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Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

19 Oct

South Africans would be stunned to learn the only purpose of their Truth and Reconciliation Commission was "vengeance." And I think the people of America would be stunned to learn career DOJ officials are now considered "partisans." This is a sad article. washingtonpost.com/outlook/truth-…

The argument for letting some people be above the law and not face justice for their actions is always a political one. And columnists like this dress up that political argument in all sorts of ways that fraudulently rest on "principle"—usually by misidentifying motives/actors.

Having rule of law means you investigate violations of the law no matter by whom they are committed—and you do so impartially and without regard for political considerations. Those who argue for a different way should have the courage to say that they are being nakedly political.

Read 11 tweets

Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

18 Oct

(THREAD) Tim O'Brien is a great Trump biographer. But as a fellow Trump biographer, I'd disagree that there's no strategy component here. Trump's M.O. is a metamodern melange of strategy and instinct. What's he doing? Building his brand among his audience. cnn.com/2020/10/18/pol…

1/ When I first began writing academic articles about Trump in June 2015, I posited that he'd be appealing to many folks because—instinctively, not in a reflexive way—his paradoxical juxtapositions of opposing tendencies represent the darkest end of our current metamodern moment.

2/ At a time when postmodern political theorists—who in the waning years of that paradigm have come to love bipolar dialectics, which see polar-opposite forces contend with one another until one is destroyed—were calling Trump's followers "angry," I called them "angry optimists."

Read 26 tweets

Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

17 Oct

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1317440177472704512

I wrote 2 days ago that Trump *knew* a *long time ago* that Giuliani was involved in a Russian disinformation campaign. It's almost like I wrote a book called Proof of Corruption about this. Glad it's now breaking news on CBS. Proof of Corruption became a bestseller in September.

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1317440177472704512

PS/ To be clear, Trump knew *well* before December 2019—as detailed, using many major-media sources, in Proof of Corruption. Today's breaking news is that it was December 2019; tomorrow's news will say "summer 2019"; eventually everyone will catch up with the book: "spring 2018."

PS2/ And yes, I'm talking about spring 2018. Media is so many months—even years—behind the curatorial research in the Proof series that it's releasing as "breaking news" Trump knowing about a plot he knew about a year and a half earlier than CBS News now says. This is incredible.

Read 12 tweets

Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

17 Oct

Beyond my feed and media hits—BBC, CNN, etc—here's how I tried to help.

Proof Books—bit.ly/ProofSeries
Proof Pod—bit.ly/ProofPodcast
Newsweek—bit.ly/NewsweekColumns
Interviews
🔹Playboy—bit.ly/PlayboyIntervi…
🔹HBO—bit.ly/HBOInterview
Site: sethabramson.net

I've been thinking about this lately because my time as a political journalist is almost done. I've been planning to move on for a long time.

(Note: I'd add my recent chat with Russell Brand to the list above, but it's not out yet. So I'll add the below.) theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

I know some will feel put out that I won't be spending November obsessing over each new Trump atrocity. But I just can't. I've given 5+ years of my life to covering this madman, and it's taken a toll. My work on Trump's life from 1987 to mid-fall 2020 will have to stand as it is.

Read 24 tweets

Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

16 Oct

A couple weeks back I wrote here that our three year-old rescue hound Quinn doesn't know how to sit properly. Some of you gently took me to task, as you thought that the picture I offered wasn't a very good representation of the problem. How about this one, dog lovers of America?

PS/ (Quinn is a she.)

PS2/ (This is, as you can probably tell, the oldest and dirtiest chair in the house. But we can't get rid of it because both Quinn and Scout are obsessed with it, treat it as their "home base," and couldn't bear to be parted with it. And we would basically do anything for them.)

Read 4 tweets

Seth Abramson

@SethAbramson

16 Oct

Twitter has deleted, so far today, 150 followers from my feed out of (presumably) some sort of security necessity. Virtually every day, 100 to 300 followers are dutifully deleted. About 2,000 weekly. But Kremlin disinformation? Now *that* can freely appear *anywhere* on Twitter.

Can you imagine if Twitter policed Kremlin disinformation as fanatically as it polices the follower counts of Trump critics? If it removed one Kremlin-pushed "news" story from its platform for every one follower it removes from this (and many other) feeds?

That would be amazing.

Twitter has never explained to its users how it identifies followers that need to be removed from certain accounts—and I don't mean one at a time, I mean *mass purges* of 20 to 100 followers *all at once* that occur over and over throughout the day. Every *single* day. See below:

Read 5 tweets

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