iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 30/09/2026

So you don't have to go look it up yourself. Data from FiftyPlusOne.

FiftyPlusOne chart of Iowa General Governor election from June to present. Democrat Sand is +8 over Republican Lahn. Error bars are separated by a wide margin in the chart.

Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 29/09/2026

As a non-economist, I am open-minded to the economic arguments against the wealth tax. But on political economy, I think @cameroncorduroy.bsky.social's argument is naive. This is like saying the problem with absolute monarchy is not the monarchy but the wickedness of the reign.

The problem with Elon Musk is not his wealth; it is what he chose to do with his wealth. Yes, in theory, if you implemented this miraculously robust wealth tax that successfully limited personal wealth from growing from millions to billions, Elon Musk would not be a problem. But you know who would be? Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who enabled the gutting of USAID, revoked hundreds of student visas for political speech, and is personally instrumental in the United States’ ongoing war crimes in both the Caribbean and Persian Gulf. Or OMB Director Russ Vought, the man in charge of actually enacting DOGE personnel cuts and deciding to withhold billions of federal funds from Democratic states. A more appropriate response to wealthy individuals leveraging their wealth to destructive political ends is to harden the political system, not tweak economic policy in the vain hope of preventing the existence of wealthy individuals.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 25/09/2026

Would you rather have a beer with Hasan Piker or Richard Hanania?

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 16/09/2026

This keeps happening to me. I have alienated so many.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 15/09/2026

Okay but also, their 2024 Harris style Democrat is something they made up in their heads? In what way was Harris progressive on immigration?

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 14/09/2026

63 out of 100 refers to 63 simulations out of 100 result in a Democratic majority. The bulk of those are between 51 and 53 seats.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 11/09/2026

If I get this t-shirt, which seems a foregone conclusion, then I would have a @liberalcurrents.com shirt, a @demsocialists.bsky.social shirt, and a @thebulwark.com shirt. My t-shirt wardrobe would be perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Gray t-shirt with a black and white image of Bill Kristol, gazing into the distance. Text reads:

WOKE
BILL KRISTOL!
THE BULWARK

in the style of the iconic AOC 2018 posters.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 10/09/2026

Definitely worth considering the baseline rates of suicide by strangulation. Old data here, but gives perspective. I think the whole tree aspect is what seems shocking.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 09/09/2026

Beyond the quiescence of "I just wanna grill" liberalism and "everything is problematic" perfectionism of social justice lies the synthesis of @quinnae.com's Final Girl, whose "yearning to live cannot be stopped." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-h...

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 07/09/2026

www.liberalcurrents.com/meet-the-dem...

From the way people speak about it online, you could be forgiven for imagining that Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton have a brunch fortress somewhere from which they order drone strikes on anyone with a plan to win an election. Members of Congress and New York Times columnists can regularly be heard demanding Democrats “do” something about their base, that they “run” one kind of candidate or another, or tie themselves to the whipping post and endure the arrows from some fresh conservative freakout. But from the perspective of someone who knows—has learned—how the party works, they’re talking to shadows on the wall. All they have is a sock puppet named "The Democrats" which, they are constantly lamenting, doesn’t listen.

That’s because the party is in Savannah. The sock is just a sock.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 05/09/2026

I still fondly reference Hillary Clinton's leaked comments about open borders! I am also no stranger to criticizing the closed borders worldview of Bernie Sanders, who is not a DSA member. Sometimes people just don't fit into your dumb little boxes.

Search item from:me hemispheric

Results include three skeets quoting HRC's open borders and green energy remarks.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 05/09/2026

TIL you shouldn't support DSA because they support closed borders, which is why they hated Hillary Clinton. Anyway, these posts are about me. A fun fact about me is I vocally voted for HRC! I was just a normie lib then, a recently ex-libertarian. Also, post-2016 DSA was all in on #AbolishICE.

Some asshole skeeting:

"I joined DSA because they're the only folks who seem to share some of my values, like open borders." A real thing someone said on this app. Despite the fact that DSA's most hated figure, Hillary Clinton, said her dream was a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.

Then:

This, specifically, was the thing they hated about her! That was the dreaded "Wall Street speeches"! DSA's first era of explosive growth post-2016 was people who super, super hated the idea of open borders!

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 04/09/2026

Gerrard Winstanley's Law of Freedom or DSA Workers Deserve More Program?

The earth is to be planted, and the fruits reaped and carried into barns and store-houses, by the assistance of every family. And if any man or family want corn or-other provision they may go to the store-houses and fetch without money. If they want a horse to ride, go into the fields in summer, or to the common stables in winter, and receive one from the keepers; and when your journey is performed, bring him where you had him, without money. If any want food or victuals, they may either go to the butchers’ shops, and receive what they want without money; or else go to the flocks of sheep or herds of cattle, and take and kill what meat is needful for their families, without buying and selling. And the reason why all the riches of the earth are a common stock is this, because the earth, and the labours thereupon, are managed by common assistance of every family, without buying and selling; as is shewn how more largely in the office of overseers for trades and the law for store-houses.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 04/09/2026

Slavery itself is fine and good, a fit punishment for the sin of economic exchange. Or for idleness. <touches earpiece> Wait, I'm hearing these aren't *slaves*. These are *common servants*. Don't put it in your pamphlets that these would be slaves.

47. He who breaks any laws shall be the first time reproved in words in private or in public, as is shewed before; the next time whipped, the third time lose his freedom, either for a time or for ever, and not to be any officer.

48. He who hath lost his freedom shall be a common servant to any freeman who comes to the task-masters and requires one to do any work for him; always provided, that after one freeman hath by the consent of the task-master appointed him his work, another freeman shall not call him thence till that work be done.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 03/09/2026

While other non-socialist contenders look for ways to appeal to as many voters as possible, Rahm Emanuel is looking to antagonize as much of the Democratic base as possible.

Rolling Stone passage, in which they say Emanuel is proposing "more police and tougher border enforcement, mandatory national service," among other things.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 03/09/2026

Oh my Galt, you guys. It is like a whole Randian Christian facebook group. (Note, for the purposes of these skeets I am denigrating neither Christians nor Randians. Many fine people, etc.)

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 03/09/2026

I have seen takes that you would not believe. Atlas Shrugged is an explicitly *anti-Christian* text. What is remarkable about the modern right is that they can not only claim diametrically opposed works as their own, but brutally misinterpret them both at the same time.

Tweet from one @chadjmul that reads:

As a Christian, husband, father, and citizen, I think that outside the Bible, Atlas Shrugged is one of the most important books of our cultural moment. Please take the time to read it. You won't be sorry that you did.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 31/08/2026

This part is critical. "Lived experience" is not the opposite of hard data and research. It's the beginning of better research, better science. Woke 2.0 means translating these better knowledge conduits into practical results and power.

That means supporting or building research institutes, policy shops and think tanks that are explicitly and publicly aligned with the political project of uplifting the marginalized. Not pretending to be neutral. Not hiding in effective secrecy like the Democracy Alliance—an organization meant to counter the Heritage Foundation, but lacking the ability to influence the conversation the way Heritage does. The new institutions of Woke 2.0 must build and fortify credentialing pipelines that bring those of us from marginalized communities into positions of epistemic authority—more feminist researchers, more immigrant lawyers, more trans doctors. Not merely for the sake of diversity, but because diversity is a means of converting lived experience into knowledge.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 28/08/2026

Got into an argument with "Steve" (One assumes his last name is Sailer) on a Bulwark reply thread where I defended open borders. Anyway, I learned about a whole new racist environmentalist I'd never encountered. Ever heard of Edward Abbey? Attaching a couple charming quotes.

"[I]t occurs to some of us that perhaps ever-continuing industrial and population growth is not the true road to human happiness, that simple gross quantitative increase of this kind creates only more pain, dislocation, confusion and misery. In which case it might be wise for us as American citizens to consider calling a halt to the mass influx of even more millions of hungry, ignorant, unskilled, and culturally-morally-genetically impoverished people. At least until we have brought our own affairs into order. Especially when these uninvited millions bring with them an alien mode of life which—let us be honest about this—is not appealing to the majority of Americans. Why not? Because we prefer democratic government, for one thing; because we still hope for an open, spacious, uncrowded, and beautiful—yes, beautiful!—society, for another. The alternative, in the squalor, cruelty, and corruption of Latin America, is plain for all to see."

Or:

"According to the morning newspaper, the population of America will reach 267 million by 2000 AD. An increase of forty million, or about one-sixth, in only seventeen years! And the racial composition of the population will also change considerably: the white birth rate is about sixty per thousand females, the Negro rate eighty-three per thousand, and the Hispanic rate ninety-six per thousand.

"Am I a racist? I guess I am. I certainly do not wish to live in a society dominated by blacks, or Mexicans, or Orientals. Look at Africa, at Mexico, at Asia."

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 27/08/2026

Looks like the investigation is ongoing, but the suspension is lifted. Heartwarming that Trump's Ambassador to Belgium has taken such an interest in <checks notes> *The Future of Liberalism*.

Nathan Cofnas tweet about looking forward to continuing his "work on the project, 'The Future of Liberalism.'"

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 25/08/2026

I love this statement by the DSA, celebrating Dolly Parton as a working class hero. Of course, she also powerfully embodied liberal values: of openness to difference, generosity, hard work, learning, and kindness. Dolly Parton believed the world was for everyone.

Facebook post by Democratic Socialists of America extending condolences to loved ones of Dolly Parton, calling her a "hero of the working class".

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 24/08/2026

Would like to have included an answer about investigating ICE agents for abuses, but I could only select up to three.

Survey question: "What should Congress prioritize on immigration? Select up to three."

Image only includes my three answers: Reduce deportations, End the detention of children and families, and Create a pathway to citizenship.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 24/08/2026

I am a broken record on political surveys. I always try to find a way to advocate for open borders in free response questions. I was proud of myself for resisting an answer that included the phrase "collective seppuku".

Survey question reads: "Imagine it's two years from now. What is one thing the government could have done that would make your life better?"

My free response: "Opened our borders so that everyone who wants to become an American has a clear and easy path to citizenship."

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 21/08/2026

Burgis is just begging for a communal drowning with this though.

What, for example, does it mean to say, as DSA’s national platform does, that various laudable and desperately needed criminal justice reforms should be understood as steps toward “abolishing” police and prisons? Even in an advanced socialist society where poverty was something people read about in history books, at least some interpersonal violence would almost certainly still persist. When it does, investigation by some sort of professionalized, publicly administered law enforcement body followed by trials and involuntary confinement for those found guilty is a far better solution than vigilantism, vendettas, or ultralocalized community groups deciding who’s guilty and what they think counts as a fair punishment à la medieval villages.

If what we really mean by “abolition” is that we want the corrupt and brutal forms of policing and prisons that exist now to be replaced by more humane and democratic versions of law enforcement in a socialist future, expressing this as a call for “abolition” is misleading on the substance of the proposal, since we aren’t actually calling to abolish policing and prisons but rather to change them. It is also flagrant political malpractice, as any average person who hears “abolish police and prisons” imagines a world overrun by theft and violence with no recourse. And rightly so, as the term “abolish” means to eliminate immediately and entirely, which was the position of nineteenth-century abolitionists toward the institution of slavery.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 21/08/2026

Here, "liberal" is again associated with political freedom and republican government, and also appears in the modern-sounding phrase "liberal institutions".

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 21/08/2026

Here, "liberal" is associated with "political liberty".

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 21/08/2026

I'll just post some examples in the next few skeets. Here, "liberal" is used as the opposite of "despotic" (left), and as a synonym for "republican" and "democratic" (right).

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 20/08/2026

👀 Krausism and the Spanish Avant-Garde, by Christian Rubio.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 20/08/2026

What's your favorite Bible Verse? Wrong answers only.

Optimus Prime, pretty beaten up, but standing. "...because freedom is the right of ALL sentient beings."

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 18/08/2026

Remember kids, the most important thing is to hate strangers on the Internet, in spite of all evidence that they share your values. This all started because I posted that Castro was bad, but we should stop embargoing and threatening Cuba, and prosecute Rubio et al for war crimes.

Interaction with a blocked out user.

Me: The whole right wing in the US is actively bent on the destruction of trans individuals and the very idea of trans people, and are making positive steps to that end, to the point where trans people are fleeing to Blue states. Clear genocide. This isn't a gotcha. It's pretty straightforward.

Her: I just wanted to see if you hated us as much as you do Cuban people.

Me: Because I want us to end the blockade of Cuba and renormalize trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba, and because I want to prosecute Trump administration officials for war crimes? That is what I actually posted.

Her: Yep, that's what I was talking about. Not the part where you denied genocide.

Her: The focus of your post was anticommunism. You and Rubio and Trump have that in common. You begrudgingly mention the crimes (of genocide) because you know you have to pretend to care about them.

Her: Anyway, you at least pretend to support trans people, but since you support the genocide of Cuban people, you cannot be trusted as an ally. You are our enemy as well.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 18/08/2026

Click the link. So many people eager to pile on to someone literally agreeing with all the stated DSA demands because I'm a LIBRUL, but too fucking lazy to get the context.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 17/08/2026

10. An Introduction to Latin American Philosophy - Susana Nuccetelli. Wide-ranging, but could benefit from multiple authorial perspectives (a little skeptical of Nuccetelli's take on LA feminism, e.g). Especially loved the discussion of José Martí Krausist influence.

Cover of An Introduction to Latin American Philosophy, by Susana Nuccetelli. Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy. Blue book with some blue and gold imagery.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 17/08/2026

My god. You people are so quick to join a pile-on of a dreaded LIBERAL but too fucking lazy to click through for context.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 17/08/2026

DSA didn't mention Fidel Castro? In the article commemorating his 100th birthday?

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 17/08/2026

All the Fidel fluffing by DSA is egregious. You don't ever gotta hand it to dictators. Also, Rubio is not trying to destroy the Cuban people *as a people.* Not every war crime is a genocide. But the actual meat and potatoes of this DSA statement seems on target? www.dsausa.org/statements/d...

DSA unequivocally demands

an end to the genocidal blockade

an end to all threats of military violence against Cuba

an end to all imperialist aggression against Cuba

the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba

reparations payments to be made to Cuba for the trillions of dollars in damages the blockade has cost the Cuban people

the prosecution of Marco Rubio for crimes against humanity

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 14/08/2026

Portland book haul! Not just Powell's. I discovered a great used book store on Belmont where I picked up a few of these: Belmont Books.

Nine books arranged on a carpet floor. A Latin American philosophy anthology; a book of Chinese folk tales; Feminist Politics and Human Nature, by Alison Jaggar; Care, by Premilla Nadasen; the Case for Rage, by Myisha Cherry; Socialist Mayors in the United States, by David Berman; Puta Feminista, by Monique Prada; the Slave Power, by Leonard Richards; the Capture of Atlanta and the March to the Sea, by General William T Sherman.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 11/08/2026

I was sloppily reading into these passages. I picked up this volume on the Levellers and the Putney Debates by Geoffrey Robertson. No idea about the author.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 09/08/2026

I was trying to read this @thebulwark.com piece on Woke, and then I got to this part. No it didn't. That isn't true.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 07/08/2026

Anyone heard of this book? Found it at Powell's just now. A bit spendy.

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 07/08/2026

Reading about Latin American political philosophy and encountered Bejamin Constant Botelho de Magalhaes.

Second plane has struck meme. Caption is "There is another Benjamin Constant."

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