"Unless we imagine a systematic severing of children from parents, birthright citizenship in the historical context of free immigration implies a constitutional regime of open borders." www.liberalcurrents.com/abolition-am...
"They are projecting their desire for a restrained, demilitarized foreign policy onto Trump, who is in fact hyper-militarizing American foreign policy… The White House’s own executive order shows that the rebranding is about readying the country for war, not reeling it in." (from September)
Considering Markwayne Mullin’s past as an MMA fighter, some additional relevant thoughts
www.liberalcurrents.com/merry-christ...
Pervert Politics: Trumpism’s Body Obsessions:
How Republicans went from the party of prudes to the party of perversion.
By @aselrod.bsky.social:
🧾 www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
From Trump to Noem to Hegseth and beyond, we are being governed by a party of perverts who are set on making their own psychosexual derangements into policy
www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
Good noting of the body politics of our moment. Bill Connolly used Theweleit to explore it too - in Aspirational Fascism. One claim here is pain porn needs plastic people — men and women only need apply — and that war is a necessary amplifier of the fixation. How best to counter it, politically?
I really appreciate @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com joining me for a concert about what she's been reading, contingency and history, patriarchy as the organizing narrative of our lives, and more. I hope you'll listen and then subscribe to @liberalcurrents.com and read Samantha's work.
“A negative coalition can be an effective source of resistance. Anger and outrage against the current administration is mobilizing Americans in collective defense of their neighbors, as in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles and in countless small towns across the country.”
"Hegseth’s vision of the American military is preoccupied with an ideal of the male form—one that’s a kind of modern mishmash of Spartan imagery and homoerotic fascist machismo. But that is only one facet of the Trumpian right’s fixation on the body." www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
"Attorney General Bondi will order state bar associations to stand down in their investigations. They will ignore her. Nothing will happen." www.liberalcurrents.com/authority-an...
"We are treated to our president, (. . .)an adjudicated sex offender, giving semi-erotic rants about violent crime and wounded soldiers. We are forced to endure the mentally pubescent antics of a Secretary of 'War' who boasts about the death and destruction created by his rippling 'war fighters.'"
"What’s inescapable through all of this is the sense of the human form—particularly as a subject of violence or abuse—as a source of inextricably political and sexual excitement. Yes, this is especially true of Trump, but it’s a generalized phenomenon on the right."
"If the Trumpian right glorifies in some alterations, they clearly demonize others. The discussion of trans individuals remains centrally focused on the lurid details of their bodies, particularly their genitalia." www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
"Throughout the speech, one was left with the clear sense that Trump was at his most animated when describing the bloodied and mangled bodies of other people." www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
"The federal judiciary, through the precedents set by the Supreme Court over a very long period, have quite successfully asserted that they have the authority to determine who has authority over what. Crucially, this means they also hold the authority to determine what their own authority is."
“When Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by DHS, people on the right quickly memed their deaths to glorify state violence against the left. Again, their bodies, and the manipulations thereof, serve as the primary object on which to enact politics.” www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
“The body is the primary subject of Trumpian politics. This is true both in the affirmative sense of right-wing aesthetics and in the punitive sense of managing the bodies of others to display power and contempt.” www.liberalcurrents.com/pervert-poli...
hegseth is very clearly articulating that we don't want to hit critical targets, we want to terrify & kill iranians, because there's no plan here other than snuff films for twitter bsky.app/profile/libe...
"Formal authority and actual social power do not have a clean, straightforward relationship with one another. Each angle that the Trump administration takes has to be examined in its particulars—an admittedly exhausting enterprise, but an important one." www.liberalcurrents.com/authority-an...
"Despite the magnitude of what they gave, our final donors in this campaign are not of 'the donor class' any more than the 1,300 GoFundMe donors are, or the hundreds of new subscribers who have joined us." www.liberalcurrents.com/we-have-met-...
"Yet they believed that normal politics was possible, and hoped to turn the other cheek, to bless those who cursed them. 'The fever will break,' Biden had been predicting since Obama’s reelection in 2012." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...
"To help one’s neighbors, to stand up for the Bill of Rights, and to demand that our government follow the law is to insist that principles of freedom and equality—the natural rights of every individual—can only be achieved collectively." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...
missed this incredible journalism news: @liberalcurrents.com reached their $500k fundraising goal!! that means full time staff, further building out the site, and funding for good people doing important work without billionaires. hell yea.
"Federal officers who execute warrantless searches and secret police who murder protestors violate more than just their oath to the Constitution. They violate the proper order of a free people." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...
"Militarily closing the Strait of Hormuz—i.e. preventing US Navy access to it—would be hard, but Iran doesn’t need that for an economic impact. Hostilities make ships afraid to sail, and insurance companies refuse to cover the risk."
Looks like the White House really didn't think this through.
From Principles to Politics. Freedom, equality, and fellowship are principles of the republican tradition, in the U.S. and globally. Echoes can be found in liberté, egalité, fraternité ou mort (liberty, equality, and fraternity or death) in revolutionary France, in the revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar’s Letter from Jamaica, and in countless constitutions across the world. These are universal values, and they are also quintessentially American. The Trump administration’s perversion of these American values explains why his second administration is so unpopular. But its opponents must not repeat the errors of the Biden-Harris administration, which activated a negative coalition to win the presidency in 2020 but failed to secure a durable settlement thereafter. The Biden-Harris administration’s fundamental error was refusing to confront the enemy of freedom, equality, and fellowship as the enemy. Biden and Harris knew exactly the stakes; they warned Americans of what the Trump administration would do if returned to office in 2025. Yet they believed that normal politics was possible, and hoped to turn the other cheek, to bless those who cursed them. “The fever will break,” Biden had been predicting since Obama’s reelection in 2012. The Nazi propagandist Carl Schmitt was right to identify liberal democracy’s weakness: reducing political conflict to disagreement over economic policy or cultural values. But when the procedures of liberal democracy have been distorted by antidemocratic forces, the liberal’s response to these distortions must be unequivocal. Every liberal—republican, conservative, socialist, Christian, or any other—must draw the line when confronted with lawlessness, corruption, and perfidy by those who abandon freedom, equality, and fellowship for their personal ends. There can be no compromise on these principles.
The anti-Trump coalition is a negative coalition, defined by what it opposes. Durable political change requires a positive coalition, defined by what it believes and the principles that will defend. Here is my outline of those principles... and the stakes.
www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...
“This administration shares, with earlier iterations of fascist politics, an obsession with action, with the kinetic application of power.” www.liberalcurrents.com/war-fighters...
"The liberal’s response to these distortions must be unequivocal. Every liberal (. . .)must draw the line when confronted with lawlessness, corruption, and perfidy by those who abandon freedom, equality, and fellowship for their personal ends." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-republic...
