Friday, February 27, 2026

Loose Tabs
Shortly after I posted this on Friday night, Trump (and Israel) launched a wave of attacks against Iran, aimed at decapitating the Islamic regime (at least it appears successful in killing long-ruling Ayatollah Ali Khamineh). Franklin Roosevelt called Japan's surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor a "day of infamy." I used that same phrase to describe GW Bush's opening salvo of "shock and awe" on Baghdad in 2003. While I don't know the dimensions of Trump's attack — it was clearly larger than several similar attacks Trump had already made, but one could argue that the "war" actually started somewhere back — one would not be amiss to reckon this another "day of infamy." Whether this fizzles out in some sort of face-saving agreement, or escalates into WWIII, remains to be seen. That Trump and Netanyahu have blindly thrust us into a new state of the world is undeniable. The things we should be absolutely clear on are: the "crisis" that precipitated this action was totally fabricated, the result of Israel hyping Iran as some kind of supreme existential enemy, for no reason beyond their desire to provide cover for their ongoing displacement of the Palestinian people; that the US has gone along with demonizing Iran because the CIA installation of the Shah in 1953 and the subsequent support of the Shah's terror campaign against his people is something Americans have never acknowledged and made any sort of amends for; and that several generations of American politicians, including Biden and Trump, have allowed themselves to be manipulated and dictated to by Israelis, Netanyahu in particular. There was never any need to go to war with Iran, and even a week ago an agreement could have been negotiated, at least had the US shown any decent respect for the Iranian regime and people.

After rushing this out, I realized that I had left an earlier date in place, so I should at least fix that. This came out on the 27th, not the 24th. I also meant to add the Table of Contents, so that's here now. Beyond that, the only thing I've added was a note to the latest Jeffrey St Clair "Roaming Charges," which includes some useful anticipation of the attack. I haven't had time or stomach to survey the more recent news — literally, as I've come down with something that makes work impossible as well as undesirable. I also missed squeezing in a final February Music Week (although I still could post-date one), or putting up anything on my Substack in February.

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 34 days ago, on January 24.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

Table of Contents:

Topical Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Last time: Thanksgiving; Epsteinmania; Zohran Mamdani; ICE Stories; Venezuela; Iran; Jerome Powell.

We're probably not done with all of these (certainly not ICE, although I've moved them into a new regular section I'm calling Trump Goes to War (Domestic Edition)).

Epsteinmania: After numerous delays, the Department of Justice finally released a "large cache" of documents and media related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein: this one an overwhelming dump of 3 million pages and 180,000 images.

Melania: The movie Jeff Bezos spent $75 million on to flatter the Trumps. This is, of course, a lightning rod for critical ridicule — which, sure, is a big part of why I'm reporting on it at all. Given the subject and circumstances, I'm not surprised that at Rotten Tomatoes the average of scores given by recognized critics is 8% (50 reviews). It's likely that most film critics are anti-Trump to start with, but even if there is a bit of selection bias, that's a pretty low score, suggesting that the film isn't very good, at least by common critical standards. (The sample size is pretty decent: it may be slightly inflated by critics out to slam Trump, but not much. Moreover, one shoudn't assume that anti-Trump means anti-Melania, as a lot of people like to think that Melania is secretly anti-Trump too.) What's much more suspect is that the viewer ratings appear to be ecstatic at 99% (1000+ verified ratings), for a largest-ever discrepancy between the ratings of 91 points. I don't know how to prove this, but intuitively the self-selection bias here must be huge. Who, after all, would buy a ticket to this particular movie? No one I know, except perhaps to write a nasty review, and those people would show up in the critics column. But I find it hard to understand how anyone would pay money to see Melania. It's not unusual for right-wingers to mass-purchase books to plant them on the New York Times bestseller list. Same thing could be happening here. Indeed 1000 tickets for party operatives promising to follow up on Rotten Tomatoes would be a drop in the Bezos bucket.

The Washington Post:

Super Bowl LX: For the first time in several decades, I watched (and mostly enjoyed) the game, was perplexed by the half-time show, and suffered through enough commercials to fill a new screed like Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, but no time for that now.

  • Marissa Martinez [02-06]: Bad Bunny is taking over the US. Does he want Puerto Rico to leave it?

  • Sean Illing [02-07]: Enjoy the Super Bowl while you can. Football won't last forever: "The sport feels unstoppable — yet also doomed." Interview with Chuck Klosterman.

  • Izzie Ramirez [02-08]: Bad Bunny's knockout halftime show, explained by a Puerto Rican: "All of the cultural Easter eggs you might have missed."

  • Ophell Garcia-Lawler [02-09]: How Bad Bunny shut down his haters at Super Bowl.

  • Cruz Bonlarron Martínez [02-09]: Bad Bunny's Super Bowl show was political art at its best.

  • Alfred Soto [02-09]: The boricua quotidian: Bad Bunny.

    When MAGA has to coax a barely functional Kid Rock into alternative Superbowl programming, then you know Bunny is lucky to have such feeble adversaries. The show itself? Wobbly at first. Bunny looked like he'd realized several hundred million spectators were learning about him. Then, as he played subject and object for a staged recreation of life in a blighted U.S. territory, his confidence swelled; the recent tracks that nodded towards the boricua quotidian gained resonance. Pedro Pascal and Gaga came across as eager fellow travelers. Past and future Billboard chart toppers Ricky Martin and Cardi B served as reminders of the scope of Puerto Rican popular music. "I appreciate Bad Bunny for bringing the Telemundo Saturday afternoon variety show ethos (dancers, inapt sets, let's-try-this attitude) to global TV," I wrote on Bluesky. The dancers, for many watchers the show's kitschiest part, come straight from the twilight zone that is Spanish language television on a weekend at 4 p.m. Hell yeah. The last two minutes played as much as an elegy to an endangered hemispheric comity as an Epcot parade.

  • Josh Fiallo [02-09]: Kid Rock's lip-synced halftime show brings MAGA pundit to tears.

  • Constance Grady [02-10]: Woke isn't dead. Bad Bunny's halftime show proved it. "Maybe the right didn't capture the culture as much as they thought."

  • Addy Bink [02-08]: Trump calls out this 'sissy' NFL rule a lot. Why? I hadn't watched football for decades, but had little trouble following the game. I didn't notice anything on the initial kickoff, except that the the ball was spotted on the 35-yard-line after the end-zone touchback. I looked up this one after Trump complained about the "sissy" rule. Seems OK to me, but some assholes are primed to complain about anything. Kickoff returns always seemed like a randomizing function to me: a possible (but unlikely) lucky break as opposed to the usual methodical grind. In addition to reducing injuries, it also seems likely that the rule reduces flags away from the play, and good riddance to them.

  • Aaron Ross Coleman [02-13]: The only solution capitalism has is to sell us more useless junk: "Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions." I've long regarded advertising as one of the fundamental sins of modern life, and I've worked hard to arrange my life so I hardly ever have to face it. So I was far from prepared to watch the Super Bowl, in real time, with full state-of-the-art ads. I was overwhelmed, so I've been hoping to find some clear analysis. This barely glances the surface, but does suggest an explanation for the how hard I found it to figure out who's selling what: if the selling is always implicit, perhaps the best you can do is to just lodge an indelible image. Over the course of the show, I probably recognized 50+ actors in cameo bits, paid just to register their faces in some context. Beyond that, there were dozens (maybe hundreds) of pop culture references, many of which I couldn't pin down. It would take a whole new volume of Cultural Literacy to decipher all the references advertisers assume we know (or perhaps just hope we recognize).

The DHS shutdown: Funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, ended on February 14, causing a "shutdown" of the Department (which doesn't seem to include ICE). As of Feb. 24, the shutdown remain in effect. Seems like this should have been a bigger story, but I've seen very little mention of it (at least that I care to include here). It doesn't even seem to have its own Wikipedia article, although some basic info is available under 2026 United States federal government shutdowns.

The Supreme Court rules on tariffs: Or some of them, some of the time, using some definition of "ruling." The days of the Court doing us favors by clarifying the rule of law seems to be long past.

  • Cameron Peters [02-20]: Trump's tariff defeat, briefly explained.

  • Elie Honig [02-20]: Trump's tariff fantasy just exploded.

  • Ian Millhiser [02-20]: Why a Republican Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs: "Trump loses, and the Democratic justices didn't need to concede anything." In particular, the Democratic justices didn't endorse the "major questions" doctrine that Roberts tried invoking, pace Honig above.

  • Eric Levitz [02-20]: The Supreme Court's tariff decision could save you $1,000: "The Court just did Trump a huge favor. Will he take it?" The assumption is that everyone but Trump understands that tariffs are bad, so the Court ruling is saving Trump from self-harm. But it's possible that Trump's focus was always more about enhancing presidential power than anything economic. That's certainly why he's fighting the ruling. Moreover, the whole refund angle is a mess, not least because you can't roll back every consequence of the tariff decision.

  • Greg Sargent [02-20]: Trump's epic loss on tariffs is even worse for him than you think: "The Supreme Court's stunning invalidation of most of the president's tariffs is another sign that Trumpist populist nationalism is in crisis." That's not my take at all. It reduces a bit of the drag that tariffs are taking on the economy, while creating a messy problem of restitution that isn't likely to be handled at all well. (Personally, while I agree that Trump abused the law in implementing his tariffs, I'd write the losses off, except for purposes of blaming Trump.) But more importantly, it gives Trump an excuse for his failed policies, and turns the Supreme Court back into part of the deep state swamp conspiracy that is dead set on stopping Trump from saving the nation. That's a political argument he can, and will, run with. My main hope here is that by stressing the nefariously political nature of the Court, it bites him back.

  • Joshua Keating [02-20]: The Supreme Court just blew up Trump's foreign policy: "How will Trump get countries to do what he wants without tariffs?" Trump has regularly threatened countries to tariffs, demanding "policy concessions on a host of issues that often had little to do with trade." Tariffs were his "big stick," and pretty much the only tool he had, since "soft power" and good will were beneath him.

  • Karthik Sankaran [02-20]: Why SCOTUS won't deter Trump's desire to weaponize trade: "Today's Supreme Court decision only closes one avenue for the president to unilaterally impose tariffs."

  • Harold Meyerson [02-23]: Trump's tariffs weren't really about trade policy: "They were about his nostalgia, his ego, his bigotry, and his greed." Sure, but more than all that, he discovered in them a source of instant presidential power, which he could use for its own sake, as well as to shake down bribes.

  • David Sirota [02-23]: On tariffs, Neil Gorsuch is hardly apolitical.

  • Matt Ford [02-24]: Clarence Thomas has lost the plot: "The associate justice's dissent in the tariffs case deserves some extra attention, because it is hopelessly uncoupled from law, history, and the Constitution."

  • Elie Mystal [02-24]: The giant mess behind the Supreme Court's tariffs ruling: "The 6-3 decision was a rare victory, but it was crafted out of conflicts that leave almost nothing certain — including future tariff rulings."

Threatening/Attacking Iran: As has been standard policy since 1991 — for how and why this happened see Trita Parsi's book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007) — Israel is once again pushing the US into war with Iran. Reminds me of the Iraq War-era quip about how "real men go to Tehran."

  • Joshua Keating [02-19]: It really looks like we're about to bomb Iran again.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [02-19]: Military tankers for Iran attack deploying near Iraq War levels: "'Strikes could occur any time now,' say experts who explain what id-air refuelers mean for sustained operations."

  • Nick Turse [02-19]: Trump menaces Iran with massive armada capable of prolonged war: "The amount of military forces gathering near Iran dwarfs even the monthslong build-up before the US coup in Venezuela."

  • Trita Parsi [02-20]: No, even a 'small attack' on Iran will lead to war: "The deal Trump wants is a no-go for Tehran, which is resigned to retaliating if bombed again, limited or otherwise."

  • Ryan Grim/Jeremy Scahill/Murtaza Hussain

    • [02-20]: Trump privately dreams of Iran regime change glory as Democrats cynically weigh political benefits of war: "Trump says he wants to be the president who takes down the Islamic Republic. Democratic leaders see him walking into a political trap of his own making ahead of the midterms."

    • [02-23]: Iranian officials to Drop Site: Tehran is showing "unbelievable level of flexibility" in talks to prevent US war: "Iran understand it is dealing with an erratic US president, but its negotiators still believe they can thread the needle with Trump." Two probably unsurmountable problems with a possible deal: Trump cannot be trusted to honor even his own deal; and Israel still has effective veto over any deal (even if they give in for the moment, they know they can kill it later).

  • Eldar Mamedov [02-21]: Why Arab states are terrified of US war with Iran: "They see the military build-up and now that bombing and regime change can have consequences, especially geopolitical ones." Especially because they are much more vulnerable to Iranian reprisals than Israel or the US is.

  • Chris Hedges [02-21]: The suicidal folly of a war with Iran: While I agree that attacking Iran would be complete and uttery folly, I don't quite buy the word "suicidal." It's folly because the only way to achieve the stated goals is to get Iran to agree to something satisfactory, which probably means the US has to give up some points that don't really hurt and may even be for the better. And there's no real scenario where bombing Iran gets one closer to such an agreement. Indeed, the more you attack Iran, the more insistent you are on dictating a change of government and power, the more resistant you are to treating Iran with any degree of respect, the harder negotiation becomes. Given all the effort the US and Israel have already put into backing Iran into a corner from which they can only lash out in spite, it's remarkable how level-headed their leaders have remained. And that's why another attack doesn't seem likely to be provoke Iran into a response which inflicts serious harm on its attackers. It's not really clear how much harm Iran could inflict, but it's not something that should be dismissed out of hand. US bases and ships in the region are vulnerable, as is a lot of US-friendly oil infrastructure (and the latter is pretty conspicuously vulnerable, as is any shipping going through the Straits of Hormuz). And while Iran has consistently denied any desire to develop let alone use nuclear weapons, it's pretty widely agreed that they could if they wanted to. That mere fact should act as a powerful deterrent, but the US seems determined to push Iran into a corner where they have no other option. A sufficiently large attack could tip that balance. Also, while Iran's leaders clearly want to avoid provoking the US into a massive attack — that's probably why their responses to previous attacks have been muted and advertised — at some point the leaders may decide that their own survival matters more than their people, and risk the latter to save their own skins. (Iraq, Syria, and Libya offer recent examples of regimes that turned on their own people rather than giving up power.) So while the assumption so far has been that Iran's leadership is too responsible to respond to attacks irrationally, is that really something the US wants to depend on in the future? And if it is a dependable assumption, why all the fearmongering about a useless Iranian nuke?

  • James A Russell [02-22]: All aboard America's strategic blunder train. Next stop: Iran: "Our stumbling into war with Tehran would be the latest in a self-inflicted 30-year road to nowhere."

  • Dave DeCamp:

  • Sajjad Safaei [02-23]: What if today's Iran is resigned to a long, hellish war with the US? "Tehran learned from the June attack and its comparative advantage now is to drag Washington into a protracted regional conflict."

  • Sina Azodi [02-24]: History tells us coercion through airpower alone won't work: "Donald Trump won't commit troops because he knows it would hurt him politically. But that's what it would take if he wants Iran to capitulate." Iraq and Afghanistan are examples where air power alone failed, and ground troops were needed to seize the capitals. Whether ground troops worked is arguable: temporarily perhaps, but the US struggled to remain in control, and ultimately lost. The Nazi Blitz of England in 1940-45 and the US bombing of North Vietnam are also examples of air power failing to win. Still, Iran is roughly three times the size and population of Iraq. And while the regime has been weakened by sanctions, there is no reason to believe that the legacy of supporting the Shah, imposing sanctions, and sporadic attacks and subversion has made many Iranians long for a US-imposed, Israeli-directed puppet regime. Maybe Lindsey Graham still thinks that "real men go to Tehran," but I doubt that Trump could line up anyone in the actual Army leadership to sign up for a ground invasion. Even in Venezuela, they made no effort to occupy anything: that was just a snatch and grab operation, leaving the old system in place and hoping they can extort some slightly better deals. I could see Trump thinking he'd like to do something like that, but it's going to be much harder, for lots of reasons. The thing is, he could have cut a deal with Iran (and for that matter with Venezuela) if he only showed them some respect and allowed them to settle differences with dignity. He didn't do that, because he wants to show the world he's really a leg-breaking mobster, someone who can reduce his enemies to ash and dictate terms. The world doesn't work like that. (Although Netanyahu also thinks it does, and with America backstopping his every move and funding his perpetual war machine, he's been able to get away with it so far.)

  • Blaise Malley [02-25]: Who are the Dems giving tacit green light to Iran attack and why? Schumer and Jeffries, for instance.

  • Ori Goldberg [02-26]: Israel's lonely push for war with Iran: "Internationally isolated, restrained in Gaza, and unraveling at home, Israel sees another escalation as the only way to maintain its aggressive regional agenda." Iran doesn't want war with the US. Neither do the great majority of Americans. The only one who wants this war is Israel: they need an enemy to justify their permanent war machine (which provides cover for their continued usurpation of the West Bank), they fear that their right-wing political order will collapse without continued war, and they believe that trapping the US in conflict with Iran will keep American support coming.

Shortly after I posted this, Trump and Netanyahu unleashed a major bombing attack on Iran. I added a bit up top on this, and added a Jeffrey St Clair link below. I wasn't planning on searching for more, but a few early pieces came up anyway (I needed to update this on 03-03 because I missed a link, and wound up adding a couple more pieces; obviously, there is much more I am missing):

  • Richard Silverstein [02-28]: Iran: Trump's war of annihilation: One key point here, not widely reported elsewhere, is that Ayatollah Khamenei "reportedly prepares leadership plan if killed."

  • Al Jazeera [03-02]: Rubio suggests US strikes on Iran were influenced by Israeli plans: This makes it pretty clear that Israel is directing US foreign policy:

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested that a planned Israeli attack on Iran determined the timing of Washington's assault on the government in Tehran.

    The top diplomat told reporters on Monday that Washington was aware Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Tehran would retaliate against US interests in the region, so US forces struck pre-emptively.

    "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action," Rubio said after a briefing with congressional leaders.

    "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties."

  • Michael Hudson [03-02]: The US/Israeli attack was to prevent peace, not advance it.

  • Jonathan Larsen [03-02]: US troops were told Iran War is for "Armageddon," return of Jesus: "Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military." This story is also reported by:

  • Trita Parsi [03-01]: Some observations and comments on Trump and Israel's war on Iran: I scraped this off Facebook, so might best just quote it here:

    1. Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June - it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months.

    2. For a ceasefire to be acceptable, it appears difficult for Tehran to agree to it until the cost to the US has become much higher than it currently is. Otherwise, the US will restart the war at a later point, the calculation reads.

    3. Accordingly, Iran has shifted its strategy. It is striking Israel, but very differently from the June war. There is a constant level of attack throughout the day rather than a salvo of 50 missiles at once. Damage will be less, but that isn't a problem because Tehran has concluded that Israel's pain tolerance is very high - as long as the US stays in the war. So the focus shifts to the US.

    4. From the outset, and perhaps surprisingly, Iran has been targeting US bases in the region, including against friendly states. Tehran calculates that the war can only end durably if the cost for the US rises dramatically, including American casualties. After the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran says it has no red lines left and will go all out in seeking the destruction of these bases and high American casualties.

    5. Iran understands that many in the American security establishment had been convinced that Iran's past restraint reflected weakness and an inability or unwillingness to face the US in a direct war. Tehran is now doing everything it can to demonstrate the opposite - despite the massive cost it itself will pay. Ironically, the assassination of Khamenei facilitated this shift.

    6. One aspect of this is that Iran has now also struck bases in Cyprus, which have been used for attacks against Iran. Iran is well aware that this is an attack on a EU state. But that seems to be the point. Tehran appears intent on not only expanding the war into Persian Gulf states but also into Europe. Note the attack on the French base in the UAE. For the war to be able to end, Europe too has to pay a cost, the reasoning appears to be.

    7. There appears to be only limited concern about the internal situation. The announcement of Khamenei's death opened a window for people to pour onto the streets and seek to overthrow the regime. Though expressions of joy were widespread, no real mobilization was seen. That window is now closing, as the theocratic system closes ranks and establishes new formal leadership.

  • Vijay Prashad [03-03]: A war that cannot be won: Israel and the United States bomb Iran: Of course, I agree with this conclusion, but that's largely because I subscribe to the broader assertion, that no war can ever be won. The best you can do is to lose a bit less than the other guys, but that does little to redeem your losses. I think this is true even when you downgrade your ambitions: instead of regime destruction and regeneration, which happened in Germany and Japan after WWII, or the occupation and propping up of quisling governments that the US attempted in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump seems to have adopted Israel's Gaza model which is that of periodically "mowing the grass," hitting Iran repeatedly in a forever war that ultimately points toward genocide.

Trump's State of the Union speech: The Constitutionally-mandated annual speech is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 24. That's approximately when I hoped to post this, so the section starts with speculation, including much Trump is unlikely to say anything honest about, and will be added to if need be.

  • Michael Tomasky [02-23]: The real state of the union: millions of Americans are just disgusted: "Yes, we're angry about what Donald Trump is doing to our country. But even more than that, we're heartsick over the countless ways in which he is destroying this nation."

  • Jeet Heer [02-24]: The state of the union will be even worse than Trump's polling numbers: "What's a flopping demagogue to do?"

  • John Nichols [02-24]: Summer Lee knows the real state of the union: "The progressive representative from Pennsylvania will speak truth to Trump's power tonight." I gather the Democrats' "official" state of the union response will be from centrist Abigail Spanberger, but this one should be more interesting.

  • Alex Galbraith:

    • [02-24]: "These people are crazy": Trump uses State of the Union to attack Democrats, SCOTUS. "I'm not sure this word is the dagger to the heart Trump thinks it is. It's rather like "weird," in that it not only attacks one party, it also shows the attacker to be an elitist, thin-skinned and super judgmental, a prig. I think that Walz calling Trump (and his supporters) "weird" backfired, for many reasons, including that it made Trump look like a possible alternative to a system that was being choked by the dictums of what respectable politicians can say. I doubt Democrats will try to play this by embracing the charge, but one can at least look askance at who's making the charge.

    • [02-24]: "Is the president working for you?": Spanberger hammers Trump on affordability. While Trump mocks them, Democrats have finally found a word which consolidates inflation, debt, wages, and costs into a single concept that better fits one's lived experience. The following is a useful primer:

      • Dylan Gyauch-Lewis [02-11]: What is affordability? "It's more than just prices." It's also more complicated, but perhaps not complicated enough. It's hard to factor in increasing precarity, partly because it strikes so hard in individual but rather random cases. Also the sense of powerlessness more and more people are feeling (because those in power are always pressing their advantages: that alone is enough for a "vibecession"). Quality also factors into affordability: while tech is generally improving, the transition is rarely smooth, creating losers as well as unintended consequences; on the other hand, business is always looking to cut corners, and shirking on quality is one way to do that.

  • Zack Beauchamp [02-24]: The most important line from Trump's State of the Union.

    It came during a discussion of the SAVE Act, a Republican bill designed to combat the fictitious scourge of noncitizen voting. Democrats, Trump claimed, only opposed the bill because "they want to cheat." And then he took it much further.

    "Their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat," Trump said on Tuesday night. "We're going to stop it. We have to stop it."

    Think about that for a second. This is the president of the United States, speaking to the country in a ritualized national address, claiming that the opposition party is not only wrong on policy but fundamentally illegitimate, so much so that if they win an election it must be because they cheated.

    Taken literally, that is the president announcing that the stated policy of his administration is preventing the opposition from winning any future election.

    Of course, the odd thing here is that most of the actual instances we can think of where a party tries to rig elections for their own advantage occur on the right-wing side: today's Republicans, or for white Democrats during the Jim Crow era. The purpose of the SAVE Act is to make it harder for poor people to vote. What Trump really wants is a system where Democrats can never win an election, no matter how unpopular Republican policies are. That's because, well:

    But Trump doesn't see Democrats as opponents. He sees them as enemies. . . . And indeed, this was how Trump talked about Democrats in the State of the Union.

    "These people are crazy. I'm telling you, they're crazy. Boy, we're lucky we have a country with people like this," he said. "Democrats are destroying our country, but we've stopped it, just in the nick of time."

    Beauchamp relates this to Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt, but the Nazis studied America's Jim Crow laws for precedents. It's tiring to have to keep talking about democratic principles, but that's the line Republicans insist on drawing. The problem for Democrats is not that they lack moral high ground, but that a great many Americans simply dismiss the notion of moral high ground (except inasmuch as they claim it themselves, ideally as a grant from God), but also the principle allows for either side to win, and leaves it to the people to decide which. In defending that principle, which the other side flat-out rejects, Democrats tend to undermine what should be their real mission, which is to show that it is the Republicans who are the enemies not just of the political system but of the people the system is supposed to represent.

  • Ed Kilgore [02-25]: Trump's State of the Union was a bloated awards show. Much discussion before the speech about Trump's record low approval numbers, and how he desperately needs to turn a corner. No one seems to think that he did with this particular speech. Kilgore thinks it at least "thrilled his base," even if it convinced or much impressed anyone else. I'm left with two thoughts: that for someone who claims to love America, he sure hates an awful lot of actual Americans; yet he seems to sincerely believe in not just the righteousness but the inevitable success of his program. As Kilgore put it: "It appears he will go into difficult midterm elections standing pat on his record, his message, and his unshakable belief in his own greatness." I'm not really sure how Trump could rig the 2026 (and 2028) elections, but as long as he thinks he's winning, he's unlikely to try (at least beyond his habitual complaining about mail-in ballots, voter id, etc.).

  • Meagan Day [02-25]: Pay close attention to Trump's affordability rhetoric: "Donald Trump's State of the Union was mostly lies and grievances. But his aggressive play for economic populism — borrowing progressive ideas and branding them as his own — should be a warning for Democrats to get serious about affordability."

  • Paul Heideman [02-25]: Donald Trump is staying the course: "Donald Trump's inane self-aggrandizement made listening to his State of the Union speech an exercise in endurance. It was also a reminder of how lucky the nation is that Trump's pathologies prevent him from more ably seizing his historical moment."

  • Christian Paz [02-26]: How Democrats reorganized their State of the Union resistance: "The Democrats tried something new to rebut Trump's address." Aside from the "official" response by Abigail Spanbarger, there were others, plus two counter-programming events, one dubbed the "People's State of the Union," the other the "State of the Swamp."

  • Alec Hernandez/Dasha Burns [02-26]: The SOTU moment that Republicans hope saves the midterms: "Americans have soured on the White House immigration enforcement tactics, but the president's speech has the GOP strategizing on how to regain momentum on a favorite issue." Their initial is this 30-second ad, which shows Trump saying: "If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens." It then shows Republicans applauding en masse, and pans to various Democrats who look bored out of their minds. Given Trump's lackadaisical delivery, buried deep within a speech that rambled on for nearly two hours, who wouldn't be bored? Even had they been hanging on every word, Trump's challenge scarcely makes any sense — if you asked me, I'd say that the first job is to ensure equal justice for all, which no one would say ICE is doing. (Then I'd add a few more things, like regulating the economy, protecting the environment, and making war unthinkable. Granted, do those things and American citizens would be safer — most likely "illegal aliens" would neither be illegal nor aliens.) Trump then points to the Democrats, and says "These people are crazy." Really sick burn.

  • Harold Meyerson [02-26]: The SOTU clips that should prove disastrous for Trump and the GOP: "Democrats should stream and broadcast the president's odes to our economy over and over again." Jimmy Kimmel's 60-second edit gives you a taste, but jumps around too much.

  • Corey Robin [02-26]: On the Democratic Party style: Just focusing on style/rhetoric:

    I don't think I've ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words and phrases, each genetically engineered, in whole or in part, to make any sentient being stop paying attention. Reading this speech, that is the only conclusion I can come to: that the sole purpose of this speech is to make people stop paying attention.

  • Sasha Abramsky [02-27]: For 108 minutes, Trump gives a tedious Mussolini impersonation. I've never listened to Mussolini, but I'm skeptical that he was ever so offhandedly wry and lackadaisical.

Major Threads

Israel: Enter "stage two" of Trump's Gaza War Peace Plan, which we can now safely say that Trump is implementing in the worst way possible, through his so-called Board of Peace. It is worth recalling my [10-21] piece on Making Peace in Gaza and Beyond, which lays out a different approach (one which cuts Israel considerable slack, arguably much more than they deserve, but which could be tolerated if the Trump and other key Americans decided the war had to end). As I noted last time, the minimal requirements for any serious peace plan are:

  1. Israel has to leave Gaza, and cannot be allowed any role in its reconstruction.
  2. The people who still live in Gaza must have political control of their own destiny.
  3. The UN is the only organization that be widely trusted to guide Gaza toward self-government, with security for all concerned.

Trump's Board of Peace not only bypasses the UN — forget that it's theoretically sanction by UN Security Council Resolution 2803, because Trump already has — it suggests a new alignment under Trump's personal control, excluding any nation not willing to bow and scrape up tribute money. This is reminiscent of Bush's "Coalition of the Willing," but where Bush's ad hoc club was mere propaganda, this is styled as a plot to control the world. Not even Ian Flemming has managed to concoct a villain as megalomaniacal as Trump.

  • Omar H Rahman [01-13]: Israel's Somaliland gambit reflects a doctrine of endless escalation: "By projecting power into the Horn of Africa, Israel aims to increase pressure on rivals, undermine regional stability, and narrow the space for diplomacy." Somaliland is region in northern Somalia, along the coast of the Gulf of Aden, that has broken away from the beleaguered Somali Republic (which Trump has bombed over 100 times). Israel is the only country to recognize Somaliland's independence. One speculation is that Somaliland could be used as dumping grounds for exiling Palestinians from Gaza.

  • Sam Kimball [01-27]: Zionist expansion: a first-hand account of Israel's illegal occupation of southwestern Syria.

  • Muhammad Shehada [01-29]: How Netanyahu is sabotaging phase two of the Gaza ceasefire: "By undermining a new Palestinian technocratic body, Israel is trying to make Gaza appear ungovernable — and prove the need for its sustained military rule." Many details loom large, especially the return of the spectacularly corrupt Mohammad Dahlan masquerading as a neutral "technocratic" functionary.

  • Basel Adra [01-30]: Inside a coordinated, multi-village settler-soldier pogrom in Masafer Yatta: "As settlers set homes ablaze and looted livestock across three villages for over five hours, Israeli soldiers blocked ambulances, arrested victims, and even took part in beatings. This is how it unfolded."

  • Jamal Kanj [02-02]: Weaponizing America's economy in service of Israel: Not only does the US subsidize Israel's wars, especially against "their own people"[*], but the US uses its financial power to punish dissent around the world. Thus, the US has "sanctioned international courts, punished UN officials, pressured humanitarian organizations and national leaders who dared to insist that Israeli crimes be judged by the same standards applied to all nations." In this context, US sanctions against states like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and North Korea are not just acts of war "by other means," but are threats to other countries of what could happen to them should they stray too far from US dictates in support of Israel.

    [*] One of the most effective propaganda lines used against Saddam Hussein was that he had "gassed his own people": Kurds resident in Iraq, suspected of sympathies with Iran during the ongoing war, and later in open rebellion against Iraq's regime, but still counted as "his own people." Israel bears at least as much responsibility for its Palestinian residents, some nominally citizens but most denied legal rights and standing. Israel is the only nation in the world where we accept that the political elite can divide the people who live there into a favored group of "citizens" and others that can be discriminated against.

  • Deema Hattab [02-03]: A catalog of Gaza's loss: "Recording what has been erased — and making sense of what remains." Part of a series on "A Day for Gaza."

  • Ramzy Baroud [02-06]: On the menu: how the Middle Powers sacrificed Gaza to save themselves.

  • Neve Gordon [02-09]: Demographic engineering connects record murder rates in its Palestinian towns and the weaponisation of antisemitism.

  • Qassam Muaddi [02-11]: Israel just started legalizing its annexation of the West Bank. Here's what that means.

  • Abdaljawad Omar [02-13]: How Israel is eroding life for Palestinians in the West Bank: "Israeli violence in the West Bank isn't as dramatic as in Gaza, but it is methodical, durable, and sometimes harder to understand. Here's how Israel is using settler terror, financial policies, and legal tactics to suffocate Palestinian life." One problem with focusing on the clear cut genocide charge in Gaza is that as far as Smotrich and Ben Gvir (and quite possibly Netanyahu) are concerned, Gaza is just a side show: the real battlefront is the West Bank. Gaza is a test of how much violence Israel can get away with (which has turned out to be quite a lot). Israel clings onto Gaza because no one that matters has told them the obvious, which is that they have to give it up and leave. If the US did make such a demand, I suspect that Israel would have no choice other than to accept the loss. Israel has, after all, already turned the strip into a wasteland. But Israel is unlikely ever to consider withdrawing from the West Bank. Their project there is to make so burdensome for Palestinians that they eventually give up, leaving Israel with the "land without a people" they've always longed for.

  • Mira Al Hussein [02-19]: In widening Saudi-UAE rift, Israel is at the heart of a narrative war: "Saudi accusations that Abu Dhabi acts as Israel's proxy have ignited a media firestorm. But similar anti-Israel sentiments circulate within the UAE itself."

  • Tom Perkins [02-23]: How data on the crackdown on Gaza protests reflects the increasing repression of activist movements in the US: "Data shows Gaza protesters faced harsher punishments than Black Lives Matter protesters did just a few years ago. Experts tell Mondoweiss this is the result of pro-Israel bias and a backlash against protest movements that has been building for years."

  • Farid Hafez [02-24]: Why Israel is joining hands with Europe's far right: "Tel Aviv is courting the same movements that once peddled lies about a global Jewish conspiracy — only now their target has shifted to Islam."

  • Brett Wilkins [02-24]: Huckabee accused of inciting murder after Israeli settlers kill Palestinian-American teen: "The US ambassador to Israel is engaging in empowering and allowing for actions that lead to the targeted lynching and killing of US citizens."

  • Nicholas Liu [02-25]: How the Gaza war changed America: Interview with Bruce Robbins, who "argues Gaza has shifted the debate over how and when the label is used." The label he focuses on is "atrocity," which is the subject of his recent book, Atrocity: A Literary History.

  • Michael Arria [02-26]: International outcry over Huckabee claim that Israel can control from Egypt to Iraq: "The Trump administration is in damage control mode after Mike Huckabee claimed Israeli has the biblically mandated right to stretch from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq." Fallout from a Tucker Carlson interview of Trump's Ambassador to Israel — a Baptist minister and an especially devout and belligerent Christian Zionist.

  • Trump's Board of Peace: The coalition of the willing to pay has had their first meeting, and the coalition of the vulture capitalists are licking their chops. Everyone understands that Israel's destruction of Gaza has been so total that the world community will have to chip in billions of dollars to restore even the bare necessities for modern life today. The purpose of the Board is to raise this money, and to make sure that as little as possible goes to the Palestinians, who remain (as Israel has long insisted) unwanted and unnecessary people. The obvious way to do this is to imagine Gaza as a blank slate for profitable real estate scams, where most of the money will ultimately be siphoned off by the insiders who control the purse strings. Chief among these is "chairman for life" Donald Trump, but the real brains behind this appears to be son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose Saudi-financed investment fund turned out to be the single biggest grift of Trump's first term.

    • Mohammed Haddad/Mohammad Mansour [01-27]: Map shows what would happen to Gaza under the US 'master plan': "The plan treats Gaza as vacant beachfront property, proposing glass towers and industrial zones over historic sites." The "plan" was unveiled at Davos, which was kind of like addressing the Balfour Declaration to the Rothschilds.

    • Tariq Kenney-Shawa [01-30]: Jared Kushner's "plan" for Gaza is an abomination: "Kushner is pitching a 'new,' gleaming resort hub. But scratch the surface, and you find nothing less than a blueprint for ethnic cleansing."

    • Ellen Ioanes [02-09]: Board of Peace is a Board of Profits.

      • Thomas Cavanna [02-19]: How Trump's Board of Peace is set up for a multibillion dollar fail: "A vague mandate and pay-to-play model suggest it'll become a bloated boondoggle in search of an expanded ission lacking full international legitimacy."

    • Dave DeCamp [02-19]: US plans to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza for international force.

    • Nick Cleveland-Stout [02-20]: Board of Peace will be a bonanza for wealthy board members: "Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner downplayed the potential for profiteering but that's not exactly the case." This is worth quoting at some length, although this only hints at the extent of the coruption.

      Companies are already jockeying for contracts. This week, The Guardian reported that the Board of Peace issued a contract to build a 5,000-person military base for an international force tasked with protecting civilians and training "vetted Palestinian police forces." It's not clear who the contractor is.

      In December, a leaked document revealed that U.S. officials were searching for a "Master Contractor" that would "earn a fair return" for trucking. A U.S. disaster response firm, Gothams LLC, submitted a plan to the White House that would guarantee the company 300% profits for work in Gaza. The company would move goods into Gaza in exchange for a fee, as well as a seven-year monopoly over trucking and logistics for the Board of Peace.

      Administration officials and businesspeople affiliated with the Board have also promoted a new "Gaza supply system" which, according to a January slide deck, offers sovereign investors between 46% and 175% returns in the first year of investment.

      "Everybody and their brother is trying to get a piece of this," one long-time contractor told The Guardian. "People are treating this like another Iraq or Afghanistan. And they're trying to get, you know, rich off of it."

      Israel's representative on the Board of Peace, billionaire Yakir Gabay, said that Gaza's coastline should be "developed as a new Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and potential islands." Gabay made his money largely through real estate, though he claims he will refrain from building hotels in Gaza himself.

      Another member of the Executive Board, Marc Rowan, runs one of the world's largest private equity firms, Apollo Global Management. Rowan touted the money to be made during yesterday's meeting. "The coastline alone? 50 billion in value on a conservative basis," he said. "The housing stock — more than $30 billion . . . The infrastructure — more than $30 billion." Altogether, Rowan said, Gaza contains some $115 billion in real estate value, but "it just needs to be unlocked and financed."

      The dominance of private equity and real estate moguls on the Board, combined with a lack of transparency surrounding policies and timetables for Gaza's reconstruction, raise concerns about abuse. Hugh Lovatt, a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the role of businesspeople such as Rowan and Kushner is "completely at odds with what the Palestinians in Gaza need."

      I'd edit that last line to change "need" for "want." This notion that other people (Americans, Israelis, Saudis), qualified exclusively by their wealth and hubris, are entitled to decide what Gazans need is profoundly not only disrespectful, it is a recipe for class war (even assuming the ethnic and religious "deradialization" proceeds according to plan, which I wouldn't bet on). Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some of this gets built, and some Palestinians are hired to work in these foreign-owned palaces and factories. Workers could strike for better wages and working conditions, but the Board is also running its own private police (think of the 19th century US Pinkertons), and many of the Board members (especially the Saudis and Israelis) are quite comfortable with the idea of importing foreign scab labor, which will further imiserate the Palestinians and kindle new conflicts (on top of the old). This probably ends in Israel leveling Gaza once more, hoping to drive the Palestinians out. And while this might seem like a setback for the war profiteers, they're taking their cut up front, and can always resurrect their graft with a new Board promising another new Peace. I may still be of the opinion that the Trump Plan is better than the naked genocide that preceded it, and perhaps is the best one can hope for given the unchallenged power of Netanyahu and Trump, but it it still far short of the very modest proposals I made back in October.

    • Ishaan Tharoor [02-21]: Donald Trump's pantomime United Nations: "The Board of Peace might be destined to fail, but it still threatens to undermine an international system in which the US was once the linchpin." First paragraph begins: "It didn't take long for the flattery to begin."

    • Michael Arria [02-25]: Meet the companies and billionaires looking to make a massive profit off Trump's plans in Gaza: "U.S. companies are aiming to make huge profits from the Gaza reconstruction plan, with several billionaires on Trump's Board of Peace openly discussing the opportunity to make billions."

    • Matt Wolfson [02-25]: The Gaza Plan's 'sick kind of detachment' and its dangers for America.

    • Ben Armbruster [02-26]: The White House wants Iran to attack Americans: "Trump officials are searching for ways to get into a war with Tehran.">

    • Jehad Abusalim [02-26]: Gaza does not need new overlords: "The U.S. plan for Gaza is the final stage of Israel's genocide. Bombs and bulldozers obliterated Gaza's landscape, and now skyscrapers and data centers aim to dismantle its social fabric and capacity to resist."

Around the World: Formerly "Russia/Ukraine," and that's still going on, but Trump seems to think the US is enjoying a unipolar moment like some Americans fantasized about after the Soviet Union dissolved, and that's having repercussions around the world. For Trump's own activities, see the next section. This one will look at the world is reacting, or sometimes just minding its own business.

  • David Broder [12-18]: The new Europeans, Trump-style: "Donald Trump is sowing division in the European Union, even as he calls on it to spend more on defense." He's probably confusing several different trends, in part because Trump's own foreign policy is so incoherent. I expect his threat to Greenland will spur the re-armament crowd, but not to buy more American arms. (If they're going to buy arms, they shouldn't they build up their own arms industries?) Moreover, the far right, which he has clear sympathies with, is more likely to turn against the US than nearly anyone in the despised center.

  • Dan M Ford [2025-12-31]: 6 stories that defined Trump's approach to Africa in 2025: "Minerals, peace deals, and a complete dissolution of relations with at least one country."

    1. Diplomatic scuffle with South Africa: This doesn't mention Israel, but does mention "genocide," which Trump claimed "was being perpetrated by the country's black population against white farmers."
    2. Massad Boulos' role as Senior Africa Advisor: Boulos is the father-in-law of Trump daughter Tiffany.
    3. Peace agreement between Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda: all the better to tap into the region's "vast mineral wealth."
    4. Effort to end the war in Sudan: ineffectively so far, but Trump has some leverage with outside forces (UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia) and, well, there's oil at stake.
    5. Economic engagement with Africa: Where he "secured a record $2.5 billion in business deals."
    6. The US bombs Nigeria: Merry Christmas!

  • Robert Skidelsky [01-30]: Much ado about a Chinese 'mega-embassy' in London: "British newspapers and politicians have taken to fighting an imaginary war with Beijing."

  • Joshua Keating [02-03]: Is a new US-Russia arms race about to begin? "We're about to lose our last nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. What does that mean?" New START, the last of several arms control treaties the US and Soviet Union negotiated, expires on Feb. 5. The treaty limited the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed warheads. As both already have many more warheads in storage, the arms race could be rapid, if either side count think of a rationale for deploying more. I can't think of one, but the US nuke industry has been pushing a multi-trillion-dollar "modernization" for some time.

  • Evan Robins [02-13]: Keir Starmer's failure is nearly complete: "The wildly unpopular UK prime minister is likely doomed in the wake of an Epstein-related scandal entirely of his own making. He deserves every bit of hell he's in." The Epstein connection was through Peter Mandelson ("a longtime Labour power broker and Starmer's handpicked former ambassador to the United States"). Starmer's takeover of the party from Jeremy Corbyn seemed doomed from the start: he purged Corbyn and jettisoned the last vestiges of democratic socialism, leaving the party with no principles other than corrupt compromise with financial power and US militarism. Not only couldn't he make it work, he had no defense when it failed.

  • Johnny Ryan [02-17]: Europeans are dangerously reliant on US tech. Now is a good time to build our own: Actually, now is the time to go open source, and not let any country or company tell you what you can or cannot do, let alone how much tribute you have to pay to keep the lights on.

  • Laura Wittebroek [02-20]: Profit over people: How the world fuels Sudan's war. Since 2019, Sudan has been torn apart by a civil war between two militia factions, each supported by an array of outside opportunists (especially the UAE, but everyone in the international arms trade seems to be involved), although this follows decades of conflict between whoever controlled Khartoum and the outer provinces.

  • Tanya Goudsouzian/Ibrahim Al-Marashi [02-20]: How Pakistan is busting the Great Power monopoly on air power: "The industry here is showing how emerging states are gaining leverage through the democratization . . . of weapons." Long dependent on the US for F-16 aircraft, Pakistan is now building its own fighter-bombers, dubbed the JF-17, co-developed with China, and available for export.

  • Anatol Lieven [02-23]: Ukraine marks biggest evolution in military tactics since WWII: "The transformation in weapons and conventional warfare has resulted in the bloodiest stalemate in generations." This, by the way, led me to a couple of earlier articles, also on futility:

  • Martin Di Caro [02-23]: What does Putin really want? "Four Russia-Ukraine experts tell us if aything has changed as the war enters its fifth year without resolve." Nikolai Petro, Sergey Radchenko, Sumantra Maitra, Nikolas Gvosdev. I have little confidence that any of them know. This is part of an anniversary series, along with the already cited Lieven piece, and:

  • Peter Rutland [02-24]: Ukraine's dilemma: "The nation has fought bravely but will it have the support to keep going, externally and internally, for a fifth year?" The problem is under Biden you had a president who refused to negotiate. Under Trump you have a president who cannot negotiate. Zelensky and Putin are just following their assigned roles, especially given that neither leader can afford to look like a loser, both can sustain what they're doing indefinitely (although Ukraine is in much more precarious shape, with limited resources and dependent on outside help), and outsiders aren't ready to sweeten the pot (end sanctions, offer reconstruction funds, take some steps toward disarmament). I've long believed this would be easy to solve, but the US and Europe have to value peace and cooperation more than division and war. Russia needs to meet them part way, too, but until the West is willing to settle this dispute, it matters little what Putin does.

  • Jason Ditz [02-26]: US demands Iraq end Maliki nomination by Friday: Iraq is another country where Trump feels he should be able to dictate its leader.

Trump Goes to War (International Edition): Formerly "Trump's War & Peace," but not much of the latter anymore. On opening this file, this includes actual or threatened wars in Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland.

  • Heather Digby Parton [01-08]: War has become fashionable again for the GOP: "The right's detour into pacifism under Trump was never going to stick."

  • Pavel Devyatkin [01-13]: Tech billionaires behind Greenland bid want to build 'freedom cities': "As Europeans try to redirect Trump, his Silicon Valley supporters have ideas of their own, involving low-regulated communities and access to rare earths."

  • Sara Herschander [01-30]: America's culture wars are killing people overseas: "When 'pro-life' foreign aid hurts women and children the most."

  • Martin Di Caro [02-02]: Geo-kleptocracy and the rise of 'global mafia politics': "Expert Alex de Waal explains how the capture of Maduro, leaving his corrupt regime in place, is a 'crystalline example' of regime change in the new era."

  • Rachel Janfaza [02-03]: The quiet reason why Trump is losing Gen Z: "They wanted fewer wars. He didn't deliver." Pull quote from a 22-year-old woman in Ohio: "The 'no new wars' thing is now the biggest joke of my life." But why is this just a "quiet reason"? Probably because Democrats don't talk about it. Harris blew the 2024 election by expressing no qualms about the major wars Biden (Gaza, Ukraine) boosted, let alone the piddly strikes that had become so routine they're rarely reported. Clinton blew the 2016 election by trying to come off as the tougher, more belligerent commander-in-chief. Democrats desperately need to find a way to stop looking like warmongers. They could start by relentlessly attacking Trump's tantrums. They could expand on that by developing a broad vision that puts American interests firmly on a foundation of peace and human rights.

  • Tara Copp/David Ovalle [02-03]: Pentagon warns Scouts to restore 'core values' or lose military support: "The relationship dates back decades, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticized the organization for allowing girls to join and changing its name from Boy Scouts." The new name is Scouting America. I haven't paid any attention to them, and had no idea that they were supported by the military. (Evidently, the military provides "medical, security and logistical support" for their National Jamboree, which I only recall due to a spectacularly off-color speech Trump gave them a few years back. Article includes a photo of Trump after his 2017 speech.) I joined the Cub and Boy Scouts in my youth, and some of what I learned there has stuck with me (as well as some trauma). In my annual music lists, I routinely note: "As the proto-fascist organization of my youth insisted, one should always be prepared."

  • Leah Schroeder [02-04]: Hegseth to take control of Stars & Stripes for 'warfighter' makeover: "Critics, including veterans and First Amendment advocates, say the proposed overhaul would usurp the storied military newspaper's independence." I suspect its "independence" has always been a mere "story." Still, Hegseth's vision for the "War Department" is uniquely disturbing.

  • Joshua Keating [02-13]: Trump's biggest war is one he almost never talks about: "Why did the US bomb Somalia more than 100 times last year?" The bombing started under Bush, increased under Obama, much more so in Trump's first term, continued at a lower pace under Biden, and accelerated under Trump II.

  • Rubio Goes to Munich: The Secretary of State gave an address to the Munich Security Conference:

    • Eldar Mamedov [02-14]: Rubio's spoonful of sugar helps hard medicine go down in Munich: "The Secretary of State' message on civilizational renewal and self-reliance wasn't too different than Vance's the year before, but it landed much softer." Author agrees that Rubio delivered "a peculiar mix of primacist nostalgia and civilizational foreboding," echoing Vance's more confrontational message a year back, but his "spoonful of sugar" was appealing to Europe's own post-imperial chauvinism, instead of writing it off.

    • AlJazeera [02-14]: Rubio slams European policies on climate, migration as he calls for unity.

    • Mehdi Hasan [02-17]: Forget Maga. Welcome to Mega: Make Empire Great Again: "Marco Rubio arrived at the Munich security conference with a disturbing message for European governments: empire is great." Quotes Rubio as saying: "We do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it."

    • Carol Schaeffer [02-17]: The Munich Security Conference marks the end of the US-led order: "US politicians flooded the summit — but Europe no longer sees the United States as a reliable partner."

    • Nick Turse [02-19]: More US troops are headed to Nigeria: "The Trump administration is sending more troops to a region where US military presence has coincided with increased violence."

    • Zak Cheney-Rice [02-19]: Heirs to plunder: "Marco Rubio's Munich speech made a sinister case for shameless western imperialism."

    • Jonathan Cook [02-19]: Rubio declared a return to brutal western colonialism — and Europe applauded: "Old-school, white-man's burden colonialism is unapologetically back." Not the way I would put it, but while they are unapologetic about their moral and military superiority, their divine right to lead a world that exists only to serve them.

    • John Quiggin:

      • [02-21]: The US state has proved itself dispensable: I doubt that the US was ever indispensable to its allies. At most, it was a convenient crutch, simple-minded enough in its initial anti-communism and later megalomania that it was easier (and more profitable) to humor it than to risk displeasure. But the net value of NATO security was never much, at least as concerned the Russians — more important was that it kept France, Germany, Britain, and maybe Italy from rearming against each other, which would have been a dangerous waste. The dollar, capital and trade flows weren't worth much either, but as long as the US was generous enough to pay for its primacy, it was easier to just go along. But "America First," with Trump's shakedowns and extortions, served notice that such a game couldn't last long. We're seeing some of that now, and will see more over time. One big change Quiggin notes is that Europe has already made great strides in arms development and production, as they've largely taken over supply to Ukraine. Trump's erratic tariff policy has further undermined their interest in America. As Quiggin notes, Rubio's ovation in Munich was mostly polite. But it also came from people who are tightly integrated into the decomposing alliance. Outside the room, the speech wasn't nearly as well received.

      • [2025-02-01]: The dispensable nation: Quiggin refers back to this piece he wrote a year ago. One thing I'd add is that while the notion that the US is uniquely virtuous has obvious attraction to the people who nominally run it, and through it imagine themselves as the natural rulers of the world, this conceit has little practical value to the overwhelming majority of Americans, and is at best humored by the leaders of other nations.

    • Steve Howell [02-24]: Rubio, rodeo, and tall tales of empire: "The secretary of state has provoked the ire of Britain's first black woman lawmaker and put the spotlight once again on how the US has historically treated people of his own heritage."

Trump Goes to War (Domestic Edition): This will carry on from "ICE Stories," and will also pick up skirmishes in the courts. It isn't a stretch to say Trump's waging war against his own people, except inasmuch as he doesn't consider most of us to be his own people.

Trump Regime: This is for stories about what the supplicants and minions in the Trump administration are doing day-in, day-out to make America less enjoyable and livable. This includes bad policies as well as bad actors, but some of the worst are dealt with in other sections. Trump himself merits his own section, a bit further down.

  • Kenny Stancil [01-26]: The Trump regime is making disasters worse: "DHS Secretary Kristi Noem sat atop millions of dollars in flood prevention grants while the West Coast was being inundated. Now she's slashing FEMA disaster response staff."

  • Jelinda Montes [01-29]: South Carolina measles outbreak hits record high: "This is the largest measles outbreak since the United States declared measles eliminated in 2000."

  • Kenny Stancil/Julian Schoffield/Chris Lewis [02-05]: DOGE lives on through Russell Vought: "Trump's White House OMB director has quietly institutionalized the government demolition agenda set in motion by Elon Musk's wrecking crew."

  • Annie Levin [02-10]: How the far right won the food wars: "RFK's MAHA spectacle offers an object lesson in how the left cedes fertile political territory." I'm not sure I'm buying any aspect of this argument.

  • Umair Irfan [02-12]: Trump just blew up a load-bearing pillar of climate regulation in the US. What happens now?

  • Matt Stieb [02-12]: The prediction-market scandals are getting bleaker: I'm not sure where to file this. If people can bet on anything anytime, it's very near certain that those with insider knowledge will try to take advantage. In high-class casinos like the stock market, the SEC at least tries to punish gross instances of insider trading, not that the last 50 years give us much confidence in their ability.

  • Hannah Story Brown/Toni Agular Rosenthal [02-13]: Doug Burgum, the regime today of our time: "Dashing the hopes of establishment Democrats, Trump's interior secretary and 'energy czar' has adopted his boss's excesses as his own."

  • Clyde McGrady [02-13]: Trump nominates an apostle of 'white erasure' for the State Department: "Jeremy Carl, President Trump's nominee to lead the State Department's outreach to international organizations, had a rough confirmation hearing, but he stood by his views on 'whiteness.'" Last section offered a list of "who opposes his nomination?" But then the piece ended by noting:

    Others appointees have weathered the storm, including Darren Beattie, a senior State Department official who was fired from the first Trump administration after speaking at a conference attended by white nationalists.

    "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities and demoralizing competent white men," Mr. Beattie once wrote on social media.

    Still, some on the right are rallying to Mr. Carl's side.

    The conservative activist Christopher Rufo defended Mr. Carl, writing that Americans have been bullied into believing that "white culture" is "inherently shameful or evil," which leads them to "pretend that it doesn't exist."

    Actually, "competent white men" would be an improvement over many of the Trump nominees, including some who are not men and/or not white (not that I'm recalling many of the latter). As for Rufo, it's fool's errand — an act of deliberate self-crippling — to try to separate "white culture" out of American culture. While the result may not be "inherently shameful or evil," the parts that are shameful and evil will be much concentrated.

  • Nia Prater [02-13]: USAID's remaining funds are paying for Vought's security detail.

  • Ed Kilgore [02-14]: Revoking climate-change regulation may be the worst thing Trump has done.

  • Hayley Brown [02-20]: The Trump administration's catastrophic census proposal.

  • Abdullah Shihipar [02-23]: The staggering costs of Trump's war on public service: "The administration's steep cuts to public service jobs and research opportunities are saving Americans very little money — but they're having a detrimental impact on society." While I share the headline alarm, the stats here about career choices have me wondering if the ideological campaign to deprecate pubic service won out 20-30 years before the mass firings. One factor here is education debt, which has pushed graduates toward more lucrative careers in predatory finance, and away careers in public service. (The military is the exception that proves the point. It has long featured education credits as compensation, and is widely seen as a way relatively poor people can get an education. However, it is nearly useless as public service.) Rekindling the notion of public service, and making it an attractive and fulfilling career choice, is essential for any decent post-Trump recovery. It's going to take more than just rehiring people Trump fired.

  • Emmett Hopkins [02-26]: Trump is threatening to cut transit left and right. This is totally in character:

    Taking away transit funding will also increase congestion and deliver chaos to the streets. It will not only hit people's household budgets but also ripple through small businesses, medical facilities, schools, and grocery stores, all of whom rely on functioning transportation systems — including transit — to move goods, customers, and employees smoothly. Drivers and nondrivers alike will feel the impacts. Transportation is also the largest sectoral source of US greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing public transit would make that even worse, adding further fuel to the climate crisis.

Donald Trump: As for Il Duce, we need a separate bin for stories on his personal peccadillos -- which often seem like mere diversions, although as with all madness, it can be difficult sorting the serious from the fanciful.

  • Sophia Tesfaye:

    • [12-13]: Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump's corruption: "From media mergers to foreign policy, Trump's son-in-law is consolidating power — and making millions." Thanks to his Middle East portfolio, he bagged much more graft in Trump's first term than anyone else. Now he's back as part of Trump's Board of Peace. And he's involved in "the biggest media merger in years."

      After leaving the first Trump administration, Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners, including $2 billion from the Saudi government's Public Investment Fund. The Saudis' own advisers reportedly warned Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Kushner's record did not justify such an investment, but the crown prince overruled them. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, adding another $1.5 billion to the pot. As of late 2024, Kushner had still not produced meaningful returns for these foreign governments, yet he had paid himself at least $157 million in fees. Forbes now calls him a billionaire.

    • [02-11]: MAGA blame game shows Trump in retreat: "Trump and Vance back down and blame unnamed staffers for controversial posts." The buck always stops . . . somewhere else.

  • Toby Buckle [2025-12-18]: The Americans who saw all this coming — but were ignored and maligned: "Call them Cassandra: the people — mostly not white and male — who smelled the fascism all over Trump from jump street. Why were they 'alarmists,' and how did 'anti-alarmism' become cool?" Minor point, but even some elderly white blokes saw this coming. I could measure this not just by what I wrote before the event, but how literally sick I felt on election night, 2024. Sure, I advised against using the word "fascism" during the campaign, but only because I didn't see the practical utility beyond people who already sensed what Trump was planning. I'm reminded here of the term "premature-antifascists," which was applied to leftists in the late 1930s, who in mainstream eyes were only vindicated with the war declarations of 1941. We'll be hearing much more about Trump the Fascist. For example:

    • Robert J Shapiro [02-17]: Hannah Arendt understood the forces behind Donald Trump: "The late scholar of mass movements, charismatic leaders, and government violence foreshadowed the president's rise and the MAGA movement in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Recent polling proves her prescience."

  • Bill Scher [01-19]: The ephemeral presidency: "Except for the damage, nothing Trump is doing will last." That's a pretty big exception, but it seems almost flippant to assume that executive orders can be rescinded at will, or that Democrats will find the will. The courts that helped Trump seize power won't be equally disposed to reversing him. And the world will have changed: mostly for the worse, but those who benefited from the changes will resist giving them up. Then there are the things that shouldn't be reversed. Scher is particularly keen on reverting to a Biden-Obama foreign policy, but they didn't have one worth saving, and their fumbling was a big part of the theory that even Trump couldn't do worse.

  • Jonathan Rauch [01-25]: Yes, it's Fascism: "Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny." Mostly buried under the paywall, but I take his point. Before the 2024 election, I cautioned against using the F-word for two reasons: one is that it only resonates with people who understand the history but don't need the word to clarify why they oppose (or in rare instances support) Trump; the other is that historically-minded leftists are so sensitive to tones of fascism they tend to overuse the word, sometimes reducing its insight to a mere indictment, and that tends to be taken as too much "crying wolf." On the other hand, our ability to understand what's happening is strongly influenced (or simply limited) by our command of historical precedents. And what the Trumpists have done since the election has been so extreme that the only historical antecedents that come close to having the same impact are the fascists. We have, in short, moved from a state where associating something with "fascist" could suggest a dire future to one where it broadens out understanding of what's actually happening. One effect of this is that it no longer matters if the signs and analogies are precise. It only matters that the tone matches, and that the gravity is comparable. And the current tone and gravity is incomparable to damn near anything else that humans are experienced.

  • Andrew O'Hehir [01-25]: A fake presidency, but real tyranny: "Trump'slazy, crumbling regime values viral AI memes more than actual policy. But the brutality is real." Or as Marie Antoinette would have put it, "let them eat memes."

    By now it's become clear that content creation — feeding the beast, in an all-too-literal sense — is a principal driving force behind all this Nazi-cosplay street theater. The memes will continue, as indeed they must: Over and over again, we see ICE officers stage unnecessary confrontations, smashing car windows or pepper-spraying unarmed demonstrators in front of liberal observers and camera crews.

    Viral videos and meme-worthy images, whether they thrill the loyalists or outrage the libtards or both at once, are not byproducts of these blue-city occupations. They are not incidental to this moment of fascist terror but among its most significant instruments. They are deliberate injections of ideological poison meant to sow division, spread misinformation and render the truth valueless or irrelevant. . . .

    Hateful and stupid social media memes can serve to justify or excuse despicable acts of political violence. Just as important, they also serve to conceal them, as in the "King Trump" video, beneath an unstoppable downpour of crap. When millions of people have persuaded themselves that elementary-school shootings are staged by "crisis actors," the Jan. 6 insurrection was an FBI false-flag operation and the COVID pandemic was the work of a vast global conspiracy, the distinction between verifiable real-world information — an imperfect standard, but in my profession, the only one we've got — and paranoid or narcissistic delusion has become unsustainable. . . .

    I'm not sure any of that is meant to be convincing. It's the blatantly fake ideological wrapping of a crumbling regime built around a rapidly failing con man. His only actionable agenda is nihilistic rage, acted out as a brutal but incompetent reign of terror directed at his own people. Trump's version of fascism barely made it off the couch, and is still more comfortable there. Its vision of the past is imaginary and it has no future, but its destructive energy has changed the world.

  • Chauncey DeVega [01-29]: Vice signaling explains Trump's enduring appeal: "Minneapolis reveals why outrage alone fails to loose Trump's grip." This is a play on the notion of "virtue signaling," where people do good deeds just to appear more virtuous — a charge typically leveled at liberals by people who can't imagine anyone acting altruistically. Vice signalers want to impress on others how bad they are, often to intimidate others into submission as well as to elicit approval from people who yearn to see power used against their supposed enemies. A big part of Trump's popularity owes to his credibility as someone who's willing and eager to abuse his power.

  • Garrett Owen [01-30]: Trump and sons seek $10 billion taxpayer-funded payday in IRS lawsuit: "Leaked tax returns caused the Trumps 'public embarrassment' and reputational harm, lawsuit says."

  • Elie Mystal [01-30]: Want to support the fight against fascism? Boycott Trump's World Cup. Not much of a sacrifice for me, but I know people this would be a big ask of. The difference makes me think this would be a bad idea, but I should note that he's talking about teams boycotting (and even then, just US-hosted events, as opposed to events in Canada or Mexico).

  • Heather Digby Parton [02-03]: Trump is openly cashing in on the presidency.

  • Cameron Peters [02-06]: Trump's racist post, briefly explained: More specifically, since this isn't the only time, the one "depicting Barack and Michelle Obama's faces superimposed on apes."

  • Algernon Austin [02-06]: Trump get spectacularly richer, while putting the country on a path to poverty. The graft you know about, even if the numbers are hard to fathom. Also unsurprising is Fred Wertheimer's assertion that in terms of monetizing power, "the president most similar to Trump is Russian President Vladimir Putin." As for future poverty, there are many points, including:

    About 25,000 scientists have been cut from government agencies. Joel Wilkins of Futurism concluded that the administration's actions have resulted in a "colossal exodus of specialized expertise from institutions important to public health, environmental protection, and scientific research" and that "[t]he effects are likely to be catastrophic — and the reverberations could be felt for decades."

  • Eric Levitz [02-09]: Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail. "The nightmare scenario for American democracy is no longer unthinkable." Sure, he would if he could, but what I'm seeing here looks less like a plan than a set up for a rationalization for a probable loss.

  • Kelli Wessinger/Astead Herndon [02-09]: Just how healthy is Donald Trump, really?: "Why it's so hard to know whether the president is okay." Well, it took almost 200 years to figure out that George III had porphyria, although even that seems to be doubted these days. That he was a narcissistic asshole should have been more obvious at the time. Not that knowing helps much with Trump.

  • Toni Aguilar Rosenthal [02-13]: The antidemocratic zelots presiding over Trump's makeover of US history: "The administration's sketchily funded Freedom 250 project, which will oversee the celebration of America's semiquincentennial, is a pageant of right-wing extremism." This is going to be hugely embarrassing:

    This makeover has mostly been the handiwork of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who serves as ex-officio director of the NPF board. Burgum swiftly set about stacking the board with Trump loyalists, including top Trump fundraiser Meredith O'Rourke and Chris LaCivita, Trump's 2024 campaign co-manager. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, NPF isn't required under federal tax law to disclose its donors and is even empowered to grant donors anonymity. Donations to the foundation are also tax-deductible — an added bonus for anyone seeking access to Trump's fundraising ecosystem.

    If that sounds like a recipe for grift dressed up as a charitable donation, that's because it is. The New York Times recently unearthed documents showing that Freedom 250 is a clearing house for donor perks. A cool $1 million gift offers photo opportunities with the president; $2.5 million can land you a speaking slot at the marquee July 4 celebration in Washington. And because of the NPF's opaque standing as a 501(c)3, the public may never know who its well-heeled benefactors are.

    There's also a wave of federal funding sluicing into the NPF's coffers. The Trump administration has redirected a $10 million grant initially earmarked for America250.org to the NPF. Another $5 million grant was shuffled out of the National Park Service and to the National Park Foundation to fund "A250 events."

    But these events are more than just vessels for influxes of cash — they're promoting a right-wing bid to whitewash the history of the country, and promote the dogmatic worldview of Christian nationalism.

  • Cameron Peters [02-19]: Trump's ballroom blitz, briefly explained: "How Trump is signing off on his own new ballroom."

  • Shawn McCreesh [02-19]: Why is Trump dumping East Wing rubble in a public park? "The East Potomac Golf Links is a municipal course that has been a fixture in Washington for decades. President Trump is turning it into something else."

  • Tad DeHaven [02-20]: Trump's dream is a giant slush fund Congress can't touch: "From Venezuelan oil to the Board of Pece, Trump is constantly looking for new sources of cash he can control."

    But the long-term risk is not just that Trump might be doing something illegal. The long-term risk is that his presidency is normalizing treating the receipt and disbursement of money as instruments of personal power.

    This is followed by a rhetorical hypothetical about the bloody murder Republicans would scream if a Democratic president was doing this sort of thing, but that misses the point. Democrats may be corrupt, but in the sense of doing favors for donors, possibly with some eventual kickbacks. In short, Democrats are servants of corruption. But what Trump is doing is trying to control the whole casino, so he gets a piece of every transaction, and that only adds to his future power.

  • Naomi Bethune [02-23]: Whitening American history: "Trump's efforts to remove Black people from America's story have been countered by scholars, activists, judges — and history itself." And yet the continue, a relentless effort to hide history that discomfits a few racist fabulists like Trump. There's a link here back to Robert Kuttner [2025-04-15]: Trump's Orwellian assault on Black history.

  • CK Smith [02-22]: Armed intruder shot dead at Mar-a-Lago: "An armed an was killed by Secret Service agents after entering a restricted area of Mar-a-Lago, officials say." Trump was in DC, far away from the site, so it's hard to credit this as an assassination attempt.

  • Margaret Hartmann: This month in Trump trivia (aside from the Melania movie, op. cit., and some Epstein bits):

Republicans: As bad as Trump is, I worry more about the party he's unleashed on America. Here are some examples, both bad actors and dangerous and despicable ideas.

  • Sasha Abramsky:

    • [01-30]: An open letter to Congressional Republicans of conscience: "For the good of the country, it's time to cross the aisle." I have no doubt this plea is falling on deaf ears, even among the very short list he mentions. "Conscience" is a dead letter among Republicans. The last one to claim such a thing was Barry Goldwater, and he was just striking a pose in defense of the indefensible.

    • [02-13]: The Republican crack-up has begun: "Even conservatives are fleeing the GOP as more and more Americans turn against Trump's authoritarian project." Don't get too excited here. His poster boy is "Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego's eastern outskirts." What we've seen repeatedly is that the few Republicans who have broken ranks have dissolved into nothingness almost immediately. Few of them have even dared run for reelection.

  • Jake Lahut [02-02]: Nancy Mace is not okay: "Something's broken. The motherboard is fried. We're short-circuiting somewhere."

  • Ian Millhiser [02-02]: Republicans are normalizing the one reform they should fear most: "The Supreme Court is the GOP's most durable power center. It makes no sense for them to endanger that source of power." He's referring to efforts at the state level to go to extraordinary legal means to pack courts in their favor: one example is adding two seats to the Utah Supreme Court, which has "sided with plaintiffs challenging Utah's GOP-friendly congressional maps," and "blocked Utah's ban on most abortions, temporarily stopped a law banning transgender girls from playing high school sports, and found the state's school voucher program unconstitutional." He could have mentioned efforts in Kansas, which thus far have been less successful. Republicans seem convinced that any power they grab will be permanent.

  • Ed Kilgore [02-25]: Cornyn's nasty attack on Paxton may haunt Texas Republicans.

Democrats: In theory the people we trust to protect us from Republicans. In practice, they're not doing a very good job, so I tend to latch onto stories about how to do better (then scoff at them).

  • Amanda Marcotte [02-06]: Shock Democratic upset in Texas shows voters still hate book bans: "Running against Moms for Liberty is a winning 2026 strategy." Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a state senate district that Trump carried by 17% in 2024, a "eye-popping swing of 31%."

  • Norman Solomon [02-06]: The actual Gavin Newsom is much worse than you think.

  • Michael Tomasky [02-12]: What the Democrats need to do now: "To win back working-class voters, then need to signal ore clearly to working people that they are on their side. That means picking fights on their behalf with the bad actors who are making their lives harder — and the democracy-hating billionaires." This is a long article which raises a lot of important questions regarding political strategy. As I've given these same issues considerable thought, I could see writing a whole Substack essay on the subject. I've read Tomasky's 2022 book, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, and some of his earlier work, including many essays. The book is a strong defense of Biden's economic agenda, or what it could have been had Biden not been hobbled (by Republicans, by retro-Democrats, by his own advisers, by the media, and by his own incoherence — a personalized spin on problems that pervade the Democratic Party). Tomasky starts with "four core problems":

    1. Why don't the Democrats fight more? Meaning, against Republicans.
    2. Why do the Democrats fight so much? Among themselves.
    3. What the center gets wrong
    4. What the left gets wrong

    That's followed by sections on:

    1. Stories — and Villains
    2. What Biden Did — and Didn't — Do
    3. Targets
    4. An Economic Bill of Rights
    5. Conclusion: The Democrats' Third Great Challenge

    This is all pretty good, but doesn't quite get out of the mental ruts, especially between center and left. As Tomasky notes, "the left has become the chief source of energy and creativity in the party." The center needs to understand and appreciate that, but also they need to understand that the principles that drive the left are principles that they can and should also subscribe to (more equality; less corruption; peace and broader cooperation; less prejudice and discrimination; more personal freedom; public service; a more robust safety net; opportunity for all). And they need to let the left be itself, committed to principles regardless of consequences, and not demand conformity to the compromises that the center regards as pragmatically necessary. The left needs to think of itself not as an advocate for certain interest groups, but rather as the aspirations for virtually everyone. To do that, the left has to break a bad habit, which is the tendency to dismiss and disparage people they disagree with. This is wrong in principle and self-defeating in practice.

  • Perry Bacon [02-13]: Instead of pandering, Democrats should try changing voters' minds: "How can the party of liberalism make liberal ideas more popular? By creating a more liberal electorate. Yes, it can be done. Here are five ways how." Chapter heads:

    1. Use their bully pulpits
    2. Align with movements
    3. Work the refs — and seed new ones
    4. Become a more civic party
    5. Get more young people voting

  • Ross Barkan:

    • [02-17]: AOC's Munich stumble is a warning to the left: Her "stumble" seems to have been that she "stalled for about 20 seconds" when asked whether "the US should send troops to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion." As she later explained, making a point that most Democrats as well as Republicans find hard to grasp, "we want to make sure we never get to that point." I've tried to make this point before: that war should ever break out testifies to a catastrophic failure of diplomacy, and an even more fundamental misunderstanding of world politics. Democrats need to totally rethink foreign policy: the first point is that war is never an option (a stronger statement than that it is a "last resort," but not one that refuses to fight if one really does have no choice — I'm not personally disagreeing with the pacifist position, but I'm not insisting on it as policy, not least because I recognize that some people will take defenselessness as an invitation to rape and pillage); the second is that we need to build international cooperation through voluntary (not coerced by the dictates or leverages of power). I take these two points to be obvious, but they run counter to virtually every respected voice in US foreign policy — a bipartisan claque constantly spouting nonsense, including such leading questions as "would you commit to sending troops to defend Taiwan against China?" Even Barkan, who is a long-time critic of US foreign policy, gets sucked in to the logic of deterrence (which only deters those disinclined to war in the first place; otherwise the policy aggravates and provokes).

    • [02-23]: The Democratic Party's breakup with AIPAC is almost complete.

  • Jason Linkins [02-21]: There's only one way to eradicate Trumpism for good: His keyword is "accountability," but what does that mean? The examples here are all negative, like Obama's disinterest in holding the Bush administration accountable for its wars and economic disasters. I'm not particularly keen on putting people in jail, but we need to be very clear about what Trump has done, including his extraordinary personal enrichment. Otherwise, Democrats will continue to be punished for sins of their predecessors, as happened to Obama and Biden.

  • Conor Lynch [02-22]: Zohran Mamdani wants to reclaim efficiency from the right.

  • Hafiz Rashid [02-23]: DNC's 2024 election autopsy blames Kamala Harris's stance on Gaza: I've said all along that if Trump won in 2024, the main reason would be Biden's wars. Still, it's surprising to see the DNC admitting to any such error. By the way, the author previously wrote [2024-08-23]: The black mark on the Democrats' big party.

The Economy: Another old section, brought back recently as I needed to talk about the AI bubble. Now it occurs to me that I should split that section in two, so tech gets its own following section, and this deals with the rest of the economy, and what economists have to say about it.

  • Ryan Cooper [12-15]: America can't build homes anymore: "Cities stopped building not by accident but by design. Our housing system is constructed on scarcity, speculation, and private veto power."

  • Vivek Chibber [12-23]: Power, not economic theory, created neoliberalism: Interview: "Ideas become influential when they're latched to the correct constellation of interests. Without that, they remain in the wilderness forever."

  • Eric Levitz

    • [01-23]: Wall Street buying up houses is good, actually: "The surprising truth about corporate investment in housing." Really? First he argues that mega-investors are insignificant so have little effect on prices, then he changes the subject and argues that they're better because they discriminate less ("corporate investment in single-family homes is good for integration"). Levitz has been struggling for some time trying to get a handle on housing costs — e.g., see [2025-08-26]: What far-left cranks get right about the housing crisis, which is a defense of YIMBY-ism that admits it doesn't solve everything. There are lots of problems with housing and its unaffordability, but one of the deepest, and most politically intractable, is the idea that houses should function as long-term investments, indeed that for most people they represent most of their savings. If we get to where we have a housing surplus, the immediate effect will be not just to drive rents down but to reduce the nominal wealth of a big slice of the middle class. That's going to be a tough sell, and it's going to require much deeper thinking than YIMBY considers. (Side point: because Democrats spend nearly all of their time with donors and lobbyists, they only look for fixes that open up more profits, and they never consider savings that are too widely dispersed to organize their own lobbies. Thus, for instance, they subsidize more green power, but pay little attention to reducing energy use.)

    • [02-18]: Why voters hate Trump's (pretty decent) economy: "The data is solid. The vibes are atrocious. What gives?" Perhaps because even better data did so little to enamor voters to the Biden economy?

  • Heather Long [02-03]: We're in an economic boom. Where are the jobs? "AI is sending stocks soaring, rich people are spending big, and hiring is at a crawl."

  • Caitlin Dewey [02-12]: 2025 was a dismal year for jobs.

  • Joseph Stiglitz/Mike Konczal [02-13]: Trump's tariff fantasy collides with economic reality: "The president claims an 'economic miracle.' The data tell a different story." The article is paywalled, but a synopsis notes that "the administration's policies are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, specifically regarding trade, and are leading to higher costs for Americans and long-term structural harm." Key points:

    • Tariffs as a Tax on Consumers: Stiglitz and Konczal argue that tariffs are not a strategic tool paid by foreign countries, but rather a "blunt tool" that functions as a roughly $1,000 tax on the average American family, fueling inflation.
    • Persistent Inflation: Despite claims of an "economic miracle," they note that inflation in early 2025 remained high (around 2.7%) rather than meeting targets, with tariffs contributing significantly to increased consumer prices.
    • Squandering Economic Advantages: They argue that the administration is "squandering" long-term competitive advantages by cutting funding for research, education, and public institutions while simultaneously damaging key trade alliances.
    • Uncertainty and Reduced Investment: Stiglitz notes that the erratic, "on-off" nature of tariff policies, combined with a disregard for the rule of law, creates a "scary place to invest," increasing volatility and decreasing confidence in the U.S. economy.
    • Missed Growth Targets: Stiglitz previously highlighted that, despite large deficits and low interest rates, the economic performance under these policies has failed to deliver the high growth rates promised, falling short of previous administration averages.

  • Ryan Cummings/Jared Bernstein [02-26]: Crypto is pointless. Not even the White House can fix that. "Nearly $2 trillion of wealth has evaporated from the global crypto market since October." But was it ever real in the first place? This also led to an older article:

  • Paul Krugman [02-27]: The economics of faltering fascism: "Unfortunately for Trump, and fortunately for us, he didn't inherit an economic crisis." Charts compare unemployment rates for Hitler, Putin, and Trump, showing how the first two came to power against a dire economic backdrop, whereas despite much bitching the Obama and Biden economies were relatively solid and stable.

    In the end, if Trumpist fascism is indeed defeated, I believe that there will be three sources of that defeat. First is the courage and basic decency of the American people, who refuse to bow down. Second is the egomania and malign incompetence of Trump, who tried to bludgeon and gaslight Americans into submission. And last is the weakness of a fascist movement that just can't deliver the goods.

Technology: Big boomlet here is AI. Some of this will be on business, and some on the technology itself, not that it's easy to separate the two.

  • Sophie McBain [10-18]: Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?: "From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently." I've seen cascades of short videos that qualify as brain rot and found it very hard to pull away from them, but eventually I did, probably because I have some deeply embedded protestant ethic which keeps me forever working, allowing entertainment only if it adds to my store of knowledge and reason. Maybe the problem is that my sort of work ethic has gone out of most people's groundings. While the traditional explanation for this is the temptation of sin, I think there's also a pragmatic consideration: why pursue knowledge if there's nothing you can do with it? People don't keep up with technology because it's hard, but also because it's been black-boxed and trade-secreted and esotericized to the point where you have no control over it, even if you do mostly understand it. Same with politics, business, law, even medicine. These, and much more, are dedicated not just to shaking you down but to keeping you powerless. After all, powerlessness begets indifference and incuriosity, which is the secret formula for stupid.

    If brains need friction but also instinctively avoid it, it's interesting that the promise of technology has been to create a "frictionless" user experience, to ensure that, provided we slide from app to app or screen to screen, we will meet no resistance. The frictionless user experience is why we unthinkingly offload ever more information and work to our digital devices; it's why internet rabbit holes are so easy to fall down and so hard to climb out of; it's why generative AI has already integrated itself so completely into most people's lives.

    We know, from our collective experience, that once you become accustomed to the hyperefficient cybersphere, the friction-filled real world feels harder to deal with. . . .

    Human intelligence is too broad and varied to be reduced to words such as "stupid," but there are worrying signs that all this digital convenience is costing us dearly. . . . In the ever-expanding, frictionless online world, you are first and foremost a user: passive, dependent. In the dawning era of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes, how will we maintain the scepticism and intellectual independence we'll need? By the time we agree that our minds are no longer our own, that we simply cannot think clearly without tech assistance, how much of us will be left to resist?

  • Eric Levitz [02-11]: AI's threat to white-collar jobs just got more real: "You've become increasingly replaceable."

  • John Herrman [02-13]: Oops! The singularity is going viral. "Insiders and outsiders are both feeling helpless about the same thing."

  • Russell Payne [02-26]: Hegseth threatens Anthropic over killer AI limits: I'm not sure which is more troubling: that the War Department has a $200 million contract for AI, or that Hegseth wants the software stripped of any "safeguards." I doubt if he even knows what the technical term means, but wimpy and nonlethal to him, so it's gotta go.

    • Bryan Walsh [02-26]: The Pentagon's battle with Anthropic is really a war over who controls AI. Evidently the points of contention are described here:

      Anthropic's policies allow its models to be used as part of targeted military strikes, foreign surveillance, or even drone strikes when a human approves the final call. But it has maintained two specific "red lines" it won't cross: fully autonomous weapons, meaning AI systems that select and engage targets without a human involved, and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. Amodei said in his statement that "AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties," while frontier AI systems were "simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons."

    • Maria Curi/Dave Lawler [02-26]: Anthropic rejects Pentagon's "final offer" in AI safeguards fight.

The Free Press (for lack of a better term): Note that the recent sacking of the Washington Post has its own section this time.

  • Chris Lehmann [01-30]: The smug and vacuous David Brooks is perfect for The Atlantic: "The former New York Times columnist is a one-man cottage industry of lazy cultural stereotyping." I haven't read him in so many years I may not have noticed the move, and the new paywall is just one more reason to not care.

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

David Klion [2025-04-17]: The war on the liberal class: As the author tweeted: "Seems like a fine time to re-up this piece I wrote a year ago, about how the Trump Administration and its Silicon Valley oligarch allies are murdering liberalism as a class along with the cultural and intellectual institutions that sustain it." Back in the late-1960s, I grew up to be very critical of the era's liberal nostrums, but lately my views have softened and sentimentalized, now that we risk losing even their last few saving graces. I can now admit that, like the Stalinists of the 1930s they so loathed, they started with fairly decent intentions, before they allowed themselves to be adled and corrupted by power. Astra Taylor had a similar idea when she wrote Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone.

Klion locates liberalism in a "new class" (borrowing from Djilas, although one could also refer to Reich's "symbolic manipulators"), which gives the "war on liberalism" targets which can be attacked without having to grapple with concepts: universities, nonprofits, bureaucracies, publications — organizations that can be starved of funds and denied audiences. Klion provides numerous examples, including the promotion of right-wing alternatives, which help suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere sustaining independent thought. What isn't clear is why these fabulously wealthy individuals want to live in a world where most people are denied even the basic idea of freedom.

The crisis facing liberalism begins with the crisis of basic literacy. It was the expansion of literacy after World War II that made the ascent of the New Class possible in the first place, and it's only slightly hyperbolic to say that liberals today confront a society in which no one under 30 reads serious books or newspapers. A much-discussed article in the Atlantic last fall flagged that even undergraduates at the most elite universities struggle to read whole books that their counterparts a decade ago were able to handle. Their attention spans have been eroded since childhood by social media addiction, and now the social media they consume is no longer text-based.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the dominant social media platforms were Facebook and Twitter, both of which, whatever their faults (including Facebook's central role in bankrupting traditional news media), primarily circulated the written word. Both of these platforms are currently controlled by Silicon Valley billionaires in hock to Trump, and both have become increasingly degraded, poorly functioning, and saturated with scammers and hatemongers. Even more salient, both are losing market share to the Chinese social media platform TikTok, which prioritizes short-form videos that obviate any need for more than nominal literacy, much less for the critical-thinking skills that liberals have always regarded as essential to a healthy democratic polity. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is increasingly copying TikTok's approach.

Meanwhile, tech firms in both China and the U.S. aggressively compete to develop AI, which functions in part by plagiarizing, synthesizing, and undercutting the reliability of original written work while promising to render human-generated writing redundant and unmarketable. The combination of video-based platforms, AI, and algorithmically "enshittified" text-based social networks that suppress links to actual writing has rendered the internet fundamentally hostile to anyone who crafts words for a living. This is a threat not just to the basic finances of professional writers but also to their ability to socially reproduce a receptive public for what they're selling.

The same tech oligarchs who bankrolled Trump's victory have been using their unprecedented fortunes to fund alternative institutions to compete with, and ultimately sideline, the established ones. As Eoin Higgins documents in his recent book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, venture capital-backed platforms like Substack have been instrumental in creating lucrative new career opportunities for veterans of mainstream media, especially those who parrot the reactionary views of their funders. While these platforms are available to writers of any political persuasion, it is reactionaries who disproportionately get the most lucrative deals: Independent blogging doesn't tend to reward robust newsroom cultures and traditional editorial standards as much as invective and audience capture.

Eric Levitz [01-20]: A very simple explanation for why politics is broken: "Entertainment got too good." That's a bit too simple, but covers the right, which as long as Republicans still receive a competitive share of votes suffices to break the whole system. But it's only entertainment on the right. The center-left has its own fissures and chasms, but the only time we get entertainment is on the late-night comic shows, which serve as a palliative against the everyday horrors of the Trump mob. I took a break from Kimmel-Colbert-Myers after the election, and have only recently returned. It is comforting to know that not just these hosts but also their crowds are staunchly on our side. As for the right, I'm simply immune to their "entertainment": I can't recognize it as true, as honest, even as just sincerely misguided. It's based on an instinct for self-flattery, cult-worship, dominance, and cruelty I never acquired (not that I didn't notice its appeal to quite a few folks around me). But the entertainment didn't win over anyone who wasn't prepared in the first place. And the preparation was simple cynicism: first show that no one can be trusted, admitting everyone is crooked, even your own guys; but their guys are even worse, often working not just to feather their own pockets but as supplicants to even more diabolical conspiracies. To fight such people, you need your own fighters, willing to get dirty and bloody.

By the way, this opens with a series of charts showing the split of white presidential vote by income quintiles going back to 1948, each normalized to the national margin. Republicans won the upper two quintiles every year up through 2012, but lost it three times with Trump (small Democratic edge on 2nd quintile in 1956, 1960, 1968, 2000, and maybe 2012, but in each of those cases the top quintile broke strongly R). On the other hand, Democrats won the bottom two quintiles in all of the pre-Trump races except 1960 and 1968 — where the far-from-patrician Nixon was aided by some unusual splits. As for 2016-24, Levitz says:

This development surely reflects Trump's personal imprint on American life. Yet it was also made possible by long-term, structural shifts in our politics.

Aside from the somewhat muddled Eisenhower and Nixon elections, the pattern of Democrats winning the poorer quintiles and Republicans the richer ones has been pretty consistent. The clearest examples were from 1976-88, with 1984 the strongest correlation, but 2008 is nearly as strong. The pattern still held for 2012, but the divide was reduced, partly because right-wing media fanned white racial backlash, but also because the Obama recovery worked much better for the rich than for the poor. Not coincidentally, Obama seemed to identify (or at least socialize) much more with the rich than with the poor. I wouldn't call this a "structural shift," but it did offer Trump an opening that someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have had trouble navigating. But Trump also had the advantage of running against Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, who spent all of their energies cultivating the rich and famous. Even so, Trump was a dumb choice, but Democrats had squandered whatever credibility they once had to point such things out.

When I think of "structural shifts," I think of things that are beyond individual conscious control: technology, capitalism, mass culture, aspirations for freedom and self-determination. Even so, many of them are consequences of political decisions, as when the Democrats decided not to restore let alone expand support for labor unions after Taft-Hartley weakened them, or their decisions to cut taxes on the rich and loosen up regulations constraining finance, or their wrong-headed and mendacious war in Vietnam.

Those structural shifts have blighted the lives of many whites, stranding them in stagnant areas, with limited skills and vanishing opportunities. That many such people would turn against a Democratic Party that seemed to care little and offer less isn't surprising. Unfortunately, in Trump they've found a "savior" who will only make their lot worse, at most giving them hollow flattery, some kind of emotional release at seeing their supposed enemies attacked and/or ridiculed.

Jonquilyn Hill [01-26]: Are we getting stupider? "Technology is rotting our brains — but there are ways to stop it." Interview with neurologist Andrew Budson, "who specializes in and researches memory disorders." Title is broad enough we probably all already have answers, which will be seen to have little bearing on the very narrow subject broached here. Budson focuses on mental decline among individuals, and his main take is "use it or lose it." His main insight is that brains are meant for social networking, not compiling facts or computing results, so he sees isolation and loneliness as major contributing factors. He also notes that watching more than one hour of TV per day "rots your brain," but that's because it's a solitary activity — content seems to be irrelevant, but I'd guess that most people who see this headline will be expecting yet another critique of mind-devastating content. As I read along, I found myself thinking about assisted-care living, and how to better structure those organizations for sustained mental health. I think it's safe to say that's not a high criterion for our current mix of providers and customers, where economics rules, making quality of life an option few can afford. But that's a subject for a future essay.

It's commonly understood that people learn voraciously when they are young, a rate that slows down over time (although accumulated knowledge and insight may still produce qualitative breakthroughs), then usually declines in advanced age, sometimes catastrophically. Plot this out on a line and you'll find that most people most of the time are in decline. A different question is to compare generations using common sample points: how to 30-year-olds today compare to 30-year-olds in 2000 or 1980 or 1960 or 1940? I don't know, maybe because I'm skeptical of metrics (like IQ[*]). But my impression is that the totality of knowledge has only increased, and continues to do so, which makes it impossible for individuals to keep up. We depend on an ever-increasing division of labor to manage all this knowledge, but our inability to keep up with the whole falls ever farther behind, making us feel stupider, or at least less in charge. So it's possible to be smarter than ever before, yet less and less competent to check the intelligence of others. That would be less of a problem if we could trust the experts not just to know their stuff but to do the right thing with their knowledge. Unfortunately, the last 40-50 years has witnessed a boom in fraud and greed with little or no moral or political checks. When those people screw up, as happens pretty often these days, it's often unclear whether it was because they were crooked, or stupid.

[*] The data for IQ suggests that it increased steadily from 1900 to 2000, correlating with broad gains in education and science, but has since declined, which is often blamed on automation, although I could see the same correlation with inequality (time-shifted a bit).

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [01-30]: Roaming Charges: Bored of Peace: Eventually gets to Trump's insane counter-UN racket, but first half deals with ICE, Minnesota, and other instances of Trump fascism.

  • [02-06]: The story of Juan Hernández.

  • [02-09]: Roaming Charges: If you're not a scumbag, you're a nobody: "One of the world's richest jerks is gutting the once-storied newspaper he bought as a vanity project, used to promote his own narcissistic and predatory brand, ran editorial interference for Trump, eventually grew bored with the shredded like yesterday's news."

  • [02-13]: The Nazi origins of the South American drug trade: Klaus Barbie, cocaine and the CIA.

  • [02-16]: Roaming Charges: Trick or retreat in the Twin Cities?

    • On a chart of "% who are extremely/very confident that Donald Trump acts ethically in office," the score among white evangelical protestants has dropped from 55 to 40%; for white non-evangelical protestants, the drop is from 38 to 26%. The only group not showing a decline is black protestants, who have held steady at 7%.
    • Quotes Kristi Noem: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country."
    • After "CBS Evening News loses nearly a quarter of its audience after editorial takeover": "Bari Weiss buries CBS News, which, like the emasculation of the WaPost, was probably the goal."

  • [02-27]: Roaming Charges: State of the empire in extremis. Just found this as I was trying to wrap up, so I didn't initially cite anything here, but there are various items on Trump's war threat. The one I was most struck by was a tweet from Robert A Pape: "This represents 40-50% of the deployable US air power in the world. Think air power on the order of the 1991 and 2003 Iraq war. And growing. Never has the US deployed this much force against a potential eney and not launched strikes." I'm reminded of the WWI story about how even if mobilization was meant as a threat, none of the powers could back away from war once they did. Also of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the US anticipated on much the same evidence. Still, even with repeated evidence of how wrong people are to enter into war, I find it hard to expect that they would consciously blunder like that. Until it happened, I was skeptical that Russia would invade Ukraine, and suspected that the reports were just a taunt by the Biden administration hoping that Putin would fall into their trap. Trump's attack on Iran wasn't unannounced: it was repeaed so often that at some point he may have backed himself into a corner where no other option seemed possible. Still, it was a very stupid and careless maneuver, but it's only the last in a long string of totally avoidable mistakes.

  • [03-02]: Preliminary notes on a planned decapitation. The keyword here is "whacked": for Trump, that's all it comes down to, the solution to all problems. And if it doesn't work, just whack again.

    Trump has done the world a service. He has abandoned pretense and clarified the true nature of American power. There is no longer any need to manufacture a case for war, to make an attack seem conform to international law and treaties or to demonstrate its righteousness by acting as part of an international coalition. Now America can do what it wants to whomever it wants solely because the people who run its government want to. This has, of course, almost always been the case behind the curtain of diplomatic niceties. But Trump has ripped those curtains down and now the world is seeing American power in the raw: brazen, arrogant and mindless of the consequences, which will be borne by others and if they complain, they might be whacked, too.

Stefano Tortorici/R Trebor Scholz [02-11]: Socialist co-ops against Silicon Valley empires: While there is much to be said for cooperatives in general, they could be developed as an alternative to the big tech companies, where the fundamental flaw is that the services they offer are merely bait for their main purpose, which is collecting and exploiting user data.

Matt McManus [02-07]: Thomas Mann and the temptations of Fascism: "The resurgence of right-wing populism has set the table for the far right's renewed fortunes. Published in 1947, Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus offers a guide to the mythmaking and rejection of reason that continues to animate authoritarian politics today." My wife read (or possibly re-read) Mann's book recently, and was so struck by the timeliness of his description of the onset of Nazism that she posted an excerpt, which I logged in my drafts file (and might as well move here):

No, surely I did not want it, and yet — I have been driven to want it, I wish for it today and will welcome it, out of hatred for the outrageous contempt of reason, the vicious violation of the truth, the cheap, filthy backstairs mythology, the criminal degradation and confusion of standards; the abuse, corruption, and blackmail of all that was good, genuine, trusting, and trustworthy in our old Germany. For liars and lickspittles mixed us a poison draught and took away out senses. We drank — for we Germans perennially yearn for intoxication — and under its spell, through years of deluded high living, we committed a superfluity of shameful deeds, which must now be paid for. With what? I have already used the word, together with the word "despair" I wrote it. I will not repeat it: not twice could I control my horror or my trembling fingers to set it down again.

McManus notes:

A well observed feature of the far right is its strange tendency to combine indifference to factual accuracy, or even honesty, with soaring rhetoric about truth, beauty, and greatness. Beyond just a well-documented willingness to obfuscate, bullsh*t, and lie, many of the far right's core ideological convictions seem like bloviated imaginaries and outright fabrications. Often figures on the far right openly acknowledge this tendency, as in a 1922 speech where Benito Mussolini admitted his adulation of the rejuvenated Italian nation was a manufactured myth:

We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And it is to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, that we subordinate everything else.

This willingness to conjure patently artificial values into being, while still insisting all else be subordinated to the products of one's fantasy, is hardly unique to the early twentieth century right. In 2004, a George W. Bush administration official widely believed to be Karl Rove dismissed the "reality based community" for failing to realize that, as an empire, "we create our own reality." In The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump anticipated his political style by admitting he engaged in "truthful hyperbole" that "plays to people's fantasies" and desire to "believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular." More recently J. D. Vance, himself well-versed in far-right thought, has insisted that if he has to fabricate stories to attract people to his cause, then by God, he'll do so.

Dolly Li/Jordan Winters [02-19]: The House of Representatives is too small: The size has been fixed at 435 for more than a century, during which US population tripled. The "one way to fix it" seems to be simply adding more members, each with more compact districts. I have alternative proposal, which I call "Representative Democracy," where districts of whatever size (larger, smaller, doesn't matter, nor do they even have to be all the same size) each elect two or more representatives, where each representative wields a vote weighted by the number of voters who backed he candidate (the weights could be 1-for-each-vote). Typically, this means that each district would have both a Republican and a Democratic representative. If the winner got 60% of the vote, and the runner-up got 40%, both would go to Washington, but when they voted, the winner would cast a vote of 60%, and the runner-up of 40%. This could get more complicated with third parties, and it is an open question whether one wants to promote or retard such things. But this solves several big problems. For starters, it takes away the incentives for gerrymandering. Also, by ending "winner take all" this should dampen the amount of money poured into competitive races. It also, perhaps most importantly, means that everyone will have a representative dependent on one's vote. Elections will still matter, as they will shift relative power, but they will be less susceptible to landslides, as well as other machinations.

Alfred McCoy [02-22]: Accelerating American (and planetary) decline: I'm starting to tire of stories about how America is in long-term decline, and how Trump is only accelerating that decline. But here it is again, in broad outlines. Even before Trump:

While the U.S. was pouring its blood and treasure (an estimated $4.7 trillion worth) into those desert sands, China was enjoying a decade of warless economic growth. By June 2014, in fact, it had accumulated $4 trillion in foreign currency reserves — and in a major strategic miscalculation, Washington had even lent a hand. In deciding to admit Beijing into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Washington's leaders proved bizarrely confident that China, home to a fifth of humanity, would somehow join the world economy without changing the global balance of power in any significant way.

In 2013, as Beijing's annual exports to the U.S. grew nearly fivefold to $462 billion and its foreign currency reserves approached that $4 trillion mark, President Xi Jinping announced his historic "Belt and Road Initiative." Thanks to that initiative and the lending of a trillion dollars to developing nations, within a decade China would become the dominant economic player on three continents — Asia, Africa, and, yes, even Latin America.

While Trump has personally skimmed extraordinary profits from his America First/Make America Great Again racket, tangible benefits to ordinary Americans are less than zero. More troublesome has been his stifling of innovation within the US economy, which not only means that the US is falling behind its old rivals, but crippling its ability to ever catch up. Even the much vaunted US military is nothing more than overpriced, faulty-performing high-tech crap that is useless for any practical purposes but which risks war and moral hazard, while wasting talent and money that could be used for something actually useful. McCoy is especially damning on how "Trump has essentially smothered America's infant green-energy economy in its cradle (and ceded a future green-powered global economy to China). But he has no way of reckoning the final costs of Trump's fossil fuel gambits. Another variation on this:

Zack Beauchamp [02-23]: How to stop a dictator: Compares case studies from Brazil, South Korea, Poland, and Trumpist America. This piece is part of a series Vox is running on America After Trump. Seems like premature optimism, but it's not much fun considering the alternative, which is how much worse things could get if "after Trump" turns out to be just more of the same. Some pieces in this series:

  • Zach Beauchamp [02-18]: How one country stopped a Trump-style authoritarian in his tracks: "What Brazil got right that America got wrong."

  • Julie Myers [02-18]: The Brazilian playbook for defending democracy: "The fall of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and what it proves about Trump-style authoritarians."

  • Jolie Myers/Noel King [02-24]: You got your democracy back. Now what? "What the United States can learn from Poland's experience with autocracy." One lesson: "once democratic norms are broken, they're hard to rebuild — and the temptation to stretch those norms doesn't disappear when power changes hands." Interview with Ben Stanley, who's written a book about Poland and the challenges of undoing the illiberal "Law and Justice" regime. He points to a "trilemma": "Voters want you to reform quickly, legally, and effectively, but it's almost always impossible to achieve all three at the same time." Democrats are gaining political ground by emphasizing the illegality and unconstitutionality of many Trump initiatives, but restoring norms, guard rails, checks and balances won't suffice to undo the damage, and may make it harder to show any effectiveness.

  • Zack Beauchamp [02-25]: Did the Constitution doom American democracy: "In 2015, Matt Yglesias predicted America's political system would collapse. Did Trump prove him right?" The Yglesias essay referred to is here: American democracy is doomed. Interview with Yglesias. I'd be more inclined to argue that the Constitution, with its snarl of checks and balances, was intended to keep democracy safe for the propertied interests (which initially, conspicuously and infamously, included slaveholders). But just because America was never able to develop as a democracy doesn't mean that what passed for democracy was doomed, except perhaps to disappointment. I attribute Trump's ascendancy to frustration: as the system precluded real reform, why not try to break the logjam by investing the guy who promised to break the rules? That the people made a rash and ill-advised choice should be obvious by now. But what better choice were they allowed?

  • Lee Drutman [02-26]: US democracy has repaired itself before. Here's how we can do it again. His argument "why the Progressive Era is the most like our own" has some resonance, in that systemic problems of oligarchy were treated with top-down reforms meant to prevent any major shifts of power (stifling the challenges of populists and socialists). The analogy to the 1960s is less clear, but maybe that's a cautionary tale. By the way, while I've always admired the progressive era reformers, I'm not very happy with many leftist's habit of calling themselves progressives. While I'm more up than down on progress, I don't like the idea that it is inevitable and necessarily good, and I suspect that we're losing votes by not acknowledging the need to limit or at least tone down its excesses. Right now, my preferred self-description is small-d democrats: its distinction from capital-R Republicans is crystal clear, and it reminds us that everything we propose should be aimed at majority support. On the other hand, the alternative of populists has been spoiled by right-wing demagoguery.

Books:

  • Laura K Field: FuriousMinds: The Making of the MAGA New Right:

    • Jennifer Szalai [2025-12-17]: The intellectuals fueling the MAGA movement: "Furious Minds, by Laura K Field, traces the ascendancy of hard-right thinkers whose contempt for liberal democracy is shaping American politics."

  • David Harvey: The Story of Capital: What Everyone Should Know About How Capital Works:

  • Chris Jennings: End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America:

      Sarah Jones [02-19]: Why is the right so obsessed with the apocalypse? I understand that there are people who believe that the future was literally foretold in the Book of Revelation, and who spend much of their waking lives deep in research on the subject. I understand this because my grandfather was one, as evidently was his father. My own father continued this old family tradition, albeit in his own idiosyncratic way, which I never attempted to understand, because the whole thing always struck me as completely fucking nuts (even, I'm quite sure, when I was still a faithful member in good standing of the Disciples of Christ, which had long been the family church). While my ancestors are long dead, I understand this because I still know otherwise decent people who still seem to believe such things. They, too, are nuts, at least in this one respect, but I try to politely ignore that, because there's simply no way I can wrap my brain around the notion that hastening the end of the world we know could be a good thing. I believe that it is important to try to respect different ideas, even in such shady domains as cosmology. Jones does a pretty good job of explicating this one — at least her story aligns with a dozen other versions I have read — but there's still this unbreachable gap between recognition and belief.

  • Clyde W Barrow [02-05]: Reading C Wright Mills in the Age of Trump: "Seventy years ago C Wright Mills published The Power Elite, a scathing indictment of corporate executives, state officials, and their academic apologists. His analysis has lost none of its bite as we confront an increasingly degenerate US power elite."

Other media/arts:

  • Anis Shivani [2017-05-29]: Four years later, Breaking Bad remains the boldest indictment of modern American capitalism in TV history: "The show's visual style is the greatest-ever rebuke to the gory hold neoliberalism has over our minds and bodies." Stumbled across this piece, not out of any particular curiosity about the 2008-13 Vince Gilligan series (five seasons, which I hated at first, broke with early on, but my wife persevered, and I wound up watching he end of; we also watched Better Call Saul, and have started Pluribus and will probably return to it, but with little enthusiasm, at least from me). While my disgust is undiminished, I'm likely to use its title as the second chapter of my "weird" political book: a brief sketch of how America "broke bad" from WWII to Trump. I don't much care whether the show works as critique or example, but I thought I should flag this for future reference. It also turns out that Shivani, who has also written novels and poetry, wrote a 2017 book called Why Did Trump Win? Chronicling the Stages of Neoliberal Reactionism During America's Most Turbulent Election Cycle, which I hadn't noticed, but looks sharp enough to order.

Some notable deaths: Mostly from the New York Times listings. Last time I did such a trawl was on January 24, so we'll look that far back (although some names have appeared since):

  • [02-27]: Neil Sedaka, singing craftsman of memorable pop songs, dies at 86: Brill Building songwriter, recorded a half-dozen classic hits 1959-62, staged a minor comeback in the 1970s with Sedaka's Back, and never really left.

  • [02-24]: Éliane Radigue, composer of time, silence and space, dies at 94: "Her Tibetan Buddhist spiritual practice and her experiments with synthesizers came together in vast, slow-moving works that drew wide acclaim."

  • [02-21]: Bill Mazeroski, 89, whose 9th-inning blast made Pirates champs, is dead: One of the all-time great defensive second basemen. Hero of the 1960 World Series, a gruesome affair still indelibly etched in my memory.

  • [02-17]: Anna Akhmatova, leading Soviet poet, is dead: "She was a towering figure in Soviet literature who was once silenced in a Stalinist literary purge."

  • [02-17]: Jesse Jackson: "An impassioned orator, he was a moral and political force, forming a 'rainbow coalition' of poor and working-class people and seeking the presidency. His mission, he said, was 'to transform the mind of America.'"

    • Robert L Borosage [02-18]: Jesse Jackson still provides light in these dark times.

    • David Masciotra [02-20]: The poetic symmetry of Jesse Jackson's life: love, rage, and leadership. Author has a previous book, I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (2023). He makes a good case here.

    • Jeffrey St Clair [02-20]: Up, down and around with Jesse Jackson: "Jesse Jackson's two runs, in 1984 and 1988, were the last Democratic presidential campaigns I had any interest in joining." He goes on:

      Those campaigns, which, among other things, warned about the coming neoliberal takeover of the Democratic Party, spawned dozens of great activists, including my late buddy Kevin Alexander Gray, who would later play vital roles in the movements that followed Jackson's political campaign: anti-World Bank and WTO protests, the Nader campaigns, the Occupy Movement, the Sanders campaign, BLM, and the migrant rights movement.

      The Democratic Party, in league with the Israel lobby, deployed every trick in the book, and some found only the apocrypha, to not only destroy his campaigns but to try to destroy Jackson both as a force in the Party and personally. (RFK and J. Edgar Hoover conspired to do the same with MLK.) Yet, even with the entire party apparatus working viciously against him, Jesse still crushed party stalwarts Joe Biden, Al Gore and Dick Gephardt. His ultimate loss to Michael Dukakis was preordained.

      To watch Jesse Jackson speak in 1984 was to be struck, and often mesmerized, by a voice few Americans had heard before: the fluid, rolling cadences, the urgent tone, the piercing anecdotes, a voice that didn't shout but summoned, that didn't sermonize but called for action. His speeches gave voice to the voiceless, to the destitute, the abandoned and stigmatized, the oppressed and the imprisoned.

      He then cites PJ O'Rourke as "an unlikely admirer of Jackson's oratorical skills," to quote:

      I did, however, want to hear Jesse Jackson speak. He's the only living American politician with a mastery of classical rhetoric. Assonance, alliteration, litotes, pleonasm, parallelism, exclamation, climax and epigram — to listen to Jesse Jackson is to hear everything mankind has learned about public speaking since Demosthenes. Thus, Jackson, the advocate for people who believe themselves to be excluded from Western culture, was the only 1988 presidential candidate to exhibit any of it.

      St Clair details much of the Democratic Party's demonization of Jackson. Some of this is familiar, but much slipped by me. I've often thought that had Jackson run again in 1992, he could have captured the Democratic Party nomination. But he probably would have lost in the fall, and didn't want to be blamed as the spoiler resulting in four more years of Reagan-Bush. Bill Clinton should have owed him a large debt for such circumspection, but never showed any signs of honoring much less recompensing Jackson.

  • [02-16]: Robert Duvall, a chameleon of an actor onscreen and onstage, dies at 95.

  • [02-14]: Roy Medvedev, Soviet era historian and dissident, is dead at 100: "His score of books and hundreds of essays documented Stalinist executions, Communist repressions, and the transition to post-Soviet Russia."

  • [02-11]: Ken Peplowski, who helped revive the jazz clarinet, dies at 66: "Also a saxophone standout, he served as stylistic bridge between the Benny Goodman swing era and the genre-blurring present"

  • [02-03]: Michael Parenti, unapologetic Marxist theorist and author, dies at 92: "A prolific writer and lecturer, he viewed US history through the lens of class struggle."

  • [01-30]: Catherine O'Hara, 'Home Alone' and 'Schitt's Creek' actress, dies at 71: "An Emmy-winning comedian with oddball charm, she got her start with the influential Canadian sketch comedy series 'SCTV.'" I would have led with films like Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and Waiting for Guffman. Not sure why I gave up on Schitt's Creek, but it probably wasn't her.

  • [01-28]: Sly Dunbar, whose drumming brought complex beats to reggae, dies at 72: "As one half of the famed rhythm duo Sly and Robbie, he played with some of the biggest names in music, including Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger." What about Bob Marley?

  • [01-21]: Rifaat al-Assad, paramilitary leader and 'Butcher of Hama,' dies at 88: "The brother and uncle of Syrian tyrants, he commanded a unit that killed up to 40,000 civilians in a 1982 uprising against his family's rule."

Some other names I recognize: Edward Hoagland (nature writer), Willie Colón (salsa musician), Richard Ottinger (D-NY), ElRoy Face (baseball relief pitcher), Ebo Taylor (highlife musician), Mickey Lolich (baseball pitcher), Lee H Hamilton (34-year representative, D-IN).

Note that the New York Times also offered overlooked no more obituaries for (mostly interesting people I wasn't familiar with, but these two are glaring omissions[*]):

  • Clifford Brown, trumpeter whose brief life left a lasting mark: "He was one of the most talked-about jazz musicians in the 1950s. After he died in a car accident at 25, his influence grew." Brown was already DownBeat's "New Star of the Year" in 1954, by which point he was probably more accomplished and regarded more highly than any other trumpet player in his cohort (he was slightly younger than Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Art Farmer, Thad Jones, Chet Baker, Blue Mitchell — they were all b. 1924-30). I have 2 A and 4 A- albums by Brown, and I'm in a distinct minority as a non-fan of his With Strings or his featured collaboration on Sarah Vaughan (a Penguin Guide crown album).

  • Jimmy Reed, the bluesman everyone covered, then forgot (1925-76): "His most enduring hits were recorded by Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. But his own career faded from view." I'd question who (beyond the NYT) forgot him. The year after he died, GNP/Crescendo released The Best of Jimmy Reed, which Robert Santelli ranked 11 of the best 100 blues albums ever. I have it and two later best-ofs (a Rhino from 2000, and Shout! Factory from 2007) as full A albums (all three focus on 1953-63), and a 6-CD box of The Vee-Jay Years (1994), as well as a compilation of his 1966-71 Paula records, just a notch behind.

[*] More typical are entries like: Frances B Johnston (photographer), Ruth Polsky (NYC music booker), Louise Blanchard Bethune (architect in Buffalo), Kim Hak-soon (who exposed Japan's "comfort women" program), and Remedios Varo (Spanish painter).

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