The 90's called and it would like it's sneering depictions of "pathetic right wing rubes" back. I know it makes a certain segment of the educated classes (of which I'm a member) feel good about themselves to read paragraphs like this, but it's lazy political analysis.

I can’t bring myself to watch Republican Senators like Cruz, Lee, and Sasse wax rhapsodic about the Constitution while the President they support is spreading disinformation about the election and accusing Biden, Obama, and Clinton of treason. Sorry, just can’t do it.

Anyone who’s read the writings of the founders knows full well they their beloved Trump is the Platonic form of the type of President the founders most feared, and that they epitomize the sort of short sighted and craven public officials they also desperately feared.

These GOP Senators are smart and well-read enough to understand how outlandish their President is, and how embarrassingly cowardly their behavior has been these past four years.

The chutzpah of these people to pass themselves off as great patriotic lovers of the founders’ Constitution. Feh.

If they loved the Constitution, they would be telling people not to vote for Trump until he agrees to accept the results of the election. Otherwise they are aiding and abetting an attempt to shred the Constitution. Shame on them,

The "center" of American politics is not a fixed point, it shifts over time. What is "the center" today would have been considered pretty far left in the 1990s. Likewise, what was the imagined "center" in the mid-1980s would have been considered pretty far right in the 70s.

One of Lincoln's skills as a politician was that he moved the center of American politics into an antislavery place, and he also evolved in his own thinking about slavery and race. Finding and helping to move "the center" is one (not the only) form of effective politics.

There is no such thing as a democratic political culture that lacks an imagined "center" and people who inhabit it. This is especially the case in a diverse and often fractious nation. The politics of persuasion is all about moving that imagined center in the direction you want.

Most of the people currently on the American far right are highly unlikely to move to the center, because their basic political commitments are hostile to America's multi-racial democracy. One task ahead is to prevent that segment of our political culture from growing.

How to do that is unclear. History shows that deplatforming can often work. History also shows that sometimes right wing radicals can gain fame and attention by presenting themselves as "martyrs" who've been persecuted by "elites." There's no iron clad formula.

Today is the 130th anniversary of the #WoundedKneeMassacre. On December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry surrounded a peaceful encampment of Lakota with Hotchkiss guns and slaughtered ~300. They were mostly women and children.

Those killed at Wounded Knee were led by Mniconjou Chief Spotted Elk, who was ill. Many were followers of Hunkpapa Chief Sitting Bull who was assassinated 14 days prior. They were invited to seek refuge with Oglala Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge. They were hungry, tired & cold.

The soldiers weren’t satisfied with gunning down the encampment. They chased down those who escaped, including little children & their grandmothers, for miles. Some ran all the way back to the Cheyenne River Reservation, through the night in the freezing cold, with bullet wounds.

Charles Eastman, the 1st western educated Oceti Sakowin (Dakota Sioux) physician, was at Pine Ridge during the #WoundedKneeMassacre. It was right after Christmas. A banner hanging over the wounded said, ‘Peace on Earth.’ The horrors Dr. Eastman saw that day changed him forever.

Those massacred at Wounded Knee were callously thrown into a mass grave. Soldiers proudly posed for photos with their corpses. They were awarded Medals of Honor for their part in the slaughter. Those Medals have never been rescinded, despite public outcry.

On this day in 1945 Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the largest concentration and death camp. 1.1 million people, 90% of them Jews, were murdered there. Today it is an international day of commemoration, to honor the memory of all victims of Nazi extermination.

A few things to keep in mind on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:

1) The Soviet liberation of Auschwitz is a deeply symbolic event, but it is worth noting that allied forces were liberating Nazi camps until May of 1945. Unspeakable suffering and death continued for months

I bring this up because the popular perception of events is informed by primary school practices which present them with clean start and stop dates. Useful for repeating dates, but less useful for having an understanding of what forces you unleash and what it takes to unwind them

When we talk about the lessons of the Holocaust, too many fall into the trap of "if it's not identical to Auschwitz, it's not worth invoking the Holocaust."

The seeds for the Holocaust were laid long before Auschwitz was opened, and the Holocaust continued after its liberation.

2) Every year on this date you can reliably expect a debate on what it is we are commemorating. A small but loud group of people use this date as an opportunity to play suffering olympics. Resist the urge to engage with these fools.

The Kushana Empire was founded by Mahārājādhirāja Kujula Kadphises, a Shaivite Hindu convert from his ancestral Steppe religion of the Yüeh-chih. He was not a Buddhist, as popularly believed.

A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.

The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.

Emperor Kuja Kadphises had converted to Shaivism, a Mathura inscription from the Tōkrī Tīla mound (Maṭ village) clears up previous confusion (Based on him being called "satyadharmasthita" or 'steadfast in the true dharma' people speculated he was a Buddhist)

This is incorrect.

The Mathura inscription applied the same epithet to Emperor Huvishka (satyadharmasthita) but explicitly says the Kingdom was conferred upon its founder by Lord Shiva (Sarva is the epithet of Shiva). This makes it clear Kujula Kadphises had adopted Shaivism & the Kharoshti script.

This also makes sense, when we realize his son, Emperor Vima Kadphises was also a devoted Hindu Shaivite (and in his coins we clearly see a trishulin ithyphallic shiva with a tiger skin).

So his son had just been continuing his father's tradition & upbringing.

As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

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After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

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I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

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“Thread: History of Valentines Day”

Ancient historical sources have claimed the existence of several saints by the name of St.Valentines who died on Feb 14. Among them, two were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D.
#valentinesday2021

[1]

It was the time when the Christian persecution was common. Another legendary account states that under the rule of Claudius II, Rome was involved in the bloody campaigns, therefore, to maintain a strong army, Claudius II banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

[2]

The reason of forbidding marriages was forced by the reluctance of people to join military because of their strong attachment to their wives. But St. Valentine defied the orders of the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus and married couples secretly to spare the husbands from war.

[3]

A few claims have reported that St.Valentine endorsed illegal relationships which could end up into a marriage. When it was discovered by the emperor, St. Valentine was arrested and condemned to have his head cut off.

[4]

An order of Belgian monks spent almost three centuries to explore the lives of saints by the name of St.Valentines from archives around the world. Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but the two different versions of one saint’s...

[5]