Broad protections for civil liberties are a definitional element of democracy but not autocracy. That's the best reason for ordinary folks.

Even if democracy is only a game for resolving elite conflicts w/o violence, ordinary people bear the brunt of that violence. That's another reason.

If he’s limping bc he’s got a rifle part down his pants it’s amateur hour but if he’s doing it to throw off gait recognition tech that’s some serious forethought.

The issue with Gyokeres is that we're taking on two kinds of substantial risk. Performance risk - Will his production translate from Portugal? Will he elevate the side? Roster/Financial risk - If his first two years are poor, are we stuck with a 29-year-old on 200k per week for three more years?

Its mainly people refusing to admit their own culpability, whether as Trump voters, as folks who spent years both sidesing him and fixating on shiny baubles like DEI, or as folks who lost their mind at the Biden administration. The truth is that WE FUCKED UP BIGLY and they played their part. End.

I'm as worried about Trump as anybody but "US is now less democratic than Russia or Ethiopia by our measures" seems like a bad take.

Yup. And its both patrimonial and - as is becoming more and more apparent- highly ideological in a very very dark way. That combination is terrifying.

You joke but G Gordon Liddy actually did this inside the Nixon White House.

And stripped from people like @markzaidesq.bsky.social at the same time.

Yup. I expect a very very bleak job market across the board. Universities will retrench and freeze hiring until they can assess the damage and figure out what to do.

Also a moron for thinking “buona sera” is some phrase in Italian when the Godfather is just saying the guy’s name (Bonasera).

This is a longstanding pathology of left wing politics. Cafes in Santiago in 1972 were full of people who believed that Chile's constitutional democracy was just a facade erected by the bourgeoisie to prevent popular revolution. And a year later those people were getting thrown out of helicopters.

Exactly right. We’re seeing delegative democracy in action right now. And O’Donnell’s work on democracy in contexts without rule of law is also looking very pertinent.

I would say that we are witnessing changes to rules and norms related to the exercise of power but not (yet) changes to those rules and norms related to access to power.

That combination is familiar territory for Latin Americanists, delegative democracy makes it to the US.

We are so fucked.

We let massive tech companies create society destroying products and hardly put up a fight.