it is okay to criticize joe biden. we're going to need to do a lot of it in the next four years, so might as well get into practice.

he has always said a lot of stupid shit, and I suspect he will continue to do that. he's always been bad on lots of issues, and I suspect that will continue as well.
he is susceptible to pressure though. which is a reason to pressure him.
he's sort of going to end up as one of the greatest presidents ever or as a disaster at this point, given the nightmare hole he's got to crawl out of. so...hopefully people will point out when he's fucking up or we're all fucked.
Clyburne and Schumer have already said his 10k student debt plan is weak tea and he should do better. and they're right! hopefully he will listen and not be a dope.
honestly Schumer has been a huge and pleasant surprise since the virus hit. he's been mostly way to the left of where I thought he'd be. sometimes to Pelosi's left, which is pretty weird if you know they're records.
he's also been working closely with sanders, it looks like.
and now he appears to be pushing Biden to toss the hope for getting republican help and just ram a bill through with reconciliation. a bigger bill, I think, since he wants to include a ton of money for infrastructure.
anyway; "we can't criticize biden because fascists" is a bad argument because one of the thing we need to hold him accountable for is fighting fascists!
lack of accountability doesn't in fact produce good government, and if you doubted that I'd take a look at the last four years.
as I've said, Biden's initial appointments and the aid package are better than I'd expected. but there's no reason not to talk about the ways it could be better!

More from Biden

President Biden is signing an Executive Order today that will put an end to the Keystone XL pipeline.

I’m sharing a few of the pieces I wrote re #NoKXL that shows how long my people have been fighting it. Water the Life giver was published by Indian Country Today in 2011.


I wrote KXL equals death in 2013 for Indian Country Today. Eventually, President Obama heeded our wishes & stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline. Trump revived it on one of his first days in office. Now Biden will revoke the permit. It’s been a long, hard fought battle. #NoKXL


Here is a spirit camp held in 2014 by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, offering prayers to stop the pipeline. #NoKXL


Our Tribes signed a treaty together United against Keystone XL.


The movement really got going when a small group of elders went out on a Reservation road and put their bodies in the path of trucks hauling construction equipment for the Keystone XL Pipeline. #NoKXL

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x