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Tad DeLay

@taddelay.bsky.social

1.1K followers 360 following 610 posts

Author of FUTURE OF DENIAL: The Ideologies of Climate Change (Verso 2024) plus several others on religion and psychoanalysis | philosophy prof Views don’t represent employer taddelay.com

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Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · Jun 20

The Guardian’s article on my book.

“Elaborate yet accessible…Future of Denial is an eloquent, forthright text about the realities of the crisis and where it’s heading.”

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘What if there just is no solution?’ How we are all in denial about the climate crisis

In his new book, Tad DeLay suggests there is no rosy roadmap to go forward – but there are things we can do

www.theguardian.com

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5h

In this climate I’m so lucky to have the good admin I have now. My interests are a grab bag of things the bad guys hate (marxism, climate change, zionism, plus teaching on gender and sexuality). I haven’t always had that support. A prior school threatened legal action if we published books

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 6h

*resegregating* that is. It would be quite a shock if the trump admin were desegregating anything

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 7h

I’ll grant conservatism has a hard time in educational environments. But it’s a political philosophy fit for a pampered child, packed full of lies and nonsense engineered by liars. If I’d argued in undergrad music class that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is better than Mozart, I’d have felt belittled

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 7h

Can I teach philosophy without discussing societal or political events? Is there even a point to philosophy if it’s not about societal or political events?
Can profs teach if talking about real things that we all know are actually happening means their college could lose funding? We’ll see

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 7h

Bloomberg reports this compact is being extended now to all colleges, and the first threat is withholding student loans. Multiple points clearly result in desegregating higher ed. I’ll underscore again that it bans professors from talking about “societal or political events”

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 4d

Another example of how we see the acute anti-intellectualism of fascism dovetailing with the broad and long-term anti-intellectualism of the modern university. Who needs the humanities, reading all those dirty old books?

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve wondered when they’d try shutting off student loan access to bully colleges into suppressing academic freedom.

The new higher ed compact threatens this unless all college employees “abstain from actions or speech relating to societal or political events”

No more talking about real things

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

In the US it’s still controversial to say fascism is a right-wing thing, or to say fascism is a legible result of capitalist production. I have more faith in a guy in a dinosaur costume dancing in front of the secret racism police in Portland than a guy “working with my colleagues across the aisle”

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

Walter Benjamin said politicians opposing fascism betray us by 1) a stubborn faith in progress, 2) confidence in mass resistance, and 3) servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus.

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

Walter Benjamin said politicians opposing fascism betray us by 1) a stubborn faith in progress, 2) confidence in mass resistance, and 3) servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus.

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

Maybe that’s what the AI dream of fully automated hunter drones is for. It gets around thorny Constitutional problems

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

Simple enough to send troops in red states to provoke blue states. But if they start hitting with drones the real question for court’s Originalists is whether operators must be in North Dakota or some base in overseas. Hard to say!

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 5d

I’m really into @peterbrannen.bsky.social’s new book. If you’ve most read anything I’ve written in recent years, it’s indebted to his prior book The Ends of the World

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 8d

Others have said it but it’s kindof funny how well the Greeks understood the exposure of democracies to a shameless moron. “Desire of the masses for fascism” type stuff 2400 years ago

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 8d

Told my 5 yr old I was teaching political philosophy today. “What’s that?” It’s about whether we should be fair to people or unfair. “I think we should be fair to everyone,” she said

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 8d

Today’s class is in The Republic where democracy slides into tyranny when a shameless idler and liar abuses the courts to persecute enemies, makes big promises about how rich everyone will be while impoverishing all, and stirs up war to consolidate power. It’s weird how things used to be back then!

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 8d

Today’s class is in The Republic where democracy slides into tyranny when a shameless idler and liar abuses the courts to persecute enemies, makes big promises about how rich everyone will be while impoverishing all, and stirs up war to consolidate power. It’s weird how things used to be back then!

Reposted by Tad DeLay

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 9d

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 9d

This video of Chicagoans intervening to save a man from being abducted off the streets by ICE is making the rounds on Instagram.

Community action works.

Source: www.instagram.com/reel/DPZL2AL...

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 11d

Isn’t the AOC photo when she was sad at seeing a concentration camp full of kids? Just like Satan

Berny Belvedere @bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 11d

Criticizing Charlie Kirk is a fireable offense that incites domestic terrorism. But calling political opponents "the party of hate, evil, and Satan" is proper and good. Got it.

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 11d

I’ll explain the Lacanian theory of desire or Marx’s definition of capitalism, and some immediately forget while for others it will lurk in their minds for the rest of their lives, and that’s just how it goes. Similar thing happens with writing

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 11d

A strange dynamic of teaching is the back and forth between wondering if students are hearing any point you drive home and, OTOH, frequent realizations that students remember some obscure offhand comment and treat it as the unquestionably true Word of God

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 12d

Adorno said Hitler imposed a new categorical imperative on the world: never again. We must organize thoughts and actions to prevent another relapse into barbarism. But it turns out liquidating unwanted people groups is still so popular, with broad support among leadership that could stop this today

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 12d

I don’t know what can be done. I research and teach. I’ve written critically about the genocide in a book and article. It’s a topic in my classes while dealing with a health crisis that puts me at some risk, but it’s very minimal. It feels like raising awareness isn’t working, maybe, I don’t know

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 12d

It looks like Colston was among those abducted by Israel yesterday. Ordinary people are capable of such bravery. I don’t know what to say

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 18d

I don’t know Alex Colston well, but he was my editor on my article last summer on Palestine and apocalypticism. He’s one of the courageous people on the flotilla, reporting for Drop Site.

Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 18d

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 14d

That story brought to you by @mikeduncan.bsky.social’s Revolutions podcast, which you should be listening to. I’ve been working again through the whole catalogue on my long commutes to make better sense of Verso’s massive volume of Marx’s political writings. Makes for good class content too

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 14d

Before the February revolution in 1848, a woman in Paris said she knew revolution was approaching because the people were singing. She saw a worker run by with five loaves of bread. Enough for three days, he explained. “We always do these things in three days”

I can’t imagine such optimism.

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 14d

I’m no historian but you see three common results when troops are ordered into cities:
1. refuse to fire on citizens, exposes loss of control, may lead to monarch’s abdication
2. They do fire, groundswell of opposition, monarch abdicates or is deposed
3. There’s a massacre, new unbearable normal

Tad DeLay @taddelay.bsky.social · 14d

These options are common in the metropole, not the colonies, so you know, how racists view Portland versus Baltimore or Chicago is like a “results may vary”