Douglas Lain

Cutrone on 250 Years of America (Special Livestream) x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Welcome to the 21st Century x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

The Rise of the Zoomers x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

What year is it, 1980?

@glukianoff That you can be an American despite of whoever you were!

I’ve always found people who bristle at “American exceptionalism” kind of… weird. Not because I lack self-awareness — I’ve spent my career cataloging every way this country fails to live up to its own rules. But that’s exactly why I love it so damn much. We built a system designed to be shamed by its own founding documents, and it still delivered one of the most spectacular, world-altering runs in human history. A genuine force for human flourishing. I also found the argument against American exceptionalism to be historically illiterate. Here’s a sample of what we were first at: • The first large-scale democratic republic in human history — not a city-state, not a monarchy with a parliament bolted on, but a bold continental experiment in self-rule, popular sovereignty, and ordered liberty. • A written Constitution (1789) with separation of powers and checks & balances — still the oldest national constitution in force anywhere. • The Bill of Rights (1791): the first time a nation wrote “the government cannot touch these” into supreme law and actually meant it. A dare the world copied — from later rights charters to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. • Public land-grant universities and mass higher education (Morrill Act), opening college to ordinary people no aristocracy would have let near the gates. (but don’t get me started about what happened after we started. Massively federally funding it.) • Kitty Hawk, 1903 — first controlled powered flight. • The Moon, 1969 — still the only ones who’ve been there. • The world’s largest economy since ~1890, powering unprecedented prosperity through grit and genius. • The assembly line, skyscraper, transistor, personal computer, ARPANET — the backbone of the modern world. • Telephone, phonograph, GPS — connecting and powering daily life. • Surgical anesthesia, polio vaccine — saving and transforming millions of lives. • Jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll — brand new American art forms that conquered the globe. • Hollywood’s dreams, blue jeans, bourbon, and a culture so open a kid like me could devour sushi, burritos, stuffed cabbage, and tabouli in the same week and rightfully think of it all as American. That’s the part that fills me with genuine love and pride: not just the power or the wins, but the appetite for freedom, creativity, and reinvention. The audacity to say “We the People” and keep trying to live up to it. What do you love most about this truly exceptional country? 🇺🇸

The State and Capital have been intertwined for a loooong time.

Regardless of whether the pro or anti-Israel faction of the Democrats are triumphant, Trump's version of American Empire will eventually be ratified by the Democrats.

And this is why Europeans are less free than Americans.

There has never been a good Supergirl movie. Why is that? Maybe the character was ill conceived at the start?

@militarymindfuc What is it called now? Because it goes on and on.

@DougLain culture war is so 2016

I watched the Louis CK special and laughed a lot throughout it. But the closing bit didn't tie everything together. So when it had finished, I didn't feel like I'd been given anything to consider. But what's more interesting than how Louis CK turned out a special that was merely very funny, is how the only way people can talk about it is in terms of his cancellation and also how their reaction to his special reflects some broad cultural change or their moral superiority. We simply cannot judge things aesthetically or at least rarely do. It all has to be fit into the culture war. This is how thought and connection to life are stymied.

Mamdani is right about nothing being fixed into place. It's a way to say we are free here, or at least more free than anywhere else. but the power of America and its internal freedom are connected, which makes our freedom self-contradictory.

@michael_inverse @arttavana You know what, this "times change" canard as a reason to be a humorless prig never changes.

People are just now discovering Louis CK's sense of humor (and they are not taking it well).

Jesus Christ, the damage the Democrats do to the word socialism is staggering. "I'm dead serious about YOUR interests..." Whose interests? And what about the fact that under capitalism, all of our interests contradict?

@ThereLabyrinth @ccutrone1970 The problem is that the leftists are as machine-like as AI, only with smaller data sets.

@ccutrone1970 I don't know. Maybe you should talk to machines then.

If a machine can “understand,” why can’t people?

@bruegels_muse @ccutrone1970 What are you even talking about? What reactionary tendencies?

@ccutrone1970 because you consistently do this mealy mouth bullshit that attempts to gesture towards nuance while endorsing the most reactionary tendencies on the left. don't act surprised

@thimblenoise Whatever you say, Boomer.

@DougLain You’re washed up irrelevant and out of touch fuck off

Trump is a transitional figure. The Democrat who comes next will ratify and professionalize his policies and agenda. The left will mostly go along. And socialists have nothing to offer as an alternative except either a false promise of a return to the past. The return to decolonization as the primary ideology of the left is simply the left's way of going along with the quasi-nationalism that is becoming the new prevailing ideology.