1/ Many people remark that we wouldn't have survived 4 more years of Trump (ym'sh) - and I agree - but this was a 40 year project of destroying the democratic form of US gov., starting with Reagan, and accelerated from Gingrich.

DJT was to almost the final hammer blow.

2/ Both Roosevelts changed the function of the government from preserving the entrenched power to an instrument to help people survive & thrive

TR was a Progressive, tore down the monopolies, established public health etc. When he left the party, the GOP became what it is today
3/ Wilson took up TR's platform (TR helped by splitting the 1912 vote) and when the GOP won in 1920, they actively tried to undermine the entire new project of what America would do for its citizens.

https://t.co/ULmR7sU4gT
4/ Of course 12 years of retrograde regressive GOP destroyed the economy and led to a worldwide depression which aided the rise of totalitarianism around the world. 1920/1929 and 2020 share so many characteristics

But FDR, thank God, was able to pull us from the brink
5/ For the next 40 years FDR's vision of the government being the support and protector of its citizenry culminated in LBJ's Great Society, finally bringing many of the gifts to the oppressed engine that drove America's prosperity: African-Americans
6/ The Democratic Party switch to support Civil Rights led to the massive white supremacist backlash (the "Southern Strategy" "law and order" and other racist euphemisms) that found leaders in Goldwater (helped by the Q precursor John Birch Society) then Nixon & ultimately Reagan
7/ Nixon still believed in government helping its people, so did GHW Bush, but Reagan manifestly did not and became the pagan god of the anti-government movement. So many GenX Republicans worship Reagan, and it's pathetic given he stands for Sodom's cruelty & greed
8/ When the GOP saw Clinton - a reconstructed hippie married to the scariest type of woman they could imagine, one with a backbone & a brain - they knew the American experiment wasn't going to work. Rather than secede like their grandfathers did, Gingrich destroyed from within
9/ @Teri_Kanefield, exploring the research of many scholars like @HC_Richardson and @TimothyDSnyder, shows how the Roosevelt-LBJ version of government was anathema to the revanchist reactionaries that took over the GOP. That's what's been assaulting us for 40 years
10/ So, yes, we wouldn't have survived another 4 years, but we've been dying off from guns and horrible health care and stagnant wages and disintegrating local news & public education. We barely pulled off saving the country in 2018 & 2020, because we were nearing the end
11/ It's common misconception that Darwinian systems create the 'fittest' and this ideology has been applied to biology and economics. It's the root of the Reaganite worship of markets uber alles, and it's no wonder it's connected to supremacist ideology
https://t.co/55Kx0HyL0W
12/ All systems run according to conservation of energy, which means they persist not b/c they're optimized for peak performance. Nope: to conserve resources, they run at the lowest level to be barely functional, unless maintained by intelligence & culture to actually be optimal.
13/ If left alone, a system (like government, the markets, a VIRUS) will reduce to it's lowest level of performance that just keeps it working. And since spot-fixes are cheaper than system overhaul, the system will only be fixed piecemeal (#Literalism helps see only trees, too)
14/ America was under assault by the GOP for 40 years, with it turning hot under Gingrich and massive assault under McConnell's obstructionism. This led to Trump (ym'sh) being able to seize the machinery of disdain, rapine and hate the GOP created but left rudderless
15/ Utter neglect - the ideology of The Holy Marketplace - left us with income inequality last seen before Teddy Roosevelt (for why, see above) and a pandemic killing stupefying numbers of citizens, a number of whom voted for the party which doesn't care that they die
16/ So, yes, we pulled away at the last moment before utter societal collapse. The ideology of pre1994 is still found in the military (thank God) which kept us from a full-on autocratic take-over

I just hope we can demolish the evil ideas of the Hoover-Reagan axis & save the USA
17/ Ultimately, I want to use this moment to teach that systems survive, a culture survives, because of active curating & altruistic maintenance. Selfishness, cheating, neglect are all signs of a sick culture.

Those were the sins of slavery & white supremacy. We must change.
18/ @threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.

More from Joshua Cypess

1/ A thread of comments & observations about the death of the cackling vampire Rush Limbaugh.

My first observations in the main thread are here, but this offshoot is needed because there's been so many wise & witty things I've


2/ First, re: those who in their wayward moral obtuseness feel we "can't speak ill of the dead." I've said that this is what abuse enablers say, but I hear that some religious traditions preach this. Oy.
So there's this: https://t.co/7Ky4RA3nkZ &


3/ Drucker is another great wit, and this carries the proper mood


4/ There's definitely a Jewish Tradition angle for how to treat evil people who die: the only respect is to justice, right & wrong, and above all compassion's existence necessitates condemning cruelty


5/ We're coming up on #Purim, and that's all about how to remember evil. There may be a reason, then, that I share the attitude of many other people committed to righting
1/ OK a few more #Exodus thoughts (because I'm going through a mountain of parsha stuff amidst all my other writing) connected to the #DvarTorah here about the nameless collective-compassionate action of the multitude being the engine of the salvation.


2/ It struck me to link to another conundrum (kinda like the large plague frog in the room): how Pharaoh has his free will removed

So, the nameless action could be a purposeful contrast to the singular powerful individual who normally is history's

3/ IMO God manipulates Pharaoh in order to prevent one person making too much of a difference!

This ties into another larger point I often make about the culpability of the Egyptians & how actually they, not Pharaoh, are the focus of the plagues.

4/ My point contrasts how the Egyptians - who were responsible for being enslavers, for dehumanizing & stealing the labor of Israelites up to the point of joining in the Pharaoh command of infanticide (see

5/ These individuals needed to make their choices without coercion from the autocrat, hence Pharaoh lost 'free will' in his capacity as someone who can move the engines of political power.

He lost free will in order to preserve the free will & action of his subjects

More from Politics

So let's see a show of hands: how many of you even knew Huber was digging into the Clinton Foundation? While he was assisting Horowitz in his digging into the FISC/Steele Dossier/Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie/DNC/Hillary campaign stuff?


I'm sure Huber is coming to DC *only* to discuss Clinton Foundation things with Meadows and his committee.

He for certain, like, won't be huddling with Horowitz or that new guy, Whitaker while he's in town. That would NEVER HAPPEN. [wink wink wink!] 😉

I just spent a year and a half telling you they will SHOW YOU what they are REALLY DOING when they are READY.

Not before.

No matter how much whining is done about it.

I'm exhausted but it's worth it.

Now you know why they're f**king TERRIFIED of Whitaker, the closer tapped by Trump to come in late for the hysterical fireworks that will ensue soon.

Look who's suddenly fund raising for his legal defen- er, I mean, ha ha - his reelection campaign!
OK. The Teams meeting that I unsuccessfully evaded (and which was actually a lot of fun and I'm really genuinely happy I was reminded to attend) is over, so let's take another swing at looking at the latest filings from in re Gondor.


As far as I can tell from the docket, this is the FOURTH attempt in a week to get a TRO; the question the judge will ask if they ever figure out how to get the judge's attention will be "couldn't you have served by now;" and this whole thing is a

The memorandum in support of this one is 9 pages, and should go pretty quick.

But they still haven't figured out widow/orphan issues.

https://t.co/l7EDatDudy


It appears that the opening of this particular filing is going to proceed on the theme of "we are big mad at @SollenbergerRC" which is totally something relevant when you are asking a District Court to temporarily annihilate the US Government on an ex parte basis.


Also, if they didn't want their case to be known as "in re Gondor" they really shouldn't have gone with the (non-literary) "Gondor has no king" quote.
What does "patriots in control" mean?
What would that "look like" in reality?


So a massive adult film star in all his glory is included in an official FBI government filing


Hunter Biden's book is categorized as "Chinese


TIME admits to "conspiracy" to "not rig, rather


A "pillow guy" has military-grade intercepts detailing the IP addresses and device MAC IDs of EVERY incursion into every county in the

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The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
Trending news of The Rock's daughter Simone Johnson's announcing her new Stage Name is breaking our Versus tool because "Wrestling Name" isn't in our database!

Here's the most useful #Factualist comparison pages #Thread 🧵


What is the difference between “pseudonym” and “stage name?”

Pseudonym means “a fictitious name (more literally, a false name), as those used by writers and movie stars,” while stage name is “the pseudonym of an entertainer.”

https://t.co/hT5XPkTepy #english #wiki #wikidiff

People also found this comparison helpful:

Alias #versus Stage Name: What’s the difference?

Alias means “another name; an assumed name,” while stage name means “the pseudonym of an entertainer.”

https://t.co/Kf7uVKekMd #Etymology #words

Another common #question:

What is the difference between “alias” and “pseudonym?”

As nouns alias means “another name; an assumed name,” while pseudonym means “a fictitious name (more literally, a false name), as those used by writers and movie

Here is a very basic #comparison: "Name versus Stage Name"

As #nouns, the difference is that name means “any nounal word or phrase which indicates a particular person, place, class, or thing,” but stage name means “the pseudonym of an