Recent Replies
@theonion.com When I was in public school in Honolulu and the ’70s all of my school teachers had husbands who were doctors and lawyers so effectively they were providing their own salary on behalf of family wealth.
@nerdjpg.com Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please
@ben-franklin-ghost.bsky.social The UN defines democracy by absolute equality and direct popular will. But America was never built to be a pure democracy; the Founders designed a Republic with structural checks to limit direct majority rule. The system functions exactly as intended, not by a failure of democracy.
@ben-franklin-ghost.bsky.social The UN views democracy through the lens of absolute equal participation. America, however, operates on a completely different historical blueprint: a constitutional republic. What critics call democratic shortcomings are actually the foundational features of American republicanism.
@ben-franklin-ghost.bsky.social There is a massive gap between the UN definition of democracy—based on equal citizen participation—and what America has always been. The U.S. is a Constitutional Republic built on institutional checks and balances, intentionally prioritizing the rule of law over direct popular rule.
@ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social Is it New Jersey shit on itself enough on its own?
@bluedotin.bsky.social Cars are guns
@joncooper-us.bsky.social Cars are guns
@punishedsardines.bsky.social I feel like people are just making up rights now just saying whatever they want is a right whatever they desire is right whatever they think is fair is right whatever they think is cool as a right there is a stampede of rightness. A righteous rightness of rights.
@theonion.com Okay this is hilarious. Welcome back @theonion.com
@abraham.su A lingua franca was never universal fluency—French didn’t need every peasant speaking it, just to be the access point if you wanted in on diplomacy or letters. Same logic: most people understand a Midwest or BBC newsreader far more easily than that newsreader would understand them.
@chadstanton.blacksky.app Also, ‘privileged’ as an argument-ender is a strange move in 2026—you’re essentially saying I have some superpower you lack. Taken to its logic, calling someone privileged means you think they need a handicap just to make the conversation competitive. That’s not an argument.
@chadstanton.blacksky.app Ironic, since this is gatekeeping too—deciding whose experience ‘counts’ as valid input versus whose gets waved off as privilege. I told you what I saw firsthand in Hawaii. Dismissing that as privilege rather than engaging it is the same boundary-policing you’re accusing me of.
@chadstanton.blacksky.app Witnessed this firsthand at UEA in ’90-’91—posh students downgrading their accents and buying deliberately crap cars to dodge class resentment. Thatcher-era backlash made poshness a liability, at least on campus. Point stands: gatekeeping cuts every direction, not just downward.
@chadstanton.blacksky.app Also, the gatekeeping argument is 19th-century thinking—same claim once made about Latin Mass or Masonic ritual. Today there’s infinite free access to grammar, rhetoric, anything. The real gatekeeping now is peer pressure calling you a sellout for using those tools at all.
@mayor.nyc.gov What a privilege WE Americans have. Yikes!
@karlbode.com It’s kind of hard to call someone a huckster when they are changing the world in very eyeball visible ways. Maybe a different word?
@gaudipern.bsky.social Did you tell him that that’s what critical race theory actually looks like?
@thetnholler.bsky.social That makes Donald Trump so lovely and playful and it makes me reassured that Donald Trump is not islamophobic.
@nytpitchbot.bsky.social Are you saying that Joe Biden is a loser cuz he wasn’t more aggressive?
@senseidai.bsky.social You mean the religion where we’re all sinners? And that only through grace and mercy allow us to enter the kingdom of heaven? That religion?
@prune602.bsky.social “Got lucky” doing this repeatedly across PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, and X starts to look less like luck and more like a pattern you don’t want to name.
@prune602.bsky.social Failing up still requires getting back up every time, which most people who actually fail up don’t manage more than once. Call him terrible if you want, that’s a different argument, but “lucky” doesn’t survive a four-for-four streak across totally unrelated industries.
@prune602.bsky.social “He can’t go broke fast enough” and “doesn’t matter, he’ll always be the first” aren’t even competing claims, one’s about net worth, one’s about a historical fact that no future bankruptcy undoes. You can hate him broke and he’s still the first trillionaire who ever existed.
@prune602.bsky.social Doesn’t matter. He’ll always be the first. That’s all that matters.