Notices by Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online), page 4

With Trump, we’re always suspended somewhere between

“You won’t have a country anymore.”

AND

“A new golden age.”

3/

That hollow quality appears clearly (or seems to) when Trump nods to the future.

Or, rather, when he gestures to America’s TWO POSSIBLE FUTURES.

Depending on his mood, or where you catch him in his rhetorical swerving, we are either headed for total disaster or a return to mythic greatness.

2/

America is not yet a dictatorship, but that’s the MAGA North Star. It’s not so much a legal theory of a unified executive as it is a fantasy about totalitarian control.

We should prepare accordingly.

end/

By contrast, when Trump invokes or imagines a new golden age, he is always talking about enforced unity. One perspective that governs and eradicates all others. It’s the authoritarian core of MAGA politics, and it always carries the potential for repression and violence. For America to be secure, for America to prosper, power can brook no difference, no dissent, no challengers or opposition. That’s what’s happening right now with the purge of the military, and the FBI, and the DOJ, etc.

6/

When Trump threatens us with the dissolution of the nation, i.e., you won’t have a country, he is always talking about difference and the politics of pluralism. We can’t accept diversity or multi-vocality because all disagreement and dissent is lethal to Trump’s vision of America. America can only be secure where there is a single, unchallenged order to things. Security requires adherence to one center of power. Any deviation from this is a recipe for disaster. Obedience or death.

5/

Am I rooting against my country?

No.

I’m rooting against the criminals and nihilists who are actively sabotaging it.

#uspol

"There may well be normalcy again. But it lies on the other side—not in accommodation to this malevolent insanity, run by lackeys and toads. The risk of overreaction is trivial compared to the risks of accommodation.”

--Mark Greif (Stanford U.)

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-universities-research-cuts-reaction/

#highered #academia #democracy #science

Garbage people like Vance and DeSantis have gotten into power thanks in large part to their elite educations.

Now they want to attack the very institutions that elevated them, making it impossible for others after them to reap the same rewards and advantages.

This is, in addition, to the damage to health and life that will be caused by erosion of scientific and medical research.

It's fake populism that directly harms the people MAGA claims to champion.

Fascism is rooted in the idea of organic community and in the notion that a select and chosen people are bound by a common thread of fate and fortune. This spell is reinforced through the construction and subjugation of “alien others.” To build OUR ranks and fulfill OUR destiny, THE INTERNAL ENEMY must first be purged and later eliminated. Each raised arm, together with every shout, whistle, and cheer, reaffirms this logic.

Zelensky told the American people no ocean will protect them against Putin.

He’s one hundred percent correct.

We’ve been invaded and our Republic has been toppled, functionally speaking.

America is getting its first taste of regime change.

That’s your headline.

#uspol #democracy #fascism

It's midnight in America.

I'm stunned this went on air.

It's the most shameful display of American amorality I have ever witnessed. It makes me sick to be governed by these craven men.

The people of Ukraine are in the hands of Merz and Macron now, because Trump and Vance have left the camp of democracy and self-determination.

Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇦

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-zelensky-news-02-28-25/index.html

Trump's despicable war on DEI rolls on.

Meanwhile, the US Mint, according to its website, still plans to continue its American Women Quarters Project in 2025.

The 16th coin in the series honors Ida B. Wells, the journalist and civil rights activist.

This coin was set to be released into circulation on Jan 2, 2025.

Has anyone seen one in the wild?

@jeffjarvis

Stephen Miller must be relieved not to look like the most criminally insane member of the MAGA clique anymore.

Media criticism is still important. Not because we will change the gaslighters and boot lickers. But because they must never change us.

"As long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking."

--Vaclav Havel

#media #democracy

Fuck you, NYT.

This “analysis” brought to you by the same people who blame battered victims for provoking their violent partners.

#Ukraine #democracy #media

I’m doubling down on my analysis of MAGA laughter/humor.

Some people say that the Nazi salutes are just trolling, that is, tweaking the libs and rubbing their noses in MAGA libertarianism.

But just think how depraved and broken you have to be to take pleasure from the distress, fear, and vulnerability of others.

It doesn’t matter if it’s unadulterated Nazism or faux Nazism with a sprinkle of sadistic pleasure.

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/18/the-corruption-of-maga-comedy/

#uspol #democracy

It’s of course important to talk about the insufficiencies of memory culture and the strategic blunders of liberals, but I don’t accept the argument that the duty to remember is what spawned neofascism. It certainly isn’t what spawned Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s (because it didn’t exist then).

A student sent me this.

I have some thoughts. 🧵

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/germany-elections-afd.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yk4.iCAG.I7hk7P6dYux8&smid=url-share

People who want to be morally unrestrained and embrace myths of past glory don’t become that way by being asked to show moral restraint and think more deeply/seriously about history.

Nazis make Nazis, even if they deeply resent woke libs.