Eristics Destroyed Democracy
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eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Eristics Destroyed Democracy
@eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
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The right wing embrace of pure eristics has made political discourse useless.
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eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Exhibit A from Canada
A flowchart showing how Canadians mix metric and imperial measurements, using imperial for body height and weight, oven temperature, short distances (measured in feet) etc.
October 1, 2025 at 2:41 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
What to do if you witness an unidentified “officer” taking someone. 1) Record it. 2) Call 911 and report a possible kidnapping. SAY: Someone is being taken. The individuals claim to be law enforcement but won’t show ID or name their agency. License plate is ______. This forces verified law enforcement to show up. They must take a statement. It pressures the “officers” to identify themselves. Creates a paper trail. Sets up grounds for a civil lawsuit. It may not stop detention but it demands accountability
June 24, 2025 at 2:17 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
A goat lying in the grass among yellow flowers, eyes closed and lips curved resembling a blissful smile. Caption reads “I am cringe… but I am free”. There really isn’t any reason for this to be a picture of a goat I don’t think, but the blissful look on its face really captures a vibe
May 12, 2025 at 12:40 AM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
While it’s not my area of expertise, as you point out, it naturally presents itself as a question. When that happens I always assume it’s also arisen as a question for others, for whom it *is* in their area of expertise
May 1, 2025 at 12:27 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
I’ve taken the framing of the problems underlying Western alienation on their own terms for so long - believing their oil is our main source of wealth, and they put in more than they get back. But at least the first of those is really not true, and the second is now unclear to me.
May 1, 2025 at 12:11 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
It’s definitely real culturally. I also always assumed it was true that the oil and gas industry was one of the leading sectors of our economy, and that Alberta did not receive adequate support from the Federal government.

But if some of what I’ve been reading lately is reliable, I have questions
April 28, 2025 at 5:05 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Map of North America showing the west coast and north eastern US states as part of an expanded Canada
April 26, 2025 at 2:17 AM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by a newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy a paper. One day, the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “Looking for an obituary.” Vendor says: “Those are towards the back of the paper, comrade.” Guy says: “Not the one I’m looking for.”
April 24, 2025 at 4:08 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Noam Chomsky quote: "I don't know what word in the English language - I can't find one - that applies to people who are willing to sacrifice the literal existence of organized human life so they can put a few more dollars into highly overstuffed pockets. The word 'evil' doesn't begin to approach it."
April 24, 2025 at 12:50 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Image of obese leopard, with caption: “Nope, I can’t eat another face”
April 23, 2025 at 4:13 AM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
The “yes, and” to this is that the massive MAGA movement, Christian nationalism, the alt-right, militia movement, the “Dark Enlightenment”/neo-feudalism of the brogliarchs, and the cynical willingness of plutocrats to back anyone who’ll slash regulations… they’ll all still be here!
Quote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached or voted out. But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him, the dark money that funded him, the online radicalization that drummed up his arm, nor the racism he amplified and reanimated.”
April 22, 2025 at 7:23 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Cartoon of faces wearing read hats droning in unison: “Tarrifs are really good actually but it’s also good they’re paused for 90 days or if they don’t happen at all”
April 14, 2025 at 6:37 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
It’s happening unannounced
Cartoon showing a large crowd of ICE officers in full riot gear. One says to the other “What time did they say this kid gets out of class again?” It’s hard to say if this is satirizing or just describing the ICE kidnapping of international students on US university campuses!
April 14, 2025 at 5:21 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Jim Carrey movies
A line graph showing increase in prevalence of autism per 1000 people increasing from years 2000 to 2010, plotted alongside another showing total number of Jim Carrey movies increasing over the same time period. The two lines have nearly identical slopes. The graph title reads “Definitive Proof that Jim Carrey Causes Autism” The point of this spurious correlation is to show that correlation is not causation
April 11, 2025 at 5:26 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Social media post by Matthew Todd: “you can tell how broken we are that a financial crash has the *entire* news media and establishment focusing on it, but you can have the hottest year in 100k years, with scientists warning of the collapse of civilization, and it is barely reported. Humanity is malfunctioning.
April 10, 2025 at 8:24 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
There is a great big button in people’s heads. Trump pushed it hard for his followers. It leads to a fervent, passionate, religiously ecstatic sense of what is right, or at least a strong conviction that the fascist stance is the right corrective. Wronged true believers can have it pushed again.
Umberto Eco's 14 Points of Fascism 1. The cult of tradition. 2. The rejection of modernism. 3. The cult of action for action's sake. 4. Disagreement is treason. 5. Fear of difference. 6. Appeal to social frustration. 7. The obsession with a plot. 8. The enemy is both strong and weak. 9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. 10. Contempt for the weak. 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. 12. Machismo and weaponry. 13. Selective populism. 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Lawrence Britt's 14 Points of Fascism 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 4. Supremacy of the Military 5. Rampant Sexism 6. Controlled Mass Media 7. Obsession with National Security 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined 9. Corporate Power is Protected 10. Labor Power is Suppressed 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 14. Fraudulent Elections
April 7, 2025 at 3:45 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Photo of a white goat lying in the grass among flowers, captioned “I am cringe but I am free”
April 6, 2025 at 2:40 AM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Snapshot os a social media post from a user called Grosslriane. “This is NOT what America is about. America is about *opens history book*. Uh oh. *Frantically starts flipping through pages* Uh oh. Oh no! No no no no no!”
April 5, 2025 at 4:16 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Image in the style of needlepoint, reading “The Opposite of Woke is ‘Mean’”
April 5, 2025 at 4:00 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
There’s just so much anti-democratic aggression out there right now. I don’t think the problems will end anytime soon
He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached or voted out. But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him, the dark money that funded him, the online radicalization that drummed up his army, nor the racism he amplified and reanimated
April 5, 2025 at 6:38 AM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Map of an expanded Canada including US Pacific Coast and North Eastern states, implying greater cultural, economic and political similarity across these areas, relative to the remaining US states, and recommending their political unification.
April 4, 2025 at 7:19 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
There’s a section in Alain de Botton’s “The News: A User’s Manual” I find so helpful for describing this problem. There are a lot of angles on this problem I discuss in the alt text, but this helps illuminate problems with people who govern based on headlines and exec summaries
“Beneath the rage (underlying news comments), one senses a touching belief that the problems of the world are basically solvable, it’s just they aren’t being dealt with swiftly or decisively enough for the simple reason, to which every new day provides fresh testimony, that we are ruled by crooks and idiots.” (I think it might be added to Alain de Botton’s ideas here that both crooks and idiots do rule, but they’re the ones forcing simple solutions onto complex problems.) Alain de Botton writes how the news invites us in to important spaces, introduces us to the key players, gives us a top-line overview of the problems being discussed, summarizes just a few of the complexities, a subset of which we bother to read, and “then shows us nothing but inexplicable delays, strange compromises and maddening evasions. It can feel as though we are daily being invited to watch helplessly while a close friend drowns behind a plate glass window.” Not to say that risk-averse decision makers don’t sometimes prevaricate for stupid reasons. Two things can be true. “The news is reluctant ever to provide us with a sufficiently rich set of descriptions of the problems that surround issues. The most logical solutions regularly look as if they were being ignored out of sheer stupidity. We ask with impatience and eventual fury, ‘why don’t they just…?” Again, few of us read far enough beyond the headline and lede. News must be written for that attention economy, and the research and beat knowledge of the reporter can’t be fully embedded in the story… Also, sometimes our impatience and fury is warranted, especially once a very clear pattern of dysfunction can be observed over many cycles… but still, all these layers interact “What the news seldom bothers to mention is why things don’t change very much; why great power and resources can’t solve our difficulties at a stroke. It doesn’t induct us with any degree of subtlety into the genuine reasons for calling a decision ‘difficult’. It leaves us instead to assume with mounting fury that every ongoing problem can only be the result of intense laziness, stupidity or malevolence - and could be solved in a few relatively decisive and simple steps by someone intelligent and ingenious…” Again, actually getting into the complexities can require expertise that, were a journalist to write it out, we could not read, so it’s not the place of news per se to do all that work. Also, people affected by the curse of knowledge do overcomplicate things. And yet, frustration anchored in simplification is a problem. When people with simplistic knowledge then get into power and enact policies based on their frustrations, that can create very big problems.
March 28, 2025 at 7:25 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
A young white man stands among protesters, wearing sturdy boots with stealthy soles (cop boots), a conspicuous ring-shaped object in his hip pocket (cuffs), a wire passing from his front pocket up inside his shirt, and the seams of a sign armoured vest visible under his t-shirt. Do not share plans with this guy, or let him goad you to “stir shit up”
March 27, 2025 at 8:11 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
Which version of the idea works best, I wonder…
March 6, 2025 at 5:09 PM
eristicsmustdie.bsky.social
March 4, 2025 at 6:45 PM