Bruce Buchan
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brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan
@brucealexb.bsky.social
7.4K followers 680 following 1.1K posts

Scholar. Historian of ideas. Mostly Enlightenment & race, quite a bit on empire & colonisation, plus some corruption and a little piracy for good measure.

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Political science 46%
History 18%
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brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d
Our political problem is that hypocrisy among our governing class merely fuels cynicism. Cynicism may be satisfying, but changes nothing. If we are to achieve the political change we crave, we need to leave our cynicism at the door and expect that hypocrisy should have consequence.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d
The moral problem of hypocrisy is not just that sets aside truth for expediency. It is that the hypocrite is an existential catastrophe. When hypocrites perjure themselves by lying to their own consciences, what further bar to evil will restrain the hungry ambition of their deceit?

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d
We’ve become far too complacent about political hypocrisy. We expect it of our political class. It sickens and infuriates us, but we tell ourselves ‘they’re all the same’. Years ago Judith Shklar eloquently warned us that hypocrisy leads inevitably to cruelty.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d
A yearly reminder to the flag wavers on our national day: just like donating to charity, or being kind to animals, if you have to advertise it to all and sundry you’re not actually doing the thing. You’re engaging in self-promotion. There are better ways to love your country than waving a flag.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 1d
Here we are again. January 26. The date on which British colonisation of Australia officially commenced. It’s a poor excuse for a national day. We could do a lot better if only we allowed our imaginations free, for once, from the dark shadows of colonialism. #ChangeTheDate.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d
Pardons issued by an impeached and criminal president should be nullified.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d
Something akin to the Denis Sievers House in London could work. A subtle background profile of noise that heightens the tension resting on everyday artefacts.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 2d
Soundscapes. The warning signs of mutiny. Murmuring. Shot rolling. The dramatised dialogue in court records. Piratical oaths. Dampier’s and Wafer’s publications and their illustrations.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 6d
I understand this person’s fear and frustration. But no person deserves sympathy for knowingly voting for who they thought would advance their own interests by persecuting someone else.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 7d
He’s a paradox. He remains critically over-theorised, yet frustratingly under-determined.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d
He’s already turned the US into a an extended dementia clinic where his every senile whim is indulged. Now he wants to globalise the indulgence he’s always received.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d
Trumperialism. He’s the unchallenged Emperor of Dementia.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d
Foreign policy by dementia. So much winning.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 8d
One of the advantages of being a historian of the #C18th is making shrub. Equal parts freshly pressed fruit juice (or syrup) and alcohol of choice. This is strawberry vodka, strawberry brandy, cherry vodka, cherry brandy, and strawberry Irish whisky. Fruit sourced from the beautiful Adelaide Hills.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 10d
The Adelaide Hills. South Australia’s best kept secret.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 13d
Without doubt the best undergraduate course I studied at Uni was a multi-disciplinary unit called ‘Revolution: A History’. It studied theories and practices of political change from the ancient to the modern world. Now seems a good time for it to be revived. I think it would be a popular course!

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 14d
This (non) apology is a perfect primer for a game of Bullshit Bingo.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 14d
A sign of our mutual incomprehension is the return of the ‘profession of faith’ as a surrogate for virtue. Yet there is nothing more tiresome under the sun than someone else’s statement of faith. It’s about as compelling as being inveigled to endure the viewing of another person’s holiday photos.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 14d
“We need writers now more than ever, as our media closes up, as our politicians grow daily more cowed by real power, as Australia grows more unjust and unequal.

Adelaide Writers Week is the canary in the coalmine. Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future.

They are coming for you.”

Reposted by Christopher Wright, Bruce Buchan

instanterudite.bsky.social
Jo Dyer @instanterudite.bsky.social · 14d
Warrior Louise Adler.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week | Louise Adler
Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation
www.theguardian.com

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 19d
1.5 trillion is simply the price he’s prepared to pay for a distraction.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 20d
It is somehow fitting that on the anniversary of the Trumpist insurrection, a failed state put the former tyrant of another failed state on trial in a judicial system riddled with deliberate inequities. Happy anniversary.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 21d
For someone who clearly sees himself as ‘a player’, Vance gives off a helluva lot of Spiro T. Agnew vibes.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 21d
Empires never die in darkness. Their final humiliations are always laid bare in the full glare of day.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 22d
I don’t know it, I regret to say.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 22d
I am tempted by the madness of king George as my historical analogy, except for the fact the George was always more lucid than Trump is, even when he was ‘mad’.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 22d
Trump is the broken centre of a tangle of brokenness intent on breaking all it can grasp. All the breaking accomplished by the concatenation of breakers he has unleashed is merely a spreading reverberation, a perpetual repetition of the original shattering of his broken ego.
ericumansky.bsky.social Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 22d
WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 22d
I don’t think we should discount the possibility that nobody in this Admin, least of all the President, knows what they are doing, or why they’re doing it. There are probably 3 or 4 (and most likely more) factions advancing their own agendas under the guise of Trump’s rapidly advancing senility.

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Jan W. Mueller, Elizabeth Saunders , and 32 more

ericumansky.bsky.social
Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 22d
WH sources say Venezuela's opposition leader committed the "ultimate sin": She accepted the Nobel Peace prize.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” one said.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Although Machado ultimately said she was dedicating the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” said one of the people. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.

brucealexb.bsky.social
Bruce Buchan @brucealexb.bsky.social · 29d
The career reflections of a born chancer. It’s almost as if she profited politically, personally, and financially in a fit of absence of mind. She was moved by self-pity, chased every unworthy resentment, sought new opportunities for cruelty, and bequeathed fascism. Some career.
paulecohen.bsky.social Paul Cohen @paulecohen.bsky.social · 29d
CHOOSE YOUR FASCIST
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · 29d
“Our side has been trained by Donald Trump to never apologize and to never admit when you’re wrong.” Read the inside story of how Marjorie Taylor Greene went from zealous Trump cheerleader to his loudest Republican critic: nyti.ms/3Lbzi88