iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Replies

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 04/02/2026

I wrote about Minnesota and ICE and how average Americans are reclaiming the power that the administration is abusing. www.pbump.net/o/this-is-wh...

What's been weird to learn is that other leaders of institutions act the same way. Some of them hoard and protect their influence like it's money because they, too, are rich. You don't get rich by giving your money away and (they seem to believe) you don't get powerful by exercising your power. But, in fact, that is often how power works: using power can help build power. At the very least, power holds no value unless it is exercised, which alone is a valid reason to exercise it. If you are powerful but never use your power, you are not powerful.
I'm talking here primarily about the huge, obvious loci of power — the centers of power that exist in part to serve as checks on other centers of power.
Congress vis-a-vis the presidency. The media relative to the government. Higher education in contrast to misinformation. But they often aren't serving as checks on what's unfolding, or are obviously and bizarrely using their power only sparingly, garden hoses aimed at protecting their own homes from the wildfire.
So it's left to individuals, who have stepped up where institutions have not.

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Shambling Corpse of Randy Herman @randyhermanlaw.com · 04/02/2026

"If you are powerful but never use your power, you are not powerful" is very good

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Anmaril 🌿 @anmaril.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

I find it unfitting. Most of these issues only arise because the presidential office has so much power, increased by both parties over the decades. It is exactly because the trumpet now using this power, that the situation is that bad.

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Shambling Corpse of Randy Herman @randyhermanlaw.com · 04/02/2026

Here is my own little version of this: I have been trying for a year to get the NC Bar Association to put out a statement in support of the rule of law, following the example of the ABA. They are afraid to do anything because their funding comes from the NCGOP.

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Dingus Ex Machina @akatzel.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Madeleine Albright would have agreed

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