Tobias Harris

@tobiasharris.bsky.social

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Japanese politics analyst; author of The Iconoclast: Shinzō Abe and the New Japan; Chicago-born Cubs fan now living in DC; marathoner.

Substack: Observingjapan.substack.com.

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Reply to

Daniel Drezner

Non-zero probability this looks deeply embarrassing one day, more than it already does.

At the Wilford Brimley line and still able to bring the heat, I'm sure. youtube.com/shorts/7ehNT...

Born Oct. 22, 1973, Ichiro Suzuki is 18,530 days old today, matching Wilford Brimley’s age on the day ‘Cocoon’ was released. Congrats Ichiro! You’ve reached the Brimley/Cocoon Line.

48-year-old Ichiro Suzuki throws 94 mph first pitch at Mariners game 😳😳youtube.com 48-year-old Ichiro Suzuki throws 94 mph first pitch at Mariners game 😳😳

If only we could have had two-way player Ichiro.

Reply to

Horkos

KRW doesn't stretch as far these days.

Reply to

Kislevite Socialist Delegation Leader Gigan

Holy shit

Reply to

drow zelensky

Fair enough on Michels's personal trajectory. I guess I believe in a soft form of it (Schumpetrian?). Insider-outsider divides are inescapable, so getting accountability right is imperative.

Reply to

drow zelensky

I'm also a believer in the iron law of oligarchy and ultimately it's about replacing one set of elites with another. The answer to bad experts who have failed isn't getting rid of expertise entirely but getting better experts and ensuring some forms of accountability.

Reply to

Brett Fujioka

I think that's a reasonable equivalent.

Reply to

Paul Nadeau

Apparently not. Just an unbelievable paragraph.

Reposted by

Tobias Harris

Japan's Constitutional Democrats in disarray. My latest: open.substack.com/pub/observin...

Constitutional Democrats in disarrayopen.substack.com The CDP reacts to the Ishimaru shock

Japan's Constitutional Democrats in disarray. My latest: open.substack.com/pub/observin...

Constitutional Democrats in disarrayopen.substack.com The CDP reacts to the Ishimaru shock

Love to start the week with a brimming cup of abject despair.

Thank goodness it's Prime Day this week -- surely a big discount will chase the blues away.

I read this paragraph on the front page of the FT this morning and it made me angry enough to write a letter to the editor. Imagine using the decades after the Civil War as an example of the ability of American democracy to move past violence.

It doesn't even work by its own criteria! Two presidents were assassinated!

Not to mention the, uh, end of civil rights at gunpoint for freed slaves in the South, widespread violent labor unrest and strike breaking, and on and on.

One of the things I like about AOC is that she's not in a defensive crouch. bsky.app/profile/aubr...

She really said, “Retire, bitch.” (The “bitch” isn’t stated but is strongly implied.”

Reply to

Paul Nadeau

I think this nails it. McClellan syndrome indeed. bsky.app/profile/john...

The Democratic party has George McClellan syndrome

I generally avoid cursing on social media but this is the most pathetic shit I've ever seen.

A senior House Democrat says efforts to replace Biden at the top of the ticket have stopped because, “We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency."

Trump rally shooting upends congressional Democrats' crisis over Biden's candidacywww.axios.com Rep. Dean Phillips said it would be "unpatriotic and unprincipled" to focus on anything besides the shooting.

Reply to

Faine Greenwood

So I have no idea if there is anyone on here who had their minds bent when young by reading Robert Anton Wilson, but one of the most memorable things he did in several books was talk about human politics as primate politics and it's always stayed with me.

I read the reviews that said the last two hundred pages of "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" are interminable, and wow, they weren't kidding.

Trying to do something useful and writing postcards to Michiganders.

www.turnoutpac.org

Progressive Turnout Projectwww.turnoutpac.org Our mission: Rally Democrats to vote. Progressive Turnout Project is the largest voter contact organization in the country.

Reply to

Nate Ledbetter

Yeah, it's that "significant amount of violence" that gets me down.

Reply to

Nate Ledbetter

I mean, it's been a while since I studied Hobbes, but if I recall correctly, this was his fundamental problem. And the Leviathan has to impose epistemic order as well as more "kinetic" order.

I've found myself thinking about 17th-century England a lot lately, as surely it ranks high on the list of most polarized polities and yet somehow managed to build a stable liberal order on the other side of it.

Reply to

Nate Ledbetter

At a certain point, the question becomes not how do you have democracy in the absence of shared reality but how do you have any political order?

Reply to

Nate Ledbetter

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's "Fall" and his near-future America characterized by epistemic balkanization barely feels like fiction.

@jeremyyellen.bsky.social, time for a revised edition of your book.

on twitter theres a guy who believes Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was about protecting the gender binary from douglas macarthur (a trans woman) same guy behind like half of all the insane transvestigations that go viral like he did jeremy white, rachel weiss, tswift, the statue of liberty