Nathaniel C. Green
@nathanielcgreen
History professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Author, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE, by Kansas Press. Currently writing a book on the history of the three-fifths clause. Opinions solely my own.
Timeline cleanse: My six year old son's favorite stuffy, Beary, getting ready for her morning constitutional.
Whenever I see art with poor proportions, I always think of Edward Savage, who, before he painted "The Washington Family," painted portraits so bizarrely proportioned the people look like bobble-head dolls. Unintentional artistic hilarity.
In anticipation of Juneteenth, from Charles Sumner, NO PROPERTY IN MAN (1864), on the subject of reparations for slavery: 💾
That little note stuck to the soldier's face reads: "Fund Public Transit (Duh)." We ordinary people in the DC Metro are are not the intended audience for these defense contractors, but that doesn't mean people can't make it clear they don't like these companies, or what they're selling!
I always think about @moiradonegan.bsky.social and @adriandaub.bsky.social's podcast episode about Silicon Valley tech billboards every time I walk past ads like this in the DC Metro. But unlike those billboards, people walking by can write on them, and sometimes, they do!
These women clearly recognize that these men expect them to sooth their fragile egos. But no amount of reassurance is ever going to suffice. Masculinity is a fragile, needy pathology. No matter how much a man who is hung up on "being a man" is reassured he's a Real Man, it'll never be enough
The notion that he needs to watch what he says because someone trying to ban books might screen-shot a quote actually absolves these bad-faith actors of any responsibility. It's Mac's fault for saying it, not their fault for circulating it out of context.
Would that be the same Patrick Henry who abhorred slavery so much he famously feared the Constitution's power could be used to "free your n----rs"? THAT Patrick Henry?
I mean, seriously, given how huge a sack of shit Phil McGraw is, how can you not find this uproariously funny? Trump says this, *then* brings McGraw up to the stage? Absolutely ruthless comedy. Trump in rare form here.
I grow tired of this notion that we have to accommodate the fragile egos of men who are out of work because they think they're too manly for certain types of work.
Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you get terrible migraines? Have you tried conquering a racist, treasonous army that was willing to tear the country apart in order to keep enslaving people? It worked for Ulysses S. Grant,* and it can work for you, too! *Actual customer! Not a paid endorsement!
But those schemes are all doomed to fail to deliver on their promises, whether that's making a ton of money or creating a better product or actually finding fulfillment in life. Caring about something, and working to get better at it, even when it's hard and you fail, is the key.
This is my favorite part. You could go further than this piece does and make the even more direct link between this and A.I. It really is the same thing.
This is an instructive example of how the accusation of being "canceled" both minimizes his transgression against his victims and reframes the accountability he faces as a transgression against him.
From D.C.: a big, inflatable Trump fire-shitting on the Constitution. Happy No Kings Day!
I can't quote-tweet this, but I thought this was especially spot-on. This horrific story is an illustration of how noble causes can be enlisted in the service of horrid abuse, by making women and girls responsible for that cause, rather than the men perpetrating the horrid act.
As a reminder, this is what she said in 2016. www.npr.org/2016/09/10/4...
Book in the wild! Book in the wild! @adamrothman.bsky.social's SLAVE COUNTRY at Arlington's Central Library!
Absolutely appalling. Trump and his ilk are absolute cowards. These displays should be restored. Along with another panel about the history of people under oppressive governments claiming they're not responsible because they were "just doing their jobs."
The "yes, Trump provoked an attack on the Capitol building, but maybe I don't have enough information about him yet" is a particular indicator of Weiss's ability to frame vapid political statements as though they were evidence of genuine "free thinking."
@adamserwer.bsky.social emphasizes this in his excellent piece, but the whole notion that it's a "criticism" of the president to remind service members they must disobey illegal orders is a clear indication Trump believes he is the law.
The idea of a "wife bounty" is just transparently misogynistic. Want to meet someone special? How about if you stopped thinking of women as a possession, you fucking loser?
I stopped reading after only a few paragraphs. This is just gross. Among the many problems here, these fools think relationships are "problems" to be "measured, optimized, and solved," rather than connections to other people that have to be maintained and nurtured
Oh, really. You're writing a book, you say? Me, too! You're doing research, you say. Me, too! You know what I rely on to find primary sources and "piece them together"? My own brain. You know who "looks things up for me"? Me, that's who. You know who writes it, from beginning to end? Me.
"So, first thing in the morning, I get up and don't read or think. I immediately rely on an algorithm to give me the gist of e-mails I get, and I let it decide which ones are important enough to respond to."
"We were so all-in on crypto that our podcast name is an esoteric crypto term. But A.I.'s the real deal! You can trust us!"