What with X turning into a cesspool, and now Meta's properties apparently evolving into playgrounds for MAGA, many people have been turning to BlueSky as their preferred social media platform.

I like BlueSky, and have an account, but I really don't post there for the same reason I was never a big fan of Twitter. It has limitations when compared to Facebook.

For TikTok users, there's also a great alternative. A new social media platform called Fanbase was launched in summer 2024. It's almost a clone of TikTok, but is U.S. -owned, meaning it's free of the national security concerns associated with TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance. They even have a migration tool that will transfer everything in your TikTok account to a Fanbase account.

However, for those of us who prefer the way Facebook functions, minus the ads and data aggregation, there's another alternative which sort of rose up a few years ago, but then disappeared from public awareness. It's called MeWe, and is much more like Facebook than X.

(This originally ran in the New York Times and is republished under Fair Use)

Nov. 24, 2024

By Daniel Chandler
Mr. Chandler is an economist at the London School of Economics.

The election victory by Donald Trump and his Republican Party was a rebuke of a Democratic Party that has positioned itself as protector of a despised status quo, rendering it unable to connect with an electorate desperate for change. Defeating Mr. Trump in the future will require liberals, progressives and others on the left to articulate a positive vision that can capture the imagination of a broad majority of Americans.

But where can they find the inspiration for such a vision?

The answer lies in the work of the towering 20th century political philosopher John Rawls.

Former Trump administration officials:

U.S. vice president

• Mike Pence, U.S. Vice President (2017–2021) under Trump, Governor of Indiana (2013–2017), U.S. Representative from IN-06 (2003–2013), U.S. Representative from IN-02 (2001–2003)

Cabinet-level officials:

• John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor (2018–2019), Ambassador to the United Nations (2005–2006)[3][4]
• Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence (2017–2019), U.S. Senator from Indiana (1989–1999; 2011–2017) (endorsed Mike Pence)[5][6]
• Mark Esper, U.S. Secretary of Defense (2019–2020), U.S. Secretary of the Army (2017–2019)[7][8]
• John F. Kelly, White House Chief of Staff (2017–2019), U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security (2017) (Independent)[9][10]
• H. R. McMaster, U.S. National Security Advisor (2017–2018)[11]
• Only half of Trump's cabinet officials endorse his 2024 campaign.[12][13]

We need to accept an uncomfortable reality. The Taliban WILL take over Afghanistan. That was always the inevitable outcome. A committed insurgency will outlast an occupying force every time. There has never been an instance in history when this wasn't true.

And of course, we all seem to have forgotten that the Taliban evolved from the same Mujahideen who defeated and ousted the mighty Soviet military in the '80s (with aid from the U.S., I might add).

When people say Afghanistan is this generation's Vietnam, it really is an excellent analogy. Just as with Vietnam, we chose to oppose a government we didn't like and install a Vichy-type regime that was friendly to us, but which was inevitably hopelessly corrupt and weak.

That once again we've proven ourselves to be incapable of learning the lessons of history is no one's fault but our own.