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My name is Jamelle Bouie. @nytopinion columnist. Co-host of @UnclearPod. Upgrade your grey matter, ‘cuz one day it may matter.
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Sep 1, 2023 10 tweets 2 min read
This gets people tripped up so it is worth clarifying. "Abolition" in this context refers to the political movement to *immediately end slavery* everywhere it existed. This was indeed a "fringe" position. There were a variety of antislavery positions as well as the Anti-Slavery political movement that wanted to restrict slavery through legislation. The end of slavery in the North, beginning after the Revolution, was a gradual process, not one of immediate emancipation.
Aug 22, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Whether this is a slight of hand or just poor reasoning, the problem is that this argument fails to distinguish between “compromises that ameliorate injustice” and “compromises that entrench injustice.” slowboring.com/p/the-two-kind… Clear that he is inviting readers to think about this in the context of LGBT rights, but there are no justice-facing compromises on the table. There is, instead, an effort to push LGBT people out of public life entirely. That is the context for the “no compromise” position.
Jun 29, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
beyond the obvious logical issue with Thomas’ assertion here, the basic problem here is that Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 specifically to deal with the “badge of servitude” that undermined the equal status of freed AND free blacks. the fourteenth amendment was written, in fact, to provide a firm constitutional foundation for precisely the kind of ameliorative work congress tried to do in the 1866 CRA
Jun 5, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
a fun thing about the zoning in my neighborhood is that you can build a monstrous, hideously expensive single-family home by right, but if you wanted to build 2 or 3 smaller units on the same lot you would have to go through approval hell. this, even though the monster single family home is wildly out of scale with the neighborhood, while a set of smaller attached homes (or even a small apartment building) fits the “character” of the area
Jun 3, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
“we chose freedom ofer fauci-ism!” Image that’s a real line, i did not make it up
May 24, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
i think LINCOLN is one of spielberg’s late-career triumphs and it is a personal favorite movie of mine but the one thing that takes me out of it is at the very beginning when dane dehaan shows up as a union soldier. he doesn’t belong! he looks too much like he’s seen an iphone. on the other hand, bruce mcgill looks like he came straight out of 1865
May 23, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
political thriller about how half the country believes godzilla is a hoax after destroying new york in vain attempt to convince americans he is real, godzilla holds a press conference in washington where he pleads with the public to believe in him. marjorie taylor green calls him a cuck. fade to black.
May 18, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
yeah this guy thinks he has the juice youngkin has high approval ratings but he has basically had to pretend that he isn’t a hard right republican who wants to ban abortion to keep them
May 17, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
this is such an important point. the bruen test essentially treats omissions in the historical record as dispositive for evaluating contemporary laws, which is completely bananas once you give it a moment’s thought there are two immediate problems: first, it is a constitutional test that essentially requires our forbears to have anticipated contemporary developments and problems.
May 9, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
one of the great thing about “American Midnight,” Adam Hochschild’s new book on America from 1914 to 1920, is how it emphasizes again and again just how big a piece of shit Woodrow Wilson was yes, Hochschild makes very clear that the Wilson administration nearly destroyed the political left in this country
May 8, 2023 13 tweets 4 min read
The reason I am less open to the possibility of imminent danger is that no one who witnessed Neely’s killing has said they were in imminent danger. Those are the facts. So much of the pushback to me here has been “why won’t you agree with my vibe that Neely was a threat that had to be dealt with” and my answer is: Because no one who was there and who has spoken to the media has said that.
May 8, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Because in all of the witness statements that we have access to, no one has said that this was the situation in question. You can read those statements for yourself. You can find them in newspapers like the one I work for. This is something you made up. “We don’t know that Neely wasn’t about to assault an elderly woman.”

Yes we do! We definitely know that. And I can assure you that if this were the case, it would have been the FIRST THING we learned about the incident.
May 8, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
I’d be curious to know what evidence you have that says either a) the young man feared neely would punch someone in the face, b) that neely was poised in the moment to assault someone, or c) that the young man had prior knowledge that kneely had the capacity to assault someone? because in the absence of b) or c), the answer to your question is “irrespective of what the young man feared, fear absent imminent threat cannot be the basis for one person to act violently against another.”
May 7, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
i would like to take my children out to the mall without the chance of them having their faces blown off by a high powered rifle, dan. i would like my wife to be able to go work teaching 8 and 9 year olds without having to wonder if that day is the day someone is going to try to earn themselves a little place in the history of mass shooters
May 7, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
watching john frankenheimer’s SECONDS and the camera in this movie is absolutely wild the end of this movie is incredibly chilling, damn
May 6, 2023 13 tweets 3 min read
watching STARSHIP TROOPERS tonight and i find it genuinely incredible that there were critics back during release who did not immediately clock that this was an “in-universe” propaganda film so, the movie begins with a very explicit propaganda film sequence, and then transitions to the “real movie” after a “one year earlier” insert card. but the real movie is still the propaganda film! and the film keeps giving you clues that this is the case .
May 3, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
wild to read replies treat this as somehow ambiguous when it is a straightforward case of someone assaulting and killing another person wait this dude was RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGES?!? nytimes.com/2023/05/02/nyr… Image
Apr 27, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
what i really like about eggers’s work is he does seem to think like a historian, in that he takes seriously the subjectivity of people in the past the characters in his films feel genuinely foreign in that they carry a very different and sometimes incomprehensible worldview, however much they feel similar to us as 21st century people.
Apr 26, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Hey Park, I understand that you don’t have a problem with Tucker “We must prevent the mongrelization of the white race” Carlson, but surely you’re smart enough to see why a ostensibly progressive publication shouldn’t run a puff piece about him. From the man who brought you “Telling the truth about the Confederacy is a form of aggression.”
Apr 26, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
I do not understand why it is so difficult for some people to understand that you cannot disentangle Tucker’s so-called populism from his expressed belief that the state must preserve the integrity of the white race. Tucker — an employee of Rupert Murdoch! — has no problem with “neoliberal plunder” insofar that it touches nonwhites and others he sees as an imposition on American society. His critique has always been that the herrenvolk deserve better!
Apr 25, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
lmao lord it’s so blatant! politico.com/news/2023/04/2… Image gorsuch might as well have just gotten a big sack with dollar signs on it Image