ItsArchStanton.bsky.social

Whoa.

Anyone proposing that an official be allowed to revoke the passport of a citizen for criticizing *this* country would be rightly regarded as batshit insane and deeply hostile to this country's laws and traditions. Proposing that they can do that if we criticize some *other* country? Fuck. That.

As always, Trump continues to play 9 dimensional Hungry Hungry Hippos on the world stage.

Seeing the New York Times still devoting around 8 top of the page stories to the event, I think about how many school shootings where “only” one person died would barely merit a mention there.

To a supremacist society, Charlie Kirk matters. To varying degrees, most of the rest of us don't matter. Or at least our humanity is left up for debate among people like Charlie Kirk—which I'm told by Ezra Klein is doing politics exactly—EXACTLY—the right way.

"You are being musically mean to me and it's hurting my feelings so I am going to call the police department that we are supposed to be supporting to report a feels violation."

Structured lethal state violence aimed at the weak isn't light sparkling authoritarianism with Nazi characteristics, it's the real deal

But don’t call them Nazis.

Kirk didn't serve in the military or hold office. The war hero treatment -- half-mast flags, military guard, Air Force Two escort, calls for a statue at the Capitol or to lie in the Rotunda -- shows that for MAGA, service to Trump has become the highest, most honorable form of service.

Charlie Kirk spent his life‘s work and all of his energy and time targeting out-groups while arguing for a world in which gun massacres would be easy to enact, plentiful, and inevitable, and he became famous and wealthy doing it, and we’re now not supposed to mention that because it’s not polite.

This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.

Anyway, time to get back to releasing those Epstein files

Responding to America’s call, Ukraine sent more than 5,000 troops to Iraq — the third-largest Coalition contingent. Eighteen Ukrainian soldiers never came home. They wore our flag in a distant war because allies asked, and because freedom’s defense doesn’t stop at borders.👇

Big sigh. Watch this. Can you see why the Yankees’ moment of silence, the lowered flags, the promise of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, feel like a gut punch to the very people he spent years targeting? No one wished death on this man, but what we’re seeing right now is too f*cking much.

This coverage of Charlie Kirk is absurd. As a veteran, peacenik, anti-gun nut, and proud liberal, I do not advocate violence of any kind. Kirk used his politics as a weapon, and aimed to hurt innocent people. I am not celebrating his death, but I am lamenting the demise of truth in this country.

This is such a funny element to the Kirk eulogizing: they can’t describe him the way they’re describing him *and* show clips of anything he actually said or did

“Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot”. -Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk: “God’s perfect law says gays should be stoned to death.” Liberals: “This is an honorable man who did politics the right way. Through debate, not calls to violence.”

9/11 is a great time to remember that the imperial power will seize on any opportunity to do what it was going to do anyway, especially if it gets to do it under the gaudy pagentry of being the Aggrieved

have spent the last 12 hours in some sort of pre-grief for what's clearly coming, an imperial boomerang with x-ray vision now unconstrained by whatever law we had left

Pundits are focusing on Kirk’s willingness to debate people while studiously ignoring the people whose basic humanity he was willing to debate

I don't mourn because I think Kirk was a positive component of US political discourse. I mourn that our discourse, rule of law and basic decency are so broken we've returned to the sixties' rampant political violence. Americans writ large no longer have a belief that legal processes solve anything.

I condemn political violence. That's not demanding anyone mourn strangers they dislike. That's not condemning violence used in self-defense/wartime. That's not denying that pre-WWII Nazism was dangerous, just as some MAGAs' emulations of pre-WWII Nazism are. It means condemning political violence.

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

Horrific to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot today in Utah. Political violence must be always and totally rejected. Praying for him and all who may have been injured or impacted.

Political violence disproportionately hurts people with less power, not people with more power. Political violence will disproportionately hurt people of color and women and LGBTQ people. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. Celebrating political violence means at best indifference to that.

Certainly looks like we scared the President away from Chicago. Fighting like hell works.

Sounds like it’s time for statehood to me.

If the general principle here is that the federal government subsidizes higher ed activity and these innovations, I very much look forward to the period of forced nationalization of tech companies.

“The government sometimes makes brief, investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture or car washes…and who do not speak much if any English.” -Justice Kavanaugh

The White House Press Secretary, the official spokesperson for the Trump administration, told reporters in an official briefing that the president wants to invade "every Democrat-run city" with troops. Any media still pretending that this is about "crime" is making a conscious choice to lie to you.

"release the epsteinphile" ?? he's in the dang white house

yesterday "here is proof that the president is a sex criminal" felt pretty bad. today "almost all of the news media is assisting in covering up the fact that the president is a sex criminal" feels much worse

i like this

i don't like the post-truth reality. i'd like to go back to things being true again

"And remember that Jesus said 'suffer the little children' and that's what we're doing, we're making sure those children suffer, and that they continue to suffer to this day. In Our Lord and Savior Donald Trump's name we prey."

IMO, this kind of behavior is what these kind of men subjected women to for decades. Those women were never believed. Now general society is getting a taste of what it feels like for the truth to be as plain as day, yet no power systems exist which will protect us from them.

you really have to step back and admire it: they just released a winking SIGNED love note from the sitting US president to the most notorious pedophile sex trafficker in history, and nothing much is happening

These people belong in prison. Every last damn one of them.

“Sandy Koufax is a southpaw pitcher” is the one sports trivia fact I know, and I used it to get the sports piton on the first attempt the first and only time in Trivial Pursuit on November 9, 2017. We commemorate it every year.

Bless the Epstein survivors who are speaking out. That level of bravery is something Coward McBone Spurs will never have.