Nicholas Grossman
International Relations prof at U. Illinois. Editor of Arc Digital. Author “Drones and Terrorism.” Politics, national security, and occasional nerdery.
- Vague, toothless coverage is media trying to regain public trust. It's just that they think "public trust" means "Republicans," the way to get it is by avoiding bias (which means saying things Republicans dislike), and the fact that trying this for years hasn't worked is not a reason to reconsider.
- My take on "Abundance" is that every time I hear the authors speaking about the book, it sounds like a dispatch from an alternative universe where Obama's fourth electoral victory was his narrowest yet, so the big national concern is how to make technocracy successful and more politically appealing.
- A government of, by, and for racist conspiracy theorists. With real mass violence and suffering in the world, they ignore, deny, or work to worsen. But a made up persecution that some of the world's worst bigots use as a "look what you made me do" excuse? There they have sympathy and work to help.
- It's only corruption if monied interests give valuable gifts to public officeholders in the Corruption* region of France. Otherwise it's sparkling conflict of interest. Get it right, you ignorant masses, your betters are speaking. *I looked up "corruption" in French for this. It's "la corruption."
- “Self-described socialists in this debate so strenuously denied that Trump is a fascist, not because they didn’t see it, but because it got in the way of their politics.”
- s-usih.org/2025/05/the-... Savage review by @notoriousrsg.bsky.social: "Little did Steinmetz-Jenkins know that, within a year of its publication, his volume would go from being a triumphant coup-de-grace against the liberal tyrannophobes, to an artifact of the shortest victory lap ever taken. "
- Three broad camps: 1) Opposed to bribery, think it's bad when officials, such as a president or Supreme Court justice, take bribes 2) Cool with bribery when they like the bribed official, pretend to oppose it when they dislike the recipient 3) Believe 1 and 2 must be discussed as equally ethical
- A swath of media acts like the biggest victims of COVID were people who speculated that it leaked from a lab and received replies on social media like “no evidence, conspiracy theorist, stop it” instead of “I doubt it, the epidemiological evidence indicates otherwise, but can’t totally rule it out.”
- I really don't see how rights are irrelevant because the economy is all that matters. Even if you think the economy is by far the most important thing, rights are a crucial part of a well-functioning economy. The White House's attack on rights in the US is bad on it's own AND harming the economy.
- Claude, could you update the Declaration of Independence for 2025, using the list of complaints against King George III as a template, filled exclusively with factually accurate accounts of real US government abuses from this year alone?
- The reality TV or anti-hero show frame is "will this supporting character be loyal to the main character under pressure, or betray him?" Fourth Estate, inform the public, hold-power-accountable journalism would frame it as blatant Constitutional violation, un-American, breaking the people's trust.
