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paul johnson

@rhetoricpj.bsky.social
6.8K followers 1.3K following 6.1K posts

I live in pittsburgh and like it. wrote a book about conservative populism. have spent the last 15 years studying the right. go arsenal! I like gin. Book: www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817321093/i-…

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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The key here is they really are inheritors of McCarthy and insist on sustaining the tradition despite the lack of objective conditions similar to those of the early postwar period. The spirit of accusation/persecution is fundamental to the right and overlaps with the American 'berserker' style
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Robin James @robinjames.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“slop assumes a different kind of relationship between general and particular than is assumed in most of the political philosophy grounding US law” www.its-her-factory.com/2026/10/slop...
its-her-factory.com
Slop as a vector of private interest: abstraction, songwriting, and extraction after the public/private divide
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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
My new JOD piece arguing against the “cure polarization” approach to saving democracy.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026
"they really believe it"/"they will try to do it"/"the promises are real" are things that most americans refuse to believe about politicians but if you take them seriously will help you predict political behavior more often than not
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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is an excellent article by Leif Wetherby - why AI is a cultural technology not a collection of human-like agents (citing our work on this). And why the anthropomorphism is a distraction from the very real risks and dangers and the way to deal with them. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Stop Talking About A.I. Like a Human (Gift Article)
If we want to figure out the proper way to control A.I. models, we need to recognize what they really are.
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Lmfao
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Institute for Public Knowledge @ipk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Join IPK and NYU's Brademas Center on Oct. 21 for a talk with @juliaazari.bsky.social. She will discuss her book Backlash Presidents with @kimberleynyc.bsky.social and @joelowndes.bsky.social. Moderated by @mikekoncewicz.bsky.social. tinyurl.com/3xd5f8ba
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Some very exciting news about events on campus next spring calendar.pitt.edu/event/an-int...
calendar.pitt.edu
An Interview with Jamelle Bouie
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Holly Anderson 🍇 @hollyanderson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
crylaughing at the thought of Mike Tomlin getting home after a long day of listening to Aaron Rodgers and just straight up dissociating for five hours in Minecraft 
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Lotta unsolved murders in new York, Sax"
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One of my strongest beliefs is that Liberty Bibberty and the LiMu Emu are signs of a truly washed culture. Grimace and The Noid would never put up with this shit
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Why All the Handwringing About a ‘Tea Party of the Left’ Was So Misguided talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-all...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Why All the Handwringing About a ‘Tea Party of the Left’ Was So Misguided
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. As...
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
On why this isn't really gonna be a Tea Party of the Dems talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/why-all...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Why All the Handwringing About a ‘Tea Party of the Left’ Was So Misguided
This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. As...
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Ok we do need a Harambe aftermath long read though. Zero question it was ground zero for something
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Nashville Scene @nashvillescene.com · 28/09/2026
Scene staff reporter Eli Motycka was removed from the guest list for Peter Thiel's Nashville Antichrist lectures — and he's not the only journalist who was. 🧵
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Well we'll find out who did the Bestiality!
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Real "imperial boomerang but meta" when you're Terra Nullius'ing Texas a second time
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Back on my bullshit (reading the few extant semiotic takes on the writing of George Kennan)
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Mike Goodman @themlg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s the mall. But people don’t like saying “the mall” and just “the mall” but it’s definitely the mall.
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Benjamin notes that fascism was the response of reactionaries to a world where it could create and circulate things in ways unknowable to a single individual. So the death of the monoculture, itself a projection of a shared center in a postmodern world, is I'm sure going swimmingly.
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
To the point if you rendered LA of the 90s in the way Pat Buchanan spoke about it would look cartoonish, insane, unreal....the AI stuff is closing a loop but its not entirely *new*
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
What an artifact of our time
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
context. sentiment. inferences. People seriously cannot do these things anymore. That’s why they angrily demand you spell out every joke, every reference, super duper promise you mean something only this one prescribed way. They cannot do it for themselves or tolerate the any ambiguity.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Most people have no idea how much international students are the lifeblood of higher education. But they’re about to learn. Sigh.
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Kate Jackson @katejackson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One thing about being a business law professor with a PhD in political theory during These Times (tm) is that once you realize that Silicon Valley has become a vanguardist (fascist) political project, you see its fingerprints *everywhere.* From dual class shareholding to repealing 14a-8, from
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
What a cover (book is compelling too)
Cover of a book with s woman riding a jet engine
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Mike Koncewicz @mikekoncewicz.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I just started a new Substack, Two, Three, Many 1968s, which will gradually become more active over the next few months. Stay tuned for future posts on the Tom Hayden bio, essays on the evolving legacy of the Vietnam era, and a new podcast in 2027. many1968s.substack.com/p/coming-soo...
many1968s.substack.com
Coming Soon- Two, Three, Many 1968s
The whole world is forgetting
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A very important thing to understand is that right-wing messaging has been a 60+ year op to impede the media from admitting that the respective gaps between the parties and 'the people' don't index some mystical connection to the volk in the GOPs sole possession
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The sense of shifting vibes was, as pointed out on thread, partly an instinctive read of algorithmic changes that some people mistook for a cultural vibe shift. And some of it was about losing that overlapping vector of black Twitter as a North Star
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Complex but: Trump's appeal as 'populist' was based on misrecognition of something short of even strong *plurality* support for him in the country. instead pundits were gassed up on herrenvolk theory of 'the people' where his most fucked up characteristics were a mystical appearance of 'the people'
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"Riker, you're telling me we've just transported down to a plant where every single substance is just made of Cybertruck?" "That's right, Captain. And it is without a doubt the coolest, raddest, and best planet the crew of the Enterprise have ever visited."
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Just Judge Dredding Architecture sure yea
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Annie McClanahan @anniemcc.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I have a new piece--"Labor Organizing in the Age of Service Work"--in New Labor Forum and it's open access! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com
Labor Organizing in the Age of Service Work - Annie McClanahan, 2026
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The aberration was really 1947-1973
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
King of New York... crazy ass movie. David Caruso, you can see why people thought he might have had it
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Grant Brisbee @grantbrisbee.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Gotta era-adjust for this. The raw numbers look close, but the RCSM+ is off the charts for this administration. They're like a 40-homer hitter in 1968.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026
one thing i'm curious about is what republicans do if november is truly catastrophic. like, if we wake up and democrats have flipped iowa and kansas and florida and republican candidates have lost to independents in nebraska and montana. how do they react to trump?
bloomberg.com
Trump’s Grip on GOP Slips as Midterm Election Anxiety Sets In
As Donald Trump took an aggressive stance on the global stage at the United Nations on Tuesday, several Senate Republicans were breaking from the president back in Washington.
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alice e marwick @alicetiara.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I am SO DELIGHTED to announce that our brand new report: The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania is out today. datasociety.net/research-lib... TechCrunch has the scoop: techcrunch.com/2026/09/22/e...
techcrunch.com
Everyone can find a reason to dislike data center construction | TechCrunch
Inside two years of fraught AI data center debates in Pennsylvania.
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Just caught that a bar that shows up in King of New York is also in season one of Sex in the City
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Guess who ironically never recovered from "the end of history" incidentally? Fukuyamas Last Man, doomed to be nothing more or less another commodity in the eyes of the global market
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Night cake!!
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Shout out to the student journalists at The Daily Iowan for reporting on the travesty that is Iowa's Center for Intellectual Freedom. With quotes from me dailyiowan.com/2026/09/15/u...
dailyiowan.com
Uncertainty in leadership, curriculum surrounds UI Center for Intellectual Freedom
In the barren walls of his Calvin Hall office, where the Center for Intellectual Freedom resides, interim director and University of Iowa economics professor Luciano de Castro shuffles a stack of pape...
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/09/2026
the thing that stands out to me is less the Dem spread than the fact that the GOP seems stuck in the low 40s. if that holds, and if undecideds/double-haters break for Democratic candidates in the final stretch, you are looking at a total collapse for the congressional GOP
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
And lots of people conflate democracy with any kind of agitation! I have students who regularly say J6 was "democracy" even as they condemn it
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
For comm folks interested in right wing studies, me and Freya Thimsen are co-running an RSA seminar next June in Louisville focused on thinking through methods for studying the right: rhetoricsociety.org/event/semina...
rhetoricsociety.org
Seminar 9: Rhetorical Criticism of Right-Wing Rhetorics - Rhetoric Society of America
Leaders: Paul Johnson (University of Pittsburgh) and A. Freya Thimsen (Indiana University) This seminar affords the opportunity for participants to develop tools for conducting analysis and criticism ...
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Yup. This is among my top takeaways from almost 20 years on the right wing beat: they have a messaging strategy that works. Some of it is about greater resources (money, homogeneity of base, whiteness, etc) but they aren't without skills and discipline
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Lol. Its like they gave Milhouse's dad a tv segment
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The country realized this guy actually hit the ground during the 2008 financial crisis and we're now split between people who reckoned with that trauma in socially legible language and those who built their whole thing out of loss www.esquire.com/news-politic...
esquire.com
The Falling Man
Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in i...
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paul johnson @rhetoricpj.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"Microsoft Authenticator isn't sure this is YOUR pulse"
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Every half-ass plan for our extinction that they provide just turns me on. No internet, you say? No online banking?? No 2FA to use the bathroom at my job??? Baby I was a latchkey kid in the 1980s. You’re describing my platonic ideal. Extinct me.
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