S Peter Davis

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The Grift That's Smothering the Resistance

I wasn’t on Twitter during the Arab Spring. It sounds like it was a big deal. Millions of people across a continent throwing off the shackles of tyranny and demonstrating for the first time the power of online organizing. It’s widely regarded to be the least shitty thing

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Yes, Attacking Teslas is Self-Defense

I’ll say it in a way that is as legally unobjectionable as I can manage: I do not endorse violence but I understand why it’s happening.  I’m not even talking about the type of violence that harms people. When people feel politically powerless in America it’s

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🔒 How Geeks Ate the World

Defining geeks, how their relationship with masculinity formed a culture, and their culture formed an ideology.

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No, You Can't Run a Government Like a Company

There’s a longstanding myth that, I think, emerges from the near-religious dedication people express toward capitalism that anything can and should be run like a company. Run a classroom like a company! Run a household like a company! Run a government like a company! Surely the businessmen are the

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We Need to Talk About Christopher Rufo

For all the theatrical vandalism that Elon Musk and his groyper cohorts are wreaking throughout the US government it’s worth mentioning one of the less bombastic clowns in this carnival. Every few months the mainstream media goes into a raptured feeding frenzy over some alleged hive of far left

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Elon Musk is the Right's Luigi

I’m fairly neutral, but leaning toward disapproval, of Luigi Mangione and I hope you’ll let me make my case before I lose too many of you.  I totally get why people approve. It’s the appeal of the vigilante superhero. Subtracting the part where he got caught, his

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Understanding Fascism as Childish Tantrum

When you step back and look at the situation in the United States right now as a millennial, it really feels like a comedy premise that some really cringe internet writer would have come up with in 2013 and tried to make into a low budget movie: An army of

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Let's End the Self-Defeat of Platform Shaming

With all that’s been happening in the news lately—and that’s a lot—the last thing I have patience for is discussion about independent journalist Mehdi Hasan being a Nazi.  Hasan has copped this from every side of politics. You don’t get to be a left-wing British-Indian-American

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Obedience and the R-Word Mind Virus

My initial problem was that I didn’t know whether it would be more distracting to actually use the word or to avoid it. Which tactic would detract from my point more than serve it?  Ultimately I don’t think it will matter too much. You’re going to see

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The Arm Thing

Inauguration Day encroached with a darker cloud over it than I remembered. The last time this happened back in 2017 everyone was still numb with shock, but this time everyone was just kind of sad and afraid. That’s warranted, I believe. And when I say everyone, I mean, everyone

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The Warlord Internet

It’s kind of funny how the trajectory of the internet wound up following the plot of the Mad Max movies in an analogy that’s only a little bit silly.  Those movies are often used as a reference for a lawless post-apocalyptic anarchy, but the story only started off

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I Am Once Again Begging the Left Not to Get Baited Into Conspiracy Thinking

Among the increasingly unhinged (decreasingly hinged?) antics of our friend Elon Musk lately, one recent debacle stood out from the rest: The curious and absurd case of Adrian Dittmann.  For those with the good sense to have no idea what I’m talking about, for months the surprisingly robust community