Monday, September 16, 2024

Speaking of Which

Opened this file on September 11, 1:27 PM, with the big debate looming that evening. As I'm writing this Sunday evening, that start seems like ages ago. Little chance I'll make my rounds before nodding off tonight. I could see posting or of not, where the main reason for posting is to move earlier into doing endlessly delayed non-blog work.

Indeed, late Sunday night I decided to pack it in without posting. I don't expect I'll need to add much on Monday. And in general, I won't be circling back to publications I checked on Sunday, or reporting news that only broke on Monday.

Finally posted this late Monday night. I ran into a lot of pieces on Monday that added a lot of extra writing, in many cases including regrets that I didn't have time to write even more. Even with the extra day, I didn't make all the usual rounds. I also found myself needing to search for further articles on specific topics, which may wind up being a better way to go about doing this. I also hit a bunch of paywalls. That's a horrible way to run a democracy, but that's a rant for another day.

For what it's worth, this week, on initial post, has the most words (15635) and the third most links (288, behind 317 and 290) of any week since I embedded the counting software.

I was struck by the following passage from Annie Proulx's Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, where talking about the bogs in Germany she brings up some old Roman history. The significance here is about how arrogant empires seed their own destruction (p. 120):

Rome's first emperor, Caesar Augustus, was seventy-two years old and near the end of his rule when the legions suffered their catastrophic defeat on the edge of the Great Bog. Germania's population was rural, made up of farmer-warriors and their families living in small settlements at the time of the battle. There were no real towns, and private ownership of land had been unknown among the eastern barbarians fifty years earlier when Caesar conquered Gaul. In general, where colonial- and imperial-minded aggressors make their moves into new territories and encounter indigenous people, often very numerous and "complex, multi-lingual, culturally diverse," as the two groups gradually mix and confront each other, tribal identities begin to take shape and individual "tribal leaders" are named. For the aggressor, this bundling is the opening process of controlling the indigenous people who, up to that time, may not have seen themselves as distinct tribes. Suddenly, they are corralled by identity to a specific area.

The Roman system of conquest was to grant conquered people Roman citizenship and involve them in Roman customs and culture. What Rome got from its aggressive takeovers encircling the Mediterranean Sea was an increase of manpower to serve in the army, slaves and money from taxation of its new colonies.

The Roman legions were augmented by auxiliaries of men from conquered lands. Yet many of the vanquished hated the Romans, their martial ways, their enslavements, their self-proclaimed superiority, their heavy taxes and their strutting presence as overseers and governors in seized territories. At the same time the conquered population wanted to be joined to the powerful, to visit glittering Rome whence all roads led.

The next couple pages go into specifics about the battle, where over 13,000 Roman troops were slaughtered at a loss of 500 Germans. I had long been under the impression that the Roman Empire expanded steadily up to its maximum under Hadrian (117-138 CE; Wikipedia has maps from 117 and 125), but I've since learned that history is messier. I first heard about the German bog debacle after the Bush invasion of Iraq, when I noted:

Of course, this will take a while to play out, but the logic of self-destruction is clear. A while back Martin van Creveld compared the Bush invasion of Iraq to the disastrous Roman invasion of Germany in 9 BCE when Augustus marched his legions into a swamp, losing them all.

By the time I wrote that, I had already noted a comparable Roman military disaster, when in 53 BCE Crassus led "across the Euphrates" into Iraq, where the desert proved as debilitating as the German bog -- although in both cases the real culprit was the Roman ego. Back then I was thinking more about the hubris of the invaders, but one could just well focus on the inevitability and resilience of resistance.

A short while later, I read this, from Timothy Egan, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis (2011, pp. 16-17):

What Curtis knew of Indians was informed, in large part, by depictions of dead natives he had seen in a book as a child. More than a thousand Eastern Sioux had been rounded up following an 1862 raid on settlers in Minnesota. The carnage was widespread in villages and farms in the southwest part of the state; by one estimate, eight hundred whites were killed in what became known as the Sioux Uprising. The Sioux had been roused to violence by repeated violations of their treaty, and by the mendacity of corrupt government agents who refused to make the required payments from the pact. In defeat, after the uprising, the Indians were sentenced to death. At the same time, many in Congress demanded that all Indians be wiped from the map, echoing the view of their constituents after the Sioux had caused so many casualties. President Lincoln commuted the sentences of most of the insurgents. But the death penalty remained for more than three dozen of them. On December 16, 1862, they were all hanged, the largest mass execution in American history. Curtis had studied an engraving of the lifeless Sioux in Mankato, Minnesota. Necks snapped, faces cold -- it haunted him. "All through life I have carried a vivid picture of that great scaffold with thirty-nine Indians hanging at the end of a rope," he wrote.

Top story threads:

Israel:

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

  • Ruwaida Kamal Amer/Mahmoud Mushtaha: [09-12] 'People torn to pieces' in Israeli airstrike on Gaza displacement camp: "Israeli bombs set tents ablaze and left deep craters in the earth as the army attacked Al-Mawasi, a designated 'safe zone,' for the fifth time."

  • Michael Arria:

  • James Bamford: [09-13] Israel's crackdown on the West Bank has already killed an American citizen: Aysenur Ezgi.

  • Rachel Chason/Jennifer Hassan/Alon Rom/Niha Masih/Kareen Fahim: [09-15] Houthis fire missile from Yemen into central Israel, warn of more strikes: "Israeli forces said the missile Sunday did not cause any direct injuries, but Netanyahu threatens, 'we exact a heavy price for any attempt to harm us.'"

  • Ellen Ioanes: [09-11] How Israel keeps evading responsibility for killing Americans.

  • Fred Kaplan: [09-11] The key reason why we're not close to a cease-fire: That's an easy one -- "Netanyahu refuses" -- but one should note that Biden doesn't dare make his refusal the least bit awkward, even though that simply reinforces the ideas that he is helpless as a leader and/or he actually endorses as well as facilitates genocide. Previous American presidents have generally been able to prevail on Israeli leaders to make some gestures toward accommodating American needs, even if they really didn't want to (withdrawing from Sinai in 1957) and/or doublecrossed the Americans later (basically, every time since). Also, what the hell is this?

    Both sides' positions are reasonable, given their interests. Hamas fears that without a permanent cease-fire and total withdrawal, Israel will inflict utter devastation on all of its positions (and suspected positions) after the last hostage is released. And Israel fears that Hamas will attempt another Oct. 7 if the group isn't first destroyed as a political and military power.

    I mean, the Hamas position sounds reasonable, because that's exactly what Israel is doing, and without a permanent ceasefire has vowed to continue doing until the last Hamas fighter is dead, even if they have to kill every other Palestinian to get to him. But Israel has no grounds for any such "reasonable fear." Another "Oct. 7," if indeed any such thing is possible, will only happen if Israel recreates the same (or worse) conditions. There are many ways to prevent further eruptions from Hamas. Killing every Palestinian is the worst possible option.

  • Joshua Keating: [09-13] Can the world stop a massive oil spill in the middle of a war zone? "If the race to stop a spill in the Red Sea fails, it would be one of the worst in history."

  • Branko Marcetic: [09-13] The US government is a partner to Israel killing US citizens.

  • Mitchell Plitnick: [09-12] Israel's lie about a US activist's murder has exposed the Biden-Harris double standard on Palestine: "Israel's lie over the murder of U.S. activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has been exposed, and in the process, so has Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's double standard on the worth of Palestinian lives."

  • Josephine Riesman/SI Rosenbaum: [09-10] Kamala is sending a subtle message on Israel. Is anyone listening? What she said in the debate was almost literally what she said in her DNC acceptance speech. "Subtle" is one word for it, if you assume that she's being completely honest, and has every intention of filling out every little detail. Or, less generously, you could say she's being cynical and deceptive. As I pointed out a while back, her "subtle" message would be more effective if she reversed the order of terms, and first bemoaned the massive destruction and loss of life before touting her deep commitment to a secure Israel. At this point, when most people hear "Israel's right to defend itself" they automatically translate it to a license to commit mass murder, because that is exactly what Israel has done every time they've uttered those magic words.

    The authors make their case at great length. I'm not completely dismissive, but I'm far from convinced. I do have some feeling for the pressure she is under, and of the stakes should she fail. I'm personally willing to let this play out through November, after which she will either have much more leverage, or will be totally irrelevant. Partly for that reason, I've moved this discussion away from the sections on Debate and Harris. But another part of that reason is that I feel her critics for failing to come out more clearly in favor of ceasefire and conflict resolution have every cause to speak their piece. And even to vote against her if they feel the need, although I think that would be a mistake, especially as an attempt to move your fellow Americans to be more critical and independent of Israel.

    Here's part of the piece:

    If you're trying to determine Harris' position on Israel from the mainstream news media coverage of it, you're likely confused.

    Headlines point in all directions, from "Harris' Support for Israel 'Ironclad' After Attack on Golan Heights" to "Harris Team 'Expressed Openness to a New Direction' on Israel Policy." One article claims there are "Democrats Working Inside the Party to Persuade Kamala Harris to Stop Weapons for Israel," while another dishes: "Harris Steps Out on Israel." But many explainers wind up throwing their hands in the air, like the Forward did: "Kamala Harris Wants to Support Israel, and Palestinians. It Will Be Even Harder Than It Seems." Indeed.

    But taken together, Harris' statements and movements around Israeli policy -- throughout her career but especially in recent months, after the candidacy was bestowed on her -- do add up to something.

  • Ali Rizk: [09-12] Is Gaza war feeding ISIS resurgence in Middle East? "As resources are drawn to Israel-Lebanon region, US troops are fighting the terror group more than ever."

  • Norman Solomon: [09-11] Undebatable: what Harris and Trump could not say about Israel and Gaza: Starts with "Kamala Harris won the debate. People being bombed in Gaza did not." Ends with: "Silence is a blanket that smothers genuine democratic discourse and the outcries of moral voices. Making those voices inaudible is a key goal for the functioning of the warfare state."

  • Jeffrey St Clair: [09-13] Murder in Beita: the IDF's killing of Aysenur Eygi.

  • Jonah Valdez: Most Americans want to stop arming Israel. Politicians don't care.

Israel vs. world opinion:

  • Gideon Lewis-Kraus: [09-08] The angst and sorrow of Jewish Currents: "A little magazine wants to criticize Israel while holding on to Jewishness."

  • Ben Lorber: [09-05] The right is increasingly exploiting the horror of genocide: "Right-wing operatives are channeling the genocide in Gaza into mainstream antisemitism." A report from the fifth annual National Conservatism (NatCon) conference ("the cutting edge of the Trumpian Right"). I'm not making a lot of sense out of this. Traditional right-wing antisemites, including some NatCon grandees, have more often been staunch supporters of Israel: Zionism both flatters their prejudices and offers them hope for their own societies becoming Judenrein. However, we're not dealing with especially clear-headed thinkers here, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise when they start confusing their complaints. Anyone who sees the atrocities Israel is committing and conflates them with all Jews (or even all Israeli Jews) is a fool -- and note that the most flagrant offenders here are the propagandists who try to equate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It's inevitable that people who don't know any better will take this hint and run with it, which seems to be Lorber's subject here.

    I hadn't run across Lorber before, but he has a book (co-written by Shane Burley), Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, and some older articles:

  • Craig Mokhiber: [09-10] No, Israel does not have a right to defend itself in Gaza. But the Palestinians do. "Basic morality and simple logic dictate that the right of self-defense belongs to the Palestinian people, not to their oppressor. And international law agrees." True that international law does recognize some right to self-defense, but it is not a moral principle, and I am suspicious of whatever logic you might think supports it. Although law often reinforces what we take to be moral, it has to deal not just with what people should do, but with real people in complex situations who do things that do not always conform with morality. One thing that people often do, whether by nature or culture, regardless of law, is attempt to defend themselves. Self-defense is used to describe a wide range of acts, from shielding your face from blows to throwing punches of your own. Modern weapons magnify and accelerate both threats and damage. Some are so powerful that they can harm bystanders, who never were threats, so never needed to be defended against. What law has to do is to decide whether self-defense is understandable and/or excusable, or should be condemned and possibly punished. To say self-defense is a right is to assert that acts which otherwise would be considered criminal should be not just tolerated but taken as exemplary, as precedents to encourage others to even greater violence.

    But in this specific case, to the extent that one allows such a right, why shouldn't Palestinians enjoy it same as Israelis? If you only allow Israel a right to self-defense, and allow it so broadly, you're really just saying that you think Palestinians are sub-human, that they don't count or matter, and might as well be slaughtered indiscriminately. As the last year has proven, that's no hypothetical. That's what Israel is doing, and anyone who thinks they have a "right" to do so is simply aiding and abetting genocide.

  • James Ray: [09-13] Electoral politics are not the way forward for the Palestine movement: "The question of how Palestine activists should engage in electoral politics has split the movement, but the 2024 election season should clarify why they are not an effective strategy for building power." I'll endorse the title, but the article itself leans way to heavy on "the Palestine movement," which I have some sympathy for but little faith or interest in. Electoral politics are set for the year, with nothing but the voting left to do. While there are important issues and major differences in candidates yet to be decided, lots of issues aren't on the ballot, including America's support for Israel's genocide against Palestinians -- which is how I prefer framing the issue, as it seems much broader (of interest to many more people) and deeper (of greater importance) than the question of where and when one can fly Palestinian flags.

    The movement, of course, can and must continue, using any tactics that seem likely to move public and/or elite opinion -- anything that would put pressure on those in power to act to halt these atrocities and start the long process of healing. I can argue that those of you who are intensely concerned with this issue should spend your vote on Harris and the rest of the Democrats -- it's not much, but it's yours, and if you don't vote, even out of righteous spite, you're wasting your right to participate in even our bare minimum of democracy. Also, by spoiling your vote, you're not just being negligent but showing contempt for people who need your help on issues that really matter to them -- the same people you need most urgently for your issue.

    I could also argue that Harris is more cognizant of and amenable to further pressure on this issue. I'm not going to plead this case here: it's just a feeling, not supported by clear statements on her part, or by a track record which shows any great will on her part to withstand the enormous pressures the entire political systems puts on politicians like her to pledge allegiance to Israel. My own inclination is to not just vote for her but to give her a free pass through November, as I don't see any constructive value in further embarrassing her on this issue (or in encouraging her to embarrass herself by reiterating her blanket support for Israel). But I'm not saying that anyone active on this issue should stop talking about it, and I'm not going to be holding any grudges against others who can't help but include her among the many American political figures who are complicit in this genocide. For pretty much the same reason, I may think that people who self-identify as "pro-Palestinian" have a dubious grasp of political tactics, I bear them no ill-feeling, because they at least are committed to opposing Israel's hideous and shameful reign of terror. Until the atrocities are stopped, whatever thoughts they may have about Palestinian statehood are mere curiosities.

    By the way, don't give Trump the same free pass until the election. Feel free to point out how his presidency contributed to the conditions that elected Israel's ultra-right government, that cornered and prodded Hamas into their desperate Oct. 7 revolt, and that revealed so many Republicans as genocide's biggest cheerleaders. This is not just a matter of setting the historical record straight, but it directly counters the ridiculous notion that Trump is some kind of antiwar candidate.

  • Ben Reiff: [09-11] Why did a British Jewish newspaper publish fake Israeli intelligence? "Israel's army suspects fabrications published in the Jewish Chronicle were part of a pro-Bibi influence campaign, while the article's author is not as he claims."

  • Stephen Semler: [09-12] Is Israel intentionally attacking aid workers? "We've compiled 14 incidents where humanitarians were attacked despite giving the IDF their coordinates and being clearly identified as civilians."

The Harris-Trump debate:

  • Vox [Andrew Prokop/Nicole Narea/Christian Paz]: [09-10] 3 winners and 2 losers from the Harris-Trump debate: The winners were: Kamala Harris, ABC News's debate moderators (David Muri and Linsey Davis), and Swifties for Kamala; the losers: Donald Trump, and Immigration. Once again, the Vox writer were out in force:

    • Ellen Ioanes: [09-10] Kamala Harris's and Donald Trump's wildly different tax plans, explained.

    • Joshua Keating: [09-11] Biden and Harris say America's no longer at war. Is that true? "Harris says US troops aren't fighting in any 'war zones.' What about Iraq, Syria, and the Red Sea?" Within the context of the debate, Harris had a point, which was useful in countering Trump's lie:

      Beyond the legal hair-splitting, Harris made the comment in the context of a defense of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and it is true that under Biden, the US military posture overseas has significantly shrunk from what it was under the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations.

      (Trump has falsely claimed in the past that his presidency was the first in 72 years that "didn't have any wars," despite the fact that he oversaw four years of combat in Afghanistan as well as major military escalations in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. At least 65 US troops died in hostile action under Trump's presidency.)

      That number under Trump was significantly less than under Obama, which in turn was less than under Bush. A comparable Biden number is probably less than Trump's, but not much less.

    • Eric Levitz: [09-11] Donald Trump lost the debate because he's too online: "The GOP nominee spoke to swing voters as though they were his Truth Social followers." Also note the section head: "For swing voters, many of Trump's ravings sounded like a summary of the sixth season of a show they'd never watched."

  • Intelligencer:

  • Emma Brockes: [09-11] Harris clearly beat Trump -- not that you'd know it from the right-wing media. Shame on them. "From the likes of Fox News has come a masterclass in post-debate pretzel logic. Surely the excuses must run out soon."

  • Frank Bruni: [09-12] Kamala Harris is serious. Donald Trump is not.

  • Margaret Carlson: [09-11] Harris shows how to dismantle a would-be dictator: "Humor, ridicule, gut punches, and that look of puzzlement and contempt were just some of the tools the vice president used to take down Trump."

  • Nandika Chatterjee: [09-12] Fox News host triggers Donald Trump by saying "he decisively lost" the debate with Kamala Harris: "Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto said the debate wasn't close."

  • John Ganz: [09-11] Cats and dogs: "I can't believe I watched the whole thing!"

    Trump still has considerable powers of self-expression, which are often underrated by liberals, but they should not be overrated either. He has a very limited vocabulary and it constrains the extent to which he can articulate responses on any issue. So, he falls back into hyperbole -- everything is the worst, the best, the greatest. This can be effective, but often last night it sounded repetitive and, yes, kind of dull. If the American simply people tire of his antics, it will really be over for him. Harris's message of "let's turn the page" is a good one because it presents Trump as tiresome as much as fearsome.

  • Richard A Friedman: [09-12] Trump's repetitive speech is a bad sign: "If the debate was a cognitive test, the former president failed."

  • Susan B Glasser: [09-11] Donald Trump had a really, really bad debate.

  • Shane Goldmacher/Katie Rogers: [09-11] Harris dominates as Trump gets defensive: 6 takeaways from the debate: "Layout out bait that Donald Trump eagerly snatched, the vice president owned much of the night, keeping him on the back foot and avoiding sustained attention on her own vulnerabilities." As Rick Perlstein tweeted: "In a strictly intellectual sense, I'm very excited to see how the New York Times solves the linguistic puzzle of making that sound like a tie. It will require a Fermat's Last Theorum-level of ingenuity." Perlstein later linked to a NYT app article headline ("Fierce Exchanges Over Country's Future Dominate Debate") that satisfied his expectations, but when I searched for that headline, I found this article instead. Perhaps sensing that such precise (albeit vague) balance wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, they conceded the debate to Harris, while playing up whatever they could for Trump. The six takeaways:

    1. Harris set traps. Trump leaped into them.
    2. Trump played defense on his record.
    3. Harris seized the advantage on abortion.
    4. Trump didn't hide his disdain of Harris.
    5. Harris missed some opportunities.
    6. Trump missed Biden.

  • Nardos Haile: [09-10] "I went to the Wharton School of Finance": Harris getting Trump flustered makes for great TV.

  • Thom Hartmann: [09-13] Inside Trump's 'peace candidate' debate scam. This is an important subject -- one I wish he did a better job of handling. Trump should have zero credibility as a "peace candidate," well below Biden/Harris, even though they've set the bar pretty low. They at least have a modicum of empathy for the costs of war. As such, they can see some reason to stay clear of war, or to clean up the wars they've been given (e.g., Afghanistan). What Hartmann is pretty good at is pointing out "our media failures":

    Thus, Trump and the entire GOP are now furiously trying to rewrite their party's history of using unnecessary wars to get re-elected. And, according to opinion polls, it's working because America's corporate media pretty much refuses to point out Republican perfidy in any regard.

    Consider these indictments of our media failures. Polls show:

    • 52% trust Trump more compared to 37% for Harris on inflation (even though America has the lowest inflation rate in the developed world because of Biden's policies)
    • 51% trust Trump vs. 43% for Harris on handling the economy (even though Biden's economy beats Trump's by every metric, even pre-Covid)
    • 54% trust Trump more on border security compared to 36% for Harris (even though border crossings are at historically low levels now, lower than any time during Trump's non-Covid presidency)
    • 53% trust Trump vs. 40% for Harris on immigration (even though Trump wants to build concentration camps, go door-to-door arresting Hispanics, and again tear children from their mother's arms)
    • 51% trust Trump vs. 41% for Harris to stand up to China, even though Trump got millions in bribes from them for his daughter
    • And on crime and public safety, 48% trust Trump versus 42% for Harris, even though crime levels today are lower than any time during Trump's presidency

    None of these numbers would be where they are if our news organizations had accurately reported the facts.

  • Jeet Heer: [09-11] With her rope-a-dope strategy, Kamala Harris baited Trump into scaring swing voters: "Last night's debate will help give Democrats an edge. But strengthening the base remains crucial."

  • Fred Kaplan: [09-11] Harris exposed how easy Trump is to manipulate. Dictators have known this for a long time. Easy to manipulate, for sure, but when it comes to manipulation, you need proximity, which only his staff really has, and they've generally been able to cancel out any idea foreign dictators may have planted. While Trump threatens to break the mold on US foreign policy, in his first term, he was hamstrung by orthodox blob operatives, leaving him with nothing but a few ridiculous photo ops. A second term could be better or worse, but given how consistent (and wrong-headed) US foreign policy has been across both partisan administrations, he'll probably just make the same mistakes over and over again. It's not like he actually knows any better.

  • Ezra Klein: [09-11] Harris had a theory of Trump, and it was right: "The vice president successfully baited Trump's angry, conspiratorial, free-associating side. But what wasn't said was just as telling."

  • Robert Kuttner: [09-11] Notes for next time: "Kamala Harris did well in the debate but missed some opportunities to remind voters of Trump's sheer craziness."

  • Dahlia Lithwick:

  • Amanda Marcotte: [09-11] "The same old, tired playbook": Harris baits an aging Trump into being his grumpiest, weirdest self: "Even with the muted microphones, there is no 'sane-washing' Trump during the debate." There's also an interview of Marcotte by Alex Henderson.

  • Melanie McFarland: [09-11] "She whupped him": Kamala Harris won the debate by turning a potential disaster into a laugh-in.

  • Mary McNamara: [09-12] How Kamala Harris de-normalized Trump is less than 2 hours.

  • Harold Meyerson: [09-11] Normal meets weird: "And normal wins by a knockout in Tuesday's Harris-Trump debate."

  • John Nichols: [09-11] Kamala Harris won the debate about the future of American democracy: "Harris exposed Donald Trump as a clear and present danger, framing a stark choice and inviting voters to 'turn the page.'"

  • Andrew O'Hehir: [09-12] Trump's self-destruction was epic -- but this is America, so it might not be enough.

  • Molly Olmstead:

  • Bernie Sanders: [09-12] Kamala Harris was great in the debate. Will that be enough to win?

  • Bill Scher: [09-11] Kamala Harris is good at this: "The vice president laid out her plans for the future while Donald Trump was caught in a tangle of grievances about the past."

  • Adam Serwer: [09-14] The real 'DEI' candidates: Kamala Harris's evisceration of Donald Trump at the debate revealed who in this race is actually unqualified for power."

  • Rebecca Solnit: [09-11] Kamala Harris, unlike Donald Trump, was well prepared for this debate -- and won: "Harris spoke in lucid paragraphs, but Trump spouted lurid, loopy stuff."

  • Margaret Sullivan: [09-11] ABC's debate moderators did what some said was impossible: factcheck Trump.

  • Charles Sykes: [09-11] Trump blames everybody but himself: Talk about infinitely recyclable headlines! "He can't face the truth about his performance at the debate."

  • Robert Tait: [09-11] Republicans dismayed by Trump's 'bad' and 'unprepared' debate performance: "GOP lawmakers and analysts virtually unanimous that Trump was second best to Harris in first presidential debate."

  • William Vaillancourt: [09-12] Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz says Trump's campaign is over after bad debate.

  • John Zogby: [09-14] The polling is in and Harris won the debate. But Democrats shouldn't get cocky.

  • Steve M: [09-11] How the right-wing mediasphere -- and Trump's fragile ego -- set him up for failure last night. This elaborates on a theme that I've been noticing for years, which is that Trump is merely a receptacle for right-wing propaganda. Right-wingers have cynically formulated their propaganda to trigger incoherent emotions in their listeners -- a technique often dubbed "dog-whistling." To carry the analogy a bit farther, Trump isn't a whistler; Trump's just one of the dogs. What makes him the MAGA leader is his money, his ego, his ability to capture the media's attention. But as a thinker, as a speaker, as an organizer, he's strictly derivative, a second-rate hack picking up and repeating whatever he's been told. M explains:

    Trump has always been cultural conservative -- a racist, a fan of "law and order," an admirer of strongmen and authoritarians -- but years of binge-watching Fox News have made his opinions and prejudices worse. Now he has a set of opinions -- on renewable energy vs. fossil fuels, on immigration, and so on -- that are made up of talking points from the right-wing informationsphere. When he says that windmill noise causes cancer, he's repeating an idea spread by pseudo-scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry.

    But that's how his mind works -- his ego is so fragile that he can't bear to be wrong, so he clings desperately to any assertion that reinforces his notion that he's right. Windmills kill birds! Solar energy is useless when it's cloudy! Of course, the right-wing infosphere is a machine designed to reassure all of its consumers that their prejudices and resentments are right. . . .

    But in recent years, as Fox News has begun losing its primacy on the right while the Internet has increasingly been the main source for what rank-and-file right-wingers believe, fringe ideas have become more mainstream: Barack Obama birtherism, the allegedly stolen election in 2020, QAnon's notion of a vast elitist pedophile ring that somehow excludes all Republicans.

    And now we have the cats.

    When even J.D. Vance was spreading scurrilous stories about Haitian immigrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, I was surprised -- not because right-wingers are spreading hateful and dangerous blood libels about immigrants (that happens all the time), but because Republicans weren't confining the spread of this preposterous and easily disproved story to the fringier parts of their infosphere. They were going mainstream with this.

    But of course they were. In 2024, it's hard to restrict a story like this to the fringe. Naturally, Elon Musk promoted it, as did many online influencers and Trumpist members of Congress.

    Trump hates immigrants, so of course he seized on this story and talked about in the debate. Trump's confirmation bias is tied to his delicate ego, which always needs to say, See? I was right. A few years ago, he might not have even noticed this story. But the tiers in the right-wing mediasphere have collapsed, so the confirming messages Trump is exposed to are stupider. And he believes them. . . .

    Trump simply can't take in information that challenges his beliefs. His ego can't handle it. The right-wing infosphere flatters Trump the way dictators flatter Trump: by telling him what he wants to hear. That's the person Kamala Harris showed us last night, and that's why we can't allow him to win the presidency again.

  • Taylor Swift endorses Harris: I wouldn't be surprised to find that her lawyers drafted the statement (released on Instagram) weeks ago, but its timing does two useful things: it shows due diligence, as she waited for a moment when it would appear she considered both options fair and square, and it provided a singuarly conspicuous verdict on the debate, thereby underscoring its importance.

Trump:

  • Sasha Abramsky: [09-13] Trump is as gullible as he is a threat to democracy: "A decade into his political career, Donald J Trump is entirely at the mercy of his own BS."

  • David Atkins: [09-12] Trump doesn't understand tariffs, but he knows enough to be menacing. Trump's fascination with tariffs seems to be based on the notion that he can impose them arbitrarily and with impunity, so they function as a massive ego stroke. On the other hand, his opponents are nearly as simple-minded and dogmatic as he is. As I've said before, tariffs only make sense as part of a strategy to build up domestic industries (i.e., if you are doing economic planning, which is something most American politicians have long denounced). It now occurs to me that there may be better ways to do that than tariffs.

    Facts cannot penetrate Trump's narrow, incurious, egotistical worldview. He believes that as the leader of the world's dominant economy, he can bully the rest of the world into submission. And like Hoover -- not coincidentally, the only other president to preside over a net loss of jobs in the United States -- he will make an easily avoidable mistake that costs everyone.

  • Peter Baker: [09-09] As debate looms, Trump is now the one facing questions about age and capacity.

  • Charles R Davis: [09-08] Trump, lying about migrants and crime, says mass deportations "will be a bloody story": "he claimed he would use police and soldiers to deport at least 12 million undocumented people."

  • John Cassidy: [09-09] Donald Trump's new "voodoo economics": "The former president's tax plan would cost the government trillions of dollars. Tariffs and Elon Musk will pay for everything, he says."

  • Chauncey DeVega: [09-12] The problem with pinning Donald Trump down: Americans' attention spans are too short: "The American people are not well. Sick societies produce sick leaders." Time to "elect a new people"? Wouldn't it be much simpler to just slam Trump with the truth day and night until everyone sees him as an embarrassment?

  • Kevin T Dugan: [09-11] Trump's bad debate cost him nearly $500 million. The metric here is the value of Trump's Truth Social stock.

  • Eugene R Fidell/Dennis Aftergut: [09-13] Trump's plan to undermine foreign policy: The authors argue that Trump promised to violate the Logan Act, a law which "makes it a felony for private citizens, including presidents-elect, to interfere in foreign policy." I doubt that anyone, least of all Trump himself, is going to take his statements that literally, but the sloppy thinking is typical. The innuendo, that he's just a Putin stooge, is more barbed, but its plausibility is also based on his sloppy thinking.

  • Adam Freelander: [09-09] Exactly how Trump could ban abortion: "Whether the US bans it everywhere could be up to the next president."

  • David A Graham:

  • Elie Honig: [09-13] Jack Smith's reckless gamble: "The special counsel seems ready to bet the entire January 6 case against Trump on an improbable outcome."

  • David R Lurie: [08-19] Trump's carny act isn't working anymore: "His Folgers Coffee Conference showed a candidate in decline." Compares his Aug. 15 "press conference," with tables of grocery items, props for his wild claims about inflation, with a similar branding event from his 2016 campaign, describing the latter:

    It was all pretty darn weird; but the press lapped it up and, for the remainder of the campaign, gave Trump all the airtime and attention he wanted for similar performances.

    The Trump Steaks Conference was to become the template for Trump's political strategy during the ensuing decade, a mélange of elaborate (and often patently false) self-promotion blended with equally false and correspondingly vicious attacks on whoever happens to be Trump's opponent du jour.

  • Jason Stanley: [09-13] Donald Trump is openly running on a Great Replacement Theory campaign. If you're not familiar with GRT (especially as used by the American right), here's an index of articles.

  • Margaret Sullivan: [09-07] The power of a single word about media malfeasance: "It's 'sanewashing' -- and it's what journalists keep doing for Trump." She credits various pieces by Parker Molloy, Michael Tomasky, Aaron Rupar, and Greg Sargent, quotes some, quotes a definition, and notes:

    Here, as an example, is a Politico news alert that summarizes a recent Trump speech: "Trump laid out a sweeping vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Streets execs today." As writer Thor Benson quipped on Twitter: "I hope the press is this nice to me if I ever do a speech where no one can tell if I just had a stroke or not."

    Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn't know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements -- a "sweeping vision," even.

    After the intense media focus on Joe Biden's age and mental acuity, you would think Trump's apparent decline would be a preoccupation. He is 78, after all, and often incoherent. But with rare exceptions, that hasn't happened. . . .

    But why does the media sanewash Trump? It's all a part of the false-equivalence I've been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness.

    And it's also, I believe, because of the restrained language of traditional objective journalism. That's often a good thing; it's part of being careful and cautious. But when it fails to present a truthful picture, that practice distorts reality.

    I was pointed here by a Paul Krugman reference. I figured it was worth noting separately, and for good measure, I searched for "sanewashing Trump" and found it's suddenly been adopted widely of late. Links follow -- I skipped "Trump has not been 'sane-washed'," because it's at Atlantic, and I didn't want to blow one of my few "free article" credits on something as transparently worthless. (Parker Molloy critiques the Paul Farhi piece below, so you can find the link there.)

    But let me make a couple preliminary points. The term has never been used pre-Trump, because no previous candidate has ever given us such copious evidence of dubious sanity. It's not that we've never seen neuroses or delusions before, but they've never seemed so disconnected from reality. Trump has three personal problems that are relevant here, and while none of these are unprecedented, his combination is pretty extreme. (1) He lies a lot, and not just about things we're used to other politicians lying about. (2) He has very little grasp of policy ideas, but even his conventional policy ideas -- the ones common to most Republicans, most of which he thoughtlessly picked up from Fox News -- are ill-considered and unworkable, so detached from reality even before he embroiders and imbues them with his personal twists. (3) He is old and mentally clumsy, as well as extremely vain and conceited, states that we perhaps too readily associate with dementia.

    While "sane-washing" is new and especially Trump-specific -- unless the term ever appeared in the Republican campaign to impugn "Biden's dementia" -- the media angle is much older, this a mere inflection on the more common term "white-washing," which occurs when reporters suppress, sanitize, and/or rationalize their reporting. This has been going on for ages, but few if any candidates have benefited more from an indulgent press than Trump, not least because few candidates have ever needed so much indulgence. Worse still, the process has been self-normalizing, so rather than gently nudging Trump back into normal discourse (as white-washed Trump), he figures he can push his boundaries even further, confident the media will excuse further excesses (or that he can denounce them as 'fake news").

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [09-09] Rustbelt poll: Majority say Trump more likely to avoid war: "Survey finds strong support for Gaza ceasefire; most believe today's foreign policy doesn't put America first." The poll was designed and run by Cato Institute.

  • Elizabeth Warren: [09-14] What Donald Trump isn't telling us: Starts off with Trump's "concepts of a plan" for replacing Obamacare:

    Plans translate values into action. They test the quality of the ideas and the seriousness of the people advancing them. Plans reveal for whom candidates will fight and how effective they are likely to be. And in a presidential race, if either party's nominee is asked about his or her plans for something as fundamental as health care, voters should get a straight answer.

    The problem is not that Mr. Trump can't think up a way to put his values into action. The problem is that when he and other Republican leaders produce plans with actual details, they horrify the American people.

    Mr. Trump's health care values have been on full display for years. In 2017, Republicans controlled Congress, and their first major legislative undertaking was a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Every time they drafted something, independent experts would point out that their plan would toss tens of millions of people off their health insurance, jack up premium costs and slash benefits for those with ongoing health problems. . . .

    But at the debate, Mr. Trump displayed a new strategy. He seems to realize that his health-care plans are deeply unpopular, so he simply doesn't talk about them. Thus, after nine years of railing against the A.C.A. and trying mightily to repeal it, he has moved to "concepts of a plan," without a single detail that anyone can pin him down on.

    The new strategy might have worked -- except Mr. Trump's right-wing buddies have already laid out the plans. No need for concepts. Project 2025 has 920 pages translating Republican values into detailed action plans, including on health care: Repeal the A.C.A. Cut Medicare benefits. End $35 insulin. Stop Medicare drug price negotiations. Cut health-care access for poor families. Restrict contraceptive care. Jeopardize access to I.V.F. Ban medication abortion.

    As Project 2025's favorability plummets, Mr. Trump is once again scrambling. "I have nothing to do with Project 2025," he claimed at the debate. "I'm not going to read it." But it was written by many members of Mr. Trump's former administration and over 250 of the policies in the plan match his past or current policy proposals.

  • Agence France-Presse: [09-14] Laura Loomer, far-right flame thrower who has Trump's ear.

    Meet Laura Loomer, the latest fringe figure to set up in the presidential candidate's inner circle, and who has managed to shock even Trump's most extreme allies as he seeks to reclaim the White House.

    Loomer, a 31-year-old social media influencer and provocateur, has managed to squeeze into Trump's entourage as he is struggling to win over the independents and moderates needed to prevail in November's election against Kamala Harris, a race that is coming down to the wire. . . .

    Asked Friday about her incendiary posts and conspiracy theories, Trump -- a voracious consumer of social media who has previously amplified Loomer's posts on his own account -- shrugged them off, telling reporters in California: "I don't know that much about it."

    Trump declined to criticize Loomer, instead hailing her as a "free spirit" supporter with "strong opinions."

    More on Loomer:

  • Madeline Halpert/Laurence Peter: [09-15] Trump rushed to safety and suspect held after man spotted with rifle: Evidently someone was seen with a gun on a golf course where Trump was playing. Secret Service shot at a man, who dropped the gun and fled, and was later apprehended. Many articles call this "a shooting" and/or "an assassination attempt," which is something to look into, but not established fact. Presumably we'll know more soon, but I don't recall ever learning much about the previous "assassination attempt." While it would be bizarre to fake events like this -- the previous one seemed to spike his polls -- it's hard to rule anything out with Trump, or to assume that normal rules apply. It's also hard to care, possibly because he seems so keen on assassinating other folks that you can't discount the karma, and possibly because when I think of similar cases the one I always land on first is George Lincoln Rockwell.

Vance, and other Republicans:

Harris:

  • Jedediah Britton-Purdy: [09-12] Harris can win on the economy, but she needs a stronger message. Dean Baker reacted to this piece -- "the gist of the piece is that most people are hurting now, but Harris can turn things around by adopting a more populist agenda" -- adding that "it would be great to see Harris push a more populist agenda," but mostly attributing the problem to misinformation ("the media have lied to the public"), but also by asserting that "most people are not hurting how, or at least not more than they did in the past." One problem is that the whole system is rigged to maintain a level of economic pain, so most people feel precarious even when conditions are within normal bounds. Also not clear to me what Britton-Purdy's "clear economic program" actually is. Certainly there are lots of opportunities, but making them clear and tangible to voters is much easier said than done.

  • Marin Cogan: [09-11] Wait, Kamala Harris owns a gun?

  • Jill Filipovic: The big thing Kamala Harris is doing differently than Hillary Clinton: "The Democratic Party is finally figuring out how to right-size its focus on identity politics."

  • Jacob S Hacker: [08-14] Kamala Harris had a great health care idea in 2019. She should embrace it.

  • Heather Digby Parton: [09-13] Kamala Harris' big tent strategy -- and its success -- has thrown Trump for a loop. I personally find the Cheney endorsements damning, but when she mentioned them, I thought she got the "even" inflection just right. I suppose what that shows is that she's the politician, and I'm not. I'm skeptical of how many disaffected Republicans she can win over, but as long as she can pick up some without turning on (or off) her natural base, that not only helps her chances of winning, it opens up the possibility of winning big -- and that would be a good thing, even if it muddies the message a bit.

    I could go farther here and argue that for most Republicans, a big Harris win, even one that gave her a comfortable margin in Congress, would be a blessing. Trump and his movement are a dead end, desperately clinging to demographics that are slipping away, that can only be shored up by disabling democracy, while their policy prejudices only make problems worse, and their reflexive resort to force behind propaganda only makes their victims and opponents more desperate.

    In the 1970s, Republicans argued -- wrongly, I think, but not without reason -- that America has swung too far to the left, so they set about "rebalancing" government. Since then, they never let up, pushing inequality to levels that never existed before: the "gilded age" of the 1880s and the "roaring '20s" were past peaks, both ending in massive depressions, which were corrected with shifts back to the left -- never far, as the rich fared handsomely in the Progressive and New Deal/Great Society eras. Pace the Trump paranoia, they have little to fear from Harris and the Democrats -- even from the farthest left reaches of the party, whose actual programs proposed are modestly reformist, and easily compromised by lobbying.

    Capitalism doesn't help anyone develop a sense of enough, but common sense does, and Republicans need some of that. Especially, they need a break from the Trumpists, who are paranoid and delusional, prepared to burn it all down for the sake of idiot theories, just to exercise their malice against much of the world. It's good to respect the new Republicans who, like recovering alcoholics, are willing to break. The the Cheneys still have a lot of recovering to go.

  • Charles P Pierce: [09-16] Kamala Harris understands that an overly serious campaign is a losing campaign: "Our history is not all crises weathered and problems solved. It is also brass bands, and torchlight parades, and barrels of hard cider at rural polling stations." Point noted, but then: "Sorry. This article is for subscribers only."

  • Zephyr Teachout: [09-09] Stop calling Kamala Harris' anti-price gouging proposal price controls: "Her plan to control inflation is not some leftist plot. It's rooted in mainstream American legal tradition -- and sorely needed."

  • Rebecca Traister: [09-09] The people for Kamala Harris: "How a women-led movement,born in the devastation of 2016, put Democrats on the brink of making history." Magazine cover story article, takes the time needed to sketch out the big picture. This article was paired with:

    • Olivia Nuzzi: [09-09] The afterlife of Donald Trump: "At home at Mar-a-Lago, the presidential hopeful contemplates miracles, his campaign, and his formidable new opponent." Note, however, that the magazine cover used a different, more intriguing title: "Peering into Donald Trump's ear, and soul." (Actually, the Traister article also has a different cover title: "The joyous plot to elect Kamala Harris.")

  • The Cheney endorsements

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

Election notes:

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

Climate and environment:

Economists, the economy, and work:

Ukraine and Russia:

Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:

Other stories:

  • Yet another 9/11 anniversary:

  • WD Ehrhart: [09-13] Why I don't watch political speeches: A position I sympathize with, although I've never been tempted to throw things at the TV, other than the occasional snide comment. So I'd have to explain my aversion differently.

  • Nathan J Robinson/Current Affairs:

    • [09-13] The worst magazine in America: The Atlantic poses as a magazine of ideas, but its writers get away with terrible arguments. Its ascendance is a sign of the dire state of American intellectual life." Long article, seems like he spends a lot of time on effort on such obvious atrocities as Robert D Kaplan's "In Defense of Henry Kissinger." More interesting is Simon Sebag Montefiore's "The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False," which is about how we shouldn't describe Israel as a "settler colony" because the settlement took place over several generations, the "settlers" are no different from immigrants elsewhere, but their designation as "settler-colonists" marks them as "ripe for murder and mutilation." Robinson spends a lot of time on this piece, but that last bit is too insane for him to bother with further. What he does instead is spend considerable time discrediting the sort of mythmaking Montefiore's "caricature" attempts. Whole books have been written to that effect. Robinson makes good points here, but misses most of the angles I would have focused on -- like why does the "settler-colonial" analysis help or hinder you from understanding the history? and what's with this "murder and mutilation"? -- as well as the deeper question of why Atlantic's editors like to publish overblown articles by ill-tempered nincompoops?

      One reason could be that some articles, even if you know they're not just wrong but horribly so, should be published somewhere, if only for smarter people to knock them down. I don't know from Montefiore, but I can imagine someone deciding they want a piece on Kissinger, and wondering if Kaplan might have an interesting take. (I've read a lot of Kaplan, and while he's often wrong -- any time he opens a paragraph with "that got me thinking," you know some really insane shit is coming around the bend -- I've learned a lot along the way. Same for George Packer, source of another Robinson case study.) You're never going to convince me that Atlantic editorial choices are above political prejudices, or even that they are seriously dedicated to providing some sort of open forum, but you need more than just a few examples. You could really use some statistical analysis. But I suppose you could point out examples that are both countersensical and have no "prestige" reason to be published, like the sanewashing article I mentioned above. Robinson does get into this a bit later on, but mostly as asides to a big bang of extra example outrages.

      I sometimes wonder whether I should break down and subscribe to Atlantic. I frequently see links to articles that look like they may be interesting (some by writers I respect, like Adam Serwer and David Graham), and some that just look like arguments I want to knock down, but in the end, I'm just too cheap (and/or committed to free speech), so I almost never click on them. (My wife does pay for digital subscriptions, so sometimes I'm able to piggyback on her accounts, but she really loathes much of what appears in Atlantic, so it's not on her list.) Still, I regularly look at their table of contents to get the lay of the land. From Monday's list, here are some articles I might have considered (a few more I slipped into relevant slots above, especially on Trump and the debate):

    • [09-13] How the soul of New York City is vanishing: Interview with Jeremiah Moss "on what neoliberalism has done to the culture and soul of New York City."

    • [09-13] What doesn't get said: "Commentary around the first Harris-Trump debate focused on Harris's impressive performance. But both candidates accepted dangerous right-wing premises on climate, immigration, economics, and foreign policy." Well, as the joke goes: two campers are surprised by a bear in the woods. One says, "you can't outrun that bear." The other says, "I don't have to; I just have to outrun you." I hate Chait's concept of "the assignment"

      , but I accept that Harris has one, which is make sure she beats Trump in November, preferably by a lot. To do that, she needs to run fast and not trip and fall. (Trump tripping and falling would help, but isn't something you can count on.) I see three risks for her: one is that the war situation gets worse, with Biden and her getting by a public that isn't very sharp on such issues; the second is that she loses support from the money people, most likely by appearing too far to the left; the third is that in steering away from the left, she loses the enthusiasm she needs to get out the popular vote. She's done a pretty solid job of avoiding two and three so far, while Trump and Vance are proving to be even worse than expected, so I'm not inclined to nitpick. War I'm more worried about, but at this point turning on Israel may be the more dangerous option: I was thinking about what Netanyahu's latest threats against Yemen might mean, and wound up wondering what would stop him from exacting his "heavy price" with "a mushroom cloud." How would Biden and Harris react to that kind of "October surprise"? (Trump would probably cheer, and seize it as a wedge issue, which would only encourage Netanyahu.)

      Still, I don't have any beef with Robinson writing articles like this. He, and his readers, quite properly focus on issues. No need for them to stop during what Matt Taibbi used to call "the stupid season." That will pass, while the issues keep coming back, at least until someone finally takes them seriously.

    • [09-11] You've got to read books: "Not everyone has the available time or energy to do deep reading. But if you're going to make confident public pronouncements on matters that require a lot of research, books will help you avoid dangerous foolishness." Needless to say, I endorse this view. Following something Billmon did on his blog (defunct since 2006), I've kept a "current reading" roll and list going for 20+ years now, so I can check how much (and how little) I've read, and just what -- at least in book form. Curiously, I haven't read any of the four books Robinson cites on the 2000 Camp David negotiations, although I've read 3-6 (or maybe 12, depends on how you slice them) other books that cover the same ground -- we're in general agreement on the facts, but I wouldn't go around citing Quandt's "it's really complicated" explanation.

      This is a big subject, one that I can imagine writing quite a lot about. It's true that bad books can be worse than no books at all. (Robinson mentions Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation on Lebanon, which is monumental, but I've actually run into people who got everything they know about Lebanon from Thomas Friedman, and they're painful to deal with.) It's also true that one can learn to read bad books and get value out of them (like the aforementioned Robert D Kaplan library). But even journalists doing "first draft" history often get much better by the time their work comes out in book form (cf. practically everyone who started embedded and wound up with a book on Iraq -- hell, even George Packer got better with a bit of perspective; I wouldn't be surprised if Thomas Ricks' Fiasco had Gung Ho! as its working title).

    • [09-05] How to approach the crisis of mass incarceration: "Mass incarceration is extremely harmful to prisoners and society. But what do we do about it? The editors of Dismantling Mass Incarceration discuss." Interview with Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo.

Obituaries

Books

  • Zack Beauchamp: [09-11] How a 2006 book by a Harvard professor explains the Trumpist right's gender politics: "Harvey Mansfield's book on 'manliness' prefigured JD Vance's musings about 'childless cat ladies' by nearly two decades."

  • Daniel Immerwahr: [09-09] What if Ronald Reagan's presidency never really ended? "Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump's opposite -- yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner." A long review of Max Boot's "definitive" 880 page biography, Reagan: His Life and Legend.

    Recent events have forced Boot to ask if Reagan was part of the rot that has eaten away at Republicanism. Boot now sees him as complicit in the "hard-right turn" the Party took after Dwight D. Eisenhower which "helped set the G.O.P. -- and the country -- on the path" to Trump.

    And yet Boot sees a redeeming quality as well: Reagan could relax his ideology. He was an anti-tax crusader who oversaw large tax hikes, an opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment who appointed the first female Supreme Court Justice, and a diehard anti-Communist who made peace with Moscow. "I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help," Reagan famously quipped. But he delivered that line while announcing "record amounts" of federal aid. He viewed the world in black-and-white, yet he governed in gray.

    I rather doubt that Reagan wanted to "govern in gray." That was a concession to the Democrats who controlled Congress, to the still-existing liberal Republicans, to the liberal courts, and to the popularity of New Deal and Great Society programs. Reagan was realistic about what he could accomplish, but he did move the needle on all fronts. How anyone could see his program, or his personal charisma, as heroic escapes me.

    Here's another review:

  • Michael Ledger-Lomas: All roads lead to ruin: "Sunil Amrith's The Burning Earth takes us on a gloomy and bleak tour of how, in the name of progress, Western empires made a mess of everything."

  • Rohan Silva: [2022-09-19] Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx review -- where have all out wetlands gone? I just read this book, and quoted a bit of it in the introduction, which is why I found this review. While there is much of interest in the book, it's connection to climate change never gets developed, beyond the occasional occasional notes that peatlands sequester a lot of carbon, so their loss has increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

  • Annie Levin: [09-16] Why you should host a hootenanny: "Outside of a church or karaoke room, singing is mostly left to the professionals. But anyone can -- and should -- partake in the joys of collective singing." I can imagine, but I gave up singing in public in 5th grade, when Lannie Goldston insisted that I lip-synch, and kicked me in the shins every time I slipped up and uttered a sound.

Chatter

It took me the better part of two days to finally insert all of the entries in my April 25, 2024 Book Roundup into my Book Notes file, which at this point is probably too long to be a useful web page (6944 paragraphs, 369868 words), but which I need to figure out whether I've mentioned a book before. I couldn't really start on a new post until that bit of housekeeping got done.

One thing I noticed there was this blurb on a 2017 book (presumably written then) that seems completely relevant to this week's news:

Nathan Thrall: The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (2017, Metropolitan Books): Hard to think about the conflict without considering how to end it, especially if you're an American, since we've long assumed that our mission on Earth is to oversee some sort of agreement. Thrall has been following the conflict closely for some time now, and writes up what he's figured out: that the only way it ends is if some greater power wills it. The title has a certain irony in that the Israelis, following the British before them, have often said that violence is the only language the Palestinians understand. But as students of the conflict should know by now, the only times Israel has compromised or backed down have been when they been confronted with substantial force: as when Eisenhower prodded them to leave Sinai in 1956, when Carter brokered their 1979 peace with Egypt, when Rabin ended the Intifada by recognizing the PLO, or when Barak withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. Since then no progress towards resolution has been made because no one with the power to influence Israel has had the will to do so -- although Israel's frantic reactions against BDS campaigns shows their fear of such pressure. On the other hand, one should note that force itself has its limits: Palestinians have compromised on many things, but some Israeli demands -- ones that violate norms for equal human rights -- are always bound to generate resistance. What makes the conflict so intractable now is that Israel has so much relative power that they're making impossible demands. So while Thrall would like to be even-handed and apply external force to both sides, it's Israel that needs to move its stance to something mutually tolerable. The other big questions are who would or could apply this force, and why. Up to 2000, the US occasionally acted, realizing that its regional and world interests transcended its affection for Israel, but those days have passed, replaced by token, toothless gestures, if any at all. It's hard to see that changing -- not just because Israel has so much practice manipulating US politics but because America has largely adopted Israeli norms of inequality and faith in brute power.

Curiously, I noted but wrote nothing about Thrall's later book:

Nathan Thrall: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy (2023, Metropolitan Books).

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