All of right wing thought needs to be broadly discredited.

I guess that might have been halfway plausible when we had something resembling a justice system?

It's such an indictment of our political discourse that impartial law is no longer seen as significant. It's all about whether we can vilify or humanize him. Murder a person--is that wrong or right? Who's to say? The real question nowadays is whether they were a "good" person or not, apparently!

While the rest of us keep on losing

Pacifism was about all I retained from my Quaker upbringing. But that pacifism has been buckling since the Ukraine war.

Not sure if this counts but my history book club will be discussing Howard French's Born in Blackness next week. My book club happens to be all-white (not by design!). We don't tend to talk so much about what's happening right now but ties from the book to contemporary life will likely arise.

Hang on, isn’t joining a country’s military inherently political? (Unless you’re like pressed into service) Or do you mean more like “partisan”?

Is this supposed to be incoherent? “Individualism” paired with “universalism” and “collectivism” paired with “particularism”?

I’m gonna level with you. I can’t figure it out and there’s probably no there there but it FELT right. Well, except for the fact they’re All True Bastards.

Somehow this feels like a No True Bastard situation.

Sure it is, just play the board game Imperial. We US Americans tend to think we’re Exceptional, though.

I’m so gullible I thought that was a direct quote.

Didn't folks used to say "regime change starts at home"? And now those same folks are pining for the W Bush days. (When I say "folks", this includes me 😬)

A provision banning racial profiling of Hispanics by ICE in reaction to yesterday's SCotUs action should immediately be added as a non-negotiable position for any kind of CR.

*Force* the GOP to *demand* racial profiling of Hispanics and make them threaten to shut down the government over it

I had thought that the whole Musk moment (DOGE and all) was going to lead to the big business/government fascist alliance but then that fell apart. I see fascism (of course) doesn't take no for an answer so Trump is trying another avenue.

Isn't this why people study history? To expand the scope of our imaginations so that less and less is "beyond imagination"?

I don't think they're earnestly imagining that. They're just signaling as strongly as possible that Trump is more important than the US.

Yeah I tend to agree that draft-talk presumes several unlikely prerequisite events happening. Otoh as a rule I think it’s better to have a wider political imagination than narrower. That’s a big lesson Trump should teach us all!

Is a draft impossible because World War 3 will never happen?