Search Results for: founders

The cognitive dissonance of the so-called Republican “agenda” is on acute display, wherein mortal threat to a literally enumerated power of the Constitution given to Congress to establish a federal US postal service seems not to bother the Constitutional originalists one bit. Not to mention said power’s role in facilitating free and fair elections. Curioser […]

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You’ll hear a common retort on the extreme right that now holds sway in the mainstream Republican Party, in response to protests about the dismantling of democracy in this country — that we’re “a republic, not a democracy.” Right off the bat, a republic is a form of democracy — so they are claiming something […]

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Wealth Cult -- rich men behaving badly, by Midjourney

A network of exceedingly wealthy individuals and organizations have channeled their vast fortunes into influencing American politics, policy, and public opinion — they’ve formed a wealth cult. And they’ve leveraged that cult and its considerable fortune to influence and in many ways dramatically transform American politics. The most succinct way I have come up with […]

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Peter Thiel at Isengaard looking into the Palantir

Peter Thiel has a plan to save the world, and it looks like a nightmare. He’s casting around for scapegoats, but perhaps Peter Thiel and the Antichrist are one and the same. The PayPal co-founder, Facebook‘s first outside investor, and Silicon Valley‘s most influential political operator has spent years developing a political philosophy so strange […]

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The Founders knew acutely the pains of centuries of religious warfare in modern Europe and resoundingly did not want that for their new nation. Many of them moreover knew religious persecution intimately — some whose families fled the Church of England for fear of being imprisoned, burned at the stake, or worse. Is America a […]

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mental models for critical thinking

Critical thinking is a disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. It involves questioning ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. It requires curiosity, skepticism, and humility to […]

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Alexei Navalny, anti-corruption crusader in Russia against Vladimir PUtin

That’s a paraphrase. But it’s descriptive — Alexei Navalny skewered Putin’s Russia for its corruption. And paid a price with his life — because that’s what authoritarian regimes demand: your loyalty or your life. Yet a Russian-style mafia state is the end goal of Trump and his cronies. Navalny — like the U.S. Founding Fathers […]

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US Republican Senators cavorting with military personnel, drinking and laughing and celebrating the orgy of money they are rolling in

The GOP just passed their budget reconciliation bill for FY2026 — a squeaker, but over the line and now signed into law. Looking at this staggering compilation of budget line items, we’re witnessing what can only be described as the construction of an unprecedented domestic security apparatus that should alarm anyone who values civil liberties […]

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Christian nationalism illustration

The term Christian nationalists brings together a number of radical religious sects seeking to overthrow the democratic republic of the United States and installing a strict theocracy, from dominionists to orthodox Catholics to Evangelicals and many more. Christian nationalist organizations work to increase the influence of religion on politics, under the invented mythology that the […]

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Peter Thiel at Isengaard looking into the Palantir

In the shadows of Washington’s policy debates, a quiet technological revolution is taking shapeβ€”one that could fundamentally alter how the federal government collects, analyzes, and potentially weaponizes data on American citizens. At the heart of this transformation sits Palantir Technologies, the secretive data analytics firm co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel that has become the […]

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Elon Musk wearing a t-shirt that says "Occupy Your Data"

Twitter Timeline (aka ‘X’): From Founding to Present Few platforms have so profoundly shaped the 21st-century media and political landscape as Twitter. Launched in 2006 as a quirky microblogging experiment in Silicon Valley, Twitter rapidly evolved into a global public square β€” a real-time newswire, activism megaphone, cultural barometer, and political battleground all in one. […]

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Curtis Yarvin advocating dictatorship in a Rachel Maddow segment linking him to JD Vance and the plot to shut down higher education in America

Curtis Yarvin, born in 1973, is a software developer and political theorist whose controversial neo-reactionary views have rippled through both Silicon Valley and right-wing political circles. Writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin gained notoriety for his influential blog “Unqualified Reservations,” where he advanced ideas that challenge the foundations of democracy and equality. Yarvin wasn’t […]

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Right wing groups in America have long wielded disproportionate influence over political discourse, policy-making, and the judiciary — quietly but effectively steering the country toward a more authoritarian, corporate-driven agenda. Groups like the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation operate as power brokers in the conservative ecosystem, funneling money and influence to shape not just elections, […]

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