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Yascha Mounk Profile picture
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3 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
No, GameStop isn't an effective action against big finance carried out by the ideological descendants of Occupy Wall Street. Duh.

But, yes, GameStop was fueled by rage at big finance and the days when some hedge funds bled did feel very satisfying for that reason. Duh.
Hey, this kid in school just stuck his middle finger out at a teacher the whole class hates. Was this an effective rebellion against the pedagogical system?

No, duh. And if he's a little smart, he knew he'd pay for it in the end. But I bet it felt pretty damn good anyway...
It was deeply irresponsible for some people to pretend that Reddit was about to strike a deadly blow against capitalism (and encourage their followers to buy overvalued stock).

But it's obtuse not to see why so many people found deep satisfaction in this saga.
By the way, that's why I emphasized, all along, that buying GameStop stock did *not* look like a smart investment to me...

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More from @Yascha_Mounk

Yascha Mounk Profile picture
3 Feb
A lot of folks have so bought into the lie that those of us who worry about people being gratuitously fired for minor offenses just don't want anybody to be criticized that they see it as an amazing gotcha when we say that people should be criticized for terrible behavior.

🧵
As @jon_rauch explained, there is a big difference between somebody being criticized and somebody being canceled.

persuasion.community/p/the-cancel-c…
In the tweet that people are dunking on, I explicitly say we should *not* be canceling the cancellers.

But when people gratuitously accuse good-faith interlocutors of thought crimes, they *should* suffer reputational harm: we should all just roll our eyes.
Read 5 tweets
Yascha Mounk Profile picture
30 Jan
This is about as scientific or sensible as the fears that the religious right had about the Simpsons corrupting America's youth.
Liberals have traditionally been skeptical about television shows ruining the young or video games turning nice kids into mass murderers.

And yet, many of us now embrace ideas about how conspiracy theories spread that make similarly simplistic and sensationalist assumptions.
"Wait, I've got it! It's because of all the Easter Eggs in Bojack Horseman! THAT's why people now, for the first ever time in human history, are willing to believe in batshit conspiracy theories."
Read 4 tweets
Yascha Mounk Profile picture
27 Jan
I support (the option of) statehood for Puerto Rico on an ur-American principle: "no taxation without representation."

But it's a little weird that so many people assume that a) Puerto Ricans would definitely vote for statehood and b) their Senators would always vote with Dems.
Puerto Rico has a deeply entrenched partisan political divide that does not map neatly onto the American one.

And its Senators would, primarily, have an interest in getting the best treatment for PR.

It really isn't as simple as "they're brown so they'll just be Democrats."
Of course, all of this is even more reason to offer PR a vote on statehood.

This shouldn't be some partisan maneuver to "rebalance" the Senate. It should be pursued because we owe Puerto Ricans a chance to decide on their own future, whatever the consequences for US politics.
Read 4 tweets
Yascha Mounk Profile picture
25 Jan
An unsourced German press report in a serious newspaper suggests that the primary vaccine used in the UK only has 8% effectiveness among 65+.

This is either:

a) a totally irresponsible failure of journalism, or

b) a giant disaster for the UK (and @BorisJohnson's government).
In the interest of reducing deaths and beating this pandemic, let's all hope it turns out to be a)...
FWIW, Germany's biggest tabloid is now reporting a version of the same story, suggesting that the vaccine is unlikely to be green-lit for 65+.

At this point, this does not look like misreporting; true or false, someone senior in the German government is really feeding this info.
Read 6 tweets
Yascha Mounk Profile picture
21 Jan
As somebody with a Body Mass Index just over 25, this would put me in one of the highest priority groups to get the vaccine in Washington, DC.

Respectfully, that is completely nuts.

washingtonpost.com/local/dc-polit…
(On the other hand, I now have an excuse to eat poorly for the next few weeks. Don't wanna drop below that magical threshold!)
This is also a great example of the idiocy of trying to smuggle racial justice into vaccine priorities under the hood.

The point of this policy is to get it to DC's poorer residents. In the end, it'll help the people who have the most resources to work the system.

Total fail.
Read 4 tweets
Yascha Mounk Profile picture
17 Jan
Germany's Christian Democrats just chose a new leader, who is likely to succeed Angela Merkel next year: Armin Laschet.

Unlike his main competitor, Friedrich Merz, Laschet is a moderate who is likely to continue Merkel's political line.

That's good. But I have a few concerns.
1)
It is far from clear that Laschet will continue Merkel's line on foreign policy.

In the past, Laschet has been deferential to Russia, defended Assad and even attacked NATO for its solidarity with Britain at the time of the Salisbury Attack.
It's possible that Laschet will seek a middle course between America, on the one hand, and Russia and China, on the other hand.

Even if he does not make that disastrous mistake, he is highly unlikely to turn Germany into a more consistent defender of democracy and human rights.
Read 8 tweets

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