By #JacobWesoky, president of #DemocratsAtMcGill, via @mtlgazette - Feb 5, 2026
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#Opinion: How it feels to be an #American living in Canada right now

I’m living in #Canada, where #multiculturalism, the rule of law and democratic norms remain strong, watching the freedoms I once took for granted wither away at home.

#McGill #PoliSci #politics #StopTheDictatorship #StopAuthoritarianism #StopTrump

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/op_eds/opinion-how-it-feels-to-be-an-american-living-in-canada-right-now

That the "biggest political concern" is the "cost of living" tells us everything we need to know about the basic structure of the polity around us.

With reference to the "cost of living", notice how the "money axis" runs through it, providing accountability within an ecosystem. But let's also acknowledge other axes, other than the money one, that are not money but that also hold the energies of transactional value, so to speak, these axes are orthogonal to the money axis. The money axis, and others that run parallel to it, apply their control through a certain narrowness that they all exhibit: their particular specifics are very particular and very specific, the security of their identity is one of their most important features, the (supposed) resistance of their tokens to being counterfeit.

There are swarms of such creatures, all vying for relative advantage within their common ecosystem: that of exact accounting of transactions, a sort of metaphysics.

The existence of exact accounting within a particular realm, or species, and the respective realm's ability to enforce such accounting on transactions that take place within it, are the stuff of the basic metabolism of Leviathan, its offspring, and cousins. It is how the small energies of the "little people" are connected into the big machines of commerce or the state.

Looking at the situation from another point of view, wherever we need transactional accounting to keep us honest, the more that that transactional value that can be loaded into those axes of transactional value which run orthogonal the to the money axis (with its exact and strict accounting), the less effective will be the control of those oppressive systems (pronouns: they, them) which run along the money axis, or parallel to it, and which depend upon their ecosystems like fish depend upon water. In other words, the less that our lifestyle depends upon systems of exact accounting between ourselves, the less of our energies will be transferred to the oppressive systems that operate globally.

To me it seems that it is something about the dynamics of transactional systems that are based on strict accounting which inevitably leads us to autocracy, oligarchy, and corporate domination. I think we should be looking for alternative paradigms of exchange.

#money #economics #capitalism #polisci #sociology #psychology #oligarchy #fascism #democracy #demos #polity #socialism #anarchism #vultures #vampires
https://johntinker.substack.com/p/dimensions-orthogonal-to-the-money

Thought experiment:
Imagine all the armchair experts on US domestic politics—including well meaning Europeans—actually knew the real convoluted rules of Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branch.

And for just a wee moment, let’s imagine voters and journalists knew civics too.

#momentofzen #SurroundedByIdiots #polisci

I just created a new blog, and to celebrate I'm doing something I've never done here, creating a proper introduction! I'm a 20 something American #trans woman who's currently researching #polisci and studying #cybersecurity.

I'm very passionate about #politics (I don't know exactly where I land, but somewhere on the far left lol). I've been trying to help build a strong local community where I'm at. Organization & community is one of the best defenses against fascism! As is direct action!

I also really love music, esspecially hiphop. My favorite artists right now are, in no particular order, #Doechii, #SZA, #KendrickLamar, #BillyWoods, #KaliUchis, and #LittleSimz.

https://pirategoddess.net/blog/introduction/

#introduction

"Well, I anticipated a lot of what would happen if Trump were reelected, but I did not anticipate the quick acquiescence of almost every American elite sector. The universities are part of a larger story. In many ways, it started with law firms — or you could say it started with the fact that we no longer have corporations so much as we have megalomaniacal multibillionaire tech bros who operate as individuals — sycophants trying to buy their way in. Musk is the most obvious, but they’re all that way right now. They’re inescapable because they control huge sectors of internet-enabled stuff that everybody needs. In some ways, Musk is the most vulnerable because of Tesla.

The universities are not an exemplary story of collective action, but they’re not as bad as the other elite institutions. I want to be careful here because I’m not sure we know how much informal coordination has been going on among university leaders. Obviously, there has not been a big public thing. That would be very difficult to do — there are so many colleges and universities, and even so many fairly important ones. They’re divided between the overly rich private universities and the major public universities and university systems. This is where Harvard was very important. I think Harvard, like everybody else, wanted to find a way to make a deal, because what nobody anticipated — and I think it’s fair to say that nobody did — was the attack on overhead and the attack on scientific research.

That, along with the attack on international students, could destroy these institutions. University administrators in our era are not profiles in courage. They are picked to go along to get along. They’re also picked for courting donors."

https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/23285/20740

#Sociology #PoliticalScience #PoliSci #USA #HigherEd #Universities #Trump

What happens when you hear phrases like "clash of civilizations" used unironically?

#polls #history #geopolitics #polisci