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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋

@drlaurakittel.bsky.social
182 followers 33 following 77 posts

Taught ethics and social jusice, now defending democracy. Still researching human rights and happiness. Looking for new aligned projects and a long-term position. PhD in Philosophy. Supplicant to two 🐰. 📍Minnesota

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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Tyrants, whether fascist, authoritarian, or some other type, rule illegitimately. Even if they gained power through democratic means, a tyrant is never legitimate, because TYRANNY ITSELF UNDERMINES & NULLIFIES ANY CLAIM TO RIGHTFUL GOVERNANCE.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Human rights are non-partisan. They include & protect everyone: Democrat, Republican, Independent, etc. Rights are the good towards which the gov't is geared. Groups can have different ideas about how to implement them, but if groups become hostile to rights; they're no longer operating justly.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Human rights are the justification of the modern nation-state. Meaning that human rights are *the* reason for establishing a nation & its govt. This innovation came about during the American Revolution. The purpose of America--& all modern nations--is to protect & advance human rights.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
If you think that people accessing basic human rights like food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, w help from gov't, *prevents* them from becoming self-reliant or self-actualized, then my advice on your views: revise & resubmit.
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Reposted by Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋
Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
DOGE was never about savings. It was always about surveillance. Over the weekend, we released new details—and now whistleblowers are coming forward too. What’s becoming clearer by the day: DOGE isn’t a government efficiency program. It’s a data weapon aimed at the American people.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I was an international visa-holding doctoral student speaking truth to power in Australia. Never once did I fear being disappeared.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
You can't appease a madman.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
"In democracies, universities are there to teach facts." - Jason Stanley In fascist regimes, they teach falsehoods so that students are coerced into approving the fascist state without question.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Thought of the day: Thank God for Bernie Sanders 🙏
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Reposted by Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋
Cllr Salman Shaheen @salmanshaheen.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
It really says a lot about the state of the world when this is one of the least alarming headlines I've read all day.
uk.news.yahoo.com
Asteroid's chances of hitting Earth have nearly doubled in a week, ESA scientist warns
An steroid up to 300ft wide now has a 2.2% chance of colliding into Earth. It could prompt a space mission to intercept it.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Fascism "aims at refashioning not only the forms of life but their content--man, his character, and his faith. To achieve this purpose it enforces discipline and uses authority, entering the soul and ruling with undisputed sway." -Benito Mussolini, 'The Doctrine of Fascism," 1932
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Day One of our mission to save democracy. Stay hopeful, active, and engaged. Learn how you can help your community to preserve its strength and support of democratic norms.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
"Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Glad I didn't waste my time going to law school. And instead invested in something that exists, like philosophy.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Weakening and stripping the state of democratic institutions is the point of Trump's cabinet picks. When gov't fails by this design, will supporters correctly understand who is to blame?
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Reposted by Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋
WriteWhale @writewhale.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
@rindieca.bsky.social
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Entering the resistance era. 👇
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Excellent thread of advice for the new year, which promises to test us beyond current limits. 👇
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Reposted by Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋
Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
What we actually crave—& what capital has almost totally destroyed—is real, lived meaning in community. Its absence has caused so much fraying, but it’s not something that can be manufactured or mass produced. It requires shared purpose built in space.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
US is still failing to secure this human right. Only developed nation to violate it.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Jimmy Carter once spoke at my college, sharing about his work in Africa. Hearing about how many people died for lack of clean water, he worked to help bring it to them. From start to finish, Carter's life exudes goodness and the active desire to alleviate the suffering of others. RIP PresidentCarter
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
I wonder what would happen if we elected leaders that actually care about us. 🤔
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Correct. There's at least *two* of them now! Three if you count Putin.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Merry Christmas, Sky folks! 🎄
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
I have to say that Blue Sky has a great ratio of rabbits to cats to nightmarish political dystopia posts, which makes me think that the next serveral months will be survivable. Only just.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
A woman died after being set on fire in NYC's F Train. Interesting when you want to compare notes & search men being set alight, news reports show men set on fire a homeless person, themselves, or a woman. A tale of two sexes, only one regularly facing gendered violence.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
According to John Rawls' difference principle, "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged…(TJ 302/266 rev.)" Particularly in relation to income, wealth,power & positions of office & responsibility.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
In an alternate universe somewhere, Kamala won and we are greeting the holidays with the lightness and joy of a democracy-shattering crisis averted. 😌
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Citing your sources is an act of resistance. - John Terry 👏 I'm going to use that for sure!
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Gene Sharp writes in "From Dictatorship to Democracy" that "nonviolent struggle operates by changing the conflict situation & the society so that the opponents [dictator & supporters] simply cannot do what they like" (p 54). How can we focus on doing this now?
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
I remember watching this interview live when I lived in Australia. FBI expert says answer to school shootings is more cops w/guns stationed in schools. Australian response: 1/3
google.com
Sunrise hosts Kochie and Nat stunned by guest’s take on Texas school shooting
The breakfast show presenters couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is an anti-fascist document. It arose directly out of the atrocities perpetrated by the Axis powers during WWII, to denounce in the strongest possible terms tyranny and oppression.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
The problem with for-profit health insurance companies making decisions on whether to fund medical treatments is a moral one: people who don't receive the care they need are harmed, they suffer, and they often die. Treating this issue as if it's morally neutral is wrong.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
"History will teach us, of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the great number have begun their career by paying obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
The death of democracy CAN come at the hands of democratically-elected leaders. Just starting the book "How Democracies Die" by Levitsky & @dziblatt. This is one of the first major points of the book of which to take note.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
Welcome to my timeline, where we try to understand the world and the fundamental nature of rrality through reason. When that fails, we drink and pat fluffy creatures.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Is now a good time to remind people that healthcare is a human right?
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Reposted by Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋
Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 11/12/2024
Even as Americans live longer, they spend more of their years in poor health than any other country, a new study shows. People in the US live with illness for 12.4 years on average – up from 10.9 years in 2000, according to a study published by the American Medical Association
bloomberg.com
Americans Spend More Years Sick Than Rest of World, Study Finds
Even as Americans live longer, they spend more of their years in poor health than any other country, a new study shows.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Bipartisanship is an important goal under normal circumstances, but when one political party has been overtaken by an extremist authoritarian group, working together to reach a compromise is no longer possible. 🧵 1/9
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
With the controversy over Hesgeth's nomination, don't lose sight of Trump's statement that he'll deploy the U.S. military against Americans. This is a tactic autocrats use to silence dissenters, target vulnerable populations like immigrants, interfere with elections, & restrict civil liberties.
pbs.org
Trump suggests he'll use the military on 'the enemy from within' the U.S. if he's reelected
During his first term as president, Donald Trump tested the limits of how he could use the military to achieve policy goals. If given a second term, the Republican and his allies are preparing to go m...
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
This is incredible news! Let the fall of dictatorships repeat around the globe.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Democracy is necessary for human flourishing.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Denying coverage for necessary, life-saving medical care is also violent, but when it's done behind a desk with the stroke of a pen, apparently it's just business.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Do not obey in advance. That's one of the primary messages in the literature on defeating authoritarianism, particularly the book On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Colleges and universities should know better than to capitulate. They should lead the way forward to a democratic future.
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Laura Kittel, PhD 🦋 @drlaurakittel.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Sounds like an appropriate theme for 2025. Great foreshadowing here.
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