"Fame matters a lot more now than intellect, or conscience, or morality, or competence...It’s not that we haven’t always had a high tolerance for con men and demagogues. It’s just that they all have unprecedented access through our communication channels."
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Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
Director, defendingdemocracytogether.org. Editor at large, thebulwark.com. Host, conversationswithbillkristol.org.
Joined October 2014
Bill Kristol’s Tweets
Slowly, slower than I expected but they are getting there step by step. The Jewish Lobby and the Protocols are the next logical phase.
And yes, I do realize she is quite possibly BIU (Briefing Under Influence) but as Russians say, the drunk says what the sober thinks.
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«In public he Zelensky wears a vyshyvanka, but in reality he does not belong to the culture, the spirituality of this country [Ukraine] & its people”. A spokeswoman for @mfa_russia de facto says that Zelensky, as a Jew, cannot represent Ukraine. #BlackHundred’s spectre is looming twitter.com/dedzaebal/stat…
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I'm only half-joking here. Those of us who accept the rule of law can have failures of imagination regarding the behavior of those who don't. Authoritarians feel no need to yield to laws or the Constitution, and they have some confidence they can rally supporters to go with them.
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Isn't Musk running for president?
But, you say: "The Constitution!"
But, he'll say: "The 'natural-born citizen' thing is silly. Why should only liberals be able to reinterpret the Constitution? The courts won't overturn the choice of millions. Let's do it! Vox populi, vox dei!"
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To Democrats and independents who might vote in a Democratic primary:
If Biden were not to run in 2024, which Democratic ticket would you be inclined to prefer?
When you make a selection it cannot be changed
Whitmer-Warnock
Polis-Whitmer
Buttigieg-Wes Moore
Shapiro-Spanberger
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"But if Biden does not run again, for whatever reason, Democrats have a strong selection of contenders who could step up...Democrats don’t need to fear turning the page."
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What's strikes me about the reaction to Griner's homecoming isn't so much the Two Minutes Hate of MAGA, but how many Americans seem susceptible to it. Trump is faltering, but the semi-fascist toxins he helped unleash are still coursing through our society.
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Happy warriors.
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Did you miss Thursday Night @BulwarkOnline's Festivus?
Watch (or listen) tnb.thebulwark.com/p/its-a-bulwar
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On the reaction to the return of Brittney Griner: "What is notable is the extent to which American far-right punditry has been almost literally reciting Kremlin talking points—and putting identity politics over basic solidarity with a fellow American."
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Hanukkah 2022 is approaching so check this out:
Jewish soldiers from Austrian-Hungarian and Prussian empires celebrated 7th day of #Hanukkah, meaning the photo was taken on December 25, 1916.
The menorah 🕎 is held by 2 officers from both empires to show unity of 2 allied armies
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How long before a good part of MAGA turns on Trump?
Who'll be the MAGA candidate to the right of Trump in 2024?
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i can’t believe i’m going to jail for an nft salesman 
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23-year-old Iranian protestor Majidreza Rahnavard's dying wishes--before being hanged--reflect the living wishes of so many young Iranians living under theocratic tyranny.
"Don't cry, don't read the Koran, don't pray"
"Be joyful. Play happy music"
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A fun thread on Trump's MAJOR GRIFT.
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My journey to learn the details of the Trump Trading Cards has been AMAZING. The fine print is some next-level grift.
1. I presumed it was a set of actual physically printed Trump cards for $99. They are NFTs.
B. It's $99 PER CARD.
III. You don't get to pick. It's Random.
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"That is the burden and blessing of being a great country...I wish we could’ve got the other prisoners out too, but over the long haul, we’re winning, he’s losing. The freeing of Bout isn’t changing that trajectory and I’m just happy Brittney’s home safe."
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How long before Bannon and Gorka desert Trump for Kari Lake or MTG or Tucker Carlson? Lenin is looking old and weak, and the Stalinists are plotting...
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MAGA world is super pissed about Trump's NFT launch.
Steve Bannon and Sebastion Gorka want the person responsible fired.
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OK, my political career hasn't been spotless. My first vote was for Nixon. Years later I (sort of) defended Palin. I'll pass over other adventures...
But I'm so grateful I never voted for or defended this guy--so much more dangerous than Nixon, so much less serious than Palin.
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"COVID still kills about 450 Americans per day. Disproportionately, these deaths are among people who are not fully vaccinated. Ron DeSantis doesn’t give a crap about that. He doesn’t care if his stunt convinces people not to get vaccinated."
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Hosted todays pod with the phenomenal as first-time guest.
We covered crypto, vaccines, AI, housing, his unifying theory explaining all the recent disruption, and the most remarkable breakthroughs of the year. It’s so good, enjoy!
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.: "The once great party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance. Instead, it has embraced lies and deceit."
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This discussion between and has interesting observations and thought-provoking exchanges about the current political/intellectual moment--which, the more I experience it and reflect on it, seems to me a consequential one.
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"The biggest threat to Ukraine’s success was the Republican Party...Now Trumpism has been deflated and is on a downward slope. The United States and its NATO allies have to capitalize on the moment and help Ukraine win."
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Come for the claim that Trump was a better president than Washington and Lincoln, stay for the "Trump digital trading cards"
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"'The progress of human liberty,' Frederick Douglass said, 'shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.' Freedom depends upon risky effort made against larger forces...Ukrainians have reminded us of this."
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"62% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they want their party to nominate someone other than Trump, while 59% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they’d like to see someone other than Biden at the top of their ticket."
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Or to put it in modern American terms:
We need a revival of both FDR liberalism and Reagan conservatism--and a center that appreciates both.
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If we can't update a kind of Burkean conservatism that will appeal to young people on the right, and if we can't do the same for a kind of Millian liberalism on the left--we really will come apart at the seams.
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Americans under-45 are generally more liberal than the electorate as a whole, so the gulf between young conservatives, who prefer Trump to DeSantis, and most of their peers, who are liberal with a decent chunk further left, would seem to be a sociological and cultural chasm.
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Americans under-45 are generally more liberal than the electorate as a whole, so the gulf between young conservatives, who prefer Trump to DeSantis, and most of their peers, who are liberal with a decent chunk further left, would seem to be a sociological and cultural chasm.
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The college/non-college difference is striking. But age is even more: Trump and DeSantis are tied among 45 years and over, Trump's ahead by 30% among Republican and GOP-leaning independents under 45. The young are attracted to performative radicalism and flamboyant extremism.
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.@NPR/@NewsHour/@MaristPoll 2024 Republican Nomination
Republicans and GOP-Leaning Independents
Donald Trump 45%
Ron DeSantis 33%
Mike Pence 8%
Someone else 11%
White, College
DeSantis 46%
Trump 32%
White, Non-College
Trump 49%
DeSantis 32%
Dec. 6-8
maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/upl
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Last night's interesting (I thought!) conversation on the shape of our politics, today and over the next two years, with and .
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Nice appreciation of by .
Which reminds me: Ron's post-election conversation (conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/ronald-b), where you can see Ron, so to speak, in action, is worth a watch or a listen.
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"Like the great Enlightenment liberal philosophers, Hitchens took liberty to be the grounding political value: the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation."
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"Hitchens argued that there would always be 'powerful enemies' of the Enlightenment, and he decided that defeating those enemies and defending the open society was worthwhile...He recognized this 'necessitated constant argument about the idea of America.'”
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"When he broke from the International Socialists in the mid-1970s, he recalls in Hitch-22 his sudden realization that 'democracy and pluralism were good things in themselves, and ends in themselves at that, rather than means to another end.'”
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"His positions on Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arab Spring, and Islamism weren’t such substantial deviations—or deviations at all—from his consistent defense of liberalism."
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"In an essay about Dickens, Orwell described his subject as 'a man who is generously angry—in other words, a 19th-c. liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.'”
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"[The Democratic Party] is still regarded as extreme, particularly in its tolerance of extremist groups. 53% thought so in 2022. 53% thought the same about the GOP. But imagine how well Ds could do if they were viewed as much less extreme than Rs."
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"It turns out that the progressive base mobilization strategy has a fatal flaw...These voters would be more likely to turn out for a Democratic party associated with safe streets, a healthy economy and a sensible, non-divisive approach to social issues."
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"Key House Democrats signaled Wednesday they would accept the Senate’s version of an Electoral Count Act rewrite if it is attached to the coming omnibus. The legislation would update a 135-year-old election law Trump and his allies tried to exploit..."
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Joe Biden was right on Putin: "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."
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Ombudsman: Children's torture chamber found in liberated Kherson.
Ukrainian authorities discovered a room that Russians used to detain and torture children during the occupation of Kherson, Dmytro Lubinets, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada, said on Dec. 14.Show this thread
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