Mastodawn

William Lindsey

Noting how an "empathy gap" undermines Republican policies, Brian Beutler says,

"Trump can only imagine people as marks and subordinates. He seeks to extract from them and punish them if they resist. He imagines all human relations as between the dominant and oppressed, and thus defaults to acts of oppression, imagining weaker people will choose to be subdued rather than risk greater losses by standing up for themselves."

#Trump #Iran #war #domination
/1

https://www.offmessage.net/p/how-the-empathy-gap-swallowed-america

How The Empathy Gap Swallowed America

When politicians stop intuiting human inclinations, they become dangerously prone to alienating the public.

Off Message

William Lindsey

"It is the miscalculation that drove his flagging approval ratings into the danger zone, and drove his secret police operation out of Minneapolis deeper into the hinterlands of Minnesota. The miscalculation that made him think extorting and threatening our allies would strengthen, rather than weaken his hand."

#Trump #Republicans #empathy
/2

William Lindsey

"The miscalculation that made him imagine regime change in Iran was a matter of a weekend bombing campaign.

Tyranny is foolhardy politics. But it is an approach that appeals to Republicans, because they’ve come to believe that dominance of others—minority rule—is the only way to make the United States conform to right-wing ideas about how society should be ordered."

#Trump #Republicans #empathy #Iran #war
/3

William Lindsey

"Four weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, one conclusion is already difficult to avoid. Our leaders preside over an extraordinary machinery of destruction, but they remain strikingly obtuse about human beings — about their pride, shame, convictions and historical memory. ...

What this war exposes, then, is a failure not only of strategy but of literacy."

~ Yonatan Touval

#Trump #Republicans #empathy #Iran #war #literacy #history
/4

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/opinion/israel-us-war-iran-literature.html

Opinion | Is It 1914 in America?

The planners of the Iran war had plenty of on-the-ground intelligence but operated with little insight into the minds of their enemies.

The New York Times

William Lindsey

"Literature and history, at their most serious, train precisely the faculties these leaders lack: the capacity to grant that other minds are not transparent to us, and are governed by purposes not our own. A mind tutored by history and literature knows that actors in the grip of a sacred cause tend to mean what they say — and that bombing a founding myth is more likely to consecrate it than to dissolve it."

#Trump #Republicans #empathy #Iran #war #literacy #history
/5

William Lindsey

"The more technologically sophisticated war becomes, the more dangerous it is to place it in the hands of people untrained in irony, contingency and the darker constants of human nature. Such leaders will speak fluently of capabilities, timelines and kill chains. They will have no language for resentment, dishonor, loyalty or grief — and they will discover, too late, that wars are made of these as much as of steel and fire."

#Trump #Republicans #empathy #Iran #war #literacy #history
/6

William Lindsey

"That is the illiteracy of this war."

#Trump #Republicans #empathy #Iran #war #literacy #history
/7

William Lindsey

"Facts are inconvenient. They complicate the narrative. They remind us that actions have consequences, that history has context, that rights weren’t handed down by magic but fought for by real people with real stakes. Facts don’t care if they ruin your argument or even your day, and they especially don’t care if they make your favorite politician, artist, philosopher or scientist look bad.

Which is exactly why fact matter."

~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#facts #literacy
/8

https://kareem.substack.com/p/the-houthis-didnt-suddenly-materialize

The Houthis Didn’t Suddenly Materialize, Where Accountability Goes to Die, Clowns Become Candidates, & History Has Receipts...Legal Spin Doesn’t.

March 31, 2026

Kareem Takes on the News

William Lindsey

"Whatever God is and however it moves through people’s lives, I don’t know. But it’s important to hear others’ stories even in they don’t confirm your own. Reality is terribly complex, and faith lives in the least definitive wing of reality. Good faith should bring more questions than answers."

~ Holly Berkley Fletcher

#facts #literacy #empathy
/9

https://hollyberkleyfletcher.substack.com/p/my-new-favorite-thing

My new favorite thing

Getting emails from people who have read my book

A Zebra Without Stripes

William Lindsey

"What animates today’s international gangsterism?

First and foremost, gangster powers believe wholeheartedly in the infamous dictum found in Thucydides: the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. This idea isn’t exactly might makes right; real and would-be international gangsters aren’t terribly concerned with the 'right' part of the equation."

~ Peter Juul

#Trump #Putin #XiJinping #domination #morality
/10

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-new-era-of-international-gangsterism/?ref=articles-and-essays-newsletter

A New Era of International Gangsterism

Trump, Putin, and Xi believe wholeheartedly that the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.

Liberal Currents

William Lindsey

"It’s more akin to what Roosevelt called 'the philosophy of force'—a fundamental belief in the supreme prerogative of power, unconstrained by supervening notions of morality or any other principles. ...

Again, it’s critical to understand that this is the way leaders of gangster powers believe the way the world should work."

#Trump #Putin #XiJinping #domination #morality
/11

William Lindsey

"Trump has made his admiration for international gangsters like Putin and Xi crystal clear, and he has made plain that on his watch America will—at best—sit back and watch as these gangster powers carve the world up between themselves, and indeed intends to do some carving of its own."

#Trump #Putin #XiJinping #domination #morality
/12

Chris Corrigan 1d ago

@wdlindsy This is the part of the thread where I cry a littlest how broken and disconnected these people are. AS a Christian I struggle to make sense of good and evil in a world that is as complex and nuanced and interconnected as ours. But I do resonate very strongly with the idea from the Hebrew Scriptures that the definition of sin (and the punishment for it) is to be cut off from God. To be cut off from the heart, from loving and being loved.

Chris Corrigan 1d ago

@wdlindsy My tears are for the utter disconnect that these men and women exhibit. The utter dehumanization of themselves and the psychotic nature of their actions in the world. I believe that everyone is capable of redemption and metanoia. But I also believe that one cannot just stand by and let millions die from intent or neglect while a person figures out which way to turn. This should properly be called the Lenten War. Waged in darkness from darkness, by a man who accepted the devil's offer.

Chris Corrigan 1d ago

@wdlindsy What Jesus rejected in the desert, Trump and his minions said yes to. And the legions of Christian Nationalists whose blood lust and contempt for human life have enabled this have missed the ENTIRE point of not only Jesus' teachings, but the entire message of Lent and Holy Week. It requires them to practice capacities that are so far exiled from their lives that it seems obvious that their redemption is out of their hands.

It kills me to say that about another human being.

Chris Corrigan 1d ago

William Lindsey

@ChrisCorrigan I think one of the effects of the period of history we're living through — perhaps in particular for us in the US — is seeing many people we thought we knew unmasked. Family, friends, neighbors taking off the mask and showing us, usually very proudly, the emptiness and amorality they have been harboring inside. The question is how so many of us have willingly made this of ourselves at this point in history.

Sensible Crone 13h ago

@wdlindsy thank you!

Sensible Crone 13h ago

@wdlindsy wait what!? KAJ has a blog????? ♥️😍😎👻💃🥂😀😊😃

Just Tom... 🐁19h ago

@wdlindsy
Wise words. Evident to most who have watched generations inherit resentment caused by historical injustices and the actions of colonial powers and their interference in nations where they have no right to be.

CassandraVert 14h ago

The destruction of the US has included the destruction of relationships, reputation, and soft power. That's not 47's thing, but he's got people who get it.