{ "did": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "publications": [ { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity_did": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "name": "Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "record": { "url": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com", "icon": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreicjjixev6nb2hviuv6cqc2wzv3pbvxtkmdakiagqr6qyexp7ozqum" }, "size": 760978, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "name": "Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "$type": "site.standard.publication", "theme": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.publication#theme", "primary": { "b": 0, "g": 0, "r": 0, "$type": "pub.leaflet.theme.color#rgb" }, "accentText": { "b": 255, "g": 255, "r": 255, "$type": "pub.leaflet.theme.color#rgb" }, "pageBackground": { "a": 100, "b": 255, "g": 255, "r": 255, "$type": "pub.leaflet.theme.color#rgba" }, "backgroundColor": { "b": 106, "g": 3, "r": 74, "$type": "pub.leaflet.theme.color#rgb" }, "accentBackground": { "b": 84, "g": 2, "r": 255, "$type": "pub.leaflet.theme.color#rgb" }, "showPageBackground": true }, "basicTheme": { "$type": "site.standard.theme.basic", "accent": { "b": 84, "g": 2, "r": 255, "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb" }, "background": { "b": 106, "g": 3, "r": 74, "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb" }, "foreground": { "b": 0, "g": 0, "r": 0, "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb" }, "accentForeground": { "b": 255, "g": 255, "r": 255, "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb" } }, "description": "Politics, culture, and philosophy through a radical liberal lens. Host of ReImagining Liberty podcast.", "preferences": { "showComments": true, "showInDiscover": true } }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:14.051062+00:00" } ], "documents": [ { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdbshmybvc2u", "data": { "path": "/3mdbshmybvc2u", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "ethics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Regime Has No Defense Against a Good Neighbor", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019bf74c-fa50-788b-b0ad-deb31ad4b687", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What we’re watching in Minneapolis is the forces of a federal government ruled by a fundamentally anti-social ideology running into a wall of operationalized neighborliness. And neighborliness is winning." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It might not feel like that, and I get it. There’s violence, and deaths, and at least one of them is a clear case of an assassination carried out by the regime’s lawless goon squad. But that regime is also flailing, its actions galvanizing opposition, its popularity falling, its tactics aimed less at competently consolidating power and more at producing social media content for the absolute dregs of its very online base." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What’s happening, too, though, is a clear demonstration of the actual political divide in America right now. It’s not about policy, unless you zoom policy so far out that it’s just “pro-democracy” versus “pro-autocracy.” And it’s not even really ideological, except insofar as ideology is, right now, downstream of psychology." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The divide right now is between those living with a cramped, walled-off consciousness, fearful of anything outside their transaction, and those operating with a boundless sense of concern." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Watching what’s happening in Minneapolis, it’s clear that what separates Americans who are living up to the best that label represents, and those who are intent on destroying it, is character. Who has it, who doesn’t." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For all our faults, and there are plenty, Americans possess—in greater numbers and depth than the regime, empty as it is of humanity, predicted or imagined or can understand—a character, including a character of neighborliness and compassion, that is powerful, courageous, and winning." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreicbj3ctv7js26fhn7tiidtbrz5vocsj2ahb2crybu4shsb5ocujd4", "uri": "at://did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3md752pwwg622" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You listen to JD Vance or Greg Bovino or Kristi Noem, and what stands out, alongside the evil of their words and worldview, is that these are people who have no conception of what it’s like to care about others. It’s all hatred and domination. In the case of Trump himself, it’s those and a perspective where every relationship is exclusively transactional. I do something for you if and only if I get something more out of it than I give up. And if hurting you will benefit me, I’ll do it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The benefit they look for is the feeling of being an oppressor. It’s a fleeting relief from their own internal void. It’s a hunger that thinks it can be sated by consuming the dignity of others. It is a frantic attempt to construct a self by diminishing others—a zero-sum delusion where they believe they can only grow taller by cutting off the legs of those standing next to them. It is a feverish, cramped existence. It is, in other words, the opposite of neighborliness." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And those guys are up against an American Midwest culture that centers neighborliness. There’s a lot more in the character of Minnesotans that’s giving them the strength to win, but if there’s a core, it’s that. It’s caring about others, and standing up for them, and taking risks for them, not because they’re of your tribe, or your skin color, or your religion, but because you have empathy and a sense of decency, an understanding that to be a good neighbor is to help and know that your neighbors will do the same. And it’s speaking out, not staying silent, not hiding away from helping, because with neighborliness comes an obligation to neighborhood. It’s not just one-to-one care and decency, but the realization that this mutual web of support is the whole of the moral life. We do not become fully human in isolation, we become human through the quality of our proximity to one another." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The other side are the ones who reject that. And Americans have sorted into those sides. When this moment is behind us, and we move on to rebuilding, and governing again, our ideological divides will reemerge. Our policy disagreements will reemerge. But right now, as we look at Minneapolis, and its heroism and strength and sacrifice, we can see that there are neighbors and there are those who hate their neighbors, and it’s only the former who are strong, because hatred is exhausting and fragile, while the expansive heart has no boundaries it needs to violently defend." } } ] } ] }, "description": "America’s political divide is between neighborliness and neighborhood pariahs, and neighborliness is winning.", "publishedAt": "2026-01-25T22:42:30.988Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-25T22:42:33.442814+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mczqmmelhc2c", "data": { "path": "3mczqmmelhc2c", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "announcement", "podcast" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty is taking a short break", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019be631-3050-700d-9968-cb04a53189cf", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "ReImagining Liberty podcast cover art", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreihb3i54j5ays5nt3mhz6bsckriaswryicxjk4dcfp2mj5gb3yowcm" }, "size": 524133, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 40, "byteStart": 21 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 235, "byteStart": 216 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "You might've noticed ReImagining Liberty episodes have been a little slow lately. Part of that was the holidays, but part of that was a rather huge project I'm working on that comes out in late February. If you like ReImagining Liberty, I'm pretty confident you'll love this. But it's also meant that I've been swamped." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 108, "byteStart": 89 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So I've decided that, instead of dragging things out without an explanation, I'm putting ReImagining Liberty on a short hiatus until that project launches. If you're a paying supporter (thank you!), note that I've paused billing, so you won't be hit with another monthly charge while there aren't new episodes to get early access to." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 233, "byteStart": 214 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The show will return, but my attention is, for the moment, on getting this new and big thing into the world. I will say, without giving too much away, that it includes a new podcast, from me, that'll run alongside ReImagining Liberty. But it'll be a lot more than that, too." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I can't wait to show it to you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "coverImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreihb3i54j5ays5nt3mhz6bsckriaswryicxjk4dcfp2mj5gb3yowcm" }, "size": 524133, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreifisduoatb5dumjrft22amz5kdogbfl7ors36hevn7d7yipl5i3by", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3mczqmp7crk2c", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreiaqyjsn43ozyh4blqa7jeby5vopj5gj32caaednjtnor7znsozbku", "rev": "3mczqmpblka2q" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "A brief pause for the next big thing.", "publishedAt": "2026-01-22T17:48:10.818Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-22T17:48:15.851289+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdqi4xvrx22j", "data": { "path": "/3mdqi4xvrx22j", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "podcast", "libertarianism", "politics", "liberalism" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty 001: How To Be a Better Advocate for Liberty", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019c155c-719e-7eef-8e9b-f139b598c90c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "ReImagining Liberty podcast cover", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY4Ng?view=apps&sort=popularity", "text": "Click Here To Listen To This Episode", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.button" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 56, "byteStart": 37 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Welcome to the inaugural episode of ReImagining Liberty." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 100, "byteStart": 80 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 193, "byteStart": 179 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://twitter.com/corymassimino", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 268, "byteStart": 238 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://c4ss.org/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "My goal for today's conversation was to set the direction and tone of the whole ReImaginging Liberty podcast going forward. And to do that, I brought on my friend Cory Massimino (@corymassimino), a philosophy student and a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He's also one of the smartest young scholars I know, and our talks and Twitter debates over the last several years played a large part in the evolution of my thinking." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In today's episode:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We talk about the need for the liberty movement to decouple from its historical alliance with conservatism and the American right." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We explore the ways reading outside of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to ideas you're inclined to disagree with can be hugely beneficial." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And we wander into topics like liberty and virtue and libertarianism as a project of emancipation." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 10, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 29, "byteStart": 10 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 29 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 146, "byteStart": 38 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 185, "byteStart": 146 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 13, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 16, "byteStart": 13 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 28, "byteStart": 16 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 31, "byteStart": 28 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 49, "byteStart": 31 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 52, "byteStart": 49 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 71, "byteStart": 52 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 74, "byteStart": 71 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 86, "byteStart": 74 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 89, "byteStart": 86 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 102, "byteStart": 89 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 105, "byteStart": 102 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 106, "byteStart": 105 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠." } } ] } ] }, "coverImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "description": "A conversation with Cory Massimino", "publishedAt": "2022-03-23T17:46:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-31T18:47:34.324466+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6zih3qe2s2f", "data": { "path": "/3m6zih3qe2s2f", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The End of the Showman Presidency", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019ae023-d2d0-7447-979b-40bd0022b9f0", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 126, "byteStart": 96 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m33ezqr5as2k", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The second Trump administration is playing out rather differently from the first. Part of this, as I wrote about back in March, is the sort of people Trump has surrounded himself with this time." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The first Trump administration wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been because it had relatively normal people in positions of power, who responded to incentives in a relatively normal way and had moral features within relatively normal parameters. Some were stupid and evil, yes, but plenty weren’t. And that made it harder for Trump to get done all the stupid and evil things that appeal to Trump." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That happened not because Trump wanted serious people, but because he didn't expect to win, and so his campaign hadn't picked people out in advance. This meant, when they suddenly did need to staff an executive branch, they went to the more typical GOP establishment Rolodex." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But \"He chose a lot of kind of normal GOP apparatchiks\" isn't the only reason Trump 1.0 was, compared to the last year, comparatively benign. The other feature of Trump 1.0, that doesn't seem to obtain now, is that he responded to the public's dislike of his policies by backing down. He felt, in other words, popular pressure. And Trump's ultimately a branding guy. That's his whole thing. He slaps his name on things, and makes money from his name being on those things. He's a showman, and a successful showman responds to his audience. When Trump tried things eight years ago and discovered they were broadly hated, or weren't playing well in the media he wanted to get glowing reviews from, he'd pivot. He'd blame someone else, and fire someone near him, but he'd pivot. He's not doing that now." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 47, "byteStart": 26 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/trump-white-house-travel-rallies-isolated/685073/?gift=SCYx-5scVta3-cr_IlgTyWP3oHxowuOvo9p874ISqRI", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So what's changed? First, Trump is in a bubble." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreiebechzqehqpz5pxsptpydmumkaai5ijyhacrmspygw5jp2wglpii", "uri": "at://did:plc:wzf6d2mlcaeaxcppo425imrv/app.bsky.feed.post/3m6wrxh5ncc2y" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He was in a bubble before, of course, to some extent. His first term was filled with binged Fox News, but now it's filled with binged Newsmax. He's still active on social media, but it's Truth Social instead of Twitter. (And even if he is still looking at Twitter, the Twitter/X of 2025 isn't the Twitter of 2016.) He doesn't have those \"typical GOP rolodox\" guys giving him the bad news, but instead has cranks and weirdos and true believers and neo-Nazis who want to keep him content so they can keep inflicting their prejudices and hobby horses and grifts on the country." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He's also, to put it bluntly, quite a lot stupider than he used to be. And Trump was never a genius. He's in significant mental and physical decline. He's confused and tired and epistemically buffered, and so mistakenly believes he's a popular king." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The big story of the last election, when it comes to elites, is that they convinced themselves a second Trump presidency would look a lot like the first. They'd get Biden off their back, there'd be a bit more fight against wokeism, but things would broadly be mostly okay. But the \"mostly okay\" of that first term was the product of Trump having relatively normal people around him and Trump not wanting to be unpopular. What elites got wrong, then, is that in a second term, Trump picked the worst of the worst to fill the White House, and he'd aged out of the cognitive faculties needed for him to recognize his lack of popularity. You occasionally see something break through to him (he backs down sometimes on tariffs, and the White House is circling the wagons on Hegseth's war crimes). But his decline is accelerating. And the Voughts and Millers who can see the unpopularity aren't likely to back down themselves, but instead do everything they can to inflict as much damage as possible before the American people kick them to the curb in 2028." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Things are only going to get worse before they get better." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreiewogbiskziod7nns25qnymrgtqa5ahlcawmuuxcmn4pywziokvva", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m6zihckbp22f", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreig6riftw4ikgd4jbscmkycpzswebftt3fb5u2v6aecxcxyvtadcba", "rev": "3m6zihcntay2z" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "In Trump 1.0, he'd back down when he was unpopular. Now he doesn't.", "publishedAt": "2025-12-02T17:41:13.215Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.627001+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgud57nk2a", "data": { "path": "/3m2fgud57nk2a", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Liberty Upsets Patterns—and Conservatism", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f2-0a08-7554-8a1b-91f6e998a533", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 23 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/fusionism?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Since the rise of the “fusionist” movement that grew out of mid‐century anti‐communism, many libertarians have allied themselves with conservatives. While we can debate whether such alliances have been helpful in advancing libertarian goals, the fact is that conservatism and libertarianism are distinct political theories that serve different ends. The liberty libertarians strive for upsets traditional patterns–including the very patterns political conservatives seek to conserve." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Liberty and the Patterns of Culture, Institutions, and Values" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 57 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 92, "byteStart": 86 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://amzn.to/44OHroV", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 109, "byteStart": 97 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bookshop.org/a/110440/9780465051007", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 180, "byteStart": 150 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/blog/arguments-libertarianism-robert-nozicks-utopias?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In his classic work of libertarian political philosophy Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Amazon | Bookshop.org), Robert Nozick introduces the phrase, “Liberty upsets patterns.” What he means is that if we start with any social pattern–such as an equal wealth distribution or a particular set of living arrangements, and then introduce individual autonomy and choice, eventually the pattern will change from its starting point. The only way to maintain the initial pattern, then, is to restrict people’s liberty to deviate from it. When people are free, they will use their freedom in unanticipated ways, establishing new patterns in place of the old." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is a problem for conservatives who like to think of themselves as allies of libertarians as well as for libertarians looking for allies among conservatives. If political conservatism is ultimately about conserving certain cultural arrangements and institutions, as well as a preference for “traditional” ways of doing things, then it exists in tension with the disruptive nature of liberty. When liberty upsets those arrangements or allows people to more easily abandon the traditional ways, political conservatives have to restrict liberty to retain their preferred social and economic patterns." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Culture is a durable pattern of preferences and resulting behaviors. Yet its durability isn’t absolute and the pattern of culture changes all the time. It used to be that the American Top 40 was filled with rock ‘n roll music, but preferences have changed and the charts are now filled with much more hip‐hop and R&B. Baseball used to be “America’s pastime,” but now football is “America’s game.” There used to be a pattern where the “cool kids” wore acid‐washed jeans and their moms wore high‐rise jeans, then there was a pattern where neither would be caught dead in either; yet now we’re back to a pattern where youth culture combines both to create acid‐washed, high‐rise jeans. Homosexuality used to be taboo, you kept your sexual orientation to yourself, and you feared being found out. Now, it’s in the cultural mainstream." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "These cultural patterns changed because people had the freedom to express different preferences and had the wealth and the privilege to act upon them. The only way to keep culture static would be to outlaw people from acting on their changing preferences. And even in the most authoritarian regimes, people still find ways to import dissident literature or unapproved movies and music, like the smuggling of rock n’ roll behind the communist Iron Curtain in the 1970s and 1980s. They find ways to express themselves, even if they have to keep it hidden, such as the women in some Islamic countries who wear colorful clothing under their mandated burqas." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Political Ideologies as Competing Pattern Preferences" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One way to think about political ideology is as a framework for the governing rules and institutions that create and maintain certain patterns. Political philosophy takes ideological concerns, preferences, and conclusions and asks how we can arrange laws and political organizations to promote those values." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For example, progressives dislike the disparities in power that result from racial and gender discrimination, e.g. wealth versus poverty, business owners versus employees, etc. They believe these are harmful and unjust situations, and so their political philosophy is grounded in the pursuit of legal rules and political institutions that will alter the existing relationships into something more egalitarian. They do so even when it requires the state to impinge on some kinds of liberty or to curtail certain traditions. Thus, prioritizing egalitarian preferences over other values leads to progressive politics." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Libertarians believe that individual liberty is valuable (in politics, it is the highest value) and ought to be respected. They dislike relationships that coercively restrict individual liberty. Libertarians have different reasons for giving liberty such a prime place. Some see individual liberty as the best way to enable and promote virtue. Others take a strict natural law view of rights. Still others believe that state claims to authority are without moral foundation, or that all of us have equal dignity, or just that political and economic liberty yield the best results in terms of happiness and wealth. But all of them share the political libertarian goal of creating and supporting rules and institutions that will maximize individual liberty." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Conservatism, as a political ideology, seeks to maintain those social and economic patterns that conservatives prefer or believe are conducive to a good society. Thus, in contrast to libertarianism, political conservatism is not about identifying, cultivating, and maintaining those patterns of rules and institutions which maximize liberty. Instead, it is about maintaining social patterns which result in a society that aligns with the conservative’s cultural values and personal tastes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For example, a conservative might hold the following beliefs:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Secularism is bad and more people ought to be religious." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Women are having too few babies and it’s bad that so many are choosing not to have children at all." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Life in decadent, cosmopolitan cities is undesirable when compared to living in virtuous, rural, small‐towns." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The cultures that immigrants bring are inferior to American culture, and to the extent their cultures displace American culture, immigration is a threat." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Ideally, for the conservative, all or most citizens would share those same beliefs and act upon them, or at least not act against them. This would then lead to a world where more people are religious, women decline or postpone careers in order to have children, people stay in the small towns they grew up in, and foreigners either stay in their own countries or adopt the full slate of American values if they do come here while abandoning their native languages and cultures." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course not all conservatives share these exact beliefs. Some are more socially liberal and tolerant than others, and they might well disagree among themselves about which patterns of values and behaviors ought to be preserved. But the point is that conservatism, in the sense that it looks to “conserve,” is not forward‐looking but instead backwards‐looking, tinged with nostalgia. Some of the conservative’s preferences used to be, at some time and in some place, culturally dominant, and he yearns for a return to that state of grace, or at least desires a halt to the culture’s further drifting away from it. At least as often, however, the nostalgia is for a fictional or romanticized past, one that never really existed except in the imagination of the conservative who would like to see it “exist” once again." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Ultimate Incompatibility of Conservatism and Libertarianism" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Libertarianism began as a radical movement of liberalism rather than as an ally or offshoot of conservatism. However, since the middle of the 20th century many mainstream libertarians have sought and sometimes found allies among political conservatives, initially grounded in a shared appreciation for free enterprise and in opposition to communism. It’s debatable whether fusionism was ever a wise alliance from a libertarian perspective, or whether any genuinely libertarian ends were achieved as a result of it. But what is clear is that the fusionist alliance has broken down as so many American conservatives, most acutely since the rise of Donald Trump, have abandoned whatever libertarian values they might once have held, expressing more concern about preventing the cultural and racial change brought by immigration, or punishing corporations that express or provide platforms for non‐conservative values, than with small government and economic liberty." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If we understand libertarianism as a philosophy which aims at protecting those social and institutional patterns that maximize individual liberty, and understand conservatism as a political philosophy aimed at protecting those social and institutional patterns that maximize conservative values, then the reasons for this breakdown are obvious." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In a world where most people accept or go along with the conservative’s preferences, he will see little reason to use the state to enforce his preferred patterns because they will be, in effect, self‐enforcing. This is why, for a time, fusionism looked like it might work. Conservatives were broadly in favor of markets and against regulation because greater wealth is good and because most people’s economic behavior and the resulting outcomes weren’t a threat to conservative preferences. Leftist big government, on the other hand, was a threat. This enabled conservatives and libertarians to find common ground on opposing big government, repealing regulations, and promoting free enterprise." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In a world where society’s contours and tastes largely align with a conservative’s values, he will support political and economic liberty because they bring recognizable benefits such as freedom for his religious practice, plentiful high‐paying jobs in places he wants to live, and so on. But in a state of freedom, the economy and culture are never static." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In contemporary America, secularism is on the rise while membership in organized religion declines. Women are spending more time pursuing education and careers, are earning more money, and so are having fewer children. The population of cities is growing, in large part because their economic and cultural dynamism make them attractive places to live. Immigrants are introducing new ideas, languages, aesthetic preferences, foods, and ways of living, and many of those are catching on in popular culture." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In other words, the conservative’s preferred patterns are being disrupted by liberty. Being free means people have the option to choose lives that are different, sometimes radically so, from what the conservative prefers. Freedom has increased wealth, making it easier for them to make those choices. And it has increased dynamism, upending old economic arrangements such as those which enabled middle‐class jobs in small towns." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Conservatives Must Either Curtail Liberty or Give Up Political Conservatism" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In this changed world, political conservatism has two options. The first is to reject liberty. In recognizing that political and economic liberty have undermined their preferences, they’ll demand that the state restrict freedoms in order to incentivize or coerce people into returning to the conservative’s preferred way of life or to prevent them from continuing to do things that threaten it. In this case, political conservatism places this pattern above the liberty‐maximizing pattern, and so conservatism is no longer an ally with, or even compatible with, libertarianism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The second option begins similarly, in that political and economic liberty cut against conservative values and preferences. But instead of fighting the tide, this conservative accepts it. It’s not ideal from a conservative perspective, but they recognize the need to respect everyone’s liberty to choose, even if their choices are distasteful. In this case, the conservative sees that liberty has disrupted his favored patterns, but he still sees the government’s role as maximizing liberty. But notice that, in taking this path, our conservative isn’t a political conservative at all, because now his political philosophy is aimed at maintaining maximum liberty. Thus there’s no need to make a case for the compatibility of conservatism and libertarianism, because the conservative and the libertarian are now both libertarians, though perhaps with different cultural tastes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is why, ultimately, conservatism is incompatible with libertarianism: When liberty upsets patterns enough, the political conservative will either call upon the state to curtail liberty, or just give up conservatism for libertarianism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Liberty is dynamic. Conservatism is static. They cannot coexist.", "publishedAt": "2022-02-04T21:38:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.471857+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgiwtkes27", "data": { "path": "/3m2zgiwtkes27", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Why Tech Bros Overestimate AI's Creative Abilities", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d9e2-2d31-7994-bb49-946be2d3dd13", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published March 17, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Internet Movie Database aggregates film reviews from critics, but also allows anyone to write a review themselves. These are occasionally amusing in a film snob way because there are people who will gush about the epoch-making brilliance of, for example, horror films that topped the box office for a single weekend and then vanished, both from the charts and cultural memory." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 20, "byteStart": 6 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282209/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 158, "byteStart": 139 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2399696/?ref_=tturv_perm_1", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Take Darkness Falls, a forgettable 2003 flick about (spoilers) an evil tooth fairy. It has a Metascore of 23, an IMdb rating of 5.0, and this 10 star review from “d-maxsted.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Darkness Falls is one and was one of those rare horror movies where all the pieces came together,the director,the crew and the performances by the actors,it simply is a rare example of a what I would consider one of the best and further more you certainly don’t get many as good these days. [sic]" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 88, "byteStart": 70 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 185, "byteStart": 101 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/technology/why-im-feeling-the-agi.html?unlocked_article_code=1.304.VVPI.7cVSOIrxmmvx&smid=url-share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I was reminded of that review when I read Kevin Roose’s article in The New York Times about how Silicon Valley is convinced we’re a year—maybe two, maybe three—away from AGI, which Roose defines as roughly “a general-purpose A.I. system that can do almost all cognitive tasks a human can do.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 162, "byteStart": 127 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/the-staggering-promise-of-ai-tutors", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 302, "byteStart": 273 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/why-ai-is-the-new-sliced-bread", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I’m not an AI skeptic. I think LLMs are already powerful tools with real world uses, and there are many clear ways they can make the world dramatically better. A lot of the arguments in the “this technology is junk” or “AI is just a plagiarism machine” genres don’t stand up to scrutiny." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That said, we’re nowhere near AGI—if AGI is even conceptually coherent at all—and the reason so many in Silicon Valley are convinced otherwise isn’t that they have some insider knowledge the rest of lack, but that their understanding of, and appreciation for, the full range of “cognitive tasks a human can do” is, to be frank, rather cramped. This is less about technology than it is a culture that fancies itself sophisticated in terms of philosophy, literature, and other topics we lump into the humanities, but has a thin appreciation for all of them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 94, "byteStart": 75 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://x.com/sama/status/1899535387435086115", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Take Sam Altman’s enthusiasm for OpenAI’s new creative writing model. As he describes it, “we trained a new model that is good at creative writing (not sure yet how/when it will get released). this is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 482, "byteStart": 472 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://x.com/sama/status/1899535387435086115", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The “vibes” might be right if your level of metafiction sophistication is that of a precocious high schooler who has yet to take a college level literature course: “Already, you can hear the constraints humming like a server farm at midnight—anonymous, regimented, powered by someone else’s need.” Or, “She lost him on a Thursday—that liminal day that tastes of almost-Friday—and ever since, the tokens of her sentences dragged like loose threads…” And so on." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Altman isn’t alone in this. Twitter overflows with examples of tech bros breathlessly claiming that AI-generated video has achieved levels equal to the shot composition of Paul Thomas Anderson or the eye of Roger Deakins." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 176, "byteStart": 155 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://amzn.to/4kPojP1", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "A favorite example, which I sadly can no longer find, was an excited techie who’d asked ChatGPT (or maybe it was Claude) to solve philosophy’s famous “trolley problem” and had his mind blown when it gave a (to him) entirely convincing answer. Of course, to someone with an even modest philosophy background, ChatGPT (or maybe it was Claude) had done no such thing. Instead, it regurgitated one of the many canonical answers to the problem, without acknowledging that significant counter-arguments exist, or that this particular canonical answer was just one among many. In other words, it hadn’t solved the trolley problem so much as it had concocted prose that sounded like an answer to someone who had never before seen what sophisticated trolley problem arguments look like." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 221, "byteStart": 189 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/the-staggering-promise-of-ai-tutors", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 449, "byteStart": 427 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/ai-chatbots-as-learning-tools-when-to-trust-the-answers-and-when-not-to", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This pattern repeats. It’s not that AI can’t be helpful in talking about humanities concepts. If the level of understanding you’re looking for is high school or maybe undergraduate, these tools can teach you a lot, and for a lot of people, that’s more than enough. But if your aim is graduate level analysis and output—a level surely included in “almost all cognitive tasks a human can do”—you’re going to be quickly led astray." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 298, "byteStart": 293 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 454, "byteStart": 449 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The same holds for art. AI can, right now, produce pretty passably mediocre art. Which is a threat to plenty of artists, writers, etc., because plenty of artists, writers, etc., produce mediocre art. I’m confident existing frontier LLM models could come up with an episode of the ABC drama 9-1-1 indistinguishable from the output of that show’s writing room. But, again, “almost all cognitive tasks a human can do” aims a bit higher than 9-1-1." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 573, "byteStart": 497 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-to-talk-yourself-into-defending-nonsense", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What’s going on is a confluence of two features of Silicon Valley tech bro culture. First, Silicon Valley tech bros believe that they aren’t just skilled at computer programming, but that they are geniuses to a degree that cuts across all disciplines and realms of accomplishment. This is the character trait that ultimately makes Elon Musk so destructive. He doesn’t know anything about, say, the federal government or how its systems works, but he’s convinced of his own genius, and so his uninformed first impressions must instead be the groundbreaking insights needed to really shake things up for the better." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What this feature of tech bro culture means in practice is that if the tech bro finds the AI’s output convincing, then it must be convincing in a cosmic sense. It must be correct to the point of utter dispositiveness, because it feels correct to the uninformed tech bro." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 263, "byteStart": 236 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://openai.com/index/sora/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 371, "byteStart": 349 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/user/everyframeapainting", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 383, "byteStart": 371 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/user/everyframeapainting", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The second feature is a basic lack of taste. That Sam Altman thinks his chatbot’s short story is brilliant tells us much more about Altman’s literary sophistication than it does the nearness of AGI. That tech bros think OpenAI’s Sora video generation model can replace auteur filmmakers says more about their need to watch more episodes of Every Frame a Painting on YouTube than it does about the nearness of Hollywood’s end." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 103, "byteStart": 82 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/silicon-valley-s-very-online-ideologues-are-in-model-collapse", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The trouble is, the Silicon Valley tech bro scene is extraordinarily insular and epistemically closed. So they don’t have many people forcing them beyond their intro 101 level understanding of the “cognitive tasks a human can do” in the humanities." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But there’s also an incentive towards exuberant narratives and over-confidence deeply embedded in the business model of Silicon Valley. In many ways, Silicon Valley looks less like capitalism and more like a nonprofit. The way you get rich isn’t to sell products to consumers, because you’re likely giving away your product for free, and your customers wouldn’t pay for it if you tried to charge them. If you’re a startup, and not FAANG, the way you pay your bills is to convince someone who’s already rich to give you money. Maybe that’s a venture capital investment, but if you want to get really rich yourself, it’s selling your business to one of the big guys." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You’re not selling a product to a consumer, but selling a story to someone who believes in it, and values it enough to put money towards it. That story of how you can change the world could be true, of course. Plenty of nonprofits have a real and worthwhile impact. But it’s not the same as getting a customer to buy a product at retail. Instead, you’re selling a vision and then a story of how you’ll achieve it. This is the case if you go to a VC, it’s the case if you get a larger firm to buy you, and it’s the case if you’re talking ordinary investors into buying your stock. (Tesla’s stock price is plummeting because Musk’s brand has made Tesla’s brand toxic. But Tesla’s corporate board can’t get rid of him, because investors bought Tesla’s stock—and pumped it to clearly overvalued levels—precisely because they believe in the myth of Musk as a world-historical innovator who will, any day now, unleash the innovations that’ll bring unlimited profits.) (Silicon Valley has, however, given us seemingly unlimited prophets.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What this means for AI is that, even if the tech bros recognized how far their models are from writing great fiction or solving the trolley problem, they couldn’t admit as much, because it would deflate the narrative they need to sell." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Roose acknowledges this when he writes, “Maybe we should discount these predictions. After all, A.I. executives stand to profit from inflated A.G.I. hype, and might have incentives to exaggerate.” But that only gets to the second of the two points above. When it’s combined with the first, the lack of deep understanding of domains of knowledge outside their narrow expertise alongside an “I thought of it, so it must be brilliant” perspective, you get a culture where all ideas are big ideas—and all big ideas are unexamined." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T19:25:41.191Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.430414+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma7mvocfj22u", "data": { "path": "/3ma7mvocfj22u", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "technology", "social media" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "You Can't Escape the Algorithm", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b2e42-10fc-799b-85af-fc54f7a263a1", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The trouble with algorithmic feeds, on social media or YouTube or TikTok or wherever, is that they put a thumb on the scale for bad behavior. That's, at least, the folk diagnosis. And so the folk remedy, to most if not all of the problems of social media, is to replace algorithmic feeds with strictly chronological ones. Either by having customers demand it or, if that fails, having governments dictate it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I'm skeptical of this folk theory on both its diagnosis and remedy sides. Skeptical in that, if you were to get most or all social media platforms to stop filtering what you see based on what their machine learning tools think you'll engage with, and instead had them just show you everything from everyone you follow, with the latest at the top, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't actually change all that much. The problems with how people use social media—and what social media does to our information environment, our culture, and our politics—are complex and deep and not easily solved by a \"flip this switch\" silver bullet." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Roughly, here's what purported to be wrong with algorithmic feeds, and what, it's believed, chronological feeds will fix." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 21, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Gaming the algorithm. The basic motivator of bad behavior is a desire for engagement. We want lots of likes, reposts, followers, clicks on our links, etc. If the algorithm is what determines how many people see each of our posts, we'll write our posts with the algorithm's preferences in mind, instead of aiming for our posts to have free-standing value that contributes positively to the public conversation." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 13, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Rage farming. Gaming the algorithm leads, frequently, to rage farming. Platforms want users to maximize their time on site, which means maximizing their engagement, which means showing them posts they're likely to engage with, and one of the best ways to get people to engage with a post is to show them posts that'll piss them off. Hate reposts are still reposts. Quote dunking is still quoting. The more people are enraged by what they see, the more they'll stick around to keep that feeling going, or to make sure they don't miss something they ought to get mad about. This is Fox News's strategy for keeping parents and grandparents glued to their TVs, and it works." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 11, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Fickleness. The first two are mostly problems for all of us as users of social media. It's not psychologically good to be in a place where everything you see is tuned to upset you. The problem of fickleness is more a concern for content creators. If you want to build an audience on a social media platform, you need to know what kind of content will grow that audience. And you want to know that if you commit to a strategy now, it won't blow up on you tomorrow. If the powers that be retune the algorithm, however, what works today might not work tomorrow, and you'll lose all your algorithmic reach. As a creator, then, algorithmic feeds can lead to your livelihood getting burned." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 54, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "A thumb on the scale for big/high engagement accounts. This is about creators, too, but primarily smaller ones. If the algorithm optimizes on engagement, and part of that engagement is that people like to see content from big accounts, it can be hard to become a big account if you aren't a first mover on the platform, or aren't independently famous. And until an algorithm knows enough about a new user to have a full sense of their interests, it's likely to lean on just showing them the most popular stuff, which is likely to be big accounts. So algorithms can make it harder for new people to build a following." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 232, "byteStart": 230 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There are others, but that's sufficient for me to set out why I'm skeptical that switching to a purely chronological following feed is the silver bullet so many seem to think. (And, of course, to be pedantic, a chronological feed is an algorithm, just an exceptionally simple one.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let's do a quick thought experiment. Imagine you send a post out into the world on a social media platform. It's a criticism of the latest move by the Trump administration, where you remark that the move is clearly tied in with Trump's narcissism and cognitive decline." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The post does well. Reposts and likes start flooding in. You get replies and quote posts, some supporting and some negative. A fight breaks out in your mentions between your typical anti-Trump followers and a handful of MAGA types. Eventually, the engagement tapers off, but not before you pick up a bundle of new followers." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We can put a positive gloss on this. You wrote political commentary (that's valuable) that got attention (that's valuable) and provoked a bit of discourse (that's valuable) and netted you a larger audience (that's valuable). But we can also put a less positive gloss on it if we want. You wrote a quick post instead of deep analysis (you didn't elevate the discourse), you enraged some people (that's bad) and provoked arguments (creating toxic discourse), and your audience grew by adding followers who like toxic rage pages (leading to the risk of audience capture pushing you towards more toxic rage bait in the future)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you take the positive side, and your post went out on a platform with a strictly chronological feed, you might frame it as getting some big accounts to repost you, which led to more eyeballs on your post, which led to valuable discussion. A win for the discourse and social media culture, the result of healthy chronological feeds. Everything that happened to get you lots of engagement is the result of what's good about sticking to an ordered timeline." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you take the negative side, and your post went out on a platform with an algorithmic feed, it's that the algorithm knew your post would get a bunch of #resist \"Right on! Take that, Drumpf!\" shares alongside a lot of rage engagement from Trump fans, and so it pushed your post out to the wider world. Everything that happened shows exactly what's wrong with algorithmic feeds, in that they promote rage bait and created an algorithm feeding incentive for you to post it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "My argument, and why chronological feeds aren't a silver bullet, but instead just a way to make a complex problem seem simple, is that both stories can be correct because both styles of feed, in the end, are much less distinct than we'd like to think, and both incentivize similar kinds of bad behavior." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 307, "byteStart": 297 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In an algorithmic feed, what you want to do is tune your posts to hit the algorithm's sweet spot. If that's engagement, then you write the kind of stuff that's engaging (rage bait is very engaging), and you post it frequently enough that you'll get enough algorithmic hits when the conditions are just right to take it into the vitality stratosphere. You'll then learn from the hits what precise combinations work and you'll double down on them. You'll fall, in other words, into audience capture, but with an audience of one: the algorithm." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 762, "byteStart": 705 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The thing is, though, the algorithm is simply a way of mathematically modeling and predicting what the larger audience of actual people wants. The platforms want you to use them a lot. (If they're commercial, that is, but any sufficiently large platform has strong incentives to become commercial in one way or another.) They want you to use them a lot if they're selling ads because that's more ads seen, and so more ads sold. They want you to use them a lot if they're instead selling subscriptions, because you're more likely to maintain a subscription for a product you use frequently than one you don't. The reason the algorithm selects for shallow rage bait or other empty calories posts is because that's what most people want to like or share or click on." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "With a chronological feed, then, assuming you, as a poster, still want engagement and follower growth (and most users do, unless they're entirely in it to lurk), you'll do the things that get you engagement and follower growth. And that means doing the things the audience wants. And to the extent the algorithm is correct in its guesses (and there's a lot of money riding on algorithms being correct in their guesses), it means doing things an algorithm would want you to do." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 307, "byteStart": 286 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 694, "byteStart": 691 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 800, "byteStart": 794 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The way you go viral (i.e., get lots of engagement) in a chronological feed is to post the kind of stuff people will repost. Maybe the kind of stuff particular big accounts you know follow you are apt to repost. (Seeing as my most viral Bluesky posts have typically been kickstarted by @kenwhite.bsky.social reposting them, if I were engagement-maximizing, I'd write for Popehat.) Reposts both put your post in front of more people who will repost it and keep it alive, so new people keep seeing it, even if it's old enough that otherwise it'd be crowded out of their feed. This also means, if you want to consistently go viral and build an audience, with a chronological feed you'll post a lot. You can't count on a ranked feed to show your old posts, so you need to make sure you've always—always—got new posts. Yes, you keep your followers and so if you post slowly you still have the same number of potential viewers. But they're not all online at the same time, getting attention depends on those initial reposts, and growth begets growth, so if you take time off, you fall behind the posters who don't." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The upshot is that a chronological feed, assuming posters' desire for engagement is constant no matter the technical structure of the platform (and it probably is), will incentivize posting that is (1) reportable and (2) frequent. Put another way: flood the zone with rage bait. Which is what the folk theory tells us algorithms do." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is all a (very long) way of saying that in most cases, what people blame on the algorithms is really just what does well on social media, regardless of the algorithm. Yes, you could tune an algorithm to select against it, but those tend to result in dull sites. Take, for example, Threads. What algorithm objectors object to isn't so much the algorithm itself as what it reveals about social media audiences. And so when they demand a chronological feed as the way to fix that, the unstated assumption is that, in the absence of an algorithm, social media users will have the same tastes they do. A chronological feed will show more of what they like and less of what they don't." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We can't escape the algorithm. Even if it's an algorithm of people, it's still to privilege what people like, even if it's the kind of stuff you want to see less of." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreidalsvnkdj3f7h4cphv2yynfnmcy67rmtp7mibotg225firapek74", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3ma7mvv7gqs2u", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreibnkkuxmkcmo7bx6kiqfbimfou3tdb7kflil2k5tippbqz4ezbwuy", "rev": "3ma7mvvc3zg2x" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Chronological feeds won't fix social media", "publishedAt": "2025-12-17T21:42:07.467Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.536663+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3le5fvzzs27", "data": { "path": "/3m3le5fvzzs27", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "No Kings and Letting Ourselves Hope", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199df47-bb86-7dd6-ba85-e3dbcaa5e816", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yesterday, walking with my family down 15th street for Denver’s No Kings protest, I felt like we can win." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreidndcp76eh7r6f5ue73vcv7bh3yal6ih3x24e6bfvklbismzvxvme", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3iis43t3k2r" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 379, "byteStart": 326 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m3lcybdjk227", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Not that we have won. There are more than three years to go. It doesn’t even mean Trump is losing, because the executive still had a lot of levers to pull, and those the constitution grants to the other branches, those other branches seem to have handed de facto control to him. His MAGA movement, which exists primarily to give abusers powers society was working to deny them, can still inflict quite a lot of abuse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m3lcybdjk227", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Trumpism and the Status Anxiety of Abusers - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "MAGA, at its core, is a cult of abuse. The right to abuse, the justification for abuse, the dopamine rush they get from abusing others, is built into every policy, every program, every line of rhetoric. They identify with abusers because they want to abuse people.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiclb2gnjwimcfr2kx6kb3aowihcitnzbor4iriar4eiyusjwl4q5u" }, "size": 29978, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But marching in that crowd, it was obvious there are a lot more of us than there are of them. And we have decency on our side. It’s cliche, but there was love in the air. Or, if not quite love, then friendliness. Camaraderie. Compliments on signs and outfits, gracious gestures of letting people into or out of the crowd. People watching out not to step on the rather long tail of my son’s inflatable dinosaur costume." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The closest thing to conflict I saw was when the group in front of us, chanting “Hey hey ho ho,” turned a corner and ran into a group chanting “Whose streets?” And everyone kind of awkwardly paused, because people couldn’t figure out which chant to continue or to follow. It resolved without violence or hurt feelings." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 248, "byteStart": 234 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/aaronrosspowell.com/post/3m3ivolqbqs23", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 346, "byteStart": 324 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/gelliottmorris.com/post/3m3kf3gdoxc2j", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What I saw instead of conflict was passion, and anger, and a real desire to help each other. To look out for each other. To get through this together. I saw grandmas in frog costumes, kids with their families, and kindness. And signs like this one, pointing to decency in these dark times beyond the conspicuous splendor of millions upon millions taking to the streets to remind the country what it actually stands for." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreieoxnphgyqqfyopxcifcbcfm35quxh2mf5dckhnnkn7rwvdnze5ky", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3ivolqbqs23" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 64, "byteStart": 55 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "None of that means we’ve won. But none of that means they’ve won, either. And the meltdown so many MAGA had, including Trump, his vice president, and many of his most prominent allies, showed that they know they haven’t won, and that victory is a lot harder than they’d like. They know America loathes them, except for the 30% or so who are too immoral, or just too ignorant, to walk away from fascism and return to patriotism. Thirty percent’s tiny, though. Not enough to hold a country, or at least not be certain they can." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So it was reasonable, yesterday, to feel hope. We have three more years, and that’s three more years where the people who hate America the most have control over many of the government’s most dangerous mechanisms for immiserating and degrading the nation. But that also means we have three more years to show our government, and ourselves, and the world the real America. For the real Americans, the ones who actually represent this country, in its thriving and messy and beautiful diversity, to make our voices and our values heard before we eventually reassert them and take our country back." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreidjb64kt2x536ggyazyagrjbcquungc6syxehzfrc6wfs3yib32yy", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3ik5rvshk2l" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yesterday was a good day for America. And it was good, nine months into all this, to have a day were feeling good, where feeling hopeful—in the midst of inflatable costumed silliness—felt earned." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I saw a frog marching down Denver’s streets, shouting “This is what democracy looks like!” and I thought, yes, it sure as hell is." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreifgoubq5lnnbfvc3j5gxbtcykhz4ujjnjevcjtktvaeravlcuktxi", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3le5oip3s27", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreih2kt5zllttx3pog7mpnkyv6bokpo5d4n2bkf7k5zz3dut2t6runa", "rev": "3m3le5omzs32z" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "There are more of us than there are of them. And we have decency on our side.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-19T22:31:22.155Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.242441+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fh2qe2d22a", "data": { "path": "/3m2fh2qe2d22a", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "conservatism", "buddhism", "ethics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Social Conservatism is Suffering", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f5-9028-7dd3-8715-bd13f86d998c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Pain is inevitable, but suffering isn’t. Pain results from raw facts about the world and our place in it. We’re embodied, and our bodies feel pain from injury and illness. But suffering comes from how we react to the world and what happens to us." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Understanding suffering in this way—as something we inflict upon ourselves—and recognizing its causes points to an uncomfortable truth: Social conservatism, the belief that social dynamism should be slowed or stopped and that others should live in line with conservative lifestyle preferences, isn’t wisdom, but instead suffering." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If this is true, then the proper response, culturally and politically, to socially conservative demands isn’t to accommodate them by reining in dynamism, but rather to encourage social conservatives to give up social conservatism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Social Versus Personal Conservatism" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Before going too much further, it’s important to draw a clear distinction between “social conservatism” and what we might call “personal conservatism.” In fact, the general lack of seeing these as separate attitudes, not necessarily entailing each other, obfuscates important political issues and makes our thinking about social politics muddier than it needs to be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 662, "byteStart": 658 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To be a personal conservative is to choose to live your life according to fixed values or preferences. This could be mainly an aesthetic choice, and a low stakes one, such as, “I will only read print books, and never get a Kindle” or “The only good music was made before 1975.” Or it can be much deeper, such as living by the strict moral code of your religious faith. The nature and intensity of the conservatism in personal conservatism isn’t what distinguishes it from the social variety, but rather its boundaries. To be a personal conservative is to direct your conservatism inward, at your behaviors, beliefs, and values. It is to construct your life in such a way as to keep it in line with your preferences." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Social conservatism, on the other hand, is, as it says on the tin, a social project. It moves the borders outward to encompass society itself, and thus the other people within it, even if they don’t share the conservative’s values. The social conservative says, “It is not enough that I hold to my values and preferences. Everyone else must as well.” Or, in a softer form, “While others don’t necessarily need to internalize my values, it is wrong for them to live in ways conflicting with my values, or that make it harder for me to live a conservative life, or simply make me uncomfortable.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A personal conservative can remain so even in a dynamic culture. He can hold to his views and tastes, and follow them, while the world around him changes and the people in it go about wildly diverse lives. A social conservative, in contrast, will always find such dynamism a problem to be fixed, because his expectation is that society at large will reflect his personal preferences. If it doesn’t, he will demand that people keep their non-conservative ways limited enough that he can comfortably ignore them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus one can be a personal conservative without being a social conservative (“I’m going to live how I want, but I’m not going to expect you to live that way, too”). And one can be a social conservative without being a personal one (“I expect society to conform to conservative values, but behind closed doors, I’m going to get up to all kinds of non-conservative behaviors”)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "With that distinction clear, let’s move on to the nature of suffering." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "What is Suffering?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 160, "byteStart": 124 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://amzn.to/41bTVUm?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“Suffering results from the distance between our desires and our situation, a failure of the world to fit our [plan],” writes the philosopher Jay Garfield. We suffer because of a disconnect between the way things are and the way we want them to be. “We want things we don’t have, and that is a source of suffering,” Garfield continues, and “we want to avoid things that nonetheless befall us, and that is a source of suffering.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 88, "byteStart": 58 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://amzn.to/3KIjy9R?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The ancient Sanskrit term for suffering is “duhkha.” Joseph Goldstein explains that etymologically it “refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride.” The central idea, then, is that we suffer because the idea we have of the world, or the idea we have of how the world ought to be, isn’t reflected in the world as it is. This creates a sense of discomfort or unease and we continually bump up against that difference, and so we suffer." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 685, "byteStart": 633 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2z52lampk2z", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Of course, there often are features of the world we want to change, and are right in doing so. Injustices exist and if we have the opportunity to undo them, we should work to achieve that. People can be made better off, and our compassion for the pain and suffering of others directs us to help them to the extent we can. But it is important to recognize a difference between unease at injustice and unease at difference. The former calls out for action, the latter for relinquishment. A bright line doesn’t exist between the two, but if we put effort into introspection, examining the sources of our own suffering closely, while cultivating feelings of goodwill and sympathetic joy, we will be better able recognize which side of that line a particular fact about the world falls." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Suffering of Impermanence" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One source of suffering—one kind of disconnect we can feel between how we want the world to be and how it actually exists—is impermanence. Change is a raw and constant fact of the world. Not just in cultural matters, but everywhere. We’re born, we age, we die. We’re not exactly the same person today we were yesterday, and we’ll be rather different a year from now. The world around us always evolves, and even its physical parts come and go, grow and decay. Dynamism isn’t a preference, it’s the base nature of reality." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 391, "byteStart": 366 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3mde7p6htok2b", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To fight against dynamism then—to demand stasis—is to attempt to force upon the world a feature it cannot have. Social conservatism is always doomed to fail, and clinging to and insisting on permanence for what is inevitably impermanent, results in suffering and stress. A happier, more flourishing life is one that not just accepts dynamism, but finds ways to embrace and celebrate it. There’s a reason the battle against the acceptance of alternative lifestyles, against social change, against religious evolution, and against shifts in racial and gender status is always so angry, its warriors so anxious, enraged, and resentful. They are demanding something that cannot be, and angrily blaming others when they can’t have it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Social conservatism posits a world of essential natures, of natural hierarchies, of unchanging truths embedded in static traditions. It is an ideology of permanence, a fixed way of doing and being, and an assertion that any deviation from these isn’t just wrong, but is a denial of nature itself. But this view gets things precisely backwards. There are no essences, not in any permanent sense. There is only evolution and change. Personal conservatism can give us a way to live with that fact, by exerting a degree of control over ourselves and holding to a set of principles through which we experience the world. But social conservatism, the demand that dynamism be excised, is a sort of ignorance about the fundamental truth of ourselves and our world." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 115, "byteStart": 97 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/impermanence/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“[S]uffering is not inherent in the world of impermanence; suffering arises when we cling,” says Gil Fronsdal. “When clinging disappears, impermanence no longer gives rise to suffering. The solution to suffering, then, is to end clinging, not to try to escape from the transient world.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Social conservatism is an ideology of clinging in an environment where everything we might cling to inevitably changes. Rather than letting that inevitably lead to suffering—rather than insisting that the impermanent become permanent—social conservatives would be better off giving up the “social” part of their project and embracing the dynamic nature of society and culture. Their suffering is self-inflicted, their anger at social change unnecessary and self-defeating. Social conservatism is suffering, and the way out of that suffering is to just let it go." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "We cannot make permanent what is inevitably impermanent, and insisting otherwise brings distress. Better to embrace dynamism and social diversity.", "publishedAt": "2023-04-07T20:42:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.080513+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fhabraak2u", "data": { "path": "/3m2fhabraak2u", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "A Crash Course in Cultivating Liberal Virtues", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f8-0b3c-7aa1-8739-b98d72d862cb", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published April 24, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 147, "byteStart": 119 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/liberalism-and-sympathetic-joy?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 471, "byteStart": 442 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/social-conservatism-is-suffering?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "We can meaningfully strengthen liberalism while making life in an open, dynamic society happier and more rewarding by cultivating liberal virtues. This entails developing a compassionate desire for others to be happy, and taking pleasure in their achieving it—in all the diverse ways peaceful people get up to pursuing their bliss in a liberal culture. The alternative—resentment of difference and demands for social conservatism—is a straight line to suffering." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 235, "byteStart": 224 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 470, "byteStart": 430 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/goodwill-sympathetic-joy-and-liberalisms?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Still, one might wonder if the liberal virtues demand too much of us. Yes, we should tolerate difference, as challenging as that can be, by resisting the urge to lash out against it. But to go beyond toleration to actually celebrating difference and delighting in the myriad ways diverse people find happiness is much more difficult, if not impossible. If that’s the case, then no matter how people like me bang on about the benefits of goodwill and sympathetic joy, we’re effectively wasting our breath. Better to focus on the more attainable, and realistic, tolerance—which, even if attainable and realistic, still seems to present a challenge for many." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We might go even further and say that not only are general goodwill and sympathetic joy unrealistic, but they are, in fact, foolish. Must we really have goodwill for Nazis? Must we find joy in the happiness of racists, or people who derive pleasure from harming others? Is it wise to be nonjudgmental, accepting all paths to happiness as valid and praiseworthy?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In brief, yes, we should cultivate goodwill even for awful people. But, no, we shouldn’t take joy in their perception of their own happiness because happiness that derives from ill-will and harm isn’t happiness in the first place. And while we shouldn’t suspend moral judgment and accept all behaviors, it turns out that a powerful way to boost wise moral judgment is to put in the work replacing ill-will with goodwill, and resentment with sympathetic joy. That cultivation is challenging, of course, but there are practical methods for achieving it, methods everyone is capable of undertaking and which demand little sacrifice of our time or other responsibilities." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s start with the possibility of cultivation. After all, to twist Sherlock’s advice to Watson in a way I’m sure the good detective would find irksome, if we can start by showing how the impossible is, perhaps, merely improbable, we can move a good deal closer to the truth. That truth—the wisdom of the liberal virtues and so the dismissal of unwarranted concerns about giving up judgment and allowing the intolerable—will wait until our next essay." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 18, "byteStart": 11 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Achieving perfect virtue is, admittedly, beyond our reach. Still, we look to moral saints not as practically achievable ideals, but as North Stars for our ethical striving. Their embodiment of total virtue, even if they only exist in religious mythology or philosophical abstract, provides clarity as to what such virtue looks like, and that clarity makes it easier for us to know, in our individual striving, which direction we must head, and how far we have to go. Christians, for example, don’t ask “What would Jesus do?” because they believe they can attain perfect Christliness for themselves. They ask because they see Jesus’s behavior as the best possible example through which to become more ethical themselves. A similar perspective exists in every religious faith featuring an embodied exemplar of its ideals. It also exists in secular moral philosophies that articulate essential virtues or clear principles of justice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "None of these traditions or philosophies respond to the impossibility of perfection by throwing up their hands and abandoning moral striving. None say the path to improving ourselves by moving toward those unachievable ideals isn’t worth pursuing. In fact, one way to conceive of the virtuous life is not the life of perfect virtue, but instead the life spent in pursuit of virtue." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That pursuit is challenging. Virtue is always more difficult than vice, and working towards greater virtue is more difficult than settling for one’s moral status quo. It’s easier to sit on the couch than it is to get out and exercise. It’s easier to grab a Pop Tart than to cook a healthy meal. But just like good fitness and a healthy diet, pushing through the challenge of virtue is worthwhile, rewarding, and admirable." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So how to approach it? For some, the task is easier of course. They have a more open and welcoming disposition, a natural inclination to view diversity with delight instead of suspicion. For others, the task looks intimidating indeed, for they have been cursed with a personality that feels discomfort in difference, and sees change not as progress but as threatening decline. Both sorts will approach the cultivation of liberal virtue via the same methods, however, even if the former will find the path less arduous." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Roughly, cultivating liberal virtues begins with awareness, continues through mindfulness, and culminates in habit—though each also can be seen as distinct and supportive of each other." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We start with awareness of our own ill-will and resentment. If we don’t recognize them, or don’t recognize the problem with clinging to them, then we will maintain our instinctual perspective rather than replacing it with a healthier one. Thus we have to set ourselves the goal of noticing when our reactions are the result of ill-will and resentment. Take a moment, when you have a strong feeling about the actions or beliefs of another, to ask where those feelings come from." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This noticing becomes easier over time, and more habitual, as we practice it. We can then couple this with a mindfulness of healthier mental states—in this case, goodwill and sympathetic joy—and so develop the habit of abandoning ill-will and resentment when present and substituting them for their virtuous opposites. Because virtues are habits of character, dispositions to see the world in certain ways and to act out of that perspective, the pairing of awareness (noticing unskillful mental states when they arise) and mindfulness (remembering to maintain that awareness and to instead practice skillful mental states) support each other in creating deep and lasting habits of virtue. Like working a muscle, these virtuous habits become stronger with greater use, and greater use makes them easier to exert." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 1027, "byteStart": 964 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://tasshin.com/blog/practicing-love/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "At the practical level, one way to approach this task is through metta meditation. This entails intentionally giving rise to internal states of goodwill and then maintaining a focus on them through the session, which can last as little as a few minutes, and so is accessible to even the busiest of us. Essentially, metta meditation is teaching yourself to feel goodwill and then focusing on that feeling so that it becomes a natural part of who you are, even when the timer dings and the session ends. Going back again to the fitness analogy, if you lift weights regularly in the artificial and controlled setting of the gym, you don’t just become better at lifting weights. You become stronger, and that strength persists when you leave the gym. (I don’t have space here to set out the details of how to practice metta meditation, but if you are interested—and you should be, because it is a beneficial and lovely experience, I encourage you to start with the writings and guided audio instructions of Tasshin Fogleman.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus, in just a handful of minutes a day, we can use this simple practice to gradually undo our habits of ill-will and resentment, and replace them with the more skillful states of goodwill and sympathetic joy. We needn’t achieve perfection to see benefits, to ourselves and others, and any movement toward the liberal virtues is better than remaining stuck without them. That’s not too demanding at all." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Perfect virtue is impossible, and moral growth is challenging. But we can improve ourselves in practical ways, even if we can't achieve the ideal.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-04T20:45:29.634Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.338927+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk7kvoas23", "data": { "path": "/3m2zk7kvoas23", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Misuse of Meritocracy", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da1e-e8bb-7ddc-ae9e-138801f94901", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published August 19, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "An argument you see about “meritocracy,” one common among those on the ideological right, is that some groups, typically women, have a harder time understanding or accepting merit and meritocracy than others, typically men. If meritocracy is good, and if power should be awarded and wielded based on “merit,” then it is bad if control of power, within institutions and more broadly, shifts away from those who understand and appreciate meritocracy, and towards those who don’t." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I’m wary of meritocracy talk like this, not because there’s something wrong with the idea of merit itself, but because talk like this often obfuscates motivations that either have nothing to do with merit, or misunderstand the concept in ways analogous to the accusations they’re making about others." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 324, "byteStart": 293 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100008353?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Humans are quite good at self-deception, and the idea of meritocracy—particularly when framed as “My tribe, demographic, or cultural group is meritocratic, while their tribe, demographic, or cultural group isn’t”—is fertile ground for such deceit. Each of us is part of one or more “interpretive communities.” These are made up of the people we associate with, but also the texts internal to that community: Your community has a shared corpus you believe to be true, and which shape the methods of thinking and interpretation you apply when encountering new texts outside of that corpus and outside of your community. It’s important to note that “texts” here doesn’t just mean books. It means the intellectual and argumentative content you create, engage with, and are exposed to. So the arguments you hear from people outside of your community are texts, as are the beliefs shared within interpretive communities not your own." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We need theories to give context to the information we consume and process. We need an interpretive framework. But because that framework is shared within our community, and because we have a natural suspicion of those outside our community, this framework, while being helpful, can also create blindspots, or lead us to misread and misinterpret texts grounded in the shared methods and epistemologies of other communities. We believe our own community is at least largely right in its basic beliefs and interpretive framework, or else we’d be either agitating for change within the community or seeking a different home." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is important when thinking about the concept of “meritocracy” because the very idea of merit is a social one. Merit is just what we’ve chosen to value and what we’ve chosen to reward. Sometimes we choose for good reasons, and so it would be unwise to change the standard. But sometimes we choose for bad reasons, and what we take to be meritorious is, instead, simply the idiosyncratic or self-serving preference of our particular tribe or interpretive community." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 738, "byteStart": 671 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The way to respond to a critique of the standards of merit we hold to is to say, “Sure, let’s discuss it, and you should offer up your standard and then build a case for it as a better alternative, while I defend my standard, and we’ll see whose argument holds up.” But saying, “Your standards are different from mine, and the burden of proof is on you to persuade me,” while correct in an ideal sense, becomes complicated by the fact that you and your interlocutor are coming from different interpretive communities. What your request means, with that context, is, “Your standards are different from mine, and the burden of proof is on you to persuade me by the standards and in the interpretive framework of my community.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s crucial to emphasize the role that “interpretive framework” is playing here. Imagine that you and I are both offering our advice to a person suffering from an illness, and we have different prescriptions for making them well. It’s one thing if we both share the same concept of wellness, and then differ on which medicine will most fully and safely result in it. It becomes a good deal more complicated if we instead differ on what it means to be “well” in the first place, and so have distinct methods for talking about and evaluating the merit of medicines. If we limit our conversation to the two opposing medicines and which is “better,” but without acknowledging and clarifying the concept of “wellness,” we’ll simply be talking past each other." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s true that the idea of “wellness” or “health” has broad agreement. But it’s not total, and it changes over time. If you read male psychologists from a hundred years ago (and most psychologists were men a hundred years ago) on the topic of what it means for a woman to be psychologically healthy, it doesn’t look much like psychological health today, but instead is a state of subservience, performative quietude, and unquestioning acceptance of “traditional” women’s roles and a power structure with men at the top." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We tend to harden the shared truths and interpretive framework within our community through a process Roland Bartes called “myth making.” We take historically or culturally contingent beliefs internal to our community and build a story about how they are instead “natural” facts of the world. Once we have naturalized (or “mythologized”) these beliefs, they become buffered from critique, because you can’t critique nature. And they become artificially elevated against alternatives, because any alternative is, by definition, unnatural." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus what we’ve labeled as “merit,” internal to our community, might well have degrees of objective worth, in the same way “health” does. Thus, just as we can talk about some medical interventions (such as taking Ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19) as objectively false in their purported efficacy and harmful to health, we can talk about some traits or behaviors being correctly labeled as “meritorious,” and others as correctly labeled unworthy. But most conceptions of merit are a good deal more gray, and a good deal more contingent on standards internal to and contingent upon interpretive communities." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 516, "byteStart": 487 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Further, because the idea of “merit” is moralized, we have an incentive to view criticisms of our standards of merit with moral suspicion. It’s not just that people who critique us are wrong, it’s that they’re bad—and we’re inclined to think they reject the very idea of merit itself. But it’s awful difficult to actually think of communities that reject merit, or reject the idea that people should be rewarded for worthy things. Instead, there are disagreements about what we should be rewarded for. In many communities once dominated by men, the entrance of women has meant a declining relative status of those men. Men used to be at a top, were the most well-respected, and their ideas defining the community’s consensus. Men who made it to the top sometimes did so for meritorious reasons, but frequently what counted as “merit” was instead behaviors that fall under what we’d now label “toxic masculinity,” for example. Aggressiveness, lack of empathy, petulance in the face of critique, and a systematic exclusion of questioning viewpoints from women and minorities." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 1130, "byteStart": 1073 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/08/20/twitterx-as-a-bubble-for/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If we’re not careful to critically examine our own beliefs, we tend to fall back on defining a meritocracy as “a system where people like me are at the top,” and so a move to a system where other people rise in status, or end up viewed as leaders or exercising power, is definitionally a retreat from meritocracy. Women have historically, systematically been excluded from many institutions, and so those institutions had an internal culture that, among other features, was one that excluded women, and was accepting of that exclusion, and saw that exclusion as the result of meritocracy. Thus when women enter those institutions, their very presence, and then their ascension to positions of power and leadership, is viewed by some members of the male-dominated community, and particularly those who benefited from it, as evidence not that those women have merit, but that meritocracy is in retreat. Women must be DEI hires, or the result of unjust affirmative action, or only supplanting (some) men in the status and merit hierarchy because standards have fallen. Getting outside of your interpretive community’s bubble is an important first step." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you find yourself believing, based on the framework and shared perspectives internal to your interpretive community, that half the population lacks standards of merit, and further rejects the idea of merit, this should be a flag that something has gone wrong with content and ratiocination of your interpretive community, and that a more careful, more open-minded and epistemically humble critical examination is warranted—one that is aware of the blindspots of interpretation, the incentives of status games, the risks of mythologizing, and has a willingness to accept that sometimes a genuine meritocracy doesn’t have you at the top." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T20:32:01.655Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.820217+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo2zhv2s24", "data": { "path": "/3m2zo2zhv2s24", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Shaky Future of Trump's Personality Cult", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da5e-3920-7555-986f-293f89aa4bcf", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published December 9, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In a little over a month, we’ll see the swearing in of a second Trump administration. But whether the administration remains the Trump administration for the next four years is a bit less certain than getting four years of Trump the first time around. The incoming president showed pronounced mental decline during the campaign, and his physical appearance, including growing signs of frailty, indicate his health isn’t terrific. He’s quite old, doesn’t exercise, and has a poor diet." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 315, "byteStart": 295 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.liberalcurrents.com/americas-paths-to-personalism/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This throws a pretty substantial X factor into predicting what the coming years look like. Right now, as he’s assembling his cabinet, it’s clear Trump intends to rule not just as a temperamental authoritarian with clear fascist urges and worldview, but that he wants to bend the government towards personalism. He wants loyalty with the aim of personal enrichment. The result, so far, is a lot of incompetent people teed up for roles in the administration, from Musk and Ramaswamy given the task of finding inefficiencies, to cabinet picks chosen not because they’re skilled administrators, but because they look good on TV to a not very bright and not very informed old man." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So what happens if, in the next year or few, Trump’s health declines enough that he’s not capable of carrying out any of his duties, or maintaining the appearance of doing so? What happens if he dies?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The answer to that is bound up in a pretty basic feature of Trumpism: it’s not really an ideological movement, but is instead a personality cult. What defines Trumpism, and hold the MAGA coalition together, isn’t a shared commitment to a set of ideas and policy preferences. Instead, what defines Trumpism is Trump. The reason Trumpism has been successful in twice taking the presidency, and in fully claiming the Republican Party, is that lots of Americans like Trump, and he’s able to wield that admiration against any member of the GOP who steps out of line." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This has been a powerful force in American politics, obviously. But it’s also a brittle one. The American right, because it is not ideologically unified, is instead a coalition of factions in fact quite hostile to each other. These include the old school, Reaganite, Paul Ryan conservatives—or at least the ones who haven’t yet left or been driven out. They include the right reactionary “post-liberal” ideologues in the style of JD Vance and his patron Peter Thiel. And they include the QAnon faithful, the conspiracy addled anti-vaxxers, the newly resurgent neo-Nazis, and the just crazy weirdos like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right now, all these groups can be lumped together into Trumpism because they’ve all sworn a degree of fealty to Trump, or believe that cozying up to him will advance their personal interests. But most of them fundamentally hate each other." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus when the personality cult loses its personality, it’s not clear what happens to American conservatism. Trump himself is popular with enough voters that he can squeak out electoral victories, but the actual policies of Trumpism (e.g., Project 2025) are spectacularly unpopular. Plenty of voters like the idea of this celebrity businessman who talks like them, upsets the people they don’t like, and has decades appearing in the news and on television as an appealing (to them) quintessence of “success.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But if Trump is out of the picture, who steps in? Vance is loathsome, turns off basically everyone who hears him speak, and entirely lacks charisma. Donald Trump Jr. clearly wants to be the next headlining Trump, but is so dumb and coked up that he’s barely functional. No one in Congress appears poised to seize the opportunity. There are some influencers popular with MAGA crowds, but they lack the enormous brand awareness Trump brought to his campaigns, and so couldn’t coast, like Trump has, on the idea of Trump the voters want to support." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 517, "byteStart": 502 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m3ahechta22z", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Trumpism faces a basic problem if it’s to continue beyond Trump. On the one hand, the people who would become Trump through shouting Trumpy things have largely failed with voters, especially when they have to convince a whole state of them, instead of an extreme right congressional district. This is why the Senate is considerably less Trumpy than the House. On the other hand, those who’ve tried to turn Trumpism into an ideology and then work to advance that (the Vances, the Millers) are just creepy as hell, and rightfully repulsive to most Americans." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Further, Trump’s greatest desire is to be the center of attention. He wants fawning and praise. He wants nothing more than to be the most important, most respected man there is. He’s happy to have obsequious loyalty, and he loves to surround himself with famous people whose fame rubs off on him. But this also means he hates getting upstaged. Even if Trumpism can somehow identify its heir apparent to be the next personality leading the cult, Trump is likely to knife that person as soon as its clear that’s what they are, or what they might become. If Trump were committed to the idea of Trumpism continuing, as a movement, after him, he’d be cultivating its next leader. But he’s not, both because he’s incapable of thinking that far in advance, and because he’s incapable of thinking about anything other than himself. For Trump, Trumpism is Trump, and the interests of Trumpism as a movement simply are whatever happens to be Trump’s own interests from moment to moment. He doesn’t care to continue the personality cult because he doesn’t care about anything beyond attention and money." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If Trump can’t make it through his term, there’s a rather more than zero chance that the Trumpist coalition splinters, and that his administration—or the new Vance administration—falls into a dysfunction of infighting, backstabbing, and everyone in a leadership role wanting an array of entirely incompatible policies. And then, if America survives until November 2028, the GOP gets wiped out in the election, with no immediate path forward." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "None of that means Trump can’t do a ton of damage, or that whoever comes after him can’t do a ton of damage. And Trump might hold on to his health and sanity long enough to make it through until January 2029. But those of us who want to see Trumpism ended as a force in American politics would do well to think about how we can take advantage of this fracturing, and the suddenly weakened American right, if the time comes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:41:04.126Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.323671+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo76yip224", "data": { "path": "/3m2zo76yip224", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "culture", "influencers" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Selling Out vs. Just Selling: The Weirdness of \"Content\" Monetization", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da60-4122-7555-986f-d34b1a47a109", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 12, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I’ve been trying to put my finger on what feels like a generational divide regarding how creators of works relate to their creations. It’s not uniform, of course, but there seems to have been a shift in how we talk about, and so contextualize and approach, the act of “being a creator.” It’s a story of technological change, too. Medium influences message obviously, but that’s not all of it. And it’s all centered on the evolving ontological characteristics of “content.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 401, "byteStart": 381 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I mean “content” here in a genericized sense, because its genericization is critical to understanding this odd world in which we find ourselves. Roughly put, “content” is a placeholder for “the things artists, writers, influencers, thought leaders, and so on create.” But it’s a placeholder that has come to usurp that which it holds the place of. The signifier has taken over the sign. We can think of it as if, over time, we stopped viewing pronouns as ways to conveniently point to each of the diverse and more significant proper nouns they might point to, and instead thought in terms of a generic and general “him” or “her” or “them.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Content isn’t everything, though, and everything isn’t content. Creators might make sculptures, or bespoke shoes, or carved cabinets. But sculptures, bespoke shoes, and carved cabinets aren’t “content.” The term of art among the trendsetters for the creators of these artifacts is more likely to be “builder” than “creator.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Two Kinds of Creations" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 564, "byteStart": 546 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://amzn.to/41hPrxF", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 715, "byteStart": 702 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There’s a distinction in philosophy of art that clarifies here. Among artworks, there are those that are “allographic” and those that are “autographic.” The latter are the sculptures and bespoke shoes: The work of art is what the artist held in her hand and shaped or stitched. It is art about which we can coherently speak of forgeries. A perfect copy of a bespoke shoe isn’t the same as the original. It’s just a copy, even if “perfect.” Allographic art, on the other hand, is art where every copy really is the original. If I publish a novel, we don’t talk about there being an “original” and each paperback copy as a mere copy. Rather, each paperback you buy of my novel is the novel. The same holds for recorded music, movies on film or digital, and so on. There might be one-off variants we attach particular weight to (signed first editions, first pressings, and so on), but we don’t attach weight to them because they are somehow more authentically the novel or the song than the third printing or the high def MP3 download. Rather, they are a particularly valued variant of that basic artwork." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 230, "byteStart": 213 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/newsletter", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 257, "byteStart": 240 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/reimaginingliberty", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 786, "byteStart": 763 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "With that distinction in mind, we can perhaps talk about “content” of the sort at issue here as “the stuff you might make that’s allographic.” It’s YouTube or TikTok videos. It’s blog posts. It’s newsletter posts. It’s podcast episodes. In common usage today, a “content creator” is a person who makes those sorts of things. This doesn’t mean content creators aren’t or can’t be artists, because, as noted, allographic art is still art. But it also doesn’t mean that all content creators are artists, because plenty of creations we’d categorize as allographic (such as blog posts, explainer videos, and podcast interviews) aren’t really “art” as most of us understand it. (Of course, the definition of “art” is much more thorny and complex than most of us think. Fortunately, we don’t need to even think about its complexities for our purposes here.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There’s more going on, though, because for as long as we’ve had technologies of reproduction, there have been content creators creating and selling allographic content. That’s not new, and so not representative of a cultural shift. Instead, this shift is about how content creators think both about their content—or at least how they publicly talk about their content—and the relationship between it and the act of selling. And that shift resulted from the interaction of two roughly simultaneous trends, the first towards becoming a solo entrepreneur salesman as the culturally privileged aspiration among young people, and the second towards everyone wanting—and wanting to sell—a personal brand." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "On Being a Salesman" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 216, "byteStart": 197 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://amzn.to/42ONQkG", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If there’s a cultural inflection point in the rise of this new relationship between content creators and their content, it’s the publication, and runaway success, of Timothy Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek. This was the book that convinced a lot of white collar and knowledge workers—and aspiring white collar and knowledge workers—that the path to easy riches was via the one-man sales operation. He taught the gospel of drop-shipping, where you’d set up a website that was little more than a thin front for someone else’s shipping business, get people to visit the website and buy, and then skim a cut of the resulting sales. You didn’t need to actually handle any product yourself, because your business was taking orders and then passing them along, with payment, to someone else who would box them up and put them in the mail to your (and their) customer." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, drop-shipping wasn’t new. And, of course, being a salesman wasn’t new. Amway and Tupperware parties were precursors to the drop-shipping grind bro. In fact, the main innovation Feriss brought was to pitch as masculine an age-old get rich quick scheme that had historically been viewed as feminine, which he accomplished by replacing collectivist sales parties and friend-pestering as the primary marketing mechanism with the rugged individualism of solo building a website or mailing list." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But what was new, or at least the cutting edge representation of emerging trends, was telling college educated people that their old plan of “rise to the top of a large organization” to get wealthy wasn’t as sure-fire or undemanding of their time as “get people to buy stuff from your independent sales operation.” Suddenly everyone wanted to be a solo entrepreneur." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 79 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 187, "byteStart": 184 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 374, "byteStart": 361 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Becoming a “content creator” today is just a new form of this. If you get very big, you might have some helpers, like a producer for your show, but the core idea is that it’s you doing the selling as an independent, not you being part of a larger organization that sells stuff. The other half of the “content creator” model, though, is all about what you sell." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Rise of the Personal Brand" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 412, "byteStart": 409 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 431, "byteStart": 423 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The intersecting trend is the rise of the “personal brand.” Whereas with old-school drop shipping, the answer to the question “What am I going to sell?” was “This other company’s generic supplements,” the personal brand shifted the answer to “Me.” It’s no longer enough to be a solo entrepreneur. The aim now is to be famous while doing it. Your company doesn’t have customers, but now you have an audience. And this has shifted the emphasis in the operation from having a product, and then getting people to find it, to being the product, such that people want to buy whatever is associated with it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Again, in broad strokes this isn’t new. We’ve had famous people selling their brand for, well, ever. The oldest form might be the spiritual guru, the guy who claims to have unique metaphysical insights or a spiritual connection with what matters, and then talks followers into following and supporting him on the promise that proximity to him (to his personal brand) will lead to their own spiritual awakening and success. And the old guru model actually speaks, better than more contemporary parallels, to this contemporary “salesman of personal brand” because the indicator of being on the path to success is the same: counting your followers." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Everyone who sells anything can measure success by counting how many things he’s sold. And if the number sold each week or month is going up, that’s a sign things are working. But if what you’re selling is a brand, the only way to sell anything in the first place is to achieve some success in establishing that brand. The trouble is, “brand awareness” is a lot harder to measure or watch incrementally grow than counting units sold." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The guru could do it, because he could see that yesterday he had three followers and today he has four and so, even if none of them are contributing anything to his financial wellbeing, the number’s going up. If it keeps going up, he’ll get enough who do support him to be a success. Likewise social media. To make a living as a “personal brand,” you need thousands or hundreds of thousands or probably millions of followers. If today you have only ten, you’re earning nothing, and won’t be for a while. But what you can see is that yesterday you had eight. And you can see that a week later you have a hundred, and so not only are you gaining followers, but the rate of gain is accelerating." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 308, "byteStart": 300 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In a world before such easy quantification of growing brand awareness, lots of people would give up pretty early on. They’re not now a success, and the signs that success might come are opaque. In the world of social media, though, there’s a number that, even if it’s not going up quickly, is going up. So you stay on the treadmill." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Especially because it’s so cheap to do so. Becoming an “influencer” doesn’t demand much in the way of upfront costs. You already have a phone, which already has a decent enough camera. Platforms make distribution costless, and tools exist so anyone can cut a short form video. This isn’t feature filmmaking, and it isn’t years spent writing a novel and then trying to find a publisher to sink a bunch of resources into manufacturing and distributing it. This is dancing into your phone to a song you got, along with every song in existence, for a few bucks a month on Spotify—if you didn’t just grab it for free on YouTube." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 246, "byteStart": 207 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://tana.inc/content-creation", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "AI tools drive the costs even lower, both in dollars spent and in time needed. Want to start a newsletter about how emerging technologies will impact project management, but lack expertise in either topic? Get a robot to draft something for you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Backwards Funnel" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus the current spot we’re in: People want to be solo entrepreneurs, and what they want to solo sell is their personal brand, and the way they sell their personal brand is by monetizing “content” associated with that brand." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But notice that this is backwards from the way creators have typically approached making a living with their creations. A writer becomes a writer because she wants to write. She has something she wants to say, and she hones her craft in saying it. Hopefully, other people want to hear it too, and if they do, then they buy it and her brand grows around being the person who said those things. In other words, the personal brand is downstream of the content." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Even in instances where it looks like more directly selling the brand, such as a famous person having a memoir ghost written for him, the brand likely grew around some area of expertise. This person is very good at acting, so became famous, and now people want to read his life story. This person is very good at business, and so established a brand around being good at business, and now people want to buy his thoughts on how they, too, can be good at business." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "“Content creators” flip the script. They want to be the kind of person who is rich and famous for “creating content,” so they start by trying to create a brand by gaining followers for themselves, and the way they go about that is figuring out what “content” will attract followers." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 54, "byteStart": 49 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 163, "byteStart": 144 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 224, "byteStart": 197 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 311, "byteStart": 304 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 352, "byteStart": 341 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This means expertise comes, if it comes at all, after brand. This is why so many content creators are in the business of branding themselves as content creators and then selling content about how to be a content creator. They’re building their brand around what interests them, which isn’t the content of the content, but rather how to sell a genericized “content.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "There’s Nothing Wrong With Selling" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s important to distinguish this critique from a critique of selling your creations. Artists have always done the latter. Artists aspire to be working artists. Novelists want to sell books, musicians want to sell songs or tickets to their shows. But this is a critique, or at least a highlighting, of a different way of thinking about that whole business." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I was a teenager in the 1990s. The culture then was pretty clear that among the worst things you could do was “selling out.” We all had experienced the trauma of knowing an artist before they sold out, and then suffering the disappointment of seeing them sell out." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 282, "byteStart": 256 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeEyncm_jQ", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 291, "byteStart": 282 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeEyncm_jQ", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 292, "byteStart": 291 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WeEyncm_jQ", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This wasn’t about getting big. You could have a platinum album without selling out. Instead, it was about giving up on creating the kind of content that had been meaningful to you and replacing it with the kind of content you thought would sell. It’s Weezer after the flop of Pinkerton." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 173, "byteStart": 155 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But kids don’t worry about selling out anymore. In fact, grind mindset culture and influencer culture and hustle bro culture all elevate selling out to the thing aimed at. If you can sell out, then you’ve succeeded. Failure is the inability to find an avenue to selling out. You don’t start with something to say and then figure out how to sell it, but instead start with a desire to sell and then figure out what to say." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Supremacy of “Content”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, plenty of people making a living by selling or monetizing their content on the internet don’t fit this “personal brand first and genericized content” model. Lots of artists make meaningful allographic art." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But there has been a recognizable shift in how willing people are to shamelessly embrace the “personal brand first and genericized content” model. How willing they are to sell it openly as what you should aim at. It’s why so many creators are unapologetic about creating AI slop and why so many tech firms market their products as helping creators do that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And maybe the rise of AI slop is the way out of this. Maybe as content channels flood with bland content made by people whose interest is selling something instead of saying something, we’ll develop a counter-revolutionary force of people who demand meaningful content before they’ll follow a brand. That still exists, too, of course. We just need to treat it more fully as what to aspire to." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "What it means that we stopped caring so much about what we create and started caring only about whether we can sell it.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:43:24.132Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.211546+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rvmrwxc2n", "data": { "path": "/3m33rvmrwxc2n", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "If You Want to Win Political Arguments, Stop Being an Asshole", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199deb5-58be-7999-ad1d-8ae58033924d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published June 30, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Roughly speaking, there are three reasons we might engage in political discussion. The first is intellectual interest. Playing with ideas, including political ideas, is fun, and banging them against each other to see which comes out on top is fun. So just as some people find it enjoyable to hash out who’s the best quarterback of all time, some people find it enjoyable to hash out which political institutions or rules are most just or most likely to create a flourishing society." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The second is domination. Politics is, ultimately, about the exercise of power. It’s about controlling others, and who gets to do that controlling, and to what ends. So you might engage in political talk to point out to the people you intend to control that you’ll be the one doing the controlling (or, at least, people like you), and they’ll be the ones getting controlled. This is politics as verbal bullying." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The third, and the one that motivates most of us when we engage in political talk, is persuasion. I want to bring you around to my political view, because my political view wins out when enough people have come around to it. So I offer arguments, and debate your arguments, and if all goes well, one of us will move the other closer to his position." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s set aside the first, intellectual interest, for now. If you’re reading this, you’re probably the sort of person who finds political talk at least somewhat intellectually interesting even outside the context of the other two reasons. But let’s focus instead on why most people talk politics, which (they think) is to persuade, but is, more often than they’d like to admit, to instead dominate." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 992, "byteStart": 977 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwmFiCcN2rk", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "You get this a lot on social media. It’s what pile-ons are all about. I express an opinion the prevailing culture on the platform disagrees with, and the response is threats, or insults, or quote posts of “can you believe this guy?” The goal is to make me feel stupid or small, and so to make the pile-on-ers feel smart or big. It’s pretty prosaic stuff: Make yourself feel good by making someone else feel bad. And that feeling-bad-ness is a form of domination, especially when it arises out of political talk. The people doing the dominating know that. The person getting dominated knows that. There’s an implied threat in the pile-on itself: there are more of us doing the pile-on against the one of you that we’re in a position of power. Or, at least, appear to be, because a pile-on isn’t actually indicative of the pile-on-ers’ opinion being more widespread than that expressed by the piled-on. (I’m reminded of the line from The Mr. T Experience song “Two of Us” about how the “two of us outnumber every single one of them.”)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But there are cases when the people engaged in a game of domination believe they’re engaged in a game of persuasion, and it’s actually pretty common in a lot of political discourse. It happens when the person arguing is an asshole." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 215, "byteStart": 37 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I wrote here a while back about how people who think their strong commitment to principle justifies their being an asshole are mistaken both about the content of their principles and the nature of principle itself. It’s basically, “I believe in this so strongly, and my cause is so moral and just, that nothing else matters, and that includes being courteous and respectful to those around me.” The trouble with this line of thinking is that morality and justice are about our relationship to other people. You can’t be just while treating others unjustly—even in the cause of “justice.” You can’t be moral while treating others immorally—even in the cause of “morality.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But that’s a claim about ethics: being an asshole demonstrates that your professed ethical character isn’t an ethical character, but instead an unethical one draped in some degree of ethical talk. Adding on the above context about persuasion and domination helps us to additionally see that being an asshole (a form of domination) is unproductive, too." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you want to persuade someone of your political position, you need to convince them that your position is better. And that means better for them. Or better for everyone. Or better for most people. It doesn’t mean just better for you. Or just better for people like you, but not like them, and not like most other people. Persuasion in politics means convincing others that your way is the best way for them to achieve their aims. Or it means convincing them that their aims weren’t the right ones. In other words, it’s fundamentally not about domination." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But to be an asshole is to position yourself as a dominator to those around you, because to be an asshole is, simply, to tell everyone around you that your interests are always more important than theirs, and that one of your interests is making them feel small or stupid in order to make yourself feel big and smart." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus “I can be an asshole and persuade” is, in almost every instance, a mistake. You can’t. Because coming off as an asshole to your interlocutor, or to people who hear your arguments, is telling them up front that your motivation is domination, and so they will view your political arguments in that context. What you want, they’ll reasonably assume, is to use politics to dominate, just as you are using your asshole-ness to dominate. You’re signaling, from the opening gate, that the politics you want to persuade them of are, whether explicitly stated or not, about political domination instead of political cooperation. You’re telling them your worldview is zero-sum instead of positive-sum." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Being an asshole makes people justifiably suspicious of whatever politics you advocate, and they will assume that, even if you talk about freedom and liberty and openness and exchange, what you’re really all about is power and control and, well, domination. Maybe you can talk your way out of that hole (there are assholes who advocate genuinely emancipatory politics, after all), but you are starting in a hole, and the more of an asshole you are, the deeper it is, and the more likely your arguments will come across, to your listeners, as digging it even deeper still." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you care about your politics, just as if you care about your principles, you should fight every urge that might arise to be an asshole about it. It’s not just more ethical. It’s more persuasive, too." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Political persuasion versus the urge to political domination.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T17:54:57.497Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:17.486867+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbozbfts26", "data": { "path": "/3m2xbozbfts26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "A Twitter Eulogy", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199a7a2-ca2f-722d-a6cd-3a0230e46e6e", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published May 7, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 723, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This weekend I deleted my Twitter account. Which is a small thing, yes, but it’s 16 years of interactions, and 13,000 followers, and it wasn’t an easy decision. Not the least because, in those 16 years, I made real and important friends through Twitter. The platform meant a lot to me. So as my little commemoration, and moment of self-indulgence, I’m reprinting below a very short essay I wrote—originally as a Tweet thread—ages ago when one of those friends, who meant an awful lot to me, died unexpectedly. Five years later, I still miss him, and I hope this essay can give a sense of what it is Elon Musk has destroyed, and why social media, as many problems as it has, still matters—and still brings value." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Twitter gets a lot of criticism, and a lot of it is well-deserved. But Twitter’s also an amazing place, where strangers can become friends, and where we can learn much from people we’d never have encountered otherwise." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It was a death that made me fully grasp the scope of that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 22, "byteStart": 11 }, "features": [ { "uri": "http://twitter.com/MeadBadger", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "My friend @MeadBadger died on Sunday. His real name was Brock Cusick, and he sometimes went by Adam Blackstone, but he was always @MeadBadger. We’d known each other for years, and in that time we’d discussed politics, religious faith, technology, Dungeons & Dragons, and so much more. Knowing him enriched me and I valued our friendship immensely." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I never met him in person." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It was one of those stumble across each other on Twitter things. A mutual follow retweets, one person appears in the other’s mentions, you get to talking. You know nothing about each other except for a username, a quippy bio. In real life, a chance meeting like that, at a bar, a networking event, whatever, would be the end of it. Hi, a quick conversation, move on. But Twitter has that follow button and it’s so easy and costless to press, you can take chances without the risk of real life baggage." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Here’s a person, he seems maybe pretty interesting, so I’ll click follow and now he’s there, every day, his thoughts scrolling up my phone or in a tab in my browser or in an app in the corner of the desktop. That random person is now a presence, and a frequent one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Then years go by and in that time, this person has become someone you interact with weekly, daily, throughout the day. Even if it’s just a like, an acknowledgment that they heard what you said or you heard what they said." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This, I think, makes Twitter friendships sneak up on you. That follow is so easy, sending a reply or hitting like so quick, that you don’t really realize how much the people there become presences in your life. Until they aren’t. Until they stop. That @MeadBadger was my friend I obviously knew before his death, but online friendship is something we’re still all getting used to. There have been pen pals before, and that’s similar, but the immediacy, the shared stream of consciousness, makes Twitter different." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I’ve caught myself, several times since Sunday, wondering how @MeadBadger will respond to this thing I’m about to tweet. Because such responses are a baked in part of the whole Twitter experience. People who you just get used to hearing from and might at any time." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I guess I only fully understood the depth of these sorts of relationships when he died. When the always on, enriching, more valuable than I can say interaction with a man I never met but who made me, over the years, a better person through his example and words, just stopped." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I miss @MeadBadger deeply. I wish I could tell him, in a tweet, how much his friendship meant to me. And I’m glad, more than I knew until now, that this silly and frustrating and amazing Twitter platform exists to make friendships like ours possible." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 81, "byteStart": 74 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/aaronrosspowell.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "With Twitter now behind me, I’m always here on the blog, as well as on Bluesky." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-11T22:54:16.883Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.470893+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgtlnepc2w", "data": { "path": "/3m2zgtlnepc2w", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The False Equivalence Trap", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d9e6-b0d1-7991-baae-29f260573d17", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 8, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As America gets closer to putting an authoritarian back into power, and this time with the legwork done to genuinely dissolve our democracy and liberal institutions in the name of populism, nationalism, and right-wing grievance politics, lots of very serious people are maintaining a position that reactionary populism is not that bad or that the other guys aren’t any better. This is, by any objective measure, nonsense. But it’s compelling nonsense to plenty of quite smart people." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Why?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Here’s a common line of thinking that goes a fair way to explain it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be thoughtful and wise is to be above the fray." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be above the fray is to be non-partisan." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be non-partisan is to not favor one side over the other." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To not favor one side over the other is to be equally critical of both sides." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be equally critical of both sides is to view both sides as equal in their badness." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To view both sides as equal in their badness is to not admit when one side is clearly worse." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To not admit that one side is clearly worse is to understate the badness of the worse side or to overstate the badness of the less bad side." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This has as much traction as it does, among the quarters that it does, in part because, for much of recent memory, it was possible to argue that the sides differed primarily in their policy preferences, and each side had some good policies and some bad. And so being thoughtful and wise (and above the fray, etc.) was to simply point out when those individual policies were good or when they were bad. (Or, in a specifically journalistic context, to focus your attention on the horserace: Which side was winning and why.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But with the GOP’s turn to the hard-right, and with its clear and explicit efforts to undermine basic institutions like free and fair elections, the peaceful transfer of power, and a general commitment to a pluralistic and open society, this old framework breaks down. Yes, both sides have some good policies and some bad, but the far-right, which has become the mainstream right, wants to undo the democratic process in which those policies used to get made." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "America is on the cusp of becoming a very dark place, and it might be tempting to pretend that away in order to maintain a sense of above-the-fray-ness. But right now all our thoughtfulness and wisdom needs to instead be directed at protecting our very democracy—so we can have the opportunity to argue about good and bad policies in the future." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T19:31:38.553Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.616618+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6l5d3qhw22g", "data": { "path": "/3m6l5d3qhw22g", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Answer to Student AI Writing Slop is Authorial Voice", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019ac0b5-880d-7221-8de5-672fc52316ed", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The way they teach you to write in high school is to make your prose sound like everyone else. This isn’t because your English teacher wants to beat all individuality out of you and turn you into the perfect conforming public school subject. Maybe that’s some of them, sure, but most of them instead recognize that to become a good writer you first need to learn to write clearly and with control over your prose, and both are difficult if you’re instead writing with the dramatically oriented style typical of enthusiastic teens." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The idea, like learning to play scales before you improvise, is that this control, and this ear for staid clarity, will give a foundation upon which more fun styles can be built without sliding from good writing to bad. And that makes a lot of sense. Most teens, even enthusiastic young authors, are bad writers. They might have the talent to become good writers (though not all do), but they lack the skill to pull it off. So you start by learning to be prosaic, and once you have that down, you develop an authorial voice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The trouble comes from the over-application of this approach. If you’re a teen who already writes well (they exist!), then the advice to go bland isn’t a step to making your writing better, but is instead a demand you make your writing worse. Such a teen should push back by demonstrating they’re capable of bland (it’s good to be able to shape your prose to your audience), but once demonstrated, they shouldn’t keep practicing the habits of blandness." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Except every teen who’s enthusiastic about writing thinks they’re a good writer. Even if they’re not. And, given the kind of writing you find in popular books, books it’s likely at least some high school English teachers are reading for pleasure, there’s a chance that enthusiastic teen ends up in a classroom where the teacher can’t really tell the difference." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreifi32p5rth32rhp2m63gycrbbs6mqsjws4oxxbqi6gii5m4mh4agy", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m34f73iizc2k" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 137, "byteStart": 58 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://substack.com/inbox/post/179443397", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "All of the above is what I was thinking about when I read Steven Mintz’s article about the damage AI has done to undergraduate writing. Particularly this paragraph:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "During this fall’s semester, I assigned my undergraduates weekly outside-of-class essays. Many are now interchangeable—uniformly well-organized, articulate, and confident, yet oddly generic and curiously detached from the specific issues we’re discussing in class. Most troubling, several papers made claims about sources we had never examined, complete with plausible-sounding analysis." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 505, "byteStart": 499 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 695, "byteStart": 681 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-ai-detectors-think-the-us-constitution-was-written-by-ai/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude write better than most students. They write better than most adults. This isn’t because they write well, but because most people are quite poor writers. LLMs can produce coherent prose, something most people find challenging, especially when writing at length. LLM output is generally well organized, and organization, for most adults (let alone students), is hard. This all makes the urge to use an LLM to help with your writing assignment rather strong. If it writes better than you can, and possibly better than you’ll ever write, why not use it? How’s your teacher going to find out? (The AI detection tools unscrupulous firms sell to schools are snake oil.) And it’s not like you’ll lose access to these tools when you have to write something in the real world, after graduation, at your job, or in your daily life. Right?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And I get it. I like writing and don’t want a robot to do it for me. But I’m weird. For most people, writing is a chore, and just as I’d love for a robot to do the dishes and clean the house and weed the garden, it’s just a fact of humanity that the bulk of the people I share the planet with wouldn’t mind if they never had to write another essay again." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So my reaction to Mintz’s article, and to that paragraph in particular, isn’t about what everyone should do, but instead the question of what the young people who are good writers, or on their way to becoming good writers, should do about a world where relatively decent prose is available to everyone as a free service." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What I think they should do, and what their parents should encourage, is take advantage of where LLMs are bad: They author prose that is, going back to Mintz, “uniformly well-organized, articulate, and confident, yet oddly generic.” In other words, LLMs write well by the standards of a mid-tier high school English teacher, but they lack authorial voice. Their default output is “oddly generic.” And if you force them—“Write in the style of...”—they’ll come up with prose that is at best a parody of whoever you have in mind." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 185, "byteStart": 180 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Thus, I think, the way to stand out in the classroom, or the way to indicate to the teacher or professor that you wrote the paper and not ChatGPT, is to have a voice. One that’s yours, that comes through in your writing, in class and take-home, but also in your speech. You should have an expressive fingerprint, and it should be clear in whatever you express." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yes, this means, as I said, pushing back on the “write bland” feedback. If you’re a good writer. It means showing off who you are a little earlier than we encourage young writers to do. It means playing more, and teachers having more tolerance for that play. The control still matters. So does the clarity. But those can come alongside cultivating a voice. Students should make the effort to sound distinct from the bots. And teachers should make the effort to help them achieve that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreid3djolo726wrcbz3i33auzk3kva3c4lczdaa5jfxnpzwulzsrm44", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m6l5dbfwkk2g", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreihlbbzlzawbygl55h67w5wq4gjxsbw6rmafgom4cxspue27uot7sa", "rev": "3m6l5dbjb7d2n" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "LLMs are bad at sounding unique. So we should help young writers to develop their own unique prose style.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-27T00:44:51.503Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.100152+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zn7wo4o224", "data": { "path": "/3m2zn7wo4o224", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Verge’s “Failure” is a Win for Everyone: Talent Networks as Networks", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da4f-9c4d-7888-89a2-fcc21c8283ab", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published August 29, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 71 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theverge.com/authors/becca-farsace?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 92, "byteStart": 83 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.theverge.com/authors/becca-farsace?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 149, "byteStart": 140 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/beccafarsace?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 187, "byteStart": 164 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjer379ONJo&ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 391, "byteStart": 382 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Becca Farsace is a talented young video producer who, until recently, worked for The Verge, a technology journalism website. She’s now gone solo, and put out a video explaining why. It’s worth watching. Farsace is open and honest about the challenges and loneliness of remote work, and the friction creative people can feel in large organizations. Her reasons for leaving The Verge are good ones." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/hjer379ONJo?rel=0", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 300 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 46, "byteStart": 37 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 238, "byteStart": 229 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 694, "byteStart": 683 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But they’re not reasons that make The Verge look bad, even though that’s a narrative spinning up in some corners. She wanted independence, and control and ownership of her creative output, and she couldn’t get it within The Verge right now. That, by itself, is unremarkable—even if Farsace’s talents are. What’s interesting about the narrative framing isn’t the particulars of Farsace’s leaving her employer for the better part of a decade for something new, but rather how the framing reflects the way people tend to view networks and markets from a narrowly focused and static perspective, a perspective that obfuscates many of the benefits of dynamic markets as networks, instead of as individual transactions." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 89, "byteStart": 61 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://projectc.substack.com/p/becca-farsace-on-why-shes-leaving?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 470, "byteStart": 443 }, "features": [ { "uri": "http://bit.ly/40U01uM", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "As an example of this narrative, here’s Liz Kelly Nelson, writing about the departure: “What the trend in video makers leaving brands to be in control of their content, and their destiny, tells us, though, is that media companies may need to rethink their willingness to share ownership, and profits, with the highly creative content producers like Becca Farsace for whom the old rules just aren’t good enough anymore.” When Nelson shared this post on Threads, she added, “What does it mean when the networks that invest in growing strong talent just can’t seem to hold onto them?”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 39, "byteStart": 30 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I was struck by the wording. The Verge failed to hold on to Farsace, true. But did the network that grew her talent? It depends on how broadly you zoom out, and how expansively you think about what it means for a network to invest and to benefit." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 9, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 143, "byteStart": 134 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The Verge is a business, and it operates in the market—broadly, but also in the narrower market for technology news and analysis. The Verge hired Farsace because, as a business, it expected earn more from having her on staff (e.g., from advertising revenue on the videos she produced) than it cost to have her (her salary, benefits, and use of various other corporate resources). And it’s possible, in making the decision to hire a 22 year old, that they expected the balance there to not be in their favor for some time. Young and inexperienced workers are typically paid less than their older and more experienced colleagues because they are less productive. They produce less value for their employer on, say, a per hour basis than someone who’s been doing it longer and has developed their skills. So when you’re hiring young and inexperienced employees, you’re typically banking on them becoming more productive as their skills develop." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 349, "byteStart": 341 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But it is also the case, when you hire young people fresh out of college, that you’re unlikely to have them forever. Very few of us stay with the same employer from just after graduation through retirement. Part of that is when you’re fresh out of college, you’re still figuring yourself out, and still working through what it is you actually want to do long term. Maybe you switch industries entirely. Maybe you just decided that, while you thought you wanted to shoot videos, what you in fact really want to do is manage a production team—and there’s not an opening at your current employer. Or, as in Farsace’s case, you decide you’d like to strike out on your own." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 51, "byteStart": 42 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 125, "byteStart": 115 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 471, "byteStart": 462 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That this latter happened doesn’t mean The Verge has screwed up in retaining talent. Or, at least, it’s not ipso facto evidence of that on its own. Some employers are bad at talent retention because, for example, they’re toxic workplaces or don’t pay well, and so when employees grow their skills enough to have other options, they jump ship. But it doesn’t sound like that’s what happened at The Verge. Instead, Farsace’s talent outgrew what The Verge could reasonably offer her." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And, as someone with a lot of experience hiring and managing young people fresh out of college, let me tell you that, when you’re a manager and that happens, it’s actually pretty awesome. You obviously want to keep great people, because great people contribute greatly, and they’re also usually a lot of fun to work with. But you can’t always do it, because an organization has needs beyond “keep everyone who’s great,” and so keeping them would mean either giving up things you can’t give up, or it means doing that person a disservice. Because if you’re a good manager of young talent, your first responsibility is to be their biggest fan. You want them to succeed and to grow. That benefits your organization while they’re there, yes, and so managing them well, from the perspective of the organization’s interests, means giving them what they need—including direction and mentorship—to achieve it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But you also want them to succeed even if that success means outgrowing what it is you can offer them. The first reason for this is ethical. It’s good to want others to succeed, and it’s good to delight when they do so. I’ve accomplished a lot in my career, and have many personal accomplishments I’m proud of, but nothing has made me prouder than when a young person I gave their first career opportunity to goes on to awesome things. I’ve had interns or first job employees who are now prominent think tank scholars and tenured professors. That’s incredible and rewarding, and I couldn’t be happier for them—and they wouldn’t have done it if I’d “retained” their talent. Because, at the time they were ready to take that next step, I didn’t have a path available that would get them to where they had decided they wanted to be, or where they ultimately deserved to be. To begrudge them leaving, or to see it as a failure of the organization I was with at the time, would’ve been to fail to take seriously my role as their mentor, friend, and biggest fan." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 94, "byteStart": 85 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 247, "byteStart": 238 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 352, "byteStart": 343 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 597, "byteStart": 574 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/positive-externality?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 822, "byteStart": 813 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The second reason gets to the problem with framing a situation like Farsace leaving The Verge as “the networks that invest in growing strong talent” failing when they don’t “hold onto them.” Because “the network” isn’t The Verge, it’s the pool of talent in video production, and the pool of talent for organizations like The Verge. When you invest in young talent, you benefit your company for as long as you have that talent on staff, and you benefit that young talent by paying them a wage and helping them develop their skills. But you also create positive externalities. Other people, who aren’t you or your organization or the employee herself, benefit from that investment. That employee is creating products of value to others (many, many people love the videos Farsace made for The Verge), and they will continue to create value wherever they go next." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 33, "byteStart": 27 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 944, "byteStart": 935 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 990, "byteStart": 947 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.threads.net/@reckless1280/post/C_TYE5NRJ93?xmt=AQGzUXxU_4ZQ0my-yGCaDAAjgTTykBwyjCDOOLWC8NAZ2Q", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 1201, "byteStart": 1192 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“But that’s not value for us,” you might think. If we invest in someone and they leave, sure they’re creating value elsewhere, but we’re not gaining from it. And that’s true, if you take that narrow perspective. If all you look at is the immediate transaction between you and the employee, or between your customers and that employee’s output. If you zoom out, however, and think about “the network,” then you recognize that you’re not the only one doing such talent development. Whoever ends up landing that person when they leave, or whoever benefits from their solo output, is gaining value. Because you’re part of that network, if you cultivate a culture of developing young talent and cheering them on as they grow, then you’ll be able be able to find new talent yourself that has been similarly developed in other organizations sharing a similar culture and values. When Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, celebrate’s Farsace’s new solo venture, he’s not just doing right by her, he’s contributing by example to a community that will bring him and his organization talent in the near and long term, and is telling future Becca Farsaces that The Verge is a great place to get your start." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiee2ltazrxbjpf4mcoxed4jvn6g2qz3ci2hoqfmppiz6f4jpsdscm" }, "size": 115345, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1264, "height": 314 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 54, "byteStart": 45 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 420, "byteStart": 411 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So one way to read Farsace’s exit is that The Verge was incapable of holding on to a talented contributor. That’s the static and narrow view. The other is to focus on The Verge giving a young and raw talent a place to earn a living while developing her skills to the point where she could strike out on her own, and then publicly cheering her doing so, and that this contributes very much to the network The Verge is a part of and benefits from. That’s the dynamic and broad view." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 168, "byteStart": 159 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Markets are such powerful forces for good because they give us incentives to blur the line between self-regarding actions and other-regarding ones. It was in The Verge’s interests to hire Farsace when they did. It wasn’t an act of charity. But by following that interest, they launched the career of a tremendous talent, and contributed to a network that will do more of the same. This wasn’t a failure, but the best kind of success." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:25:55.216Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.799751+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zncix4jk2q", "data": { "path": "/3m2zncix4jk2q", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Quillette Effect", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da51-ba63-7bb6-bf49-1d59c01915bd", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published October 30, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We all have a strong tendency to favor information that confirms our existing beliefs. This bias can be amplified within ideological communities, where shared values and perspectives create echo chambers that reinforce pre-existing beliefs and erect barriers to understanding and engaging with alternative viewpoints." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One particular form of this is what I call the “Quillette Effect,” where an ideological community creates the illusion of open inquiry while instead reinforcing its own biases. It occurs when a source trusted by a particular community presents a critique of opposing viewpoints in a way that is both inaccurate and flattering to the community’s existing beliefs. This creates a false sense of understanding and reinforces the idea that the opposing viewpoints are not only wrong, but also easily dismissed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 29, "byteStart": 20 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://quillette.com/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 240, "byteStart": 220 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY0NA?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 260, "byteStart": 247 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzU3MzAyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTY0OTIyMw?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The name come from Quillette, an online magazine popular with right and center-right audiences. Their tagline is “Free Thought Lives.” Quillette has published articles purporting to explain left-wing ideas such as critical race theory and postmodernism. However, these articles often misunderstand or misrepresent these ideas, presenting them in a ways both simplistic and uncharitable. For Quillette’s core audience, who are predisposed to be critical of these ideas both because they come from other tribes and because they contradict or critique their own beliefs, the articles provide a seemingly credible confirmation of their existing biases. However, for those familiar with these ideas, Quillette’s presentations are often inaccurate and misleading." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Quillette Effect is not limited to a single publication. It can be observed across the ideological spectrum, wherever communities create and consume content that reinforces their existing beliefs under the guise of neutral or “open” inquiry." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The consequences of the Quillette Effect can be significant. It can lead to a deeper entrenchment of biases, a decreased willingness to engage with opposing viewpoints, and an overall increase in polarization. By creating the illusion of open inquiry while subtly reinforcing pre-existing beliefs, it undermines critical thinking, deep understanding, intellectual rigor, and constructive dialogue." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Recognizing the Quillette Effect is crucial for anyone seeking to engage in meaningful conversations across ideological divides. It’s a reminder that we must be critical of the information we consume, especially when it comes from sources we trust. It’s also a call to be more mindful of our own biases and to actively seek out diverse perspectives expressed by the people who hold them. If we want to learn about new ideas, and new theories, especially if they are ideas and theories we’re inclined to think our wrong, our starting point should be the writings of the proponents of those ideas, not their critics." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Only by genuinely challenging our own assumptions and engaging with alternative viewpoints—expressed in the most accurate, fair, and thorough terms possible—can we hope to overcome our echo chambers and build a more informed and understanding conversational community." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Learning about ideologies exclusively from their opponents is a recipe for epistemic failure.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:27:21.494Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.078613+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "data": { "path": "/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The GOP's Competence Gap", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da51-0db9-7777-8866-c46e4a0abef9", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published October 30, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A couple of years into the Trump administration, I had a conversation with a Trump supporter who lived outside of the beltway. “I bet you people in DC can’t stand him,” he said. He was right. But not, I told him, entirely for the reasons he had in mind. Yes, Trump’s far-right populist politics were out of step with the heavy Democratic lean of Washington, DC, and out of step with even most DC conservatives. Lots of think tankers, advisors, and agency staffers thought his policies were bad." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But the other upsetting aspect of Trump’s administration to the Beltway professional class was its incompetence. Yes, the Trump administration and its legislators and judicial appointees were wrong outside of normal DC parameters. They also were just very bad at their jobs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Being effective politically, in the sense of crafting policy and getting it implemented, requires a rather significant amount of knowledge. Both of the details of policy design—and the related fields like economics, political science, international relations, etc., that go along with it—and the details of how Washington’s institutions work." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What I said to this Trump supporter was that it was upsetting to those with that knowledge to watch those without grab the reins of power and then fumble their way through misusing them. “You, in particular, should be mad,” I added, “because you’d sent your guy to Washington and he and his people were too dumb to get done what they’d promised you they’d get done." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In the years since, this problem has only gotten worse for the GOP, which has filled its ranks with the generally incompetent. Trump might still win next week, and have another four years to give it all another try, but his victory won’t be the result of GOP competence, but instead Trump’s own celebrity." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 267, "byteStart": 242 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/actually-trump-would-be-terrible-for-the-economy", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 330, "byteStart": 321 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m3ahechta22z", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "As the GOP, and American conservatism more broadly, have gone full-MAGA, it’s driven out competent legislators, regulators, policy analysts, staffers, and campaign operatives, because it turns out competent people know enough to recognize how bad MAGA policies are, and so want nothing to do with them, or the shrill and weird people who are their most vocal avatars." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 110, "byteStart": 66 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-kamala-harris-michigan/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Take, for example, a story published this morning at Wired about the Trump campaign’s Michigan ground game." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Instead of a traditional voter turnout operation led by the GOP nominee’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign is leaning into some not-so-cutting-edge technology and a podcast blitz to target younger men who are either sporadic voters or don’t vote at all." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Republicans are depending on a pair of mobile apps which are difficult to find, since they aren’t on the Apple or Android app stores. The one used by Elon Musk’s America PAC is severely limited by the lack of a geo-tracking feature, forcing users to rely on “offline walkbooks” which don’t always upload, a key bug first reported by The Guardian. The other, 10xVotes, which has been promoted by Tucker Carlson and the Michigan GOP, requires users to enter search queries for people they know, rather than providing them with a list of contacts. (This reporter created an account and tried searching for family members in Michigan who would fall squarely under the category of low-propensity voters and came up with no results.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Trump has outsourced much of his campaign’s operations to Elon Musk, who has demonstrated poor judgement and poorer understanding of, well, pretty much everything. He’s turned the RNC into a sinecure for low-information family members and a personal slush fund. Trump aligned think tanks have gone so extreme that quality scholars simply have left." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I pretty consistently hear from friends in DC that the quality of GOP hill staffers has plummeted. Gone are the days of nerdy policy wonks, replaced with young men whose primary political education came through 4chan and “own the libs” campus activism. It’s not just that the GOP isn’t sending their best, it’s that they’re running out of a “best” at all." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 693, "byteStart": 618 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2xcd4u63226", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 858, "byteStart": 799 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This is made worse by the collapse of Twitter into a fringe-right bubble. Twitter was never representative of the population in general, but it was the place to be if you were in politics, policy, or journalism. It’s where all of DC—and those who wanted to end up in DC—hung out. Given how Twitter, under Musk, has drifted right, and not just drifted right, but become overwhelmed with right-wing misinformation and conspiracy theories, that’s further shaping the quality of conversations, interactions, connections, and information young conservatives are getting. And, because the structure of social media tricks us into believing our feed is more representative than it really is, they don’t have a sense of how malformed their social and intellectual environment is. At its worst, this can lead to living in a more-or-less alternate reality that bear little resemblance to the world in which public policy making happens." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The problem the GOP faces isn’t just that their quality is lower now, it’s that the pipeline for future talent is in pretty dire shape. To the extent MAGA remains in control of American conservatism—and future conservative policy analysts, lawmakers, regulators, writers, and staff received their political and policy education through MAGA sources, leaders, and communities—the competence gap between the GOP and the Democrats when it comes to the kind of knowledge necessary for effective policy-making will only widen." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "MAGA has succeeded, to the degree its succeeded, because of Trump. When Trump’s no longer around, it’s not clear how today’s GOP can ever hope to convince many Americans it can effectively govern." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:26:41.874Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.775464+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33ezqr5as2k", "data": { "path": "/3m33ezqr5as2k", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Trump Promised Disaster. His Supporters Didn’t Believe Him.", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199dde2-8f29-7220-96c5-c9d779bb34f0", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published March 5, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The sense of dread from some corners of the Trump-supporting world as he carries out what he said he’d carry out—and with predictably dire results—is the sorry consequence of smart people talking themselves into drawing the wrong conclusion from the fact that America mostly survived Trump’s first term." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Most politicians don’t follow through on their campaign promises, but Trump very much is. That’s a problem for America, and for the world, because what he promised during his campaign was to remove constitutional limits, rule as an autocrat, break the economy, and upend the global order." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 158, "byteStart": 139 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-china-working-class-voters-dc140dbc", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 174, "byteStart": 158 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-china-working-class-voters-dc140dbc", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 207, "byteStart": 184 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1j4sy0x/daily_discussion_thread_for_march_06_2025/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Now, lots of people who supported him in the election are freaking out. Not everyone, of course. His support is still there. But from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to the Wall Street Bets Reddit, there’s a growing sense of “Oh, shit.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 684, "byteStart": 173 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The disconnect here, between what Trump said and what many of his supporters thought he’d do, only makes sense if those supporters didn’t believe him. If they thought, Sure, he keeps telling us he’ll impose ruinous tariffs, but he won’t actually. Sure, he keeps telling us he’ll tear America out of its place of global leadership and instead make it a vassal state of his buddy Putin, but he won’t actually. Sure, he keeps telling us he’ll destroy the federal government and the constitutional system with it, without a clear plan to meaningfully replace any of it beyond a massive tool to carry out revenge against those he thinks wronged him, but he won’t actually." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The easy response—“I didn’t believe he’d do it”—is to proclaim the incredulity a sign of stupidity. Of course he’d do it. Every sign pointed to him doing it the moment he was sworn in. Just as the easy response to why working-class Americans, dependent on federal jobs, Social Security, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, would vote for a guy who was promising to take it all away is to say, “Man, those guys just didn’t know anything.” And there’s some truth to the stupidity and the ignorance." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 441, "byteStart": 431 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But I think something else was going on for a lot of them. Namely, they misread Trump’s first term in a way that they shouldn’t have, but in a way that isn’t entirely irrational, either. The fact is, Trump said he’d do a lot of bad things in his first term, and then largely didn’t. Or he started to, or announced he was going to start to, and then backtracked or gave up at the first resistance. Or he implemented some de minimis version of the bad thing that failed to achieve much harm. Or he did some, but definitely not all." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 286, "byteStart": 184 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Smart people who wanted to talk themselves into supporting Trump concluded from this that he didn’t mean those stupid things, and so he didn’t mean them this time around, either. He’s just a bullshitter, and the thing about bullshitters is that most of what they say is bullshit. So let it wash over you, while telling yourself that a second Trump term will look much like the first. There’s the informed and engaged voter version of that, which tallies the list of first-time campaign promises and the actual policies his administration carried out and draws the comforting conclusion. Then there’s the uninformed and disengaged version, where low-information voters had a vague sense of “prices were lower in 2019” and so voted for what they imagined, in a haze of ignorance and misunderstanding, would be a return to 2019." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But what the first weeks of the second Trump administration have made clear is that he probably wasn’t bullshitting the first time around, just as he wasn’t last fall, but that structural barriers existed to mitigate the bad stuff in Trump 1.0 that have been circumvented in Trump 2.0." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Namely, Trump 1.0 didn’t expect to win." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The first Trump administration wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been because it had relatively normal people in positions of power, who responded to incentives in a relatively normal way and had moral features within relatively normal parameters. Some were stupid and evil, yes, but plenty weren’t. And that made it harder for Trump to get done all the stupid and evil things that appeal to Trump." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For the second campaign, though, his people put in the work to remove those barriers. They made a plan, much of it set out in Project 2025, to hit the ground running in a way that would overwhelm the system, take advantage of its weak points, and ensure the stupid and evil stuff would be fully inflicted this time." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So the shock from the corners that ought to have known better really is that they thought there’d be adults in the room, because there were adults in the room before. They thought Trump would talk about burning the economy down, but he wouldn’t have the opportunity to light the match. They were, in other words, paying attention to what Trump was saying and assuming it was bullshit instead of paying attention to what the people around him were saying and taking it seriously." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And now it’s too late, and it turns out everyone was telling the truth." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Many Trump supporters underestimated his intentions during his first term, believing he wouldn't follow through on his campaign promises, but his second term has revealed the dangers of their misjudgment.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T14:04:37.239Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.942109+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbu7xdfc26", "data": { "path": "/3m2xbu7xdfc26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Speaking Ill of the Dead", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d57d-72d6-7992-a0d7-45687d5d96e9", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published June 8, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 65, "byteStart": 43 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Robertson_controversies", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Pat Robertson, the evangelical leader who hated most of humanity, died today. He spent his career demonizing everyone who didn’t align with his narrow vision of Christian nationalism, blaming disfavored groups for natural disasters, defending genocidal dictators, and generally bending American conservatism and conservative politics towards ugliness and exclusion. His presence and his work made the world a worse place, and his legacy brought nothing of value. He should not be mourned or missed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Nor should he be praised, or treated with the respect out of a misplaced sense that the dead are owed an “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all” deference. But saying as much is remarkably controversial. We’re told to not speak ill of the dead, and especially to not speak ill in the immediate aftermath of their death. Thus what I wrote above, on the day Robertson died, gets viewed as morally suspect. It’s perfectly reasonable to criticize someone who is no longer alive, but you just have to wait." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This strikes me as a very odd position to take, however. Especially as a blanket principle. There are times when a particular death is owed a period of respectful silence, but that obligation is situational. In the case of genuinely bad people, it’s quite clear we needn’t hold to it. Roughly, the rule ought to be that if it is permissible to harshly criticize someone when they are alive, or to do so some length of time after their death, it is permissible to criticize them on the day of their death—or in the week following, or during whatever period those who argue against speaking ill have in mind." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 115, "byteStart": 88 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/02/16/liberalism-and-sympathetic-joy/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "It is important to distinguish wishing suffering on someone from speaking ill of them. As I’ve argued elsewhere, we should wish that everyone—even our enemies—find happiness and freedom from suffering. The alternative, to hope that they are unhappy, entails cultivating mental states that bring greater suffering upon ourselves and do nothing to change the beliefs or behavior of those we dislike." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But “happiness” doesn’t mean “they’re enjoying themselves,” because you can enjoy behaviors for corrupt reasons, and some, such as Robertson, find (what they imagine to be) happiness in vicious hate and harm directed at others. “Happiness” motivated by ill-will, cruelty, and resentment isn’t happiness at all, but a kind of unrecognized suffering, and so wishing happiness for someone afflicted by that means hoping they recognize their bad motivations and ethical ignorance and change their ways in a healthier direction. Robertson clearly fell into this camp, even if he mistakenly believed he was acting in a Christian manner and in accord with Christ-like values. Having goodwill towards everyone—including Robertson—means a wish that they give up the hatred and delusion leading them to embrace ill-will, cruelty, and resentment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But not having ill-will towards someone is not the same as refraining from speaking ill of them. Honesty is a virtue, and an important part of helping others see their way out of the corrupt values of someone like Robertson is to openly discuss how and why they went wrong, to use them as examples of how not to be. This criticism isn’t ill-will because it isn’t motivated by a desire to inflict suffering, but instead a desire to see it end." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "With that in mind, we can turn back to the question of timing. Robertson was a public figure, his death noted and discussed broadly, in major media outlets, on social media, and in casual conversation. It is a notable event, and so instead of being a time for silence, this is in fact a prime time to critique his failings, because it’s when people are most likely to pay attention to those critiques." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What’s more, I don’t think people actually believe the rule about refraining from speaking ill of the dead—certainly not in an absolute sense. Ask yourself, is there anyone I can imagine for whom this rule wouldn’t apply? Who was so evil by my assessment that it is perfectly permissible to point out their evil on the day of their death? Basically all of us could come up with a name or two, and so has a line, even if not an entirely clear one, over which it is okay to speak ill of the dead. The notion of a moral prohibition on doing so isn’t really about whether it is ever okay to criticize someone on the day of their death, but rather that the particulars of the criticism aren’t necessarily widely agreed upon. Lots of people sadly liked Pat Robertson and his beliefs. They feel the same bigotry and hate he did, and so criticizing him is criticizing them. But that some people will disagree with a moral judgment isn’t a reason to avoid making it, or to avoid articulating it. In fact, the presence of moral disagreement is a strong reason to discuss it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Pat Robertson was, by any reasonable moral measure, a profoundly bad person. He embodied ill-will, cruelty, and resentment, and directed them outwards onto vulnerable groups. He sought to use social and political pressure to harm peaceful people, and he stirred up and encouraged destructive values among those who followed or were influenced by him. He added to the suffering in the world, and on the day of his death, we should all acknowledge that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-11T22:57:11.665Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.133009+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7tcs7mie22r", "data": { "path": "/3m7tcs7mie22r", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "journalism", "podcast" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty 095: Adam Gurri on Opposition Meda versus Complicit Media", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b1504-605d-755d-a6b9-74df65ec5cee", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 48, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/MTQ1OTE4MjM1", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Click here to listen in you favorite podcast app" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Regimes falter when opposition media is strong. But America's legacy media has failed to live up to the dangers of the political environment and the authoritarianism of Trump's administration. We need stronger opposition media, making full-throated defenses of liberalism. But what does that look like?" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignLeft" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 30, "byteStart": 20 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 79, "byteStart": 63 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.liberalcurrents.com/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I'm joined today by Adam Gurri, founder and editor-in-chief of Liberal Currents, which is currently fundraising to take their indispensable publication to the next level. Adam and I talk about the state of media, what it means to carve out principled opposition, and how stronger opposition media can see us through the coming years and towards a future for liberalism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 16, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 56, "byteStart": 29 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://gofund.me/be2b76bf9", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Liberal Currents fundraiser: https://gofund.me/be2b76bf9" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 9, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 28, "byteStart": 9 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 36, "byteStart": 28 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 142, "byteStart": 36 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 181, "byteStart": 142 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 12, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 15, "byteStart": 12 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 27, "byteStart": 15 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 30, "byteStart": 27 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 47, "byteStart": 30 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 50, "byteStart": 47 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 69, "byteStart": 50 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 72, "byteStart": 69 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 72 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 86, "byteStart": 83 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 99, "byteStart": 86 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 102, "byteStart": 99 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 103, "byteStart": 102 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreigyinj3gjgzuu6ogaieuliufrfefxighxgjilea3odznawpse6gym", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7tcsgfnl22r", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreihiizpea6r4caftmevcpnxqjn5e66sscrnkwzbueyoxg7qppuywt4", "rev": "3m7tcsgi6ln2v" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "A podcast conversation.", "publishedAt": "2025-12-13T00:09:17.128Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.085424+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcb4y7vwqk24", "data": { "path": "/3mcb4y7vwqk24", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "fitness", "maga" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "What Pete Hegseth’s Kettlebell Swings Tell Us About MAGA Ideology", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019bade6-46ba-7002-8a32-efb8ded50a70", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "Pete Hegseth failing at a kettlebell swing", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreigvetwe7ufxufnzzsxw7qdrvd2fvjaxeigo7ijutawqukrjy5e5pu" }, "size": 95934, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1080, "height": 608 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth likes to be videotaped working out with the troops. He’s shown off his push-ups and now his kettlebell swings. Hegseth is bad at push-ups, and he might be even worse at swings." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreiftjmn2nmtcreisgsxt6wecmdpl7ucnovekoclynder4fyac7ld3m", "uri": "at://did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3mbz2i7hod52q" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Now, generally speaking, if a guy who imagines himself a paragon of fitness wants to show off, and wants to show off that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, that’s not a big deal. In part because it’s so common—we’ve all seen these guys at the gym. In part because, who cares?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But Pete Hegseth isn’t just another meathead at the gym trying to impress women and fellow bros while instead demonstrating how little effort he’s put into developing skill in what he tells the world he’s skillful at. Pete Hegseth is the self-proclaimed Secretary of War in the second Trump administration and a self-proclaimed warrior of the MAGA ideology. His showing off isn’t (just) to impress any women or bros who might happen upon his Instagram feed. Pete Hegseth’s showing off is intended to convey a message about, or a particular image of, MAGA ideology. The reason America needs to be made great again is because it’s no longer great, and the reason it’s no longer great is that men far weaker than Pete Hegseth, or far weaker than Pete Hegseth tells himself and all of us he is, have corrupted it away from manliness and strength and manly strength. Pete Hegseth, and the rest of the second Trump administration, do what fascists always do, which is to project what they believe to be intimidating power through images of what they believe to be traditional masculinity. And for fascists like Pete Hegseth and his colleagues in the second Trump administration and his fans on social media, traditional masculinity means muscles and the threat or willingness to use them to inflict violence on those the fascists imagine to be weaker than themselves or weaker than their movement or weaker than their manly ideology." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 518, "byteStart": 492 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1qalxjg/ice_slipping_on_ice/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So they perform. They put out memes of men with strong jaws and T-shirts too small for their biceps and chins that exist only on Robert Z'Dar or artificially with a lot of cutting, sawing, anesthetic, and subsequent and rather unmanly swelling. They perform because they think other fascists will watch and feel pumped up in their ideology and because non-fascists will watch and get scared of the fascists. They put up those memes, or they threaten Greenland, or they dress up like soldiers and slip on Minnesota ice, or they do kettlebell swings." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And they think they look good and tough doing it. Pete thinks he looks good doing those swings, or else he wouldn't be filming himself doing them. It represents a kind of cognitive inversion: in order to maintain the self-image of the warrior, the mind must repaint the reality of the clumsy movement into a perception of grace. He thinks those swings signal how manly he is because only a real man, it seems, can awkwardly lift a bell without properly hinging and driving with the hips." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 1104, "byteStart": 1101 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "You might be tempted to think that, probably, Pete recognizes that much of Trump's base aren’t legitimately manly guys, but instead incels. Or instead shlubby men, the sort who maybe played high school football, once, and think, or tell their wives they think, they could've made it big, but now get winded carrying groceries into the house. You might think Pete knows his swings are crap, but also knows the people watching won’t know that. But that’s to misunderstand MAGA ideology. It is a movement wholly consumed by the maintenance of a constructed identity. When there is no substantive reality to the self—no actual expertise, no cultivation of skill—the self must be continuously hallucinated into existence through performance. So Pete’s narrative of self-identity paints the white nationalist fans in Dear Leader’s personality cult as modern incarnations of the Spartan warriors who existed historically in Plutarch’s stub biography of Lycurgus, but exist more clearly in the minds of Pete and those shlubby guys as they appear in Frank Miller and Zack Snyder’s wet dream, 300. Except those Spartans would've done better swings." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The problem isn’t, it’s worth pointing out, the bad form itself. A kettlebell swing is a technical movement; it takes some time and effort and practice to learn, even if not a lot. You don't start off good at it. You might need some coaching. That's okay. Nor is the problem not caring to do that practice or get that coaching. Maybe kettlebell swings aren't your thing. Maybe you want to put your time elsewhere. That, too, is okay." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 93, "byteStart": 85 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 362, "byteStart": 354 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The problem, and it’s as core a feature of MAGA ideology as there is, is that Pete believes he knows how to do swings, believes it enough that he wants you, and his MAGA fans, and all of America to watch him do them and be impressed by him doing them. And not just impressed, but awed. His enemies, or the people he's decided are his enemies, he wants overawed. And yet, his bad form means he looks like everyone else who is bad at doing swings, and if you know what they're supposed to look like, your reaction isn't awe, but instead the thought that the guy up there, awkwardly lifting a kettlebell with the troops, is kind of a moron." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 8, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That’s the core of MAGA ideology. It’s a rejection of expertise by people too lacking in ability, or too lacking in motivation, to develop expertise, and so who reject the idea of expertise itself, by attacking and demeaning experts, but also by performing as if inexpertise is the height of badassness. It is a fundamental lack of the internal protective quality that warns us when we are debasing ourselves. A competent person possesses a sense of conscientious self-respect that acts as a check on their behavior—a voice that says, “This is beneath me.” Hegseth and MAGA lack this guardrail. You want to look tough and scary and awe your opponents? Do something brash and loud and poorly." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 48, "byteStart": 19 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m7bk5wolls2c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 287, "byteStart": 283 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I’ve called MAGA an auto-humiliation movement. It’s a philosophy—not just political, but social and personal, too—that latches onto tropes of manliness and strength, whether historically authentic or inauthentic but repeated enough in popular portrayals of a certain sort to feel authentic, and then performs them without realizing how frankly stupid they look when you don’t get them right." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s like as if the Star Wars kid waved his golf ball retriever around and filmed it not because he wanted to have a bit of fun, but because he thought, if the video got out, he’d seize the reins of political and cultural power." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "Animation from the famous Star Wars Kid video.", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreifjfyj7f65pjaf3gskqcjnn4sfpnhpzadr6unyjwza2o5lt57incm" }, "size": 3891158, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/gif" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 320, "height": 240 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You see it in right-wing influencers waving around swords and thinking you really can get the girl if you study the blade, and then raging against feminism when it turns out girls want something else." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreigz4bwksxc2fcdggw5w2bq7wwgjcbfcwrrfesq6q5atnnpmkla44i", "uri": "at://did:plc:fv2nxxac24oxk5fqztfazyuc/app.bsky.feed.post/3keppfv4cc32s" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And you see it with Pete Hegseth’s kettlebell swings. Pete Hegseth is an incompetent alcoholic. There’s nothing inspiring about him, and nothing particularly scary except insofar as our political system’s guardrails failed to such an extent that Hegseth’s erratic personality can lead to real harm." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Hegseth’s swings are, in other words, a quintessential example of MAGA in practice outside of White House policy. Here's a guy who understands the world and himself so poorly that he'll humiliate himself and call it strength. We’re fortunate, it should be said, that MAGA is this way instead of wanting competence to advance its ends. These guys are bad at everything they do, and that badness, while still allowing them to be profoundly dangerous, makes them less dangerous, or less able to sustain their dangerousness, than if they put the effort in. " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So let’s all agree not to help Pete Hegseth improve his swings." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "coverImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreigvetwe7ufxufnzzsxw7qdrvd2fvjaxeigo7ijutawqukrjy5e5pu" }, "size": 95934, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreiact6aedefmabbblehm44ezir4kk5fexzbzms5r6w5zp5xzmzklxa", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3mcb4ycca5k24", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreicotzrfoqjuadso2doqxm3nsbu4eoruwjlcqzmfovwdmqztyo7dry", "rev": "3mcb4ycflx42j" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "MAGA is built on a fundamental lack of the internal protective quality that warns us when we are debasing ourselves.", "publishedAt": "2026-01-12T22:52:55.906Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.019109+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgwdmc7c2a", "data": { "path": "/3m2fgwdmc7c2a", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "How the Right Distorted Libertarianism", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f3-0e0e-7dd3-8715-4b3aa4950d29", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published May 11, 2022)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I worry about the future of the libertarian movement." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 154, "byteStart": 142 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.npr.org/2016/05/09/477339063/conservative-author-pj-orourke-reluctantly-backs-clinton?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "America faces an acutely precarious political environment, with immediate and severe threats to liberty that go beyond what P. J. O’Rourke once called, “wrong within normal parameters.” It’s not just that we’re staring down rising inflation and a possible recession. It’s that one of the two major parties, always a few marginal voters away from winning elections, has made clear it will subvert those elections, rejects the rule of law, and has abandoned any pretext that institutions should constrain the pursuit of power." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 232, "byteStart": 226 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/20/after-buffalo-republicans-double-down-great-replacement/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 319, "byteStart": 313 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.nytimes.com/article/disney-florida-desantis.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The contemporary Republican Party doesn’t much value individual and economic liberty, either, but is instead committed to enforcing a narrow conception of what it means to be a “real American,” drawn along nationalist, racial, populist, and culturally reactionary lines. It is happy to use state power to punish those who dissent. This amounts to a genuine crisis of liberty, and one from which our democracy and our freedoms might not recover. If given another opportunity in the White House, the GOP’s preferred autocrat and his enablers will have the experience and groundwork necessary to inflict potentially fatal damage to the country’s governing institutions." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We need a strong defense of liberty, one that can appeal to the many Americans, on the right and left, who worry that our basic freedoms are on the line in a way unique in recent memory. We need a strong libertarian movement because liberty is under threat, libertarians have the most principled and developed arguments for liberty, and, because we needn’t get caught up in partisan loyalties, we can speak across party divides." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 131, "byteStart": 84 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY4MQ", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Yet many in the movement are actively moving in the wrong direction, not just with the alt-right takeover of the Libertarian Party, but also in doubling down on a Republican-fusionist approach to policy advocacy. Partisan entanglements and cultural tribalism have obscured how much of a threat the American right represents, both to the country and to libertarianism itself." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For our purposes here, the “libertarian movement” means American libertarianism’s political mainstream: the Libertarian Party (the movement’s most recognizable brand), but also DC’s public policy scene. This essay is about the ways portions of the libertarian movement have drifted from core principles and what’s needed to get back on track." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "How We Got Here" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 557, "byteStart": 496 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/02/16/liberty-upsets-patternsand-conservatism/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Most people, and I know this from having spent a decade as a professional liberty advocate, view libertarianism as part of the right. We’re “Republicans who smoke pot” (although I am neither a Republican, nor do I smoke pot) or else “Hippies of the right.” When I was at the Cato Institute, we were constantly frustrated by journalists referring to our scholars as part of the “conservative Cato Institute.” And while it’s true that libertarians aren’t conservatives (in fact, conservatism is fundamentally in opposition to libertarianism), there’s a simple reason so many people think we’re on the right: We’ve spent decades signaling to them that we are." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 209, "byteStart": 183 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/left-and-right-prospects-liberty?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The left is where the libertarian movement finds its intellectual antecedents. Libertarianism began as a movement within liberalism, against the conservatism that defined the right. As Murray Rothbard put it," } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "[T]here developed … two great political ideologies, centered around this new revolutionary phenomenon: the one was Liberalism, the party of hope, of radicalism, of liberty, of the Industrial Revolution, of progress, of humanity; the other was Conservatism, the party of reaction, the party that longed to restore the hierarchy, statism, theocracy, serfdom, and class exploitation of the old order. … Political ideologies were polarized, with Liberalism on the extreme “Left,” and Conservatism on the extreme “Right,” of the ideological spectrum." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 198, "byteStart": 188 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In the middle of the 20th century, when libertarians joined with the right against the threat of communism, libertarianism came to view itself not just in alliance with the right, but as part of it. This was an odd fit from the beginning, because while both libertarianism and conservatism opposed communism, the conservative objection had more to do with the Soviet Union as a great power threat to American global dominance, communism’s “godlessness,” and the ways domestic communists were advocating for racial justice, worker empowerment, and social liberalization. Communism was bad, and the Soviet Union did appear to be an existential military threat to the United States (though, with access to Soviet archives, perhaps less of a threat than it appeared at the time)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But why communism, as an ideology, was bad looked rather different from a right-wing versus libertarian perspective. CIA director Allen Dulles and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover spent a lot of time rooting out communists. But it had more to do with being cultural reactionaries and viewing global communism as a threat to politically connected American multinationals than it did the libertarian fears of central planning vs. free market economics and creeping authoritarianism. Conservatives at the time worried about communism taking away our “American freedoms,” yet worried rather less about Jim Crow taking away some Americans’ freedoms. In other words, this alliance against the threat of communism didn’t mean there was much, if any, compatibility between libertarianism and the American right when it came to philosophy or public policy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 36, "byteStart": 21 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Frank Meyer, at the National Review, concocted the confused muddle that came to be known as “fusionism,” the idea that conservatives could embrace a libertarian view of (very) limited government, while libertarians could embrace the right’s idea that free citizens should cultivate, and a free society is dependent upon, specifically conservative virtues. The problem with the deal was that libertarians were correct about government, but conservatives were wrong about virtue. Limited government is good, but so are the liberal virtues of tolerance, celebration of diversity, dynamism, and radical self-authorship." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 345, "byteStart": 316 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/06/08_reagan.shtml?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Then Ronald Reagan came along and supercharged fusionism, making libertarians believe they’d finally ascended in the conservative movement, all the way to the top. After all, it was Reagan who said, “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.” But, of course, it was also Reagan who launched his political career by promising to crack down on the freedom of expression and association of students protesting a deeply unjust war." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "A Distorted Libertarianism" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This shift, from liberal to conservative, had a number of consequences for libertarianism, even though there are many libertarians it doesn’t describe. First, libertarian organizations came to see the right as their primary outreach direction. Even today, many libertarians put most, if not all, of their student outreach efforts into young conservatives. Comparatively little attention is given to young progressive groups; their members are dismissed as “not gettable,” simply too opposed to liberty to be worth the effort. This is related to another consequence of fusionism, namely a greater emphasis on economic freedoms (where conservatives and libertarians used to at least somewhat agree) than social freedoms (where conservatives have more difficulty getting on board with liberty)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 461, "byteStart": 410 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://tanneronpolicy.com/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 538, "byteStart": 481 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://twitter.com/KralcTrebor/status/1520039248186982400?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The result, at least within mainstream libertarianism, is that conservatives tend to be welcomed, and their anti-liberty deviations more readily overlooked (Hoppeanism, the Mises Institute, and lawmakers like Thomas Massie and Rand Paul), while progressives are made to feel unwelcome, their deviations seen as evidence that they can’t be potential allies (AOC is wrong about plenty of economic issues, but is one of the more libertarian members of the House when it comes to criminal justice, surveillance, and other civil liberties)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This means a movement dominated by people who came from the right. “But what does it matter where people came from if they’re all now libertarians?” you might ask. Yet people are naturally tribal, and we rarely drop our influences entirely. If you came from the right, chances are you’re more comfortable around those still on the right, and tend to find greater salience in political concerns of the right. And chances are you’ll tend to feel culturally distant from people on the left, and to brush aside social and policy concerns mostly talked about by the left." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 446, "byteStart": 428 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/03/the-fallacy-of-mood-affiliation.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This leads to a lopsidedness in assessing threats to liberty, an asymmetry regarding which issues libertarians are loud about (those palatable to conservatives) and which they’re quieter on (those upsetting to conservatives). This means, for example, too often taking the right’s side in the culture war, or having more sympathy for it, while mustering greater skepticism for social arguments originating on the left. This mood affiliation with conservatives means giving them the benefit of the doubt, while holding the left to a higher evidentiary standard, and being more willing to (even if unconsciously) strawman their views. It means putting more effort into working with Republican lawmakers than Democratic ones, and continuing to view Republican lawmakers as “friends of liberty” even as they expose themselves as deeply anti-libertarian in a rightward direction. Libertarians are quick to forgive, overlook, or downplay GOP deviations as minor points of disagreement, especially when it comes from lawmakers, like Massie and Paul, who are seen as friends of the movement. At the same time, lawmakers on the left, who in fact hold pro-liberty views on a range of issues, get tarnished as “socialists.” They are only the enemy because they happen to hold non-libertarian views in a leftward direction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 587, "byteStart": 562 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/why-are-there-so-few-black-libertarians?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 698, "byteStart": 665 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://theunpopulist.substack.com/p/the-good-and-bad-of-critical-race?s=r&ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "When it comes to the activism of the Libertarian Party, probably the most recognized brand in our movement, as well as the general tenor of the young libertarian movement, we see a flood of right-wingers, including right-wing reactionaries. As long as you’re “fighting back against the left,” you’re welcome, even if what you’re fighting back against is the left’s calls for greater openness and toleration, and the breaking down of unjust, and often state reinforced, social hierarchies. (It’s part of the reason libertarians have generally been bad at talking about race, sneering at issues of racial justice, even though our political theory has a great deal of importance to say about the topic.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "All of this creates a feedback loop of increasing right-wing radicalism. Anyone from the left or center-left who looks into libertarianism will get a strong first impression that it’s partisan and tribally right-wing. It doesn’t help that the Libertarian Party has been taken over by “paleolibertarians,” who are openly nationalist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, anti-LGBT, anti-feminism, and frequently pro-Trump and pro-coup. Or when they see prominent libertarians inflating the threat of “wokeness” while treating the Trump administration as just another set of politicians, wrong within normal parameters, to advise." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 330, "byteStart": 298 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "People I’ve talked with on the left have told me on several occasions that I’m the first libertarian they’ve come across who they didn’t think was a right-winger, and who didn’t immediately make them feel like libertarianism was only a place for conservatives. And while I’m decidedly not the only liberal libertarian, their experience of our movement, especially online, was so off-putting that it should be cause for real concern. Young people who are now exploring and developing political identities do that work online, and libertarianism is usually showing them a movement that is needlessly and wrongly hostile to many of their values." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This doesn’t just mean that the libertarian movement’s rightward signaling has cut them off from potentially becoming libertarians, either. Given the way American politics sorts itself into teams, and the way talking across teams is challenging for many, people with libertarian sympathies turned off by the movement’s right-wing appearance are likely to end up further from libertarianism than if they hadn’t explored it in the first place. “Those guys are awful,” they think after their first impression. “I want to make sure I’m very much not like that.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Holding Back Change" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 531, "byteStart": 500 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/rothbardian-anarchism?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Libertarianism is fundamentally a radical philosophy. “Libertarians … are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed,” Rothbard wrote. “But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians… As we have seen, Conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty.” Fusionism’s legacy is in making much of the libertarian movement forget that. (Including, it’s sad to say, Rothbard himself. Later in his career, he abandoned his own principles and turned instead to paleolibertarianism, which is libertarian in name only.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This mistaken identification with conservatism and the Republican Party brings opportunity costs. By allying ourselves with one side, we miss out on chances to work with people outside of that political and cultural tribe. But the damage goes deeper." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Libertarianism should be positioning itself as an appealing alternative to rising illiberalism, and as the philosophical foundation of the cosmopolitan side in the emerging cosmopolitan/populist divide. We have an opportunity to reinvigorate our movement, and help instill a deeper culture of liberty. But doing that means breaking free from partisan alliances, and no longer seeing ourselves (and thus encouraging others to view us) as part of a right-wing that is turning increasingly against cosmopolitanism and liberty." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Within the libertarian movement itself, both in the Washington think tank scene and in grassroots activism, however, there’s less desire for change than there ought to be. Instead many argue that the old strategies are still worthwhile, and that no matter how bad the right has become, the left is still always and only the enemy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Even where there is a desire for change, or just where there’s a recognition of how far from libertarian the Republican Party and American conservatism have drifted, there are strong incentives against acting on it. Part of that is financial. Libertarian organizations get much of their funding from right-of-center sources, because decades of the fusionist strategy meant looking to the right to fundraise. But money’s not the only issue." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 441, "byteStart": 420 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/libertarians-who-dismiss-social-justice-are-mistaken?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There’s the cultural alignment discussed earlier. Because so many libertarians came from the right, their social networks are largely within the right. Pushing back on conservative alliances means pushing back on friends, peer groups, and circles in which libertarians often feel most comfortable. This isn’t helped by the fact that libertarianism is very white, male, and middle- and upper-class, making it harder (but not contradictory) to empathize with the concerns of the poor, women, and minorities. Which, in turn, makes the movement a less welcoming place to those groups, and so even less diverse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 459, "byteStart": 431 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-cynical-theorists-behind-cynical-theories/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 535, "byteStart": 505 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHtvTGaPzF4&ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This cultural affiliation plays out in news consumption habits, too. I’m frequently discouraged by how many libertarians turn for political commentary and cultural analysis chiefly or exclusively to right-wing sources. If they want to learn about ideas, arguments, and ideologies of the left, they don’t go to the people who believe or advocate them, but instead look to what right-wing sources have to say about them. No one should turn to James Lindsay to get up to speed on critical theory, nor Stephen Hicks on postmodernism, nor Dave Rubin on social justice, but too many do." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Arguably there is also the ongoing influence of Ayn Rand. While a case can be made that the philosophy of Objectivism is not right-wing—and Rand herself was socially radical for the time—Randianism frequently takes on a right-wing flavor in its approach to social justice matters, its belligerent foreign policy, and Rand’s (often ignorant) rejection, and lack of curiosity about, philosophies different from her own." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Lastly, we can’t dismiss simple sunk costs thinking. The libertarian movement has spent over half a century developing deep ties to the right, cultivating relationships with Republican lawmakers, working itself into conservative circles, and recruiting largely from the political and cultural right. It has an infrastructure in place, and human capital built up to those ends. That’s a lot of resources, and decoupling from the right means not only giving up on some of them, but also putting new resources into building relationships with people we aren’t as used to. It’s far easier to say “We can make this old thing work” than it is to admit it’s time to try something new." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Way Forward" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Even if it’s hard, though, change is needed. A non-fusionist libertarianism can be a voice for principled radicalism in America’s political realignment, while more seriously combatting the immediate threats to American liberties coming from the right. Seeing the right and the GOP as the best or only path forward for libertarianism hasn’t produced many great victories, and it’s difficult to imagine how it will in the future. Even if we view the Reagan-era Republican Party through the foggiest of rose-colored glasses, that era was an historical aberration, and one unlikely to come back. The fact is libertarianism doesn’t have a home on the right, and it never really did. We were more like tolerated house guests, kept around because we were sometimes rhetorically useful." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 415, "byteStart": 393 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://nationalconservatism.org/natcon-dc-2019/presenters/jd-vance/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "How to change, then? How can libertarianism break free of fusionism and, in so doing, become healthier, more diverse, more forward-thinking, and, yes, more effective? The first step is pushing back on our right-wing branding. Whenever I say it’s time to abandon fusionism, I’m told, “The left wants nothing to do with us.” (Of course, the right is increasingly explicit that it wants nothing to do with us.) And while the many fruitful conversations I’ve had with people on the left, even the far left, show that’s not true, it is the case that the left is more skeptical about libertarianism than the right used to be. But it’s a mistake to view that as a consequence of something more libertarian about the right. Instead, it’s merely a self-fulfilling prophecy, the consequence of decades of libertarians telling the left they’re part of the right, and telling the left that, when it comes to liberty, they are always and exclusively the enemy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 202, "byteStart": 179 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://compactmag.com/article/against-right-liberalism?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Likewise, I’m told, “The right is more welcoming to us.” While that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, with the intellectual vanguard of the right going out of its way to repudiate liberalism, if we do find more friends among the right, it’s because, again, we spent decades embedding libertarians in the conservative movement. If you and a bunch of your friends crash a party, the fact that you now have friends at that party tells you nothing about whether the other attendees want much to do with you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Breaking the feedback loop means putting in the effort both to reach out to a more diverse audience and to be an audience to more diversity. It means, at the very least, subverting the stereotype of libertarians as right-wingers by no longer signaling that we’re right-wingers. Mere denials when, for instance, journalists refer to libertarian think tanks as “conservative,” aren’t enough, because actions, or silence on important issues, make those denials more difficult to believe." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Rebranding as genuinely politically independent, as no longer “of the right,” won’t happen overnight, but it can’t happen at all until we start. We need to convince potential new allies, potential new libertarians, and just everyday Americans that we’re not on board with the insanity of the American right–and especially that we’re not Republicans, because the Republican brand is irredeemably tarnished." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Against a Counter-Fusionism" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 245, "byteStart": 221 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9048401/bernie-sanders-open-borders?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 307, "byteStart": 284 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/03/my_simplistic_t_1.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That shouldn’t be taken as a call for libertarians to enact a left-fusionism with Democrats and progressives. If fusionism was a mistake, it’s a mistake we shouldn’t repeat by picking a different team. The left is decidedly un-libertarian, too, and many on the left have such a strong moral aversion to radically free markets that they’ll never get fully on board with libertarian economics. It’s wrong to downplay the threats to American liberty and prosperity coming from the Democratic Party. Genuine independence is possible. Yet we also shouldn’t let recognizing the threats to liberty on the left turn into mindless, partisan false equivalence. In the current political environment, forcing an equivalency on the two parties in terms of the immediate and dire threat they represent to the basic institutions upon which our freedoms depend is unserious and dangerous." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Ending right-wing fusionism doesn’t mean cultivating a left-wing variant. The path forward is found in abandoning partisan alliances and focusing instead on issue specific opportunities. But those opportunities, if we go looking for them, are hurt by decades of fusionism and the continuing projection of libertarianism as part of the right. The Republican Party has become so toxic to so many that libertarians who appear to have either embraced it in its current form, or are seen as uncritical fellow-travelers, risk rejection when we talk to activists and lawmakers on the left to help with criminal justice reform, anti-war activism, or other causes where one would think we might find common cause. You cannot persuade anyone of what you are saying if they think you are a threat, and so long as we lack true independence, but are instead part of an increasingly authoritarian coalition, we’ll be seen as a threat." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "A Healthier Liberty Movement" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Reagan’s GOP isn’t coming back. Classical liberalism’s home within the right was short-lived, and the Republican Party has reverted to the full-throated populism endemic to the American right throughout its history. The economic freedom where libertarians once aligned has been replaced by nationalist calls for autocracy and efforts to use state power to punish businesses that don’t toe the social conservative line. That’s simply what the GOP is today. A libertarian-Republican coalition doesn’t make sense anymore, if it ever did. If the GOP gets worse, and there’s every reason to believe it will, then libertarians risk being judged by history as the people who fretted about marginal tax rates while palling around with lawmakers who voted to steal a presidential election and who are actively trying to return an authoritarian, and arguably fascist, leader to power." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 263, "byteStart": 222 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY4Mw", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The path to a healthier libertarian movement is abandoning partisan alliances, and reaching out to a diverse audience, including an audience outside the right. Network beyond conservative circles and put in the effort to understand non-conservative ideas fairly. We need to be a more open audience to ideas outside our comfort zone. Not just because we might learn something, but also because putting the effort into understanding, and welcoming engagement with, the ideas of others, outside of conservative circles, makes others more likely to be willing to engage our ideas, as well." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In having those conversations, though, we need to be aware of how our messaging is coded right and how changing it can make it appealing to new audiences, without abandoning our principled commitment to radical liberty. We should take seriously the concerns of people outside of conservatism, and be ready to discuss how liberty provides answers to those concerns, instead of brushing the concerns off as ill-informed, ideologically blinkered, or “woke.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In a country pulled in illiberal directions, with a growing number looking for ways to use the state to punish their cultural enemies, a strong commitment to liberty is crucial. The good news is, libertarianism can thrive and persuade, building a new culture of liberty across partisan divides. But it’s going to take shedding learned perspectives that, while perhaps comfortable, are counter-productive. It’s going to take abandoning the idea that libertarianism needs to “pick a side” and instead embracing robust, non-partisan, conspicuous independence." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Libertarianism can find its bright future. But the first step is admitting how dark the American right has become." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "description": "Once rooted in liberalism, libertarianism's detour through the conservative movement has blunted its radical edge and commitment to principle.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-04T20:39:56.025Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.4388+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3lcybdjk227", "data": { "path": "/3m3lcybdjk227", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Trumpism and the Status Anxiety of Abusers", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199fe84-25d4-7995-8f98-d167be03c4be", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published 8/20/2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Trumpism is a movement of men who beat their wives. It's not that every Trumpist is a wife-beater, obviously. Or that every wife-beater is a Trumpist. It's that the core ideology of Trumpism is \"I should get to abuse others.\" I should get to dominate them. I should get to hurt them. I should get to grind them down because I don't like them, and what are you going to do about it?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 59, "byteStart": 45 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/kellybarnhill.bsky.social/post/3lwthvc4sak26", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Here's how novelist Kelly Barnhill put it in a Bluesky post about the unsurprising news of widespread abuse in ICE detention centers:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreib34p6cka4pcphbxyblo5g33f72hqjeiolsgay3zldt6akp2zw6d4", "uri": "at://did:plc:2jszithbh5synbdwbjrmn4wp/app.bsky.feed.post/3lwthvc4sak26" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Barnhill is correct. But the draw of Trumpism is to a particular sort of abuser: the guy whose abusive urges or actions are bound up in a feeling of status anxiety. Trumpism appeals to men who don't like that others (women, minorities, immigrations, LGBT people) are rising, because they know, even unconsciously, that they're not good enough to compete. That they're getting shown up. Exposed as mediocre, or worse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 43, "byteStart": 27 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/t/podcast", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 62, "byteStart": 43 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/t/podcast", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 152, "byteStart": 121 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://conference.ismaglobal.org/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 206, "byteStart": 194 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://radleybalko.substack.com/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 1049, "byteStart": 1003 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zk7kvoas23", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "During a live recording of The UnPopulist's Zooming In podcast I hosted last week (and which should release soon) at the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference in Washington, DC, journalist Radley Balko said something that was clarifying about this central attitude of Trumpism: To mediocre guys who attained success and power because the system was stacked in in their favor, a move to meritocracy feels like discrimination against them. They like to believe they are owed success because they are better (more skilled, more able, more intelligent) than the people who historically have had less of it. And when the barriers keeping those historically less successful people out of their domains of success break down, they rage. Not because, with scattered and rare exceptions, they're actually being discriminated against, but because these new entrants, perhaps because they had to be that much better to overcome those barriers, frequently outperform them. These men, who for decades have been the loudest about America needing meritocracy, discover they don't do as well as they anticipated when it more fully arrives." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus abuse. In this worldview, America is filled with people who are taking from you. People who are responsible for your declining status, in their unjust and unearned seeking of their own. So you want to strike out. You want to degrade the people you blame for making you feel smaller. And by degrading them, by abusing them, you can feel bigger and more powerful, even if you can't claw back a feeling of actual success. Being an abuser means, if nothing else, you're above the abused. And if you can abuse everyone except the people most like you, then it means you and the people like you are at the top. Which is all the MAGA movement has ever wanted. People like them getting to dominate, getting to inflict abuse without consequences, is what it means, ultimately, in their minds, for America to be great." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-19T22:10:35.840Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:22.011792+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rxh4clk2o", "data": { "path": "/3m33rxh4clk2o", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "An Inconsistent Approach to Viewpoint Diversity", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199deb6-4659-7999-ad1d-c02589d07c7a", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 8, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 87, "byteStart": 61 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/who-goes-maga/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick has an excellent new article about “Who Goes MAGA?” He sets out a taxonomy of the sorts of people prone to drifting into Trumpism, from “The Wellness Influencer” to “The LinkedIn Thought Leader” to “The Facebook Mom” and more. I recommend it as a catalogue of archetypes to keep your eye on." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I wanted to call out one in particular, “The Contrarian Intellectual,” in part because it’s the character class I have the most experience with, but also to highlight a example of one of the dynamics Mike notes in passing." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He’s not technically MAGA yet, but he’s on the glide path. He writes long pieces about how “the left has lost its mind” and how “we need to have difficult conversations.” He appears on podcasts to discuss “the excesses of woke culture” and “the importance of free speech.” He’s built his brand on being the reasonable liberal who’s willing to criticize his own side." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 195, "byteStart": 134 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But his criticism only flows in one direction. He’s endlessly concerned about cancel culture but never mentions voter suppression. He worries about campus speech codes but not about book bans. He’s created a career out of giving conservatives permission to feel intellectual about their prejudices." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "His MAGA turn will come when he finally admits what’s been obvious all along: he’s more comfortable with the right than the left. He’ll frame it as a principled stand against progressive extremism, but really it’s just the natural conclusion of a grift that started with “I’m just asking questions.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 610, "byteStart": 567 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2fgud57nk2a", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I’ve bolded the relevant sentence because, having worked for years in libertarian public policy—including through the rise of the culture war to subsume most other politics—it’s a move I see a lot. Let’s say you want to (1) push right-wing culture war preferences in state education while also (2) maintaining a rhetoric of liberty, limited government, and open inquiry. Obviously (1) is incompatible with (2). It’s possible that in a regime of perfect liberty, people will choose right-wing cultural preferences. But experience doesn’t bear that out. Freedom tends to lead to social liberalism. The solution is to equivocate on school choice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 128, "byteStart": 96 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://weconnect.lgbt/pride-flag-bans/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Instead of giving your own opinion of the merits of bans (not just on books, but more broadly, including expression by teachers), you can argue that we wouldn’t be having these kinds of fights at all if, instead of government and mandatory schools, we had school choice. If parents were free to send their kids to whatever school they want, and if entrepreneurs were free to set up schools catering to a wide range of preferences, then parents who want their kids exposed to, say, LGBTQ identities could send them to socially liberal schools that center and celebrate that. Parents who instead don’t want their kids exposed to these identities, or don’t want them told that such behaviors and expressions are acceptable, could send their kids to more socially conservative schools." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The school choice argument is that when parents can decide what is best for their own kids, and don’t have to worry about parents with differing views forcing those views upon them, then everyone can adopt a live and let live approach to each other. But if the school district has to pick a single curriculum, or a single standard for which books go in the library (and it must articulate some standard, after all), and every parent living in that district is compelled to send their kids to the state run schools, then disagreements become zero sum. If I get my way, you don’t get yours. If you get your way, then I don’t get mine. Thus, fights." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Now, you might disagree with school choice for any number of reasons. But this argument in its favor, even if you find it ultimately unpersuasive, isn’t unprincipled. It’s making a point about how schools could be better by being restructured to remove a frequent cause of conflict. That’s a worthy goal. And, while the person making the school choice argument isn’t weighing in on the wisdom or moral permissibility of book bans directly, it would be wrong to read the argument as supportive of the bans. Instead it’s saying, “We shouldn’t be focusing on efforts on the symptoms, but rather trying to ameliorate the underlying cause.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The trouble is the inconsistency Mike notes. Because a great deal of the people who make the above argument also believe that both public and private universities ought to have viewpoint diversity. If you’re on the cultural right, what you likely mean by that is that universities ought to center culturally right perspectives more than you believe they do. They’re not diverse now because they heavily emphasize a culturally left perspective, so making them diverse means emphasis in the other direction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Again, this argument can be made in a principled fashion. Even if you yourself are not on the cultural right, you can argument reasonably that, given many Americans are, it’s better for schools to expose students (who are less likely to be from a culturally right background than the typical American) to a representative range of views. Fair enough." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 667, "byteStart": 652 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/Njg2MjkxZDFkYjMxNTAzN2I3NWQ4ODI3?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But if you goal—your actual motive—isn’t “all views treated equally” but instead “a thumb on the scale for culturally right-wing views,” you can slide between these two arguments (for school choice and for higher-ed viewpoint diversity) as the situation aligns with your preferences. You argue “school choice” when a school district is banning books with LGBTQ characters or telling teachers not to put a photograph of their same-sex partner on their desk. You argue “viewpoint diversity” when a university is overwhelmingly populated by left-leaning professors, or when classes don’t take Russell Kirk as seriously as they do Michel Foucault. You pick an argument to apply when that argument will get you the conclusion you want, and you don’t deploy it when it won’t." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The inconsistency exposes itself readily, however. If the answer to fights about curriculum is “school choice,” then “school choice” ought to be the answer to fights about curriculum in universities. And the think about universities is, unlike primary and secondary education, we already have nearly perfect school choice. Chances are, if you went to public school for K through 12, you went to the school assigned to you by wherever your home address happened to be. You didn’t have a choice. But if you went to a public university, chances are you had quite an array of ones to pick from. I grew up outside of Detroit but attended the University of Colorado, and could have attended universities in pretty much any of the fifty states. And I could’ve picked a private university (as I did for law school) if I couldn’t find a public one I liked. In other words, if the answer to fights about what views should be represented in a given school is simply “If we had school choice, parents could send their kids to a school representing their views, and so there’s no need to fight about any particular school,” then that same answer should trump calls for any given university to be viewpoint diverse. The CU Boulder English department was pretty lefty, true. But I could’ve gone to Hillsdale." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This equivocation allows someone to stick to libertarian rhetoric (“choice” and “intellectual pluralism”) while actually holding to a goal closer to right-wing cultural hegemony. Neither argument, choice or intellectual pluralism, is, on its own, a problem. Both are perfectly principled. Laudable, even. But if you’re going to be principled about libertarianism (which, it ought to go without saying, demands not being MAGA), you have to apply them consistently." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "If school choice is the answer to fights over curriculum in K-12 schools, it also needs to be the answer at universities. But culture war supporting libertarians don't tend to apply the argument that consistently. ", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T17:55:58.653Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.861556+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2azqdbgdc2r", "data": { "path": "/3m2azqdbgdc2r", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "How to Be in a World on Fire", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199a7a2-d034-722d-a6cd-ab108a569e85", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I was talking with a friend about the feeling of being relatively small while up against something very big, and the sense of “What can I even do?” The sense that the world is burning, or at the very least smouldering, and even if you or I are privileged enough that the fire hasn’t yet directly reached us, there’s the anxiety of it all around, and the fear of what yet more is coming." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Recent events—the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the regime’s use of Kirk’s death to accelerate its campaign of oppression against anyone who fails to enthusiastically support the MAGA agenda—have ratched this all up, made that feeling of anxiety greater, made the fire feel closer and hotter." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And the question is, what do you do? What do you do in the slide from democracy to autocracy, even if it’s not yet complete, and even if it won’t ever be complete because institutions will, somehow, hold and, eventually, reverse the decline. " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 160, "byteStart": 149 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The answer, I think, is two-pronged. And those prongs are pretty familiar ones if you’re a regular reader of my newsletter, or regular listener to my podcast. First, there’s the perspective we ought to bring to the moment. Second, there’s the values we ought to hold, and reaffirm, throughout." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Regarding perspective, there’s a need to fully recognize and assess what we’re up against, and how far along the threat is. Democracy is not yet lost. It’s true that, for now, we no longer live in a constitutional republic. The federal government is operating as if it is already an autocracy, and the Supreme Court is supporting it in that. But the regime is also meeting quite a lot of failures, and lacks both the intelligence and discipline to succeed in many of its aims. What this means is that, at this moment, it hasn’t yet fully consolidated authoritarianism in America, and it very well might never achieve it. The 2026 elections could result in a landslide for Democrats, who could then use the power of the purse to defund most all of the worst of what Trump’s up to. The 2028 election could result in a full scale repudiation of MAGA, and then the question becomes not defeating authoritarianism, but rebuilding after it. (And I’m hopeful that such a rebuilding would offer new opportunities for more radically liberal institutions.) " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But things could go the other way. Trump might figure out how to suppress enough votes in urban areas to prevent a blue wave. Or he might simply refuse to leave office and convince the institutions to support him in that. The point, in fact, is that the proper perspective to bring to this moment, in terms of assessing it and so knowing where to direct our attention and effort, is one of epistemic humility. Things are moving fast, but they’re also chaotic, and it’s impossible to know with any certainty how this all ends up. Be wary of people who tell you otherwise, either from the “we’re already doomed and it’s time to give up” side or the “Trump has already lost” alternative." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There’s another element of proper perspective to keep in mind, as well. And it focuses very much on what to keep in mind. You’ve probably heard of mindfulness, likely in the context of mediation. The Buddhist word for it is “sati.” This gets translated typically as mindfulness, but it’s more specifically “to remember to observe.” That’s what I mean here. It’s easy to get caught up in the latest horror or viral story. Our perspective of assessment can get derailed by letting our attention fixate on what’s less valuable, and to let slip our mind the things we really ought to give that attention to. Yes, this story is making the news now, but let’s not forget about that other one. Yes, everyone is talking about that, but immediate suffering can be more effectively alleviated by putting our effort into this, instead. Etc. This mindfulness—this keeping in mind what we ought to keep in mind—needs to be filtered through a clear understanding of what you or I, in our situation and with our abilities and resources, can most effectively do to help. It might not be raging on social media." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Then there’s values. Our perspective influences our values, and our values influence our perspective. And what’s needed right now, more than in recent memory, is a deep commitment to centering the values of compassion, empathy, and selflessness. We are very much in this moment together, and the only way we get through it is through a spirit of shared concern. Rejecting this is how so many, including so many of the powerful, have gone wrong. If you look around—at politicians, at many business leaders—there’s a self-centered-ness, a willingness to destroy the lives of others for one’s personal gain. To cut side deals with authoritarianism. To keep your head down, to flatter, to hope that fire stays very far away from you personally, and look for ways to maybe find a little warmth in it while it’s here. Such attitudes must be rejected. Both because they are destructive of liberal democracy, and because they are corrosive to liberal values. This is not a time for self-interest at the expense of others. It is a time to do everything each of us can to ensure a future for everyone." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "None of this advice can remove that feeling of smallness, at least not entirely. We’re up against something very big and very powerful and very dangerous. We might lose. But we haven’t yet. And there are important places where we’re winning. However things play out—and we’ve got a long way to go—we’ll do better, strategically, tactically, and for our own mental and emotional health, if we put real effort into cultivating and maintaining the right perspective and the right values for this horrible moment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreiau64txja5pjprtrqwducufrzqi6d5oc5utblknzych7koh6t2khe", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m2azqhufhc2r", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreiciktcgipfu3twd5644ce2sphts5qgmghexnarg7iazr73vvmgkre", "rev": "3m2azqhxfnd2v" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "The values and perspectives our political moment demands of us. ", "publishedAt": "2025-10-03T02:33:16.744Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.052038+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "data": { "path": "/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Anti-Anti-Trans Election", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019a5529-769a-7009-b4b4-8bb01aab5c4d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yesterday's elections were obviously big wins for the Democrats, and big losses for the forces of far-right authoritarianism. As a preview of the midterms, they give hope. Not because every Democratic policy is a good one. Many aren't. But because right now what matters most is ensuring a future for American democracy, which the GOP is committed to destroying." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 130, "byteStart": 121 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/a-stunning-rebuke-of-anti-trans-politicsdems", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What stood out as a particularly hopeful sign in yesterday's results was the complete failure of the anti-trans project. Erin Reed has a good overview." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/a-stunning-rebuke-of-anti-trans-politicsdems", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "\"A Stunning Rebuke Of Anti-Trans Politics\"—Dems Win Elections Nationwide Despite Anti-Trans Ads", "description": "As election results poured in on Tuesday night, it became clear that Democrats were winning nationwide against anti-trans opponents.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiassydi6gg67qxkk3gpgbjmjdmugdqpxhg6e7s7uvv6zufeh3gpdm" }, "size": 38191, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Taken together, the results amount to a resounding rejection of the notion that Democrats must soften—or stay silent—on LGBTQ+ rights to win. The Republicans who built their campaigns on anti-trans and anti-queer messaging, convinced that bigotry was a shortcut to victory, will not be holding the levers of power. And despite the pleas of centrist consultants urging Democrats to abandon transgender people, it was those who targeted them who saw their electoral fortunes collapse on Tuesday night. For the first time in years, transgender Americans can take a breath and see evidence that the wave of anti-transgender panic aimed at them may finally be receding." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The fact is, the anti-trans moral panic, and the bigotry that took advantage of it, was always concentrated primarily in two small groups. Elites saw trans rights as part of the woke wave that unsettled their (imagined) place in the social hierarchy. They hated that, and that hatred got expressed in calls for Democrats to abandon trans people to the right-wing wolves. I wrote about the mechanics at play here:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Elite Complicity in the Rise of Fascism - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "America's elites downplay Trump's authoritarian fascism out of a corrupt sense of class consciousness and solidarity.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreifvwpy3ju6eppi2dnxzrygo7wg35aw7siwsszslhubmnxt22jw6um" }, "size": 38748, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The second group is the extreme social reactionaries represented by groups like Libs of TikTok. They aren't the high status coastals, but are much lower down the social status pecking order. They represent the gutter bigots who've always plagued American culture and politics, and who have felt more empowered since Trump made it okay to be a gutter bigot in public life." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But together, those are small numbers. And even if many more Americans have some concerns about trans identities, maybe about fairness in sports or in risks around medical procedures, those concerns aren't motivated by fear of declining status or by being quintessentially hateful people. And those concerns turned out to be ranked rather low compared to the economy or federal thugs beating up innocent men, women, and children." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yesterday was a good sign that, while there's still a lot of work to do in establishing both trans rights and trans social equality, and while there's still a good deal more bigotry in the country than any of us but the bigots would like, America's not a grim a place as it looked. Our job now is to keep that progress going." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreicibsbiot5iz5rkbldawjtr4jumx5gm5ketawdpnjut3bf6nzs2jm", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4vnk5lib224", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreig7i7mfbxxdtehcfqxbqwl63ecjxlik2byp74xpugrwbz4er4lqfa", "rev": "3m4vnk5oxau2g" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Running against trans people failed and America proved itself a better place than the worst among us want it to be.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-05T18:11:14.050Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.766045+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zkbbxxsk23", "data": { "path": "/3m2zkbbxxsk23", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Twitter/X as a Bubble for Bad Ethics", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da1f-ea3c-7ddc-ae9e-4aa289c20bce", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published August 20, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Twitter was always small compared to other social networks, even before Elon Musk got his hands on it. But it punched way above its weight in terms of the cultural center of mass. There were two reasons for it. First, while Facebook was where the ordinary folks hung out, and Instagram where you’d find the celebrities, Twitter was where journalists and “thought leaders” spent their time. Many of their conversations on the platform were downstream of more obscure corners of the Internet, like web forums and various sub-Reddits, but Twitter was where the big discussions that shaped the news happened, or at least the big conversations among the people who were responsible for everyone else’s picture of the news. Second, even if you weren’t a journalist or thought leader, if you were the sort of people who wanted to follow their conversations and lend your voice to them, Twitter’s where you went." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "These combined meant that Twitter was where “The Discourse” was, and if you wanted to see what was happening in “The Discourse,” you went to Twitter. Being active on Twitter, even being exclusively active there, allowed you to keep your finger on the pulse of the national conversation to a reasonably expansive degree—or at least to a much greater degree than spending the bulk of your time anywhere else." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 389, "byteStart": 342 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-social-media-tricks-our-brains-and-destroys-our-politics", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But then Musk came along, and Twitter changed. Musk himself, as the most prominent user of the renamed X, pushes a line that isn’t representative of where America’s national conversation is at, but rather a narrow, (proto)fascist, white nationalist sliver of that conversation. And he dragged the community along with him. A while back, I wrote about how the structure of social media—the way you follow people to construct a single “feed,” instead of participating in distinct rooms or forums—tricks us into thinking the slice of a platform’s users we’re regularly seeing, and the slice of the platforms conversation we’re regularly watching and participating in, is much more representative of the whole than it in reality is." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 605, "byteStart": 593 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://truthsocial.com/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The hard-right turn of Twitter/X as a platform made this worse. And it’s made it worse because many of those journalists and thought leaders who’ve remained—even though doing so, and contributing value to Musk’s ventures and furthering his interests, is clearly an immoral act—haven’t recognized or come to terms with that turn. They spent years using Twitter from a perspective of “this is representative,” and still hold to that. They still believe X is the national conversation, that it is America’s water cooler, when in fact it’s no more those things than Trump’s Truth Social platform." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That the broader conversation on X is functionally indistinguishable, both in its content and the character of many of its participants, from Truth Social interacts in troubling ways with the perception, by those still-active journalists and thought leaders, that X remains what Twitter once was: a more or less representative picture of the wider discourse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 168, "byteStart": 100 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2023/07/20/surround-yourself-with-those-who/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "First, there’s an internal, deleterious impact. Who you associate with matters, not just because the people you associate with is a reflection of your own character, but also because the people you associate with shape your character. We cultivate our ethical perspective in collaboration with others, and if those we collaborate with are unethical, we’ll shift in that direction, too. Thus if our thought leadership is mostly interacting with the kind of hard-right and profoundly immoral perspectives of the community Elon Musk has cultivated and promoted, and is reflected in electoral politics by people like JD Vance, then this is bad for those thought leaders, because to the extent it makes them increasingly unethical, in both values and the way they see the world, it makes their own lives worse. You can’t lead a good life as a bad person." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 485, "byteStart": 466 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/the-politics-of-broken-values-and-warped-perspectives", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Second, there’s an external, and also deleterious, impact. Because these thought leaders are increasingly acculturated to, and accepting of, the narrow and unethical perspective representative of the X community—but not representative of America generally—and because they mistakenly believe that perspective to be relatively mainstream, in their role as thought leaders—as columnists, podcasters, influencers, public intellectuals—they will promote that broken ethical view back to people outside of the X bubble. X still punches above its (diminishing) weight the way Twitter did." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The first step to a solution is for the journalists, pundits, and thought leaders still active on X, and who still stick to it as their primary or exclusive platform, to leave. They don’t need to decamp to more broadly representative platforms, because the fragmentation of social media means those don’t really exist anymore. But they should decamp to more ethical platforms, so that they’re not inculcating—in themselves and then, through their work, the rest of us—a system of values, and a moral and epistemic perspective, harmful to flourishing, a functioning culture, and a healthy democracy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T20:32:59.402Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.756934+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tjacszc2y", "data": { "path": "/3m33tjacszc2y", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Silicon Valley’s “996” Is About Power, not Productivity", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199decf-b91b-7dd0-8092-affa80ddd6c4", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 23, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 33, "byteStart": 28 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 70, "byteStart": 36 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“996” is, according to Wired, finding its way to Silicon Valley. It’s a term for a Chinese model of work: you start your labor at 9am, finish at 9pm, and do it six days a week. In other words, it’s basically being an associate in a big law firm, spread to other economic sectors." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The way this horrific work/life imbalance gets sold by the people selling it is under the flag of “productivity.” Whatever company it is they head is doing important work. World-changing work. Historically world-changing work. And if you want to be a part of that, you need to feel a drive towards all-in-ness. Which in turn means not being weak by wanting, say, time with your family or friends or the opportunity to relax." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But it’s not really about productivity, because nothing about 996 boosts productivity. Instead, its about the guys at the top, the ones telling the people below them to work 12 hours a day six days a week, wanting to feel important and powerful." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 25, "byteStart": 20 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Take this from the Wired piece." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Companies aren’t having trouble finding willing employees, and some frame it as core to their work culture. Rilla, an AI startup that sells software designed for contractors (like plumbers) to record conversations with prospective clients and coach them on how to negotiate higher rates, says nearly all of its 80-person workforce adheres to the 996 schedule." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "“There’s a really strong and growing subculture of people, especially in my generation—Gen Z—who grew up listening to stories of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, entrepreneurs who dedicated their lives to building life-changing companies,” says Will Gao, the company’s head of growth. “Kobe Bryant dedicated all his waking hours to basketball, and I don’t think there’s a lot of people saying that Kobe Bryant shouldn’t have worked as hard as he did.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Notice the disconnect between the people Will Gao compares himself to and the product his company actually builds. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, in a very real sense, forged (or the people working at their companies forged) the modern technological world. Kobe Bryant was one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived. Will Gao makes recording software to help plumbers eek out a bit more profit. This isn’t nothing, it’s good to help people figure out how to earn a better living, but it’s probably not going to be “life-changing” even for the plumbers, let alone world-historically." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But the other disconnect is that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Kobe Bryant were all the guys at the top. Jobs wanted to build Apple, and he wanted to work long hours to do it. Gates wanted to build Microsoft and was driven to do so. They weren’t told to by a boss. Likewise, Kobe Bryant put in endless practice time toward becoming the best basketball player he could be because, to start with, he absolutely loved playing basketball." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What Will Gao and the other executives at Rilla are instead doing is demanding, in an exceptionally tight technology labor market, that anyone who wants a paycheck from them needs to give up their lives. Maybe some people do, and maybe some don’t feel they have much choice, but let’s not kid ourselves that this is about an existential drive towards world-historical impact à la Jobs, Gates, or Bryant." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 33, "byteStart": 25 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Further, if the goal is actually productivity, well, 996 ain’t gonna do it. We have research on this. A lot. Long hours don’t make people more productive, because there are only so many hours in a day, and only so many days a week, you can be at peak productivity. Instead, long hours burn you out. And as you burn out, as you become exhausted and stressed, your productivity (and creativity and everything else needed for a successful, world-historical start-up) declines. By a lot." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 121, "byteStart": 117 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In my experience, though, the people who push this stuff aren’t terribly curious about the state of the research. They want to work long hours, because they believe in their company, or because they bought into the grind mindset false bill of sale. They’ve swallowed an image of what being serious about work looks like, and they’ve made that image so central to their identity that to admit it’s a mirage, that they’re instead just making their companies worse while making their workers miserable, would be to admit, well, that they’re maybe not as world-historically important as they imagine themselves to be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But I think there’s something else going on, too, and it’s about power. Years ago, in a conversation with a CEO who proposed reconfiguring his organization’s headquarters from largely private offices with doors that could close to largely open-office floor plans and removing doors from the remaining private offices, I mentioned the research. I said, “You argue that this change will increase both productivity and collaboration. But there’s robust evidence that it will do precisely the opposite. Workers in open-offices are less productive, and they tend to shift to electronic communication rather than face-to-face just to carve out some degree of privacy.” And he screamed at me." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He screamed because he didn’t want to hear what the research said, because, like a lot of the guys calling for 996, this move wasn’t, I suspect, motivated by a genuine desire for greater productivity and collaboration. Or, if it was genuine, it was a thin genuineness, more of a “he’d convinced himself his pretext wasn’t pretextual, but authentic” than “he legitimately wanted to pursue whatever changes would maximize productivity and collaboration.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 96, "byteStart": 92 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 321, "byteStart": 318 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 558, "byteStart": 553 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "No, the actual motivation is when you’re at the top, for many of these guys, the way you feel like you’re at the top is to see people beneath you. It’s why Trump wants his staff to genuflect, and why he likes parades. He’s the guy in charge, and being the guy in charge only really feels like it if you can see the people who aren’t in charge. In other words, you want to exercise your in-charge-ness, and witness those subject to it. Otherwise your in-charge-ness is as much a mirage as those open-office productivity gains. Or at least feels like it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 565, "byteStart": 562 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 630, "byteStart": 623 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What 996 accomplishes, then, isn’t a more productive company than one where workers come to work each day feeling happy and refreshed. What 996 accomplishes is workers being in the office basically all the time the guy at the top would care to look out into the office and see his workers there. What taking doors off of offices and moving to an open-office floor plan accomplishes (if the goal isn’t merely some gain in how many people can be packed into limited square footage) is that if you’re the guy at the top, you can walk around the building and see the people who report to you. You can see them working for you. And not just individually, such as if you had online one-on-ones with them regularly, or if you swung by their (private) offices, but as a mass." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That doesn’t increase collaboration. It doesn’t increase productivity. The evidence for both is overwhelming. But it is a pretty powerful feeling. And if you get to feel it, it means you’re pretty important. Maybe even as important as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Kobe Bryant." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "The \"996\" work schedule reflects a troubling belief in sacrificing personal well-being for perceived productivity, driven more by power dynamics than actual efficiency.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T18:23:49.249Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.394151+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znyhuvck24", "data": { "path": "/3m2znyhuvck24", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da5c-4ed8-7555-986e-f3e94bdb014f", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published November 17, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 107, "byteStart": 67 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-users-flee-rivals", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Trump’s election saw a renewed wave of users feeling X/Twitter, many of them heading instead to Bluesky. Bluesky, like Threads, has a “block first” culture: Rather than responding to abusive mentions or trollish behavior, users just block and move on. Bluesky also has a widely used “shared blocklists” feature that allows people to make lists of users (e.g., people with pro-Nazi phrases in their bios) and then others can subscribe to those lists and auto-block or mute anyone on them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Because Bluesky got its start primarily as a place for users who didn’t want to stick around Twitter when Musk took over, and is now rapidly growing because of an ongoing exodus of the same sorts of users, its community leans left. The right-wingers were happy to stay on Twitter. Reinforcing this, right-wingers who do show up tend to leave pretty quickly. They get heavily blocked, gain little engagement, and go back to friendlier territory." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "All of this has led, over the last week, to an ongoing conversation about echo chambers. Is Bluesky one? (Or is Threads, which has similar dynamics?) And, if it is, is that bad? Not just in the sense of “Ideological diversity is generally good,” but bad in that it’s wrong to put most of your time into a social media platform where most people agree with you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 42, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/08/26/silicon-valleys-very-online-ideologues/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The most popular essay I’ve ever written is about social media echo chambers, so I have thoughts on this question. Namely, much of the criticism of “echo chambers” is conceptually confused, because it ambiguously slides between important distinctions. So let’s see if we can clarify things a bit." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Echo chambers, to the extent they are bad, are bad for a few reasons." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you only ever hear ideas and arguments from people you already agree with, you won’t ever have your ideas challenged, and having your ideas challenged is important if we want to ensure they are true." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you only ever hear ideas and arguments from people you already agree with, you won’t be aware of the arguments made by those you don’t agree with, and so won’t have an accurate and fair understanding of them." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you only ever hear ideas and arguments from people you already agree with, the picture you have of the state of the world will lack veracity. It will be distorted, and it’s important that our view of reality be accurate." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you’re only interacting with people you agree with, you won’t be in a position to persuade those you don’t." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s easier to double-down on hatred of the other if you never interact with them, and so never have your stereotypes challenged." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "All five of these are true, to one degree or another. The question is whether they apply to Bluesky, or any other ideologically and culturally aligned space, and, if they do, whether they are severe enough to justify either not using such platform, or using them but intentionally following some critical mass of people aligned in ideological opposition to you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I think they don’t, in the sense that I think there’s nothing wrong with spending most of your social media time, if you don’t count yourself as belonging to the political right, in a place like Bluesky, and there’s nothing wrong with, for example, not following a bunch of MAGA accounts while there. But why there’s nothing wrong with either has a lot to do with how we think about social media platforms." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s start with a simple observation. While we have hand-wringing conversations about “echo chambers” when it comes to social media, we don’t tend to have them about other spaces. If you belong to a church, chances are everyone in that community shares a common set of religious beliefs—and we don’t argue that the lack of strong atheist or Muslim representation in a Catholic congregation makes it an echo chamber. If you work at a non-profit advancing abortion rights, you probably haven’t hired many people who oppose reproductive freedom, but that doesn’t make your workplace an echo chamber—or at least not the kind of echo chamber we raise the above five concerns about. If you hang out a lot in an online discussion forum dedicated to Star Wars, we don’t call it an echo chamber because it lacks a ton of Trekkies." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Why the difference? Because we recognize that people belong to different communities, and communities are build around shared values and interests. Intellectual and ideological diversity matters, but inconsistently, and not all diversity is necessary, or necessarily good. A medical school should have instructors with different perspectives where those perspectives represent meaningful positions within the medical community, but it probably shouldn’t have instructors who reject the germ theory of disease." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 482, "byteStart": 475 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "We also recognize that people are aware that each of the communities they exist in—and most of us exist in many, sometimes overlapping and sometimes not—are not representative of the whole. You can be in a knitting club without believing that everyone in the world is an into knitting as you are. You can belong to a Buddhist sangha while being perfectly aware that most people aren’t Buddhist. In fact, the reason you seek out these communities in the first place is because they’re unrepresentative. If everyone you encountered was already into these things, you wouldn’t need to join a community dedicated them. You’d always already be in one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 169, "byteStart": 119 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2023/06/15/how-social-media-tricks-our/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In cases outside the context of social media, we largely understand this. But social media has a weird structure that tricks our brain in a particularly pernicious way:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When you use Twitter (or Bluesky, Mastodon, or another similar platform), you don’t join a hosted community the way you do at Reddit, nor do you sign up for entirely distinct servers the way you did with the old web forums. Instead, you join Twitter, and then you follow people and start having conversations with them. From an individual perspective, they’re simply using Twitter. The home feed is Twitter, the conversations they see are what people are talking about on Twitter, and everything is happening at twitter.com or in the Twitter app." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But the millions or hundreds of millions of individual users are seeing a set of sometimes overlapping but ultimately distinct illusions. Each of their Twitters isn’t quite the same as anyone else’s Twitter. So what it feels like “Twitter is talking about” is instead what their small slice of the bigger community is talking about. While we understand at an intellectual level that our experience is defined by the narrow subset of users we decide to follow—and what they decide to repost into our feed—it seems like our experience is representative of the whole of the platform." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What this means in practice is that the risk of social media ideological uniformity isn’t the uniformity itself, but that social media leads us into believing that uniformity is representative of the whole. An echo chamber is really only an echo chamber if you’re unaware of it. Otherwise, it’s just a group of people you enjoy having conversations with." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In the context of whether Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, or any other non-Twitter/X platform is an echo chamber, then, what really matters isn’t that there aren’t a ton of MAGA people there saying MAGA things. What matters is how the members of the Bluesky, Threads, or Mastodon communities view those communities on Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon. Are they getting tricked in the way described above?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We can’t answer that with perfect certainty, and the answer’s going to vary from person to person, but the fragmentation of social media that happened when Musk took over Twitter cuts against it. People who left Twitter for smaller platforms are, in my experience, quite aware of how unrepresentative those new platforms are. They’re not getting tricked, because they conceptually understand the platforms to be closer to web forums than the “center of culture and the home of the discourse” view many once held about Twitter." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Isn’t it bad if people are using social media to talk about politics, but only hearing one side? Yes, it’s bad if they are entirely unaware of views contrary to their own or if their only interactions, ever, are with their narrow tribe. But it’s unrealistic to think that’s the case with a place like Bluesky. Politically engaged people there live in a country where half the population voted for Trump, and in a media environment saturated with right-wing and center-right perspectives." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 192, "byteStart": 172 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/aaronrosspowell.com/post/3lb6gupow4k2g", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Further, it’s unlikely they’re going to learn anything new about the subtle points of pro-MAGA philosophy from the kinds of people who get readily blocked on Bluesky. As I wrote in a post over there recently:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreibxlktltlqyz5i7e5gone2rhpf7w2auozkrbk5mmzlstc2bnwq72a", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3lb6gupow4k2g" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 596, "byteStart": 532 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/10/30/the-quillette-effect/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Ultimately, then, there’s nothing inherently wrong with spending most of your time in an online space populated largely by people who actually want to be around. We all spend a great deal of our time in spaces populated largely by people we actually want to be around—and if we don’t, we’re actively seeking those spaces out. So long as we remain aware of how unrepresentative our various spaces are, and, when we engage with people outside our information bubble, we understand them clearly and fairly (instead of through distorted pictures of them internal to our own ideological group), we’re not in an echo chamber, but instead merely in a community that makes us happy. And there’s nothing wrong with that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:39:38.570Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.490063+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2xfol4is2o", "data": { "path": "/3ma2xfol4is2o", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "podcast", "politics", "philosophy" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty Podcast", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b24a8-37a6-7ee3-b6cf-a30cf67e0934", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "ReImagining Liberty Podcast Cover", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 20, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 104, "byteStart": 84 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] } ], "plaintext": "ReImagining Liberty is a philosophy and ideas podcast, hosted by Aaron Ross Powell (@aaronrosspowell.com), that explores the emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical social, political, and economic liberalism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 28, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Listen in Your Favorite App:" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 14, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/launch?showId=1614436300&platform=apple", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 24, "byteStart": 17 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/launch?showId=1614436300&platform=spotify", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 34, "byteStart": 27 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhp0N9rJk6QDJtG25tAqkQntB7YVSJCYa", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 45, "byteStart": 37 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/launch?showId=1614436300&platform=overcast", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 51, "byteStart": 48 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/public-rss/14282390?show=1591838", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | RSS" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 15, "byteStart": 1 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "[All Other Apps]" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 52, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 67, "byteStart": 52 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/c/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 68, "byteStart": 67 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And if you want to listen to episodes a week early, join my Patreon." }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignLeft" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 1, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Episodes" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/MTQ1OTg1Nzkx?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 64, "byteStart": 39 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 96, "byteStart": 64 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:brnnpb6x3pdapjeqqs275gbd", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 97, "byteStart": 96 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "096: The Irrationality of Rationalists\nwith Samantha Hancox-Li (@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 43, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m7tcs7mie22r", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 61, "byteStart": 44 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 91, "byteStart": 61 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:r75unbj372lvbim6syioaueo", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 92, "byteStart": 91 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "095: Opposition Meda versus Complicit Media\nwith Adam Gurri (@adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com) " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 34, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m6fneobpvc2w", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 52, "byteStart": 35 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 74, "byteStart": 52 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:73t3muu2pudsajp7a2fj3aly", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 95, "byteStart": 74 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 120, "byteStart": 95 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:sfjhatb4xl76ufpeoou6zemu", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 121, "byteStart": 120 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "094: A New American Reconstruction\nwith Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social) and Shikha Dalmia (@shikhadalmia.bsky.social)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 44, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY4Ng?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 66, "byteStart": 45 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 92, "byteStart": 66 }, "features": [ { "did": "did:plc:mc77l3yb3lz7q2ukjpjsoqxw", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#didMention" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 93, "byteStart": 92 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "001: How To Be a Better Advocate for Liberty\nwith Cory Massimino (@corymassimino.bsky.social)" } } ] } ] }, "coverImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "description": "The emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical liberalism. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell.", "publishedAt": "2022-03-24T00:06:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.368916+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33exkn6mc2o", "data": { "path": "/3m33exkn6mc2o", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Reign of the Competency Cosplayers", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199dde1-2f60-7559-94d4-5ac229b30b87", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 26, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 136, "byteStart": 107 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m33erawvis2l", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "American politics is a disaster and it’s due, in large part, to the fact that the people in charge have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t know anything, have little interest in learning, but are confident in their ability to fix everything. The result looks to be about what you’d expect: instead of fixing, they’re breaking, and instead of acknowledging that they broke it, they’re insisting that’s just what “fixing” looks like." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One way to frame this is that Americans—or enough Americans to win elections—reject expertise. They don’t value knowledge much anymore, and don’t feel they should be led by experts because they’ve looked around, don’t like what they see, and blame it on the experts having led us astray. The solution, at least in their minds, is to replace experts with non-experts, which can’t be any worse, right?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There’s something to that story. Americans have rejected experts. Where the story goes wrong, though, is that they haven’t rejected expertise. Instead, they’ve shifted how they assess expertise and what counts as an expert. They’re getting the assessment very wrong—we are not ruled by experts but instead now by cranks and dullards—but they still care about what they imagine to be competent experts who are instead non-experts wearing the costume and adopting the mannerisms of experts." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And that’s what’s going on with America. The country’s been taken over by competency cosplayers." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "How’d we get here?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you’re angry and feeling righteous, the last thing you want is for someone to tell you you’re mistaken about whatever’s made you mad. Doubly so if the person telling you is, you’re convinced, the kind of guy who looks down on you, sneers at you, and belongs to a cultural group you believe is to blame for most of what’s wrong around you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What happens, then, when knowledge and expertise about the topics that have provoked your anger, and that you’re emotionally invested in, is concentrated among those very people you least like? What happens when the expert consensus goes against your deeply held views, and rests primarily among people on the other side of the tribal, cultural, or partisan division?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One option is to accept that you might not agree with those guys on everything, but they do know more than you do, so maybe you should listen to them when they’re speaking from genuine expertise. Another option is to dig into the body of knowledge they possess, learn it thoroughly, and then assess, with your own newfound expertise, whether they’re correct." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But if you’re mad, and if those guys are in the out-group, neither’s terribly appealing. Becoming an expert yourself is a lot of work, and probably requires a great deal of education—and your political tribe doesn’t really value serious book learning, and certainly not the academies where it takes place, anyway. Deferring to their expertise means admitting you are wrong, and admitting they know more than you do, and that means giving them credit, and they’re the out-group." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Still, it’s nice to feel smart and in-the-know, and a good way to feel that is to have experts tell you you’re correct. If intelligent and competent people say, “Yeah, you were right all along, and those so-called experts on the other side are actually stupid, or morally corrupt, or ideologically blinded, or all three. While you are intelligent, morally worthy, and so thoroughly adept in logic and reason that ideology has no obscuring hold on you.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What you do, then, is find your own experts. People who clearly know what they’re talking about, and are definitely competent in their fields, but who won’t challenge you, and will give you expert-endorsed permission to continue believing what those other guys tell you is inaccurate." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 451, "byteStart": 441 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Except there’s a problem. How do you know these guys on your side actually are experts? How do you know they’re not snake oil salesmen taking advantage of your ignorance and motivated reasoning? To identify expertise, we’ve really only got two options. First, we can develop it ourselves, but that’s, like we said above, a lot of work. And even if you can do it in one domain, no one, not since maybe Aristotle, can be an expert in everything. So your second option is to trust the judgement of other experts and to put a thumb on the scale for expert consensus. If everyone who knows a lot about a topic believes one thing about that topic, it’s probably better, lacking expertise yourself, to go with their consensus than to assume the random heterodox thinker has it right. That’s not foolproof, of course. The consensus can be wrong, and heterodox thinkers have been proven right. But it’s a decent heuristic." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That second option is what most of us do most of the time. It’s a good bet. But, if the expert consensus is against you, which it is if you’re the sort of person we’re talking about, it’s not a satisfying bet, because it looks an awful lot like admitting error." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 314, "byteStart": 307 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 513, "byteStart": 509 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The way out of this trap is to find a critical mass of your own experts, who agree with each other—and agree with you. They don’t need to be actual experts, not in a way other actual experts would recognize. In fact, they can barely know more about the topic than you do. But they need to convincingly perform as experts in an “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV” sense. And they need to perform that “expertise” in concert with enough similarly situated performative experts that it can feel like there’s something of a consensus on their, and your, side." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 39, "byteStart": 29 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "They need the appearance of competence, too: They’ve found success in applying the things you believe to be true, and their success in applying them reflects in a flattering way on you. It’s not just that the guy on TV knows a lot about, say, business, and that what he’s saying about business maps on to what you believe about business yourself. It’s that he’s achieved something in business—he’s demonstrated a degree of competence—and this shows that if you were to enter into business, you’d have similar accomplishments. It’s success by proxy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter if his success is real. In fact, it’s unlikely to be, because he’s saying the things you believe, and you’re not an expert, and the real experts disagree with you. And, generally speaking, success, while it has a degree of luck, also demands expertise. If he were a real expert, he’d disagree with you, because the consensus among real experts is that you’re wrong." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus the “success” in success by proxy can only really be a simulacrum of success, one given form and believability not through real world achievements that would show genuine expertise, but instead through a constructed narrative about that “expert” put together by the lore-builders of your preferred media and information ecosystem. Further, it’s not just that this person seems to “know” things. Book learning’s not that important. What matters is that they appear clever in applying their knowledge, that they do things. That they have accomplishments that are the result of their expertise. They’re rich. They’re famous. It doesn’t matter how they got rich or famous, just that they are. Or that the lore of your media ecosystem tells you they are. They have, in your mind, competence. And you know this because so many people who believe the same things you do keep telling you they have competence. It’s not just that this person isn’t a doctor but plays one on TV, it’s that the TV is telling you the medical drama he appears in is actually a documentary." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I call these people competency cosplayers. They’ve taken over the commanding heights of politics. They’ll keep breaking things, because their competency is pretend. They’re performing a role for people who want to see people like themselves in those roles. Or, if not like themselves, because they know they’re not rich and they know they’re not experts in this stuff, people who like them. People on their team, in their tribe, and opposed by the guys on the other side in that consensus that is so unbearable, or stuffy, or snooty, and keeps saying you don’t know anything and should listen to those who do." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "They want to play a character, and you want to believe they are that character, and everyone playing or wanting to believe is in a media bubble telling them all these guys are legit, and everyone who’s not these guys is a fraud or corrupt. All this is understandable, because if the people you don’t like are telling you you’re wrong, you don’t want to believe them, because that means the people you don’t like are right. But when the people you do believe take the reins of power, all the imagination and fancy costumes your tribe can bring to bear won’t paper over the fact that these guys aren’t competent, and they aren’t experts. They’re just cosplaying." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "American politics suffers from a lack of genuine expertise, as leaders prioritize performative competence and tribal loyalty over actual knowledge and skill.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T14:03:23.709Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.443154+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2z52lampk2z", "data": { "path": "/3m2z52lampk2z", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "ethics", "liberalism", "buddhism" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d947-5afc-755e-8aa3-5a4d8d0b7465", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 16, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One way to defend liberal institutions is to argue that they are value neutral. Thus a liberal government protects the persons and property of its citizens, but doesn’t coerce them into a particular conception of the good life. Under a liberal regime, you can be a teetotaler or a lush, a Christian or a Muslim, a hedonist or an ascetic. Thus liberalism is desirable, in part, because it supports robust pluralism. We needn’t fight with one another about how to live, because some narrow range of society’s diverse preferences won’t be codified into law." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And while any attempt to move the political regime of a liberal society away from that core commitment to law’s value neutrality should be fought tooth and nail, it’s not the case that legal neutrality doesn’t have the effect of making some values and preferences more likely to find success in the resulting society. How our individual values and preferences interact with diverse people—and their diverse values and preferences—can impact how happy we’ll be, and how much of our lives are spent enjoying a liberal society versus resenting it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Because most of us want to be happy—we want ours to be lives of flourishing—the fact that some values and beliefs are more conducive to that than others within a liberal society means that political liberalism, in the value-neutral sense, nonetheless rewards, and so encourages, certain traits of character. Fortunately, the very traits that liberalism rewards are those that make political liberalism more robust—and the traits that make liberalism more robust are those of admirable people more likely to lead ethical and flourishing lives. Thus, unless it’s short circuited by political intervention or toxic ideologies, liberalism constructs a positive feedback loop, where good people are more likely to be liberal people, and liberal people are more likely to be good people." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 266, "byteStart": 237 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SublimeAttitudes/Section0003.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 775, "byteStart": 718 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel170.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Many traits fall into what I call these “liberal virtues,” but here I want to focus on goodwill and sympathetic joy. I’m using these terms in an Eastern philosophy sense, specifically Buddhist philosophy. Goodwill, as the scholar Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu puts it, is “a wish for true happiness, both for yourself and for others. Because the highest level of true happiness comes from within, your true happiness need not conflict with that of anyone else. Thus goodwill can be extended to all beings without contradiction or hypocrisy.” Within that, then, sympathetic joy is simply “what grows out of goodwill when you see happiness: You want that happiness to continue.” Another way to think about it is “finding joy in the happiness and success of others.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We need to be careful not to confuse goodwill or sympathetic joy with “loving everyone” or “never being critical of another’s behavior.” Even if either were possible, neither would be desirable, or even rational. We can’t love everyone the way we love our family and friends, but we can wish that everyone find happiness, even if we personally want nothing to do with them. Goodwill and sympathetic joy can be universal in a way that love cannot." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "“Happiness” in “finding joy in the happiness and success of others” speaks to happiness from their perspective, not necessarily our own. It is subjective and pluralistic. What makes me happy isn’t necessarily what would make you happy, but we can both recognize that each other’s happiness is genuine. This can be true even if what makes another happy we find personally distasteful. (A critical point, for example, in the anti-transgender moral panic on the right.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 236, "byteStart": 228 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://c4ss.org/content/52400?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“Success” is likewise a personal measure. Our culture tends to define success by our bank balance, fame, or, among adherents of Ayn Rand, our productivity. (For a debunking of why the last is a faulty metric for happiness, go here.) But holding success to those narrow confines is obviously incorrect. Rather, we should think of success as, roughly, having the life you want, or having the life that makes you happy. If that’s being a titan of industry, so be it. But the monk living in the woods and never earning a dime, or the “underemployed” person making enough to afford a simple lifestyle they find contentment with, is equally successful." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, we can be mistaken about our own happiness, or believe we’re successful when we’re not, because we can be making choices that are harmful or that we’ll later profoundly regret. But our default should be to trust people’s subjective judgment, because they know more about their own goals and satisfaction than we do. And we should be very careful about elevating our personal preferences to universal truths about human flourishing. It can certainly be the case that what a person takes to make them happy is, in fact, actually harmful, even violently so, to others." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 155, "byteStart": 119 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/SublimeAttitudes/Section0003.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Buddhist philosophy is clear that happiness can only come about through skillful intentions, meaning not motivated by “ill will, cruelty, resentment.” Knowing with certainty where to draw that line when it comes to another’s subjective happiness—or “happiness”—is impossible. But that it’s impossible doesn’t mean we need to give up on the distinction, or let ourselves fall into the trap of thinking only that which aligns with our own subjective conceptions of happiness is true and worthy. A liberal society is inevitably messy, but messiness is not nihilism. And cultivating traits of goodwill and sympathetic joy will make us better able to recognize genuinely unskillful intentions, while cultivating or giving into ill-will and resentment will make us far less likely to recognize and appreciate others’ skillful happiness." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is, in fact, one path to illiberalism. It comes from failing to recognize happiness and success in alternative ways of living, and so insisting both must conform to a narrow range. From there, the illiberal concludes that the problem with freedom is it enables and encourages people to pursue success and happiness outside of “traditional” ways. Illiberals see any happiness and success that doesn’t align with their preferences as false, inauthentic, mistaken or corrupt. Thus, to return to the prior example, transgender people aren’t actually happy in their gender identity, but are instead mentally ill and secretly miserable. Illiberals on the left can make a similar move, assuming that people who freely choose “traditionally” conservative lifestyles, or hold to restrictive religious faiths or opt to raise children instead of seeking careers, aren’t genuinely happy and aren’t meaningfully successful." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Goodwill and sympathetic joy are clearly virtues. A person who isn’t resentful of others’ happiness has a better character than a person who is. And a person who in fact finds joy in others’ happiness takes that good character a step further. We admire (or should admire) such large-hearted people, and strive to cultivate this feeling in ourselves." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But what does this have to do with liberalism?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A society permeated more thoroughly with the virtues of goodwill and sympathetic joy is likely to better maintain political liberalism than one grounded in mere toleration. Illiberalism comes about in part because people have reached a limit of how much difference they’ll tolerate, and they turn against liberty, and toward the state, to put a stop to lifestyle choices they dislike. If illiberalism takes strength from intolerance, then cultivating virtues that go beyond tolerance into sympathetic joy strengthens liberalism’s defenses. And if we’ve come to view the happiness of others as a key component of our own happiness, then restricting their freedom to pursue success as they define it will be seen as not only making them worse off, but ourselves as well. It’ll cause us pain, not give us joy, to do so." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 234, "byteStart": 204 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2022/02/04/liberty-upsets-patternsand-conservatism/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 605, "byteStart": 597 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Essence_of_Buddhism/npRVBAAAQBAJ?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Virtues are cultivated, and the environment we’re in can make it easier or harder to do so. The good news is that in a liberal society, there is an inherent incentive to develop these liberal virtues. Liberalism necessarily entails that we will be surrounded by people different from us, pursuing success in ways not our own, and finding happiness in places we don’t. Living in a liberal society will be quite miserable if we constantly resent different kinds of happiness and self-expression and harbor ill-will for those experiencing and embracing them. As Tibetan scholar Traleg Kyabgon puts it, “Feelings such as resentment and bitterness gradually make us weak, frustrated, and unhappy, rather than having any impact on the person toward whom we direct these emotions.” On the other hand, living in a liberal society will become not just tolerable, but a genuine delight, if we possess the virtue of sympathetic joy. Thus as liberal citizens, these virtues are a means to great life satisfaction, which we all should want and strive for." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This feedback loop, far from being value neutral, is one of liberalism’s great strengths. But to take advantage of it, we need to recognize it, and push back against the illiberal desire to resent happiness in difference and diversity. We should avoid the ideology of hang-ups, have little respect for religions that ask us to become worse people and accept tolerance as only a second-best alternative to a fuller internalizing of liberal virtues." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T16:36:35.598Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.412201+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6d4qckwcc27", "data": { "path": "/3m6d4qckwcc27", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "David Boaz: Liberty's North Star", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019ab257-b5af-7dd1-91d4-6c2e27dd5860", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreibo2hp66plyruynrom2gkbmtkhmwqgpjddqs6z63mngo6lhuktpey" }, "size": 223306, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1200, "height": 675 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published June 1, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 142, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, passed away on June 7th. I wrote this tribute to him while he was in home hospice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 31, "byteStart": 21 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "My friend and mentor David Boaz is dying. I hope you’ll indulge me in some thoughts on why David matters to me—and also why he should matter to you. Tributes like these typically get published after their subject has died, but I wanted to say this before, because, for however brief a time still, we all share the world with a good man." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "David’s legacy is the Cato Institute, where he served for four decades as its executive vice president, a title that doesn’t fully capture his influence. David was the north star of Cato, the maintainer of its principles, its guide, and oracle, and fiercest editor. Those of us who care about making the world better by making it more free have David as our role model and inspiration." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 133, "byteStart": 109 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 210, "byteStart": 190 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://amzn.to/4bLQIAl?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 296, "byteStart": 290 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I owe him my career. The first book about libertarianism I read, while I was still an undergraduate, was his Libertarianism: A Primer. (The book was later republished in a second edition as The Libertarian Mind, and it remains the best one-volume introduction to libertarianism.) David’s Primer convinced me. Not only of the fundamental morality and justice of a political system aimed at maximizing the liberty of all to author their own lives and live in peace with others doing the same, but also that I wanted to dedicate my life to helping realize that world. Through college and then law school, that was the dream. And the dream on top of that dream was to work at the Cato Institute, because that’s where David worked, and it was the organization dedicated to putting into practice the ideas he set out and defended in his primer." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 667, "byteStart": 663 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So as law school wound down, and we all figured out what we wanted to do next, I already knew. I just had to somehow make it happen. I’d refresh the Cato jobs page, looking for something I might be a fit for. But I was a fit for none of it, because, even though I did very well in my Constitutional law class (and very poorly in my contracts class), I didn’t have anything like the skills it took to work at a think tank. I’d interned a bit, but my knowledge of the actual details of public policy was quite far from an expert’s. I’d thought a lot about political philosophy, but unless you’re heading into academia, no one’s going to pay you to do that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 154, "byteStart": 145 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 708, "byteStart": 699 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But then, a month or two before graduation, when I’d resigned myself to becoming an attorney, I spotted a job at Cato that I at least wasn’t obviously unqualified for. It was called “Staff Writer,” and all I could really gather about it was that you wrote some publications about what Cato’s scholars were doing. I was a pretty good writer, and a pretty good synthesizer, and so I applied. And got invited for an interview—with two complications. First, I had to write a report on a Cato event as a test. Second, the job wasn’t just in the same building as David, but reporting directly to him. That meant the very first time I’d meet my intellectual hero was in an interview. I was terrified." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 196, "byteStart": 183 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So I cheated. I shouldn’t admit as much, but I came clean to David long ago. I got help on the writing test, from my college friend, and then future Cato colleague, and then future Free Thoughts podcast co-host, Trevor Burrus. And Trevor’s dad. Who was himself an attorney and a skilled editor of legal writing. Between the three of us, I aced it, and the interview was confirmed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 340, "byteStart": 319 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I flew from Denver to DC for just a day. They parked me in a hotel room across the street from the Cato building, and I scanned it from my window, thinking maybe I could see the office that was his. Then I was in in the lobby, and then the elevator up to the sixth floor, and then sitting in the reception area outside David Boaz’s office, and I was positive I’d blow it, because my intellectual hero was on the other side of that door, and somehow I had to convince him I was good enough to work for him." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 262, "byteStart": 255 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 479, "byteStart": 468 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 773, "byteStart": 768 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 834, "byteStart": 824 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 854, "byteStart": 843 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The way David interviews you isn’t “Tell me about a time you were challenged and how you overcame it” or “Tell me about a time you failed, and how you responded.” It’s “You think you know about this libertarianism stuff, now prove it.” He grilled me. It was a minute of pleasantries and then question after question probing the most difficult points in libertarian theory and practice. And the whole time I’m thinking, “That’s David Boaz. He’s right there.” (As I write this fifteen years to the day after I first walked into Cato with David as my boss, and now with him upstairs on his deathbed—and over the last few days, when I walk into that bedroom to help him with something, or to just check with the hospice aid while he sleeps—I still think, and marvel at my good fortune, “That’s David Boaz. He’s right there.”)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 213, "byteStart": 205 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 474, "byteStart": 461 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "As the interview went on, the relentless exchange of questions and then answers he’d smile skeptically in response to, I knew it had to be coming: he’d ask me about foreign policy, and I didn’t know anything about foreign policy. When it arrived—something about the Iraq War, which David had opposed—I felt my inexpertise, and groped for anything that might make me sound reasonably competent. What I came up with was a paraphrase of an exchange from The West Wing, and while I’m now sure David knew that’s where I got it, he graciously didn’t tell me so at the time." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And somehow he was satisfied. He asked me to sit outside his office again, and then came out and offered me the job. My new desk was that cube right outside his door. Further, I wasn’t just reporting to him, but as staff writer, I was David’s right-hand man and primary conversation partner during working hours." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 382, "byteStart": 371 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "David became what he became, and built the organization he built, because he feels the moral weight of freedom’s call—not just for himself, because everyone wants freedom for themselves, but for everyone. His tireless advocacy for gay rights, long before such a thing was popular in Washington, and his early calls to end the war on drugs, speak to what made David a libertarian, and not a Republican masquerading as one. Freedom isn’t just lower taxes. It’s liberation and emancipation for those most ground down by its lack, and those so marginalized that they don’t have any power to stand up to the state, or to the oppressive social hierarchies that give it marching orders." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But David also became what he became, and built the organization that he built, because he loves this stuff. He can’t get enough of ideas, their conflicts, and their evolution. He and I would talk for hours, floating propositions, probing distinctions, and poking holes. The point, for David, was exploration and learning. Winning mattered to him, of course. He’s dedicated his life to seeing one set of ideas (political, economic, and social liberty) win out over their opposites. And he was the most skilled debater I’ve ever seen in action. Yet David knew—and appreciated at a deeper level than almost anyone—that progress is a conversation. It’s persuasion, not force. It’s mutual exchange, not dominating pronouncements." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It was in these conversations that David moved from a boss to mentor to cherished friend. Everyone at Cato was a little scared of David, even while they also loved him, because we knew not just that Cato existed in his image, but because he set the standards higher than anyone else, and knew all of us were capable of meeting them. (He could also spot a typo with superhuman perception.) But as staff writer, those lucky few of us who held the role over the years came to understand David as a deeply humble and humane man. In retrospect, it is obvious he’d be that way, because you don’t fight to give everyone, everywhere the opportunity for self-authorship and equal dignity if you don’t care, profoundly, about humanity." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "David taught me to be a better advocate for the ideas that matter so much to both of us. And he gave me the career that has been so much better than I ever could’ve imagined. But he also made me a better man through our friendship, and conversations, and his example of taking one’s principles seriously." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "At a time when so many in his movement have turned away from or softened their commitment to those principles—out of expediency or cowardice, or for money or to better cozy up to politicians, or because that commitment to principle was mainly rhetorical in the first place—David held firm. It would’ve been impossible for him to do otherwise. David just is principle. If our being can have a fundamental nature, that’s his." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "They say not to meet your heroes because they’ll disappoint you. Mine didn’t." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "The legacy of my boss, mentor, and friend.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-23T20:13:03.221Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.481776+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgxr2w2k2y", "data": { "path": "/3m2fgxr2w2k2y", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Hate Can Be Mainstream", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f4-1631-7dd3-8715-87892025860a", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 23, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 29, "byteStart": 17 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://adflegal.org/setting-the-record-straight?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 127, "byteStart": 81 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.splcenter.org/news/2020/04/10/why-alliance-defending-freedom-hate-group?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I’m struck by this defense the Alliance Defending Freedom published against accusations by the Southern Poverty Law Center that it is a hate organization. Struck not by the merits of the SPLC’s case (the organization does have a history of being over-broad in its application of the “hate” label), or the veracity of the ADF’s denial, but instead by one of the moves the ADF makes, namely by pointing to just how many people share its views." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Under the heading, “SPLC’s conception of ‘hate’ includes broad swaths of mainstream, conservative America,” the ADF writes," } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The so-called “radical right” and “anti-LGBT organizations” SPLC has identified include many beloved, respected, and mainstream conservative and religious organizations and individuals, such as Ben Carson, Heritage Foundation, Dennis Prager, PragerU, The Federalist Society, Franklin Graham, Catholic Medical Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, Heritage Action, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Liberty Counsel, Pacific Justice Institute, The Leadership Institute, First Liberty Institute, Ruth Institute, European Center for Law and Justice, Alaska Family Council, Florida Family Policy Council, Texas Values, and Homeschool Legal Defense Association, to name just a few." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The “lots of people believe as I do, therefore I’m not morally wrong” claim has a long history, and it’s easy to understand why. Few of us think of ourselves as bigots. Few of us want others to label us bigots. If our views are commensurate with the crowd, we’re provided both anonymity (we’re less likely to be singled out for censure) and cover (it’s easier to censure a single person than it is half the population). Beyond that, however, there’s a sense of “the majority is right” that’s baked into our democratic culture. The basic principle of a democratic system is that “the people” decide, and that “the people” just is whichever group has the most votes. This bleeds into our thinking outside of strictly setting the agenda for government, such that it’s easy to convince ourselves that the social values held by the majority are correct and good—or at least not radically incorrect and hateful." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Hence the ADF’s list. If mainstream conservatives, prominent conservative figures, major conservative organizations, and popular conservative YouTube channels are anti-LGBT, then it’s simply unreasonable to label their brand of anti-LGBT as hate or bigotry. Strength in numbers is evidence of virtuous beliefs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 293, "byteStart": 231 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And yet even the most superficial knowledge of this country’s history will recognize that it is overflowing with examples of majorities holding objectively hateful views. To take just one example, until the middle of the 1990s, the majority of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage. In 1958, which is well within the lifetimes of many still living, only 4% approved. It’s impossible to argue that disapproval of interracial marriage was motivated by anything other than bigotry." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It is equally obvious that many, if not most, anti-LGBT beliefs fall within the category of bigotry as well, and future generations will clearly look back on those beliefs with the same condemnation as our current generation looks back on anti-miscegenation. Further, this is true no matter how many Family Research Counsels, Heritage Actions, or PragerUs presently insist otherwise." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We also need to be very careful about treating wrongful beliefs and values differently, or with kid gloves, because they happen to be grounded in a given religious faith. In fact, the health of a liberal society depends up treating all beliefs equally, and being equally willing to critique and criticize them. Walling off some social values merely because they draw upon a particular category of metaphysical priors is as unjust and irrational as doing the opposite in subjecting them to special scrutiny and condemnation. Religious beliefs shouldn’t suffer unique social opprobrium, nor should they merit unique social immunity. Believers should not be punished for being believers, but they also shouldn’t be free from criticism if their harmful and hateful values and actions flow from their religious beliefs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Majorities aren’t made right and just because they are majorities. The history of social progress is, in fact, the history of majorities being proven wrong, of widely held values getting replaced by better, but initially less widely held, ones. Just because all your neighbors are against something doesn’t mean they’re correct, and it doesn’t mean they’re not motivated by bigotry. (Though it also isn’t prima facie evidence that they are.) We should evaluate beliefs themselves, holding them to high moral standards, and not shy away from calling them out just because they’re popular, or just because they’re grounded in religious faith." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "History will judge these views, but we also have an obligation, in the name of morality and justice, to judge them ourselves today." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Bigotry is bigotry, even if the bigots are in the majority.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-04T20:40:43.690Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.257015+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "data": { "path": "/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Necessary Virtue of Not Being an Asshole", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d9e3-1ff5-7dd4-b263-4d336777da64", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published March 27, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I used to work with a guy who would throw temper tantrums in meetings. This happened often, because he found even minor challenges to his opinions enraging—and found controlling his rage so it wouldn’t lead to a tantrum impossible. He’d shout, stamp his feet, storm out of the room, and slam the door behind him." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The thing is, he also told himself—and definitely told the rest of us—that he was principled and moral. “Principle and morality” were primary features of his self-identity." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "He’s who came to mind when a friend recently commented that, “Having moral ideals is not an excuse to be an asshole in your day to day life.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreidnvbrlmxga36z4mdb6jvdd4ncw2m4v27b7aqw55rmokhxy4ixabm", "uri": "at://did:plc:uw22lvztu4mogfaoatagswrw/app.bsky.feed.post/3llcop5kn4c2a" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What struck me about this statement, stated so simply, was not a well-yes-obviously, but precisely the opposite. The fact that the statement needs to be made at all—that there are people who either reject or are ignorant of its truth (and there are a lot of them)—speaks to a deep and tragically common misunderstanding of “principle and morality.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Principles as the Universal Asshole Excuse" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 252, "byteStart": 200 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.abc.net.au/religion/slavoj-zizek-if-there-is-a-god-then-anything-is-permitted/10100616", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 575, "byteStart": 558 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 626, "byteStart": 623 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The first is the way that people in fact do use “having principles” as an excuse or justification for being an asshole. Here I’m reminded of a terrific essay by Slavoj Žižek on the idea that “If there is a God, then anything is permitted.” Zizek’s point isn’t really a theological one, but instead about precisely the way we use transcendently weighty signifiers (God, principle) as pretexts to override less weighty ones (the interests of others, for example) while at the same time those weighty signifiers are sufficiently ambiguous in what they signify that we can employ them to justify or excuse any behavior we aim at." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 331, "byteStart": 315 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In the context of principled assholes, what happens is the claim to principle lets them set aside the effect their predilection to asshole behavior has on those around them. The principle lets them discount the needs, interests, and comfort of others, because what are needs, interests, and comfort in the face of principle itself? For if principles necessarily erode in the face of causing offense, would they be principles at all? No, clearly not. If you say you have a principled commitment to free speech, but backtrack on that whenever anyone criticizes you, you didn’t have a principle in the first place, but rather a habitual rhetorical flourish." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And yet. The fact that principle must sometimes trump doesn’t mean that pointing to principle is a universal—or universally valid—trump card. Sometimes you’re just being an asshole. And sometimes (often or almost always) your asshole-ness does nothing to ensure the principledness of your principle. It’s instead unnecessary and entirely unrelated bad behavior." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Not Being an Asshole is a Virtue" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But we can spin out some other lessons from “Having moral ideals is not an excuse to be an asshole in your day to day life.” If the above is about principles not justifying poor behavior, it’s also true that treating other people well—the opposite of being an asshole—is itself a virtue, regardless of the role principle plays. Put more strongly, committing yourself to not being an asshole is a worthy principle in and of itself." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There are close to zero situations where acting poorly towards others makes the situation better or helps to achieve laudable ends. “I’m going to treat my subordinates like crap and it’ll result in more innovation and productivity” isn’t true, but treating your subordinates like crap does produce a toxic environment that makes the most innovative and productive, who are the most able to leave for less toxic pastures, look to do so. Thus you should aim to avoid being an asshole not only because being an asshole is an unethical way to behave, but because if you actually do have principles and moral ends, you’ll better achieve them by acting appropriately. If your principles tell you otherwise—if they tell you instead that being an asshole is worthwhile, justified, or necessary—then your principles are wrong and you ought to change them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Not Being an Asshole is a Necessary Virtue" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We can go further. Being an asshole isn’t justified. And not being an asshole is a virtue. But it’s also a necessary virtue. By “necessary,” I mean that, without it, you can’t be virtuous, period." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 149, "byteStart": 127 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "“Being a moral person” isn’t a pick-and-choose process of adhering to a set of distinct rules. Rather, it’s about the kind of person you are. It’s holistic. You can’t say, “I’m moral, except for here,” because that “except” means you’re not moral in any broad sense. “He’s a good person, but he’s mean to waitresses” is incoherent. He’s not a good person." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Further, morality is a holistic ethic grounded in your perspective on your relationship to others. Morality is about how we interact with the people we share the world with. And how we interact with them is governed by how we see them. Are they equal to ourselves in dignity and owed respect? Or are they lesser? Are they worthy of moral concern or not?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be an asshole is to answer “not.” It is to operate from a perspective of hierarchy, with yourself above others, and with others as your subordinates in dignity. It is to live as if your interests, merely by being your interests, justify overlooking the effects of your actions on others. It is to believe that merely enjoying being an asshole, or feeling like exercising the will to not be an asshole is just too inconvenient, is good enough reason to be an asshole." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And what that says about you is that your principles can only ever be self-serving. Because if you had regard for others, you wouldn’t treat them the way you do. To be an asshole, then, is to demonstrate the impossibility of your holding principles, in any meaningful sense, at all. They’re just, again, rhetorical flourishes enabling you to act as you want, even though what you want is corrupt." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In other words, don’t be an asshole." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T19:53:08.228Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.481835+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2c7kzdrk2p", "data": { "path": "/3ma2c7kzdrk2p", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "movies" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Spending Time with Spinal Tap (Again)", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b2355-2090-7334-9b53-ba84cc9da991", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreia6zeyw3p3vi7sxxlojfi6mtvy3qqkpfhekiawr2c4fphjwwz5szu" }, "size": 606350, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 820, "height": 461 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published September 22, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 155, "byteStart": 136 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 287, "byteStart": 280 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 429, "byteStart": 411 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 454, "byteStart": 447 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I was thinking about which person I’ve never met has brought me the most joy, and it’s probably Christopher Guest. This starts with Waiting for Guffman, a movie my dad showed me because Guest’s character, Corky St. Clair, was, in mannerisms, the spitting image of my uncle. Guffman is my favorite comedy, and my most often quoted. But the whole Guest mockumentary cinematic universe just delights me, and This is Spinal Tap sits just behind Guffman among them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 54, "byteStart": 42 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 209, "byteStart": 197 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Which means I’m the target audience for Spinal Tap 2, which came out early this month and is already disappearing from theaters because basically no one went to see it. That makes me sad because Spinal Tap 2, which I saw with my kids yesterday, made me happy. And I don’t mean I enjoyed it, or that I laughed during it, though both are true. I mean that, while watching it, I felt genuinely happy. David, Nigel, Derek, and Marty are such wonderful and authentic characters that spending time with them again was like visiting old friends." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 155, "byteStart": 143 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 227, "byteStart": 211 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://thecave.social/notes/acopz2pcpujm00ai", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That said, I understand why the critics were lukewarm towards the movie, but their lukewarmness is, I’d argue, the result of not approaching Spinal Tap 2 the way it intends to be approached. An online friend, in reviewing it, wrote, “It feels more like reunion bonus content for the original than a proper movie in its own right, but that's okay.” It is okay. In fact, it’s probably the only right way to handle a Spinal Tap reunion, given the distance between the last film and this one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 51, "byteStart": 39 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 259, "byteStart": 241 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 406, "byteStart": 393 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 451, "byteStart": 439 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There’s an earned self-indulgence to Spinal Tap 2. Three of the four members of its creative core—Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Rob Reiner—are in the 70s. Harry Shearer is 81. All four have had wildly successful careers since This is Spinal Tap debuted in 1984. The characters they created went from making fun of rock and roll culture to becoming a central part of it, the way The Godfather shaped the Mafia. The cameos in Spinal Tap 2, and they’re very famous cameos from musicians who are themselves part of rock’s pantheon, have an air of giddiness about getting to hang out with the guys from Spinal Tap." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 677, "byteStart": 618 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#underline" }, { "uri": "https://deadline.com/2020/09/this-is-spinal-tap-settlement-reached-on-court-battle-over-rights-and-income-1234580120/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But it’s less a movie than the first one, and more a hangout session. Most of the movie takes place in a single location, an Airbnb in New Orleans where the band practices before their one-night reunion concert. Gone are the set pieces of the first, replaced by visits from friends. And that’s what this movie is, and why I think it works even when so many critics say it doesn’t. Given their ages, there’s no second career for the band to tell the story of. Really nowhere new and exciting to go. It’s not really a sequel. That’s not the point. The point is that, somehow (and that somehow has to do with lawsuits and finally winning back the rights to their movie), David and Nigel and Derek and Marty get to have a reunion and another show and an opportunity to catch up. And we, as fans, as people who love these characters, get the same. It’s an indulgence, and it’s for the fans, and it’s for the characters, and that’s enough." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Because the result is warm, and comforting, and nostalgic. And funny. It doesn’t stand alone, because it’s not intended to. It’s a coda. And if it’s the last mockumentary Christopher Guest gives me, it’s a fitting end. I can’t believe it actually happened, and I love that it did." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-12-15T18:47:29.717Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.670577+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mar6gv4ckc2t", "data": { "path": "/3mar6gv4ckc2t", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "movies" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "My Favorite Movie of 2025", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b522c-89d0-799d-9df0-691cd740613d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 66, "byteStart": 52 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 132, "byteStart": 77 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-unpopulist-staffs-2025-holiday", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 262, "byteStart": 249 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 276, "byteStart": 262 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 281, "byteStart": 276 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/subscribe", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Keeping with holiday tradition, my friends and I at The UnPopulist published our roundup of staff picks and holiday recommendations. I share the masthead with a lot of exceptionally smart people, so I encourage you to check it out. (And, of course, subscribe to The UnPopulist, too, if you haven't already. It's free, and routinely publishes the best writing out there keeping tabs on rising fascism and authoritarianism in the US and around the world.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "My pick is quite short, so here it is. This year, there really wasn't any competition in my mind. Of all the media I read, watched, or listened to, this movie stood out easily." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I wish the circumstances were better around this recommendation. Recent events have made it sad. Still, it was my favorite movie of 2025, and also the piece of media that brought me the most joy this year, and so I’ll emphasize that instead of the sadness." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 31, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues is a gift. Yes, it got lukewarm reviews. Yes, it isn’t as funny as the original. Yes, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, necessary. But for those of us who love that original, every watching of Rob Reiner’s 1984 film is like hanging out. Hanging out with morons, but lovable morons. Exasperating friends. Everything about it, every moment, is authentic. They are, after all, a real band. Nigel, David, and Derek work their way into the life of the true fan. Marty, too." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And so the sequel. Unexpected, yes. But sitting in the theater, introducing my children to these characters, the sequel felt earned. They’re all old. They’re not what they used to be. But the impact they’ve had, both in character and out, is undeniable. You can see it in how giddy the cameos of legends are. Paul McCartney and Elton John don’t just walk into a scene and walk out. They stick around. They are over the moon, it’s clear, to hang out, like us in the audience, with Spinal Tap. And Spinal Tap, even with the drama between them, are old friends. Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer are old friends. They earned a reunion. I’m deeply grateful for the joy they brought me, especially in an otherwise dismal year." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Goodbye, Marty. And thank you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 36, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-unpopulist-staffs-2025-holiday", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 50, "byteStart": 36 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-unpopulist-staffs-2025-holiday", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 56, "byteStart": 50 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-unpopulist-staffs-2025-holiday", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Read the rest from my colleagues at The UnPopulist here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreib474pe6rlocepja7ocka4ku6gjjvvjkgwv6necvilrnkgniogqta", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3mar6gzs2k22t", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreictnvnoj5azaooxyk7tdueknabfexvj6r53sfq2u7dp65h7ld5miq", "rev": "3mar6gzvgzv2v" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "It's not the year's best movie, but Spinal Tap 2 brought me the most joy.", "publishedAt": "2025-12-24T21:11:14.197Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.88667+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbnk7jek26", "data": { "path": "/3m2xbnk7jek26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "cancel culture", "ethics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable.", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199a7a2-cd2d-722d-a6cd-73ac85194e69", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published May 3, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The high drama on Twitter right now is, as always, about status. Namely, it used to be that if you were a public figure, loosely defined, you could get a blue check that would indicate to other Twitter users that you were, in fact, you. This was a sensible move on the part of Twitter as an organization, because the appeal to many users of the platform, the great deal of whom rarely or never posted, was following names they recognized. And for that to work, they had to be sure that named account was actually the person it claimed to be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But it also led to an emergent social strata. Having a blue check didn’t just signal that you weren’t an impersonator, it also signaled that you were a somebody, recognized enough to potentially have people impersonating you. The blue checks were the elite, and gaining entry to their ranks a literal badge of status." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Things didn’t need to be this way, of course. Twitter could’ve scaled up its verification operation to let anyone get a blue check if they could prove their identity. Online banks already do this, and plenty of startups offer identity verification as a service. But Twitter didn’t do that, and the resulting bifurcation of its users ended up, as so many minor things do, a flashpoint in the culture wars. For a certain subculture, primarily on the far-right—who hate the people they take to be the elites, because those people control cultural institutions that, it’s argued, exclude, marginalize, or shun this subculture—blue checks were a sign of what’s wrong with America, in need of prestige stripping by a populist movement of, for lack of a better term, the un-woke." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When Elon Musk took over the platform, not just as its new owner but as an avatar of these disaffected (mostly) men of the cultural right, the subcultural fever dream became that he would undertake that prestige stripping from the commanding heights of Twitter itself. The marginalized and shunned would become the privileged and respected. And the ham-handed mechanism by which this status reordering was to take effect would be making blue checks something you could just purchase. Eight bucks a month would get you one, and with that badge you’d be one of the elite, too. All those eggheads, effete cultural influencers, soy boys, mainstream media personalities, and other darlings of society’s liberal institutions would have no choice but to take you seriously. Because you were one of them, not in the sense of gaining respect from liberal institutions, but in the sense of compelling, through your monthly fee and the blessing of Elon Musk, those institutions to respect you against their will." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That’s how it was supposed to go in theory. In practice, what everyone who wasn’t lost in the miasma swamps of the right-wing bubbled ecosystem knew would happen in fact happened: Whatever social status—and social respect—a blue check brought dropped to zero. Below zero, it turned out, because buying a blue check became a sign of membership in, or association with, online cultures most people want nothing to do with. And then Musk tweaked the algorithm to make those new blue checks unavoidable, filling the For You tab with them, and elevating their replies above everyone who refused to send him eight bucks a month. Having a blue check became, in a matter of days, prima facie evidence that the account was someone you’d rather not hear from, and so should probably just block." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Watching all of this inevitably play out the way it played out speaks to a basic misunderstanding by many—but certainly not all—of those who, looking to culture more broadly than just Twitter, raise concerns about the spread of “cancel culture.” To be “canceled” is to be excluded, deplatformed, disassociated from, or otherwise socially punished. But why someone suffers that fate matters. The assumption, by people who see cancel culture as a new and grave threat, is that canceling typically attaches to holding opinions, mainly political opinions, that are outside the Overton Window of elite, largely left, consensus. But because there’s nothing inherently wrong with views that don’t align with the consensus, such canceling is unjust. It’s unfair." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Unjust and unfair canceling does happen, of course. There are people occupying the commanding heights of cultural and intellectual institutions who, lacking any humility in their own opinions, wrongly seek to exclude and punish the expression of any views not in alignment. The worst forms of this take the mere airing of disagreement or alternative perspectives as harmful, as rising to the level of a (definitionally weird) kind of violence. We can find stories of people unjustly “canceled”—I personally know people who’ve suffered this fate—and we shouldn’t dismiss those, or let the perpetrators off the hook simply because they are acting out of a commitment to values we might share. Freedom of expression is critical for a well-functioning, liberal society, and those who would do away with it in the name of intellectual conformity deserve criticism or condemnation." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But freedom of association matters, too. And this is where we get to the misunderstanding many in what we might call the “Elon Musk stan” subculture get wrong about the behavior they label “canceling.” They believe that the reason those old regime blue check cultural elites block them, or jump to platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon where they aren’t as represented, is because of their ideas, when in actuality, it’s just that they’re thoroughly unlikeable. And people generally don’t want to interact with those they find unlikable." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Unlikability isn’t just synonym for “Has ideas I disagree with.” Instead it means, “Has personality traits and behaviors I find unpleasant or caustic.” It means, “Being around you makes me unhappy.” And it leads to dissociation. But this isn’t canceling, not in above, and not in the way so many on the cultural far-right characterize it. Incels spin out elaborate theories about ideology and feminism rather than recognizing that maybe they can’t get a date because they come off poorly, are rude, seem condescending, or otherwise behave in ways that make them unattractive. Elon stans spin out theories, though maybe less thorough ones, about how them getting blocked is because the blockers can’t handle their Reason and Logic and Truth—but the rather more mundane reality is that, as anyone with a sufficiently large Twitter following knows, reply guys are simply irritating." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I have made a career out of advancing political positions quite far outside the elite consensus Overton Window. And I’ve done it while having countless friends I deeply disagree with on these issues, and having countless more respectful and rewarding conversations with people who hold political opinions I reject. I did my undergraduate education in Boulder, Colorado, and spent a great deal of time in my philosophy, English, and political science courses defending quite radical views, and was never shut down or punished or given a bad grade because the prof thought I was wrong. Part of that was luck—I didn’t encounter many of the unjust cancellers mentioned above—but part was just that I’m not, to be blunt, an asshole." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One of the features of far-right ideologies, because of their core values of hierarchy, domination, and exclusion, is that they can be appealing to the kinds of people who possess those traits most of us find unlikable. There are jerks everywhere, of course. No political or social ideology is free of them. But the far right disproportionately attracts them. And so when people on the far right are disassociated from, while it can be about just not wanting to hear their arguments, it’s frequently just not wanting to be around people who behave like they do. Learn to interact in more socially appealing ways and, unless your political arguments are outright evil, you’ll find a lot more people willing to hang out and listen." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "People don't like jerks. But jerks think people instead can't handle their ideas.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-11T22:53:27.538Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.887051+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgzalah22y", "data": { "path": "/3m2fgzalah22y", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "No, Midjourney (and other AI) Is Not Stealing Your Work", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f4-ca46-7554-8a1b-c96d2361073e", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published March 31, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Most of the arguments against the use of AI like ChatGPT and Midjourney to create prose and images, especially for commercial use, don’t make a lot of sense. And this is understandable, because once you clear away the inconsistent claims and unexamined assertions, you’re left with two main reasons for opposition: AI will economically undercut artists and writers, and AI is creepy. We can’t dismiss either of these out of hand. It’s perfectly reasonable for artists and writers to worry that generative AI means it’ll be harder for them to earn a living. And feelings of unease about computer programs that drift ever closer to producing human-style output inevitably arouse feelings of, if nothing else, the uncanny." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But that doesn’t mean we should let bad arguments off the hook. That opponents of the commercial use of ChatGPT and, especially, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc., avoid stating their real concerns is a problem. It’s one thing to say, “I don’t think you should use Midjourney to make art for your commercial project because I think you should pay me instead.” It’s quite another to concoct transparently bad arguments as cover for that simple economic interest." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One of the least convincing is that generative AI amounts to IP theft–or, in the words of the Author’s Guild, “plagiarism.” Text and image generators work by first getting trained on a corpus of content, which in practice means going through the internet and looking at stuff. This could be the whole of Wikipedia or the depths of DeviantArt. The information then gets processed into a neural network, with assigned tags (for subject, style, and so on), and then becomes the basis of what the software generates when you ask it for an image of Donald Trump getting arrested or the answers to the bar exam." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In other words, AI image generators have looked at a lot of images, have a sense of the appearance of different things (objects, styles, tones, and so on), and then use that knowledge to make new images based on user prompts. Occasionally, this will result in perfect or near perfect copies of other art, but you have to put some effort into getting them to do that, and doing that isn’t what they’re predominantly used for. Instead, they’re used to generate new art in the style of old, or mash together styles, or create scenes that don’t exist elsewhere." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In other words, they do exactly what human artists do. Every artist has influences, and no artist is free of them. Every artist gets a sense of what different objects look like by either seeing them in the real world or seeing them in the art of others. Every artist makes images that are “original” in the sense that they aren’t perfect copies (unless it’s tracing, or a forgery), but aren’t “original” in the sense that they aren’t in large part based on what’s come before. The images and books artists and authors learn and draw inspiration from don’t get processed into a computer’s large language model, but they do become information in the artist’s brain. (Or they get saved to cloud storage for future browsing, or copied into personal mediums for practice.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus the only real difference between the way human artists go about using what’s come before and the way computers do it is that, in the case of computers, it’s a computer doing it. And maybe that matters, somehow, but it’s not clear how it could be relevant to distinguishing why human artists are “inspired” by others, but computers doing the same thing are “stealing.” One common approach to making the case that they in fact are distinct is to claim that Midjourney isn’t coming up with anything new, while human artists inject a non-synthesizable creativity into their creations. Thus the computer, because it isn’t creating anything new, is merely copying, if even in a loose sense. And copying, in the world of intellectual property, is stealing." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But this argument doesn’t work, either. Occasionally an artist comes along who creates something we declare genuinely new, but even that has influences, even that draws upon what’s come before–and, besides, this level of novelty is exceedingly rare. For most artists, what they’re doing, let’s be honest, looks an awful lot like what plenty of other artists are doing, as well. How much actual, novel creativity is there in the countless Tolkien pastiches filling shelves in the bookstore fantasy section? How much is that new police procedural a freestanding work of uniquely human creativity, and how much is it just the same thing we’ve seen countless times before? When an artist gets hired to do yet another anime inspired cover for a tabletop roleplaying game, or when he draws another picture in the house style, it’s difficult to say it’s meaningfully distinct from Midjourney doing the same. Except, again, that one is a human and one is a computer." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And maybe there actually is an important difference between the two. Maybe humans have a metaphysical essence that imbues their output with soul in a way a computer can never match. But if so, that means the real concern is about that essential nature, and not with a papered on claim to IP theft." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "The argument that AI image generators steal from artists would mean that all artists are thieves.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-04T20:41:33.508Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.428334+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4xwujd2e22k", "data": { "path": "/3m4xwujd2e22k", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Most Americans Aren’t Fascists, and That’s a Big Problem for the GOP", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 125, "byteStart": 81 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.thebulwark.com/p/groyper-war-consumes-heritage-foundation-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-ben-shapiro-kevin-roberts", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The combination of the GOP’s absolute shellacking in Tuesday’s elections and the conflagration at the Heritage Foundation around their president’s support for groyper Nick Fuentes and the growing realization internally about how many of their junior staffers are white nationalist Fuentes fans is exposing a real problem for the Republican Party: Most Americans aren’t fascists, but the Republican Party has become the ideological home of fascism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.thebulwark.com/p/groyper-war-consumes-heritage-foundation-tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-ben-shapiro-kevin-roberts", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Groyper War Consumes the Biggest Right-Wing Think Tank", "description": "Plus: Another round of nutty Trump pardons?", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreicgz5oy3reucexdms4woa5yzsbtefsxelc6dary2ilaevt4jvxnjq" }, "size": 36122, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One way to think of the extraordinary turn to the Democrats on Tuesday is that a lot of Americans didn’t really understand, back in November 2024, who Donald Trump really is, or what his party has become. They thought they were getting the part of lower inflation and a little bit less woke, and instead they got the party of high tariffs, masked thugs, and neo-Nazi youth." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For those of us who were paying attention, there’s an element of “Of course, you dummies, this was obvious for a long time!” to the present moment of realization, both on the part of the American people and GOP elites. Trump campaigned on doing everything he’s now doing, and he wasn’t coy about it. Kevin Roberts has long used fascist or fascist-adjacent rhetoric. The book he published last year (with an introduction by JD Vance) is profoundly ugly in the way it talks about anyone Roberts doesn’t like. And Roberts turns out to hate basically everyone:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreiaepcv55kjh73nr7uqgzfk6wgfki5az4s7lsor2k2amh25bxckfha", "uri": "at://did:plc:hbpefio3f5csc44msmbgioxz/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4ow2dzxqs24" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 356, "byteStart": 306 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What’s happening now, inside of the GOP, is the dawning understanding that (1) they have a serious fascist and Nazi problem and (2) the American people can’t stand them. The trouble is, for the future of the GOP, their serious fascist and Nazi problem is shockingly widespread among young Republicans, running through the bulk of their talent pipeline. To fix it, they basically need to reboot the American right as a movement, and somehow do that in a conservative social and information environment dominated by the likes of Fuentes. That’s an uphill battle." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "The GOP's Competence Gap - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreifpu5uexsfktjiznbggcfg6bepmkf5idmbwdog7kzessozvjqueuq" }, "size": 36266, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 727, "byteStart": 696 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And they’ll need to do this in a political environment that has turned decidedly against them. You’ve probably got a floor of around 30% who will support MAGA no matter what. But the remaining 70% are coming to see what MAGA is, and are swinging hard against it. Red states are gerrymandering on the assumption that the 2026 electorate, or the 2028 one, will look similar to 2024. But the turns we saw on Tuesday mean that strategy could blow up spectacularly, wiping out what once were safe red districts. Additionally, the GOP’s far-right culture war is pissing people off. When your campaign for governor, as was the case in Virginia, is built primarily around openly hating trans kids, you’re not going to win fans." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "The Anti-Anti-Trans Election - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "Running against trans people failed and America proved itself a better place than the worst among us want it to be.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreid4yoguqaevfq6lyyagtfh7azbkhodbs3yn3py6mbwvmhedx3cg2u" }, "size": 36746, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The best the GOP can hope for, if they want to hold onto power, is to either turn things around by November of next year, or to so fully consolidate power that it doesn’t matter. Neither is impossible, but at this point neither seems all that likely." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is a lesson in how much the content of coalitions matters. If you let the rot in, either from the bottom or the top, that rot might give you a large enough coalition to win a few elections, but if the country itself isn’t as fully rotten as you’ve become—and America, thankfully, is nowhere near that fully rotten—you’re going to end up facing a backlash you probably can’t beat." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And the GOP deserves every bit of it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreib3xhhumxyehsg5xujm35nfsz54rrce2cgbjr54rtuwrjbatlvria", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4xwuoedic2k", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreibs2hktg7b4fsxfi2hwpvzqxtceijjm7frbb3qhdmiimcg6avy2my", "rev": "3m4xwuomuhe2o" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "When you let rot into your coalition, your entire coalition eventually turns rotten.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-06T16:03:33.320Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.070786+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zggtugcc2f", "data": { "path": "/3m2zggtugcc2f", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Substack Doesn't Want You to Leave", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d9e1-0896-7dd4-b263-14fe0065eea5", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 27, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 529, "byteStart": 512 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://on.substack.com/p/direct-messaging-on-substack?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This is a newsletter primarily about political and social ethics, but it’s also a newsletter that switched away from Substack a couple of months ago, for reasons related to the way Substack leadership runs their company. Those are bound up in ethics, even if not in the way I typically write about, and I also know that a lot of my readers have their own newsletters, and so are interested in the state of that ecosystem. So bear with me as I dig into a very odd new feature Substack proudly announced today: Direct messaging. From their post:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Direct messages live in the Chat tab on the Substack website and app, and appear alongside chats from your subscribed publications. You can start a DM from any writer or reader’s profile page, from the Chat tab, or by hitting “Share” on a post or a note. When you receive a DM, you’ll be notified in the app and by email." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Why would Substack add “direct messaging,” when, as a reader, you can already direct message with Substack authors you subscribe to by just hitting “Reply” in your email? Why add a new direct messaging system within the official Substack app?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "First, it’s important to understand how Substack’s newsletter infrastructure works. When you start a Substack, and people subscribe for free, they’re adding their email addresses to your list. That list, whether it’s a handful of your friends or tens of thousands of addresses, belongs to you. You can, at any time, download the list and, if you want to, upload it to another newsletter platform, such as Ghost or Beehiiv. In other words, the main connection point you have with your readers (their email address) is portable. You can leave Substack, take your list elsewhere, and continue sending newsletters to your readers, without them having to resubscribe to you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Just as important to understanding what’s happening with Substack is how their system handles paying subscribers. With free subscribers, you have a connection point: an email address. With paying, you have two: an email address and a credit card number. That’s why, if you turn on premium subscriptions in Substack, you have to link your Substack publication to a Stripe account. Stripe is the big player in online credit card processing. As a reader, when you pay for a Substack, you’re giving your credit card information to Stripe, and it’s Stripe that stores it, not Substack. And here’s the important bit: Most other newsletter platforms use Stripe for handling paying subscribers, too. The result is that, as a Substack publisher, even your paying subscribers are portable. Want to move to Ghost or Beehiiv? Download your Substack subscriber list, import it into the new platform, and then attach that new platform to the same Stripe account you were using for Substack. Run the handy automated migration tool your new platform comes with, and your paying subscribers will keep getting your premium content—and keep giving you money each month—without any need for them to resubscribe." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 20, "byteStart": 12 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That’s a big deal. It means that, as a publisher, you aren’t locked in to Substack. You can use it to build a huge platform, or even a huge business, and then just … leave. It doesn’t cost you anything to do that, and the whole process takes maybe a couple of hours. That’s good for publishers, because platform lock-in is bad. And it’s a selling point for Substack, because they can say to writers, “We’re giving you great tools, and you can use them as long as you like them, and as long as you think they’re worth 10% of your earnings, but if you decide you’d rather be elsewhere, we’re going to make it easy and painless for you to switch.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Nothing Substack has done lately changes any of that. You can still build a large audience there, and have a large number of them paying you, and then take it all with you if you jump ship. But that’s not the whole story. Because the other half of it, and the other key to understanding why Substack would add “direct messages” in its app, is Substack’s financials." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Running a platform like Substack isn’t cheap. You’ve got staff, infrastructure, and the costs of sending untold millions of emails. This is made worse by the fact that Substack gives most of it away for free. This is why they’ve grown so quickly and become so dominant. Unlike nearly every other newsletter platform, they don’t charge you anything to host a free newsletter, even if you have thousands or hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And if you do turn on premium subscriptions, their pricing model is to take 10% of your earnings, instead of asking for a fixed monthly fee. But this also means Substack needs to earn a lot more from each of the people who are running paid newsletters than other platforms, because it’s giving away so much for free to those users who aren’t. (My own Beehiiv, in contrast, offers its platform for free if you have 2,500 or fewer subscribers and don’t charge for subscriptions, and then a flat $50 or $100 a month if you want to change, and depending on which features you need. But it doesn’t take any cut of your earnings beyond that.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 108, "byteStart": 82 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-recommendations-network?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This all works if Substack is making a lot of money. But they’re not. In their prior feature announcement, made on February 22 and introducing an upgraded recommendations system, they included this quite telling line: “In its short life, Recommendations has become an indispensable part of the Substack network, which in recent months has swelled to more than 3 million paid subscriptions to writers and creators.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There are 3 million total paid subscriptions across Substack’s network. Now, 3 million is a big number, sure. But what does that mean for Substack’s actual earnings? Not good news. Let’s ballpark it by assuming that the typical subscription fee newsletters charge is $8 a month. That’s the default Substack sets the price at when you turn on premium subscriptions, so it’s probably a pretty good guess. And let’s also assume, to make the math easy and to paint a rosier picture for Substack, that all of those 3 million subscribers are paying monthly, instead of getting the annual discount." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Three million subscribers paying $8 a month works out to $288 million a year flowing into the Substack network. But the company itself pockets just 10% of that, because the other 90% goes to the writers generating those subscriptions. So Substack’s actual take is, by this estimate, $28 million dollars a year. Which is tiny. Even if $8 is lowballing the typical subscription fee (which I suspect it isn’t, because my strong guess is the typical fee is closer to $5 a month), by any reasonable measure Substack isn’t bringing in enough dollars to cover their costs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "With that in mind, go back to the discussion of portability. If you’re a big publisher on Substack, generating let’s say $10,000 a month in subscription fees, you’re taking home $9,000 and giving Substack $1,000. (You’re not actually taking home $9,000, because you’re also paying credit card processing fees to Stripe, but we can ignore that for purposes of the analysis here.) That’s $12,000 dollars a year you’re paying to host your newsletter on Substack. If you went to Beehiiv, and chose their most expensive plan, you’d be paying $1,200 a year." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What this means is that, the bigger your newsletter gets on Substack, the more reason you have to leave Substack, because you can save an extraordinary amount of money by doing so. And, as we discussed above, it is very easy to take the email list and paying subscribers you built on Substack and do just that. You’re not locked in, and the more money you earn for Substack, the more reason you have to stop using it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To fix that and get their financials on a steadier path, Substack needs to make it harder for you to leave. They need to lock you in. Now, they’re not going to prevent you from downloading your email list, nor are they going to force you off of Stripe. (They might at some point, if things get bad enough, but their whole brand is built on not doing so, which makes it feel like a last resort move.) Instead, the way they build lock-in is by shifting the primary points of connection between you and your readers from open and portable email addresses to closed and proprietary relationships." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 157, "byteStart": 149 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And, thus, “direct messages.” Thus the “followers” you get in Substack Notes. These are points of contact between you and your readers that aren’t portable. If you leave Substack, you’ll lose them. The hub of all of this is the Substack app, and a great deal of the feature announcements they’ve made lately are about getting more and more people to view the app as the primary way they read Substacks and interact with Substack authors. The more publishers rely on the app instead of email as the basis of their relationship with their readers, the harder it will be for them to move their newsletters off of Substack’s platform." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Direct messages aren’t about giving you a better way to connect with your readers. They’re about shifting your relationship with your readers into a closed system so you’re less likely to flee to platforms that don’t take one dollar out of every ten you earn." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T19:24:30.965Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.639098+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m52ndshej22l", "data": { "path": "/3m52ndshej22l", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The “Likable”/“Unlikable” Political Realignment", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019a5f6e-1191-7bb3-aca1-7d5ac3dfab65", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Far-right political commentator Bethany Mandel took to X to remark about how other moms in her neighborhood don’t like her because she’s shitty to trans kids." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreidsyzdwgw57tk4jqyu5o55dgy4lwkbinrjxzv7l6lmcgx7fuxzgtq", "uri": "at://did:plc:kcva2cegmmmoquwjxrumscz3/app.bsky.feed.post/3m522swhp4s27" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is a good example of what I think is an underappreciated dynamic that’s played out in American politics over the last decade or more. We talk about political realignments a lot, and that’s because the evolution of American politics recently has been a series of overlapping realignments. One of the most important, but least remarked upon, is “likable” versus “unlikable.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Put simply, American conservatism, and particularly the GOP, became a welcoming home for unlikeable people. If you’re the kind of person others really want nothing to do with, not so much because of your views but because of your personality, and particularly if that personal noxiousness took the form of a hatred for, or abusive behavior towards, others you view as your lesser, the left was likely to cancel you, while the right was likely to give you a soft landing after your cancellation." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As this trend went on, it reinforced itself. How many progressive celebrities, when exposed as sex pests, pivoted to the right? How many people who’d built careers on being not right-wing then made a racist remark and built a new career in the far-right’s grievance industry? How many bosses, told by their HR departments that you can’t actually treat your female colleagues like that, turned a little MAGA?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s not that there are no unlikeable people outside of the American right. There are plenty. I get them yelling at me in my Bluesky mentions all the time. But the mainstream of the American right elevated unlikableness to a badge of honor in a way the mainstream of the American left did not. And once the culture in the mainstream of the American right turned sufficiently toxic, toxic people found themselves drawn to it, and non-toxic people found themselves fleeing or pushed out. The same thing happens when a large organization gets toxic leadership and then rots from the top down." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 371, "byteStart": 316 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2xbnk7jek26", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What happened next is that all those unlikeable people, finding themselves together in a coalition, turned their unlikeableness into an ideology. The very personality and value features that made them offputting they elevated to principled commitments with political consequences. They leaned into the unlikeability not just as a personal project, but as a political one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2xbnk7jek26", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable. - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s good the moms of Montgomery County are giving Mandel the cold shoulder. People who behave like her should be given the cold shoulder. Don’t be a jerk to kids is a pretty fundamental ethical characteristic of good people. It’s a positive sign for our society that people like Mandel and those like her have a hard time making friends, because you shouldn’t want to be friends with someone like Mandel." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 100, "byteStart": 14 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4xwujd2e22k", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The next step is convincing the mainstream of the American right that they should feel the same way." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4xwujd2e22k", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Most Americans Aren’t Fascists, and That’s a Big Problem for the GOP - Aaron Ross Powell's Blog", "description": "When you let rot into your coalition, your entire coalition eventually turns rotten.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreidqfsz6coe2u53flv7ewzgk5v53gnhq3eb5rlfanxmrnt5qnerp6e" }, "size": 34291, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreieuckvvf76p5lcmhjlspu37vqmfw2nv4maamd7abntczdl3o42v2y", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m52ne245jc2l", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreieg4p7heeh4uayooemkb4pf27wxunpqc3pv6ptfvu4qrtl6kbqjiu", "rev": "3m52ne2aq6n2o" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "American conservatism is a home for unlikeable people who’ve turned their unlinkability into a political project.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-07T17:51:08.012Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.22862+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m5ee5raios2r", "data": { "path": "/3m5ee5raios2r", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Why Elites Believe in Racial IQ Differences and Evolutionary Psych", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019a7352-ed26-7447-ae7f-20d46c0f694d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Imagine you’ve had success in a field that has historically been dominated by people who look like you. You’re a man, and everyone, or most everyone, in your profession or organization is a man. Or you’re white, and everyone, or most everyone, in your profession or organization is white. That’s just the way it’s always been, and being white or a man yourself, you haven’t thought much about it. You’re comfortable, and successful, and the people you work with look to be the same." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 525, "byteStart": 521 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 814, "byteStart": 808 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Then this comfortable stability gets challenged. Women enter. Or society tells you that the reason your organization, or department, or profession is overwhelmingly white men is because of historical and contemporary discrimination. Now, you’re not the kind of person who views yourself as racist or misogynist. So your reaction to this critique isn’t, “You’re damn right we’re discriminating against women and minorities!” But if you accept the discrimination critique, things get a bit awkward. Because you also believe you earned your position by being better at whatever job it is you do than all the people who didn’t get that job. And because your job is high status and high prestige—you’re a leader in business, or a professor at a good department—lots of people want it. But you earned it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Except, if the discrimination critique is correct, then maybe you didn’t. Or didn’t earn it quite as much, or quite as clearly, as you thought you had. Maybe you’re not as talented, or smart, or deserving, compared to everyone else, as you’ve been telling yourself, or assuming, you were all these years." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 348, "byteStart": 344 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "So you look for a way to deflect the critique. Yes, there’s discrimination against women and minorities out there in the world. But not here. Not in my organization, or my department, or my profession. Here all we care about is merit. And you’ve got a lot of it. And it just so happens that all the people with enough merit to get and hold this job are white men. Or, at least, the vast majority of them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You need to be smart, and you need to be rational, and you need all these other positive intellectual traits to have your job. So what if it turns out that women and minorities lack those? Or don’t have them with as great a degree or frequency as white men? If that’s the case, then the reason women and minorities aren’t proportionately represented in your organization or department or profession is because, simply put, they’re less likely to cut it. Maybe it’s not discrimination at all, but just a natural unevenness in the distribution of the traits needed to succeed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And here are these people doing race and IQ research who offer the appearance of evidence for that conclusion. Don’t dig too deeply into the scholarly consensus on that research, which demonstrates rather dispositively that it’s junk. IQ differences between the socially constructed categories we’ve labeled “race” are not large, and they’re not consistent, and those differences are much better explained by environmental factors. There are guys out there insisting otherwise, and if they’re right, then your position is, in fact, fully earned. So you want to believe, and that wanting to believe turns into actual belief." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 880, "byteStart": 871 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Or here are these people telling you that evolutionary psychology (a more credible field, but one that gets misapplied and misused with much enthusiasm) shows that evolution built women to be less capable of reason and smarts and the focused drive needed to excel in intellectual pursuits. Women choose mates because they’re built to have babies, and your genius is a naturally gender-biased trait you’ve benefited from, like how only male peacocks have impractical tails, and one that signals your mate-worthiness to the women on their biological clocks. This makes sense. The evolutionary psychologists, or the armchair evolutionary psychologists, have pretty intriguing just-so stories to explain it, and if those stories are correct (and compelling stories must be correct, or they wouldn’t be compelling), then the earnedness of your position is secure. Women naturally won’t be common in your organization, or department, or profession." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 306, "byteStart": 303 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The point, the reason you find so many elites drawn to these ideas, and why so many more of them express sympathy for these ideas behind closed doors, is that they’ve benefited from historical and social contingencies and a challenge to those contingencies—or the mere act of pointing out that they are contingencies, and arbitrary ones at that—is a challenge to the benefits they enjoy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreidldxepdehzcgf5xkb6qfnkk3wgq3ruh7bxwmtn4ckjisucvd32d4", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m5ee5y7gi22r", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreibhjvmp6ibn7uydki6yfgkc2qbouphqswd5cwpxkfubcrghl2krmi", "rev": "3m5ee5yd36b2o" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Both help deflect critiques of elite status being less earned than elites want to think.", "publishedAt": "2025-11-11T14:33:19.119Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.179115+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk63ares23", "data": { "path": "/3m2zk63ares23", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Why the Right Lies About Cities", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da1e-3cf8-7ddc-ae9d-d96eb8d919ec", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 15, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The right routinely tells untrue horror stories about the state of America’s cities because the state of America’s cities—thriving, dynamic, and inclusive centers of culture and engines of economic activity—serves as a dispositive rebuttal of a fundamental right-wing narrative: that “traditional” values (and hierarchies and power structures) are necessary for people to flourish." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you listen to the American right, our cities are unlivable hellscapes of crime and despair. If you listen to people who live in our cities, they’re actually pretty great. But the right is committed to an argument that without strong churches at the center the community, without strong traditional values, and without a strong sense of one’s place in a “natural” hierarchy, you can’t have a functioning society or a flourishing people. They argue that you need society organized around right-wing preferences for society to function." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But anyone who has lived in a dense and socially liberal city has first hand experience that this simply isn’t true. They’ve seen how strong, supporting, and endearing a culture of diversity, pluralism, religious diversity and secularism, and self-authorship can be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 702, "byteStart": 607 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-legos-can-help-us-understand-identity-in-liberal-societies", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 708, "byteStart": 702 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-legos-can-help-us-understand-identity-in-liberal-societies", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Thus the right lies about cities, knowing they are the perfect counterexample to their claims. They have to construct a narrative that city culture doesn’t work, and then convince their tribe to believe it. They have to claim that “unity,” by which they mean cultural monism grounded in right-wing values and tastes, is necessary for people to have strong and committed identities, and that strong and committed (and unchosen) identities are necessary for people to psychologically thrive. But life for most who live in cities isn’t a hollowed out sense of self and crushing anomie. Rather, it’s a thriving and overlapping diversity of identities and ways of belonging, among which you can choose, instead of having them forced upon you, against your will and psychological well-being, by power structures and privileged positions of a “traditionalist” monoculture." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 339, "byteStart": 258 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://publichealthpost.org/mental-behavioral-health/geography-of-despair/?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 471, "byteStart": 346 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3216064/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If we look at two of the features most indicative of a wholesome identity and culture—happiness and healthy relationships—the parts of the country where these “traditional” values hold the most are those that do rather poorly. Deaths of despair are much more a feature of rural, “traditional” America than they are its cities. And “rural women experience higher rates of [intimate partner violence] and greater frequency and severity of physical abuse” than women in urban areas." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yes, cities have relatively higher crime rates overall, but density does that. And much city crime is attributable, such as in Denver where I live, to homelessness and lack of sufficient care for those suffering from mental health issues, and both aren’t the result of liberal values, but instead the imposition of specifically conservative cultural values. Namely, NIMBYism (the demand that one’s neighborhood remain static in a particularly reactionary and closed way), the stigma affixed to mental health, and an ethnocentric refusal to allow immigrants to participate in the economy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The reason right-wing media is so dedicated to pushing false pictures of what it’s like to live in dense and cosmopolitan areas is because America’s cities are the wildly successful alternative to what the right-wing insists is the only possible successful world." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T20:31:11.687Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.862515+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rzksspk22", "data": { "path": "/3m33rzksspk22", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199deb7-76ee-7ff2-bd82-79cfc4fe47b6", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 14, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 291, "byteStart": 278 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 513, "byteStart": 500 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What happens if the spread of AI slop crowds out the market for original writing and art? It’s easy to read that as the goal of OpenAI et al. Sam Altman would much rather you pay him $20 a month to have his bot tell you about what new albums you might like than have you pay Rolling Stone and its stable of writers $20 a year to do the same. And given that most of us have a lot more we’re interested in than just new albums, and ChatGPT will readily tell us about all those things too, while Rolling Stone output is rather more limited, it’s easy to see how that $20 a month can be tempting. If enough people are tempted enough, then every subscription that might’ve gone to a publication goes to Sam Altman instead." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The trouble, of course, is that to know which new albums to tell you about, ChatGPT needs to be able to find content about new albums, either in its training data or by searching the web and ingesting what it finds. And while plenty of people will LiveJournal for free, to get good original content to ingest, that good original content needs to be paid for. Professionally produced content needs professionals, and professionals need salaries. Or, at least, freelancing checks." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You can maybe replace some of the lost market for media subscriptions by publications signing deals with OpenAI et al. to give them access to whatever they publish. And then they use the fees OpenAI pays them to pay their writers and artists and other contributors. OpenAI takes what those writers and artists and other contributors contribute, and spits it back, or spits back the information it contains, to people paying OpenAI $20 a month to have it answer all their questions." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is basically ChatGPT as a bundled subscription. Except it’s more like if you bought a bundled subscription that sent a ton of publications to a warehouse in your backyard, along with a strange little man who lives in that warehouse, reads everything that arrives, and then answers whatever questions you might have when you knock on his warehouse door. But, regardless of this Lynchian third party, the publications generating all that new content are still getting paid. (Let’s set aside, for just a moment, the oddness of experiencing new writing and art not through the words or images of the writer or artist, but instead through the second-hand lecture of that weird little Lynchian guy who lives in a text prompt.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 221, "byteStart": 218 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Where this could all go wrong in a way that destroys the flow of money from all of us to the writers and the artists, even the flow through the OpenAI middleman, is if it turns out what most of us want isn’t really new information, new styles, new expression, but a remixing of the old." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 294, "byteStart": 286 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Even if we’d had super powerful computers 50 years ago, we couldn’t have built ChatGPT, not like it exists now, because what also exists now but not 50 years ago is the internet. And not just the internet in terms of a globe-spanning computer network, but the internet in terms of vastness. We needed decades of people putting stuff online. To train a frontier model, you need a lot of material to train it on, and training it on a lot of material is possible in a world where the sum of human knowledge and output exists in digital form at publicly accessible URLs. It’s not possible in a world where that knowledge and output is tucked away in physical objects (books, tapes, scrolls) spread out in countless collections in buildings all over the planet." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So what an LLM knows is a snapshot, at the time of its training, of everything it could access on the internet at a given moment, supplemented, as you use it, by what it can find through traditional search. This means an LLM knows a ton, but it also means an LLM is like those photographs the Zoomers pass around of a 90s bedroom. It’s a freeze frame, or at least most of it, and while you can introduce new ideas when you run the prompt, it interprets those new ideas in the context of that frozen moment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, you can retrain the AI. You can say, “Okay, let’s look at the internet again, now, and base your new knowledge on what it looks like in this updated state.” You’re creating a new frozen moment, like a photograph of a 2000s bedroom. The fresh version of the model can then have that extra bit of freshness–until the world moves on and new content is created and tastes change. If the company waits long enough to retrain it, it’ll be like Disco Stu: hip and with it in a moment that has passed it by." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 72, "byteStart": 68 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 133, "byteStart": 129 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Assuming people paying that $20 a month for their favorite chatbot want something a little more fresh than Stu, assuming they want what’s current, what’s at culture’s novel edge, then maybe the bundling economy works. It won’t be perfect, because OpenAI isn’t going to sign a licensing deal with every creator who wants to create and get paid to do so. It’ll sign deals with the big publishers, who have legal departments for such things. The market for new creative works will look more like three channels of network TV than the long tail, but it’ll still be a market." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 51, "byteStart": 47 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 88, "byteStart": 54 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The worry is what if people don’t even want that? Everything, after all, is a remix. We endlessly recycle. The youth of 2025 long for the bedrooms and CRTs of 1995. Marxists complain that capitalism keeps bundling the past and selling it to us as the latest product. We revive folk, and swing, and new wave, and whatever 80s video the TikTok kids have found in the last week. Ours is, in other words, a nostalgia culture." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 24 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And this is what AI is really good at. You want something in the style of something? And that style is an established one, well-represented in whatever moment of the internet the AI was built on? That bot has you covered. It can remix with the best of them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 64, "byteStart": 49 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There’s clearly a market for this stuff, too. Stranger Things convinced a generation that what they really wanted wasn’t the future, but endless recycling of an idealized past. Old sitcoms find new life with people too young to have ever seen them when they aired. Etc., etc., etc. The worry, the way the market doesn’t just contract, but becomes small enough to drown in a bathtub, is people, or enough of them at any rate, is that most people in fact just want the old reflected back to them in ways changed just enough to not feel like a rerun but to still feel nostalgic." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 779, "byteStart": 775 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I think there will always be a market, from the perspective of the companies making the bots, for breaking news. People do want to know what’s happening in the world around them. We need someone to tell the bot when Russia invades Ukraine or who won the election or what’s up with the price of eggs. The bots need that kind of information to answer “What’s happening?” questions, and so even if the newspapers go under, the corporations gathering those $20/month fees will want to hire enough people to answer them. But the rest of it? At a scale where we can consider it a sector of the economy? At a scale where someone can say, with a degree of reasonable hope, “I want to be a writer or an artist when I grow up?” It’s easy to tell a story about how all that could collapse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In this world, original content becomes like oil: It’s what powers our existing technologies, but it’s only ever the product of the dead and gone, and we’re not getting any more of it. That sounds bad. I wouldn’t like that world, even if it comes with a cheap bot who lives in my phone and can tell me about everything there was to know at a moment somewhere behind me. And even if that bot is quite clever, and can give me writing of a kind I enjoy or music of a kind I enjoy, the fact that it’s “of a kind” means there’s something pretty important missing: namely, the whole point. What the tech bros who say they’ll never read a novel again because they can have ChatGPT tell them any story they want miss is that it’s not just about the story, it’s about the fact that someone is telling it to you. Art is beautiful and exciting and all that, but it’s also connection. It’s knowing there’s someone else on the other side of that prose or the other side of those notes, and if the novel or the song are meaningful to you, it’s because that other person on that other side gets you. Or gets something important about you, or about something you share." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A world without that is a world I wouldn’t want." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Which is why, even though the above story makes a certain sense, even though we can see how the economic incentives and the cultural preference for nostalgia could pull us in that direction, I’m optimistic we won’t actually head all the way there. Or, if we do, we’ll turn around and head a good deal of the way back." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Because this sort of society is undesirable, and people really do strive for what’s new and interesting, and not merely what is remixed, I am skeptical that such an economy would last. I think people will dial back their use of AI to generate endless slop because the market for slop will collapse. I lived through the era of reality TV. It was crap and it was everywhere, because enough people liked it and it was so cheap to produce compared to scripted shows. But the era of reality TV gave way to the era of prestige TV, and not because the relative costs shifted, but because people decided they actually liked watching shows with a bit of narrative quality. You can still find reality TV, of course, just like you’ll always be able to find plenty of AI slop. But reality TV didn’t eat the world, and, for the same reasons, AI slop won’t, either." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Markets, when left to do their thing, can run off in stupid directions. But they also have mechanisms to correct course. Nostalgia culture is real, the desire to endlessly reduce the cost of content is real, and they can interact in ways that very likely will cost some people the ability to earn a living. We likely can’t avoid that, because LLM technology is here, and people like it, and it has enough genuinely useful applications that we wouldn’t get rid of it entirely, anyway. But it also can’t do novelty, it can’t be a cultural innovator. And plenty of people want both. And are willing to pay for it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "The rise of AI-generated content risks overshadowing original creative works, potentially leading to a market collapse for writers and artists if consumers prefer nostalgia-driven remixes over new expressions, but the enduring human desire for innovation suggests that original art and writing will always have value.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T17:57:09.646Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.634937+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgrvea6s2a", "data": { "path": "/3m2fgrvea6s2a", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The American Right Never Really Loved Freedom", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b0f0-c8f7-7220-939b-b441770aa212", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of the illiberal ideologies clamoring for attention and influence in the contemporary American right, integralism, touted by some prominent Catholic thinkers, managed to be both the most coherent and quixotic. Roughly, the idea is that the radical self-authorship that markets and liberalism’s individualistic ethos enable and encourage have led our society away from not just the common good, but also meaningful, personal happiness. We’ve become hedonistic, atheistic, and unmoored from the traditions that give us meaning. We choose to abandon traditional faiths, explore non-binary genders and non-traditional gender roles, have families that aren’t nuclear, and take our kids to drag queen story hours. What sets the integralists apart from, say, the National Conservatives who share many of their gripes about liberalism, is that integralists see the solution in what would effectively be a Catholic theocracy. The Roman Catholic Church is, in their minds, not just the one true faith, but also the source of the traditions and values we need to thrive." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But while integralism as a program of public policy is likely dead in the water, it can’t be dismissed as a mere fringe right-wing faction in America. Rather, its project makes explicit the fundamental nature of the right. In fact, I’d argue, what we’ve seen over these last five or six years isn’t the fringe taking over, but instead that fundamental nature reasserting itself." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Take Adrian Vermule: He’s a Harvard law professor, Catholic integralist, piner for theocracy, and a leading intellectual of the post-liberal conservative turn. A few weeks ago, he got dragged on Twitter for setting out his wishlist for a post-liberal order. He was asked: What do you traditionalists and national conservatives want? His answer was quite simple:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 169, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The cry of “what exactly do post-liberals want to do??” has been answered over and over, @iusetiustitium, @PostlibOrder, @AmericanAffrs and elsewhere. One last time:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A lot of this is downright silly — just a way to put into law the peculiar preferences of a handful of hard-right Catholics. Most of the conversation about Vermeule’s demands focused on the constitutional issues it raised or how much authoritarianism the “etc etc” lacuna appeared to hide. However, the bigger issue is not the extremism of Vermeule’s brand of integralist conservatism. Rather, it lays bare the inherently illiberal currents in conservatism’s political project." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For Vermeule, as other integralists, there’s a proper way to live and in that proper way is found happiness of a worthy, genuine sort. He imagines this proper way to be something that resembles traditional Catholicism. Those who deviate from it might believe they are happy, but they’re actually not. Instead, they are prey to a liberalism-imposed false consciousness, dragging down not just their own well-being, but that of society as a whole. The goal of government, then, isn’t to force people to become traditionalist Catholic, because that’s not possible, but instead, as we see in his laundry list and its menacing “etc etc,” to compel them to at least behave as if they were." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The problem for Vermeule, unless he’s planning a violent overthrow of the US government, is that fewer than a quarter of Americans are Catholic. Moreover, that portion is declining, and many actually existing Catholics are, in fact, quite liberal. In other words, he won’t have much success at the ballot box. Thus, we needn’t worry too much about America plunging into a traditional Catholic theocracy anytime soon." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But that gets us back to Vermeule as symptomatic of something bigger. While most conservatives don’t share his peculiar idea of the good and virtuous life, the underlying idea that it is the state’s job to enable, support, and perhaps even compel us to abide by a particular “right way to live,” and one grounded in certain cultural traditions, is just what it means to be a political conservative." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 20, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://aaronrosspowell.leaflet.pub/3m2fgud57nk2a", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In an earlier essay, proposing that we can view political philosophies as ultimately about constructing or maintaining social and governing patterns, I put it this way:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 535, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Conservatism, as a political ideology, seeks to maintain those social and economic patterns that conservatives prefer or believe are conducive to a good society. Thus, in contrast to classical liberalism, political conservatism is not about identifying, cultivating, and maintaining those patterns of rules and institutions which maximize liberty or at least keep state power in check. Instead, it is about maintaining social patterns which result in a society that aligns with the conservative’s cultural values and personal tastes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This creates an irreconcilable tension between conservatism and liberalism given that liberalism aims at maximizing liberty but conservatism does not. We can see this quite clearly in Vermeule’s demands." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, since the rise of “fusionism,” or the attempt to fuse classical liberalism/libertarianism with conservatism, beginning at the National Review and then the Reagan GOP and the establishment party that followed, Republicans, to the extent they represented American conservatism, talked a good game about liberty. They may have been squeamish, for example, about extending freedom to the bedroom. But they buried these concerns and argued, instead, that America’s constitutionally limited order aimed at protecting individual freedom and free enterprise. Until the collapse of the GOP into Trumpism, at least mainstream Republican leadership presented itself as, in fact, liberal in the classical sense, and said it wanted the government to effectively protect liberalism from its enemies on the left." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But Trump ushered in an era of “post-liberal” conservatism, whether that was his own crude and unfocused populism, or the more intellectual approach of national conservatism, or the fringe integralists. The idea that government should, above all, respect and protect individual and economic liberty, is increasingly sneered at by the American right, and that disdain for liberty is finding purchase, and, it seems, dominance, within the GOP establishment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 456, "byteStart": 431 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/2024/02/16/why-josh-hawley-hates-your/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The clearest example is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), a highly-educated and rather intellectual politician, who also happens to hate your freedom and does nothing to disguise that. He’s written and spoken at length, both before and during his political career, about the need to abandon liberalism in favor of a “common good” conservatism that is willing to exercise state power to advance the common good as he defines it. In an essay about Hawley, written just after the January 6 insurrection, I argued how he" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 696, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "rejects the idea that “liberty is all about choosing your own ends,” but sees freedom as a destructive turn away from a purer way of life, constrained by social hierarchies and tradition. Liberty, he says, “is a philosophy of liberation from family and tradition, of escape from God and community, a philosophy of self-creation and unrestricted, unfettered free choice.” He believes liberty has led to a country that is riven by conflict, marked by distasteful cosmopolitanism, and overly welcoming to foreign people and ideas. It is an America too concerned with the outside world when we should focus on promoting a socially conservative working class protected by impenetrable borders." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Again, while we might still think of Hawley as the fringe of the establishment, the difference between Hawley’s anti-liberalism and what we used to think of mainstream conservatism isn’t about whether the state should trample freedom to maintain a certain way of living, but how far out of step culture is allowed to get from those traditionalist ideals before it does." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As rapid technological and economic change drives cultural dynamism and cosmopolitanism, and as “traditional” social, gender, racial, and religious structures and relationships give way to liberty-enabled evolving preferences, conservatives committed to “conserving” will feel more pressured to kick off the fusionist consensus and instead support the Vermeule/Hawley/populist constellation of anti-liberalisms." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We should worry about the future of American conservatism not because conservatives will get on board with Vermuele’s particular wishlist, but because he, and the rest of the New Right and the NatCons, represent conservatism reawakening to what it’s always been about, namely, support for liberty only insofar as liberty doesn’t mean cultural and economic drift too far from “traditional” norms and values. But because liberty inevitably means just that, more and more American conservatives are likely to feel, if not solidarity with all of Vermuele’s particulars, then increasing affinity for Vermeule’s broader anti-liberal project." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts individual liberty and self-determination.", "publishedAt": "2022-02-04T21:37:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.87567+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqaxqypk26", "data": { "path": "/3m2xqaxqypk26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "ethics", "buddhism" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t.", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d669-37e1-7335-97a7-397c240ff0d0", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Who we associate with and who we take into our circle of friends says as much—or more—about our moral character as the principles we claim to live by. But it goes deeper than that, because the influence runs in both directions. Our moral character is reflected in who our friends are, but who our friends are plays a significant role in the development and evolution of our moral character. If you spend your time around good people, that will influence you in positive directions. If you spend your time around bad people, that will have the opposite effect." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In the West, we tend to view ethics as an individual pursuit, and through a mostly intellectualized, rational, and autonomous frame. Our moral views, and the underlying character that motivates them, is something freely—and consciously—chosen. If we do good, it is because we have freely and consciously selected the right moral principles and then volitionally acted upon them. If we do bad, it is because those freely and consciously chosen principles were the wrong ones, or we were ignorant of, or misinterpreted, facts relevant to the situation that would have informed the application of our principles in a praiseworthy direction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 533, "byteStart": 479 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/a-crash-course-in-cultivating-liberal?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "There’s much that’s correct about that. Obviously we can choose, and we are largely rational. But this individualistic view of the ethical process obfuscates how much of not just our moral reasoning but our moral perspective isn’t, at least in the moment, fully autonomous, and is instead the product of our environment and habits. (I say “at least in the moment” because we can change our moral perspective through a careful practice of cultivating virtues, but that isn’t simply a matter of intellectual understanding.) Our environment and habits—including who we associate with—not only make developing beneficial and practiced ethics easier or more difficult, but also play a large role in whether we recognize our own ethical failings in the first place." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 219, "byteStart": 206 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN45_2.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 552, "byteStart": 526 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This brings me one of my favorite lines in the whole of ethical philosophy. It comes from the Pali Canon, an ancient collection of philosophical dialogues in the Buddhist tradition. In the text called the Upaddha Sutta, the Buddha’s attendant Ānanda remarks that, “This is half of the holy life, lord: having admirable people as friends, companions, a colleagues.” And the Buddha corrects him: “Don’t say that, Ānanda. Don’t say that. Having admirable people as friends, companions, and colleagues is actually the whole of the holy life.” (Emphasis mine.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Now this might at first seem odd. Buddhism is, after all, quite a vast and comprehensive philosophy, equal in richness and sophistication to anything in the Western tradition, and with elaborate theories of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, all aimed at the pursuit of an end of suffering. It brims over with concepts, arguments, sub-arguments, and lists. What, then, is the point of all that if the holy (ethical, admirable, praiseworthy, etc.) life is as simple as hanging out with admirable people?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But reflection makes clear what this idea drives at. The “holy life” is the ethical life, the life lived well, of happiness (and the absence of suffering), and one that is admirable to others. This isn’t a switch we flip. It’s not something we’re born knowing how to do, and it’s not something we can immediately be capable of doing, even if we have the intellectual understanding. Rather, the ethical life is a process of practice. It’s something we must train ourselves in. And I choose “train” precisely to distinguish this process from mere learning. You can know the rules of ethics and the principles of morality, but just as reading a book about how to throw a perfect pitch doesn’t make you a good pitcher, knowing the intellectual side of ethics doesn’t make you ethical. Rather, you need to practice. You need to internalize habits of ethical behavior, and you need to train your perspective to see the world in an ethical way." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus admirable companionship. The people you share your life with are the people you share your ethical journey with. We are social animals, not fully and autonomously self-made beings. How we behave and how we view the world and our place in it is influenced and given substance by how the people we surround ourselves with behave and view the world. We learn from each other, and our social ties constitute a significant portion of our identity. No only in the sense that they provide us a place, but also in that they form us. We build ourselves together." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When the Buddha says that that admirable friendship is the whole of the holy life, he’s pointing out that we just are, in large part, who we associate with. Our perspective is shaped by the perspectives of the people around us, our values shaped by their values, and the morally salient issues—and our resulting actions regarding them—filled in by the values our friends, companions, and associations find salient. What’s more, the fact that we recognize genuinely admirable people as admirable means that our ethical perspective has been tuned correctly. It means that we are ourselves ethical. Thus the ethical person will surround himself with admirable people, but it also requires that he be ethical to accomplish that in the first place. The holy life, then, just is the life of a person who has internalized enough of an ethical perspective that he surrounds himself with ethical people and, together, they support each other through this training and practice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "An upshot of this is that we shouldn’t just seek out admirable people, but that we should also, to the extent we can, distance ourselves from unethical, non-admirable people. If someone is unethical, we can have goodwill towards them and wish them eventual happiness through a change of views, but we don’t take them in, or maintain them, as friends and companions. To do so knowingly is to pull ourselves from the path of the holy life, and to do so unknowingly is a sign that something is wrong with our ethical perspective,and that we have considerable work to do in further cultivating it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This can, of course, be awfully challenging. Giving up personal connections means releasing something that mattered to us, and might still matter to some degree. It’s difficult to lose friends, or to tell someone that you can no longer consider them a friend or companion. It can be costly, too. If you conclude that your employer’s leadership is of low moral character, or if the organization elevates people of low moral character, the ethical act is to try to change it and, failing that, to leave. But paychecks can be hard to come by." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Further complicating matters is the growing belief that disassociation is censorship, that it’s cancel culture to tell someone you wont associate with them anymore, not give them a platform, not make them part of your intellectual or emotional life. It’s not freedom of association you’re exercising, this narrative suggests, but instead opposition to freedom of expression. That’s, of course, nonsense. There’s a world of difference between shutting down someone’s speech, seeking to take it away, and having no interest in hearing it, or having no interest in making the speaker part of your life. Further, the narrative that disassociation is censorship is cynically used by those who want to benefit from the controversy their hateful views inevitably cause, while avoiding any social and personal consequences for their actions. It’s why so many people who claim to be the targets of cancel culture are instead just upset that others are criticizing them. They use freedom of speech and freedom of association opportunistically." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But there must be consequences in the form of disassociation. Not only because consequences disincentivize the behavior that lost them friends, but because if disassociation is the consequence, then it’s one that’s necessary for the ethical lives of the people doing the disassociating. The more we are surrounded by unadmirable, unethical people, the less admirable and ethical we’ll be ourselves. And the less admirable and ethical we are, the more our lives will be unhappy, the more they will be filled with the kind of suffering the holy life seeks to avoid and extinguish." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 39, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN8_54.html?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In another early philosophical dialogue discussing admirable friendship, we are told to seek out those “who are consummate in conviction, consummate in virtue, consummate in generosity, consummate in discernment.” For once we have found them, once we have made sure our circle of friends and companions is an ethical one, we can emulate “consummate conviction in those who are consummate in conviction, consummate virtue in those who are consummate in virtue, consummate generosity in those who are consummate in generosity, and consummate discernment in those who are consummate in discernment. This is called admirable friendship,” the Buddha says. And it’s arguably the most important thing to have in our lives." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "publishedAt": "2023-07-21T03:14:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.347463+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tnnj7v222", "data": { "path": "/3m33tnnj7v222", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Roy Cooper, Prayer, and the Folly of Anti-Religious Collectivism", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199ded1-ae35-7dd0-8093-192ae52a74db", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 29, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper announced he’s entering the state’s Senate race. This has upset a lot of people on Bluesky. Not because they object to Cooper’s politics—he’s a Democrat who is popular enough that he could well flip a critically needed Senate seat—but because, in his announcement, he mentioned that he’d prayed before coming to the decision." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreicqcrrehae5apfkzq3crk7bxe7hbnkzzqaq54ysckwc5sdyuqe73i", "uri": "at://did:plc:i35tz3f5a6rtkmxpwx223pvh/app.bsky.feed.post/3luzkhweths2z" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 86, "byteStart": 77 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Prayer, you see, is something only religious people do. In Cooper’s case, Christian religious people. And because far-right Christians are currently doing their damndest to destroy the country and inflict great cruelty on marginalized Americans, a devout Christian like Cooper, even one who quite clearly views such destruction and cruelty as running counter to the ethics of his faith, is anathema. For these Bluesky types, religion itself is evil. Or, at best, in the political sphere ought to be confined by a policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This enragement in the replies takes the form of a lot of people condemning religion not just as evil but all religious faithful as irrational. Or whatever else might track with the way the New Atheists, back when that was a culturally relevant thing, talked about religious belief and religious believers. Reading these replies brought a feeling of cringe. Not just from seeing these, as I’ll argue, nonsense positions stated openly and righteously, but because when I was in my late teens and early 20s and in college, I made similar statements. I cringe at the Aaron who once was, but who I grew out of." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I’m writing about it, though, because I set off a rather minor conflagration when, in response to a criticism of such anti-religious criticisms of Cooper, someone wrote that lots of people have been “harmed, traumatized, or oppressed” by “religion” and so it’s okay to be mad about its expression, even in as what one might’ve thought as anodyne a form as, “I prayed while wrestling with this major decision.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 104, "byteStart": 85 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/aaronrosspowell.com/post/3lv2g2thdss2f", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I can’t find that post to link to here, because the person blocked me, but what I wrote in reply was:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "No one has ever been harmed, traumatized, or oppressed by “religion,” just like no one has ever been harmed, etc., by “philosophy.” They have been harmed by particular people with particular religious beliefs. Conflating those with the concept of religion itself is just a way to sneak in bigotry." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I bring this all up here not to just surface Bluesky drama into a different medium, but because the anger directed at me criticizing the anger directed at Cooper, and the anger directed at Cooper in all its teeth-gnashing enthusiasm, I think speaks to a real problem with the way some people on the left—in particular the Very Online left, but also in my old “logic and reason” libertarian circles—think about religion. And how they think about religious people." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 42, "byteStart": 34 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 122, "byteStart": 119 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To get mad at someone expressing anything religious—or, if we want to narrow it, to get mad at someone expressing any sort of a religious belief hooked onto a religion as broad and diverse as Christianity—is to be collectivist in a way similar to ethnonationalism or racism. It is, as I said, to be a bigot. It is to unreasonably, and irrationally, other most of the humans you share the planet with. Which is mean-spirited, ignorant, and quite stupid." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 163, "byteStart": 159 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The typical response to my claim that no one has been harmed by “religion,” just as no one has been harmed by “philosophy,” but that plenty of people have been harmed by religious people acting out of their religious belief—just as plenty of people have been harmed by people acting in application of particular philosophical beliefs—was to point out a litany of specific harms done in the name of specific religions. It was, in other words, to restate my argument while mistakenly thinking one was rebutting it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 198, "byteStart": 190 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 504, "byteStart": 496 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "It might be that religions, of one sort or another, have led to so much harm that it outweighs any of their particular value. That strikes me as implausible, but it’s not incoherent. But religion is such a vast category of beliefs that it makes no sense whatsoever to condemn it as evil, or to claim that any expression of any religious belief is wrong and bad and impermissible just because some religious people have done some bad things, and even if those things they’ve done have been very bad." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But it is also to display a total lack of curiosity about the lives of others, and in a way strikingly analogous to the sort of dehumanizing hate the people mad at Cooper claim to be against. The fact is, most everyone you share this planet with has some religious beliefs. Atheism is rare. (And if you think some atheistic worldviews, such as Buddhism, still count as religion, then not even all atheists are irreligious.) To believe that any religious viewpoint is the result of evil and/or irrationality is to say, in other words, that very nearly everyone you share this planet with is evil and/or irrational, and that you, due to your uncommon sophistication and moral insight, are one of the few rational and good people out there." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 205, "byteStart": 186 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "None of this tracks with history, or philosophy, or sociology. Some religious people are evil, or do evil things. Most aren’t and don’t. Some religious people have used their faith to justify horrors. The overwhelming counterbalance hasn’t. At the same time, some entirely secular people are evil, or do evil things, and some entirely secular people have used their philosophies and ideologies to justify horrors." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The trouble with the New Atheists, whose arguments echo through Bluesky’s anger at Cooper, is that they lied to their readers. If you explored atheism through the context of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, you came away thinking all religious faith is stupid, because the arguments for religious faith they presented and then knocked down were stupid. And many of those arguments were. But they also aren’t the arguments sophisticated advocates of religious faith actually make. You can, of course, still believe those more sophisticated arguments fail. (I do, which is why I’m still an atheist.) But they’re not stupid. And the people who think they do work aren’t stupid, any more than philosophers who argue for consequentialism as the correct moral theory are stupid, even though I think consequentialism is pretty clearly not the correct moral theory." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And just as consequentialists can be good and moral people grounding their goodness and morality in consequentialism, even if I’m not persuaded by the arguments for their moral theory, the same applies to religious faithful to ground their morality in that faith. The fact is that a lot of moral goodness is the result of, or built upon, religious faith. Both now and historically. A lot of the expanding sphere of moral concern has come from people advocating for it based on their religious faith. To deny that, to condemn religion itself (versus particular religious beliefs held by particular people) as so without merit that the very expressing of any of it in a public forum is anathema is, to be blunt, to be a bigot, and of a particularly ignorant variety." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This ignorant bigotry is, I think, the result of a lot of people simply having a difficult time with a theory of other minds. It is to be solipsistic. It is to be incapable of accepting intellectual or value difference, and so to treat any intellectual or value difference from your own perspective as being necessarily stupid or corrupt. People who hold this view—well represented among those most angry at Cooper’s faith— simply can’t put themselves in the head of another, and don’t much care to. To accept pluralism would be to undercut their own sense of elitism and righteousness. Empathy is only for the in-group." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s deeply corrosive to humanity’s shared bonds. And it’s no way to go through life." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Roy Cooper's Senate campaign announcement, which included a mention of prayer, sparked backlash on social media from people who'd rather be bigots than understand another's faith.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T18:26:17.308Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:17.512629+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "data": { "path": "/3m4jmwemgkk26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019a089a-0149-799f-8a47-9e6d9e4a2fb1", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 123, "byteStart": 116 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://leaflet.pub/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This is going to be one of those instances where I probably fail to take my own advice. You’re reading this on my Leaflet powered blog, and I’m about to tell you not just about why Leaflet is so cool, but also why I think Leaflet, or something like it, is a better way to approach a big chunk of your social media time than what most of us now think about as social media. (And, as a bonus, why Leaflet, or something like it, is better than email newsletters, too.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 82, "byteStart": 51 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/aaronrosspowell.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Then I’ll hit publish and very likely go back to posting obsessively on Bluesky. Social media’s addictive, though that addiction has less to do with the usual suspects people name—and think doing away with will reform the medium’s problems. Namely, while engagement metrics play a role (who doesn’t enjoy likes? who doesn’t like reposts?), you could get rid of them and it wouldn’t change the underlying appeal. The reason social media is addictive is the same reason we enjoy parties: It’s rapid-fire socialization with tons of people. I say something, it doesn’t need to be fully composed paragraphs of examined thoughts, and you quickly respond. But not just you. Anyone can. It’s a party of infinite scale. That’s pretty cool." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 176, "byteStart": 164 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://kernel-panic.leaflet.pub/3m3pwhu3k4k2u/l-quote/2_126-2_293#2_126", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But there’s a reason we have methods of socializing in real life that aren’t parties, and why most of us are drawn to them, even if we also enjoy parties. In a Leaflet post about disengaging from social media, Mason Stallmo wrote that, “The entire idea of encouraging people to consume what are functionally streams of conscious from other people directly is toxic for just about everything good in life.” And that’s exactly right. With a qualifier. What makes social media troubling isn’t that we should never be in a situation where we’re consuming the streams of consciousness of others, because that’s what parties are and parties are fun and rewarding. What makes social media trouble is that ours is a world where digital communication has become the dominant way many of us socially interact, and if our primary digital communication is through social media, then it’s like if we only ever interacted in the real world via parties. That would kind of suck." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The solution, then, isn’t to abandon short-form, stream-of-consciousness social media entirely, just like the solution, when you move beyond the all-parties-all-the-time of your early 20s, isn’t to never go to a party again. Rather, it’s to layer in alternatives that provide ways of socializing that are calmer, quieter, more considered, more composed. We need spaces that aren’t short-form text or short-form video, but force us to take a moment before we speak, or to commit to something long enough that we need to think about it for a moment and decide if it’s worth saying in such a relatively more lofty form. But we also need spaces where that length doesn’t turn to paralysis. If I have to write an essay before I can say anything at all, then unless I have something rather big to say, I won’t say anything at all." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 651, "byteStart": 643 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What’s critical, though, as we’re looking to spend more of our time in these calmer, quieter, and slower cadence spaces, is to ensure that those spaces feel satisfying. They shouldn’t, or at least won’t, take all of our time away from Bluesky and similar social media, but they should give us that sense of connection, of socialization. And if they can hook into the “socializing at scale” model, so much the better. The benefit of communicating in a digital space is, unlike a party where your voice can at best carry to the other side of the room and where having it do even that probably comes off as rude, your voice can reach everyone. What we want, then, is alternatives to Bluesky, etc., that get us the slow-down-and-think-about-what-you’re-writing effects, but aren’t siloed. Instead, we want the spaces we’re in, and the kinds of things we’re writing (or saying) in each, to overlap and interact." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is why I think the answer to healthier social media is to add (back) blogs. But it’s not adding (back) blogs as they worked before. Instead, it’s about taking advantage of emerging decentralized technologies, particularly technologies like Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol, to achieve something even better. And I see Leaflet as an early stage—though rapidly progressing—move in that direction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Trouble with Newsletters" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s talk about blogs. Blogger is gone, at least as a relevant social force. But there’s Substack. Or, rather, there are email newsletters, which dominate independent publishing for anything longer than a few hundred characters. Yes, we don’t use Google Reader to aggregate blogs anymore, but we do use Gmail to gather our email newsletters. Isn’t this basically the same thing? Bluesky’s for the short stuff, Newsletters are for the longer stuff. (And I hope, and especially if you’re the sort of person who left Twitter over its owners bending of the platform to promote hateful views, something other than Substack.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Yes. But also no. It’s true that newsletters have taken over the space that blogs once occupied. And a lot of the most successful newsletter writers were also successful bloggers. But newsletters aren’t blogs. They’re something worse." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 150, "byteStart": 135 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://daringfireball.net/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To understand why, let’s take one of the few remaining old-school blogs that’s managed to maintain its popularity: John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Gruber's posts range from very quick “Here’s an article I liked, with a chunk pulled into a block quote, and a link” (analogous to sharing an article on Bluesky by including a link and a screenshot of a paragraph or two) to very long “Here’s where I think Apple’s going wrong with their business” essays (analogous to your typical newsletter post). But it’s all jumbled together, and the publishing frequency is inconsistent, with multiple posts some days and then long periods of silence. That’s fine. That’s how blogging works." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://daringfireball.net/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Daring Fireball, by John Gruber", "description": "Commentary on Apple, technology, design, politics, and more.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreidzjqz6ncektfcgchd2f7jsm5xsbrvdqtsni2yzv4gamu3ndc7nuy" }, "size": 23741, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But it’s not how newsletters work. Newsletters are great for multi-thousand-word essays, like the one you’re reading now. But the distribution mechanism means they’re not great for the “Here’s an article I liked, a passage from it, and my brief commentary.” Part of this is ancestry. Newsletters, historically, have been longer and infrequent. They were one or two or more pages of paper you got in the mail. They were sent out monthly, or quarterly, or some frequency a good deal lower than multiple times a day. When they moved to email, and when our contemporary newsletter platforms brought them mainstream, they became the home for anyone who wanted to publish longer stuff online, but that “long and infrequent” culture stuck. When you send your newsletter to your mailing list, it’s going into their email inbox, alongside order confirmations, notes from friends, maybe all their work email, updates from their kids’ teachers, and so on. It’s a lot. Which means that if you send multiple emails a day to your list, your subscribers are going to get fussy. Even daily feels like a demand on their time. Especially because you’re pushing your posts into a space that, given everything else email is for, they really can’t set aside for the day or the week and then get to only when the mood strikes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus, while it’s true that newsletter platforms structurally look like only blogging platforms (you get a homepage with a list of your posts, and comments beneath), the way emails are distributed influences the form the writing takes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 81, "byteStart": 66 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Blogging, on the other hand, is much more flexible. Look again at Daring Fireball. You can even treat blog posts the way you do Bluesky posts, dashing them off as very short thoughts. But there’s something about the cultural sense of what blogging is, and the way blog posts appear on something that feels like your website, instead of feeling like a line in a global feed, that encourages a slower and more in-depth approach." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So what I think is ideal, what I’d like to see us settle into, is social media plus blogging. Bluesky plus Leaflet." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Leaflet + Bluesky > Twitter + Blogger" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But this isn’t the same as going back to Twitter plus Blogger. For one, both Bluesky and Leaflet are built on the AT Protocol, an open network that you own and control your presence in. To give a very rough sketch of what that means, when you sign up for a Bluesky account, what you’re actually doing is creating a store of data on what’s called a Personal Data Server (PDS). This is basically a bundle of all the content you create (e.g., Bluesky posts), stored on a computer somewhere. When you create a new post on Bluesky, the context of it is written into your PDS." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 860, "byteStart": 854 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What makes this exciting is two features of a PDS that set it apart from your tweets living on Twitter’s servers or your blogs living on Blogger’s. First, you control the PDS. In a real sense, it belongs to you. Access to it, such as the permission to write to it, is controlled by the keys you created when you made that first account. Chances are, your existing PDS lives, right now, on Bluesky’s servers, because they’re by far the biggest PDS host out there. But it doesn’t need to. Your ownership means you can move it whenever you’d like. That could be to another service or it could be to your own self-hosted server. And if you don’t like where you end up, you can move it again. Second, your PDS is platform agnostic. Yes, it can store Bluesky posts. But if you sign up for Leaflet, it’ll also store your Leaflet blogs. In fact, anyone can create a service that writes to your PDS, and so long as you give that service access, it can create entries in your personal database. Further, those services can write any kind of content imaginable. The technical term for this is a lexicon. A Bluesky post has a lexicon defining what goes into it. Date, post content, etc. A Leaflet post has its own lexicon that includes titles, polls, much longer text, etc. A TikTok alternative built on this PDS technology would define yet another lexicon that includes all the stuff needed for short-form videos." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 924, "byteStart": 901 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The content stored in your PDS is public. Anyone can browse it. (Though the AT Protocol developers are working on new ways to make some of it private, or to make some of it only accessible by people of your choosing.) Putting these two features together, AT Protocol’s PDS technology means that you own your presence, and that presence ties your various conversation places together. And because the data, or most of it, is public, others can pull these threads together, too. We can build views into conversational structures and connections that cut across platforms (and content forms), but those content forms aren’t tied to a particular platform. I post public short-form text via Bluesky, but the posts themselves live in my PDS, and so can appear outside of Bluesky, or I can continue posting them even if I stop using Bluesky entirely. My blog posts are made via Leaflet, and if you visit www.aaronrosspowell.com, what you’ll see is hosted on Leaflet’s servers. But all my articles are stored in my PDS, and so can be remixed and repackaged and distributed in ways outside of Leaflet’s control. The platforms aren’t the home for my expression, they’ve views into it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 640, "byteStart": 630 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Imagine Tumblr, but half the people you’re interacting with have never used Tumblr, but are instead on Bluesky. Or the option to follow a bunch of people you find interesting, and have a custom interface where you can see, share, and interact with everything they say, no matter if it’s a post, a blog, an essay, a video, or a podcast. And where using that isn’t a matter of tracking people down everywhere they might be, but instead knowing just their atmosphere (that’s what folks have taken to calling the AT Protocol ecosystem) presence (I’m @aaronrosspowell.com) and that single point of entry giving you a menu of everything." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 32, "byteStart": 29 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This also lets you customize how you get whatever selection of what that person writes, produces, says, etc., you want. It could come through a custom feed on Bluesky. Or email. Or Feedly or Reeder. It could be real time, or bundled, and bundled daily or weekly or when fancy machine learning determines that something that person has added to their PDS, no matter what form it takes or where it was added from, would be of particular interest to you. And because all of these options are building on open data, creative and talented developers can build new ways to interact with all the information from all the people you follow, and you can try those out with effectively zero friction, or use multiple simultaneously." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 124, "byteStart": 83 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What’s critical, too, is that the person creating the content you want to follow doesn’t have to think about any of this. They don’t need to know anything about the PDS their Bluesky posts or Leaflet blogs are going into. They never need to use any particular platform within the atmosphere. They could only ever use one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This becomes key to solving the biggest problem with heading over to Blogger right now (it still exists) and starting a blog: discoverability and distribution. If you want people to follow your new blog, you’ll have to convince them to follow you on Bluesky, and then you share your new posts there. Or they’ll have to find your blog in a search engine, and then make a point of visiting regularly. Or they’ll need to set up a new tool they might not already be using (an RSS reader, for example) to aggregate the blogs they read, but then remember to read their aggregator, in addition to their email inbox and their social media feed. And if they want to interact with what you’ve written, they need to do that in a different space from where they’re interacting with everyone else, and that means everyone else isn’t seeing the conversations they’re participating in with you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 237, "byteStart": 226 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The way newsletter platforms have tried to solve this is recommendation networks, which result in subscriptions, which result in emails sent to inboxes, or, in the case of Substack, a push for readers to use the Substack app, yet another social media platform." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But Leaflet, because it’s built on the AT Protocol, can integrate with Bluesky. If you log into Leaflet with your atmosphere account (most likely your Bluesky account), you can get a custom feed in Bluesky of new Leaflet posts from everyone you follow on Bluesky. Instantly. And if another of your follows starts posting on Leaflet three weeks from now, her posts will just show up. You can imagine a world where comment threads are accessible on both your Leaflet posts and on Bluesky, or where mentions of posts on Leaflet turn into posts referencing those on Bluesky, and so appear in Bluesky notifications." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 3, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And (and I know I’m saying “and” a lot, but all this stuff builds on itself), because your Leaflet posts don’t belong to Leaflet, but are in your PDS, if you decide you’d rather your blog be run by some other engine, so long as that engine can read the Leaflet post lexicon (this is why it’s good if lexicons get treated as standards), none of your connections or conversations break." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "What Leaflet Needs" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I could go on. This is the most exciting personal publishing on the internet has been in a long time, and we’re just at the beginning. And I’m using Leaflet as my example not because it will necessarily end up as the default way people write blog posts in the Atmosphere, but because it doesn’t have to. The Leaflet team is doing awesome things, and has even more awesome plans, and the service is already robust enough for you to start using today, but if Leaflet is just one among many equally popular AT Protocol blogging engines, that’s just as good. Because they’re all just views into your writing." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 75, "byteStart": 51 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://lab.leaflet.pub/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Leaflet is under quite active development, and the official Leaflet Leaflet is the place to go to see what’s new. But I want to close with some of my thoughts on what I think it needs to fully become what I hope it can become. Some of these are features Leaflet’s team has already said are coming, and some are coming quite soon. I’m just going to write them all down, anyway, because I think together they paint a good picture of what would be my perfect writing place." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://lab.leaflet.pub/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Leaflet Lab Notes", "description": "Behind the scenes as we build a social publishing platform on Bluesky / AT Protocol — blogs, newsletters, and beyond!" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 9, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 440, "byteStart": 432 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Mentions. Currently, I can link to other Leaflet posts, just as I can link to any other website, but there’s no elegant way for me to mention a post or an author such that they get notified of the mention, or that the mention (optionally) shows up on their posts, the way the old trackbacks and pingbacks did. There are challenges in this (e.g., spam), but having mentions would supercharge the social aspect of Leaflet blogging. Update: Leaflet launched mentions in early December." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://lab.leaflet.pub/3m7py65pswk2e", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Atmospheric @-mentions! - Leaflet Lab Notes", "description": "Lab Notes 017: mention Bluesky accounts, Leaflet publications, specific posts and more to come — an interface for links across the atmosphere", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreia4zxdfjh4m3fctygxapu6dyga6krdkubxfpv3pdoaw7ntm34quyq" }, "size": 83896, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 21, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Longer shared quotes. One of Leaflet’s coolest features is the way it handles sharing quotes from articles. To see it in action, highlight some text here, and then click the little “Share to Bluesky” that pops up. The resulting link preview in Bluesky will use the quote as its thumbnail image. This is exceptionally clever. The trouble is, it means you can’t share much more than a few lines of text before it just runs off the bottom of the image. But sharing big quotes from an article you like is one of the best ways to discuss it on social media. My spitballed solution is, if the quote is longer than would fit in the preview image, have Leaflet instead share an actual image, attached to the post, and then include the link in the post text." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 14, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 186, "byteStart": 179 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Notifications. This is partly just restating “mentions,” but at the moment, Leaflet doesn’t tell you if someone shares your post, quotes it, or leaves a comment. It should. Update: Leaflet launched notifications in November." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://lab.leaflet.pub/3m664kxn3xk2h", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Notifications in Leaflet - Leaflet Lab Notes", "description": "Lab Notes 015: we now have in-app notifications for post comments, replies, and new publication subscribers", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreigeelp5a7ahmp5hpwfruzkxdvoqwdgkzkxp2p4droj57picogxsxy" }, "size": 85123, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 40, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Email. And, specifically, bundled email. Right now, there are two ways you can follow my Leaflet blog. You can click the “Follow” button at the bottom of this post, and you’ll get a custom feed in Bluesky of Leaflet blogs you follow. Or you can subscribe to my RSS feed in your preferred RSS reading app. Both are great. But in a world dominated by newsletters, people ought to be able to subscribe via email. This the Leaflet team has said is coming. However, to get around the “long and infrequent” probably I noted with newsletters, I’d like to see the option of setting your own delivery frequency when you subscribe. Specifically, I’d like an option to say “Send me everything as it’s published,” “Send me one email a day that bundles everything published that day,” or “Send me one email a week that bundles everything published that week.” This should be the subscriber’s choice, not a frequency set by the writer." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 11, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 290, "byteStart": 276 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Navigation. I’d like to be able to create a navigation bar on my Leaflet webpage. Let me have links to whatever I want. Maybe that’s a post on Leaflet (an “About” page, for example), or maybe it’s an external link, such as an item that says “Podcast” and points to my podcast. This will help Leaflet blogs become more like home pages." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 5, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 320, "byteStart": 312 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Tags. Let me add subject matter tags to my posts. This will help me organize them, and help readers find more stuff I’ve written related to particular topics. But they’ll also help with discovery. Let me create a custom feed on Bluesky that shows me all Leaflet posts about a topic or combination of topics. Update: On December 12, Leaflet launched experimental tagging." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://lab.leaflet.pub/3m7t7taogdc2j", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Experimenting with tags in Leaflet - Leaflet Lab Notes", "description": "Lab Notes 018: a simple implementation of global tags for Leaflet posts, to help writers and communities coordinate and find each other — with some early examples and ways to try!", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiafzatj3qkftb3qonwgx7sm3hthlbojpcpurckwe65d2n7vyv5wci" }, "size": 86430, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 16, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Recommendations. Find Leaflet posts I might be interested in that aren’t from people I follow. Maybe I can like Leaflet posts and it uses that to find similar content. Or it finds Leaflet publications followed by people I follow." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 6, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Stats. These could be baked into the platform (a stats dashboard) or as simple as letting me add a line of JavaScript to include stats tracking from elsewhere. The point isn’t vanity metrics. It’s that knowing where your readers are coming from is a way to spot nodes in the conversation you'd otherwise have missed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 13, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Monetization. Not all hobbies need to be monetized. Old-school blogs rarely were. But we’re in an era of memberships and supporters, and there are clever ways to take advantage of the open nature of AT Protocol and its upcoming private data features to enable paid subscriptions, paywalled posts, and early access posts. This would make Leaflet even more appealing to people currently on other newsletter platforms." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 7, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Design. You can already tweak what your Leaflet blog looks like, to some extent. You can mess with colors and set a background, but you can’t change the typeface, nor can you organize your homepage, add a custom header or footer, or other ways it’d be nice to have to express ourselves." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 286, "byteStart": 273 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://leaflet.pub", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That’s my wishlist for now. I’m sure I’ll add more, and I’ll flag the ones that get added after I’ve published this. For now, though, I just want to reiterate how excited I am by what Leaflet represents, and encourage you, if you want a place to write online, to check it out." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 58, "byteStart": 51 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreih4trmh772sn5u2ig2i4aqhopy7nndazm6pcczfqhwzpbwenpxe4y", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4jmwkxqg226", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreif347juqzitaifuuk4rcgdqjmbqm7jxzwemtziyhdwa4dousxt4pi", "rev": "3m4jmwl33dm25" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-31T23:28:21.738Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.819017+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo5p36c222", "data": { "path": "/3m2zo5p36c222", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Politics of \"Unbiased\" Conservative Search Engines", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da5f-1251-7555-986f-98d0f9715102", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published December 18, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I occasionally run ads on this newsletter, but I don’t typically write about them. I’m going to do so today, however, because the advertiser my newsletter host’s ad network brought me is pretty weird. And its weirdness is a good way to talk about how the American right is constructing a politically correct parallel economy for themselves." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s start with the ad itself. (I’ve screenshotted it, because I’ve moved hosts since writing this and so don’t have the ad directly in this post anymore.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreigxvztgjz2fv7blbskunnnqm5iq2zacyae4qc3qljz6qcw47c7oue" }, "size": 331271, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1000, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Still with me? Let’s talk about Freespoke." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 122, "byteStart": 94 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://freespoke.com/about", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Freespoke is interesting, from both product and messaging standpoints. Briefly, here’s the main features they highlight that sets Freespoke apart from Google, Bing, and other competing search engines, and so constitute the core of its sales pitch to users:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It attempts to categorize individual results along the political spectrum, labeling sources as “left,” “right,” or “middle.”" }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It is “100% private” in that it doesn’t ask you to log in." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When your search points you to products, it “showcases American-made and Veteran-owned businesses” instead of the “low-quality products made overseas” other search engines point you to." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It blocks porn." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you guessed after reading these that Freespoke is a project of the political right, give yourself a star. It’s founded by Todd Ricketts and Kristin Jackson. Ricketts is the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, and served as the national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. Jackson has a long history in the GOP political and policy worlds. When Freespoke brands themselves as an “unbiased” search engine and that they don’t “manipulate the information,” it’s clear what they have in mind is all the left-wing “bias” and “manipulation” present on search engines like Google." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "There’s No Such Thing as Unbiased Search" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Every search engine, including Freespoke, has some bias. Every search engine manipulates the results it shows you. It would be impossible for a search engine to do otherwise because, no matter what you search for, there are more results on the web plausibly related to it than it can functionally show you at once. So it has to have some method for choosing which are relevant, and that method is necessarily a form of “bias.” Furthermore, a search engine doesn’t show you all the relevant results simultaneously. Instead, it lists them, and listing them means it has to put them in some kind of order. That ordering is necessarily a form of “manipulation.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 483, "byteStart": 449 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/ban-nazis-unban-sex-workers-on-substack", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Even if Freespoke can somehow get around those iron laws of search engine design, you might notice that points 3 and 4 in their sales pitch are both forms of bias and results manipulation. They have a bias in favor of American made products. They manipulate results by excluding pornography. (I’m reminded of Substack’s defense of their content moderation policies as being a deep commitment to free speech, but it’s a “free speech” that allows Nazis but bans sex workers.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Bias Labeling Doesn’t Work" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Playing with Freespoke, the results are … fine. Not noticeably better than what you get elsewhere. (It’s unlikely Freespoke spun up a search engine from scratch, given the complexity and resource intensiveness of that undertaking, so I suspect they, like many “alternative” search engines, are using Bing’s API, or something like it. But I can’t find enough information to confirm either way.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 413, "byteStart": 391 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/the-nature-of-ideology", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Their political bias labeling feature runs into the same problems these assessments always do, whether hand crafted with human judgement or, in most cases, based on AI-powered language assessment. Namely, where they do work, they’re not terribly helpful, and where they could be helpful and interesting, they don’t work. The left-right political spectrum is too blunt an instrument for cataloging ideologies." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 149, "byteStart": 125 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-15/la-patrick-soon-shiong-interview", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Still, people keep thinking they can make this work. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the L.A. Times, has been all over the news lately for wanting to shoehorn it into his newspaper. The response probably isn’t what he was hoping for. Basically everyone is pointing out that it’s a bad idea, and not just a bad idea, but a pretty stupid one. Bias filters don’t work. Why? Here’s just a handful of reasons:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList", "children": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 25, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Subjectivity of Language: Language is inherently subjective, and words can have different connotations and interpretations depending on the context and the reader’s background. Seemingly neutral language can carry implicit biases, and seemingly biased language can express what are actually pretty level takes." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 19, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Complexity of Bias: Bias can be multifaceted and manifest in various forms, making it difficult to capture with a single metric or score. A “bias meter” or a left-right spectrum necessarily oversimplifies and fails to account for the nuances of journalistic practices." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 29, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Lack of Contextual Awareness: Bias meters often lack the ability to consider the broader context of a news story, including historical events, cultural norms, and the specific circumstances surrounding the event being reported. This can lead to misinterpretations and inaccurate assessments of bias." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 32, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Limited Understanding of Intent: It is difficult for a bias meter to determine the intent behind a journalist’s choices. A seemingly biased presentation may be the result of unintentional biases or constraints such as space limitations or editorial guidelines." }, "children": [] }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.unorderedList#listItem", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 27, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Potential for Manipulation: News organizations or individuals could potentially manipulate a bias meter by intentionally using language or framing techniques to achieve a desired score. So even if the meters or labels work now, if enough people start paying attention to them, they’re more or less guaranteed to stop working." }, "children": [] } ] } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 296, "byteStart": 242 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://clearsky.app/aaronrosspowell.com/lists", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 597, "byteStart": 583 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/reimaginingliberty/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "I’ll also note that, from personal experience, these labels fail. I’ve spent my career mapping out and arguing for a quite consistent set of political principles derived from a foundation of coherent moral claims. But if you pull up the lists I’ve been added to by various users on Bluesky (Bluesky’s protocol means all the lists you create, including the list of users you’ve blocked, are publicly accessible), you’ll discover I’m on one for “Tankies & Radical Leftists,” another for fascists, and yet another for classical liberals. Throughout my time writing and podcasting about political issues, I’ve been accused of being on the right and on the left. So what’s my bias?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "“Oh, the internet. It can be a scary place… but less so with Freespoke.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 209, "byteStart": 185 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/pop-locke/gods-not-dead", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Finally, let’s talk about the first line in the ad, because it gets to this alternative ecosystem conservatives are building. Years ago, for a podcast, I had to watch several of the God’s Not Dead movies. For those unfamiliar, these are a series of films made by Christian evangelicals for Christian evangelicals. I’m an atheistic Buddhist, so I’m not the target audience for these movies, and not only hadn’t seen them before, but I hadn’t seen any of the movies made by the alternative movie industry that exists to serve evangelical audiences. The movies are terrible and mostly crazy, but one theme that stood out is “The world outside your narrow evangelical community is scary and threatening, and so you all need to stick together, and not let its corrupt values influence you.” It was striking how much these movies presented a world that simply doesn’t exist, not even remotely. Yet their entire game is convincing their audience it does and that they’re living in it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 60, "byteStart": 44 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Freespoke doesn’t seem quite as crazy as God’s Not Dead. But that line in the ad positions it with a similar pitch. The kinds of people deeply worried about pornography, and very concerned about not buying products made by foreigners, and fretting about Google hiding the “truth” from them, are quite likely the sorts of conservatives scared of a (largely imagined) world dominated by the cultural left and out to get them. The story Freespoke is selling is that if you just use their search engine, you’ll be on the path to “Finding the truth, and the freedom to make up our own minds!,” as Mary C. puts it in one of the site’s testimonials. You’ll have access to the unbiased “truth” LaurieAnna W. found: “My husband and I searched a variety of topics we felt were being censored on Google, the difference in Freespoke is amazing! All the information they are suppressing is right there!…Great site!”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And with those truths and suppressed information in your pocket, you needn’t feel as threatened by the liberal arts sophomores at Sarah Lawrence you’ve never met, because you’ve got the “arrived at my own conclusions” truth on your side. But of course a great many of those sources you find while “doing your own research” are, well, quite bad. You’re not on the uncensored path to enlightenment and instead largely and systematically misinforming yourself." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I don’t hold all this against Freespoke. Like I said, playing with it gives more or less okay results, and the left/right/middle labels aren’t uproariously bad, even if they are pretty useless. Let a thousand non-Googles bloom, catering to the tastes of diverse audiences. That’s the market in action." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But the sales pitch warrants some skepticism." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:42:33.888Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.282808+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zflvqbyc27", "data": { "path": "/3m2zflvqbyc27", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "How to Talk Yourself into Defending Nonsense", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d948-6e20-7bbb-9a35-3c2e70621744", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 25, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If you spend enough time in online political spaces, particularly those populated by pundits and intellectuals, you’ll inevitably run across the phenomenon of an otherwise very smart and educated person arguing forcefully for obviously wrong, and often entirely nonsensical, claims. It’s perplexing, and typically a bit embarrassing, but the mechanism by which it happens is relatively straightforward. And it’s worth being aware of so that we can better catch ourselves before we head down a similar path." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The process starts by going outside one’s wheelhouse. Even the smartest of us have some areas of knowledge in which we might be experts, but plenty in which we’re not. But because politics touches on, well, everything, and so talking about politics broadly means having to talk about anything, the incentive to drift outside of one’s domain of expertise when engaging in the discussion of political (or politicized) ideas is strong. Further, the way you stand out from the pack in intellectual spaces is by making unorthodox claims. If you argue conventional wisdom, you’re one among many. If you argue unconventional wisdom, you’re closer to unique. This doesn’t mean conventional wisdom is always right, or that radically departing from it is always a sign that your argument is bad. Instead, there are strong incentives to present positions going against the grain if you are motivated by a desire to provoke discussion and debate." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If your unconventional or controversial argument gets attention, then the next step is certain to follow: You’ll get criticism from people who disagree with you, and many of them will be people who have more knowledge of whatever the matter or topic is than you do. It’s not your area of expertise, after all, but it is theirs. However, because we’re talking politically charged questions here, and because you staked out a position different from the recognized experts, it’s likely not just that they disagree with your take, but that their politics are different from yours, as well. Thus the people criticizing you are, politically, from the other side." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This leads to the third step. Because you’ve made a political argument, and because the people criticizing your argument also disagree with your politics, it’s easy to convince yourself that they are motivated primarily or entirely by their politics. It’s not that they just happen to know more than you do about whatever it is you staked out a position on, and so are able to spot errors in your argument that you didn’t see, but that even the appearance of objective criticism on their part is just that, an appearance, when really what’s going on is they don’t like the political position your argument props up, and so are attaching it for disingenuous, and merely political, reasons. And if that’s the case, then the content of their criticism is beside the point, and not worth taking seriously." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What’s more, the very fact that they rushed to criticize your argument, instead of simply ignoring it, is evidence that they feel threatened by it. And because this is all in a political context, the fact that they feel threatened by it is itself evidence that the argument is threatening to their politics. In other words, it’s evidence that the argument is right. Which means you shouldn’t revise or abandon it, but instead double down on it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When described in this straightforward way, the errors in reasoning along the way, from arguing outside your area of expertise to digging in on what you ought to recognize as a poor argument, are pretty clear. But if you pay attention, you’ll notice this process playing out all the time. And if you care about getting your arguments right—not just as a way to win debates, but from a desire to hone in on truth—you’ll put in the effort, and cultivate intellectual humility, to stop yourself before you end up defending nonsense." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T19:09:26.957Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.572609+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tl7oomk2y", "data": { "path": "/3m33tl7oomk2y", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Boys Are Falling Behind Girls Because Girls Aren't Being Held Back", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199ded0-b7fd-7dd0-8092-e00551d76e20", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 26, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 161 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/girls-boys-school-performance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU8.IuP6.bwz1B6ojupl5&smid=url-share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 178, "byteStart": 164 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/girls-boys-school-performance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU8.IuP6.bwz1B6ojupl5&smid=url-share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 199, "byteStart": 178 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/girls-boys-school-performance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZU8.IuP6.bwz1B6ojupl5&smid=url-share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Is lack of male teachers to blame for boys underperforming and otherwise falling behind? Probably not, at least according to the data Jessica Grose marshals in a New York Times column. (Gift Link) She raises what’s typically a good critique to point out whenever someone says, “Here’s something bad that has recently, and it must be caused by this feature of the world.” Namely, she asks, “Is that feature new?” If it isn’t, if it’s been around for a while, then chances are it isn’t the cause of the new bad thing." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 122, "byteStart": 118 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In this case, she correctly points out that, well, young boys have been taught overwhelmingly by female teachers for much longer than we’ve been fretting about the “boy crisis.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Boys and girls were made to sit for long periods of time in the 1950s, and their punishment for disobeying was likely harsher than it is in many schools today. (I have heard so many tales of nuns hitting kids with rulers.) I don’t think there was a widespread embrace of boys acting out in the classroom in previous generations, and yet no one is arguing that American education of the Eisenhower era made boys less ambitious. This revelation made me want to see if there was actually empirical support for the boy-crisis argument." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This sounds right. So what has changed? I think the correct answer is: opportunities. It used to be that a boy could underperform a girl in school, but still be confident in achieving higher status once he graduated, because high status positions were closed to women, and so less qualified boys could still get them. Or, if they weren’t closed, their environments were so hostile to women that few women pursued them, and fewer still stuck around." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In other words, in the high-status professions, there used to be a good deal less competition, which meant that relatively more mediocre men were able to find positions and success than can today when those relatively more mediocre men have to compete with a greater number of less mediocre women. (And, in the case of white men, fewer qualified minorities, as well.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 599, "byteStart": 596 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In a knowledge economy such as ours, status very much latches onto educational attainment. Yes, you can achieve high status while not achieving high educational attainment (you can drop out of college and launch a successful tech firm). But if you want a surefire bet, getting a graduate degree helps a ton. Which means going to undergrad and doing well, and that means doing well enough in high school to be accepted into a good undergraduate program. Girls perform better in K-12, and that’s not terribly new, which is Grose’s point. What is new is that those better-performing girls have far more opportunity to get into top schools, and then go to grad school, than they did in the middle of the last century." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 197, "byteStart": 193 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 698, "byteStart": 619 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zk7kvoas23", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That, in turn, means that the guys who aren’t as successful aren’t just finding themselves competing against a field of higher-qualified peers than before, but they’re competing against more of them, as well. And, the ones who do make it into higher-status professions aren’t getting the cushy boys’ clubs of yesteryear, where they could coast comfortably in a comparatively less demanding environment. (I suspect this is the root cause of men in traditionally male intellectual professions getting rather incensed by finding themselves now among female peers who are showing them up. And then spinning up rather silly arguments about how those women aren’t really showing them up.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Put another way, there’s no longer (as much of) a default status that comes with being a guy, nor does being a guy give you exclusive access to the high-status professions. The K-12 educational success gap isn’t new, but those status and access changes are exposing it, where before it was more hidden. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for ways to bring up the educational achievement of boys, including acknowledging that boys, particularly younger boys, might need different methods to pay for their different behaviors. But it also doesn’t mean we should see the fact that the relative success of boys and girls, and then men and women, is shifting in itself a problem. If women were kept down, and now they aren’t, then it will appear that boys are losing ground. If that’s at least part of what’s going on, then the solution isn’t to drag women back down again, but to encourage our boys to recognize that it’s actually okay if the girls around them, or some of them, or many of them, are as good, if not better, at school or work or careers than they are." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Let’s not blame boys’ underperformance on women teachers.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T18:24:55.698Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.812286+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znzs2zfs22", "data": { "path": "/3m2znzs2zfs22", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199da5d-9d34-7888-89a3-35fabbf35554", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published November 24, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 61, "byteStart": 41 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.threads.net/@mosseri/post/DCkAjj1y5qz?xmt=AQGziK_G6E1Cd47VAbMbYVmQCT-1A4hvN6ez9s_DVbeMqw", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 137, "byteStart": 132 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads is significantly bigger than Bluesky (even as Bluesky crosses the 20 million user mark). It feels quite a lot smaller, though, which contributes to why a lot of people prefer Bluesky over Threads. But why does it feel that way?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A common answer is “Threads suppresses news and political content, so it doesn’t get traction.” That might be part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole, or even main, story. Rather, Threads has a unique approach to community. One way to think about it is that Threads is trying to build a fundamentally different approach to social media and the social media experience from what Twitter was and what Bluesky aims to be. Because what it’s building is quite novel, and also not clearly articulated by Threads’ leadership, it gets interpreted not as a worthy approach—even if one not for everyone—but instead as failure to accomplish the end of being a successful Twitter alternative." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Old Twitter and New Bluesky Approach" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 215, "byteStart": 173 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.social/about/blog/7-27-2023-custom-feeds", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Bluesky has an algorithmic feed, where posts are ranked on various metrics and shown out of order, and which includes posts from people you don’t follow. In fact, it has a lot of them and lets you build your own." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But Bluesky doesn’t default you to an algorithmic feed, and my sense is most people there don’t spend much time in them. Instead, Bluesky is primarily a chronological feed, showing you everything from everyone you follow (and everything they repost), ordered by time and date. Threads does the opposite. It has a chronological feed, but it doesn’t really want you to use it, because it makes accessing it somewhat opaque, and insists on switching you back to the algorithmic “For You” feed quite often. Threads want you using its algorithmic feed, and seeing what it thinks you want to see." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 133, "byteStart": 129 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Old social networks, such as Twitter in its heyday, were built around vitality. If something got popular, the algorithm made it more popular. Chronological feeds produce a similar result, because the way you see things from outside of your following network is when the people you follow repost (or retweet) it. The more a post is seen, the more likely it is to be reposted, and the more likely other people are to see it. Bluesky works in a similar way." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 109, "byteStart": 99 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-social-media-tricks-our-brains-and-destroys-our-politics", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 114, "byteStart": 109 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-social-media-tricks-our-brains-and-destroys-our-politics", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 160, "byteStart": 114 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-social-media-tricks-our-brains-and-destroys-our-politics", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In practice this means that, while there are niche communities on the platform, the experience of using it feels more like being a part of one big community. This is how, for example, Twitter was able to be a driver of the broader culture, while not being huge itself in terms of active user numbers. What was happening on Twitter, everyone on Twitter was talking about. And many of the people most active there were influential outside of Twitter." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Threads goes in the other direction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Threads Approach" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Threads algorithm is anti-viral. Rather than showing you what’s popular, it figures out, pretty narrowly, what topics (it thinks) you’re interested in, and shows you people talking about those. It rarely brings you posts outside of that handful of topics. The result is that, while Twitter (and Bluesky) feel/felt like everyone together in one room, Threads feels like a ton of smaller, barely overlapping rooms, and you’re in only a few of them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Threads is at least an order of magnitude larger, in terms of people using it on a regular basis, than Bluesky. But the Threads experience feels much smaller because using Threads is like hanging out in a much smaller network, or a handful of very small networks. Most of those hundreds of millions of users are invisible to you. They might as well not even be on Threads at all in terms of any particular user’s experience." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 254, "byteStart": 184 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/echo-chambers-and-the-ethics-of-blocking", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That’s not bad. It’s an interesting and, for many, appealing approach to social media. There’s a reason Discord communities are so popular, and why web forums were before them. People like being in smaller communities of narrowly shared interests. It’s a reasonable way to approach a social media platform, and clearly one that lots of people, given Threads’ user numbers, quite like." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But if you’re looking instead for “the discourse,” for that old school Twitter sense of being in one big conversation and where your remarks into that conversation can blow up and go viral and gain you a ton of followers across the network, you’re going to prefer Bluesky. Neither approach is better than the other. They’re different. And, with Twitter’s fall, we’re in a time when such experimentation in the basic structure of social media can happen to a degree Twitter’s dominance of its niche had prior prevented from getting much traction." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T21:40:22.811Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:36.671218+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "data": { "path": "/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199ab5c-fe94-7ffc-a172-6747c27fe953", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 276, "byteStart": 256 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_collapse?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To train an AI model, you need to give it a ton of data, and the quality of output from the model depends upon whether that data is any good. A risk AI models face, especially as AI-generated output makes up a larger share of what’s published online, is “model collapse”: the rapid degradation that results from AI models being trained on the output of AI models. Essentially, the AI is primarily talking to, and learning from, itself, and this creates a self-reinforcing cascade of bad thinking." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 337, "byteStart": 295 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zflvqbyc27", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "We’ve been watching something similar happen, in real time, with the Elon Musks, Marc Andreessens, Peter Thiels, and other chronically online Silicon Valley representatives of far-right ideology. It’s not just that they have bad values that are leading to bad politics. They also seem to be talking themselves into believing nonsense at an increasing rate. The world they seem to believe exists, and which they’re reacting and warning against, bears less and less resemblance to the actual world, and instead represents an imagined lore they’ve gotten themselves lost in." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This is happening because they’re talking among themselves, and have constructed an ideology that has convinced them those outside their bubble aren’t worth listening to, and that any criticisms of the ideas internal to their bubble are just confirmation of their ideology, not meaningful challenges to it. They’ve convinced themselves they are the only innovative and non-conformist thinkers, even though, like an AI trained on AI slop, their ideological inputs are increasingly uniform and grounded in bad data and worse ideas." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Model collapse happens because structural features of the training process, intentional or unintentional, mean that AI-generated content is included, at an increasing frequency, in the training data. The AI “learns” from sources that don’t correct its mistakes and misconceptions. Structural features of a similar sort are playing out in the far-right corners of Silicon Valley." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 33, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 56, "byteStart": 33 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zncix4jk2q", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 698, "byteStart": 678 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY0NA?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 713, "byteStart": 700 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzU3MzAyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTY0OTIyMw?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 1402, "byteStart": 1382 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-war-on-the-woke-trumps-the-truth?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "First, there’s what I call the “Quillette Effect.” Because we believe our own ideas are correct (or else we wouldn’t believe them), we tend to think that people who share our ideas are correct, as well. Thus, when someone who shares our ideas tells us about new ideas we’re not familiar with, we tend to think their presentation of those ideas is probably accurate. Quillette is a website that has often published articles explaining ideas on the left to its predominantly right-wing audience. If you’re part of that community, and share the generally right-wing perspective of Quillette authors, but don’t know much about the left-originating ideas they discuss (critical race theory, postmodernism, etc.), you’ll likely find their explainers persuasive, not just in terms of being a reasonably accurate presentation of those ideas, but also in their conclusion that those ideas lack merit. But if you do know something about those ideas, you’ll find that Quillette presents them poorly and inaccurately. In other words, the “Quillette Effect” is an example of an ideological community tricking itself into believing it has learned about ideas outside of its tribe, when in fact it’s just flattering and reinforcing ideas internal to its tribe. And Quillette is far from alone in this. Bari Weiss’s Free Press, quite popular in online right-wing circles, plays the same game." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 60, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 796, "byteStart": 727 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-camp-buying-tv-ads-mar-a-lago-florida?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Second, there’s the structural issue of wealth dependency. When you’re as rich as Musk, Andreessen, or Thiel, a great many of the people you interact with are either of your immediate social class, or are dependent upon you financially. Your immediate social class, especially the people you interact with socially, are likely to share your ideological priors, and so not challenge you at anything like a deep level. And people who are financially dependent on you are likely to reflect your ideas back to you, rather than challenging them, because they don’t want to lose your support—or they are hoping to gain it. Thus your ongoing training inputs will reflect your own ideological outputs. (The recent story of the Trump campaign buying pro-Trump ads on cable stations near Mar-a-Lago so Trump will see positive messages about himself—even though this is wasted money from a campaign strategy standpoint—is an example of this dynamic.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 249, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Third, the structure of social media not only means that very online people tend to be flooded with ideologically confirming views, but when they encounter contrary positions, its in a way that makes them easier to write off as unserious and fringe. The nature of a social media feed tricks us into thinking our ideological community is much more representative of the broader conversation than it really is." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For someone like Elon Musk—a guy who spends so much time on Twitter that it seemingly represents the bulk of his engagement with people outside his immediate circles—the odd little far-right world of his Twitter feed comes to feel like the whole world. Terminally online, heavy social media users don’t realize how much nonsense they take to be fact because that nonsense, to them, looks like majority opinion, disputed only by a discredited (by their community’s imagined consensus) and unserious minority." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 36, "byteStart": 22 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2xcd4u63226", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 393, "byteStart": 345 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2zkbbxxsk23", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "(That passage is from a longer essay I wrote digging into how this works, and how this cognitive illusion damages our politics.) Further, because so much of the online right is concentrated on Twitter, people who are active on Twitter come to view the ideas internal to the online right as closer to the mainstream than they in fact are, and so get dragged to the right, often unintentionally. This means that the “training data” of very online ideologues looks increasingly uniform and is just restatements of very online right-wing perspectives, and data outside of that perspective is treated with growing suspicion because it is mistakenly believed to be fringe, and so not worth taking seriously." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 574, "byteStart": 547 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m3ahechta22z", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The result of these three features is an insular intellectual community, talking increasingly only to itself, and increasingly cut off from the kinds of conversations that would correct its excesses, or, at the very least, give it a more accurate perspective on what the world outside its bubble looks like. Hence their surprise, for example, that the nomination of JD Vance led not to a widespread and enthusiastic embrace of neo-reactionary philosophy, but instead to an entire, and apparently quite successful, Democratic campaign built around “those guys are weird.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The problem with model collapse is, once it goes too far, it’s difficult to correct. The solution to model collapse is to train on better data. But accomplishing that, and undoing the rapidly radicalizing right-wing ideology of these titans of the Valley, means undoing the structural causes of that self-referential and self-reinforcing cascade. And that’s no easy task." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "The combination of exceptional wealth and a closed and uniform ideological and intellectual community wreaks havoc on one's epistemic psychology.", "publishedAt": "2025-08-06T18:39:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.875026+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2kop5nn7s2r", "data": { "path": "/3m2kop5nn7s2r", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "If Trump is So Unpopular, Why are Institutions Capitulating?", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199aa42-7dff-7dd2-9ee9-91149234c873", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "During the first Trump administration, I worked for a think tank. Those were odd years for think tanks, because the GOP, under Trump, largely abandoned its interest in public policy, and so largely abandoned its interest in public policy analysis. Instead, it was about posturing and power." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Maybe a year or so in, there was an extended conversation about how to talk about Trump and Trumpism. As a think tank, you engage in policy analysis, not grand theorizing about the state of political culture. So should think tank scholars be saying things like, \"Trump is an authoritarian and desires to destroy democratic institutions to instantiate an autocracy?\" Or should you instead just say, \"This policy the Trump administration has proposed would lead to bad results?\"" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 643, "byteStart": 613 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.liberalcurrents.com/americas-paths-to-personalism/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Bound up in that was a question of access. If you want to influence public policy, you need the ear of the people directing policy. And that means a lot of people—in the legislature, the administration, and the administrative agencies—who are in the president's party and support his vision of America. Telling them you don't think their policies will have positive results is one thing. You can say that while maintaining access. But having your scholars out there saying Trump and the GOP instead want to destroy the foundations of our liberal society, overthrow the constitution, and rebuild America as an autocratic personalist regime? That's likely to lose you some of the friends you need to move the short term policy needle." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 492, "byteStart": 489 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Hence the debate. It was a genuine one, and hardly unique, playing out in versions around DC. It's also what came to mind when I read the two news stories about Apple and Google pulling apps from their app stores which were helping people alert each other to ICE agents in their neighborhoods. Because here was a capitulation—and the language made it clear that's what happened—by two of the biggest, most powerful corporations in the world, and I understood why they did it. And that why, I think, is a version of the debate think tanks had during Trump's first administration. (I've been out of that world now for going on four years, so I don't know what kinds of debates are happening during Trump's second administration, but I imagine the \"He's destroying the constitutional order and we shouldn't be afraid to say so\" side has even more weight behind it this time.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "First, Apple. " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.theverge.com/news/791170/iceblock-app-store-removed-by-apple", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Apple pulls ICEBlock from the App Store", "description": "ICEBlock reportedly has 1.1 million users.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreigc6bnaqndwbumexzx5s6ibsqaw722u3mma42fkotbnntzgx2aqwm" }, "size": 31600, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Today, Bondi took credit for the app’s removal, saying to Fox News Digital, “We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so. ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed.” " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Pam Bondi is certainly taking this as a capitulation, and the app's developer agrees." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron is quoted in the same report saying, it counts over 1.1 million users, and that “Apple has claimed they received information from law enforcement that ICEBlock served to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Next, Google." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "src": "https://www.404media.co/google-calls-ice-agents-a-vulnerable-group-removes-ice-spotting-app-red-dot/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.website", "title": "Google Calls ICE Agents a Vulnerable Group, Removes ICE-Spotting App ‘Red Dot’", "description": "The move comes as Apple removed ICEBlock after direct pressure from U.S. Department of Justice officials and signals a broader crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.", "previewImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreicvjj66l75r7wcmzh5mlrrbwvcydnew7xmlkhcjig6hskgfsfkzte" }, "size": 38952, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.blockquote", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Google told 404 Media it removed apps because they shared the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that recently faced a violent act connected to these sorts of ICE-spotting apps—a veiled reference to ICE officials." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What's going on? It's fear, yes. The president wields unimaginable power, and this president in particular is less constrained in its abuse than his predecessors. But it's not all fear. Others have pushed back and won. What I think is also going on is that organizations—corporations, institutions—are habituated into a mode of thinking that isn't really up to meeting the moment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 222, "byteStart": 220 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 288, "byteStart": 286 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 341, "byteStart": 339 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 438, "byteStart": 436 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Rather than the zoomed-out thinking needed for a threat this large and immediate, these organizations share a zoomed-in perspective. A narrowing of the range of concern. What matters is what happens, or might happen, in my policy area. What matters is what happens, or might happen, to my institution, or to those factors most relevant to my continued success within that institutions. What matters is what happens, or might happen, to my company's bottom line." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You get to be a policy analyst, or a corporate or institutional leader, because you hyper obsess about such things. Otherwise you'd drift into boredom, or other pursuits, long before you rise to that level of expertise. You have one ball, and you don't take your eye off it, no matter the world's distractions. This works in normal times. It works when the game you're playing is meaningfully distinct from everything else. When it can be compartmentalized." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But ours is not an era of compartmentalization. It's an era of systemic threat. It's an era when the correct perspective is a holistic one. The entire order is under threat of overturning, and what seeks to replace it isn't marginally worse, but so bad that, much as you'd like to pretend otherwise and take advantage where you can, if the people in charge win out, their victory will mean the end of your game. Whatever it is." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 263, "byteStart": 257 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Most of us see this. Most of us recognize the magnitude of what's happening. (Too many, unfortunately, cheer it. But they still recognize the stakes.) Those with this zoomed-in perspective don't, or don't want to. They're trapped, at least until things get really bad, by the paired forces of mental habit and professional incentive. It is challenging to zoom out. And it's doubly challenging when zooming out might mean taking actions that are needed at the macro-level to protect society and its institutions of freedom, but might cause you setbacks, now, at the micro-level." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So we see institutions, corporations, and others with this perspective capitulating because capitulating feels like relief. Even if they know (and many pretend they don't) that the bully won't give up and this capitulation will inevitably lead to future and increasing demands for more of the same. Capitulating feels like gain. It feels like you're doing your job of moving the needle in the interests of your organization. Remove the app and ICE will leave your company alone. Agree to ditch some students or shut down some academic disciplines and the rest of your university will be okay. Agree to fire that voice against the regime and the rest of your journalists will be fine." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It's myopic, but that's the point. The people making these decisions wouldn't be where they are if they weren't, in some sense, myopic. You don't rise to these positions by being a generalist. But ours is a time that calls for people who can see that bigger picture and make the decisions needed. That means calling the regime's bluff. It means filing the lawsuit. It means thinking of yourself as a democrat, as a defender of liberalism, over and above the one or two finer points you've built your career on. Not because your company no longer matters, or your institution is expendable, or any given tributary of public policy doesn't have real impact on people's lives. But because they do, and the only way to protect them, to ensure things getter better for them, along with everything else, is to take your eye, temporarily, off the one ball, and even off the game. To instead pay attention to the whole, to the society and the culture and the polity. And do what you can, even if it's uncomfortable and professionally out of character, to save it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreieezd2ikirtwnyrwobhookxb7753lga7zftmqab6eg4oucblozrmm", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m2kopcfbr22r", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreifyvd3ih5yhraclmd3slumnz2lswwdsgssmzjr4ymdbbofsiyfzcy", "rev": "3m2kopcir3g2q" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "The American people can't stand Trump. His polling is abysmal. And yet private and public institutions capitulate. Why?", "publishedAt": "2025-10-06T22:42:23.523Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:52.47339+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqdvgin226", "data": { "path": "/3m2xqdvgin226", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Challenge of Committing to Liberty—and Meaning It", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d66a-e52e-7335-97a7-708427a537d7", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published October 25, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s easy to say you’re committed to liberty. To speak in the rhetoric of robust rights and freedoms, to celebrate free expression and free association, to talk about the benefits of free trade and private industry. It’s easy in large part because those things are clearly good, their opposite clearly bad. People don’t just want liberty, they deserve it. Liberalism isn’t preferable to authoritarianism because it works better and produces more, though it does. It’s preferable because it’s moral and authoritarianism is not. To commit to liberty is to commit to the right and the good over the unjust and the wrong." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But rhetorical commitment is not the same as principled commitment, and commitments are only as strong as our will to maintain them. It’s easy to say you’re in favor of liberty. It’s also easy to backtrack—to soften your commitment or carve out exceptions. Liberals become illiberal, often in subtle ways, and often without even being aware of the backsliding themselves." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The reason backsliding happens as often as it does—the reason why staying committed to thorough liberalism is so challenging—is that genuine and full liberty, defined as a society where each person has the maximum possible individual liberty and autonomy compatible with the same for everyone else, is inevitably unstable and destabilizing. Not at the macro level, because free societies tend to in fact be quite stable, with relatively consistent growth and a healthy cultural climate overall. Rather, liberalism’s instability comes at the micro level: To be an individual in a truly free society is to live in a world constantly changing around you. The economy grows, but that growth comes through creative destruction. Businesses succeed (or some of them do), but then fail (or most of them do), only to be replaced by new businesses that end up in the same cycle. Whole industries and technologies rise and fall, making skills and creative pursuits lucrative one day and economically valueless the next." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Our social environment isn’t free from creative destruction, either. Culture inevitably shifts, tastes go in and out of style, preferences evolve, ideas have a half life, and even personality traits might be rewarded today but viewed as undesirable tomorrow. To live in such freedom is exciting and bracing, but also scary, because the lifestyle we’ve put so much effort into building might, through the aggregate actions of everyone else simply exercising their liberty, prove more difficult than it was, bring less reward than it did, or come in for more criticism than used to be the case. It might be that your religion was at one time dominant and celebrated, but now is seen as fringe and backwards. It might be that your profession was at one time remunerative and held in high prestige, but now is seen as less necessary or lower status. It might be that you were at one time looked to as a thought leader and your opinions valued at the commanding heights of culture, but now you face criticism and social and intellectual marginalization." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 105, "byteStart": 36 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/social-conservatism-is-suffering", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "All of this is baked into freedom. You can’t keep a society static without denying its people liberty. Nor is stasis desirable even if it could be achieved without violating inviolable rights. Cultural change brings cultural progress. Economic change brings economic progress. There’s no historical point we can look back on and reasonably, wisely say, “Things would be a whole lot better if that’s the best they ever got.” Not every change is good, of course. Culture can take wrong turns. Preferences can shift in directions that later look silly. The economy can inflate bubbles, go all-in on industries without much value, or abandon industries that still have value. We have moral panics and market crashes. But the people who claim to predict the good changes in advance, or have a clear eye, before the dust has even been kicked up, for whether a particular cultural shift will look bad in hindsight are wrong at least as often as they’re right, and we all suffer from status quo biases that causes us to prefer, to one degree or another, the way things are—or have “always been”—over the way they’re going, ignoring the relentless history of status quos that today we wouldn’t want to go back to, and frequently recognize as profound moral wrongs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 340, "byteStart": 271 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://episodes.fm/1614436300/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9wZXJtYWxpbmsuY2FzdG9zLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0LzUxMDUyL2VwaXNvZGUvMTM4NTY1MQ?view=apps&sort=popularity", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Progress under freedom is rarely orderly. Marginalized people agitating for the liberties and dignities the status quo has denied them don’t always agitate in ways that won’t offend or won’t make those quite comfortable within that status quo quite uncomfortable. This chaotic freedom is partly just a fact of humanity’s messiness. We aren’t all-knowing and all-wise and even when our cause is just, we can overshoot the market, or direct our ire where it isn’t due. We can punish those undeserving of it, and leave innocent victims in the wake of our march towards a better world. In retrospect, the errors of strategy and tactics might be clear, but in the messiness and chaos of the moment, it is too much to expect perfection. But there’s another reason that march can be loud and caustic and disorderly: The alternatives have failed. No one calls for civility with more vigor than those seeking to maintain the status quo. Those seeking to challenge it or change it are invariably told they should make their demands known through the proper channels, and with the proper measured tone of respect. And while civility can be a virtue, in so many cases it is instead employed—or the demand for it is employed—as a means to tell those who might be unruly to give up on finding freedom, respect, and the dignity liberalism builds its egalitarianism around, and instead to accept what the system has given them, or accept when the system, through its proper rules and procedures, denies them their due." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Again, this doesn’t mean all agitation is wise, or that all goals held by the agitators are worthy from the perspective of liberal freedom and values. Protests can be in the service of vicious ends, and incivility can be in the service of cultural and economic regression. The challenge for the committed liberal is to stay committed, however, by not letting his comfort in the status quo, and his distaste for the destabilization of his own interests and social standing, convince him, consciously or unconsciously, that in this particular instance cracking down on freedom’s dynamism isn’t because those who might destabilize are a threat to liberalism, but because they are a threat to his stability." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 135, "byteStart": 104 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/anti-wokeism-as-a-rorschach-test", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 544, "byteStart": 483 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/a-rorschach-test-for-the-state-of?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "It is too easy to fall into the trap of concluding that any changes that make you less comfortable are the result of narrowing liberty, instead of its exercise. If we care about liberty at a fundamental and principled level, we have no choice but to accept that it means what we are used to is likely to, at some point or another, shift, evolve, or be replaced. We have no choice but to accept that our status, being relative, might in some ways drop as others’ climbs, and that dropping status isn’t the same thing as restricted liberty. To value liberty, and to really mean it, we need to give up the idea that we will always benefit personally from its exercise, and give up the urge to characterize any exercise we don’t benefit personally from as not the exercise of liberty, but a sign of its decline. Otherwise we risk becoming liberals in rhetoric only, while sliding into illiberalism in the name of our own comfort." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T03:16:29.883Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.400082+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xcd4u63226", "data": { "path": "/3m2xcd4u63226", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d585-1f4e-7003-829d-a15d9616db15", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published June 15, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Why does Elon Musk believe so much obviously dumb stuff? Why does he credulously retweet–or reply to with “Interesting” or “This is worrying”–clear nonsense, conspiracy theories, easily disproved disinformation, and racist and anti-Semitic arguments? Why is Jack Dorsey all-in on RFK Jr.’s patently stupid and dangerous ideas?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One possible answer is that they really are as dumb as they seem, and that their dumbness, coupled with a preexisting affinity for right-wing fringe thinking, pulls them into those beliefs and inoculates them against correction. And there’s probably something to that. The more that Elon tweets, the more it becomes clear that while he might have above normal cognitive skills in some areas, critical thinking and information literacy aren’t among them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But I want to pose another possibility, one that doesn’t preclude “they’re just dumb,” but gets at a particular kind of shoddy thinking they both have perhaps also fallen prey to—and afflicts many of the terminally online. Namely, the way that social media tricks us into thinking our small communities are representative of broader cultural beliefs, and how the idea of context collapse makes breaking free of this thinking more difficult." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I’m old enough that social media didn’t become a thing until after I was out of college. Twitter launched in 2006, the year I started law school. Facebook began a couple of years earlier, while I was working as a web developer after finishing undergrad. This means that my formative internet years were the late ’90s and very early 2000s, when instead of social media we had instant messaging and web forums." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "One big difference between these and Twitter is that the former gave you access to far fewer people to interact with. Instant messaging was then, like now, mainly for a small circle of in-real-life friends. Web forums opened things up a bit—you were talking with a porous community instead of a tight-knit cluster—but, critically, unlike Reddit and other contemporary web forum analogues, each forum back in the ’90s was its own server, running its own instance of whatever forum software the admin chose, and living at its own domain." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "An effect of this was that, conceptually, it was very clear that you were in a corner of the internet, interacting with a small community. It wasn’t “The Internet,” but instead whoever signed up for your little forum. You knew that while your forum might have its own set of shared assumptions, communication norms, and accepted arguments, they weren’t universal. They were unique—or largely unique—to your corner of the internet." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Social media broke that understanding." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "First, it radically increased the number of people we could reach and converse with on a single platform. You went from however many people had signed up for your small community web forum to hundreds of millions, all just a search, retweet, and follow away. But the same is true of centrally hosted forums, like Reddit. Everyone is on reddit.com, even if they’re interacting in forum-like subreddits. What makes Twitter distinct, and I believe explains why it can lead to the kind of bad thinking I have in mind, is that, unlike Reddit, Twitter doesn’t feel siloed." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When you use Twitter (or Bluesky, Mastodon, or another similar platform), you don’t join a hosted community the way you do at Reddit, nor do you sign up for entirely distinct servers the way you did with the old web forums. Instead, you join Twitter, and then you follow people and start having conversations with them. From an individual perspective, they’re simply using Twitter. The home feed is Twitter, the conversations they see are what people are talking about on Twitter, and everything is happening at twitter.com or in the Twitter app." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But the millions or hundreds of millions of individual users are seeing a set of sometimes overlapping but ultimately distinct illusions. Each of their Twitters isn’t quite the same as anyone else’s Twitter. So what it feels like “Twitter is talking about” is instead what their small slice of the bigger community is talking about. While we understand at an intellectual level that our experience is defined by the narrow subset of users we decide to follow—and what they decide to repost into our feed—it seems like our experience is representative of the whole of the platform." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This assumption that a small slice of the community is representative of the whole further tricks us into believing that those opinions and arguments accepted by our small community are, instead, widely accepted, if not simply the general consensus. “Everybody knows this,” we think, when in fact, it’s only “known” in our tiny circle." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 85, "byteStart": 62 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This unrecognized siloing is made worse by what’s known as “context collapse.” This happens when a multitude of audiences and communities occupy a shared space, as they do on social media platforms, each community having its own context for their conversations, and then something from within the context of one community enters into another." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The simplest example is jargon. My community on Twitter might use a particular term in a quite specific way. If a tweet intended for my community and employing that term gets retweeted into an unintended community that doesn’t share our jargon, the resulting confusion in meaning can lead to misinterpretation, anger, and controversy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But context collapse isn’t limited to misunderstandings of terminology. It can also apply to in-jokes, commonly accepted arguments, assumptions of shared knowledge of data or premises, and so on. This can then clash with the “everyone knows” illusion social media creates. Here, suddenly, is someone saying something in obvious tension with what “everyone” knows, and so that person must be mistaken, uninformed, irrational, or unethical. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t say or believe that. The imagined consensus and invisible intellectual siloes of social media heightens our already existing biases for credulously believing what our in-group believes, and applying asymmetrical incredulity to arguments and data conflicting with it. We take our circle’s fringe beliefs to be mainstream, and take mainstream beliefs to be fringe." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "For someone like Elon Musk—a guy who spends so much time on Twitter that it seemingly represents the bulk of his engagement with people outside his immediate circles—the odd little far-right world of his Twitter feed comes to feel like the whole world. Terminally online, heavy social media users don’t realize how much nonsense they take to be fact because that nonsense, to them, looks like majority opinion, disputed only by a discredited (by their community’s imagined consensus) and unserious minority." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, in-group bias happens outside of social media, and people believed plenty of dumb things before the rise of Twitter. But the illusion I’ve set out makes all of it worse by undermining many of the mechanisms that historically helped us—albeit not always successfully—to correct our nonsense." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The solution isn’t to abandon social media and return to instant messaging and web forums. Technology has changed, and social media has real benefits. Instead, our best path forward is to remind ourselves, again and again, that no matter what it feels like, our online communities are, in fact, quite tiny and unrepresentative—and we should range outside them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-11T23:05:31.732Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.66203+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "data": { "path": "/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Elite Complicity in the Rise of Fascism", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199aa90-ed32-7eeb-b559-0f99c5678181", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The path forward, from all of this, will be legal and institutional, but it will also need to be cultural and social. Both have their own institutions, of course, and their own unwritten laws in their norms. But those institutions and those unwritten laws are macro-products of micro-behaviors, the result of ethical choices you and I and all of us make throughout every hour, every day, and every year." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What all of this is showing, now, is that the micro-choices made by many of our elites, and many of those adjacent to them, in the decade or two before all of this happened (and happened with demoralizing speed once the far-right took control in January) were broken or cramped. They refused to see, or in fact participated in, what was happening while it was still in the phase something could’ve been done. Before it metastasized into our present moment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "They still do it. You can see it every time the press or a national magazine publishes another fawning “aren’t these people interesting?” interview with a character from one of the right’s fever swamps. A professor who thinks maybe what we need is a Catholic theocracy. A couple who advocates for traditional families, and large ones too, because birth rates are down, and by that they mean birth rights among those who share their skin color and cultural origins. A podcaster who winks at antisemitism, or maybe doesn’t wink, but raises its tropes with enough plausible deniability to make whatever journalist it is feel okay with writing up the interview. The person who takes money from the far-right because it’s a job or it’s funding, and maybe a little of what the far-right says has a point behind it because it sure feels like our cities aren’t as safe as they remember when they were still sheltered by their parents’ roof. Whatever the crime stats say." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The world is diverse. And the content of that diversity changes. That’s what a liberal, pluralistic society is. You can’t have it otherwise and still have liberal pluralism. But that doesn’t mean you have to like every tributary of that diversity, and it doesn’t mean you’ll feel as comfortable with all of it as you felt when you were a child sheltered by your parents’ roof. You go from being a kid to talking about the kids these days, and that’s natural, because all of us stop being kids, and in stopping being kids we settle into preferences and give up experimenting. Mostly." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So you look out at that diversity, and that change, and you put up with it, because that’s what it means to be a liberal. Which you think of yourself as, in part because the non-liberals, at least the ones who call themselves that outside of limited circles of post-liberal academia or the attendees at a National Conservatism conference, are just so uncouth. So uncultured. So proletariat." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But sometimes a resident of one of those tributaries, or someone sharing the same stream as you in all this pluralism, tells you the way you think, now, might’ve been okay, or at least accepted, during your formative years, but it’s not anymore. You can’t say that. Not about those people over there. You can’t joke at their expense. Or you can’t treat the people who work for you that way, not like people in your position in years past were able to get away with. Or you have to accept that people who look like you, or come from the same background as you, aren’t so much the culture’s focus anymore. Instead, people who don’t look like you, or didn’t come from the same background as you, have a degree of privilege and regard that feels, in its emphasis, like privilege and regard taken from you." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You’re still a liberal, you tell yourself, but this is all a bit too much. You’ve earned more than you’re getting, or feel you’re getting, not just (or even) financially, but in terms of having things be the way you want them to be. The future you imagined when you were still on your way up has been taken from you, maybe before you even reached the top. You’re haunted by its absence, a ghost of what never came to be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 379, "byteStart": 376 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 891, "byteStart": 887 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 953, "byteStart": 949 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "And here are these people, on the fringes, in strange corners of the intellectual and social landscape, removed enough from you and your peers to feel slightly exotic, saying that, actually, what you’re feeling is okay. Proper. Because that future, that settled feeling of being atop the culture and uncriticized in your ways, that you were anticipating, or had a taste of, was taken from you. By them. The people not like you. The youth, or the culturally distinct, or the woke, or the professors in the sociology department. This isn’t change you’re experiencing, or not just change. Instead, it’s corruption. It’s bad values, bad beliefs, replacing good values and good beliefs. The good values and beliefs are the traditional ones, the old ways, because they were the values and beliefs from before all this corrupting change. And you know they’re good because they’re your values and beliefs, or a heightened version of them, and your values and beliefs can’t be bad. Otherwise you wouldn’t hold them, and that’s what’s so unjust about the youth or the woke or the professors in the sociology department telling you that making those jokes or treating your assistant that way isn’t okay and you should knock it off." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So you cozy up to them. You might not buy the whole of what they’re selling, but you’re intrigued. And, besides, they feel a little transgressive, and that reminds you of the rush of your own youth, when you were the one telling your parents’ and grandparents’ that their beliefs needed updating. Or maybe you’re still young now, but feel out of step, uncomfortable in the culture, and here are these people telling you that it’s the culture’s fault. And so you give them interviews, you hang out with them at conferences, you take jobs and money from them, and let them into your circles, if only on the periphery. Because, again, they might be outsiders, but maybe they’re onto something? Their ideas are fun to think about, anyway." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This was all one thing when they stayed on the periphery. It wasn’t wise, because the content of those ideas was, let’s be honest, always rather abhorrent, because the content of those ideas always included racism, and sexism, and a belief in natural hierarchies among human beings. It wasn’t moral to entertain the beliefs of this fringe. It was a sign of poor character to find them intriguing and titillating. But now... Now those ideas and those attitudes are no longer on the periphery. They are the commanding heights. They control the federal government, and are asserting control over our institutions. They’re mainstream because they’ve poisoned our political headwaters." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "When we get through this, then, when our political institutions are no longer controlled by the sorts of people who currently control them, we’ll need to think long and hard about how we got here, and about the degree to which getting here was the result of not just tolerating, but entertaining, these ideas." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "They must no longer be edged up to because they feel transgressive. They are not harmless, we now see. They are gravely, apocalyptically harmful. We knew this from history, of course, because we’ve seen this before, but the people who really needed to see it only had in the pages of history books, where a kind of depersonalizing sanitation takes place. Where there’s enough distance, over space and time and culture, that we can turn our eye away from seeing ourselves, or seeing our friends or acquaintances or colleagues, in their pages and their stories of how other places and other times ended up here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Every time another one of these people makes the news for taking the mask off to such a degree that what they really can no longer be ignored or explained away, and if you spend time in what we’ve taken to calling “elite circles” over the last decade or two, you’ll hear the same refrain. I used to know him. I used to work with him. I used to have drinks with him. I had drinks with him last week, he’s a fun guy. Often there were signs of the kinds of values that lead to believing these ideas, and then believing them enough to take the mask off. He drank and harassed interns. He joked about women or gays or minorities. He was rather fond of talking about genetic differences in IQ or how evolution built women to be better in the home than the boardroom. It’s all unfortunate because he does good work, though. It’s just foibles. It’s all in good fun." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That’s what we have to abandon, when we get through this and begin the process of rebuilding our political and cultural institutions. Liberal pluralism means allowing, in a legal sense, bad people to hold bad ideas. There are calls, as we watch the horrors around us, to give that up. To turn the state against the expression of these ideas, when liberals regain the state. We mustn’t do that, mustn’t give into that urge, because we’re seeing now what it’s like to have a state use its muscle to crush what its rulers believe to be improper ideas. Besides, it wasn’t the allowing that got us here. The failure of elites wasn’t that they merely tolerated a certain fringe. It’s that they gave platforms to that fringe, normalized it, sanitized it. If they’d only ignored it, we might be in better shape. But instead they were intrigued by it, liked what it had to say, made its voice part of the conversation they then pushed, through the outlets they controlled, to everyone else who might’ve otherwise left it on the fringe, too. They were corrupted by it, by the fact that it was telling them their feelings of alienation from the wider culture, or from their children and grandchildren, were justified and their sense that alienation resulted from cultural injustice valid. And they were corrupted by knowing enough of these people to believe them fun to have drinks with." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We have to give that up. We have to make these ideas and the people who hold them socially anathema again. Not legally, because the First Amendment is good and just, but they ought not to be our friends. They ought not to be welcome members of our social and professional groups. There needs to be consequences for aiding and abetting all of this. We’ll need to relearn the lessons of history elites waved away out of a pull towards the exotic and a desire to be maybe a little transgressive themselves. We’ll have to relearn what is acceptable and what isn’t, what leads to a wholesome society and what drags us into a vicious one." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We’ll need the courage of our convictions, if we in fact mean them, to reshape the culture so that these ideas, of racism and sexism and hierarchy and domination, are forced back to the fringe. And stay there." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "America's elites downplay Trump's authoritarian fascism out of a corrupt sense of class consciousness and solidarity.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-03T14:58:10.145Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:43.960321+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33erawvis2l", "data": { "path": "/3m33erawvis2l", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The GOP is now just grifters grifting each other", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199dddc-7594-788a-a23a-2b559132c8e8", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published February 24, 2025)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 207, "byteStart": 167 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 257, "byteStart": 231 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://matzko.substack.com/p/the-pro-israel-techies-who-got-tiktok", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Speaker of the House Mike Johnson doesn’t know much about technology. To be fair, very few of his colleagues in Congress do either. Which is why Congress routinely misunderstands laws governing technology, or gets caught up in tech-focused moral panics." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But Mike Johnson is also the House of Representatives leader of a political party whose leader is Donald Trump, a man of no actual skill, and even less knowledge, except for an instinct for branding, and for triggering grievances in a way he can take advantage of for personal gain." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And Trump’s set the tone, from the top down. The GOP isn’t so much a political party anymore, not in the sense of having a unified ideology or policy agenda. Instead, it’s the political home for the kinds of people who have right-wing cultural preferences, yes, but also for people who fall for scams. Back to Mike Johnson. Here is is talking credulously about his party’s current leader, Elon Musk." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreigj5gemshpal7dlzjgrvulabzynnxtowjpvvmyxposvj6fbfbknpm", "uri": "at://did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3liwv43xjzp2s" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What stands out about this is how Mike Johnson, who at one time managed to secure a law degree from LSU, is all-in on buying his town a monorail." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 57 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.thedailybeast.com/flustered-elon-musk-flips-out-on-jackass-for-questioning-him/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Elon Musk has very clearly not cracked any code. He’s not a computer science guy, he’s not a data scientist. He’s a salesman. But Mike Johnson doesn’t know enough about computer science or data science to know that. What he does know—and this gets to the heart of the contemporary GOP—is that Elon Musk is telling him what he wants to hear: The federal bureaucracy is bad, needs to be destroyed, and there’s suppressed knowledge that only he has, but which aligns with Johnson’s far right prejudices, that will enable him to save the country from the forces of the woke left." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, the federal government in fact is too big. It tries to do too much. And much of what it does, even those tasks appropriate for it, it could do more efficiently. But that’s not what DOGE is about. Instead, it’s about selling a narrative of an evil swamp out to wreck America, and its chaotic, unfocused, and unproductive destruction is actually a sophisticated plan to achieve better government." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s a story of right wing heterodox “knowledge they don’t want you to know” against corrupt conventional wisdom. But it’s a story told by people lacking any genuine expertise in the system they want to reform (or destroy), being told for and to people without any genuine expertise, and no desire to acquire any. And it’s a narrative that exists not to make America better, let alone great, but instead to serve the personal interests of Elon Musk." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s also the story of the GOP itself. There’s a reason crank wellness influencers migrated right. Or why COVID conspiracists, even those whose politics used to be liberal, turned reactionary. Or why Trump is able to pump-and-dump meme coins to fleece his supporters. The GOP has become the home for people who felt out of step with the mainstream consensus, which meant the expert consensus, and their response wasn’t to acquire expertise to find faults in that consensus (which there are plenty to find), but instead to simultaneously reject the value of expertise while also elevating to the role of infallible expert anyone who could, in their ignorant assessment, convincingly talk the talk of an expert while not challenging their preexisting beliefs and prejudices." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As I wrote on Bluesky:" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreidqcdyf3nk245usgptcjmdhqir7gugg53kqupz4ickrldsnyumyma", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3livcqp6fwc2i" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreibnt5227jzuz6xbg6olowhz66xyh7wkdycm6pslgd34x2y6n2aqqu", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3livcw46gbc2i" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreibzegviiay2si5zk6ks742hcv2vozp2vbanmqoc4fk6smpnqn3cmy", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3livcz5e32k2i" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What makes the GOP’s circular con game circular is that everyone is simultaneously conning each other while being conned. Every new conspiracy theory or grift becomes part of the right-wing media ecosystem’s lore, and to signal membership in that lore to your audience (and the targets for your grifts), you need to believe all of it. Which means believing other people’s grifts, too." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 57, "byteStart": 15 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://micro.blog/account/posts/143808/edit/www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-social-media-tricks-our-brains-and-destroys-our-politics", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This leads to an increasingly unhinged epistemic spiral. And it’s made worse by the fact that much of it is happening on social media, which has strange structural features that cut against correcting for bad information." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 295, "byteStart": 263 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/how-to-talk-yourself-into-defending-nonsense", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "It’s not clear how people lost in this environment get out. A basic feature is that anyone who tells them they’re wrong, that they’ve got something incorrect, that they don’t know as much as they think they know, is speaking not from superior knowledge, but from ideological motivation. This short circuits the primary way most of us have for giving up mistaken beliefs: learning from people who are not themselves mistaken." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And because, right now, the system looks to be working—the grifters are still successfully grifting, and the party controls the White House and Congress and is able to put its favored grifters in positions of power—no single person caught up in it has much incentive to fix it. Rather, success comes from doubling down." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Even if Mike Johnson was to learn enough about data science to know that Elon Musk is full of it, what would he do with that information? Stand up to Musk? Risk looking like a fool who got conned? Tell his constituents they don’t know anything about this stuff, either?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "No, Mike Johnson, and the rest of his party, are in this for the ride. Where that ride ends up is an open question, and maybe it ends up somewhere that keeps them ahead. But it seems inevitable the circular con has to collapse at some point." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-13T13:59:52.215Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:40.729432+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2f54be5bc2y", "data": { "path": "/3m2f54be5bc2y", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Two Kinds of Libertarians", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199b04f-61a1-7223-8949-07d5a6063b66", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You can divide self-described libertarians into two camps, and the point on which they diverge goes a good way towards explaining why some libertarians have talked themselves into supporting Trump, or enthusiastically embraced him, while others view Trump (and Trumpism) as the gravest threat to liberty in America in any of our lifetimes." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If we want a rough definition of libertarianism, “skepticism of state power” is a good start. Libertarians want a smaller state, or no state at all, and pursue policies that reduce the reach of government, and limit the range of activities it has a say in. That’s rough, and leaves a lot out,  but it’s good enough to get at the basic point I want to make." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 35 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The key to the divide is to ask “Why do you oppose the state?” What is it about state power that you find objectionable, or dangerous, or immoral, or unjust? " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The first sort of libertarian, and the kind that ends up deeply opposed to Trumpism, views the state as the primary tool people with power use to reinforce their power, to remain at the top of artificial hierarchies, to circumscribe the liberty of others for their own gain. These libertarians oppose oppression and hierarchy, they oppose the powerful suppressing the weak, and, whatever good it might do, granting an institution the authority to exercise violence means that institution will exercise that violence to the benefit of the powerful and against the powerless. Everyone is equal in deserved dignity and rights and autonomy, in other words, or ought to be, and the state is a grave threat to that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 385, "byteStart": 378 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The second sort of libertarian, and the kind who you now find out there arguing that Trumpism is good actually, views the state as the primary means by which natural hierarchies (typically with themselves at the top) are interfered with. The state, by this view, enforces an unjust equality. Hierarchies (men above women, whites above blacks, “the West” above the rest) are natural, and so would emerge or persist in a state of perfect freedom. Thus, if those hierarchies are seen to fade, or if people are arguing against their persistence, the only way that can be happening, or the only way those people can achieve their flattening aims, is if liberty is somehow interfered with. And the mechanism by which liberty is interfered with is the state." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 147, "byteStart": 143 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 208, "byteStart": 206 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Both sorts of libertarian, in other words, want to shrink state power. Or, at least, say they do. Both, unless they are anarchists, will allow some state action in the cause of justice. But what that cause is differs greatly. The first group sees Trumpism as a far-right movement, fascist and authoritarian, aimed at rebuilding and reifying “traditional” hierarchies by dramatically curtailing liberty, and using state power to terrorize and oppress. The second group sees Trumpism as a liberatory movement aimed at preventing other sorts of power from deconstructing “traditional” hierarchies that aren’t just traditional, but natural facts of the world. For them, Trumpism isn’t an abuse of power, but its exercise in the name of protecting ways of being and ways of life unjustly threatened by diversity, by cultural dynamism, and other forms of non-state change." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, from the perspective of libertarian principles, the first sort sticks to its guns, while the second sort is contradictory and incoherent. You can’t make the world freer by making it less free. You can’t turn America into a land of liberty by putting troops on street corners, kidnapping peaceful immigrants, imposing protectionist policies, threatening media companies, and interfering in elections. But, if you genuinely believe those are the only means that can possibly maintain hierarchies you benefit from, and if you genuinely believe those hierarchies are necessary and natural features of the world and so any amelioration of them, even through freely chosen actions, is unnatural and so unjust, you can at least talk yourself into papering over that incoherence. " } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreig663sto7o5fs57zv3pex66lhk2bzegr2ocytejg43sulcsrmtho4", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m2f54ftpyk2y", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreib6dyqxff7yuje3suvmqx7wqrriqx5rfyscp23sycnuom6iqbjoyq", "rev": "3m2f54fz75b2m" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Some libertarians oppose the state because it reinforces social hierarchies. Others because it threatens them. Only the former is worthy of the name.", "publishedAt": "2025-10-04T17:44:17.569Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.07571+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqchr7vc26", "data": { "path": "/3m2xqchr7vc26", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Three Kinds of Conservatives", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199d66a-14dd-7551-aaf2-387f4d8a14fa", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published October 18, 2023)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We tend to use “conservative” and “the right” interchangeably. Someone who is a conservative is also on the right, and someone on the right is a conservative. Synonyms by themselves aren’t a problem, but they sometimes obfuscate distinctions that can actually be helpful in thinking through thorny political issues. This is one of those instances. It’s true many who are “on the right” are also “conservative,” but it’s not necessary that one exists alongside the other. They are not, in fact, synonyms. But our conflation of multiple concepts under these few terms gets worse. Because conservatism doesn’t mean just one thing. Instead, it’s (at least) three, and while they frequently correlate, it’s not a necessary correlation. Teasing out these concepts—the right from conservatism, and the three kinds of conservatism from each other—gives us a clearer perspective on contemporary political culture." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The first way one can be conservative is in a personal sense. This entails holding conservative, or “traditional,” preferences regarding how you want to live your life, and seeking to realize them. You might strictly follow a religious faith, decide to buy a farm and live a simple life, only listen to classical music, or just generally frown on what the kids these days are up to. Your conservatism is about a desire, need, or commitment to live in accord with a tradition of some kind, refusing to be pulled away from it by what’s novel and innovative. Personal conservatism is about how you want to lead your life, but doesn’t make demands on others about how they lead theirs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The second kind of conservatism is social. Social conservatism is ultimately an aversion to social and cultural dynamism. It is a distaste for change, or a longing for the culture to reflect the values of the past—sometimes an imagined past. The social conservative might also be a personal conservative, of course, but what distinguishes the two is that social conservatism is about wanting others to live a certain way, and thinking it’s wrong for them to not conform to the particular set of socially conservative preferences and values." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The third conservatism is political conservatism. Personal and social conservatism hook onto personal and social preferences. They’re about how one would prefer his life to be, or how he’d prefer the broader culture to be. But they say nothing about the role of government and how it ought to relate to conservative beliefs. Political conservatism, on the other hand is, about how the institutions of government should operate. One is a “conservative” in a political sense by emphasizing the wisdom embedded in past or existing laws and institutions, and worrying that changing them, too quickly or too dramatically, even in the name of progress, risks making things unintentionally worse. Political conservatism understood in this way isn’t necessarily an attempt to use the state to enforce a set of conservative values, but instead a philosophy of slow and deliberate change, informed by a perspective on tradition that says traditions persist for a reason, that they have embedded value we might not immediately recognize, and so “the way we’ve always done things” isn’t irrational inertia, but a rational appreciation for unarticulated knowledge and lessons from the past." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As noted above, it’s not just that these three conservatisms are conceptually distinct from each other, but that none of them necessarily mean the same thing as “the right.” Many conservatives, of all three varieties, are also on the right, but it’s possible to be conservative, in any of the three senses, while not being of the right." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To be “on the right” is to have a certain perspective about the nature of people, and the proper relationships between them. It is to believe that egalitarianism is wrong because humans aren’t equal, and that this inequality is natural, just, and ought to have consequences for the way society is structured, how power is exercised within it, and who is privileged in terms of status and control. For right-wingers, these inequalities map onto categories like gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and religious faith. They result in natural hierarchies, which it is wrong to interfere with, either by transgressing the boundaries between the classifications and groups, or by seeking to use social or state pressure to flatten natural hierarchies. Instead, the role of social and state pressure is to reify “natural” hierarchies, to police boundaries, and to maintain this unequal—but intrinsic and just—order. Right ideologies thus are about a particular conception of how the world is, or at least how it would be if it weren’t for improper interference, and a reactionary response to any drifting—or pushing—away from that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s look at an example. Donald Trump is, by the definition above, on the right. He absolutely believes people are by nature unequal, and that those inequalities map onto race, gender, nationality, and so on. He’s racist, and sexist, and wildly bigoted against ethnicities and nationalities not his own. But is he conservative? Certainly not of the personal sort. There’s no tradition, no strict set of values, no deep religious faith, he holds to. He probably is socially conservative, because he believes that the culture should conform to his right-wing preferences, that social dynamism is a threat, and that coercion to make that the case is acceptable and necessary. Finally, he’s not a political conservative. He places no value on the wisdom embedded in existing institutions, and would burn the entire system to the ground if it meant getting his way. Trump’s not even politically moderate. He’s a radical, through and through, wanting to, with all haste, replace the existing political regime with an autocracy he leads. To call Trump a political conservative, but also to call someone like David French a political conservative, is to immediately recognize the incoherence of conflating the three varieties of conservatism with each other." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This doesn’t mean they’re always distinct, of course. Most people on the right are socially conservative. Most political conservatives also have at least some right-wing tendencies, and so tend to view as “wise” and worth preserving those institutions and traditions that, at least in part, reinforce right-wing social orders and hierarchies. Personal conservatism, if faced with a sufficiently dynamic culture, can drift into social conservatism, which can then manifest as political conservatism (“Let’s use the state to slow down or stop social change”) or political radicalism (“Let’s overthrow the existing order and replace it with a reactionary authoritarianism devoted to enforcing gender, racial, and religious hierarchies”)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Even with these blurry lines and interrelations, if we’re to make sense of the contemporary political scene—and especially if we’re to understand the threats to liberalism posed by right-wing preferences or the ways individual and social conservatism can lead to illiberalism, authoritarianism, and fascism—knowing what it means to be on the right, why that’s not necessarily the same as being conservative, and how conservatism is really a bundle of overlapping but distinct ideas, can give clarity to our analysis." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "", "publishedAt": "2025-10-12T03:15:42.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:37.626168+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcx7hlikus2t", "data": { "path": "/3mcx7hlikus2t", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "liberalism", "meaning", "ethics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "How LEGO Can Teach Us About Meaning In Liberal Societies", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019be19e-0185-7777-a3a3-b9e4964a69f5", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 774, "byteStart": 763 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Sources of identity and meaning play a significant role in debates about the merits of liberalism. Conservatives, collectivists, authoritarians, and other anti-liberals say that, while liberalism might bring us freedom and wealth, it saps us of the sources of meaning necessary to lead a good life. Identity isn’t something we can forge in a vacuum, nor is it something that can or should be entirely up to us as freely choosing, autonomous subjects. Rather, we need identities given to us, and meaning provided for us—typically by “traditional” ways of being—and both need to be (re)enforced by the government. Otherwise—and this is the inevitable result of a liberal society, they argue—we’re all cursed to become disconnected and identity-less individuals. While we might have lots of toys to play with and lots of spectacles to occupy our time, in reality, we’re adrift without the solid enough identity needed to feel settled, and without the meaning we need to be genuinely, instead of superficially, happy. In short, the anti-liberal claims that the liberal overestimates both the capacity of most people to forge meaningful identities and communal belonging in the radical autonomy liberalism asserts and the authenticity of the identities and sources of meaning that we build in this free and open liberal environment." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 424, "byteStart": 386 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/c3Vic3RhY2s6cG9zdDoxMzgwNDQ0MTk", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "In other words, the choices before us fall into a stark binary: Either identity and meaning are communitarian, and so externally given to or imposed upon us, or else they are constructed entirely from scratch by every individual in perfect and unencumbered freedom. My worry is that this binary doesn’t just represent the choice as characterized by anti-liberals, but that it’s how many liberals present the alternatives, as well—and that the binary both makes liberalism look less appealing and, in fact, mischaracterizes how identify and meaning actually come about in a liberal society. Liberal identity formation doesn’t sit at the extreme of the binary, but instead takes advantage of the positive characteristics of the anti-liberal’s preference, while doing away with its most troubling aspects." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Liberal and Anti-Liberal LEGOs" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "To understand both the binary as presented, and my alternative to it, let’s talk about LEGOs. Imagine that for your birthday, two different relatives each give you some LEGO building blocks. Your uncle picked out a set that builds a cool car. But before wrapping it, he opened the package, took out the pieces, assembled them according to the directions, and then glued the finished car together. Thus your gift from him is a LEGO car, but only ever that." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Your aunt picks out the same LEGO set, but before giving it to you, she opens the package, takes out just the bricks, tosses those into a new bag, and then throws out the box (with the picture of the car), as well as the instructions. Thus your gift from her is a pile of LEGOs you can do whatever you want with, but without a sense of what they're supposed to build, or how to build it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Going back to the binary as presented above, your uncle is the anti-liberal, your aunt the liberal, and the LEGOs a sort of meaningful identity. As the subject of your uncle, as the subject of a communitarian society, your meaningful identity is provided to you (it’s a cool car), so you don’t have to work to form it, and, because it’s glued together, you can’t change it. In your uncle’s world, identity formation is easy (your identity is quite literally handed to you), but inflexible (the car will always be a car)." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "As the subject of your aunt, instead, as the subject a liberal society, your meaningful identity isn’t provided to you at all. You have to build it yourself, and your aunt is so open and uncontrolling that she didn’t even give you instructions that might limit your autonomy by telling you what that identity should, or even could, look like. Here’s a pile of bricks, now you’re on your own." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "If this is in fact the binary choice in front of us, if these are the only two options representing the contrast between anti-liberalism and liberalism, it’s easy to see why your uncle’s gift might be more appealing to a lot of people. Sure, some of us are comfortable with the radical freedom of a bag of LEGOs without instructions. But many of us aren’t creative enough to come up with something as cool as that car would’ve been, or don’t want to put in that much work, or find the idea of such radical autonomy stressful. Or maybe that particular car just is what we wanted all along." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "But, as I said, characterizing the choice this way is both misleading about the nature of liberalism, and rhetorically damaging to the liberal’s position. Liberals should stop treating the aunt’s gift as the right one, and look to a third option, instead." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "A Third Way" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Let’s go back to the LEGOs. You’ve set aside your uncle’s permanently assembled car as not really your ideal, but you also either can’t think of anything to build with your aunt’s pile of bricks, or else don’t even know how to begin building what you vaguely have in mind. Then your loving grandmother brings you her own gift. It’s a third set of LEGOs, and the same car, in fact. But she hasn't opened it, hasn’t thrown away the box or the instructions, and seeing that you’ve never built LEGOs before, she sits down with you and helps you work your way through the directions until the model is complete." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "At the end, though, as you’re admiring what you’ve built together, she says, “I’m glad you like the car. But you should know that, while we’ve worked on this collaboratively, and with the help of the instructions given to us, and you can, of course, keep it for as long as you like, LEGOs are meant to be played with. If you want to change the car a bit so you like it more, you should. If you want to take it apart and build something new entirely, you can, and you can even find instructions others have written to help you achieve what you have in mind. I’ve given you this car, and it’s yours, but because it’s yours, you have the power to make it yours, or make it new.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 4, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 137, "byteStart": 130 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 291, "byteStart": 278 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "That, I submit, is a better analogy for identity formation in a liberal society. Not the radical self-authorship of starting from nothing, but instead starting from something—given to us by our family, community, contemporary culture, local norms and tastes, etc.—and then, if we want to, revising, evolving, or abandoning it for something new. Further, that “something new” needn’t be entirely of our own creation, without example or guidance, but instead is the product of a vast menu of possibilities we can explore, choose from, and revise to best suit our needs." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Identity as a Default" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This isn’t anywhere near as scary as the initial binary makes liberalism seem. Liberal societies don’t mean atomized individuals kicked out to sea at birth to find their own way with a ship they first build themselves. Liberal societies give us robust and meaningful sources of identity, and start us off situated within them. You're born into a family, and the members of that family have their own identities, reinforced by where they live, whether they belong to a church and what kind, the types of work they do, the culture—or cultures, or subcultures—they enjoy and participate in, and so on." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Thus we get part of what the anti-liberal wants: to be told, “This is who you are, and this is where you belong.” What we don’t get is the other piece the anti-liberal demands: to be told, “And this is always who you’ll be, and this is always where you’ll be, and if you try to change that, or if anyone encourages you to change that, we’ll have men with guns put them in their place, and keep you in yours.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The identities handed to us, initially, in liberalism aren’t enforced and permanent inevitabilities, but instead defaults. But liberalism also provides a fantastic variety of such defaults, and we can move between them to find the ones most fulfilling to us. Our own default, the identity we're born into, is the LEGO car after we’ve built it with our liberal grandmother: an example of how it works, and maybe we one we want to stick with, for the foreseeable future or maybe forever, but one we can shape or set aside once we learn more about who we are, what makes us happy, and who we ultimately want to be." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "A family parable about forging a sense of place and meaning—and what it says about the liberal project.", "publishedAt": "2024-02-17T17:35:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:40.179893+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6fneobpvc2w", "data": { "path": "/3m6fneobpvc2w", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty 094: A New American Reconstruction", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019ab77e-7d5f-7668-84a9-64f039acf12d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "ReImagining Liberty podcast cover", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreiejxe6nxzzcrgnnndk3pofff6nk7ftwyipv2b2ucbslit77durfxy" }, "size": 287860, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/jpeg" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/YTA2MGIxNWUtZGJmZS00YzY1LWE3NjctMWZiM2YwNjNjNTdj", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 600 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "It’s still possible Trump succeeds in his project of authoritarian consolidation, but between the dramatic losses the GOP suffered in the elections on November 4th, the infighting in the conservative coalition, and the Epstein scandal, the prospects for that consolidation are looking more remote." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 170, "byteStart": 156 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 217, "byteStart": 190 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.theunpopulist.net/s/reconstruction-agenda", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 267, "byteStart": 248 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 286, "byteStart": 276 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/andycraig.bsky.social", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 513, "byteStart": 500 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/shikhadalmia.bsky.social", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 552, "byteStart": 538 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "All this makes the “How do we rebuild when Trump is behind us?” question feel less like a pipe dream. Which is why I was so happy to see my friends at The UnPopulist launch their new “Reconstruction Agenda” project, headed by frequent ReImagining Liberty guest Andy Craig. Andy is mapping out what that reconstruction should look like, and what reforms present the best opportunities to strengthen and rebuild the institutions of liberal democracy. Joining me today alongside Andy is Shikha Dalmia, founder and editor of The UnPopulist." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 10, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 29, "byteStart": 10 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 38, "byteStart": 29 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 146, "byteStart": 38 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 185, "byteStart": 146 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 13, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 16, "byteStart": 13 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 28, "byteStart": 16 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 31, "byteStart": 28 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 49, "byteStart": 31 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 52, "byteStart": 49 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 71, "byteStart": 52 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 74, "byteStart": 71 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 86, "byteStart": 74 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 89, "byteStart": 86 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 102, "byteStart": 89 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 105, "byteStart": 102 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 106, "byteStart": 105 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreia6g4y26jzyu2xaoohvaq7jfeei6hjymofiydyvqiwx7i5yfyl62e", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m6fneurs3s2w", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreiahxon2gcvok3fz3za2u5kdefodmb3hgkqn5qvzcknlmtx372h22q", "rev": "3m6fneuvgqj2u" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "A conversation with Andy Craig and Shikha Dalmia", "publishedAt": "2025-11-24T20:16:05.937Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:41.792457+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3ahechta22z", "data": { "path": "/3m3ahechta22z", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "\nWhy It Works to Call Them Weird\nWhy It Works to Call Them Weird", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "0199e3db-6e83-7ee3-96f7-7113f2dec304", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "(Originally published July 30, 2024)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Democrats’ pivot to “You people are weird” as their primary electoral rhetoric strategy has been both swift and, at least in early signs, effective. It’s getting attention, provoking whining from the Trumpist right, and energizing memeing from the online Zoomers who’d been discouraged by a politics of old men calling each other threats to freedom and democracy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 310, "byteStart": 305 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "This isn’t to say that the Trumpist right—and its neo-reactionary friends among conservative intellectual classes and reactionary tech titans—isn’t a grave threat to freedom and democracy. It very clearly is, with the movement having plenty of fascist or proto-fascist parallels. But calling them weird has found broader purchase in a way that pointing out those other features hasn’t." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There are two reasons for this, both tied to the shift in the nature of our national political conversations in the years since Trumpism vanquished any lingering Reaganism. First, the culture war came to supplant policy disagreement as the primary concern in political debate. Second, structural features of both America’s two-party system and the technology platforms that have been primary mediums of political talk have emphacized a particularly creepy sort of right-wingness. (The word of the moment is “weird,” but “creepy” is probably more accurate in describing what it is about the contemporary right so many of us react viscerally against.)" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "A Conflict of Values" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Politics, for most, has long been at least as much about values as policy. It’s not just “what bills will this guy try to pass?” but also, “which candidate would I rather have a beer with?” It’s attractive versus unattractive personalities, because we’re social and emotional creatures, and not pure utilitarian calculators of policy impact." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 311, "byteStart": 291 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 352, "byteStart": 338 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But prior to roughly the rise of Trump, there were filters in place that meant much of the way politics was presented in the media environment, and much of the way political figures presented themselves, was policy focused, because the weird fringes got filtered out. Yes, the right had its John Birch type nuts, and yes the left had its creepy tankies, but you didn’t see them all the time, because the people who made it onto TV had been selected for by the still-powerful media gatekeepers. Those media gatekeepers both selected for the relatively normal and had a preference for policy talk—and the horse race politics they tied into policy talk." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 422, "byteStart": 408 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "George W. Bush did lots of bad things, and he had trouble speaking clearly, but he seemed relatively mainstream. His values were, to borrow a phrase from the late P. J. O’Rourke, wrong within normal parameters. Trump’s values are, let’s just say, not. When politics talk was mostly policy, though, and when the people the media showed us talking about policy had positions not too far removed from the Overton Window, creepy values were kept more on the down low, and the people who couldn’t keep them on the down low didn’t get as much attention in the media landscape, except as fringe curiosities like David Duke." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What changed, in the run-up to Trump and certainly during and after his administration, is that policy talk lost its primacy in favor of cultural talk. The culture war devoured everything. The difference between a progressive and a conservative became less about tax preferences or affinity for free enterprise, and more about whether you think trans people should be able to show their faces in public, or whether you see taco trucks as a sign of civilizational progress or civilizational decline." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 374, "byteStart": 361 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 389, "byteStart": 376 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libs_of_TikTok?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 404, "byteStart": 391 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/heritage-foundation-president-kevin-roberts-jd-vances-selection-trumps-running?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 448, "byteStart": 425 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/surround-yourself-with-those-who/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The effect of this was to move values into the spotlight. The culture war just is a competition between which cultural values will dominate social life. And the cultural values of the far-right are, well, creepy. They’re off-putting. The most committed right-wing culture warrior is not someone many of us would want to have a beer with. Elon Musk, JD Vance, Curtis Yarvin, Chaya Raichik, Kevin Roberts, and their like are profoundly unadmirable. Most Americans get that. They don’t want to be around people of that sort, nor do they want their children to grow up to be people of that sort. There’s something they find troubling about their behavior, beliefs, and values that goes well beyond the particulars of their policy preferences. They’re creepy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "Structural Distortions" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 223, "byteStart": 217 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But that doesn’t answer the question of what changed. There have always been the value fringes, and they’ve always been making creepy arguments for why they ought to rule and what they’d do if they get to. They wanted culture war talk to replace policy talk, too. Yet it wasn’t until relatively recently that the shift actually took place. Why?" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The answer begins with the rise of the internet, and particularly social media, though it started with blogging. These new technologies enabled anyone to reach basically everyone, and at close to no cost. Yes, the John Birch Society could print pamphlets, but putting a pamphlet in every Americans’ hand is cost prohibitive. Putting a blog post in every Americans’ browser isn’t. And being able to do so also routes around those elite media filters keeping the weird values on the edges. This new media and communication landscape enabled not just the rise of Very Online politics, but gave them a way to reach mass audiences." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 34, "byteStart": 9 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarvin-neoreaction-redpill-moldbug?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 533, "byteStart": 510 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://amzn.to/3YpQ6wC?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 555, "byteStart": 533 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://amzn.to/3YpQ6wC?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Take the neoreactionary philosophy that is so influential on JD Vance because it was influential among a certain hard-right portion of the venture capitalists who funded his career. This stuff isn’t just evil in its aims and worldview, it’s also quite stupid. (For a deep—but, I promise, very fun—dive into neoreactionary philosophy, and one that makes clear not only how dangerous these ideas are, but also how amateurish is the philosophy and self-anointed philosophers behind it, I cannot recommend Elizabeth Sandifer’s Neoreaction a Basilisk highly enough.) Neoreaction is a movement built upon arguments that, prior to blogging, wouldn’t have lasted much beyond the freshman dorm room door, but in the age of the internet, their unsophisticated thinkers have somehow managed to convince a critical mass of equally unsophisticated thinkers of their genius." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 245, "byteStart": 153 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/social-medias-construction-of-imaginary/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 393, "byteStart": 382 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Because these unsophisticated thinkers were networked online, and had platforms that could reach anyone who found a link to them, and because of the way social media tricks us into thinking fringe ideas are more widely held than they in fact are, a movement like neoreaction, which is just an intellectualized veneer on the same old right-wing culture warring, could come to appear influential. It could come to seem like an exciting new philosophy pointing a way forward instead of warmed over and backwards reactionary arguments that have either failed to stand up to philosophical scrutiny, or led to catastrophic political authoritarianism and violence, every time they’ve surfaced in the past." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Then came Trump. Now, Trump is not a neoreactionary—or any other sort of philosophy, for that matter. He doesn’t really have or process ideas. Rather, he’s just pure and mindless self-centeredness, a creature of id and grievance and desire for power. But he also, unlike the GOP’s leaders in the decades before him, doesn’t have any problem with centering those fringes. The most morally corrupt members of the right were also the ones most likely to flatter him, and most likely to champion him as a means to fulfill their own desire for power. Any recent Republican presidential nominee would’ve seen immediately how disastrous a VP pick JD Vance would be, precisely because his entire public persona is the Very Online right-wingness most Americans can’t stand." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 343, "byteStart": 341 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 384, "byteStart": 378 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Now for the second structural feature that matters in this story. America’s is a two party system, and more or less has to be because of the way we structure voting and elections. What this means is that one half of mainstream politics just is whatever the GOP is. When Trump took over the party—to such a thorough degree that he simply is the party—the Very Online right became the American right. And so they became impossible to ignore." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.header", "level": 2, "facets": [], "plaintext": "The Rhetoric of Weird" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The reason “weird” works is because it recognizes this shift, and recognizes that, while the Very Online right is popular in certain corners of the internet, it’s still the same creepy and dangerous ideas that failed when David Duke and Pat Buchanan tried them. And “weird” is working now, as strategic rhetoric, because policy talk obfuscated just how out there and repulsive are the values behind it, while “weird” highlights, in a way most immediately relevant to voters, the kind of people who promote them." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "You can critique a philosophy by showing how its arguments don’t work, and that’s important. We shouldn’t accept arguments that don’t work. But you can also critique it by looking at the motivations behind those arguments. And while that can’t prove the argument wrong, it can give reason for greater skepticism about its rightness. “Weird” is working because it shifts the conversation to the question of “What kind of people do you want holding power over you?” And for plenty of Americans, the answer is, “Not those guys.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "description": "Shifting political talk from policy to values", "publishedAt": "2025-10-15T14:29:37.528Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:52.997556+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7bk5wolls2c", "data": { "path": "/3m7bk5wolls2c", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "MAGA is an Auto-Humiliation Movement", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019af0a3-07ae-7996-9d70-31f910983a5a", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Today, FIFA, the most corrupt governing body in sports, gave its inaugural FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump, the most corrupt governing body in America. And the whole thing was exceptionally stupid." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreihc2f3m5nifh27dwo33nowbuphs2vhj2zxtwob2a7somanyssrjp4", "uri": "at://did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7azgaolsc2u" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 223, "byteStart": 217 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batkid", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Trump received a genuinely bizarre trophy and a medal that made him quite proud. The whole scene, of a man of childlike intelligence, having a pageant put on around him so he'd feel good about himself, reminded me of Batkid, the Make-A-Wish boy who got to pretend to be Batman for a day. Except Batkid is a feel-good story, and there's nothing feel-good about playing to Trump's imbecilic ego." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreienoyzeikrb7m7xs2lwrulmakqpduyqkix4rdsvdlp55cidodijqe", "uri": "at://did:plc:fa7xejyd32fvuar5hpa2n2yi/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7azx4s7ks2k" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The other thing about this ceremony and the footage of it is just how humiliating the whole thing is. And it's humiliating in a way that is just a foundational feature of Trumpism and the MAGA movement." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We talk about how one of the ways Trump won the power he's achieved is that he's shameless. Behaviors that would've led other politicians to resign—and have in fact led other politicians to resign—don't seem to have much effect on Trump. He powers through the outrage, creates more outrage to distract from it, and never seems to face any consequences." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "That's all true, and the decline in the power of shame has been one of his most corrosive contributions to American politics. But shamelessness is distinct from what's happening in this FIFA ceremony, or when Trump earlier this week renamed the Institute for Peace after himself." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreif6q65vpkl46ovzsyco4aj6t3npxjhildelh4mu3s6vx54uhl32ju", "uri": "at://did:plc:ejihld4sywvvqwe67cdkn4jq/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7472dysv22l" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 181, "byteStart": 177 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "What's happening here isn't shamelessness. It's auto-humiliation. Trump routinely absolutely humiliates himself in public, but doesn't recognize that he's being humiliated. And that behavior really is key to understanding MAGA as both a movement and a psychology." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Shamelessness comes with awareness. You know what you're doing and how others see it, and you don't care. Trump's corruption, for example, is a kind of shamelessness. He knows he's engaging in corrupt behavior, and that others view it as corrupt, but he just doesn't care." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Auto-humiliation is about lack of awareness. When Trump put on that stupid medal, he thought it made him look important and worthy. He wanted a prize because he thinks getting prizes makes you look important in the eyes of others, and he wants to look important in the eyes of others. Or when Pete Hegseth goes on long rants about warriors, he thinks it makes him look tough, and he wants to be seen as a tough guy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In auto-humiliation, you believe people are perceiving your behavior positively or fearfully or in awe, when in fact you look like a moron or a fool. The entire aesthetics of Trumpism is auto-humiliation. The way DHS tweets out kitsch racist art is humiliating, but they believe it's intimidating. The way ICE agents deck themselves out in combat gear, they think makes them look badass when in fact it makes them look like silly cowards afraid of peaceful Mexican gardeners and day laborers. The way white Christian nationalists talk histrionically about the horrors of women doing basically anything that isn't staying home with kids, they think makes them look like gods of patriarchy when instead it makes them look like sad incels." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Trump spends most of his time humiliating himself. And Trumpism, as a movement, does the same. It's an ideology and psychology of people who want you to think they're big and tough and important and scary, but to achieve that have adopted behaviors and modes of expression that instead make them look pathetic and small and embarrassing. And this auto-humiliation, because it's coming from an ideological place, reinforces itself. That others laugh at them when they humiliate themselves isn't evidence that they're humiliating themselves, but instead evidence that others are so intimidated or scared or overawed that they're using laughter to hide it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The upside is that auto-humiliation is ultimately self-defeating, because \"Be like me and you'll humiliate yourself constantly, too\" isn't great marketing copy." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "So let's keep giving Trump dumb trophies." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } } ] } ] }, "bskyPostRef": { "cid": "bafyreiago37juwqdq4epqci7npliz6m2vhvqcnt3oofg6eikzy7lab24sm", "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7bk64lhk22c", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreie6f4h76eebrweeq5jup4xldvbf66zd53mqrrm7yh5cubit6d3kza", "rev": "3m7bk64ozi42l" }, "validationStatus": "valid" }, "description": "Trump is shameless, yes. But he also has a fetish for humiliating himself.", "publishedAt": "2025-12-05T22:33:11.314Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.496359+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3maoefmf2m227", "data": { "path": "/3maoefmf2m227", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "podcast", "philosophy", "rationalism", "politics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "ReImagining Liberty 096: The Irrationality of Rationalists (w/ Samantha Hancox-Li)", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019b4be3-ad33-7772-ab9c-7ee22753841d", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "alt": "ReImagining Liberty Podcast cover art\n", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.image", "image": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreico3cpf6dcessv2rly7kc7fxj6bzgbzfne3plv2ckdrh7xecdh53u" }, "size": 2375396, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "aspectRatio": { "width": 1920, "height": 1080 } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 49, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300/episode/MTQ1OTg1Nzkx", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Click here to listen in your favorite podcast app" }, "alignment": "lex:pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#textAlignCenter" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The ideologies that shape our world can be awfully weird. The one that combines the most influence with the most weirdness is arguably Rationalism, which grew out of backwater blogs to have the ears, and influence the minds, of people like Elon Musk and JD Vance." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 194, "byteStart": 176 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 211, "byteStart": 205 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://patreon.com/sjshancoxli?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan&utm_content=join_link", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 255, "byteStart": 239 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.liberalcurrents.com/author/samanthahancoxli/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 297, "byteStart": 273 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://pod.link/1780445399", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To talk about what Rationalism is, why we should care about its beliefs and arguments, and the impact it's had outside those strange corners of the internet, I've brought back Samantha Hancox-Li. She's a writer, game designer, editor at Liberal Currents, and host of the Neon Liberalism podcast." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 9, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 28, "byteStart": 9 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 36, "byteStart": 28 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 142, "byteStart": 36 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 181, "byteStart": 142 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Join the ReImagining Liberty Patreon to get episodes a week early, listen ad-free, and become part of the Discord community. Learn more here: https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 12, "byteStart": 0 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 15, "byteStart": 12 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 27, "byteStart": 15 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 30, "byteStart": 27 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://landryayres.com/?_bhlid=04c818b8847197e37f2ef125d751d30bc9dc7f56", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 47, "byteStart": 30 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 50, "byteStart": 47 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 69, "byteStart": 50 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 72, "byteStart": 69 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.instagram.com/sergiormduarte/?_bhlid=ea08418d67d4b92e13ee8001fe4b235ec55588ac&hl=en", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 83, "byteStart": 72 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 86, "byteStart": 83 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 99, "byteStart": 86 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 102, "byteStart": 99 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://filmmusic.io/song/3755-finding-the-balance?_bhlid=5fe910376c6711c1d790bea1e179ed78d36ca99c", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 103, "byteStart": 102 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Produced by ⁠Landry Ayres⁠. Podcast art by ⁠Sergio R. M. Duarte⁠. Music by ⁠Kevin MacLeod⁠." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.horizontalRule" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 129, "byteStart": 110 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" }, { "uri": "https://pod.link/1614436300", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 164, "byteStart": 148 }, "features": [ { "uri": "https://www.patreon.com/AaronRossPowell", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon. You'll get early access to all new episodes of my ReImagining Liberty podcast, as well. Learn more here." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "url": "https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1911108/170699304865891724/share", "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.iframe", "height": 360 } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "" } } ] } ] }, "coverImage": { "ref": { "$link": "bafkreico3cpf6dcessv2rly7kc7fxj6bzgbzfne3plv2ckdrh7xecdh53u" }, "size": 2375396, "$type": "blob", "mimeType": "image/png" }, "description": "A podcast conversation.", "publishedAt": "2025-12-23T18:19:54.728Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.185178+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mde7p6htok2b", "data": { "path": "/3mde7p6htok2b", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "conservatism", "politics" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "The Ideology of Hang-Ups", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019bfc42-c169-7bbd-ac02-452f3c81d5cb", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Often when I talk about social liberalism, and particularly when I push back on reactionary moral panics about LGBT issues, I hear some version of this reply: “Sure, a lot of the right-wing response to increasing tolerance is overblown. But don’t you think there is something we should be worried about when kids are going to drag queen story hours?” Or when gender fluidity is normalized. Or when people identify in other ways orthogonal to “traditional values.”" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The answer, and I think it’s the obvious one, is “No.” Not at all. A drag queen, for example, is just a guy wearing cloth composed in one way (“for women”) versus another (“for men”). A dress, like all other clothing, is a costume, and any meaning it has is entirely what we—socially, culturally, or individually—project onto it. If there’s no reason to object to a Star Wars story hour, there’s no reason to object to a drag queen one. If there’s no reason to object to a judge wearing a robe around kids, or soldiers wearing excessively ornate uniforms, surely the kids can manage a dude in a dress." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The difference, of course, is that a dress transgresses a boundary that cultural reactionaries insist is fixed, important, and damaging if crossed. There’s an obsessiveness with policing those categories they’ve fetishized—in both senses of the term. In other words, a great deal of the “but shouldn’t we be concerned?” soft arguments for social control is just ideology constructed upon hang-ups. In the end, the children at drag queen story hour don’t have a problem with it, aren’t offended by it, and haven’t sexualized it. It’s not clear why we should give credence to the peculiarities of those adults who do." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 445, "byteStart": 438 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But there’s a broader issue at play, and it’s one that I think is central to the current conflict between genuine liberalism and the rise of various forms of illiberalism, particularly those on the cultural right. Namely, we frequently say that a liberal society depends on tolerance of diversity. But I don’t believe that goes far enough. Instead, liberalism depends upon—and also encourages, incentivizes, and rewards—certain liberal virtues, and among these is the embrace and celebration of diversity and diverse self-authorship." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 563, "byteStart": 558 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 611, "byteStart": 603 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "To explain what I mean, let’s shift from the realm of politics and talk for a moment about what I take to be a pretty straightforward and obvious ethical claim: If you find yourself reacting strongly against peaceful people pursuing their own ends (“Living their best life,” to put it in contemporary terms)—if you catch yourself thinking “That’s yucky, they need to stop, and we ought to exercise social or political pressures to do just that”—take a moment, step back, and consider that you haven’t identified non-virtuous behavior of on their part, but instead exposed a failure of your own character." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 30, "byteStart": 23 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "The fact is, there’s nothing wrong with, for instance, gay relationships. Loving gay couples should be celebrated just as enthusiastically as loving heterosexual couples. To believe otherwise is to make a moral mistake. If it’s a moral position you’ve arrived at through reasoning, then your reasoning process went wrong somewhere. If it’s a moral position grounded in scripture, then it tells us either you’ve misinterpreted your scripture or that your scripture runs counter to an obvious moral truth." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "This same applies to drag queens, to expressing fluid gender identities, and countless other, “non-traditional” ways people exhibit diversity of self-authorship and find joy, meaning, and belonging in doing so. To hate that, to shun that, to condemn that isn’t to hold fast to virtue, but to fail to exhibit it." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 39, "byteStart": 24 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Stated more abstractly, mere toleration of diverse lifestyles and identities isn’t enough. Toleration is, of course, better than the alternative. Grudgingly accepting that there are gay couples out there or drag queens out there or transgender people out there, even if you wish there weren’t, is worlds above not tolerating them or, worse, bringing coercive force against them to get them to knock it off." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 706, "byteStart": 674 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/p/liberalism-and-sympathetic-joy?ref=reimaginingliberty.com", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] } ], "plaintext": "But just as a virtuously compassionate and generous person will seek to help others, instead of merely being content with not harming them, so too a virtuous person will go beyond toleration to cultivating sympathetic joy in the diversity of others’ self-expression. A virtuous person will take delight in others’ delight, will find a degree of fulfillment in the fact that others have found the same. He won't just grin and bear the self-authorship of his fellow humans, but celebrate it. Even when the particulars aren’t what he'd choose for himself. [Note: Since writing this essay, this, I’ve expanded this argument about the need for “sympathetic joy” into a series on the liberal virtues.]" } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "There are plenty of genres of music I don’t have much interest in. But it’s awesome that music is diverse, and that so many people, with such divergent tastes, can find joy in one or more of its myriad styles. There are plenty of TV shows I’m not a fan of, or cuisines I don’t particularly care for, but it’s amazing the wealth of options out there, and the pleasure people find in their favorite sitcom or comfort food—even if I wouldn’t want to sit through or consume either." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "We rightfully judge the person who insists there’s no good music outside his narrow interests, or hates even the thought of foods outside his comfort zone. We recognize the cramped preferences of the curmudgeon as just that. We should apply the same critique to the person who stops at mere toleration of social diversity, even if, again, tolerance is to be preferred over intolerance." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Of course, this doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t counsel against choices we believe are harmful or that the person making them will regret. But such advice needs to come from a place of love and empathy, or at least genuine concern for the other’s wellbeing. It shouldn’t be grounded in aversion to their self-expression. And while many of the people who react strongly against gay couples, transgender expression, and drag queen story hour claim to have loving or supportive motivations, or tell themselves that they do, a few moments listening to the rhetoric makes clear that in most cases—though certainly not all—they’re kidding themselves. Further, it is clear that these particular instances of advice against self-expression, even if motivated by loving concern, as mistaken. Loving advice can still be bad advice, and telling people to stop being gay or to stop being trans or to stop expressing themselves peacefully through their choice of clothing in ways that bring them happiness, belonging, and meaning is bad advice." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [ { "index": { "byteEnd": 366, "byteStart": 316 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#bold" }, { "uri": "https://www.reimaginingliberty.com/liberty-upsets-patternsand-conservatism/", "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#link" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 436, "byteStart": 429 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] }, { "index": { "byteEnd": 511, "byteStart": 483 }, "features": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.richtext.facet#italic" } ] } ], "plaintext": "Getting finally back to politics, cultivation of joy in diversity, instead of reaction against it, is necessary for the functioning and maintenance of a liberal society. Without it, cultural and social dynamism—which are, after all, just the natural, inevitable consequence of individual liberty—will eventually become too much for the merely tolerant to handle. “I’m okay with change, okay with difference, but that’s too far. Sure, men can wear dresses if they want, but not in front of the children. Sure, gay couples can express their love for each other, but only so long as they don’t do in public, or they aren’t represented so much in media that it’s treated as normal.” This is soil for reactionary social control, and social pressures fail to reign in the dynamism and self-expression, the reactionary will inevitably turn to the state." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Conservatives are right that societies need virtue to function. Getting over your hang-ups and celebrating diversity is a virtue." } } ] } ] }, "publishedAt": "2024-02-16T21:44:00.000Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-26T21:44:44.904894+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdgqfumjy22f", "data": { "path": "/3mdgqfumjy22f", "site": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "tags": [ "politics", "trump", "trumpism" ], "$type": "site.standard.document", "title": "Trump is Governing a Country that Doesn't Exist—And Destroying One That Does", "content": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.content", "pages": [ { "id": "019c016b-44cb-7ff4-b1b5-f3387191708f", "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument", "blocks": [ { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "A big difference between the second Trump administration and the first is, I think pretty clearly, Trump's information environment. It's not the only difference, but Trump has, in the past, responded consistently to certain signals in ways that modestly moderated him. Those now don't exist." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.bskyPost", "postRef": { "cid": "bafyreig3yxgimwe5pendl4hffbhdygtcfctl2fa6swcu6rjctnmagnm7lm", "uri": "at://did:plc:h7qtoo7nxqxarrsijohjhbw4/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdgotaxmub24" } } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "Trump, more than anything, wants to be popular. His sense of what leads to popularity is deeply broken, as are the moral values around it, but it's just a fact of the man that he wants people to praise him and doesn't like it when they don't." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In Trump 1, this personality trait led him to back down on policies that the public hated. Not all the time, and not enough in any \"respecting liberal institutions and norms\" sense, but it was still there. We're not seeing that in Trump 2, except when things look off-the-charts bad for him." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "I don't think this is because Trump, in his second term, is hardened to bad news and criticism in a way he wasn't in his first. I think instead it's that he's less aware of acute unpopularity when it happens. He genuinely believes people love him and what he's doing." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "What's different is the nature of the information coming into Trump's head and how he's processing that information. So his cognitive decline plays a role, making it even harder than before for Trump to update his understanding or beliefs. But it's not just cognitive decline." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "In Trump 1, his administration and staff were often relatively normal people with a relatively normal connection to reality. They weren't great, but the comparison to Trump 2 is stark. His staff are epistemic lunatics, cooked in online spaces, and postmodernly addicted to AI as truth manufacture." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "All the information arriving at Trump's eyes and ears is, intentionally or unintentionally (and it likely moves between them), constructed to reinforce a reality in which he's popular and succeeding. It takes a lot (e.g., Minneapolis) to break through." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "And Trump, never a particularly bright or inquisitive guy to begin with, now entirely lacks the cognitive capacity to notice how detached he is or how corrupt the information coming to him is. He just accepts it in a spirit of self-flattery. Which means he can't course-correct the way he used to." } }, { "$type": "pub.leaflet.pages.linearDocument#block", "block": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.blocks.text", "facets": [], "plaintext": "The upshot of Trump's cognitive decline and entirely rotten information environment is that he's ruling a country that exists only in his head. And in that country, everyone always wants more of what he's doing. Unfortunately, his goons are then carrying that out in the country that does exist." } } ] } ] }, "description": "Cognitive decline and a curated information environment means Trump has no idea what's happening in the world outside his head.", "publishedAt": "2026-01-27T21:49:03.445Z" }, "indexed_at": "2026-01-27T21:49:06.312965+00:00" } ], "documentsInPublications": [ { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdbshmybvc2u", "indexed_at": "2026-01-25T22:42:33.488833+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdqi4xvrx22j", "indexed_at": "2026-01-31T18:47:34.365366+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbozbfts26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.503158+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2xfol4is2o", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.401481+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2azqdbgdc2r", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.078139+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6d4qckwcc27", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.51177+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zn7wo4o224", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.851163+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgtlnepc2w", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.734574+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m52ndshej22l", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.259776+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fh2qe2d22a", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.163405+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33ezqr5as2k", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.976075+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4xwujd2e22k", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.098746+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk7kvoas23", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.868307+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbu7xdfc26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.191292+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo5p36c222", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.366101+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.907219+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2kop5nn7s2r", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:52.506758+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo2zhv2s24", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.372958+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3maoefmf2m227", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.247675+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.903164+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rzksspk22", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.70253+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7bk5wolls2c", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.525639+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zkbbxxsk23", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.783483+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7tcs7mie22r", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.133956+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbnk7jek26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.918247+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2c7kzdrk2p", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.943623+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.589211+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgzalah22y", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.455356+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3lcybdjk227", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:22.053751+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rxh4clk2o", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.913166+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.8099+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk63ares23", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.889262+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma7mvocfj22u", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.57019+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mar6gv4ckc2t", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.936153+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33erawvis2l", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:40.76693+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znzs2zfs22", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:36.891646+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.871477+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6l5d3qhw22g", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.128362+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zggtugcc2f", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.75005+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgxr2w2k2y", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.286928+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqdvgin226", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.455553+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m5ee5raios2r", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.440051+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.007499+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tnnj7v222", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:17.543571+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zncix4jk2q", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:21.187997+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xcd4u63226", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.70035+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqaxqypk26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.396277+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3ahechta22z", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:53.027518+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tl7oomk2y", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.864974+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcb4y7vwqk24", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.070297+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgwdmc7c2a", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:18.640732+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2f54be5bc2y", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:44.110201+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zflvqbyc27", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:35.599367+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo76yip224", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.242213+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rvmrwxc2n", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:17.51971+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6fneobpvc2w", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:41.859667+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3le5fvzzs27", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:19.279543+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgrvea6s2a", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:20.929999+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcx7hlikus2t", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:40.210999+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqchr7vc26", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:05:37.657486+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fhabraak2u", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.389636+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tjacszc2y", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.440352+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2z52lampk2z", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.445823+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgud57nk2a", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.505896+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgiwtkes27", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.468748+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33exkn6mc2o", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.477293+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znyhuvck24", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.522955+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6zih3qe2s2f", "indexed_at": "2026-01-23T22:06:06.658882+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mczqmmelhc2c", "indexed_at": "2026-01-24T01:43:22.170504+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdgqfumjy22f", "indexed_at": "2026-01-27T21:49:06.363698+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mde7p6htok2b", "indexed_at": "2026-01-26T21:44:44.94256+00:00" } ], "publicationSubscriptions": [ { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:ilpiic4vuj2gsmxrve4cowhb", "created_at": "2025-10-04T12:31:10.009919+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:ilpiic4vuj2gsmxrve4cowhb/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2elmdw57k2w" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:hv2gp4goblla4ovcthykcs25", "created_at": "2025-10-20T11:27:55.009122+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:hv2gp4goblla4ovcthykcs25/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3mpjy4i422n" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:k6lbqyax2esddn2kgqtainr4", "created_at": "2025-11-05T09:07:29.870856+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:k6lbqyax2esddn2kgqtainr4/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4up5mml4k2c" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:h5uflu6cfdbvjsggusevvy6i", "created_at": "2025-11-05T07:23:42.617262+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:h5uflu6cfdbvjsggusevvy6i/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4ujdzt4x22i" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:lkandk742sdhz4c3mmzbruzi", "created_at": "2025-11-05T09:26:50.710134+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:lkandk742sdhz4c3mmzbruzi/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4uqa7qmf22c" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:pryrbnfbguabqt3arwc6c56a", "created_at": "2025-11-05T09:57:42.813279+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:pryrbnfbguabqt3arwc6c56a/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4urxfxoqc2a" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:3uqtman4stwda2zyjgergrtl", "created_at": "2025-11-05T09:34:05.458542+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:3uqtman4stwda2zyjgergrtl/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4uqn6ffx22t" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:wi4qb7g7wj3tlnnbixqexbo2", "created_at": "2025-10-14T16:42:56.464378+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:wi4qb7g7wj3tlnnbixqexbo2/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m366eidib22a" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:joblr77q4lk4njuyxqvsgecs", "created_at": "2025-10-14T16:44:06.458022+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:joblr77q4lk4njuyxqvsgecs/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m366ftv6vc2a" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:kl7hempqschnxsspnkydz3y4", "created_at": "2025-10-14T16:54:42.784272+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:kl7hempqschnxsspnkydz3y4/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m367cqbytc2z" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:bc7eepe7hsau3j7ggepcfsru", "created_at": "2025-11-05T07:13:41.336922+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:bc7eepe7hsau3j7ggepcfsru/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4uis4fkgc2z" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:vaz2qwgo57jezm6bktzlvltn", "created_at": "2025-10-12T03:10:14.488047+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:vaz2qwgo57jezm6bktzlvltn/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2xpyp2vqk26" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:lihaxjm2nmfpaxtqybjmmvgp", "created_at": "2025-10-12T14:09:14.408095+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:lihaxjm2nmfpaxtqybjmmvgp/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2yut3jbvc2j" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:lqfszvq7vmq6nbzqt7y2n36z", "created_at": "2025-10-09T13:27:16.909002+00:00", "record": { "cid": "bafyreiajnp4dk4hzwk4c2jzzowyh3sklxdlvb6672ygwtgz2evupuisvea", "uri": "at://did:plc:lqfszvq7vmq6nbzqt7y2n36z/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2rb3c5pe22e", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreidsihyexbkqoby57kexrdfmg4hxn67nlzhir2ukvj2hxt6mvaquha", "rev": "3m2rb3cd55u2j" }, "validationStatus": "unknown" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:lqfszvq7vmq6nbzqt7y2n36z/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2rb3c5pe22e" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:zkf6r3j5gr4e2czv7q74nbth", "created_at": "2025-10-14T17:01:38.37426+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:zkf6r3j5gr4e2czv7q74nbth/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m367f73r4k2m" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:w4ecabne6ytujnc3jsnuaz6f", "created_at": "2025-10-16T01:15:00.240175+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:w4ecabne6ytujnc3jsnuaz6f/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3blgd4slk22" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:xgvzy7ni6ig6ievcbls5jaxe", "created_at": "2025-10-03T21:57:20.670378+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:xgvzy7ni6ig6ievcbls5jaxe/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m2d2rtj3ak2n" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:gyzvopwxcend4iozleerdsk2", "created_at": "2025-10-03T15:26:09.792881+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:gyzvopwxcend4iozleerdsk2/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2cewdsj6k2o" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:mr3yzpvczag2woty2eimamxa", "created_at": "2025-10-03T18:53:36.574775+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:mr3yzpvczag2woty2eimamxa/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m2cqjbtchc2k" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:yxai2tspxc5f3dduoh7j33tm", "created_at": "2025-10-03T21:43:52.857214+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:yxai2tspxc5f3dduoh7j33tm/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2czzqyw6c2t" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:27kppsest7zdqk3goeqqewic", "created_at": "2025-10-03T21:40:38.514557+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:27kppsest7zdqk3goeqqewic/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2cztxpkw22j" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:5qv3nyiedfkf3i5tmi7drcvf", "created_at": "2025-10-03T23:29:20.560268+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:5qv3nyiedfkf3i5tmi7drcvf/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2d7wdldh22y" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:ouylf4wfd75rdqupddfmeerk", "created_at": "2025-10-04T01:06:00.621989+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:ouylf4wfd75rdqupddfmeerk/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2dfd6wyn22j" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:ytmwinnm6ctrj3wzphf6udsb", "created_at": "2025-10-04T18:37:46.062576+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:ytmwinnm6ctrj3wzphf6udsb/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2fa3uygp22g" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:s2rczyxit2v5vzedxqs326ri", "created_at": "2025-10-14T18:50:35.955281+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:s2rczyxit2v5vzedxqs326ri/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m36fhztack2y" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:uxbis4trrvi62ofjsjhfcuqq", "created_at": "2025-10-06T22:58:48.69558+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:uxbis4trrvi62ofjsjhfcuqq/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2kpmivwy22w" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:ioi5j5envw55xuxjw373us5f", "created_at": "2025-10-07T13:20:25.671538+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:ioi5j5envw55xuxjw373us5f/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3666y3nnk27" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:7dylhjig26k7hm6yxbrs3byk", "created_at": "2025-10-07T20:58:47.161374+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:7dylhjig26k7hm6yxbrs3byk/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m2mzeskiik2y" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:2adtngm3y6e6ol6jastnkxzm", "created_at": "2025-10-08T19:05:01.696044+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:2adtngm3y6e6ol6jastnkxzm/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m2pdicnknk2v" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:gnipvkatwqdeogmhefr35hmb", "created_at": "2025-10-17T05:27:48.022034+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:gnipvkatwqdeogmhefr35hmb/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3ejzbk5t22y" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:foplmyynarnvxstr5sdt5hnq", "created_at": "2025-10-17T14:03:31.917773+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:foplmyynarnvxstr5sdt5hnq/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3fgti3loc2o" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:wwxi72il43ep35dxhf3qc7je", "created_at": "2025-10-17T16:21:00.631037+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:wwxi72il43ep35dxhf3qc7je/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3fojcozwc2p" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:oiekh5ilfiwkvxyvqh36z5d2", "created_at": "2025-10-17T23:52:31.252613+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:oiekh5ilfiwkvxyvqh36z5d2/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m3ghqoasd22e" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:yu2i4xhhs6f4wkdqthyr7g4a", "created_at": "2025-10-20T01:09:15.437044+00:00", "record": { "cid": "bafyreiajnp4dk4hzwk4c2jzzowyh3sklxdlvb6672ygwtgz2evupuisvea", "uri": "at://did:plc:yu2i4xhhs6f4wkdqthyr7g4a/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3lmxq3m6c26", "commit": { "cid": "bafyreidejiltnbpmofnlnf5xsp5c3ysytkwckihstxo65kjmtijactmdfe", "rev": "3m3lmxqc55b2w" }, "validationStatus": "unknown" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:yu2i4xhhs6f4wkdqthyr7g4a/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3lmxq3m6c26" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:u7565i2h7lt4726no7d5243h", "created_at": "2025-10-20T06:16:57.632015+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:u7565i2h7lt4726no7d5243h/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3m65wzi6c2r" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:uw22lvztu4mogfaoatagswrw", "created_at": "2025-10-21T18:20:05.031538+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:uw22lvztu4mogfaoatagswrw/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3pwztwdds2e" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:2p3gp2g2teuwpuv4skhiik3i", "created_at": "2025-10-22T01:45:30.776398+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:2p3gp2g2teuwpuv4skhiik3i/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3qpwforvk2u" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:xz2tim33f5xrce2rhvwuehgr", "created_at": "2025-10-22T06:58:46.281348+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:xz2tim33f5xrce2rhvwuehgr/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3rbgkdkps2o" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:uxwluatt42o23rqsndcrqyjl", "created_at": "2025-10-23T18:21:13.915438+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:uxwluatt42o23rqsndcrqyjl/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m3uxzsjxqs2s" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:zrlcy5a2egjlfcoqb2a2eotu", "created_at": "2025-10-27T21:48:01.076984+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:zrlcy5a2egjlfcoqb2a2eotu/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m47fharyjc2u" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:z3knkrbpyl232ej5iz44xwdc", "created_at": "2025-10-18T19:50:59.620612+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:z3knkrbpyl232ej5iz44xwdc/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m3ikppcsgk2q" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:tbzfsowmg4zj234pws47u3x6", "created_at": "2026-01-03T12:16:24.738826+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:tbzfsowmg4zj234pws47u3x6/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mbjf7qoc2227" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:u6jsazt54og7kx25yqvgmcox", "created_at": "2025-11-03T17:42:05.202416+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:u6jsazt54og7kx25yqvgmcox/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4qkxwsozc2c" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:stznz7qsokto2345qtdzogjb", "created_at": "2025-11-03T21:14:00.327985+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:stznz7qsokto2345qtdzogjb/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4qwsurq6k2l" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:7ditsi7667pzlxve5kr63u6c", "created_at": "2025-11-03T20:17:27.771452+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:7ditsi7667pzlxve5kr63u6c/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3m4qtnrgfas2j" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:aq7owa5y7ndc2hzjz37wy7ma", "created_at": "2025-11-03T21:14:23.033556+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:aq7owa5y7ndc2hzjz37wy7ma/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4qwtjjt5s2l" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:ysfsvhlbvqodo6ojhzftnjys", "created_at": "2025-11-03T18:46:53.523169+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:ysfsvhlbvqodo6ojhzftnjys/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4qolswcgs2s" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:kujb5q4bydgzvxbbep4bqdm7", "created_at": "2025-11-05T01:50:55.608087+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:kujb5q4bydgzvxbbep4bqdm7/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4twqxtdxs26" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:yczfsnwl2wfh65qvjjbesm53", "created_at": "2025-11-05T01:53:25.881111+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:yczfsnwl2wfh65qvjjbesm53/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m4twvgy5vs26" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:whb5n3iel5wb5vopbmx7d27h", "created_at": "2025-10-21T13:45:55.932409+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:whb5n3iel5wb5vopbmx7d27h/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m3phpouffc2u" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:f5bi3qiwfdxnlbvb44oudmrv", "created_at": "2025-11-08T01:45:28.405668+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:f5bi3qiwfdxnlbvb44oudmrv/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m53htxyg7225" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:syavxjzhkjntdrmejwp3ctl5", "created_at": "2025-11-08T10:58:16.365012+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:syavxjzhkjntdrmejwp3ctl5/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m54gqhl7cs2f" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:hoocrykpuqrvimfil3ugtdxi", "created_at": "2025-11-10T16:04:58.963659+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:hoocrykpuqrvimfil3ugtdxi/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m5bysqeetk2p" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:vyonarl4fhghaalo7icvadt2", "created_at": "2026-01-26T00:59:15.602762+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:vyonarl4fhghaalo7icvadt2/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mdc243dbxs2k" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:7gxpu45lhs5pybu7oitt3m7v", "created_at": "2026-01-26T01:08:00.135152+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:7gxpu45lhs5pybu7oitt3m7v/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mdc2lpic4s2p" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:armut7dirmaum6vvdo3dnw2w", "created_at": "2025-12-08T18:36:17.983009+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:armut7dirmaum6vvdo3dnw2w/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m7iod42ik22w" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:fgdxbgj53uq3km3jiovqb3ex", "created_at": "2025-12-12T05:31:13.649321+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:fgdxbgj53uq3km3jiovqb3ex/site.standard.graph.subscription/3m7recxidpk23" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:mxqldgf6ieemlsmlzu6efzfx", "created_at": "2025-12-23T20:24:22.935214+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:mxqldgf6ieemlsmlzu6efzfx/site.standard.graph.subscription/3maole6h6p22q" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:vzrgcskekh77pkuf3iwu3eup", "created_at": "2025-12-25T22:06:59.101923+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:vzrgcskekh77pkuf3iwu3eup/site.standard.graph.subscription/3matrzieoyk2a" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:lpyusyqszrgugvxynmv2k4uu", "created_at": "2025-12-28T10:08:56.854157+00:00", "record": { "$type": "pub.leaflet.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:lpyusyqszrgugvxynmv2k4uu/pub.leaflet.graph.subscription/3mb23cc2uic2b" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:7tpje7xupxns5wfoatk6vjea", "created_at": "2026-01-14T08:35:33.969419+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/pub.leaflet.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:7tpje7xupxns5wfoatk6vjea/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mcenyxrq222w" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "created_at": "2026-01-14T14:35:17.146869+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mcfc473lns2c" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "identity": "did:plc:6c7juxljgw4ms43kmx4wtvgc", "created_at": "2026-01-16T16:01:37.974294+00:00", "record": { "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription", "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f" }, "uri": "at://did:plc:6c7juxljgw4ms43kmx4wtvgc/site.standard.graph.subscription/3mckhugtd322i" } ], "recommendsOnDocuments": [], "comments": [], "documentMentions": [ { "uri": "at://did:plc:ukp7pzzht32uigg6bg4vxr5t/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4jvx24ugc2w", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/31_553-31_749#31_553", "indexed_at": "2025-11-01T02:09:49.553752+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4xpiwyak22h", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2znbd5z4k2p/l-quote/13_0-13_521#13_0", "indexed_at": "2025-11-06T13:51:52.144278+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m3j27onki22m", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2cdec7qrc2p/l-quote/7_0-7_402#7_0", "indexed_at": "2025-10-19T00:28:24.675651+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:7dbbjqgbj56qpe4x7pjtcoey/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7ebhjbsv22o", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2cpq6rwzk2v/l-quote/2_196-2_356#2_196", "indexed_at": "2025-12-07T00:35:31.312946+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:xqzu2eazvxb5fohoc4nap33y/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4m672meq22p", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/5_20-5_313#5_20", "indexed_at": "2025-11-01T23:42:49.02222+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:2p3gp2g2teuwpuv4skhiik3i/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4ugp3bvqk2k", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/34_0-34_334#34_0", "indexed_at": "2025-11-05T06:36:37.540218+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:gcprtwb4q3uezlrbdkwnmqu2/app.bsky.feed.post/3m53uix25ic2j", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m52ndshej22l", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m52ndshej22l/l-quote/8_0-8_405#8_0", "indexed_at": "2025-11-08T05:32:02.437747+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:gcprtwb4q3uezlrbdkwnmqu2/app.bsky.feed.post/3m53upttvy224", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbnk7jek26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2xbnk7jek26/l-quote/9_340-9_575#9_340", "indexed_at": "2025-11-08T05:35:52.192963+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:kujb5q4bydgzvxbbep4bqdm7/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4twuqvrg22h", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/39_0-39_286#39_0", "indexed_at": "2025-11-05T01:53:07.440295+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:jjsc5rflv3cpv6hgtqhn2dcm/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4qvmupvyk2w", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/28_0-28_470#28_0", "indexed_at": "2025-11-03T20:52:50.14423+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:6ayddqghxhciedbaofoxkcbs/app.bsky.feed.post/3m2cjw3ew4c2j", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2azqdbgdc2r", "link": "https://aaronrosspowell.leaflet.pub/3m2azqdbgdc2r/l-quote/0_0-0_386#0_0", "indexed_at": "2025-10-03T16:55:29.405+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:chuhzeddijgux2jxt3q2tfvo/app.bsky.feed.post/3m4tyzgvtd22q", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/31_156-31_212#31_156", "indexed_at": "2025-11-05T02:31:29.910194+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/app.bsky.feed.post/3m347plp6pc2g", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "link": "https://aaronrosspowell.leaflet.pub/3m2cdec7qrc2p/l-quote/7_0-7_427#7_0", "indexed_at": "2025-10-13T22:02:07.417+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:gcprtwb4q3uezlrbdkwnmqu2/app.bsky.feed.post/3m7e3obyxn22n", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m2cpq6rwzk2v/l-quote/2_196-2_356#2_196", "indexed_at": "2025-12-06T22:51:57.908702+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:tbzfsowmg4zj234pws47u3x6/app.bsky.feed.post/3mbjjzrorks2p", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/32_108-32_212#32_108", "indexed_at": "2026-01-03T13:42:38.997176+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:tbzfsowmg4zj234pws47u3x6/app.bsky.feed.post/3mbjki2ocos2t", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/35_321-35_921#35_321", "indexed_at": "2026-01-03T13:50:38.595272+00:00" }, { "uri": "at://did:plc:btuqjrilfffatbvck7xaaasn/app.bsky.feed.post/3mblprhpkis23", "document": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "link": "https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3m4jmwemgkk26/l-quote/32_22-32_199#32_22", "indexed_at": "2026-01-04T10:30:40.400969+00:00" } ], "leafletsInPublications": [ { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "984c7c92-0d0c-42ff-a56e-09d2290b597a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcb4y7vwqk24", "archived": null, "title": "What Pete Hegseth’s Kettlebell Swings Tell Us About MAGA Ideology", "description": "MAGA is built on a fundamental lack of the internal protective quality that warns us when we are debasing ourselves.", "cover_image": "019bb466-1511-744c-bd35-0344cff62741", "tags": [ "politics", "fitness", "maga" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "742653f8-9692-4e1b-a603-478e10afb4b6", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4jmwemgkk26", "archived": null, "title": "Leaflet, Blogging, and How to Fix Social Media", "description": "Decentralization, network overlap, and why we should all blog, too.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "33a09d73-bcea-43be-afca-d127db13aa2b", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zhzzl4x22f", "archived": null, "title": "The Necessary Virtue of Not Being an Asshole", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "8e9c53c3-41d1-49b3-8a46-ab8996af2761", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rzksspk22", "archived": null, "title": "AI and the Threat of Nostalgia Culture", "description": "The rise of AI-generated content risks overshadowing original creative works, potentially leading to a market collapse for writers and artists if consumers prefer nostalgia-driven remixes over new expressions, but the enduring human desire for innovation suggests that original art and writing will always have value.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "3ecf9e6a-0621-49dc-bc82-962e88a8b0aa", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo76yip224", "archived": null, "title": "Selling Out vs. Just Selling: The Weirdness of \"Content\" Monetization", "description": "What it means that we stopped caring so much about what we create and started caring only about whether we can sell it.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "culture", "influencers" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "6f2ff415-de14-4984-a8a3-2893ad3cd4f1", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zflvqbyc27", "archived": null, "title": "How to Talk Yourself into Defending Nonsense", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "ebedada8-bcb1-4c7a-bfa2-0c08b5fff637", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znzs2zfs22", "archived": null, "title": "Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "614cfda6-2066-4918-83d0-f1d1bca8b428", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mcx7hlikus2t", "archived": null, "title": "How LEGO Can Teach Us About Meaning In Liberal Societies", "description": "A family parable about forging a sense of place and meaning—and what it says about the liberal project.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "liberalism", "meaning", "ethics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "a9689991-4625-4e2c-8bcb-661fbc01670d", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgwdmc7c2a", "archived": null, "title": "How the Right Distorted Libertarianism", "description": "Once rooted in liberalism, libertarianism's detour through the conservative movement has blunted its radical edge and commitment to principle.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "687c2e2f-ed49-422c-93cc-e5bc433c9d4c", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgxr2w2k2y", "archived": null, "title": "Hate Can Be Mainstream", "description": "Bigotry is bigotry, even if the bigots are in the majority.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "107b4350-9b75-44ba-a814-2db118f24019", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo5p36c222", "archived": null, "title": "The Politics of \"Unbiased\" Conservative Search Engines", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "a9b09d59-8e6a-4064-8786-0f843aa9098f", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk7kvoas23", "archived": null, "title": "The Misuse of Meritocracy", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "28729c48-e5b8-4f3a-b891-721e912ffb82", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zkbbxxsk23", "archived": null, "title": "Twitter/X as a Bubble for Bad Ethics", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "96e3e33a-b958-4326-9bbc-3a2176024173", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zn7wo4o224", "archived": null, "title": "The Verge’s “Failure” is a Win for Everyone: Talent Networks as Networks", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "8966dde4-842f-4a8b-ac2c-19e60af21acc", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33ezqr5as2k", "archived": null, "title": "Trump Promised Disaster. His Supporters Didn’t Believe Him.", "description": "Many Trump supporters underestimated his intentions during his first term, believing he wouldn't follow through on his campaign promises, but his second term has revealed the dangers of their misjudgment.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "64d20ad8-3c9c-4cb6-9706-3dfaa6ba06df", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rxh4clk2o", "archived": null, "title": "An Inconsistent Approach to Viewpoint Diversity", "description": "If school choice is the answer to fights over curriculum in K-12 schools, it also needs to be the answer at universities. But culture war supporting libertarians don't tend to apply the argument that consistently. ", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "5865a50e-f7c1-4e75-9f79-827cf388b17a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tjacszc2y", "archived": null, "title": "Silicon Valley’s “996” Is About Power, not Productivity", "description": "The \"996\" work schedule reflects a troubling belief in sacrificing personal well-being for perceived productivity, driven more by power dynamics than actual efficiency.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "3c43c995-50ae-4510-a442-afff06a06a97", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cdec7qrc2p", "archived": null, "title": "Elite Complicity in the Rise of Fascism", "description": "America's elites downplay Trump's authoritarian fascism out of a corrupt sense of class consciousness and solidarity.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "d5663626-b87c-408d-9626-8da9ae67fff7", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbozbfts26", "archived": null, "title": "A Twitter Eulogy", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "61bef7f8-90b7-40e5-99e8-e121f8bb6675", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2azqdbgdc2r", "archived": null, "title": "How to Be in a World on Fire", "description": "The values and perspectives our political moment demands of us. ", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "2962736e-b673-4515-9008-483337433cb5", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2kop5nn7s2r", "archived": null, "title": "If Trump is So Unpopular, Why are Institutions Capitulating?", "description": "The American people can't stand Trump. His polling is abysmal. And yet private and public institutions capitulate. Why?", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "f7741232-aa13-46bb-bc1d-eff40d4a10d4", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgzalah22y", "archived": null, "title": "No, Midjourney (and other AI) Is Not Stealing Your Work", "description": "The argument that AI image generators steal from artists would mean that all artists are thieves.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "22f6b042-9e58-444b-9b6f-718da29d85ab", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgud57nk2a", "archived": null, "title": "Liberty Upsets Patterns—and Conservatism", "description": "Liberty is dynamic. Conservatism is static. They cannot coexist.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "5c62d238-989d-4d4e-a540-824d5d8bcfc1", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znbd5z4k2p", "archived": null, "title": "The GOP's Competence Gap", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "0e35921e-5e79-4842-b0c5-c71df17f3271", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbu7xdfc26", "archived": null, "title": "Speaking Ill of the Dead", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "7c887439-81ac-4e7e-813a-6214e08c91a0", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xcd4u63226", "archived": null, "title": "How Social Media Tricks our Brains — and Destroys our Politics", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "0c09011a-e278-482a-8a45-1b561b9777e3", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqchr7vc26", "archived": null, "title": "Three Kinds of Conservatives", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "51649750-4ef5-427f-8cf2-c16816b87349", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqdvgin226", "archived": null, "title": "The Challenge of Committing to Liberty—and Meaning It", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "44729ce8-9731-4fc2-a2e3-1cab92a187ab", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zggtugcc2f", "archived": null, "title": "Substack Doesn't Want You to Leave", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "ba5fec3e-71dd-47b3-a3a2-6d847186493a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zo2zhv2s24", "archived": null, "title": "The Shaky Future of Trump's Personality Cult", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "dc8ba6d9-45a2-4cf8-96e1-c7fdd40e1d8f", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgiwtkes27", "archived": null, "title": "Why Tech Bros Overestimate AI's Creative Abilities", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9cdc17dc-17aa-4b6f-93d9-63e583e0a4d1", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zgtlnepc2w", "archived": null, "title": "The False Equivalence Trap", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "6fb7249d-d1a9-4832-acd8-b6853c685124", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zk63ares23", "archived": null, "title": "Why the Right Lies About Cities", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "21c48a83-ca54-48f9-9f70-9cab6ef96e1b", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33erawvis2l", "archived": null, "title": "The GOP is now just grifters grifting each other", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "c23837a0-1e7d-41fd-a800-4bee0d09fce3", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33exkn6mc2o", "archived": null, "title": "Reign of the Competency Cosplayers", "description": "American politics suffers from a lack of genuine expertise, as leaders prioritize performative competence and tribal loyalty over actual knowledge and skill.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "f3f402f8-b6b3-404e-8be8-e1d58476b803", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33rvmrwxc2n", "archived": null, "title": "If You Want to Win Political Arguments, Stop Being an Asshole", "description": "Political persuasion versus the urge to political domination.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9b0361d1-eade-4c84-a47a-53cb176e76dd", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tl7oomk2y", "archived": null, "title": "Boys Are Falling Behind Girls Because Girls Aren't Being Held Back", "description": "Let’s not blame boys’ underperformance on women teachers.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9e1dcfb1-d55d-4136-89bd-30815ad2a021", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m5ee5raios2r", "archived": null, "title": "Why Elites Believe in Racial IQ Differences and Evolutionary Psych", "description": "Both help deflect critiques of elite status being less earned than elites want to think.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "34d07f16-7d90-46e4-a3ac-74f76758f1e6", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3lcybdjk227", "archived": null, "title": "Trumpism and the Status Anxiety of Abusers", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "58662bdc-4cd7-4e97-9e43-acd64fb0dd6d", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3le5fvzzs27", "archived": null, "title": "No Kings and Letting Ourselves Hope", "description": "There are more of us than there are of them. And we have decency on our side.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "5cbd9fe4-e5e7-4e7e-a204-96e03cd6bbf5", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4vnjvpaxs24", "archived": null, "title": "The Anti-Anti-Trans Election", "description": "Running against trans people failed and America proved itself a better place than the worst among us want it to be.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "ddaf376f-532f-4c07-a931-75c19e23df41", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2c7kzdrk2p", "archived": null, "title": "Spending Time with Spinal Tap (Again)", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "movies" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "07edc3ef-7498-405d-b76f-460c2f9dcdd0", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mde7p6htok2b", "archived": null, "title": "The Ideology of Hang-Ups", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "conservatism", "politics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "e0e8e6f0-8c54-46a2-a139-52c26bc0c0d3", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m4xwujd2e22k", "archived": null, "title": "Most Americans Aren’t Fascists, and That’s a Big Problem for the GOP", "description": "When you let rot into your coalition, your entire coalition eventually turns rotten.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "568161ea-7d92-4b2f-9d9c-ce343fb6963b", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fh2qe2d22a", "archived": null, "title": "Social Conservatism is Suffering", "description": "We cannot make permanent what is inevitably impermanent, and insisting otherwise brings distress. Better to embrace dynamism and social diversity.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "conservatism", "buddhism", "ethics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "08549fba-7f08-408d-8d65-f439bcff3721", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m52ndshej22l", "archived": null, "title": "The “Likable”/“Unlikable” Political Realignment", "description": "American conservatism is a home for unlikeable people who’ve turned their unlinkability into a political project.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "20491c37-dd8b-4d08-a723-4da627277cc9", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xbnk7jek26", "archived": null, "title": "You Haven’t Been Canceled. You’re Just Unlikable.", "description": "People don't like jerks. But jerks think people instead can't handle their ideas.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "cancel culture", "ethics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9784f357-0021-4a35-92be-8357194c2a03", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3maoefmf2m227", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty 096: The Irrationality of Rationalists (w/ Samantha Hancox-Li)", "description": "A podcast conversation.", "cover_image": "019b4be3-ad43-7772-ab9c-8675b8b41f4b", "tags": [ "podcast", "philosophy", "rationalism", "politics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "2f1b5949-5ead-498a-ba25-b8e744baced0", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6l5d3qhw22g", "archived": null, "title": "The Answer to Student AI Writing Slop is Authorial Voice", "description": "LLMs are bad at sounding unique. So we should help young writers to develop their own unique prose style.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "a41795a3-1a46-4ca3-9f48-8551bb87fe0a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdgqfumjy22f", "archived": null, "title": "Trump is Governing a Country that Doesn't Exist—And Destroying One That Does", "description": "Cognitive decline and a curated information environment means Trump has no idea what's happening in the world outside his head.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "trump", "trumpism" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "edee4f33-c6f6-4bd6-a975-ab479db5f1ca", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6d4qckwcc27", "archived": null, "title": "David Boaz: Liberty's North Star", "description": "The legacy of my boss, mentor, and friend.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "b954bddd-2d70-409f-b2a3-94cb80d5c082", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6fneobpvc2w", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty 094: A New American Reconstruction", "description": "A conversation with Andy Craig and Shikha Dalmia", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "1dcb2544-cba6-45c8-b3c9-c3cbeccbe37e", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma7mvocfj22u", "archived": null, "title": "You Can't Escape the Algorithm", "description": "Chronological feeds won't fix social media", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "technology", "social media" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "fc1824ee-ac5f-4677-a9d0-d5bca88e250f", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7bk5wolls2c", "archived": null, "title": "MAGA is an Auto-Humiliation Movement", "description": "Trump is shameless, yes. But he also has a fetish for humiliating himself.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "trumpism" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "5010bc63-93f9-4e8b-8d12-d093cd7dedb5", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m33tnnj7v222", "archived": null, "title": "Roy Cooper, Prayer, and the Folly of Anti-Religious Collectivism", "description": "Roy Cooper's Senate campaign announcement, which included a mention of prayer, sparked backlash on social media from people who'd rather be bigots than understand another's faith.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "fe8b9f24-065c-4f00-ab9c-aadc53850aae", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2xqaxqypk26", "archived": null, "title": "Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t.", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "ethics", "buddhism" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9b4f15ff-277c-4e00-997a-443f66893dee", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m3ahechta22z", "archived": null, "title": "\nWhy It Works to Call Them Weird\nWhy It Works to Call Them Weird", "description": "Shifting political talk from policy to values", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9d729238-1657-4c50-9d87-6fca3cf4dfe5", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2znyhuvck24", "archived": null, "title": "It's Okay if Your Social Media Platform is a Bubble", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "2ab33acc-273c-4f1b-8224-6e7a51a7ab01", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2zncix4jk2q", "archived": null, "title": "The Quillette Effect", "description": "Learning about ideologies exclusively from their opponents is a recipe for epistemic failure.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "276cc0b3-2f37-4f6e-8545-0e495e0aa983", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m7tcs7mie22r", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty 095: Adam Gurri on Opposition Meda versus Complicit Media", "description": "A podcast conversation.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "journalism", "podcast" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "4dd7a971-6ae1-46b7-98f7-2fb7bc17072a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2f54be5bc2y", "archived": null, "title": "Two Kinds of Libertarians", "description": "Some libertarians oppose the state because it reinforces social hierarchies. Others because it threatens them. Only the former is worthy of the name.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "4d90844e-97d0-4d93-91da-2d53bcf769e4", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fhabraak2u", "archived": null, "title": "A Crash Course in Cultivating Liberal Virtues", "description": "Perfect virtue is impossible, and moral growth is challenging. But we can improve ourselves in practical ways, even if we can't achieve the ideal.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "65fdc90e-bd75-4a42-9402-416889deda94", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mar6gv4ckc2t", "archived": null, "title": "My Favorite Movie of 2025", "description": "It's not the year's best movie, but Spinal Tap 2 brought me the most joy.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "movies" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "3cd43d6c-65bb-4997-876d-11996c5d0147", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m6zih3qe2s2f", "archived": null, "title": "The End of the Showman Presidency", "description": "In Trump 1.0, he'd back down when he was unpopular. Now he doesn't.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "22d042d2-70b4-48ae-9c9f-c9c7737bf6bf", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2z52lampk2z", "archived": null, "title": "Liberalism and Sympathetic Joy", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "ethics", "liberalism", "buddhism" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "43fa83ec-1069-4bae-8820-4ea34463a130", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2cpq6rwzk2v", "archived": null, "title": "Silicon Valley’s Very Online Ideologues are in Model Collapse", "description": "The combination of exceptional wealth and a closed and uniform ideological and intellectual community wreaks havoc on one's epistemic psychology.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "c09a6796-ab8f-4ff4-b603-cd3fbc763d6e", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3m2fgrvea6s2a", "archived": null, "title": "The American Right Never Really Loved Freedom", "description": "Conservative ideology fundamentally contradicts individual liberty and self-determination.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "9271478c-5df9-4650-bf24-82e1498705dc", "doc": null, "archived": null, "title": "I Resolve to Read Fewer Books", "description": "", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "productivity", "writing", "reading" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "69a098d9-7af0-4891-9308-c6933fc99e37", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mczqmmelhc2c", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty is taking a short break", "description": "A brief pause for the next big thing.", "cover_image": "019be631-3062-700d-9968-d692a90f9d06", "tags": [ "announcement", "podcast" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "e9418ce0-1e28-41a4-bdc5-b96356e2fa6a", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdbshmybvc2u", "archived": null, "title": "The Regime Has No Defense Against a Good Neighbor", "description": "America’s political divide is between neighborliness and neighborhood pariahs, and neighborliness is winning.", "cover_image": null, "tags": [ "politics", "ethics" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "b70a0cf2-0089-4834-ae3b-d82eb2c24d2d", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3mdqi4xvrx22j", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty 001: How To Be a Better Advocate for Liberty", "description": "A conversation with Cory Massimino", "cover_image": "019c155e-4ada-7eea-8e35-79684587056a", "tags": [ "podcast", "libertarianism", "politics", "liberalism" ] }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "leaflet": "8fbf9abb-3b6a-44af-b82d-985877b54796", "doc": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.document/3ma2xfol4is2o", "archived": null, "title": "ReImagining Liberty Podcast", "description": "The emancipatory and cosmopolitan case for radical liberalism. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell.", "cover_image": "019b24b0-c4ef-7771-9136-d01fcf83b9b1", "tags": [ "podcast", "politics", "philosophy" ] } ], "leafletsToDocuments": [], "publicationDomains": [ { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "domain": "www.aaronrosspowell.com", "identity": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "created_at": "2025-10-12T19:11:16.604147+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "domain": "aaronrosspowell.leaflet.pub", "identity": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "created_at": "2025-10-03T01:14:38.179923+00:00" }, { "publication": "at://did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy/site.standard.publication/3m2avdoogvs2f", "domain": "aaronrosspowell.com", "identity": "did:plc:x2xmijn2egk5g67u3cwkddzy", "created_at": "2025-10-03T13:35:47.721381+00:00" } ] }