Timothy Burke
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timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke
@timothyburke.bsky.social
6.5K followers 920 following 1.5K posts

Professor of History at Swarthmore College. Writes at timothyburke.substack.com, continuing from his old blog Easily Distracted. Remembers when there was no Internet, and stays up late because someone is wrong on it.

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Political science 50%
Sociology 17%
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timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 10h
What's fascinating is that cynical scumbags like Scott are having to rush into the vast, howling vacuum around Trump to supply the usual nonsense, because Trump and his gangsters aren't interested and aren't bothering. I don't know quite why they do it. A reflex, I guess.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h
Rick Scott: "I'm glad the president didn't just take Maduro and walk away. I'm glad that he's committed to freedom and democracy in Venezuela. Now, I can't tell you how they're going to get there ... "

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 10h
Any nation that has actual elections and a more or less liberal framework of laws, rights and regulations needs to understand: if you don't defend what you have against the US, China and Russia, you're going to lose it. Don't let an American billionaire buy companies in Greenland, for example.

Reposted by Timothy Burke

atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h
Rick Scott: "I'm glad the president didn't just take Maduro and walk away. I'm glad that he's committed to freedom and democracy in Venezuela. Now, I can't tell you how they're going to get there ... "

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 1d
Oh, I'm so sorry--hang tight and all the best hopes.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d
Looking for the part of the Constitution that says "elected members of Congress who aren't trusted by the President don't get to exercise the powers and duties assigned to them in the Constitution". Not there. Seems to me like it's Harrigan who is the guy using some other country's laws.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d
GOP Rep. Pat Harrigan: "There are members of Congress that they just cannot trust. And I understand that. We have folks that are Somali first and not America first."

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Timothy Burke, Henry Jones , and 2 more

atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d
GOP Rep. Pat Harrigan: "There are members of Congress that they just cannot trust. And I understand that. We have folks that are Somali first and not America first."

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d
My best guess is that Trump's people are offering to install Maria Corina Machado as the new head of state in Venezuela as long as she gives Trump her Nobel prize in return.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d
So any country that indicts another country's ruler (or other citizen) can go capture him if they have the military capability? Might makes right and all that? File that under "doctrines that everybody's going to regret sooner or later".
ericmgarcia.bsky.social Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2d
Vance pushes back and says this was not illegal, arguing "Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."
A 8:42 AM · Jan 3, 2026 post from JD Vance saying "And PSA for everyone saying this was "illegal": Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."

Reposted by Rebecca Solnit, Brendan Nyhan, Steve Peers , and 16 more

ericmgarcia.bsky.social
Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2d
Vance pushes back and says this was not illegal, arguing "Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."
A 8:42 AM · Jan 3, 2026 post from JD Vance saying "And PSA for everyone saying this was "illegal": Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas."

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d
Wait, they're going to charge Maduro, who is a Venezuelan citizen, with Possession of Machineguns in an American court? Why are they even bothering with courts if they're going to be that silly?

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 2d
It's almost refreshing in one sense, and horrifying in another, because I think it signals a profound absence of any plan or purpose at all that needs a lie to cover it up. It's just about showing their readiness to use military force for anything that strikes their fancy.
michaelgkagan.bsky.social Michael Kagan @michaelgkagan.bsky.social · 3d
I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

Reposted by Elizabeth Saunders, Brendan Nyhan, Shadd Maruna , and 22 more

michaelgkagan.bsky.social
Michael Kagan @michaelgkagan.bsky.social · 3d
I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war

Reposted by Timothy Burke

jesseltaylor.bsky.social
jesse @jesseltaylor.bsky.social · 3d
This is an absolutely bananas article, but my favorite part is that Bari Weiss wants to meet people where they are by taking a private jet and a fleet of bodyguards to speak to hand-picked audiences at restaurants and private schools
Private jets and ‘Bari pitches’: Inside Weiss’ chaotic CBS Evening News reboot
EXCLUSIVE: The new CBS News editor-in-chief has chartered private flights for her armed security detail, made last-minute logistical changes and fired off ‘Bari Pitches.’ Weiss is once again accused o...
www.independent.co.uk

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
All the headlines you're trying to give benediction to give Grok the agency for "apologizing". You're either trying to obfuscate or you really don't get the basic point here. Any headline that has Grok as an active agent is fundamentally and profoundly false.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
"Man in the street" is 100% the easiest genre of lazy bullshit in American journalism. This is just piling on the usual "I talked to some guy in Tennessee and also my neighbor" with deliberate ideological intent. "Average Americans" in Bari Weiss's world means "not 51% of the electorate".
ashtonpittman.bsky.social Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 3d
This isn't about democratizing the news. It's about elevating "vibes" and "feelings" to be on par with lived experience and subject-matter expertise.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
Exactly the point you're being clueless about. Musk didn't apologize, so neither can "Grok". It's like saying "Airbags manufactured by Takata apologize for being defective, company defers responsibility."

Reposted by Carl T. Bergstrom

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
And, by the way, so is "Elon Musk refuses responsibility for his product's errors". That's the point: use the headline to clarify which it is, not to muddle the narrative.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
People expect a clear noun-verb agreement statement that accurately assigns agency to a human actor. "Elon Musk apologizes for product failure". That's a headline, ffs.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 3d
If it said "collective action" or "cooperation" or "working together", or any number of Sesame Street-approved equivalents, I think you'd be ok with that? I hope, unless I have you very very wrong after years of reading you. So hear it as saying one of those kind of things.

Reposted by Robert W. Wallace, Scott A. Imberman, Timothy Burke , and 2 more

ashtonpittman.bsky.social
Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 3d
This isn't about democratizing the news. It's about elevating "vibes" and "feelings" to be on par with lived experience and subject-matter expertise.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 4d
This isn't exactly a history of the syllabus but that history tracks through it, and it also lays out why a history of the syllabus is methodologically challenging. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
The Teaching Archive
The Teaching Archive shows us a series of major literary thinkers in a place we seldom remember them inhabiting: the classroom. Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan open up “the teaching archive”—...
press.uchicago.edu

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 4d
I think this is where we're at: the hard problem is venality, criminality, corruption. There is no external guard rail or system sufficient to foil it, regardless of what one might think its wellspring is. Either you change its deep underpinnings or you make a new move on the side of constraint.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 4d
Now that is a great thought. Any state that is not a Ship of Theseus by design is doomed already--see "living constitution" vs. "originalism" while ignoring that "originalism" has always been an intellectually shabby and dishonest scam from its real-life proponents.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 4d
I think? we are thinking along the same lines. In the old sense, republicanism is winning the argument with liberalism--if ruling elites are not restrained by some sense of internal or cultural virtue, systems and institutions are worthless.

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Gernot Wagner, Timothy Burke , and 2 more

madwonk.bsky.social
Defenestration @madwonk.bsky.social · 4d
Holy shit it's real
Description of the two task forces organized by Mandami, LIFT (use city owned land to develop housing) and SPEED (identify what slows down and drives up the costs on affordable housing)

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 8d
What is a strong state? We've taken for granted that institutionalist states with strong rule of law are 'stronger' in the sense of being able to absorb and deflect potential lines of failure and collapse. Not a sustainable argument now. Are there any states that are "strong" in this sense?

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 12d
www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1...
This oral history of the 'Village Voice' captures its creativity and rebelliousness
Tricia Romano's The Freaks Came Out To Write chronicles the passion and talent that made a great American newspaper — and the forces that killed it.
www.npr.org

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 12d
I was really struck reading a recent history of the Village Voice to see that Nat Hentoff was one of the writers who tried to block or suppress writing at the Voice that he felt was unserious--e.g., that had a politics he disdained. So much for the crusade for free speech.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d
In one sense, this is nothing new. Remember the utterly unqualified graduates of Liberty U. etc who were sent to redo the Iraqi traffic code and so on during the American occupation. But this is taking it to a whole new level. It's hilarious that the right claims 'grade inflation' worries them.

timothyburke.bsky.social
Timothy Burke @timothyburke.bsky.social · 13d
There is a straight line from the naivete of well-meaning but easily fooled people who sympathetically credited talk of viewpoint diversity and cynical liars who played at those folks in order to install right-wing dogmatic ideology as the only allowable voice. Bari Weiss is the tip of that spear.