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David Roberts Profile picture
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13 Mar, 4 tweets, 1 min read
The right-wing "free speech" con, explained.
The hilarious background:
This guy wouldn't tweet "mommy milky," would he? 🤔
I don't have my blue check any more, so Mommy Milky can't sue me.

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
14 Mar
Highly recommend both the newsletter & the piece on baugruppen linked below it. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who express a yearning for more communal life -- it just seems so daunting to get there from the position of the average suburbanite.
For years I have been thinking about the central point @annehelen makes in the newsletter: individualist capitalism tells us that success = freedom from constraints. Total mobility. Total autonomy. All the choices open, no paths cut off. But actual lived experience tells us ...
... that happiness comes from embeddedness, from obligations & entanglements. We draw sustenance from community, which we cannot get without restrictions & trade-offs. Fulfillment is one side of a coin, the other side of which is commitment & constraint.
Read 5 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
14 Mar
Not just professors! Like anything that energizes & empowers the right wing, 9/11 kicked off years of efforts across culture to suppress liberal speech.

There is NO speech today that elicits the coordinated "cancelling" faced by people calling for peace & compassion in '02-'04.
Remember the Dixie Chicks? Now that was canceling -- not just protests from some activists, but a coordinated campaign of harassment & exclusion that included numerous public officials & involved death threats & album-burning parties.
More broadly: throughout history, in the VAST majority of cases, threats to speech come from the powerful & are directed against the powerless. It is subaltern & minority groups that are "canceled." It is beneficiaries of the social & economic status quo doing the canceling.
Read 6 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
10 Mar
This seems obviously correct & the deep conservative desire to impose "educational" suffering will never cease to mystify me.
Suffering does not "teach lessons." It creates trauma. The deep, deep conservative belief (instinct?) to the contrary is what prevents us from having a decent f'ing society.
I once did a dive into the scientific literature on spanking. The world is full of small-c conservatives absolutely convinced, in their bones, that spanking "teaches lessons" & encourages positive behavior. The science is clear: it does not. vox.com/science-and-he…
Read 5 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
9 Mar
I'm watching new DOE @SecGranholm speak. One of the first things she said is, "our hair is on fire." Absolutely gripped by a sense of urgency. This makes me happy.
Oh man, she's hyping the loan office, hyping R&D, and then -- as an aside -- hyping the need for more transmission.
I like to think that over the years I've developed a sense for politicians -- when they're delivering talking points & when they're sincerely interested/engaged. Granholm is genuinely hyped about this stuff.

Nerd enthusiasm recognize nerd enthusiasm.
Read 7 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
9 Mar
A random, vaguely Q-related thought. I remember back in the 90s, listening to Bill Clinton talk about how society should work for those who "work hard & play by the rules." That was the Democrats' big pitch: work hard, play by the rules, and you can make a decent living.
And I remember, distinctly, thinking: that's it? That's our vision for what it means to be American? The country's mostly at peace, the economy's doing well, so we all work hard at our jobs, don't break laws, & in exchange we all get big screen TVs & suburban houses. I mean ...
... don't get me wrong, everyone chilling out & just living reasonably comfortable lives sounds great to ME, but I feel like the country is full of people who need more than that. People need to feel grand purpose. The Cold War, which gave generations of cons that purpose ...
Read 10 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
8 Mar
I'm already dreading how the democracy reform debate will play into the media's worst both-sides tendencies.

Viewed through the lens of partisan politics, it just looks like both parties fighting for policies that will get them more votes. That's the "savvy" take.
In reality, voter fraud, of the kind Republicans claim to be addressing with their wave of state-level voter-suppression bills, is a myth. In this debate, the GOP is acting purely for partisan interest, against the public interest. Meanwhile ...
... the flaws Dems mean to address with HR1, DC statehood, etc., *really are* problems. They really do distort the fairness of the system. In this debate, the Dems are acting simultaneously for partisan interest & for the public interest. That just breaks "savvy" brains.
Read 6 tweets

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