at some point. You will be ordered to inflict violence on your fellow citizens. Think through this before it happens.

submitted 31 days ago • 72 comments

seems like it is a big deal that the unifying ideology of the doge team is neo nazism

submitted 31 days ago • 491 comments

If the US blocks access to HRT, ADHD drugs, and SSRIs, I cannot begin to describe to you how much all of the tech sector will screech to a halt. The internet is built and maintained by trans people, people with chronic depression, and the neurodivergent. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

submitted 31 days ago • 201 comments

History buffs will know that every authoritarian leader eventually converges on some version of: "I am the state. I can not break the law, I am the law, the law is instantiated in me." Our march to authoritarianism so far has been excruciatingly by-the-book. Hitting every beat. No surprises.

submitted 31 days ago • 344 comments

Two possible reactions: 1) Continue on the trajectory that got us here in the first place by discarding this as “just Trump being Trump” 2) Grapple in earnest with the fact that Trump asserts dictatorial power as the providential leader tasked with saving the nation. This is acutely dangerous.

submitted 31 days ago • 16 comments

open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p... Tim’s latest substack is well worth a read—it puts the last few days of foreign affairs into historical perspective.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Vance refuses to meet the German chancellor Scholz, but meets with the head of the AfD and CDU. Vance claims that German parties need to work with the fascists and claims democracy in Europe is declining, threatened by enemies from within. The international Right is forming, out in the open.

submitted 32 days ago • 22 comments

JD Vance is one scary motherfucker. A Yale educated lawyer, it’s highly likely he went from dispirited liberal to nihilistic fascist upon realizing that we are accelerating into the abyss. He went from warning that Trump was America’s Hitler to aspiring that role for himself in less than a decade…

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Purging the woke social justice warriors who... checks notes... make sure we have working nuclear weapons.

submitted 33 days ago • 16 comments

The messiah complex that this clown has is utterly terrifying. The very phrase “undermining civilization” directly implies that civilization DEPENDS on his sole intervention to survive. He genuinely believes that the implementation of his will is the only thing preventing civilization from collapse.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

And that's how JD Vance discovered that the Munich Security Conference folks don't enjoy amoral condescending pricks talking at them like they're stupid children.

submitted 32 days ago • 53 comments

If this is, in fact, the “direct and unambiguous” stance of the current administration, then the prospects for NATO (and the contingent postwar order) are incredibly bleak.

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

The sun is (rapidly) setting on the republic, and few outside of academia seem to really get it.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

New cover of TIME muskwatch.com/subscribe

submitted 40 days ago • 148 comments

It’s almost like Sinclair Lewis warned us about this or something…

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

Please send this to EVERYONE you know. Tim is one of worlds leading contemporary scholars of the history of fascism. His concise piece conveys the nature and gravity of Musk’s actions in a manner accessible to all.

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

There’s a non-zero chance that this fucking meme goes down as one of history’s most infamous symbol, and I can’t even begin to articulate how terrified that makes me…

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

they do not believe that anyone who isn't them has a mind or agency part ∞

submitted 41 days ago • 166 comments