Author | Lightnews

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Evelyn Faye @evelynnfaye.bsky.social · 2h

Blue Collar/Working Class has long since become an aesthetic to most. A guy who owns a construction company and makes six figures is working class because he wears work boots and jeans. A barista at a coffee shop is a member of the elite because Pronouns and Big City

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 3h

All a straight white man has to do is grow a beard and put on jeans and flannel, and voila: he has automatic Blue Collar Credibility, even if he actually grew up with a trust fund.

ONY white males get the Assumed Blue Collar nod simply by putting on an outfit, too. Doesn’t work for anyone else.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

interesting that people are treating his blue collar aesthetic as equivalent to having a blue collar upbringing

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 10h

My other Bluesky pro tip: I think it’s a REALLY bad idea to pay any attention whatsoever to who has blocked or unfollowed you or put you on a list.

I have never used or looked at any of the tools that track those things and I never intend to do so.

Down that path lies madness

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 10h

Some people on the left really do have a weird and unsettling fetish for “people who were fascists but claim to have reformed” as opposed to “people who never were fascists” - this is a great point

The Arkle Under the Stairs 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️ @arkle.bsky.social · 1d

Also, being redeemed does not entitle someone to power.

There's been this fetish on the Left that until this month I thought was just a fringe element barely worth mentioning where people seem to think an ex-fascist is preferable to someone who was never fash in the first place.

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KNinja @khrisnin.bsky.social · 15h

I love how Rep. Joe Neguse reframed this question.

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 12h

Definitions are arbitrary, but at least to me "Liberal" involves a general belief in democracies, rule of law, etc. Any of the movements I can think of that wanted to achieve left of center economic or social goals that abandoned those beliefs (communism, mainly) are no longer liberal.

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 22h

It's fundamentally video game thinking: if they perform the right steps, they will reach an "I win!" screen, roll credits, it's all done, the story ends. Human desire for neat conclusions taken to an extreme. Liberalism is built on the opposite idea: things will, in fact, continue.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 23h

The many monarchs of Europe, the slaver's Confederacy, the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Italian fascists, Imperial Japan and many more all assumed that because liberals value peace and human life, that they were weak and feckless and easily beaten.

Go look for them now.

Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 1d

I think fundamentally the problem with post liberal thinkers is that they seem to assume that vanquishing liberalism results in their enemies being converted or defeated and not becoming radicalized into enemies who no longer extend the mercies they once did.

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Scott Lemieux @lemieuxlgm.bsky.social · 1d

It's also hard to make executive branch dominance the central reality and affect of your administration and then get away with blaming the minority party in the Senate when you can't keep the government open

Monica Potts @monicapotts.bsky.social · 1d

The Republicans can end the shutdown any time they want because they have 53 Senators.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

JD Vance: "The suffering is going to get a lot worse."

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

Most shutdowns either end quickly or drag on because the stakes of "losing" get higher with time. The stakes this time feel very high for both sides, so yeah, we could be here awhile.
Effectively making article 1 a dead letter is *an* achievement, I guess.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

R's have basically been hoping/predicting the latest generation of "the youths" will be conservative/republican when the last Republican President not widely seen as a disaster left office in 1988, when I, a xennial, was 9.

Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 1d

Wednesday: @jaketapper.bsky.social says Gen Z is "gonna be a lot more conservative."

Also Wednesday: Trump gets a 20% approve / 75% disapprove rating among Americans age 18-29. (Via Economist/YouGov poll)

d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/ec...

New York Post @nypost.com · 1d

CNN’s Jake Tapper says Gen Z will be ‘a lot more conservative’ after schools forced lefty politics ‘down their throats’

Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

It would make about as much sense to reach firm conclusions about politics, communication policy, or economic policy as a result of those events as it would to do that for what did happen, which was that a global wave of inflation caused every incumbent party around the world to lose vote share.

Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine for a moment that in January of 2024 a meteor had hit and eliminated Chicago and environs, and crops failed due to ash in the sky blocking the sun, and as a result the US entered a economic depression, and as a consequence Joe Biden/Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election.

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

People keep reaching far ranging conclusions about the future of what policy and political communication should look like based on the data from what was, around the world, a really wierd political environment.

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

The other thing here is that there's an argument to be made that Biden's approach worked: dems did better than just about any other incumbent party in the post covid inflationary period. It just didn't work well *enough* in the face of a one off black swan event.

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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 1d

As someone who has been on SNAP benefits in the past, what will happen Nov. 1 is that people will start diverting other funds towards groceries. They will choose to feed their families over making credit card payments, paying medical bills, car payments, etc. This is going to affect a lot of things.

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Angus Johnston @angus.bsky.social · 4d

There's a particular kind of doomer on here who's like "and then SCOTUS will install him as president for a third term, and the military will back him up" as if that's the end of history.

Friend, there's still an "and then" after that.

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

A edited version of the XCKD "Familiarity" comic, where a stick figure woman and a stick figure man are talking. In it, the woman says "US politics is second nature to us politics followers, so it's easy to forget that the average person only knows who the president is and one or two senators." The man replies "And their representative, of course." "Of course" replies the woman. Below it says "Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field."

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Tamara Keel, but spooky @tamslick.bsky.social · 2d

The "Don't Make Me Tap The Sign" meme, where the sign reads "The purpose of the wealth tax is sociopolitical arms control, not funding basic government functions"

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 2d

Maaaaan, this. So much this. Every time there's any kind of actual in-depth survey we find that the American people are *abysmally* ignorant about even the most basic political facts, but the pundit class just immediately forgets & proceeds with political analysis based on subtle policy differences.

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 2d

Feels like so many of our convos are revolving about how voters respond to what politicians are doing, or what parties’ positions on issues are, without much actual empirical sense of what they actually know about those topics.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 2d

I’ve been thinking a lot about a new kind of polling I’d like to see. We have polling that measures public opinion, which is obviously important, but I’d love to see a little more empirical work on public knowledge: what do voters know about politics and policy?

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 1d

I do wonder if they *actually* read it, but I would agree that while "no reading" is bad, just about as dangerous is "reading exactly one book" or something like it.

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Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 2d

you have just described taxes

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 2d

now here's a good take goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/a-mantra-f...

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Aeillien @aeillien.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah, MMT is one of those movements that basically tries to solve the tension/trade offs between spending, taxes and inflation by pretending they don't exist and can just be solved using this One Simple Trick.