Bart Bonikowski

@bartbonikowski.bsky.social

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Assoc Prof of Sociology and Politics at NYU studying nationalism, populism, and radical-right politics using surveys, experiments, and computational text analysis. Affiliate Faculty at NYU's Center for Data Science.

Posts Replies Media

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Bart Bonikowski

Right about now would be a good time for Democrats and their allies to quit whining, get over their self-doubt, stop assuming any good faith by the GOP, rally behind their candidate, and start working hard on winning the election. The self-owns must stop.

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Bart Bonikowski

Reply to

Ed Burmila

Maybe the lesson here is that the people who built a political movement out of the vigilante revenge fantasies of socially maladjusted and heavily armed people overestimated their own ability to control where, when, and at whom the violence they encourage would be directed.

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Bart Bonikowski

I am putting out this heartfelt call: please, I beg of you, it’s important that everyone except me turn down the political temperature! It’s so crucial in these turbulent times for everyone who isn’t myself to watch what they say!! 💗

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Bart Bonikowski

“We would love Mr. Trump to join us in condemning political violence once and for all after the terrible incident on Saturday. This is a moment for him to help us unite the American people behind our true principle: We always solve problems through ballots, not bullets.”

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Bart Bonikowski

How is agency distributed between characters in fiction writing? In a new PNAS paper, I present a large-scale analysis of the interaction networks of 87,531 fiction works written between 1850 and 2010. What I found is an “agency gap”… Here's a rundown of my findings: 1/ www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

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Bart Bonikowski

So, while everyone is returning to their corners preparing for the next round of very important Biden discourse, Trump is meeting with Orban who is coming directly from a meeting with Putin. Cool, guys. Very cool.

No matter what Biden does, the circus continues. “Very smart” pundits & Dem pols, this is on you. Your narrative has brought this reality into existence. We’re now in a highly precarious limbo, while a wannabe-fascist who can’t utter a single coherent sentence is sailing on by. Good work, everyone.

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Bart Bonikowski

If Biden said something like this it would spell the end of not only his campaign but his current tenure. It's just one of countless examples of insane gibberish from Trump that the press & Democrats are choosing to treat as an immutable part of the electoral landscape rather than a story or issue.

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Bart Bonikowski

Reply to

Seth Masket

Biden is not owed good press by a long shot. But the amount of coverage his age is receiving relative to that of Trump's very real past and promised future actions strikes me as one of the greatest media mis-prioritizations since the run-up to the Iraq War.

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Bart Bonikowski

Trump said “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” But Project 2025 is run by Trump's closest aides, raising concerns about cognitive fitness for a candidate who seems unable to recall those around him. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/troubling-...

Troubling Signs of Cognitive Decline as Trump Struggles to Recognize Closest Aidesdonmoynihan.substack.com "I know nothing about Project 2025" statement triggers new concerns about his fitness to serve

“[…] the media know how to cover a normal problem like a sub-par candidate; they don’t know how to cover something as abnormal and unprecedented as the end of the Republic. So for the most part they don’t.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Why is the pundit class so desparate to push Biden out of the race? | Rebecca Solnitwww.theguardian.com Yes, Biden had a bad debate – but so did Trump. The media is once again repeating the mistakes of 2016

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Bart Bonikowski

“As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

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Bart Bonikowski

In the exact same nine day period that Biden and his White House and campaign have been flailing, Trump has offered voters a window into his own mental state and vision for term 2 It’s not great! www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

QAnon Memes, F-Bombs, and Tribunals: As Biden Faltered, Trump Amped Up the Crazywww.rollingstone.com Trump quietly had his own week from hell while the media was hounding Biden

Reply to

Laura Clawson

Hi! It’s been a minute!

Reply to

Laura Clawson

Thanks for the kind endorsement, Laura. 🙂

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Bart Bonikowski

The key here is that "very important people" don't seem to be bothered by this. It all is horse-race politics up to this precipice: who is winning, who is losing the day? There is no there there in American political journalism at places like the NY Times. They cannot rise to the occasion.

An aspiring dictator & convicted felon w history of treason may win the presidency. Profoundly corrupt SCOTUS justices undermined the constitution and gave him immunity from prosecution for past & future crimes. This is all political journalists should be writing about 24/7. We’re at the precipice.

Sadly, that’s exactly right.

Reply to

Jesse Baer

I agree that the campaign could have done more. But the narrative was already firmly established. It goes back 5 years and the media were waiting for the right moment to turn up the volume. I continue to believe that a switch would be a terrible idea.

The public is not responding to the debate. They are responding to the irresponsible media coverage of the debate. We are back in “but her emails” territory and there is nothing reasonable people—and actual experts—can do about it. Extraordinarily frustrating and depressing.

*”It is responding”. You get the idea.

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Bart Bonikowski

Hillary headlines in 2015. Don't let the media fool you again. Image Courtesy of angry_staffer.

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Bart Bonikowski

So this is now six public appearances which don’t count

I just watched the medal of honor ceremony they held just now and Biden was fine.

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Bart Bonikowski

A convicted felon is applying for the only job in the world that lets him do as many crimes as he wants.

Leave it to the impartial, apolitical, all-wise judges—appointed for life and purely on merit to a completely non-activist judicial institution—to turn 4th of July into an occasion for national mourning. You ruined hot dogs. And democracy.

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Bart Bonikowski

This Originalist™ court has effectively immunized both the president and all federal law enforcement officers from any meaningful accountability. Because if there are two things the Founders cherished, it's the power of a king-like executive and armed agents of the government to act with impunity.

If you need a break from the dumpster fire of democracy and like me, have kids who have been screaming all week “daddy, play Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso one more tiiiime,” the following may be just the medicine for you: www.them.us/story/sabrin.... @samanthaallen.bsky.social, you made my day.

I Asked a Grammarian to Help Me Unpack “That’s That Me Espresso”www.them.us The nonsense line in Sabrina Carpenter’s summertime bop is open to interpretation.

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Bart Bonikowski

I don't want some egghead bureaucrat telling me whether there's poison in the water I drink. Ideally I'd want that decided by a 29yo judge who went to a "biblical law school" and does not believe dinosaurs existed, and then to have that decision reaffirmed six years later by the Supreme Court.

The commentariat needs to go for a walk and take some deep breaths. The idea of ditching an incumbent president w an astoundingly impressive track record in the midst of a booming economy is preposterous. Focus on the authoritarian felon threatening our democracy. And maybe freak out about SCOTUS. 🙄