Thomas Oatley

Corasaniti-Zondorak Professor of International Politics at Tulane University. Author of A Political Economy of American Hegemony.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@ryankatzrosene So, no?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@picharbonnier Ca va?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@MeganTStevenson No, you're not the only one who thinks this. There are at least two of us.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@dugmartsch @mungowitz @scottlincicome Well, then non-traded goods would then become relatively cheaper.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@WarClandestine The Department of Defense spends 25% of the federal budget and 50% of all discretionary expenditures. No other program that isn't social security even comes close.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@bennyjohnson We spend $900 billion per year on defense. Maybe start there.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@Noahpinion Now do the US.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@JohnHolbein1 Post-tenure Review PTR

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@timburchett Maybe you could try to remember what we fought for (and against).

[Pierre Charbonnier @picharbonnier]

Remarquable article du NYT sur la grande divergence technologique entre les deux grands empires du 21e siècle : les USA et la Chine.

L'empire du pétrole fait face à celui du soleil dans une confrontation qui embarque le reste de l'humanité.

https://t.co/5WNaZgs8A6

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

Now do Christians.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

Now delayed until 7am. No communication. Pretty horrible look for your customer service

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@flynorse I’m stuck at JFK because you delayed my flight from 11:55pm until 5am. What are you able to do?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@AskFlynorseSrvc I’m now stuck in JFK because NO2 is delayed. What can you do for
Me?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@matt_vanswol https://t.co/92aw20CZpC

[Frank C @FrankCMYK]

Oh, @JDVance—
America, take a good look.
This is what a coward looks like in a tailored suit and a borrowed spine.

You were raised in hardship, forged by trauma, and handed a microphone. And somehow, you chose to become the very thing your story once stood against—a mouthpiece for cruelty, a spokesman for white grievance, and a Vice President of the most vindictive regime in modern American history.

Let’s start here:
@JoeBiden ain’t responsible for the hollowed-out husk you’ve become.
You broke yourself.

You wrote a book begging for empathy—for understanding the pain of Appalachia, the wounds of addiction, the complexity of the forgotten white working class.
And now?
You sit one heartbeat from the presidency, parroting fascist talking points and cheering for mass deportations like it’s a halftime show.

You married a woman who’d be targeted under the very policies you now defend.
You’re raising biracial children—yet you align yourself with a party that would erase them for the sake of purity and political theater.
That’s not policy.
That’s cowardice, dressed in flag pins and handed a title.

You talk about immigrants like they’re vermin—like they haven’t built this country with sweat, sacrifice, and the same hope your meemaw once prayed for you.
Your ancestors?
They didn’t build this country with “bare hands.”
They inherited whiteness, and with it, land, loans, and legacy.
And now you stand on that inheritance and pull the ladder up behind you?

You call it patriotism.
But the rest of us know:
It’s just fear.

You say there are “too many” to grant due process—
That the Constitution bends under the weight of brown skin and foreign accents.
You wouldn’t say that about your wife.
You wouldn’t say that about your children.
But you’ll say it about desperate families fleeing wars we helped start—because it plays well in the echo chamber of your ambitions.

This isn’t about law.
You’re not defending America.
You’re defacing it.

Let me speak plainly:
You were once a boy with clarity, a man with promise.
But the Right didn’t just buy your voice.
They bought your silence.
Now you carry water for billionaires, white nationalists, and a president who brags about breaking the law like it’s a sport.

You rage against “smug liberals,” but what you really hate is truth.
Because truth reveals what you are:
A collaborator.
A coward.
A man who wrapped his trauma in a suit and now sells it as state-sanctioned brutality.

And let me say more:

History will remember.
You will not be honored as a patriot.
You will not be celebrated as a statesman.
You will be remembered as the Vice President of a regime that tried to finish the job Jim Crow started.

You looked at your children—your own children—and still chose to sit next to a man who called for mass deportations, prison barges, and constitutional erosion.
All for a title.
All for power.

When the dust clears—because it always does—
when America finally retches up this poison you’ve helped inject into its bloodstream,
your name will be bitter in the mouths of those who survived your policies.

This isn’t leadership.
This is treason in a flag-wrapped podium, wearing the face of a man too broken to love himself—so he breaks everything else.

And the worst part?
You know it.
You’ve always known it.

– Don’t Blink.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@JTLonsdale @Noahpinion And how would we know this without giving due process for all who are deported?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@charliekirk11 It bothers you to learn that educated people reject political parties that support racism,
Fascism, and all forms of stupidity?

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@ryancbriggs @JohnHolbein1 Add networks plus luck you get 75% I’d bet.

[Thomas Oatley @thoatley]

@SpencerHakimian It’s not like it’s a big secret that the US doesn’t manufacture consumer electronics in any appreciable quantity.