Dan Nexon

lawyersgunsmoneyblog.comThe State of the Republic is Grim - Lawyers, Guns & MoneyIf you’re on Bluesky and follow me, you’ve probably seen that I am writing threads that really should be the nucleuses of posts here. You’ve also likely gotten a bead on where I am these days: I say “seems” because it is possible that, behind the scenes, they are taking necessary steps. These include creating […]

4 Oct 2025

It has been suggested that i pin this piece, but I never actually posted it myself. So 👇

Lawyers, Guns and Money@lawgunsmoney.bsky.social

The State of the Republic is Grim

Dan Nexon reposted

Robert Farley

@drfarls.bsky.social

53m

America’s Samurai Myth and the Credibility Mirage www.lawfaremedia.org/article/amer...

lawfaremedia.orgAmerica’s Samurai MythReconsidering Obama’s Syria red line and its lessons for Iran.

@brendannyhan.bsky.social

56m

FWIW, the first time I ever heard of the Cheesecake Factory it was when I dined there with the family of an *extremely wealthy* high-school friend. The specific restaurant was located in a *very* upscale mall. Seemed like TGIF for people with more 💵

Dan Nexon reposted

Brendan Nyhan

Where we are as a country www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/u...

Dan Nexon reposted

Dan Kaszeta FRHistS

@dankaszeta.bsky.social

Finally! Long awaited proofs.

Dan Nexon reposted

Alan Elrod

@aselrod.bsky.social

For my last Better Win a District, I wrote about TN-09. Republicans gerrymandered Memphis, the Blackest city in Tennessee, out of a seat in the House. Or at least they tried. Then along came Justin Pearson. Now TN-09 is a real fight. www.liberalcurrents.com/better-win-a...

liberalcurrents.comBetter Win a District: Tennessee's NinthJustin Pearson is leading a David-like challenge to Republican rule.

Dan Nexon reposted

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li

@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com

in which two nerds who each have more than a thousand hours in hearts of iron iv bitch about hearts of iron iv. but also it's important to understand why we are all still talking about world war two, and also how so much media essentially imagines "what if the fascist worldview was correct"

youtube.comThe Lies of Hearts of Iron (with Bret Devereaux)YouTube video by Liberal Currents

Dan Nexon reposted

Sarah Fackrell

@design-law.bsky.social

Huge thanks to Robert Wilson for taking the time last week to talk to me about the business and technology of printing in the 19th century, and for showing me some types, matrices, punches, and specimen books at Bowne & Co.: southstreetseaportmuseum.org/visit/bowne/

Dan Nexon reposted

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn.bsky.social

13h

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Someone I’ve known for a long time emailed me to complain about the absolute disdain that @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social has toward QI — which is mostly @drfarls.bsky.social since I don’t post much these days — on the grounds that it’s not wrong about restraint.

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social

The quincy institute doing multiple events with noted far right lunatic joe kent is wildly irresponsible

The hard thing about QI is that there are plenty of affiliate that I think are good people and some are even more right than not, but also why are they still there at this point?

Tl;dr red-brown-propertarian coalitions don’t get a pass just because it’s foreign policy. There are reds and propertarians in the FP space who have solid anti-fascist credentials. Hang with them.

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social

The quincy institute doing multiple events with noted far right lunatic joe kent is wildly irresponsible

Well, you know, there’s “restraint” as in “stop invading places, prioritize, and extricate from the Middle East” and then there’s “restraint” in the “offshore balancing is a panacea” or “you gotta hand it to the America First committee.”

Also the Heritage Foundation was sounding the alarm about the U.S. washing its hands of Afghanistan during the early 1990s. Trump 1.0 was probably right to withdraw from the INF treaty. So what we’re supposed to temper our criticisms?

Joe Stieb@joestieb.bsky.social

The quincy institute doing multiple events with noted far right lunatic joe kent is wildly irresponsible

Which is not 💯 unreasonable. And TBC both of us were supportive when they started up. I even did some online events. Then the Assadism kicked into gear and it became absolutely clear that, for progressives, 👇

This is like me in class when I’m totally burnt, exhausted, distracted, and so not excited about the material. Except I’d probably be taking about epicycles of logical positivism and I’d need to be tripping balls to be this next-level incoherent.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump on DC: "Nobody wanted to eat out. They were afraid. Even if you were in the restaurant, people would walk in and like the Wild West, 'Hold it up!' Everybody is standing there. Can you imagine? A fancy restaurant. They were robbing the whole restaurant. It's crazy."

… epicycles or logical positivism, but that was an intriguing typo.

If you have the misfortune to follow me right now just be aware that I’m fading fast… snd avoiding the last few hours of bibliographical work that’s waiting for me on my laptop. Sorry.

Back when I was DMing the “middle-aged former policy debaters group” we’ve had going since like 2019, the party did a little bit of time-travel excursions to the realm’s Bronze Age, and I wound up having to show them pics of the Dendra panoply and other period-appropriate artifacts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nome@nome.bsky.social

A reminder that something like this instead is a faithful recreation of what Bronze Age armor would resemble:

Dan Nexon reposted

Avishai ✡️ Weinberger

@avishaiw.bsky.social

18h

God, that Cenk Uygur ad for Abdul El-Sayed about how his opponent is for “they/them” (meaning Israel) (sorry I mean (((Israel))) ) is so gross in so many ways, both scarily antisemitic and transphobic, and I’m judging everyone involved

Dan Nexon reposted

Andy Craig

@andycraig.bsky.social

17h

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

cnn.comIran hosts Saudi Arabia and regional powers as fears grow of return to war | CNNSaudi Arabia and its allies dispatched top security officials to Iran for talks on Monday amid fears of a fresh US-Israeli offensive that could plunge the Middle East into further instability.

15h

The U.S. probably peaked in the 1990s. Gerrymandering wasn’t as precise. The VRA was intact. The voter-roll purges were more sporadic and led to consent decrees. I think reservation access was a major problem, but I’m not an expert and I’m kind of vague on the details. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ghostly Bree@mostlybree.kitrocha.com

Also the US has never had free & fair elections for everyone, and if this is your first time worrying about it, welcome to the party! Fortunately lots of people have been here for decades and know what to do, if you are ready to listen!

Dan Nexon reposted

Tahar 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 🇺🇳 🇪🇺

@rochaa.bsky.social

16h

This was lost in the shuffle today. Top security officials of Mecca Pact, KSA, Turkey & Pakistan, met in Tehran today. www.cnn.com/2026/10/26/m...

Dan Nexon reposted

Nome

@nome.bsky.social

17h

Literally the first shot of this "historically accurate" Odyssey movie shows a boat that A) Has no steering oar. B) Is under full sail *and* full rowers while entering a cave, presumably to dock inside.

violet allen@blipstress.bsky.social

It's funny how the Defenders of Western Civilization really want Odysseus to be this heroic patriarchal figure when he is canonically kind of a dirtbag.

gizmodo.comElon Musk's AI-Generated 'Odyssey' Is Here to Save Western Civilization“Homer didn’t have Grok. We do.”

Dan Nexon reposted

Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

21h

Replying to @davekarpf.bsky.social

(I swear this isn’t going to be a hype thread for my own book. But, also, here’s the preorder link): bookshop.org/p/books/vapo...

bookshop.orgVaporware, Inc.: How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the PresentFor thirty years, techno-optimists have promised dramatic technological innovation as long as we--the public, journalists, regulators, and policymakers--keep out of the way. The results have been grea...

Dan Nexon reposted

Professa Murray

@kalimurray.bsky.social

18h

As @joshchafetz.bsky.social would say: Chadha!!!!

This post is unavailable.

18h

There was a thread recently about ways in which life is better than in the recent past Here's one other academics might appreciate: many style guides no longer require us to list the location of a book publisher. Yay.

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

But the fact is that modern liberal, center-left, and left political movements are *insufficiently* transnationalized — especially when compared to the transnational right. We are *behind* the curve. Our leaders are behind the curve.

The Biden administration got waylaid with stupid shit like the "summit of democracies," while the Trump administration actively boosts its co-ideologues overseas. The problem isn't under-investment. It's passive under-investment.

press.princeton.eduThe Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

We build on the scaffolding provided by a lot of other scholars, but my own "breakthrough" on the subject came out of my dissertation, where I tried to understand the international power-political dimensions of the Protestant Reformation.

Look, I'm sympathetic to the argument that political junkies risk approaching elections like sportsball competitions. I can see how being invested in international outcomes might exacerbate some of the attendant pathologies.

foreignaffairs.comThe Real Crisis of Global OrderIlliberalism on the rise.

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

In THE REAL CRISIS OF GLOBAL ORDER, @cooleyoneurasia.bsky.social and I explained that the challenge to pluralist democracy is simultaneously sub-national, transnational, and international.

academic.oup.comExit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global OrderAbstract. We live in a period of uncertainty about the fate of American global leadership and the future of international order. The 2016 election of Donal

The article is an extension of arguments we made in our 2020 book, EXIT FROM HEGEMONY. The book has proven surprisingly influential — in academic terms, which is a very low bar — and it devotes a lot of space to the importance of transnational and sub-national "counter-order movements."

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

The problem with trying to do this quickly — and I really, really need to finish citation work for the copyedited manuscript of DYNAMICS OF POWER POLITICS — is that I'll reach for things I know offhand. And what do I know best? My own work.

foreignaffairs.comThe Vexing Rise of the Transnational RightLessons from interwar Europe.

In THE VEXING RISE OF THE TRANSNATIONAL RIGHT, @jscasey.bsky.social and I discusses... well, it's right there in the title. The piece was written right after the January 2023 attempted coup against Lula.

academic.oup.comA Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power SubversionAbstract. This book is a primer on the history of subversion—hostile domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—among rival great powers. It

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

SUBVERSION, by Jill Kastner and William Wohlforth, is an accessible "realist" -- if that's your cup of tea -- take on the subject.

journalofdemocracy.orgThe Golden Age of Transnational Repression | Journal of DemocracyAuthoritarian regimes are targeting exiles and diaspora communities in more places than ever before. Activists, journalists, and regular people living abroad must watch their backs…

@nateschenkkan.bsky.social's Journal of Democracy article, THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION, is well worth a read.

press.princeton.eduThe Clash of Ideas in World Politics

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected

Next, John Owen's THE CLASH OF IDEAS IN WORLD POLITICS, which examines periods of transnational ideological polarization — you know, like we're living through RIGHT NOW. Guess what? Demonstration effects — electoral outcomes, uprisings, etc. — in other countries really, really matter.

There is a rapidly expanding body of literature on transnational repression, election interference, and subversion. Whether or not you're invested in electoral outcomes abroad is irrelevant, because a LOT of powerful actors and governments are VERY invested in those outcomes.

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

brent 🌹🗽@therealbrent.bsky.social

Yes well it does require things like “empathy” and possessing a basic understanding that all of our lives are interconnected