Apropos of, well, everything, I've been thinking a lot about the fragility of democracy, Rawls and Nozick, "big" arguments, and when it's time to recognize that those arguments are made beside the point by the current political choice at hand.
economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/10/14/a...

NB that this is _not_ singling out a particular poster, but I see posts like this pretty well every day on bluesky. I'm _much_ more in favor of the welcoming the prodigal with fatted lamb approach than the denounce past sins one, on pragmatic as well as ethical grounds - it's how you build alliances

1870-71: Franco-Prussian War, 433K dead
1914-1918: WWI, 17.6M dead, including 116K Americans
1939-1945: WWII, 54M dead in Europe, including 277K Americans
1949: NATO founded
1949- : No big interstate war in Europe (until Ukraine, which isn't in NATO)
2024: "NATO's dumb. What's it do for us anyway?"

You know what other field is "inherently political"? Political science. That doesn't mean that to do research on the topic is political, just that the phenomenon itself is political. With disinformation studies, the political assymmetry of the findings make it easy for others to politicize the work.

New from me & @pamherd.bsky.social: how the US welfare state has evolved
Good news: programs that have grown have become less burdensome.
Bad news: there is greater inequality in the experience of burden.

(Please support the non-Taylor Swift take industry)
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/fewer-burd...