🧵Living History: Don’t Give Up the Ship with Representative Jason Crow

We are living through a moment future historians will struggle to explain without disbelief. A sitting president has publicly called for the execution of members of Congress. The U.S. military has carried out strikes of dubious legality outside a declared war. Senior commanders have resigned. Others have testified behind closed doors that no one stopped them.

Read and watch the full interview👇
thecycle.substack.com/p/living-histo… And when six members of Congress who are military vets reminded U.S. service members of a principle settled since Nuremberg not to follow illegal orders, the White House responded not with denial or evidence, but with rage.

The Trump Who Stole Christmas

(A Holiday Poem for a Country Getting Mugged in Broad Daylight)

Every American down in America

Liked Christmas a lot.

But the Trump, who lived south of sanity,

Most certainly did not.

Trump hated Christmas — not the money of course,

but the laughing, the shopping, it makes him feel worse. So deep in his tower, carved out of gold,

He plotted a scheme—

one cruel, dark, and cold.

He’d tried once before to ruin their cheer,

With Big Lies about elections the previous years.

But this time he thought,

with a smirk and a grin,

“I’ll simply raise premiums ’til nobody can win!”

🧵The Whole World is Getting Dumber
(And the Smartphone Did It)

How’s this for a gut punch?

The entire developed world is getting dumber.

Don’t believe me? Check out this graph that shows a world wide “dumbing” across three core cognitive domains—math, reading, and science-that occurs right after the introduction of the smart phone. And no, it’s not “woke teachers,” or “lazy kids,” or the Department of Education.

This isn’t even a uniquely American story.

The trends are global. OECD-wide.

Finland to France. Japan to Germany. Australia to the U.S.

Good systems and bad.

Everyone is slipping.

🚨🧵Here's part 2 of my Terrible Truths I've Learned About Humanity series, plz RT

They Not Like Us:
When Cruelty Becomes Contagious

Permission to Be Cruel

There’s a comforting myth that runs deep in American culture, especially among moderates and people who pride themselves on being reasonable. It’s the belief that most people are naturally kind, that cruelty is fringe, and that if we just had better manners and calmer politics, things would sort themselves out. It’s a lovely idea. It’s also wrong.

The truth is that cruelty has a constituency. Not a majority, not even close, but a solid, persistent minority — roughly 10 to 20 percent — who exhibit stable personality traits that are callous, aggressive, or outright sadistic.

🧵STATS You Should Know:
The Midterm Effect is Coming

Folks, if you’ve been wondering whether the “midterm effect” is actually lining up behind all the blue wins we just had, the answer from the data is: yes.

Three fresh national polls — Marist (for NPR/PBS), AP-NORC, and Reuters/Ipsos — are all telling the same basic story: The environment is turning hostile for Trump and the GOP.

The public is screaming “prices, prices, prices” as the top issue.

Trump’s grip on Republicans is still strong but no longer ironclad.

And yet, voters still don’t trust the parties or institutions, and they’re perfectly willing to blame Democrats for pain they experience, even in a Trump-engineered crisis.

Let’s walk through what these polls collectively tell us.

🧵Reality Bites:
Trump’s Voters Have Just Found Out They’re on the Menu

When the government reopened, cable pundits called it a cave. Twitter called it surrender. I called it a win—because from where I sit, Democrats didn’t lose the shutdown fight, they won the long game and gave the ACA its only chance of survival. The point was never to “hold out” for an Affordable Care Act subsidy extension that Republicans were never going to give in the shutdown. The point was to force them to take ownership of killing it. That’s exactly what just happened.

🧵They Thought They Could Control Him:

They Wanted to Save Germany. Instead They Destroyed It

When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, it wasn’t because he seized power. It was because Germany’s conservatives gave it to him. He didn’t storm the Reichstag. He walked through the front door — ushered in by aristocrats, generals, and businessmen who thought they could use him to save themselves from democracy.

🚨🧵Why We Can't Panic
Humans Are Designed to Keep Calm and Carry On

Ten months into Trump’s return to power, America feels like its full of pod people (you youngsters can go ahead and Google that one).

The FBI and DOJ have been purged and now serve as Trump’s personal revenge machine.

The so-called “Countering Domestic Terrorism” memorandum re-brands nearly half the country—anyone left of MAGA—as a potential extremist threat. Kristi Noem is on airport TVs blaming “radical liberal Democrats” for the shutdown. The law doesn’t matter. The Hatch Act doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. And the public reaction is… nothing. I used to think the problem was information—that if people knew, they’d act. I’m not so sure I believe that anymore.

Here’s why:

Shut is moving fast now: You really should read 👇

Coordination the American Way:
Inside Trump’s Plan to Turn the U.S. Government into a Weapon Against Us

When historians describe how Nazi Germany became a dictatorship, they don’t start with the camps. They start with coordination — Gleichschaltung — the process by which every institution in Germany “aligned” itself with the will of the regime. No orders had to be barked. People, fearing irrelevance or punishment and watching colleagues be purged, simply did what was expected. Courts, newspapers, universities, police — each coordinated.

Now, a century later, we are watching the American version unfold in real time.

🧵We're Deep in the Shit Now
The Only Way to Win the Shutdown Was Not to Play The Shutdown Power Grab

The government is shut down. That alone is bad enough, but here’s the kicker: Trump and his people have already said out loud that they’re going to redefine what “essential” means. Under normal shutdown rules, the basics keep going: Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, air traffic control, border patrol, some law enforcement. Everyone else gets furloughed. It’s disruptive, but it’s not supposed to be apocalyptic.

Smart People Are Dumb, Dumb People Are Experts:
Welcome to the De-Enlightenment

To tens of millions of Trump supporters, expertise itself is proof of corruption. The more qualified you are, the more you must be part of “the deep state.”

This isn’t just dumb. It’s coordinated dumb. It’s the De-Enlightenment: a deliberate inversion of the values that built modern society. I monitor MAGA for a living. My feed is a constant firehose of crazy — conspiracy memes, medical quackery, climate hoaxes, and 19th-century economics dressed up as “America First.”

And the pattern is always the same: the very markers that once signaled someone was trustworthy — credentials, experience, a government position — now mark them as suspect. To tens of millions of Trump supporters, expertise itself is proof of corruption. The more qualified you are, the more you must be part of “the deep state.”

This isn’t just dumb. It’s coordinated dumb. It’s the De-Enlightenment: a deliberate inversion of the values that built modern society.

🧵🔥🚨This Is NOT Conservatism:
It’s Fascism

I didn’t want to be in DC on election night. I was sick to my stomach. But I went anyway, because if Harris won, I wanted to give people hope, and if she lost, I wanted to make sure no one could spin it as just another “normal” Republican victory. On Sky News, I sat next to two grinning Republicans celebrating their win. And I said it plainly: this isn’t conservatism, it’s fascism. The panel looked at me like I’d dropped a bomb. But I wasn’t exaggerating. I was describing what’s right in front of us.

🧵From Goebbels to Google:
Shame Shit, Different Century

When people say “social media is destroying our society,” they act like we’ve never been here before. But we have. Exactly one hundred years ago, a new technology burst onto the scene, and within a decade, it had completely altered politics, democracy, and the way people understood reality. That technology was radio, and the Nazis immediately understood its potential to warp minds.

The parallels to today’s social media crisis aren’t just striking—they’re terrifying.

🧵The Prices Are Too Damn High:
Trump's Tariffs are Hitting Americans Hard

Donald Trump loved to promise that other people would pay for his schemes. Mexico would pay for the wall. China would pay for the tariffs. Cute. Here’s the correction: other people don’t pay. You do. Your kid. Your neighbor who works nights. The person at the hamburger joint sliding fries across the counter. Tariffs are a stealth sales tax — invisible, regressive, and perfectly designed to hurt people who can’t afford it.

This is Tax Scam 2.0. He calls it “tough on trade.” You call it “where did my paycheck go?”

🧵Fear Factory
Turning Point isn't a Debate Organization, its a Conflict Machine

Charlie Kirk didn’t invent conflict entrepreneurship, but he sure helped to perfect it. He is the prototype of a generation of right wing internet entrepreneurs who figured out that the surest way to build power, attention, and money otherwise off limits to them is not by governing, legislating, or even persuading—it’s by manufacturing outrage and monetizing it. From the garage to the donor class

Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 at just 18 years old but he wasn’t some grassroots kid hustling alone. He had a mentor, Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery, and very quickly he had a benefactor: Foster Friess, a conservative megadonor who bankrolled much of the group’s early work. That early money mattered. It allowed TPUSA to scale fast—staff, merch, events, and a social media strategy that turned “triggering the libs” into a donor-driven business model.

🧵A Blue Tsunami Is Headed for Virginia and New Jersey:

Out-Party Fundamentals Are About to Open a Can of Whoop Ass on the GOP

Sometimes life comes full circle.

Almost ten years ago, I was putting out a forecast in 2017 projecting a big win for Democrat Ralph Northam over his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race. That race was widely treated—by media and the conventional wisdom—as a knife-edge toss-up. Yet my polling with Quentin Kidd at the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University consistently tracked a Democratic lead of at least six points.

🧵The Nazi War on “Asocials”

You Can't Cure Crime Without Crushing Freedom

When the Nazis sold themselves to Germany in the early 1930s, they didn’t just promise jobs, glory, and a return to greatness—they promised a national makeover. And like all authoritarians, their definition of “cleaning up” had less to do with fixing the economy and more to do with purging poor people. The Reich was obsessed with visual order. Cities were to be spotless, streets safe, public behavior disciplined, and every human being was expected to conform to the Nazi ideal: healthy, hardworking, racially “pure,” and loyal to the state.

🧵🔥👇
Appeasement Didn’t Work Then.

It Won’t Work Now.

While he was in prison, the German version of Club Fed, for trying to execute a coup, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf — part autobiography, part revenge manifesto, part how-to guide for dismantling the post–World War I order. It wasn’t subtle. He said, outright:

“The reunification of German-Austria with the Motherland… must be carried out.”

And he was clear the borders of Germany should expand:

“It is not the preservation of peace, but the expansion of the people’s living space that is the most pressing task of our time.”

🧵STAT(S) of the Week: Tariffed Enough Already

Trump’s New Tax on America

Trump’s tariffs are finally here—and they’re hitting your wallet like a second income tax. He promised China would pay. Instead, American families and small businesses are footing the $29.6 billion bill. Here’s what he’s not telling you. In July 2025, the U.S. government brought in $29.6 billion in tariff revenue. That’s not a typo. That’s nearly $30 billion in a single month—triple the average from previous years. It’s the kind of hockey-stick spike that should set off alarms. But to hear Donald Trump tell it, this is a triumph. “We’re making money again,” he crows at rallies. “Other countries are finally paying!”

Except they’re not. We are.

🔥🧵Different Party, Same Ideology

The South Switched Teams but Kept the Same Ideology

There’s a favorite talking point on the American right: “Democrats were the party of slavery. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow.”

If you're sick of that, this 🧵is for you. There’s a favorite talking point on the American right: “Democrats were the party of slavery. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow.” They throw it out like a grenade in political arguments, as if it were a trump card that delegitimizes any modern conversation about race, justice, or the parties’ respective commitments to equality. And yes, it’s true — the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. It was the party of Jim Crow.

But that was then. And this is now.

🧵The Anatomy of “Othering”:
How Authoritarians Build Permission for Violence

All autocratic regimes need enemies. Authoritarians invent them to seize power.

If there’s one universal truth in the history of authoritarianism, it’s this: violence doesn’t begin with bullets—it begins with words. It begins with a process. A framework. A campaign to paint certain people as dangerous, alien, corrupt, or diseased. To make them “other.” Once a group is defined as outside the moral circle of society, anything becomes permissible. Ostracization. Censorship. Persecution. Deportation. Detention. Extermination. The list evolves, but the logic remains the same: they are not like us. And because they are not like us, they must be stopped.