paul johnson
@rhetoricpj.bsky.social
I live in pittsburgh and like it. wrote a book about conservative populism. have spent the last 15 years studying the right.
go arsenal! I like gin.
Book: https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817321093/i-the-people/
go arsenal! I like gin.
Book: https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817321093/i-the-people/
this sentiment, if understood broadly, would resolve like 35% of fights on the internet about Politics Strategy
The America we were taught about in school wasn’t real, but I want it to be and so do 200 million of my friends
February 5, 2026 at 6:17 PM
this sentiment, if understood broadly, would resolve like 35% of fights on the internet about Politics Strategy
oh my god
I legit don’t know if I will ever get past this ad I saw walking to an appt this morning in soho. And yes, it’s a company that uses human sounding AI voice bots to take over your customer service calls.
February 5, 2026 at 4:54 PM
oh my god
personally i don't think the idea of a creepy cynical bible-thumping pedo grifter marauding his way through an America that can't see his evil and treats orphans like shit is all that sensi--
Showed THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER to my film students. You could literally see them go from being somewhat bored, thinking it would be an outdated black-and-white film, to getting invested in the story as Robert Mitchum's menacing performance and Charles Laughton's outstanding direction drew them in.
February 5, 2026 at 4:47 PM
personally i don't think the idea of a creepy cynical bible-thumping pedo grifter marauding his way through an America that can't see his evil and treats orphans like shit is all that sensi--
Reposted by paul johnson
or put differently the precaritization that hit academia decades ago is now spreading across to other white-collar sectors
I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.
February 4, 2026 at 7:56 PM
or put differently the precaritization that hit academia decades ago is now spreading across to other white-collar sectors
this remains the funniest fucking thing of all time www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALFp...
Siskel & Ebert & the Protestants
YouTube video by hotmonger
www.youtube.com
February 4, 2026 at 7:49 PM
this remains the funniest fucking thing of all time www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALFp...
Reposted by paul johnson
February 4, 2026 at 5:55 PM
big story of the last 60+ years in US politics is asymmetric disarmament around the concept of "grievance." too many Dems/libs bought pundit line that explicit invocations of injury were unseemly/illiberal. meanwhile the Right was happy to amplify those takes while leaning into victimhood politics
"Successful anti-authoritarian movements do not win by softening their positions. They win by building unlikely coalitions around a broadly resonant grievance."
Like, say, corruption. Or, unchecked corporate power.
Like, say, corruption. Or, unchecked corporate power.
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism
Moderation used to help Democrats win, but its advantages now have been greatly exaggerated.
www.bostonreview.net
February 4, 2026 at 6:06 PM
big story of the last 60+ years in US politics is asymmetric disarmament around the concept of "grievance." too many Dems/libs bought pundit line that explicit invocations of injury were unseemly/illiberal. meanwhile the Right was happy to amplify those takes while leaning into victimhood politics
Reposted by paul johnson
Life is lifeing at me pretty hard this week, messing up my usual writing schedule. But I did manage to join @nytimes.com's John Guida to discuss Backlash Presidents and what it tells us about Trump's second term. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...
Opinion | ‘It’s All Rooted in a Sense of Victimhood’: On Trump’s Backlash Presidency
www.nytimes.com
February 3, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Life is lifeing at me pretty hard this week, messing up my usual writing schedule. But I did manage to join @nytimes.com's John Guida to discuss Backlash Presidents and what it tells us about Trump's second term. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...
ICE/CBP shooting a child on camera is going to merge with the ambient Epstein Files energy in a world-destroying way
February 3, 2026 at 10:36 PM
ICE/CBP shooting a child on camera is going to merge with the ambient Epstein Files energy in a world-destroying way
Reposted by paul johnson
I don't mean to seem alarmed, but it appears Google's book search function is, just...gone.
In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
February 3, 2026 at 5:36 PM
I don't mean to seem alarmed, but it appears Google's book search function is, just...gone.
In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
my god, some sun outside. THE SUN
February 3, 2026 at 5:42 PM
my god, some sun outside. THE SUN
this cake was baked a longtime ago with "hostility to most forms of soft social and political authority" becoming the grist for the mill of the GOP base. Covid more or less a perfect storm for turning the green shoots of Trump into a full-blown anti-public ideology in total ascendance
one funny consequence of educational polarization is that dems become the party of sober experts and GOP the party of wacky cranks. this has been electorally bad for democrats but crucially i think it's also substantively politically bad. many experts are wrong! many conspiracies are in fact true!
I'm convinced one of the reasons epstein was able to coast for so long is that for many sensible people including and especially educated liberals, viewing the world through a conspiratorial lens was always seen as vaguely distasteful and rube-coded
February 3, 2026 at 3:58 PM
this cake was baked a longtime ago with "hostility to most forms of soft social and political authority" becoming the grist for the mill of the GOP base. Covid more or less a perfect storm for turning the green shoots of Trump into a full-blown anti-public ideology in total ascendance
my doctor is an insanely midwestern polish guy in his early 60s and i would do anything he told me to. he dresses like he thinks Marshall's is for the Rockefellers
I'm not gonna act like I knew the Epstein stuff was coming, but you cannot take medical advice from a guy who looks like this. I'd never trust a doctor who knows brand-name clothes.
CBS News Expected to Cut Ties With Contributor Peter Attia Over Epstein Links | Exclusive
Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss announced Peter Attia’s hiring last week as part of her new vision for the network, but since then he appeared in the Epstein files.
www.thewrap.com
February 2, 2026 at 5:36 PM
my doctor is an insanely midwestern polish guy in his early 60s and i would do anything he told me to. he dresses like he thinks Marshall's is for the Rockefellers
Reposted by paul johnson
I came back to share this thing I wrote on a whim today. It's relatively unpolished but, I think, interesting! If you like it please subscribe and share with someone who might also like it. It's free! Nobody pays me to think my deranged thoughts! buttondown.com/abbycartus/a...
Is MAHA fascist?
Is MAHA fascist? If yes, why or rather how is it fascist? I think I can finally give a satisfying answer to this question that is based on something more...
buttondown.com
February 1, 2026 at 10:33 PM
I came back to share this thing I wrote on a whim today. It's relatively unpolished but, I think, interesting! If you like it please subscribe and share with someone who might also like it. It's free! Nobody pays me to think my deranged thoughts! buttondown.com/abbycartus/a...
The penguins kiss cam incident today will surely go viral
February 1, 2026 at 12:03 AM
The penguins kiss cam incident today will surely go viral
Look...i mean...
I have a generalised version of this - while there are specific exceptions, it just feels like a _huge_ proportion of the American conservative movement revealed themselves to not really care about anything? Like, nothing concrete at least. It's all just vague ressentiments around Gender and Race.
tiktok deal and subsequent rebirth, coupled with generalized revelations that most china hawks don’t care at all about trump undermining their supposedly all important great power competition…..is tremendously blackpilling for me.
January 31, 2026 at 6:59 PM
Look...i mean...
Modern European Jewry
Soviet History 1919-1953
International Political Economy
Knowledge Power and Desire
Rhetoric of the Cold War
Soviet History 1919-1953
International Political Economy
Knowledge Power and Desire
Rhetoric of the Cold War
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college:
1) Epistemology
2) Euripides
3) History of Rock Music
4) Dead Sea Scrolls & Apocrypha
5) Twentieth Century US Political History with @rauchway.bsky.social
1) Epistemology
2) Euripides
3) History of Rock Music
4) Dead Sea Scrolls & Apocrypha
5) Twentieth Century US Political History with @rauchway.bsky.social
January 31, 2026 at 3:02 AM
Modern European Jewry
Soviet History 1919-1953
International Political Economy
Knowledge Power and Desire
Rhetoric of the Cold War
Soviet History 1919-1953
International Political Economy
Knowledge Power and Desire
Rhetoric of the Cold War
warra libidinal drive, mate
And I said during the event that what he is offering is a tolerance of cruelty; thinking on it further now I think you could say that precisely what he is offering is that he will not care about the rule of law and you don't have to either, you can save the nation/Western civ unconstrained by rights
January 30, 2026 at 7:43 PM
warra libidinal drive, mate
Reposted by paul johnson
Yahoo with the frontrunner for Most Insane Social Graphic of 2026
January 30, 2026 at 4:09 PM
Yahoo with the frontrunner for Most Insane Social Graphic of 2026
Adrienne's work is among those that have best understood that the factual claim that "online is not real life" was, like any factual claim, one capable of changing over time...
Also video games (which is mentioned briefly in this piece). Like there's a reason that one ICE agent said firing rubber bullets into a crowd was just like playing Call of Duty. They think the observers, protestors, and people they're terrorizing are just NPCs.
“Given that training for ICE officers has dropped down to about 6.5 weeks, TV/movies might be their biggest source of knowledge. It demonstrates that agents aren’t moving with tactical focus; they’re doing what they think will look cool and intimidating in photos.”
www.wired.com/story/ice-pr...
www.wired.com/story/ice-pr...
January 29, 2026 at 7:44 PM
Adrienne's work is among those that have best understood that the factual claim that "online is not real life" was, like any factual claim, one capable of changing over time...
only good part of this is someone's gonna rig up Paul Revere riding around yelling "ass to ass"
First trailer for Darren Aranofsky's new AI animated series 'On This Day... 1776'
• Tells short narrative stories about the Revolutionary War
• Uses Gen AI tools, including tech made by Google DeepMind
• Has SAG voice actors
• Tells short narrative stories about the Revolutionary War
• Uses Gen AI tools, including tech made by Google DeepMind
• Has SAG voice actors
January 29, 2026 at 6:11 PM
only good part of this is someone's gonna rig up Paul Revere riding around yelling "ass to ass"
Reposted by paul johnson
Hard not to read all of this bully-alpha-man-forced-outcome shit as a robust rejection of consent discourse.
Microsoft and Blackrock have "have largely given up on organic adoption [of AI] by consumers. They have moved on to a new dream of forced adoption mandated by government and managerial coercion."
Fascinating piece here on what Davos can teach us about the AI industry by @mattseybold.bsky.social
Fascinating piece here on what Davos can teach us about the AI industry by @mattseybold.bsky.social
"You have to use it. You have to trust it.": Forced Adoption of AI is The Subtext of Davos
Authoritarianism is the AI Bailout; But If AI Doesn't Need a Bailout, Does it Need Authoritarianism?
theamericanvandal.substack.com
January 29, 2026 at 3:35 PM
Hard not to read all of this bully-alpha-man-forced-outcome shit as a robust rejection of consent discourse.
Valentina Void is on the case
I have died, I am dead, please tell my story
oh my GOD
DETECTIVE HARRY HOLE
oh my GOD
DETECTIVE HARRY HOLE
January 29, 2026 at 4:06 AM
Valentina Void is on the case
Spanish don draper is on it
🚨🦅 Eintracht Frankfurt are prepared to seal the arrival of Albert Riera as new head coach in the next days. Agreement imminent but expected to take some days.
January 29, 2026 at 3:14 AM
Spanish don draper is on it
It is a curse to not know the future
January 29, 2026 at 2:01 AM
It is a curse to not know the future