Alex Perkins

My Twitter interests (in descending order) are foreign policy, the Minnesota Vikings/Twins, architecture, painting, travel, and woodworking.

[Joel Berry @JoelWBerry]

I still can't get over how good this is. Conservatives have always stuck with the "It doesn't work" argument against Leftism while pointing to their charts and graphs, hoping people will follow along.

But THIS is the argument to make. 👇Leftism is ugly. It's repulsive. It's disgusting. It's lame. It's immoral. It's boring. It's depressing.

This isn't a fight between two competing economic models, one of which happens to work better. This is a fight between beauty and ugliness. Building and destruction. Thankfulness and resentment. Love and hate. Greatness and cowardice. Good and evil.

[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

@carney I’m fond of reminding people that Handmaids Tale was forced reading in the 9th grade for me at my public high school, and had no “counterbalancing” novel like Children of Men to compete with that worldview.

The kids are not alright.

[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

The mainstream left largely looks at how Canada is today and says “I’ll take two!”

Not everything about Canada is “bad”, but it’s a fundamentally different vision for America that (IMO) flattens out the exceptionalism of what makes America great.

[Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630]

Never forget what the mainstream-left take on immigration, for good or ill, actually is.

[Roy🇨🇦 @GrandpaRoy2]

If the brilliant Mykhailo Fedorov is sacrificed to protect entrenched corruption just as he’s gaining momentum as Ukraine’s first truly effective Minister of Defense, I don’t know whether I’ll still have the heart to keep supporting Ukraine.
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[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

This is the best and most comprehensive take for why I find the Democrats unpalatable.

[Swann Marcus @SwannMarcus89]

Let me give you major issues that hurt the Democrats

1. Anti-law enforcement progressive attitudes. This is incredibly toxic among men and the working class. The Democrats have lost multiple swing state elections entirely because they said stupid shit about cops in 2020. They might wind up losing Michigan over the same issue this year because El-Sayed gets extremely crotchety when questioned about his comments on this issue and doesn't seem capable of answering questions on law enforcement in a satisfactory manner. Not only are men generally pretty supportive of law and order (not to sound too chauvinistic, but I think this is partly due to men actually having a better understanding of the omnipresent risk of male violence than women have, since we see the threat from the inside), but a lot of men are - get this - employed in law enforcement, meaning in addition to progressives having bad crime policy, they are actively threatening high-paying male jobs. Which segues nicely into issue number 2.

2. Anti-productivity ideology, which actively costs men employment. The left-wing of the Democratic Party in particular is entirely about redistribution and is actively opposed to work. A strong majority of men and non-college voters don't like lazy douchebags who treat working an office job like hell on Earth. On top of that, the Democratic anti-productivity beliefs (they're much more NIMBY, much more anti-mining, much more anti-productivity of every sort) specifically costs men and the working class jobs. Why should a construction worker ever vote Democratic when the Democrats oppose letting anyone build anything anywhere? Why should someone who works in energy vote Democratic when the Democrats are increasingly opposed to all forms of energy production, since they're anti-oil and anti-nuclear and are also opposed to the mines we need to build solar panels and wind turbines?

As they've moved left, the Democrats have become increasingly hostile (often for no discernible reason) to specifically non-college male forms of employment and then they're shocked that specific demographic hates them

3. Inflation/unaffordability. Stemming from the above, the more progressive an area is the less a working person who doesn't have a trust fund can afford to live there. Even if a poor person voted Democratic at one time, I absolutely believe the Democrats lose voters because when someone moves from California to a far more affordable red state they suddenly look around and think "holy shit, why did the place I left suck so hard?" I honestly think this is part of why when people leave blue for red states, they generally don't make the red state more liberal. Tennessee's boomed for 20 years and has just gotten more conservative. If you move to suburban Nashville from the West Coast why would you ever choose to vote for the stagnation and unaffordability of the place you left?

All of these issues have gotten worse as the Democrats have moved left and that's why they have hemorrhaged working class and male support. It has nothing to do with Democrats not giving off manly vibes or being insufficiently hostile to trans people, you out-of-touch partisan dorks

[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

I've seen enough! We must protect our neighbors desire to join the United States. Land bridge to Alaska! We will call it 'Novoamerica'!

[Napoleon Bonaparte Appreciator @NapoleonBonabot]

This is why the US must create Greater Alaska and welcome Alberta and Saskatchewan into the Union

[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

This is genuinely the most emotional I have ever heard Donald Trump

[Michael Tracey @mtracey]

Never heard Trump almost seem to choke up before

[C3 @C_3C_3]

Lindsey Graham was in Congress for 31 years…

His net worth was ranked 293 out of 535 members of Congress.

Around $1.5-$2 million.

He apparently did not rip off Americans or insider trade to enrich himself.

Interesting.

[Lyndsey Fifield @lyndseyfifield]

Thinking about how absolutely vile many of you have been to Lindsey Graham during his life—and will continue to be in his death.

Few realize he became an orphan and raised his young sister while he was in college—the first of his family to earn higher education.

He was a good, brilliant, self-deprecating man with consistent principles who leaves a legacy of tirelessly working for the people of South Carolina. Praying for Darline—the sister he raised—and all who loved him.

[Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky]

So far the Bluesky response to my NYT op Ed has been:
1) Lyman has bad tweets
2) cancel Lyman
3) it’s good birth rates are falling
4) nobody should have kids

Notably missing as a response:

Any evidence my thesis is wrong.

[Nature Is Nonpartisan @NINP_org]

There are 2.4 million acres in central Idaho with no roads in or out.

The Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness is the largest contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48. It's bigger than Yellowstone and Grand Teton combined.

The only way in is on foot, horseback, boat, or small plane.

In the middle of it is the Salmon River, which carves a canyon deeper than the Grand Canyon. The name comes from early boatmen who could ride the current down, but couldn't fight it back upstream.

The Middle Fork has around 100 rapids in 100 miles. Natural hot springs sit along the riverbanks. Native cutthroat trout still swim in it, and they’re healthy enough that anglers travel from around the world to fish them.

More than 2,500 miles of trails run through the wilderness. Elk, wolverines, black bears, mountain lions, and wolves all still move through the land the way they always have.

In 1995, it became one of the first places in the country where wolves were reintroduced.

Most Americans will never set foot here.

Many don’t even know it exists. That doesn't make it any less worth keeping wild.

[Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky]

Yes, Social Security and Medicare are welfare.

[Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky]

Honestly yes.

A big part of the success of Red states generally is they have chosen to pay for public services using sales and property taxes instead of income, corporate, or other damaging taxes.

[Alex Perkins @ajperkins92]

@DastDn See also Joe Kent vs Jamie Hererra-Beutler ...

[Batya Ungar-Sargon @bungarsargon]

"Israel did genocide in Gaza" is the Dems' new "pass go, collect $200," just as the now-reviled "Defund the Police" once was, or land acknowledgments, or climate extremism in their day. It's so naked and repulsive but also so totally stupid and ridiculous.

[steven MAYHEM @steventargaryen]

none of this would be filmed on location today. the massive cave set they built would be green screened. pirates is movie magic at its best.

[Ari Lamm @AriLamm]

I see what @tylercowen is getting at. If you want info *about* the Bible, AI already outperforms at some margin (speed, if nothing else).

But in an equally important sense he's also wrong, and there's an easy way to see this. Just ask the AI what, say, David's story *means*. 🧵

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

🇺🇸 James Longstreet’s wife, Helen Dortch Longstreet, helped build B-29 Superfortresses in WWII as a Rosy the Riveter.

She was 80 years old.

And she never missed a day of work.

LIFE Magazine actually photographed her. This is one of their photos.

Her husband was the commander who oversaw Pickett’s Charge. She helped build the type of machine that dropped the first atomic bomb.

Wild.

[Liam @LegoRacers2]

Girlfriends have pretended to be interested in your map games for nearly 400 years

[Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky]

But it genuinely isn’t true.

As much as I detest much of the far right, I actually do have more in common with them. We attend similar churches. We raise our kids in broadly similar ways. We don’t murder infants or elders for being inconvenient.

I truly *wish* I had more common ground with the center left! In many low-stakes ways, I do! I like educated, highbrow culture; I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anti-science nut; I believe in the project of liberty and democracy.

But you don’t have to go very far left at all before you encounter views for which I would excommunicate someone from my church, so central to human dignity that there just is no use pretending like any joined hands are anything but tactical alliances on particular issues where we happen to have convergence. At the level of deep civilizational projects, *unfortunately* the center right does *not* have much in common with the center left. Mores the pity.