Alan Elrod

@aselrod.bsky.social

19511 Followers 9739 Following

Arkie. Anti-Dirtbagist. President & CEO, Pulaski Institution. Columnist & Contrib. Editor, @LiberalCurrents.com Words: @thebulwark.com, @ms.now, @foreignpolicy.com, @theunpopulist.net Writing a book (Broadleaf) Go Knicks He/Him

Jacobin Teen J issue cover. Includes cover lines: HASAN PIKER MOGS THE CAPITALISTS pg.20 LENIN OR LUXEMBURG, WHO'S YOUR SOCIALIST SWEETHEART? pg.12
Alan Elrod• ( @aselrod.bsky.social • 3h If you're a big account that spent the last few days boosting anti-Will Stancil mania on here, I think you do have an obligation to say that things have gone way too far. But I don't expect that because things had already gone too far and here we are. Reply from [redacted] Slow motion gif of Michael Scott laughing
Reflections on the zines At least some commentators have framed the Prairieland case as an attack on free speech in general, largely because of the importance of the zines to the government's case. Many of the defendants were in a book club together; some of that club's reading material was radical zines. It is important to be precise here. Sophie Lewis' "The Satanic Death Cult Is Real" is in fact just a long-form reflection on the horror movies "Hereditary" and "Midsommar." Other book-club readings, such as War in the Streets, which I have quoted from repeatedly, “Organising for Attack! Insurrectionary Anarchy." and "If We Go, We Go on Fire: On Grief and Social War" quite explicitly advocate for engaging in illegal activity and provide tactics and justifications for doing so. At trial, the government made a great deal of hay out of these readings. We are told that the Prairieland case therefore represents an assault on the First Amendment. Yet you can read all those zines right now. You can order physical copies from the internet right now, or you can easily search their titles and find electronic copies freely available. It is not illegal to possess, read, or distribute these texts. Perhaps you should.
Ed @ed3d.net I'll be more blunt than the good fig: why do so many people I know who are otherwise decent people follow these hatemob-whipping shitheads
Clip from The Synanon Fix
The big through line here is vicious dehumanization: No kids have died due to USAID cuts-none that we need to concern ourselves with, as they don't serve the higher cause of the nation. All Muslim immigrants in the U.K. are rapists and murderers; as Musk suggests, asking if you're "anti-Muslim" is akin to asking if you're anti-rape and anti-murder. No one who has been killed by ICE is innocent; as Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, puts it, to avoid violent death at the hands of ICE agents, don't antagonize them. No Somali living in Minnesota is there legitimately; as Trump himself says, all should be subject to removal by definition.
Kennedy is more focused on orange juice and TikTok While so many journalists and experts are covering this on-going story, Trump's government fired the talent that would have contained the outbreak and now they can't be trusted to provide information or to take steps to protect us. That includes the federal government's top health official - Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Junior - who is no help at all in getting reliable information. Kennedy has made only one public comment about cyclospora and it was misleading at best. At the end of a news conference about a completely different topic, Kennedy claimed the cyclosporiasis outbreak was "under control" (it's not) and that DOGE cutbacks to food safety programs are not to blame (they are).
The men savaging "The Odyssey" are, of course, wrong. Great works of literature can and should be repurposed for their times. We have a long tradition of adapting and retelling old stories in new ways to extract fresh meanings and experiences. Their theory of history is wrong, too. It's a boorish, vulgar historicism-one that places only white men at the center of the action and discards everything else. It's nakedly racist, but it's also hopelessly intellectually inert. But getting caught up in correcting their historical and literary facts misses the forest for the trees. The study of history and the craft of mythology are deeply intertwined because our understanding of the past is always about our understanding of ourselves in the present. What matters most here is that we confront an attempt to tell a story that cuts out the vast majority of humanity in favor of a few white men and to make that story the defining truth of the American experience. That is a lie that goes beyond errant history. It's one that's meant to shackle millions to a false and degrading inferiority all so these men can sack the riches of human civilization for themselves.
The modern English Alan, and French Alain, are derived from the name of the Alans. 6! Described by Roman authors as tall, blond, and warlike, the Alans were a nomadic Iranian people who lived on the Eurasian Steppe and the Caucasus Mountains. 71[8] Related to the Scythians, the Alans were known to Classical authors in the 1st century BC.!6] The Alans settled in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages. 3! Because there is no recorded use of the ethnonym Alani prior to the 1st century, and because no location with a placename derived from Alani can be shown to be older than the 5th century, it is likely that the name was derived from the Iranian Alan people. 31 No other explanation of the origin of the name Alan has received any measure of acceptance by scholars. 31
Gaiseric Article Talk 亥 Gaiseric (c. 389 - 25 January 477 AD), " also known as Geiseric or Genseric (Latin: Gaisericus, Geisericus; reconstructed Vandalic: *Gaisarix) la! was king of the Vandals and Alans from 428 to 477 AD.
Richard Hanania @RichardHanania • Feb 1 By obsessing over Epstein, they're attacking healthy heterosexuality.
Robert Putnam opened his coauthored 1994 book, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, with a question: "Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail?"1 The answer, as Putnam has come to argue over his long career, comes down to social capital. And America is experiencing a dangerous deficit of social capital. Putnam is most famous for Bowling Alone, first a 1995 article and then a book in 2000.2 The argument of Bowling Alone is that Americans are pulling back from a mid-20th-century height of civic participation. Putnam has spent the bulk of his professional life urging Americans to get back into their communities, join clubs, attend local events, and reenlist in the service organizations that helped build this country. It is Putnam who weighs heaviest on my mind as I consider a post-Trump future for the United States, a deeply divided country riven by status anxiety, partisan hatreds, ethnic prejudices, economic inequality, and a cynical approach to media production and consump-tion. Our crisis is so severe that I no longer believe we can simply prod Americans to get up off their couches and get involved. We must build a massive national infrastructure to encourage and enable them to do so. We need a reinvigoration of public service and civic life in this country not seen since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And indeed, we need a federal programs and funding initiative comparable in ambition to the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to put Americans back into their communities, empower local organizations, and revitalize the small-r republican virtues that sustain a people tasked with popular government and a free society.
By his own admission, Hand was informed by a sense of Christian charity and grace. So I think it's fitting to turn to a Biblical quotation, one from Christ himself, to enhance Hand's own words here: For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? (Luke 9:24-25, English Standard Version) Graham's passing reminds me of all the little ways we can die before we fully leave this life-of the costs of hubris, selfishness, and cowardice. And it reminds me that not only is each human death a tragedy because each human life is sacred, but that the little ways we kill ourselves are their own sources of grief. Of course, there have been more visceral deaths these last few days. When ICE officials handcuffed the lifeless body of Joan Sebastian Guerrero—a young man and father, here legally—in a parking lot in Biddeford, Maine, we saw the America that Lindsey Graham warned us about in action. It's an America he helped create.
It's clear that Graham allowed that spirit to die within his own heart long before he passed from this earth. I find that death, and the millions like it that have occurred in this decade of Trumpism, to be profoundly tragic. I don't think this demands that I misremember who Graham was or what he did to aid the desecration of our republic. But it does mean retaining, as Hand insists, the essentially liberal values of empathy and other-mindedness. This is how Hand defined the spirit of liberty: The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interest alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten -that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side-by-side with the greatest.
Arkansas Children’s Hospital Welcomes You Te da la bienvenida / Ej karwaineneik eok
The NYT has a postmortem on the Platner experiment and it wasn't Platner's idea to put himself forward. He was recruited by a trio of progressive operatives who saw him as a vehicle they could use to beat the Democratic establishment: Last July, in a small town in coastal Maine, a couple of progressive, self-styled recruiters of economic populists showed up at the blue-shingled house of Graham Platner, a little-known oyster farmer and Marine veteran who lived largely off government benefits. They knew his name from local labor organizers and activists, and they had watched a video on the internet of him talking about oysters. Struck by his left-leaning ideology, his working-class affect and his gravelly voice, they became convinced that he could win a Senate seat in Maine — and quickly persuaded Mr. Platner of the same. The initial headhunters, Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan, and then a third out-of-state operative they called up to Maine — Morris Katz — told Mr. Platner he was "the one," a "hero of the movement," "a historical figure" who could be "leading a revolution," according to half a dozen people with knowledge of their conversations.
Dilettantism is a form of absurd, unending entitlement. This is what pushes CEOs to seek governorships and even the White House without any real experience. It’s how wealthy vulgarians like Elon Musk and Jared Kushner end up in charge of government spending and Middle East peace, respectively. Of course, the acceptance of this thinking by the general population has helped sustain Trump’s political career, thanks to his fabricated image as a wily businessman. What Platner represents to me in this dilettantist mode is an immature and spoiled boy—a boy who never took seriously the privilege with which he was born, a boy who went to war because it seemed like fun, a boy who sees consequences as something for other people.
Alan Elrod C 4 months ago Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social • 1m @aselrod.bsky.social • 4mo Platner covered up his tattoo decades after getting it and only after it became a public liability in his senate bid. Combined with his history and other comments, I don't believe he didn't know what it was. And I don't want him in the U.S. Senate. Alan Elrod • @aselrod.bsky.social • 2m 3 months ago Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social • 3mo Similarly, Graham Platner liked to say that Susan Collins voted to send him to Iraq. But Platner enlisted after the war was already underway. As I point out in the piece, Platner sent himself to Iraq.
Ken Klippenstein & @kenklippenstein • 1h Let me know if my Graham Platner apology is debasing and self-flagellating enough Link to article Reply in thread: Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.8m • Post is going over well with the Bluesky crowd lol Screen shot Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social what a fucking asshole
Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.bsky.social Smoothgroins in shambles. What Platner's victory means: Link to Ken’s blog. Headline: Platner Wins; Washington Whines What the Maine Oysterman's primary victory means
iainham iainspur @iain.coys.social People will cry corruption or whatever and totally gloss over the misapplied VAR protocols which led to the red card. Link to ESPN story, quoted section: VAR made their recommendation to the referee based on slow-motion and still replays, which is not aligned with VAR protocols, as these should be used for only point-of-contact purposes in a red card tackle situation. Once at the screen, however, it would have been a surprise if the referee did not send off Balogun considering the pictures he was presented by VAR.
John Hickenlooper (via Democrats.org) Email subject line: Chomping at the bit
Walton Goggins as Billy Crash in Django Unchained
TO REBUILD DEMOCRACY IN THE HEARTS OF AMERICANS, WE NEED A NEW NATIONAL SERVICE INITIATIVE ALAN ELROD
Replier 1: "dirtbag lettism" much like "fight for 15" was a compromise no one listened and not enough happened quickly enough for anyone to notice civility is dead and those who killed it will be lucky if they see well constructed gallows after a proper trial that follows all the rules of currently known law Replier 2: These effete assholes will be upset there are no handrails on the walk to the gas chambers.
Series of replies. They read: *South park gif saying “retard alert”* “lol ok Mein Herr” Shut up, nerd. This is "don't punch Nazis" for 2019 Fuck your liberal "democracy" A regime of slavers, terrorists and pedophiles We don't want to save liberalism, you guys
I'd bet everything I own that you're a Zionist.
But Alan gets those sweet sweet hits by being disingenuous. He still wants to be invited to all the right parties, don't you know.
Will O'Minder @willowminder.bsky.social Hey I did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. Does any Democrat fuckface want to chastise me today? Because I was always right, but after the reaction to Tuesday's elections I have a whole bunch of new ways to humiliate you.
In the interim, I see no path out of our present crisis offered by the exultation of callousness. It isn't only that cruelty is wrong in and of itself. Empathy is an essential building block of liberal democratic life. The entire enterprise rests not only on the individual dignity of our fellow citizens but on the notion that they are beings with rich interiority, capable of good and evil, and deserving of the chance to become their best selves. Dirtbagism suggests that we can behave cruelly without being cruel. We can't. It also suggests that our enemy's sins can render them outside our obligations to one another. They can't. These are ancient impulses. There's nothing modern or savvy in our performance of savagery toward one another. And there is nothing new about the desire to humiliate our opponents. Rather than the stale, stuffy thing that many dirtbag leftists see, liberal democracy is cutting-edge. It's a moral and social provocation against millennia of human inequality and violence, a daring experiment in individual dignity and mutual cooperation. To borrow a line from James Gunn's Superman, maybe that's the real punk rock.
Avila Chevalier reposted a tweet in August 2020, responding to a social media prompt that asked, "Israel suddenly disappears, your third emoji is your reaction.” The reposted tweet's reply read, "Trick question - Israel doesn't exist!"
UNDER FIRE TRUMP MOCKS REPORTER WITH DISABILITY Donald Trump | (R) Presidential Candidate CNN 5:49 PM PT AC360°
TO REBUILD DEMOCRACY IN THE HEARTS OF AMERICANSE NEED A NEW NATIONAL SERVICE INITIATIVE Alan Elrod
Man in black clothes holding baby on chest, with corgi-sheltie mix dog by side
Magazine display rack with print copy of The Onion the ONION AMERICA'S FINEST NEWS SOURCE • ONION.COM MAY-JUNE 2026 • VOL. 62, ISSUE 18 U.S. Instates Military Wife Draft
Man in sunglasses and woman in sitting outside at restaurant. Man in sunglasses and woman in eye glasses. A stroller is between them
Story from The Independent, reposted on Yahoo Sports, that edits Hokit’s quote to remove “Black” man.
This is what male supremacist and fascist politics offer: a violent, cutthroat society where the loser is scorned and victor takes the spoils. And it's precisely the kind of order Trump wants to put on display with a White House UFC match. Using the White House to promote such an event is both an assertion of fascist politics and a tacit acknowledgment of how far we have already fallen. It promises to be a spectacle of toxic male supremacy, put on by an administration that touts the male "war fighter" as the peak of physical fitness. It's an obsession, as l've noted before, with both male power and male bodies.