Friday, August 1, 2025

Loose Tabs

I've spent roughly a week pulling this together. It's nowhere near as comprehensive as it should be, but part of that is that I'm rowing against a flood of mostly disturbing news. My idea is that I'll go ahead and post this on August 1, then write some kind of Executive Summary for a Notes on Everyday Life post in the coming week. While I'm pulling that together, I'll add a few links here, plus some more subject head writing. I'll also do the Table of Contents then. Big thing is to move on, which means putting this up sooner rather than later. I'll add change bars to mark whatever I add.

As it turns out, I'm not going to have a lot of time next week anyway. We'll have visitors, and that will take a fair amount of time and attention. It will probably result in the shortest Music Week in quite some time. Also next week is the primary election in Kansas. The big issue to be decided here is an Amendment on how State Supreme Court Justices are selected in Kansas. Republicans are upset because the State Supreme Court has ruled that abortion rights are protected by the Kansas State Constitution, so cannot be simply outlawed by the state's very gerrymandered veto-proof legislative majority. A couple years ago, they tried to pass another amendment to outlaw abortion. That measures was voted down 58.8% to 41.2%. Now they're trying this back door route. We'll also have open Democratic primaries for Governor, Senator, and the House, each with multiple capable candidates. They've been hard to come by in past years, so there is some small reason to hope for this fall.

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, not much more often in 2026). My previous one appeared 48 days ago, on June 14. The exceptional delay this time has much to do with my work on the Mid-Year 2026 Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll.

By the way, I've been trying to write some more in-depth pieces on major issues (and/or personal peccadillos), using Substack as an email agent. I call this series Notes on Everyday Life. Here's a list of recent ones, plus a couple of oldies I've pinned because they still seem relevant here, in LIFO order:

  • [07-29]: Famous Death Dwarves: Lindsey Graham is finally laid to rest. This was based on the section below.

  • [06-26]: Arafat and Abbas on Violence: Reflections from Tomorrow Is Yesterday.

  • [06-22]: After Iran: A funny thing happened on the way to the apocalypse.

  • [05-29]: But Reality Is Unscripted: Disturbing thoughts on Trump.

  • [05-05]: The Real Road to Serfdom: Tim Wu explains how monopoly power leads to fascism.

  • [05-02]: Lookback: Iraq 2003: Why does the Iran war story sound familiar? (with allowances for tragedy repeating as farce)?

  • [04-27]: Explaining Inflation: AI treats us like 5-year-olds. They leave out a few things.

  • [04-05]: Iran War: The Big Question: How does it end? Or does it end at all?

  • [04-03]: Iran War: The Three Questions: Why is this happening?

  • [03-13]: Days of Infamy: "Franklin Roosevelt knew how to sell a war." Donald Trump doesn't. He only knows how to start one.

  • [2025-10-21]: Making Peace in Gaza and Beyond: "Looking beyond the Trump points toward a peace we can all live with."

  • [2025-10-17]: Gaza War Peace Plan: "Twenty Trump points, for better or worse."

  • [2025-08-10]: Four Stories: My first post, which sets out the basic ideas behind my effort, and takes its title from a very wrong-headed Vox piece that offered some teachable moments. One sample quote I buried in parentheses:

    There is no problem that Trump is the solution to. But his slogan, "Trump will fix it," suggests that some people thought we had problems he could fix. I think Trump's slogan was very effective, especially as Harris made little or no effort to show how very ridiculous the boast was.

I also have a Notes feed there. While I've done very little with it so far, it occurs to me that I might be able to use it to publish Loose Tabs items and Music Week reviews as I write them, instead of having to wait for a long compilation post.

Table of Contents:

New 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 sections, or vanish altogether.

The World Cup:

  • Graham Peebles [07-09]: Poisoning the World Cup: The American Way: "The football has been brilliant, because football is brilliant. But the 2026 World Cup — hosted across the US, Canada, and Mexico — mainly in America — is the most corrupt, polluted tournament in the tournament's 96-year history."

Lindsey Graham: The Senator (R-SC) died on July 11, age 71. While I have many unpleasant memories of the man who probably ranks as the most persistent war hawk in my lifetime (a span that includes Arthur Vandenberg, John Stennis, Henry Jackson, and Graham's amigos John McCain and Joe Lieberman), one that sticks in my mind occurred back when he was an obscure junior member of the House (1995-2003). I pretty clearly remember him talking about the need for Republicans to lock up the judiciary and other centers of power whenever they have the chance, to stay in power even when elections turn against them. (Admittedly, it isn't easy to fact check this rare instance of blurting out the usually unspoken part about subverting democracy.) While his passion for provoking armed conflict was his defining trait, he was an inveterate schemer, a political animal with no respect whatsoever for democracy, or for the people it's meant to serve.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [07-12]: Lindsey Graham, last great Cold War warrior, dead at 71: "The senator was an inspiration to those who believed military power was essential to making the world 'right.' Others thought he lost his 'America First' perspective in Ukraine and Israel." I think the "Cold War warrior" concept misses the point. While he was old enough to have formed his hawkish beliefs before the Soviet Union dissolved, the Cold War was always constrained by a sense of limits. Graham, on the other hand, fully embraced the post-Cold War euphoria, relishing America's singular superpower (aka hyperpower) moment, believing that the mere threat of "shock and awe" would cower enemies into surrender and submission. That doctrine almost immediately failed in Somalia (where it is still failing 35 years later). It failed in Afghanistan. It failed in Iraq. No nation embraced it more fully than Israel, and they've been locked in a hopeless forever war against everyone (even their own people) ever since. Most people know by now that Graham never met a war he didn't want to escalate. What's less commented on, perhaps because it's even more ridiculous, is his inability to ever see a downside in the wars he promoted. They've failed time and time again, not only to achieve their stated goals but by causing enormous collateral damage that has only generated more chaos and resistance. But his only answer to such failure was to double down on violence. He not only worshipped power. He was locked inside its web, unable to see or imagine anything else. But perhaps worst of all was how glib and giddy his delusions made him. I don't know why Al Smith was called "the happy warrior," but he couldn't have been a tenth as deserving of that title as Graham.

  • Benjy Sarlin [7-12]: Lindsey Graham sacrificed his reputation to Donald Trump. He got plenty in return. "His career explains why so many Republicans made peace with Trump — and what he gave up to do it." The assumption, which isn't unreasonable, is that Trump will be soon regarded as a disgrace, even to Republicans. But one could also ask the question, what did Trump sacrifice to gain the toadying allegiance of Republicans like Graham? (And Rubio, Cruz, Vance, dozens more, among them the most reactionary reprobates in American politics.) In 2016, Trump had the smarts to run against Republican orthodoxy on war, trade, corruption ("the swamp"), and social security. But after he got elected, he turned everything over to regular right-wing Republicans, reducing himself to nothing more than an inept front man.

  • The New Voice of Ukraine:

    • [07-13]: Inside Lindsey Graham's relentless last days spent fighting for Ukraine and sanctions: On July 9, Graham traveled to Ukraine (flew out of Turkiye, took a train from Poland, "a journey that lasted 10 hours"). He met with Zelensky.

      That same day, the senator and his colleagues announced they reached an agreement with the Trump administration to advance the revised version of the Russia sanctions bill.

      In Kyiv, Graham told reporters that the deal had been struck just 30 minutes earlier.

      According to Representative Michael McCaul, keeping Trump engaged in supporting Ukraine was largely Graham's doing.

      Graham returned to the US, where he died on July 11.

    • [07-28]: Witkoff, Kushner could visit Kyiv within weeks.

    • [07-28]: Iran, Ukraine ease tensions over Caspian sea attack: "Ukrainian and Iranian foreign ministers, Andrii Sybiha and Abbas Araghchi, spoke on July 28 to calm things down after Ukraine attacked an Iranian cargo vessel in the Caspian Sea on July 26."

  • Jeet Heer [07-13]: Lindsey Graham chose evil: "Conspiracy theorists liked to say that Graham's Trump sycophancy was a result of blackmail. But the truth is worse: He stuck with Trump to keep the US war machine going."

  • Michael Tomasky [07-13]: Lindsey Graham's legacy? It's about one thing, and it isn't good: "He alone had the moral authority within the Republican Party to try to stop Donald Trump, especially after January 6. He chose not to. That's what we must remember today." It's mind-boggling to think that Graham had any morality, much less moral authority. (I don't have any more respect for McCain, but at least he had an act he appeared to believe in.) And for the record, the one Republican who could have stopped Trump after Jan. 6 was McConnell, who could have gotten Trump banned from running again by declaring him invalid under the 14th Amendment (with or without convicting him on impeachment charges). But by then hyperpartisanship had so rotted his brain he couldn't conceive of crossing Trump.

  • Chas Danner [07-13]: Was Lindsey Graham an opportunist, operator, failure, or disgrace? Probably all of the above. None of those are words a normal person would welcome in a eulogy, although Graham himself might have opted for the first two.

  • Jeffrey St Clair [07-13]: Graham Crackers: The words of a professional warmonger. Lots of Graham quotes here, not a lot of context. He contradicts himself so often some quotes may appear reasonable, but rest assured that in its proper context everything he said was meant to be evil. Like this one, which can hardly be interpreted any other way: "When this [Iran] regime goes down, we are going to have a new Middle East, and we are going to make a ton of money." I doubt that Graham was ever in the war business that much for the money, so most likely this quote was intended for an audience of the one who was [Trump]. But it sums up nicely what Graham saw as his Faustian bargain: he gets his war in exchange for his soul, which was never worth much in the first place. Still, odds are that in the end Trump will just pocket the money, leaving the old Middle East much as it was, but poorer.

  • Nathan J Robinson [07-13]: Why mourn Lindsey Graham and not his victims? "The late Republican senator was constantly lobbying for the killing of others. Why should anyone weep for a man who didn't care about inflicting death around the world?"

  • Elie Mystal [07-14]: Lindsey Graham's defense of Brett Kavanaugh told us everything: "The senator's infamous cry of rage spoke not only to his cruelty but also to his larger role in changing the court." Well, not everything, but enough.

  • Jamelle Bouie [07-15]: Lindsey Graham knew better. Better than what? Trump? Maybe, but other explanations are at least as plausible. Graham, like most politicians, had an intuitive sense of what one could and could not say and do. He also has a fevered desire to get out front whenever he could. Consequently, when Trump said or did things that plainly violated Graham's expected code, he was quick to criticize, only to find himself flat-footed, as Trump got away with things Graham thought impossible. That Graham moved so readily into the camp of Trump sycophants should be taken not as hypocrisy but as evidence that his earlier critiques of Trump were merely tactical, soon recognized as mistakes and corrected. Same for JD Vance.

  • Peter Baker [07-28]: At Graham's funeral, a glimpse into power in Trump's Washington: "The political evolution of Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator, both captivated and confused many of his old friends but reflected the changing order in the nation's capital."A report from the funeral, which doesn't come close to capturing how very surreal it must have been. Imagine if all the old Nazis could have shown up for Eichmann's funeral.

  • Brett Wilkins [07-28]: 'Lindsey liked war': Trump laughs off Graham's giddiness over Iran onslaught: "He's never seen a war that he didn't like." And Trump finds that charming?

  • Al Jazeera [07-28]: Lindsey Graham 'almost cried' tears of joy over war on Iran, footage shows: "Excerpts from a planned documentary show the hawkish senator claiming credit for persuading Donald Trump to attack Iran."

  • Noah Robertson [07-29]: Inside the deal to clinch Lindsey Graham's 'sanctions bill from hell': "The late senator pushed for a bipartisan financial bill that could curb Russia's main source of income."

Trump's Nuclear Proliferation Deal With Saudi Arabia: Trump announced signing this agreement on July 22. It immediately met flack from multiple quarters, including from Israel, which led to Trump insisting that Saudi Arabia sign an Abraham Accords deal. I have half a dozen categories below I could have slipped this into, but it straddles several, and is worth considering on its own. My own theory is that, having relaunched his bombing of Iran, Trump was desperate to keep Saudi Arabia support — a big deal, given that it and the other Persian Gulf states are by far the most vulnerable to Iranian counterattack. On the other hand, if the purpose of the Iran war was to stop nuclear proliferation in the region, providing Saudi Arabia with the same technology isn't a good look.

  • Trita Parsi [07-22]: The US-Saudi nuclear deal makes no sense: "How will Washington get Tehran to accept intrusive inspections beyond the JCPOA when Saudi is offered enrichment with no IAEA inspections?" The sense I can make of it is that Trump was desperate to keep Saudi Arabia aligned against Iran, but asked what it would take to keep the Saudis in line? Nuclear power has long been a Saudi goal, and long frustrated by Israel, so the agreement is above all a test of Trump's independence from Israel. That it involved granting to Saudi Arabia terms that Trump went to war to deny to Iran is the sort of irony Washington is no longer capable of understanding.

  • Kenneth Roth [07-23]: Why would Trump agree to the Saudi nuclear deal?: "The agreement offers the Saudis the same options Trump has sworn Iran will never have."

    Why would Trump agree to such a deal? Money seems to have played a big part. The deal could provide tens of billions of dollars to the US nuclear industry if it were to sell reactors to the Saudis. Suddenly the principle that Trump said was worth fighting for can be jettisoned for the right price.

  • Zack Beauchamp [07-23]: Did Trump just kill his own nuclear deal? "The US inked a deal with the Saudis. A day later, Trump walked it back."

  • Mitchell Plitnick [07-25]: The farce of Trump's nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia: "The White House announced an agreement to supply nuclear material to Saudi Arabia, and then killed its own deal by linking it to normalization with Israel under Israeli pressure. But even if the deal fails, it will significantly impact Gulf politics."

Major Threads

War on Iran: Trump's war was suspended on June 17, when he signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which among other things promised to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, while further negotiations took place for a formal peace agreement. A disagreement over protocol for shipping emerged in early July, where the US attempted to guide ships through the Strait without notifying Iran. Iran objected, and on July 6-7, opened fire on transgressing ships. On July 7-8, Trump declared the truce over, and resumed bombing of Iran, reigniting the war. Iran responded by closing the Strait, and by retaliating against US bases in the region.

  • Stephen Semler [06-22]: Iran War: Most unpopular US war in history. This was even before Trump restarted the war.

  • Andrew Cockburn [06-23]: No more Mr. Nice Iranian Guy — we killed him: "Why he never closed the Straits." "Ever since I got my hands on a secret study conducted by an Operational Intelligence Cell attached to U.S. Army headquarters in Baghdad in 2007, I've been reporting that assassinating enemy leadership figures is an entirely counterproductive exercise."

  • Robert Malley/Stephen Wertheim [06-23]: Trump's Iran debacle could be a gift for America: Since Trump resumed the war, the optimism herein has turned to dust.

  • Trita Parsi:

    • [07-01]: Why Iran believes Israel will attack again before October: "The recent Israeli-Lebanese agreement and Hezbollah's unreported role in the previous war is leading Tehran to this conclusion."

    • [07-06]: Israel belongs in the new Saudi-Iranian order: "An anti-Abraham Accords is taking shape. That would be a big mistake." This refers to something called the Better Order Project, which is basically a "two-state solution" reboot. As such, it is a non-starter for any plausible Israeli governing coalition, even with the enticement of participating in an economic zone with Saudi Arabia and Iran.

    • [07-08]: How the US-Iran fight in the Strait of Hormuz can be resolved before it blows up the MOU.

    • [07-13]: A new US-Iran war would end where the last one did: "The fundamentals won't change: Iran can threaten Hormuz, the United States can punish Iran, and neither can secure its objectives through force."

    • [07-16]: "Israel's impunity has ensured that peace is no longer part of Israel's survival strategy." "Western-provided impunity has made the Israelis believe that they can live securely without suing for peace and without ending the illegal occupation of Palestine."

    • [07-18]: Yesterday's US-Iran escalation is a mere prelude to what is likely to come

    • [07-28]: Is Zelensky trying to merge the Iran and Ukraine wars? ". . . and why Israel would benefit from intertwining these two wars." He explains the Israel angle thusly:

      This dynamic would also appeal to Israel. First, it would give the Iran war another lease on life. Second, it would internationalize the conflict further by drawing European governments into the Iran theater through their deep commitments to Ukraine. And third, perhaps most significantly, it would transform the political narrative. Defeating Iran would no longer be presented as a necessity to defend Israel, but rather, to defend Ukraine.

      Given the levels of elite and public support Ukraine enjoys — after all, it was the victim of an illegal invasion — such a framing is far more politically digestible than centering the war on Israel, given Israel's plummeting standing in the West due to its genocide in Gaza and critical role in starting the illegal war with Iran.

      Parsi turned this blog post into an article:

    • [07-28]: Zelensky's dangerous gambit to merge the Iran and Ukraine Wars: "Of course this would also appeal to Israel, prolonging the Middle East war and potentially drawing European governments into the theater, too." I've heard mixed reports about Trump's support for Zelensky: his arms pipeline has more/less shifted to Europe, which isn't capable of the same largesse as Biden provided, but also is less likely to saddle him with crappy weapons like the Abrams tanks. Zelensky's resolve to fight on has been bucked up by European support, while Putin's resolve builds on Trump's indifference to the war. So one can see how Zelensky's move tries to break this stalemate, but the key to getting Trump support isn't alignment with Israel: it's pushing Putin to align with Iran. At present, Iran is hard pressed to manufacture all their own missiles and drones. But Russia may have surplus manufacturing, and could provide Iran with weapons systems (like anti-aircraft, longer-range missiles, aircraft even) that could make a difference. Also, while Zelensky may fancy that the way to Trump's heart is through Israel, he's ignoring a lot of moral baggage that come with aligning with Israel. He's already been reckless in provoking Russia, repeatedly crossing so-called "red lines," which Putin has been reluctant to do anything about. But at some point, some Europeans are going to doubt the wisdom of following him into what might quickly become a World War. Especially if it involves supporting Israeli genocide.

  • Mitchell Plitnick [07-11]: The US war of choice against Iran has now become the War of Hormuz: "American goals in the war on Iran were unclear from the start, driven by Donald Trump's personal ambitions and the fantasies of pro-Israel neoconservatives. Now, however, there is a clear agenda: to prevent Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz."

  • Rosemary Kelanic [07-21]: The Houthi blockade puts Trump in a serious bind: "The Iran-aligned group wants to halt shipping to and from Saudi Arabia, undermining a Strait of Hormuz alternative."

  • Chas Danner:

  • Elfadil Ibrahim

  • Qamar Cheema/Mir Ahmad Muritza [07-24]: Aiming at the Gulf, Iran shoots itself in the foot: "Tehran's attacks on its Arab neighbors have increased their reliance on the US rather than reducing it." I've long thought that Iran's best chance to force Trump to negotiate is to put pressure on the Gulf States (including Saudi Arabia), who really have the most to lose in an all-out war. Unlike Israel, they are within easy range of Iranian missiles and drones. Unlike the US bases, they are poorly defended and vulnerable to attack. Plus they have lots of money, which plays into Trump's motivations. But it's tricky to figure out the optimal amount of pressure. I think it's certainly the case that Iran has attacked much less than they could have. Some moderation makes sense: after the war, they will be neighbors, with mutual interests and concerns. But the harder Trump attacks, the more tempting it will be to strike back where US allies are most vulnerable.

  • Benjamin Hart [07-28]: Trump has only humiliating options left in Iran: Interview with Danny Citrinowicz, a 25-year veteran of Israel's intelligence groups, now a "senior researcher in the Iran and Shi'ite Axis Program at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies."

  • Spencer Ackerman [07-29]: A regional war, with options to expand: "And without any reason for Iran to trust in negotiations, this is a one-way elevator until US capitulation."

Israel:

  • Ramzy Baroud [06-22]: When the Iran War is over: The West Bank may be Netanyahu's next front: It already is, and has long been, but he'll have even more pent-up ire to vent somewhere.

  • Jason Ditz [06-22]: Israeli troops raid southwest Syria villages, interrogate shepherds, detain farm worker: Well, if they can't have their war in Iran and Lebanon, they'll just move on to Syria. For Israel, there will always be another war to fight, enemy to vanquish, and maybe even land to occupy.

  • Qassam Muaddi:

  • Paul R Pillar [07-21]: With Trump distracted by Iran, Netanyahu is squeezing Gaza: "The US administration needs to use its leverage to get Israel to follow through on the ceasefire agreement." I've long thought that Netanyahu's efforts to sick Trump on Iran were meant more to distract him from following up on the Gaza Peace Plan than to address any real or imagined Iranian threat, but I don't know that he really needed the distraction. After the hostages were exchanged, I seriously doubt that Trump cares what Israel does to Gaza and the West Bank, or even to Lebanon — maybe at the end of the rainbow he'd like to get another golf resort, but he has much shorter-term grifts to play. Trump's definition of "peace" is he doesn't have to field questions about war. Thanks to a very complacent media, that's not likely to happen (unlike with the hostage story).

  • Razi Nabulse [07-24]: How Israel's crackdown on Palestinian citizens of Israel created the crime epidemic now ravaging their communities: "Nearly every day, a Palestinian citizen of Israel is killed by gang violence within Israel. The crisis has been years in the making, but its roots trace back to Israel's war on Palestinian political activity."

  • Yakov M Rubin [07-24]: Israel in Crisis: A treat from within: Writes about the Haredim, a large group of "ultra-orthodox" Jews in Israel who are mostly anti-Zionist, noted especially for their refusal to serve in the IDF, which is to say as part of Israel's permanent war machine. Rabkin's book, What Is Modern Israel?, looks interesting (possibly dated, having come out in 2016).

  • Aurélie Daher [07-30]: Trump's Lebanon fantasy is running smack into reality: "Officials in Beirut know that any agreement with Israel would be dead on arrival at home." On June 26, official delegations from Israel and Lebanon "signed a framework agreement with great fanfare in Washington." The problem is that Hezbollah wasn't a party to the agreement, and no one else has the power to disarm them. Or for that matter, to stop Israel from continuing to devastate and occupy Lebanon.

    The systematic, large-scale destruction of the country's south and the massive killings of civilians did not produce Israel's desired results. Tel Aviv had ideally hoped for a polarization of Lebanese society that would lead to a civil war, in which Shiites would come under fire from their compatriots — or, at the very least, for a majority of Lebanese to condemn and permanently exclude Hezbollah from governance.

    The Israeli army's brutal campaign had the opposite effect, adding fuel to Hezbollah's fire rather than extinguishing it. In practice, the Israeli army has re-legitimized the Lebanese organization's narrative that it has a special (if self-assigned) mission to defend the territory against the enemy to the south.

    This represents an extraordinary failure for the pro-Israel position on the issue.

Israel-American-World Relations: I used to try to separate out Israel-related pieces into several bins. The Iran war has its own news section. The Israel section above pertains to security operations in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as internal Israeli political affairs. This one deals with America's relationship to Israel, and possibly with the world's.

  • Shaul Magid [06-14]: "Reactionary renewal": "Judaism," the "Jews," and a note on peoplehood: "Is Jewish renewal abandoning the left, and if so, why?" An interesting piece, not of much political import but it does bring to light a strain of thought within Judaism (Renewal, which I'm aware of only because my father-in-law was a student of Mordecai Kaplan) against the backdrop of Israel's incessant demands for fidelity.

  • James North:

  • Philip Weiss:

    • [06-21]: My generation still can't discuss Palestine, but thankfully we no longer control the debate: "My generation of Jews entered Harvard in the 1970s as outsiders and left as the establishment that built support for Israel. Today, attitudes have shifted completely, yet my group still can't discuss Palestine. Fortunately, no one is waiting for us."

    • [07-12]: Palestine and the role of the activist intellectual: Interview with Bruce Robbins, author of Who's Allowed to Protest, on "the new McCarthyism on campus targeting those who support justice for Palestine."

    • [07-23]: Nicholas Lemann's aggrieved article on Jews and progressives reveals a blindness to the evil of Zionism: "In a widely read New York Times article, Nicholas Lemann claims anti-Zionism in the progressive world marginalizes Jews. Yet his failure to even mention Palestinians reveals his ignorance of Zionism's role in driving the crisis he seeks to confront." Lemann's article is: [07-06] A profound question haunting Jews today. He does admit "the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu, at the head of a far-right coalition, in 2022 was a devastating blow, compounded by his government's failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack and its conduct of the wars that followed." But that's about it. I sympathize with the emotional attachment that many American Jews feel toward Israel. What I don't get is the blindness that ignores how self-centered, power-mad, and supremacist Israel has become, and how far that ethic has strayed from the one that has allowed Jews in America to largely free themselves from centuries of Euro-American prejudice. By the way, Lemann's article led me to:

      • Ari D Berman [07-01]: What Zionism has always meant: Or what actually-existing Zionism has almost never meant. The Ahad Ha'am quote is misleading — he was a critic of the idea of a Jewish state, not an idealizer — while the "similar" quote from Ben-Gurion is just misdirection: "saying that Israel's ultimate successes would be determined 'not by its riches or military power nor by its technical skills but by its moral worth and human values.'" Israel's leaders have amassed so much power that it's incredible they should persist in blaming their own moral failures on enemies they have allowed no other option to. Berman's conclusion:

        [Zionism] was a means of allowing Jews to live to their greatest potential, unfettered by the restrictive, often brutal, experiences of living in foreign lands. Zionism is thus an answer to a 3,800-year-old yearning, not only a response to a modern crisis.

        Seen through the lens of its history and ultimate purpose, Zionism becomes a framework for constructive dialogue and renewed inspiration. From its biblical beginnings until today, Zionism has carried one of humanity's most enduring ideas: that a people, rooted in its values and returned to its homeland, can build a society that honors faith, dignity, responsibility and hope.

        This reminds me of Gandhi when asked, "what do you think of western civilization?": "I think it would be a good idea." I don't mind much if today's Israelis look back to their Zionist (and/or Biblical, but don't confuse them) history to find support for better values — as Americans, we have a lot of practice at elevating higher principles from the deeply flawed individuals who founded the nation — but such efforts need to be accompanied by practice. Nations can change. There are Israelis who want this change, but they have thus far had little political impact. And that's at least partly because apologists like Berman try so hard to pretend that Israel isn't the repressive, racist powerhouse it has so plainly become.

  • Yonatan Touval [06-24]: US support is Israel's true weakness. In 1979, Jimmy Carter solved Israel's real security problem by brokering a peace deal with Egypt. This included a commitment of substantial aid to both Israel and Egypt. In Israel's case, this aid has been used to finance a long series of wars that did little if anything to enhance security, and much to convince the world that Israel is a rogue nation with no interest in peace and even less in justice. For a while, the US acted as a brake on Israeli excesses, but after Clinton's Camp David fiasco and Bush coming to power, Israel increasingly took advantage of the American blank check, and American presidents, especially Trump and Biden and Trump again, turned into mere supplicants. The result is that Israel has become abhorrent to the sensibilities not just around the world but even in the US, where there is a growing movement to finally cut the subsidies and complicity. It's unclear when this will actually happen — the Trump administration is not exactly known for its sensitivity to polling shifts, but the direction seems clear.

    • The end of Israel's American dependency will be painful. Dependencies tend to end that way. But the tragedy would not lie in the loss of indulgence. It would lie in losing it and learning nothing from the loss. If America is now withdrawing the certainty of unconditional rescue, that may be the last gift it can give. What follows will test not Israel's might, which is not in doubt, but whether it can learn the discipline that sovereignty demands.

  • [07-31]: Netanyahu's meeting with Trump was not nearly as successful as he claims: "Benjamin Netanyahu gushed about his White House meeting with Donald Trump this week, but the meeting was most notable for what went unsaid about Iran."

  • Mitchell Plitnick

  • Connor Echols [07-08]: Inside the growing religious revolt against Christian Zionism: "Faith groups battled over Israel Tuesday during a marathon day of lobbying on Capitol Hill."

  • Andrew Prokop [07-16]: When Israel lost Democratic voters, in 3 charts.

  • Omer Bartov [07-21]: I'm a scholar of genocide. We're entering a terrifying new era.

  • Michael Arria:

  • Hillel Schenker [07-28]: Signs of cautious hope on the Israeli left: "One interesting development on the left is the new joint Jewish-Arab 'Place for All of Us' party, founded by leaders of Standing Together."

Ukraine, Other Hot Spots, and World Politics:

  • Jennifer Kavanagh [06-16]: Trump is blowing his chance to make peace in Ukraine: "A serious attempt to end the war means shifting focus from territory, making realistic promises, and bringing all parties to the table."

  • Alina Khamatdinova/Matthew Blackburn [07-23]: The West's plan to pressure Putin has a glaring flaw: "Hopes that a Ukrainian deep strike campaign will force a ceasefire are based on a misunderstanding of Russian politics."

  • Stavroula Pabst:

    • [07-27]: As war drags on, Ukraine's population is collapsing: "As the war in Ukraine trudges through its fifth year, deaths there now outnumber births at a nearly four-to-one ratio."

      The new population figures come as fewer Ukrainians are demonstrating a desire to fight. Earlier this month, anti-conscription protests rocked the western city of Lviv. Ukraine also has about two million draft-dodgers and about 200,000 military deserters, according to the country's former defense minister.

      In line with polling it conducted last year, Gallup found last month that Ukrainians' support for continued fighting remains low. Only 24% of respondents told Gallup that Ukraine should keep fighting until it wins the war. In contrast, 66% wanted a negotiated solution to end it as soon as possible.

      About 52 million people lived in Ukraine in 1991. Back in May, Denys Uliutin, Ukraine's Minister of Social Policy, said the country now only has about 22 to 25 million residents.

    • [07-29]: Ukraine's 'turned tide' doesn't comport 'with basic military reality': "Cajoled by Zelensky, Western media is dangerously upselling — again — Kyiv's ability to win."

  • Caitlin Dewey [07-28]: Why Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average: "The wildfires sweeping France and Spain this week are the largest blazes either country has faced in modern history."

  • Connor Echols [07-28]: Zelensky's big idea for Trump: Ukraine is the Israel of Europe: "The Ukrainian president is emphasizing the close ties between Iran and Russia as he seeks greater US support."

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Washington with a bang Tuesday, just days after Ukraine carried out a missile strike against an Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea.

    The attack appears to be part of Zelensky's effort to win over President Donald Trump, who has long had a tense relationship with the Ukrainian leader. The pitch is simple: Ukraine is the kind of partner who will take action when others won't.

    As George Beebe of the Quincy Institute put it, Zelensky's goal is to "convince President Trump that Ukraine will be an Israel-type partner for the United States in Eastern Europe, where it can serve to counter Russian aggression, contain Russian expansionism, and protect Europe and NATO." Beyond that, Kyiv is hoping to show Trump that it is "even more valuable than America's NATO allies," which the president has repeatedly criticized for being insufficiently supportive of his war with Iran.

Trump's War Department: I set this section up to deal with Trump's threats of war. We're obviously beyond that now, so see the section on Iran for more on that.

  • Ben Freeman [05-29]: Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries: "In the first step towards shifting aid further into the shadows, the House's 2027 NDAA would all but fuse the two countries' armed forces together."

  • Stabroula Pabst [06-25]: Trump's $88 billion Iran war request is stuffed with pork: "The proposal includes hundreds of millions for elevator and memorial repairs — and lawmakers aren't buying it."

  • Charles A Kupchan [07-02]: America does not know its own mind: "Internationalist are once more doing battle with America Firsters, cleaving the body politic between two incompatible approaches to global affairs." The previous time was the 1930s, when "America First" was a slogan of anti-interventionists (including fascist sympathizers), who were ridiculed as "isolationists" by advocates of extending America's increasingly global economic power into world politics. Of course, it was (and is) more complicated than that, and then and now much effort has been made to confuse the issues. I'm not finding much clarity in this thumbnail sketch of US history. Part of Responsible Statecraft's America 250 deep dive into American history, arguing about the past to score points about the present.

  • Medea Benjamin [07-10]: Eight contradictions behind NATO's Summit of "Love": Member nations have long had different views on NATO, as have people within those nations, and the result is not just confusion but an ingrained habit of stasis. For most of its history, the US was happy with that. Russia wasn't really a threat beyond its Warsaw Pact satellites, the US wasn't terribly demanding, NATO's existence allowed Europe to pretend at keeping a military while keeping it impotent (France and UK were partially exempt as long as they had colonies to suppress). This only got messy when the US went on the warpath, starting with Iraq/Kuwait in 1990, and accelerated with the War on Terror, where Washington expected them to fall in line. NATO increasingly became a US-dominated arms cartel aligned with Israel's militarism, US foreign policy was redirected to promoting arms sales, which meant provoking potential threats in Russia and China (where the Cold War playbook still resonated). What Europe (and Canada) got from this new regime was hard to quantify, but it's mostly been negative. Any reasonable analysis would move them to negotiate deals with Russia, China, Iran, etc., and cut the Americans loose. But their longstanding habit of humoring the Americans has held steady — so far, at least.

  • Joseph Solis-Mullen [07-23]: How Washington's interventions fuel Somalia's cycle of chaos.

  • Blaise Malley [07-24]: What a US war with Cuba would really look like: "Experts say every military option carries its own strategic, political, and humanitarian risks."

  • Dana Frank [07-29]: Trump's favorite drug trafficker returns triumphantly to Honduras: "Juan Orlando Hernandez came home with a skip in his step after receiving a pardon despite moving 400 tons of cocaine."

  • Jeet Heer [07-31]: Trump's Caribbean killing spree is a feckless, criminal failure: "Blowing up innocent fishermen hasn't curbed the drug trade."

Trump vs. Law:

Trump's Administration: Trump can't remake America in his own image (i.e., destroy the country, culture, and civilization) just by himself. He needs help, and having largely purged the government of civil servants and replaced them with his own minions, this is what they are doing (whether he's paying attention or not):

  • Aparna Soni [07-19]: 2.6 million lost health insurance after ACA subsidies expired. That has real consequences. "Many people switched to cheaper, higher-deductible plans, but average premium payments still rose 58% and deductibles climbed 37%, or more than US$1,000 per person. By February 2026, only 83% of people who selected a marketplace plan had paid their premiums and kept their coverage, down from 91% the previous year."

  • Dylan Scott [07-23]: So is the lettuce bad or not? "Can we trust anything the Trump administration says on cyclospora?" Nope.

  • Tony Romm/Brad Plumer [07-24]: Trump administration admits canceling grants to states that did not vote for him: "Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states 'based solely' on whether they backed Trump in the 2024 election."

  • Caitlin Dewey [07-27]: The worst year for measles in a generation: "Measures is back in part because we stopped fearing it." Also . . . Trump.

  • Emily Badger/Alicia Parlapiano [07-27]: Congress budgeted billions for big transit projects. Trump isn't spending it.

  • Brad Plumer [07-29]: Trump administration is repurposing federal land for AI data centers: "In the latest example, the Energy Department will convert a shuttered Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility into a data center campus and gas plants."

  • Thom Walsh [07-29]: The Big Beautiful Bill's market-based health care delusion: "The Rural Health Transformation program asks states to build market-style reforms in places where health care markets often do not exist." It is fair to say that the program is not only designed to fail, it is designed to fail irreplaceably:

    But the program is not simply a grant program. It is leverage. States are being asked to manage the consequences of reduced federal health care financing through plans that must satisfy federal expectations. If a state does not use the funds in accordance with its approved application, the federal government can withhold, reduce, or recover funds. The statute also bars administrative or judicial review of those decisions.

    That matters because the program is built partly around the familiar vocabulary of health care reform: choice, competition, technology, transparency, partnerships, right-sizing, and value-based care. Those ideas are not inherently wrong. The problem is that access-sustaining money is being used to push market-style policy in places where the market case for that policy is often weakest.

Donald Trump:

Politics: Pieces on US elections (recent and future) and, more generally, intra-party politicking. Party-specific pieces in following sections.

  • Ed Kilgore: Lots of pieces that could be sorted under other categories, but many become obsoleted almost as fast as they land.

    • [06-20]: Trump's new GOP midterm strategy is pure chaos: "He thinks Republicans should stop fixating on voters' concerns about prices and focus on his phony voter-fraud panic."

    • [06-23]: Tucker Carlson and MTG choose irrelevance over GOP: "These high-profile apostates may claim they represent many unhappy MAGA folk. But the fact is they're leading no one and going nowhere fast." For now, sure, but could there be a longer-term positioning angle?

    • [06-26]: JD Vance identifies with Nixon, which says a lot: "The veep compared himself to the former president, painting him as another bad boy who overcame his snooty detractors and achieved supreme power."

    • [07-07]: Why 'Medicare for All' is back on the Democrats' agenda: "Exploding health-care costs and a New Wave of progressive-candidates are reviving calls for single-payer health." It will be on the agenda until it is implemented, because anything less is bound to fail. The best one could hope for ACA was to delay the inevitable: it solved a few problems, and ameliorated some more, but at a high cost, as it also attempted to keep all industry business interests fat and happy. But rather than welcome what was actually a big victory for business, Republicans did everything they could to sabotage the law, which only accelerated its failure.

    • [07-10]: How Trump's polling lies fuel his election denial: "Trump conditions his supporters to believe his election fables by regularly making delusional claims about his popularity." And vice versa.

    • [07-15]: MAGA won't stand for limits on ICE brutality: "Efforts to rein in ICE tactics and poorly targeted mass deportations have been met with a backlash from Trump's base." As Adam Serwer put it, The Cruelty Is the Point.

    • [07-16]: Trump drags America deep down the rabbit hole: "In a White House address Trump spouted wild election conspiracy theories. Damage to the midterms could be profound."

    • [07-20]: GOP's midterm message: Democrats stink more than we do! "With Trump unwilling to defend his own record, Republicans must struggle to make the election comparative and smear the opposition as extremist." The thing is, this tactic has been backfiring. Indeed, it arguably backfired for the Democrats in recent elections, even though there is a good case that the Republicans are far more extremist than any Democrats. When Republicans attack Democrats as "socialist" or worse, the reaction is increasingly divided between "huh?" and "cool!" The charge only resonates for people who already hated Democrats.

    • [07-22]: Polls show even MAGA has soured on Trump's Iran War: "The Iran war has always been unpopular, and as the conflict drags on, public opinion is looking more and more dismal for the president."

    • [07-22]: John Fetterman's party-switch calculus: "The erratic Pennsylvania Democrat is flirting with a party flip. If the midterms produce a narrow Senate majority, he could have massive leverage."

    • [07-26]: Democrats need to postpone their civil war.

    • [07-27]: Will Trump make January 3 another January 6? "Reversing a 2026 midterms defeat wouldn't be easy, but the president is laying the groundwork."

    • [07-28]: Democrats poised to overreact to Michigan and Wisconsin primaries: Both races seem to be cases where the Democratic money people are in panic because their preferred candidates simply don't have the appeal of their challengers. The problem is that they're not coming up with good candidates to campaign for their do-nothing agenda.

  • Robert Kuttner [07-28]: Yes, Trump will attempt a coup: "If we are vigilant, he won't pull it off."

Other Republicans:

  • Rick Perlstein [06-28]: Ronald Reagan to JD Vance: minimizing Watergate is a Republican tradition: "On the American right, there is an unbroken lineage of Watergate propaganda going back to the 70s from today." There was a brief period starting in the 1990s — I date from Clinton's shameful eulogy of Nixon — when liberals loved the irony of touting Nixon as a liberal icon. That went hand-in-hand with the tendency to view the Republican turn to the right as starting with Reagan in 1980. That turn was deeply embedded in the Nixon years, even if he let some laws pass that later conservatives decried (like Clean Air, and OSHA), and put Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court. But Nixon also installed Rehnquist, which started the erosion of civil rights. (Also note that he turned the Office of Economic Equality over to Donald Rumsfeld's deliberate incompetence, so that the Great Society programs would end in failure.) Nixon also largely invented the "culture war" manipulations Reagan and others would later advance. But only with the advent of Trump has it become clear that Nixon's main contribution to the Republican right has been to justify presidential criminality, both against domestic and foreign "enemies." Unfortunately, the backlash against Watergate was limited to domestic affairs; his more serious foreign policy crimes, like the murder of Allende, were never addressed, partly because they weren't new with Nixon.

    • Lauren Gambino [06-25]: JD Vance says Nixon's Watergate scandal would be '12-hour news story' today. This says more about Vance, who was 12 year short of being born when Watergate broke, than anything else. He doesn't know the story (especially about how the cover-up overshadowed the crime, but also the whole panoply of "dirty tricks" Nixon was also hoping to cover up), and he has even less understanding of how people, including the media, viewed political crime back then. What's less clear is how much media have changed: certainly Republican-aligned media have cozied up to Trump's crazed criminality, so they can be counted on to deny and dismiss any charges. But it's not like Nixon didn't have allies hoping to bury Watergate. It couldn't be buried due to the way that it slowly leaked out, as every attempt at cover up backfired.

    • David A Graham [07-21]: JD Vance isn't a fool. Why does he act like one? "Every politician does some pandering, but few do it as clumsily, or with such evident disdain for their own supporters, as the vice president."

    • Thomas B Edsall [07-28]: Who does JD Vance think he is?

  • Bess Levin [07-15]: Ken Griffin, GOP megadonor and Rubio fan, goes all in on midterms: "The billionaire Citadel founder is said to be focusing on Senate races in hopes of shaping the party beyond Trump." He was the 5th biggest political donor in 2024, and "has contributed some $40 million to midterm races," which "could easily double by November." Susan Collins (R-ME), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and the Republican nominated to succeed Joni Ernst (R-IA) are major beneficiaries.

  • Ariana Aspuru/Sean Rameswaram [06-29]: How the rich got stingy: "The ultra-wealthy used to build libraries and public parks. Those days are over." Interview with Bella DeVaan, director of the Charity Reform Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies.

  • Elisabeth Zerofsky [07-28]: What the crackup of the Heritage Foundation says about the post-Trump right: "The bastion of American conservatism best known for Project 2025 has been consumed by an ideological — and generational — civil war."

  • Virginia Heffernan [07-31]: Don't be fooled: America hates these toxic right-wing gasbags: "Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and Erika Kirk get lots of attention. But America hates them. And increasingly, they hate each other." Hate, after all, is their stock-in-trade.

Democrats: Had I written this in real time, I probably would have expressed my dismay and revulsion over how prominent Democrats as well as the usual media vultures piled on to wreck the Graham Platner campaign in Maine, and especially over those ostensible Democrats who had promised to vote for Collins. I was never much of a Platner fan, nor am I overly enamored of his "working class charisma," and I know nothing (and care little) about the disputed facts. It's quite possible that my own kneejerk reaction isn't all that different from the way Trump fans responded to libelous charges against their hero. But we don't need to go into that any further. Platner has withdrawn. Maine Democrats have a new candidate. No need to rehash this again.

  • Kate Yoder [06-16]: The climate myth Democrats can't quit: Climate change seems to have slipped to the bottom (24 out of 25) of issues that voters identify as "very important to their vote," which is being taken as an indication that it's not worth talking about.

    The idea that talking about climate change is a liability for Democrats has become conventional wisdom. Last year, the Democrat-aligned think tank Searchlight Institute issued the advice "Don't say climate change." A recent op-ed in The New York Times concluded, "When it comes to climate change, for now, it might be better to say nothing at all." An early draft of the Democratic National Committee's autopsy report of the 2024 election, released under pressure in May, posited that messages about climate change and shifting to green energy "created anxiety among workers in traditional industries worried about job losses."

    This question deserves a much deeper answer, but all I can offer here is a paragraph. First, we have to get realistic: about the real dimensions of the threat; about how difficult it is to prevent the conditions from getting worse; and about what government needs to do to for disaster recovery. From this you can make at least two clear points: one is that Republicans are bad at disaster recovery, for lots of reasons (denial of causes, unwillingness to help anyone who isn't one of their chosen people, corruption in what they do spend); another is that climate disasters are driving up insurance rates, eventually to levels no one can afford (government needs to be able to provide insurance, starting with people who can't afford it, but also to make people who used to be able to afford it more comfortable). Neither of these things attacks people for driving SUVs or eating meat, nor do they try to shame people for setting thermostats wrong. But sure, once you start to rebuild trust, you can suggest sensible changes to reduce carbon footprint, etc. And you can justify investing money in changes that will eventually pay for itself in managing insurance costs. I suspect that the problem isn't denialism, although Republicans have campaigned on that. Most people believe the science. But they don't want to take personal responsibility for it, nor should they given the role that companies and government (like the military) play in making it worse. And they're not impressed by the solutions Democrats have been pushing so far, which are mostly just subsidies to alt energy companies and tax breaks for buying electric cars. That's a deep problem with the political system, which only supports proposals that make interest groups money.

  • Bhaskar Sunkara [07-02]: Jonathan Chait doesn't understand the socialists he's attacking: This seems to be the new definition of an academic squabble: not only is Chait's Atlantic essay behind a paywall, so is Sunkara's Jacobin rebuke. All we get is this: "Jonathan Chait thinks the Democratic Socialists of America has become the thing founders like Michael Harrington built it to oppose. He has the history totally wrong. The thread from Harrington's DSA to this one isn't hard to find."

  • Kevin Kruse [07-08]: Punching Left: Ed Kilgore refers to this as the "Democrats' civil war." Basically, there is one faction which has controlled the upper ranks of the Democratic Party since the Reagan-Bush era, largely by tapping into big business money (mostly in tech and finance). They saw this shift as both necessary, given the decline of unions as a force for political mobilization, and as an opportunity, given the Republicans' embrace of reactionary "culture war" issues. Indeed, by the time you get to Trump, their main pitch is that they're the only safeguard against fascism. But they found that they couldn't get the rich to support them unless they attacked anyone who challenged the rich and powerful, which is to say the left. This wasn't new. This happened way back with Truman and his "loyalty oaths." It happened when LBJ wrecked his Great Society to fight a pointless, hopeless war in Vietnam. And it's still a reflex for the Democrats who still raise money and direct campaigns, even though their candidates have lost much of their credibility. The problem is that their campaign pitches don't win, not least because their solutions don't work. And also because they keep embracing wars that make a mockery of their supposed commitment to peace and justice. It's no surprise that the people cited below who want to purge the Democratic Party of its left see support for Israel as their litmus test issue. (The link is to Shapiro, but Fetterman has been even more adamant.)

    Over the last month, there's been a flurry of panic from self-styled moderates and centrists in the Democratic Party about the success of a few socialist candidates in party primaries.

    Some of this grumbling has simply been the self-interested reaction of inert incumbents who are (rightly) worried that these political upstarts might be coming for their own jobs in Congress. But other prominent figures in the party have also gone out of their way to trash these leftists and assert that they have no place in the party's coalition. Rather than working alongside the left, these misguided moderates seem to believe the Democratic Party needs to distance themselves from them and denounce them.

    Today, professional concern troll David Brooks confirmed that this is a horrible idea by embracing it in a piece for The Atlantic titled Democrats Became Great By Fighting the Left.

    • As Kruse points out, at least from the New Deal forward, the left has been the leading force behind Democratic rises. I'd go further and make three more bold claims: the left has better solutions for most of the problems that trouble us today; that left arguments are potentially more effective than pitches for "moderation"; and that left overshoot is almost structurally impossible, so there is no reason to panic about power shifting left. We're a long, long ways from stopping the rich from getting richer, and even farther from making the rich poor. Few on the left even want that: we'd rather have poor people more secure, while reducing the power differences; some degree of inequality may be inevitable, but at some point the value of further leveling up may cease to matter.

  • Howard Dean [07-16]: Democrats' key to winning the midterms: "The party's healthcare affordability agenda could lower prices and put the Senate in play." One thing I've never forgiven Obama for was getting rid of Dean as DNC chairman, after Dean had engineered the Democrats' majority in Congress in 2006, and Obama's own election in 2008. Obama's pick may have helped him get reëlected in 2012, but by then Congress was lost, and stayed that way.

  • David Freedlander [07-20]: Like it or not, Kamala Harris is the front-runner: That means quite simply there is no front-runner. It's silly to even talk about the prospect. She lost to Trump. There is no excuse for that. And while she "comes in with 99 percent name ID," much of that ID isn't favorable, and virtually none of it was built by campaigning against any other Democrat.

  • Steven Greenhouse [07-22]: Democrats need to hammer Trump on his unprecedented corruption: "To win in this year's midterm elections, the party must highlight that Trump has made huge financial gains while millions struggle to make ends meet." While Trump embodies many character faults in the American people, this level of corruption should still be a major turn off. He cites Hungary as a similar example:

    Democrats should repeatedly hammer Trump for his greed, corruption and conflicts of interest the same way that Hungary's opposition repeatedly attacked Viktor Orbán for his immense corruption — a strategy that caused Orbán's popularity to plummet and caused Hungarian voters to oust their country's authoritarian leader last April. Peter Magyar, Orbán's challenger, defeated Orban by focusing on three issues the Democrats would be smart to focus on: the cost of living, the lack of economic opportunities, and the fact that their country's leader and his family grew ever richer even as many people grew poorer.

  • Andrew Prokop:

    • [06-24]: Why urban Democrats love socialists now: "Democratic socialists are winning in New York — and in other cities." I suggest everyone go back and read Thomas Geoghegan's primer on European (especially German) models for social democracy, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life. For sure, socialism is better for the poor than no socialism, but where the value of robust rights and generous public services really pays off is with the middle class. Socialism makes it possible for people with middle incomes to get a good education, to get health care when they need it, to bounce back from loss of a job, to give their children opportunities, to plan for retirement, and to avoid the pitfalls of sudden bankruptcy that haunt many Americans today. Highly educated, somewhat better than median income people, especially in large and expensive cities, may benefit even more. Moreover, they're likely to have traveled and seen that it's possible to have functioning government that treats people fairly and generously.

    • [07-30]: How "abundance" lost the Democratic war of ideas: "Moderates hoped 'Abundance' could be the party's new vision. It hasn't worked out." First I've heard of that, but centrists probably spoiled the concept by adopting it too fervently. I still haven't looked at the Klein & Thompson book, but probably will at some point. Klein makes some bad calls, but he's a pretty smart guy, and I'd expect him to have some good ideas. (Thompson I'm not so sure about, so let's forget him for the rest of this comment.) Also, I think Klein's intent was to convince the left to add yimbyism to their repertoire, and not as a substitute for everything else — which was the tack took by the centrists, who were looking to rekindle their love affair with the rich by adopting some kind of supply-side, trickle down economic agenda. And beyond that, they saw it as another cudgel for punching down the left. Of course, some on the left took their bait, and took it out on Klein. Mamdani, on the other hand, took what he liked, and ignored the rest — which seems like the right way to handle things. After all, the left does want things like more affordable housing, and has no affinity for zoning rules and anti-development hassle that derails development that would be worthwhile.

  • Bill Scher:

    • [07-28]: The DSA platform would destroy American democracy: "The socialist group's vision of a federal government without three equal branches providing checks and balances would facilitate the whims of a would-be authoritarian. Sound familiar?" Not really. The "checks and balances" system has been more effective at preventing popular reforms than it has been at preventing authoritarianism. The Republican-packed Supreme Court has pretty consistently backed Trump's authoritarian power grabs. Maybe not as consistently as Trump wanted, but the right has won some pretty serious arbitrary victories there, like ending abortion rights, allowing unlimited campaign spending corruption, and much more. What protects democracy is the right to vote, which is also under attack from Trump. It's certainly not the electoral college, the manifestly unrepresentative Senate, the gerrymandered House, the unelected war machine, or the highly politicized federal courts system.

      That much said, I'm in no position to defend DSA. I'm not a member. I'm not involved with them in any way. I've never read their platform, nor do I want to. My views are generically leftist (I believe that equality is the foundation of justice), democratic (I believe that government should serve all people, so should be responsive to all of their needs), and liberal (I believe that individuals should be as free as possible within the constraints of mutual respect and cooperation). The "socialism" label carries some historical baggage that I fear is unhelpful (as does "communism" and "anarchism"), but I recognize people who adopt such labels as fundamental allies, even if we may quarrel over details (as I also do with other leftists, democrats and/or liberals).

      Still, if the best charge Scher can make against DSA is that they want to write a new constitution which would abolish the Senate, that's a pretty weak complaint. The Founders certainly didn't regard their Constitution as permanent or sanctified. They allowed for amendments, and indeed for a new constitutional convention. The latter hasn't happened, because we've always found it easier to work with the old document than to open up a blank piece of paper. In recent years, the people pushing for a constitutional convention have been on the right, not on the left. Give this political threat, I've basically taken a defensive posture, and given no consideration to proposals to restructure government. On the other hand, if DSA wants to dream, I can only say, "good for them." Back when I was in my teens, before I settled on any real position in politics, I was fascinated by the various utopian thinkers, so it's fair to say I've always loved a good thought-experiment.

      Scher has long been the most dutiful of centrist DNC pundits, so it's pretty clear who he's carrying water for. His argument is pure distraction: DSA has many more immediate goals and plans before they get around to abolishing the Senate (which, however good in theory, can only happen after they win the Senate, by which point it will no longer be an obstacle). However, his argument takes a weird turn when he looks for a case where a "democratic socialist" case advocating "unrestrained majority rule" without constitutional checks and balances, and comes up with David Ben-Gurion. He was a nationalist first and foremost: his commitment to "socialism" was limited to "Hebrew Labor," a repudiation of the fundamental leftist notion that all are equal; and his view of "democracy" was as a bag of favors he could use to shore up his power bases and general legitimacy. There is much more that can be said about Israel's example, but one thing odd here is that one of the main complaints centrist pundits have about DSA is their opposition to Israel's wars on equality, human rights, and democracy.

    • [07-31]: How left will Democrats go in 2028? That depends on 2026: "Democratic voters, long partial to candidates who show a capacity for bipartisan compromise over ideological purity, may be changing." That statement is probably wrong on every point, except perhaps "may be changing." Democratic voters supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders not because they wanted compromises with Republicans but because they feared unbridled Republican control, and thought that the better-financed "moderates" would be better positioned to protect them. They failed, in part because all this talk about seeking bipartisan compromises made Democrats look weak and wobbly, while raising the expectations that Republicans could be moderate. Also, there's no evidence that anyone on the left wing of the Democratic Party is hung up on ideological purity. As for "changing," Scher runs through a lot of polling data, of which the most surprising is:

      According to annual Gallup polling sampled from 1994 to 2025, the share of Democrats who identify as "liberal" — as opposed to "moderate" or "conservative" — sits at a record high of 59 percent, up from 25 percent during Bill Clinton's first term.

      The label poison seems to be wearing off, as it is also for "socialist" and all the other red-baiting epithets. Scher makes more hay with polling on how many Democrats are willing to compromise, but much of that can be explained by poll construction. Let me put it this way: if I was president, and had a Democratic majority in Congress, I would still profess my willingness to cooperate with Republicans on bipartisan solutions to any problem they were willing to engage with seriously. Any time you can reach a consensus, that's better than eeking out a narrow partisan win. But how often are Republicans willing to help solve a problem? Damn near never. Clinton once described his welfare reform bill as a fundamentally good bill "wrapped up in a sack of shit." At least since Clinton became president, the only times Republicans have been willing to work out compromise deals is if they wound up making Democrats look bad, mostly by alienating their base. (NAFTA was the first big example of this. ACA was an example of months of bipartisan negotiation compromising a bill that should have passed with 80% margins, only to be 100% of Republicans oppose it, they turn it into a political cudgel.) One shouldn't be surprised that Democrats are getting sick and tired of their politicians selling them short in a pretense of bipartisanship that only seems to ratchet right. It doesn't take ideological rigor to see that candidates with left principles are more likely to see through these centrist ruses and hold out for principled solutions.

  • David Atkins [07-31]: The case for the DNC's Ken Martin. Really: I don't have any insight or opinion here. As far as I've been able to tell, the only DNC chair who did any good was Howard Dean, and Obama put an end to that. Since then, it's been a tool of the money-grubbing "centrists," and as such dead weight on efforts to elect Democrats across all 50 states. I don't know whether Martin is a change or more of the same. I will say that having to assume $20 million of Kamala Harris campaign debt isn't a good look.

The Economy (and Economists):

  • Ha-Joon Chang [06-12]: The end of the old economic order is an opening for the left: Interview. Another subscriber's only thing. (My wife subscribes, but no, I don't have the password.)

  • John Herrman [06-29]: AI inflation is screwing with the rest of the economy: "Rising prices for computers, phones, game consoles, appliances, and cars are just the beginning."

  • Brad DeLong:

    • [06-30]: Is Kevin Warsh as bad a central banker as he seems? Perhaps . . . : "Standing on one's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is no way to create a stable standard of value."

    • [06-27]: The centuries of Eric Hobsbawm, and:

    • [07-02]: The centuries of Eric Hobsbawm II: "Hobsbawm's Long Nineteenth Century — in which his unshakeable bedrock foundational commitment to Marxist teleology is both his superpower & his Akhilleus's heel." First piece is based on an Enzo Traverso review of a book by Emile Chabal. Untangling this gets messy, not least because DeLong wants to draw a line between Hobsbawm's 1789-1875 books and his later 1875-1991 volumes, praising the former, and condemning the latter, mostly for unfashionable politics, which are blamed for excessive gloom. DeLong sees his own book as the antidote, a choice that doesn't seem like much of an improvement: by limiting himself to "actually existing socialism" DeLong loses the critiques offered by all the other possible socialisms, which only serves to lock in actually existing capitalism. Still, I like this bit by DeLong:

      In Hobsbawms telling, 1848 fails as a social revolution. However, it succeeds in killing the old order: thereafter, rulers know that they must reckon with capitalism, mass politics, and national movements, and that if anything is going to stay the same, everything must change.

      I thought Hobsbawm was far too sketchy and far too glib about 1848, especially given that between the two books, I read Christopher Clark's 896-page Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World: 1848-1849. While the loss of detail may matter little, DeLong's two sentences are closer to the point than Hobsbawm's "nothing changed." What changed was the side the bourgeoisie aligned with. While they could proclaim equal creation and universal rights back in 1776 and 1789 without considering the possibility that their slaves and workers (and wives and children) might consider claim to such rights, by 1848, their world had changed, even if they weren't totally aware of it. They restarted their revolt against aristocracy, but quickly found they had more in common with the aristocracy than with the masses (something Marx anticipated in The Communist Manifesto, which is directed not against the aristocracy but instead against the bourgeoisie — this may be why Hobsbawm showed so little respect for the 1848 revolutionaries).

  • Paul Krugman:

    • [07-14]: Suddenly, Hormuz is less crucial than it was: "Why? Because the real energy crunch is coming from the Russia/Ukraine war." He points out, and has the charts, that pump prices have risen far above crude barrel prices, and that they came down less during the brief opening of the Strait. How much of that has to do with Russia isn't clear, but when Ukraine attacks Russia's "energy infrastructure," they're aiming at refineries, not production wells. While closing the Strait was certain to raise oil and gas prices, I've always been skeptical that the increased costs would spell economic disaster for the rest of the world. While demand for many individuals is sticky — it isn't easy to switch to more fuel-efficient transportation, or to cut your commute — there is some slack in the system to absorb shocks. (Krugman gives several examples.)

    • [07-24]: Quagmire of the vanities: "Why the world economy is still at risk from the Iran debacle." Following up on the previous post, he points out that the "crack spread" (the difference between the price of crude oil and the price of refined products like gasoline and diesel) "has exploded, from around $25 a barrel before the war to more than $65 now."

      Trump's gratuitous war on Iran has turned into a remarkable quagmire — remarkable because the only thing keeping the war going is Trump's vanity. He effectively lost the war in the first few days, when it became apparent that Iran's hardline regime had survived the initial decapitation strike and that the U.S. military couldn't keep the Strait of Hormuz open. But Trump is psychologically incapable of admitting failure. So the war goes on, weakening America by the day, as he searches for some way to spin his abject defeat as a victory.

Technology (Including AI):

  • Caitlin Dewey [07-22]: The AI that went rogue: "The models broke out of a controlled digital environment in an "unprecedented" show of AI risk."

  • Eric Levitz [07-30]: AI could end up too cheap to control: "Think anarchy, not oligarchy." He's talking about Chinese AI models, which are nearly as powerful and currently much cheaper than American models. Competition should drive software prices down to near-zero. AI I'm not so sure about, but I do believe that American AI companies will never make profits that justify their current valuation.

  • Kate Clark/Sam Schechner [08-01]: The race to build an American alternative to cheap AI from China: "Silicon Valley startups are setting up open models, with some operating on shoestring budgets because of limited interest from VCs."

The Environment:

Media:

  • Scott Carney [07-29]: The real reason that Substack is collapsing: "The subscription model has maxed out." Quotes Taylor Lorenz as saying, "I wish I could turn off the ability of anyone to 'follow' me. Because what good are followers when follower growth seems correlated with losing paid subs??" The author shows a graph of his total subscribers growing (+1.8%) while paid subscribers are dropping (−11.6%). He also notes that "on a good day my brain can only keep up with about 5 newsletters. Meanwhile my wallet is skeptical of the value of even paying for that number." I probably subscribe to a dozen (my two paid subscriptions were comped; I don't pay for anything else, but my wife pays for but I can't access; I very rarely pay for anything, but sometimes I can pick up on her subscriptions).

  • Margaret Sullivan [07-30]: No TV experience? At CBS News, that's no problem: "The conservative columnist Ross Douthat is the network's latest perplexing hire — but the move is in line with the new leadership."

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Dean Baker: Look for links here. They are all worth reading.

  • [07-08]: The Sanders-Trump plan for an AI sovereign wealth fund: Don't buy it: "An AI sovereign wealth fund would concentrate political power, reinforce the AI bubble, and divert attention from more effective industrial and corporate tax policies." I'm not sure what Sanders' position on this is, but I doubt it's the same as Trump's. I can imagine developing a sovreign wealth fund system that could be beneficial, but the main point wouldn't be to piggyback on bubble riding (which is what investment in AI would be at this point) but to direct investment to businesses that need more support, including for countervailing power reasons like stimulating more competitiveness. Baker makes another pitch for his "serious corporate income tax: non-voting shares in lieu of taxes." Two questions here: I don't see how the government gets its in-lieu-of-taxes from stock buybacks; and while I can see the logic of the government not voting in corporate management, I'd like to see more employee ownership, with customers also having a voting stake, so why not give the voting shares to them?

  • [07-14]: Social Security is a problem of income distribution, not demographics: "Social Security's long-term financing shortfall is driven primarily by decades of rising income inequality and slower wage growth, not an aging population or overly generous benefits."

  • [07-15]: Blocking the Paramount-Warner merger: Keeping the Trumpers from owning everything: "The Paramount-Warner merger threatens media competition, increases political control over major news outlets, and underscores the need for alternative public funding of journalism."

  • [07-16]: The NY Times reports on China: A teachable moment: "The New York Times exaggerates the weakness of China's economy by misrepresenting GDP growth, misunderstanding deflation, and overlooking the country's longer-term economic transition."

  • [07-18]: Exporters are still not eating the Trump tariffs: They are taxes on us: "New import price data reinforce that Trump's tariffs function as taxes paid by American importers and consumers, not by foreign countries." This is mostly a point on Trump's misunderstanding, which is fair enough. Still, the point of tariffs is to disadvantage foreign products, which happens regardless of who pays the tax. What's less clear is who benefits? In theory, when foreign products become more expensive, domestic equivalents become more competitive, but nothing stops them from simply becoming more expensive, raising profits. The classic theory is that tariffs help protect developing industries, which as they grow may become competitive enough to no longer need tariff protection. This doesn't seem to enter into Trump's calculations at all.

  • [07-22]: Government-granted monopolies in health care create need for prices controls: "High health care costs are largely driven by government-granted patent monopolies on drugs and medical devices, making price controls a response to existing market intervention rather than a source of it." I'd rather get rid of patents altogether, but this is one of the least things one can do to make a difference in limiting the abuse.

  • [07-23]: Trump and Hegseth are demanding big bucks for their wars: "Trump's proposed military budget would increase defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, far exceeding the cost of many domestic programs that have faced intense political opposition."

  • [07-29]: Trump wildfires: The arsonist complains about the smoke: "Trump's threat to tariff Canada over wildfire smoke ignores his own role in promoting fossil fuels, worsening climate change, and raising costs for US consumers."

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [06-26]: Roaming Charges: Call the shrink. Per Woodward and Bernstein, Nixon's last days in the White House were spent "having drunken conversations with the portraits of FDR, Jefferson and Lincoln." Unlike Nixon, "Donald Trump posts his insane rants online for all to see, nearly every night, and without the aid of alcohol to set him off, just his own disintegrating mind and no one bats an eye anymore. Last week, he compared himself to Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Alexander the Great, claiming he was more powerful than all of them, and was 'by far the most powerful person that has ever walked the planet,' because of his 'global reach.'"

    + AI-linked securities now account for a record 45% of the S&P 500, according to Yahoo Finance.

    + Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan, dead at 100, may have inflicted more human misery than any other American in the post-World War II era . . .

    + Speaking of housing costs, there are 25 million American adults living with their parents, a new record.

    + $2.5 billion: the total amount of taxpayer money the Trump administration has paid out (so far) to cancel offshore wind projects.

    + Sen. Roger Marshall: "53 Republican senators, you're gonna find 53 opinions. We're very strong-willed, typically top of our class type of folks. So we've got opinions. And the hope is, the debate within us, we take 2+2 and turn it into 8." Turning 2+2 into 8 is how the Pentagon ended up with a $1.2 trillion-dollar budget and still couldn't defeat Iran (total defense budget $20 billion) . . .

  • [07-03]: Priapic ambitions: Notes on George Washington.

  • [07-10]: Roaming Charges: The American mirror: Opens with another ICE story, this about them killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston. Farther down, he has a chart on "wealth per adult in USD": the US is number 2 in average wealth, but didn't make the top 20 in median wealth. (Switzerland dropped from 1 to 8; Luxembourg rose from 3 to 1; Belgium rose from 11 to 2; Singapore fell off the chart from 6; Denmark rose from 7 to 5.) More bullet points:

    + The Telegraph on the AI bubble: "The overvaluation of US stocks has now surpassed the level that brought the stock market crashing down in 1929. At a rating more than double that of their British and European counterparts, and the highest since the peak of the dotcom bubble, US equities are in for a hairy decade."

    + Trump made $2 billion on his crypto swindle and more than a million of his investors lost $3.8 billion . . .

    + Measles had largely been eliminated from the US. Trump and RFK, Jr. have brought the disease back, with a vengeance, as cases reach a near record high . . .

    + NYTimes Pitchbot: "Graham Platner's history of sexual assault proves he does not belong in the US Senate. He belongs on the Supreme Court." by Susan Collins.

  • [07-17]: Roaming Charges: When farce repeats itself: Starts with a Jean Beaudrillard quote, one-upping Marx. Then details another ICE killing, this one in Maine, Joan Guerrero, who was "shot and killed by ICE officer David Brouillette, a recent recruit with a history of domestic violence who was, in the words of one relative, 'extremely mentally ill.'" Also: "ICE has shot at least 17 people while they were inside their vehicles."

  • [07-22]: Transmitting the news from Neptune: Carl Estabrook's embrace of the life force.

  • [07-24]: Sound Grammar: When Hendrix hit home.

  • [07-29]: Sound Grammar: The best jazz records of 2026, so far: Among other things, describes my site as "essential reading for music fans."

    Music therefore can reach us without conditions, without expectations or contrived limits. It seeps through the boundaries of accepted discourse and hits us in the gut and the head and heart at the same time. And can only dispute the message if you play the sax, which has rarely, if ever, been an instrument of fascism. Jazz has other advantages in times of autocracy. It can express radical, even revolutionary, ideas and sentiments without falling under the censor's lash. Bill Orcutt's Music in Continuous Time may well be a call for sedition against the regime, but good luck to Todd Blanche proving it or even understanding it.

TomDispatch: Editor Tom Engelhardt has retired, which ironically gives him more time for writing, although his stock-in-trade remains rants about Trump which all lead back to global warming. Meanwhile, former intern Nick Turse has taken over, while remaining The Intercept's primary critic of American militarism.

Miscellaneous Pieces

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

Sara Herschander [07-09]: What that wobbling New York office tower reveals about America's housing crisis: The US is finally turning empty offices into homes. But it isn't always easy.

Paul Starr [07-22]: Proportional representation gets a new look: "Supreme Court decisions and unrestrained partisan gerrymandering are focusing attention on a fundamental election reform. But one version is more feasible than the others." This "fringe" idea is common around the world. It encourages the development of multiple political parties, which compete for leverage, then try to form coalitions once the votes are counted. It's a pretty good idea, but I've proposed a version that is, I think, better: I call this representative democracy. The idea here is that everybody (or almost everybody) gets their own representative. The country can still be divided up into districts, although they don't have to be equal sized. Each district would elect at least two representatives, and each of them would proxy for how many votes they received. Thus, for instance, in my district in and around Wichita, Ron Estes would be entitled to cast 198,465 votes (or 0.65 vote), but Esau Freeman would also get a ticket to Washington, where he could cast 106,632 votes (or 0.35 vote). Thus the 35% of the electorate who aren't in the least represented by Estes would still have representation. Elections would move from winner-take-all to minor adjustments. Gerrymandering would be pointless. The advantages of raising huge amounts of money would diminish, and with it all of the attendant corruption. Of course, this could be more complicated with third parties, independents, write-ins. I could see making allowances for people who didn't vote to sign up for a representative after the election, or for people who did vote to transfer their proxy. Of course, there is no chance of anything like this being implemented as long as the Republicans think they benefit from the current undemocratic system of corruption. But were that system to turn against them, representative democracy could be a lifeline, to at least stay in the game.

Emily Topping [07-22]: You should get th own your media, not rent it forever: "From Playstation games to ebooks and family photos, corporations are replacing ownership with temporary access. But we don't have to accept that." File this under "Enshittification." Leasing games go back a long ways, and come back whenver some company sees an angle to maximize profits that way. (Renting vs. owning houses is another example.) But the thing about media that's different is that the marginal costs of additional copies are so near to zero that everyone could have a permanent right to access. And, as someone who's spent most of his disposable income on print and music and has, thereby, ammassed a ridiculous amount of clutter, that sound much better to me (and, no doubt, even better for you). Of course, short of my imagined world, there are lots of reforms that can be implemented. A good first start would be to get rid of patents. Ensure a right to repair. Demand that products that are no longer maintained become part of the public domain, so that others can maintain them. Expand rights to share and copy. One more I'd like to throw out there: no clickthrough license can be enforced unless the provider can prove that the customer had adequate legal representation before clicking.

Books:

  • Zack Beauchamp [07-04]: The late historian who rekindled my hope for America's future: "Gordon Wood's argument for the 'radicalism' of the Revolution reveals something profound — and hopeful — about America." Wood has long been my "go to" historian for the period from 1875-1925, as he always seemed to have a view that was both generous and precise of very different people in a very different time. In short, he made sense to me, but I also appreciated that his view of the radicalism of the American Revolution fit in nicely with my view of its essential virtues.

  • Daniel Felsenthal [07-31]: The Jewish radicals who wanted equality for all: "In her history of the Jewish Labor Bund, Molly Crabapple tells the story of workers who opposed prejudice, tyranny, and nationalism." Which, among other things, means Zionism. The name of the book is Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund.

  • Joseph Heath [06-12]: Harari vs. Henrich: "What science actually says about human evolution." Contrasts two books on human evolutionary theory: Yuval Noah Harari: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and Joseph Henrich: The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. The two books differ in how they order evolution. For Harari, it goes: 1. intelligence, 2. language, 3. cooperation, 4. culture. For Henrich, the opposite: culture, cooperation, language, intelligence. This may be explained by an ambiguity in the word "culture." While we commonly think of it as the constellation of arts produced by intelligence/etc., another meaning is the nutrient soup in the petri dish in which bacteria grow. That is at least logically previous to whatever else can develop. On the other hand, how can you tell you have intelligence unless you can manifest it somehow (like in language, or art)? Putting language before cooperation also seems backward, as the utility of language depends on interaction with others.

  • Katherine Kelaidis [07-06]: How historians took over liberal punditry: "The hottest resistance talking heads during the Trump 2.0 are academics. What happened?": The author names: Jill Lepore, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Joanne B Freeman, Kevin M Kruse, Heather Cox Richardson, and Timothy Snyder. Author focuses, rather critically, on the latter two — not my favorite examples, although I don't read any of them regularly (or Ben-Ghiat and Freeman at all). That overlooks numerous other academics, most prominently economists like Paul Krugman and Adam Tooze (who could just as well be considered a historian).

    • Charlotte E Rosen [2025-01-20]: The end of resistance history: Cited above, deals with many of the same people, more critically on Richardson, reminding me how she became a prominent fan of Biden's foreign policy, even when it ran off the rails with Ukraine and Israel. (Snyder is another one, a Russophobe and Ukraine hawk. His area is the "bloodlands" between Germany and Russia.)

    • Osita Nwanevu [07-03]: Who owns the Declaration of Independence? "The founding document has been fought over since it was written. Today, we can let Trump claim it, or we can take up its battle cry to 'alter or to abolish' what's destroying our country." A prime example of arguing over history to make current political points. I've long been sympathetic to the view that it is a radical document based on high ideals that still have some way to go to be implemented for all. For a detailed reading, see Danielle Allen: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.

  • Allen Lowe [05-17]: Melvin Gibbs' How Black Music Took Over the World: Book review. Noted because Lowe complained about the reactions he provoked, and I figured I should check it out. But I still haven't.

  • Michael Shorris [07-21]: What's so scary about the Frankfurt School? "In The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, AJA Woods looks at how the Frankfurt scholars became the latest bogeymen for the contemporary right." I had never heard of Lyn Marcus, but Lyndon LaRouche, sure, what a nitwit! And then you get to William S Lind, and eventually Ted Cruz and Andrew Breitbart. Critical theory is difficult enough without having to extricate it from people who understand nothing and intend to keep it that way.

  • JD Vance: Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith:

Obituaries: I had been using the New York Times, but they're giving me aggravation these days, so I'll switch over to Wikipedia (July, also June), which is probably better anyway. Roughly speaking, since my last report on May 12:

  • [05-20]: Cleve Moler, 86, American mathematician and computer programmer, developed the LINPACK and EISPACK math libraries, and MATLAB, a software package that helped non-programmers solve complex math problems.

  • [06-05]: James Bradley, 72, American historian. I read two of his books: The Imperial Cruise: The Secret History of Empire and War (2009); The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia (2015). His earlier Flags of Our Fathers (2000) was the basis for Clint Eastwood's movie about the legacy that followed the taking of Iwo Jima in WWII. [NYT]

  • [06-12]: David Hockney, 88, English painter. [NYT]

  • [06-15]: Abdullah Ibrahim, 91, South African pianist. [NYT]

  • [06-22]: Clive Davis, 94, record producer and executive. [NYT]

  • [06-22]: Alan Greenspan, 100, long-time Fed Chair. [NYT]

  • [07-05]: Mike Wallace, 83, historian, best known for his three-volume history of New York City, starting with Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (co-authored with Edwin G Burrows; he was the sole author on the other two volumes). In the 1970s, he was involved in the Radical History Forum, and Radical History Review. I have a memory of him writing about Mexico. I'm not finding much to substantiate that, but he was married to Mexican author Carmen Boullosa, and they co-wrote A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the "Mexican Drug War" (2016). [NYT]

  • [07-11]: Lindsey Graham, 71, American politician and war criminal. See his section above.

  • [07-13]: Pat Oliphant, 90, Australian-born American political cartoonist.

  • [07-15]: Plas Johnson, 94, American saxophonist. [NYT]

  • [07-19]: Richard Heinberg, 75, journalist and ecologist, wrote extensively on fossil fuels (especially oil depletion) and climate change. I've read a bunch of his books, including The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003); Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007); and Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009) — seems like there must be more, but the only one I readily found on my shelves is The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises (2010). The idea of "peak oil" attracted a lot of interest c. 2000, but faded later in the decade as secondary production (aka "fracking") took off, especially in the US. With that, US production finally increased beyond the 1969 peak, which lulled people back into a sense of complacency — although by then, the worry was less about running out than about turning all we had into greenhouse gases. Actually, the advent of widespread fracking proved that the era of really cheap fossil fuels was over, and that oil and gas would only become more expensive to produce.

  • [07-20]: John C Dvorak, 80, tech writer. I read him regularly, especially in the 1980s personal computer magazines.

  • [07-20]: James Woolsey, 84, Clinton's first CIA Director, possibly his worst appointment ever (no mean feat). Especially prominent in his suport for Bush's invasion of Iraq. I recall a description of how Clinton appointed him: he was just a name the staff proposed; Clinton met with him once, 15 minutes top, and was satisfied. It was not a job he cared about, let alone realized would undermine his presidency. Now we should understand that his biggest mistake was his failure to radically curtail the military and CIA/NSA/etc., which metastasized under his benign neglect. That started with Colin Powell backing him down into "don't ask; don't tell," which turned a reasonable proposal into license for unprecedented enforcement. He should have fired Powell, like Truman did MacArthur. Instead, he kept promoting machine cogs like Woolsey (and his oily replacement, George Tenet), until the "vulcans" were calling the shots, and he was just rubber-stamping them — especially when he saw that bombing Iraq was a good political diversion from impeachment. [NYT]

  • [07-28]: Raoul Vaneigem, 92, Belgian author of The Revolution of Everyday Life, a major tract associated with the Situationist International (best known for Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle).

Some other names I recognize:

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas.

  • Kurt Andersen [08-01]: Picture is a Trump-posted meme which poses two pictures of Trump, one from his military academy days, and one current with an admiring glance of his youth, and the caption: "Same Guy. Even more energy now!"

    The ultimate malignant narcissist posting a perfectly unwitting self-parody of his malignant narcissism.

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