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Dilan Esper Profile picture
@dilanesper
Jul 5, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
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Prediction: there will not be an autocratic takeover of the American state in the next 3 years, and when it doesn't happen the academics like Skocpol who predicted it will face no loss of standing in elite discourse, just like foreign policy pundits who supported the Iraq War.
There's a whole Cry Wolf Caucus in academia who are constantly telling us we meet, e.g., 16 of the 17 signs of Hitler taking over. In an ideal society this sort of thing-- which is CLEARLY politically motivated and careerist-- would cost people credibility when it doesn't happen.
At any rate we have very strong institutions against any sort of Hitler-style takeover. There's a lot of stuff the Trump Administration is doing that I think is very bad, including, for instance, the Medicaid cuts he just signed or the immigration policies.
But American democracy will survive. There will be free elections in 2026 and 2028 and most likely the Republicans will not do well in them.
And while President Trump will have a lot of power to do damage in the area of immigration, Presidents have always had lots of power over immigration (Joe Biden did too) and it is inaccurate to label that an autocratic takeover and destruction of federalism.

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More from @dilanesper

Dilan Esper Profile picture
Apr 4
i am so angry at some of my fellow Americans. i am not even the biggest NATO booster but there's no way you can tear the thing apart while Russia is waging war for territory in Ukraine.

These people want to blow up NATO because WE were morons who attacked Iran.
A bunch of people on the Right are now committed to an absolutely idiotic war that caused a global oil shock and failed to change the Iranian regime because (1) President Trump ordered it and (2) they have an irrational love of wars.

Europe, hurt by the shock, is pissed at us.
Thus, in the war supporters' deranged calculus, Europe must be punished because how dare they get upset at us for raising their energy prices and causing shortages.

You literally have to be so incurious as to not even WANT to understand other leaders' feelings to think that.
Read 5 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
Apr 3
Thread: Justice Clarence Thomas has an incredible intellect, even though I often disagree with what he says.

My thesis is almost every member of an oppressed group who on the Court gets stereotyped, and the Justices of Color are specifically falsely accused of being dim.
First, a reading assignment. Read Thomas' dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger. It's a bit long. And I'm not expecting you to agree with it (or disagree with it). Just read it. Appreciate how tightly argued it is. See how he makes good point after good point.

supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/…
Obviously Clarence Thomas has thought quite a lot about affirmative action, ever since he was the recipient of it and perceived how it stigmatized a Black kid from rural Georgia as he attended elite white universities.
Read 19 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
Mar 13
This is just a really important lesson from the Iraq War (and some other things, like Katrina) that conservatives, with their massive media apparatus, never learned. They think they can BS and spin their way out of anything, but no, sometimes you just have to get the policy right
If the administration gets the Straits of Hormuz open and oil prices down and puts a stop to Iranian attacks on neighboring countries and forces political moderation in Iran (all things I hope happens), they can claim success. But if the bad stuff keeps happening....
As I said in my tweet, the original demonstration of this proposition didn't even involve a conservative President-- it was LBJ constantly telling the public that the light was at the end of the tunnel and we were winning in Vietnam. Generals obsessed about press coverage.
Read 6 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
Mar 1
General thoughts:

1. The people who support these sorts of actions are sick of hearing about how they violate international law, but they do. No matter how bad a government is, other states aren't supposed to just attack and overthrow the government.
2. Further, there's a REASON for that international law principle. If nobody is constrained from doing this, you'll almost certainly see more warfare in the long term, because there are all sorts of grievances among nation states.
3. This is more speculative, but I also think people who like this form of warfare underrate the revolution in remote warfare that is happening right now. Drones and electronic surveillance make decapitation strikes potentially more available, and not just to the US and Israel.
Read 21 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
Feb 23
SCOTUS nerd material: Gorsuch (cheered on online by the Right) ID's 4 opinions where he says liberals' positions were inconsistent with the position they took on tariffs-- greenhouse gases, vaccine mandates, student loans, and eviction moratoria.

He's wrong on 3 and right on 1.
The greenhouse gas, vaccine mandate, and student loan cases all involved statutory language that really did seem to authorize what the government was doing. So unless you thought the major questions doctrine should exist, the government should have won.
And of course, the liberals don't think the major questions doctrine should exist.
Read 21 tweets
Dilan Esper Profile picture
Feb 11
Let's continue our series on legal arguments that the public doesn't understand but are justifiable. Today we cover "substantive due process", the legal bogeyman that the Right blames for abortion and the Left blames for the Lochner era. It sounds terrible. But is it?
For those who don't know, the 5th and 14th Amendment basically provide that no governmental entity in America can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. "Due process" is not further defined.
So what is "due process"? Well, there's a very strong consensus (Justice Thomas might disagree with this, but nobody else really does) that it includes fundamentally fair PROCEDURES. I'll give a non-controversial example-- attachment laws.
Read 29 tweets

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