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Reposted by the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist)

Mrs. Detective PikaBOO, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 57m

It’s probably the Democrats’ fault, in his lifetime they’ve only enacted Medicaid, Medicare, and the ACA. They didn’t even bother to put universal healthcare into their platform until 1972, the man was already nearly an adult by then!

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Adam Dayton @shardshinjuku.bsky.social · 4h

Republicans are hyper-fixated on it for some reason, this is new and newsworthy.

Nire Bryce @nirebryce.breadthcharge.net · 4h

I think people keep misinterpreting the no kings protests as like the final step of what that milieu is doing instead of being a constant signal of the number of people willing to throw away 3 hours of their weekend to attend some speeches.

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 2m

only if you aren't holding the bag for at minimum three more years...ah shit bsky.app/profile/ju-t...

Juten @ju-ten.bsky.social · 20m

fellas is it good for my regime when half the country hates my guts and another quarter are apathetic and squishy

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 4m

like there's no competition, 50501 and the people working with them (which includes my local DSA and PSL chapters) are the only ones even trying to build the protest culture we need

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 6m

for them, as much as for us

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 5h

because blue states do not fund the federal government. their citizens do. states have no causal power to defend the government whereas the government has the causal power to debit your account and send you to prison.

Jon @jonp214.bsky.social · 6h

I’m seriously asking, yet again, if the federal government literally no longer abides by a separation of powers because Congress just doesn’t give a fuck anymore and instead Trump just dispenses money himself then WHY should blue states be funding any of this?

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 8m

w e l p

Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 5h

Medicare has stopped paying physicians due to the shut down. Standing right on the third rail www.statnews.com/2025/10/15/c...

Medicare payments to doctors paused as government shutdown drags on

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is pausing Medicare payments to doctors, as negotiations tied to the government shutdown drag on.

www.statnews.com

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Matti has a Boo-ty 👻 @mrbtx.bsky.social · 5h

genuinely wild to watch the GOP edge closer and closer to ripping the Constitution because they're panicking about Congressional Dems holding steady

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 9m

YES HAHAHAHA YES

Andrew Solender @andrewsolender.bsky.social · 4h

NEW: @axios.com surveyed Democrats running for House across the country. 113 replied:

31 said they would definitely/likely vote for Jeffries as speaker or leader

57 were non-committal

25 said no/likely no

Much more here: www.axios.com/2025/10/16/h...

Scoop: Dozens of Democratic House candidates won't commit to backing Hakeem Jeffries

"If there's a contingency of 10 to 12 of them and they're sticking together, I think it's going to really shake things up."

www.axios.com

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 4h

telling anti-Yoon activists they aren't real protestors

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 4h

Everybody wants to skip to the end of the movement where society retroactively agrees that it all worth it and everyone secretly supported it all along without actually spending any time in the trenches.

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 8h

I read the piece. You shouldn't. He dismisses the "No Kings" protests as liberals in blue cities. He invokes Rosa Parks, as if rural white people in the 60s loved everything that the movement then was doing. "We need a movement but not this one" is a core centrist tact these days.

Ezra Levin ❌👑 @ezralevin.bsky.social · 8h

Is this a joke. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

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Nire Bryce @nirebryce.breadthcharge.net · 4h

some of y'all are so alienated from time and labor that you miss just what it signals that millions of people decided to burn the middle of a saturday or whatever standing in a park when they themselves were not directly provoked.

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Nire Bryce @nirebryce.breadthcharge.net · 4h

I think people keep misinterpreting the no kings protests as like the final step of what that milieu is doing instead of being a constant signal of the number of people willing to throw away 3 hours of their weekend to attend some speeches.

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 11m

the only one even playing the game is, of course, the shitlibs of 50501

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 4h

right. and therein lies the problem: there is basically little to no civil society organization organizing on a vertical level that can e.g. bring people out to the level the South Korean KCTU did during Yoon's martial law declaration + after

trusted diet coke valet @litano.bsky.social · 4h

I do think Talia's thread was right that the elements that make this stuff go viral can also render it toothless when divorced from a specific context. But this is just the problem of decentralized movements writ large- it's hard to coordinate strategy or engineer confrontations at scale!

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 4h

right. and therein lies the problem: there is basically little to no civil society organization organizing on a vertical level that can e.g. bring people out to the level the South Korean KCTU did during Yoon's martial law declaration + after

trusted diet coke valet @litano.bsky.social · 4h

I do think Talia's thread was right that the elements that make this stuff go viral can also render it toothless when divorced from a specific context. But this is just the problem of decentralized movements writ large- it's hard to coordinate strategy or engineer confrontations at scale!

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 3h

one way to reshuffle the deck is to prosecute everyone else who committed a crime for Trump, and to ban gerrymandering. the former hollows out the party infrastructure and the second means that the people who win Republican legislative elections cannot win the general.

Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 2d

The long-term strategy needs to include:
1) institutions reformed to be more resilient
2) A minimum two parties that are willing to compete in a free and fair democratic process and follow the Constitution.

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 3h

"feds gas the cops at a nonviolent protest," as is happening in Chicago, is ideal. you want to make sure that the feds and the cops are on opposite sides of the escalation ladder.

there will be escalation, but you don't have to fight the actual cops yet. maybe you will, but ideally you won't.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 3h

this is objectively true. the march on washington, for instance, was about 250k. this isn't a criticism of the movement. this is a LESSON TO LEARN about why focus and clarity can matter more than raw numbers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_o...

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 3h

the civil rights movement is worth studying in terms of its actual reality--in terms of the strategical and tactical intention that went into its actions--not just as a sainted icon in the american pantheon.

www.liberalcurrents.com/how-to-win-a...

How to Win a Rigged Game

The Civil Rights Movement is worth studying not just because they were right, but because they won.

www.liberalcurrents.com

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 3h

but it FEELS unbelievable to people that the crm was not a "grassroots spontaneous mass movement," because we've spent decades guzzling fake history about how grassroots spontaneous mass movements are the only way to win. and yet:

www.liberalcurrents.com/why-movement...

Why Movements Fail

Horizontalism and its discontents

www.liberalcurrents.com

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 14m

right and that's how we win, more or less

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 3h

i am cursed by Knowledge (of Tariffs, of Poasters, of Images)

jslaker.bsky.social @jslaker.bsky.social · 3h

i feel like this is the modal response to sky posts most days

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the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 15m

because unlike 2017 libs don't have leaders they believe in

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Bear Wilner-Nugent @saltlick.bsky.social · 2h

Franken’s on a big rehab push as I can tell already from the spam texts and emails he sends constantly. Let’s move on! No more washed-up sex pests in the leadership of our party.

Zach Everson @zacheverson.com · 9h

Al Franken's campaign donated $100,000 to Jose Andres's World Central Kitchen in August, per new FEC filing.

Stands out as many defunct campaigns tend to donate to partisan causes or monuments to the candidate.

docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/form...

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Sky Marchini @sky.skymarchini.net · 1h

do you all ever think about the damage that being online does to us all? me neither, pass the bottle

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 1h

finding out that talia jane was raised in a political cult which eventually started an extortion ring which murdered five people, and that her mother went to prison for this, has a lot of explanatory power

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