Truth #11 of The Thirteen Truths of Superman
— Read on orphansandempires.substack.com/p/americas-kryptonite

inspired polemic

An interesting and well written article that pushes for an informed activism that encompasses tech.
— Read on wedontagree.net/technically-radical-on-the-unrecognized-potential-of-tech-workers-and-hackers

I keep saying this, but i keep having to.  Listening to her another pundit debate about whether whatever trump is doing right now ( in this case, reversing direction I Ukraine) is good policy or bad policy, and it's not the right question.  It might have good effect. It might be catastrophic. The issue is that one man is in a position to decide!  He is a KING!  We don't want a king!

UBI doesn't mean "no work".  It means divorcing work from remuneration.  There's still plenty of good work, but no one wants to pay you for it, so you get paid independently of your work. For example, you write songs.  You build a house for yourself.  You learn to sail, and take people sailing.  You raise a kid.  

You don't expect to get paid for any of it, but you do the work because work is meaningful and life affirming.  Remuneration, the money you need to live, doesn't depend on renting your labor out, which when you think about it is a pretty modern idea.  Back in the day we had patronage, and inheritance, and allowances (and slavery!) and all sorts of mechanisms that didn't directly tie labor to money.

The Guardian sees us in a time where we transitioned away from Pax Americana to an indeterminate state where we can’t rely on the US because the leadership keeps changing direction, so other countries have to form institutions that work around us (https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/may/10/are-we-heading-for-another-world-war-or-has-it-already-started).  But that’s just the intermediate position; the US will bring its weight to bear to actively oppose much of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will have to find a way to stand up to it.

Don’t perform outrage.  Don’t go to your opponents’ districts and give town halls.  Don’t go to ICE facilities and get arrested.

Identify those amongst your colleagues in the Republican Party who are doing things that they feel are wrong.  Talk to them, and find out what you can do to make it possible for them to do what they feel is right (security for their families? Anonymous voting?)  Then do that.

6-3 decision revokes the ability of a lower court to stay executive orders nationwide, thereby putting the authority of a lower court judge below that of the President. Since the selection of cases decided by the Supreme Court is at their discretion, and won’t even reach them if no appeal is made, seems to me this means that if the King decides tomorrow that, due to his bad bowel movement this morning, all women whose name begins with “M” should be arrested and shot,  no one in the land other than the Supreme Court can suspend the order until its legality is determined.

Or: WA state court declares my son’s citizenship valid by birth, but NJ declares it is following the rules when he flies into Newark and ICE confiscates his passport and arrests him; this is legal unless and until the Supreme Court issues an injunction.

And, by dint of a prior ruling that absolves the King of any legal responsibility in the execution of “official business”, the King is never held accountable for his act and retires comfortable in the knowledge that no M-named shrews or their grieving loved ones will ever see justice.

There has been a rash of articles lately about how tyranny and fascism in the 21st century doesn't look like that of in the 20th. No grinning thugs standing on balconies yelling at cheering crowds, no brownshirts in the streets beating on communists and Jews, no militaristic rallies. It's all "competitive authoritarianism", legitimate elections and soft coercion of institutions now, we are told.

This last week in California we see: Marines and national guard deployed against civilians in California. A senator assaulted by Federal security and handcuffed when trying to ask a question of the administration's PR person. The biggest military parade in US history. 

Tell me again how fascism in the 21st century is so different.

Three immediate thoughts re Roger’s article https://quillette.com/2025/06/10/classical-liberalism-without-strong-gods-open-society-popper/:

1. I remembered reading “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Appiah, 2006) years ago. A unifying moral liberal secular idea of how societies might function.  I remember recommending it to many friends. Quite bracing, I should re-read.

1. There are moral lessons to be drawn from established religion.  The importance of an institutional mechanism for forgiveness in society.  Egalitarianism.  Charity.  Many of society’s best ideas are distilled into religious tenets in admittedly simplistic but comprehensible forms. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

1. https://www.themontrealreview.com/Articles/Moral_Particulars_in_Literature.php Happened to read this in the same feed session, some coincidence, huh?

The media have spent a week of frenzied reporting on the high-school-level breakup of Trump and Musk.  It’s reality-tv level nonsense, and the Donald knows how to make that work for him.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them orchestrated the whole thing as part of the ongoing don’t-look-behind-the-curtain autocratic capture. It was always going to be the case that the transactional president would dispense with any one of his sidekicks when they were no longer useful to him.

There is a Musk story.  Weeks of sustained grass-roots protest at Tesla dealerships has led to plummeting sales and sinking share values as the brand has become toxic.  Tesla owners are shamed for associating with the brand, and turn away. Feeling the pressure from shareholders and board members, the CEO withdraws from activities that are damaging his brand and returns to the work of managing the businesses.  A success for bottom-up non-violent citizen protest.

I haven’t seen any punditry drawing these connections, however.