Sunday, August 17, 2025

Loose Tabs

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. My previous one appeared 28 days ago, on July 20.

This file came together in several widely separated spurts, between which it slowly accreted. The time spread is such that I no longer have any real sense of structure or coverage. It's not clear to me what I looked at, and what I'm missing. Several pieces led to long digressions, some of which I may go back to and refine into distinct posts in my new Notes on Everyday Life newsletter. While whatever I write there will eventually show up on my website, I promise that it will be more focused there, as well as delivered direct to you via email, than the piles of scattered notes I've been assembling here. So please consider subscribing.

The first section here are major categories, where I didn't wait for a keynote article. These are not necessarily regular features.

Epsteinmania: As far as I'm concerned, the Epstein-Trump story is a complete waste of time. The facts have been around for a long time now, and hardly anyone outside of the news media and the kiddie pool of the DNC care. The only thing that keeps the story going is how Trump keeps finding novel ways to deny it. All he has to do to shut up, and it will be gone within a couple news cycles. That he keeps it going suggests that there are other things he doesn't want us to talk about. Indeed, there is a lot, as the Walsh article below utterly fails to disclose.

  • David Dayen [07-15] Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue: "It's about elite immunity, the defining issue in America for more than two decades." No, the defining issue is increasing inequality. Warping the (in)justice system is an inevitable side-effect, but Epstein isn't exactly proof for "elite immunity": no doubt he got favorable treatments, but he wound up dying in jail. Maybe Trump is proof, but under pretty extraordinary circumstances. (That Trump's exception will make the system even worse is extremely likely.) Also, I think the both-sidesism here is way out of bounds. I agree that Democrats suck up to the rich more than they should, but virtually all of them accept that there are rules that everyone (even presidents) have to live by. Trump sees power as purely partisan. Even if he only supports "elite immunity" for elites on his side.

  • Ryan Cooper [07-18] Epstein Signals the End of Donald Trump's Crackerjack Crisis Management Style: "For a decade, his chump fan base automatically believed his lies — until now."

  • Eric Schliesser [07-21] On the Epstein Files; and Corruption. "It is a curious fact that in our public culture hypocrisy is treated as a worse sin than many actual crimes."

  • James D Zirin [07-24] Epstein and Trump: Why We're Unlikely to See the Files: "Judges will probably keep the Epstein files sealed, Bondi seems unlikely to release anything, and the Supreme Court's version of blanket presidential immunity will thwart any criminal case against Trump."

  • Allison Gill [08-01] Someone Waived Ghislaine Maxwell's Sex Offender Status to Move Her to a Minimum Security Camp in Texas.

  • Maureen Tkacik [08-01] Making America Epstein Again: "Trump's transactional ethics are making the US a refuge for criminals. This mirrors something Israel has done for years." I'm a bit surprised by the Israel angle here, not that I have any reason to doubt it. More can be found here:

    • Mouin Rabbani [07-25] Israel: Safe Haven for Pedophiles? "An examination of Darryl Cooper's claim that Israel functions as a safe haven for criminals and pedophiles escaping justice."

  • Peter Rothpletz [08-02] The simple way Democrats should talk about Trump and Epstein: "The scandal has haunted the president in part because of a truth voters already feel: Republicans protect elites."

  • Rebecca Solnit [08-03] The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein: "Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women." My first reaction was that this is an instance of claiming a story for one's other crusade, much like how every fire or hurricane gets turned into a lecture on global warming, or every case of fraud can be turned into an indictment of capitalism. That works, of course, because there is truth in the larger stories, but it can also cover up peculiarities that are interesting on their own. In this case, while Epstein may share in the bad habits of many other men, what's distinctive about his case is the extraordinary wealth he held, and was able to use to get his way. (I have no idea whether violence was involved or implied, as in most other cases of rape — a possible weak link in Solnit's argument — but power is almost always backed up with the threat of force.) Still, while I wouldn't have approached this story in this way, I agree with Solnit's conclusion:

    The piecemeal stories — "here is this one bad man we need to do something about" — don't address the reality that the problem is systemic and the solution isn't police and prison. It's social change, and societies will have changed enough when violence against women ceases to be a pandemic that stretches across continents and centuries. Systemic problems require systemic responses, and while I'm all for releasing the Epstein files, I want a broader conversation and deeper change.

    I'd just shift the focus to Epstein's wealth, and the great power we concede to people with such wealth. I'm not saying that every billionaire is inherently evil, but those who have impulses in that direction are empowered by their wealth to pursue them. Epstein is an example of that, and he's far from the only one.

  • Judith Butler [08-05] Trumpists against Trump: St Clair quoted this bit, while noting that "in the latest Pew Survey, Trump's popularity among his own voters has fallen by 10%." I'm skeptical. (The 10% certainly seems credible, as well more than that was based on gross misunderstanding of who they were voting for, but of this being the specific issue that moved them.)

    Trump insists that the whole Epstein affair is a "hoax" and that his own followers are "stupid" and "weaklings." Their reaction has been intense and swift, since Trump now sounds like the elitists who disparage them — elitists like Hillary Clinton, who called them "a basket of deplorables." Trump scoffs at their complaints, noting that his supporters have nowhere else to go. They feel not only deceived by their hero but demeaned, insulted and outraged, the way they felt when Democrats were in power.

    Still, Butler's point that Trump's a whiny bitch is on the mark, and more of his voters are likely to come around to that view, even if they can't find anyone else to vote for.

  • Bryan Walsh [07-26] Four stories that are more important than the Epstein Files [PS: This entry was the basis for Notes on Everyday Life: Four Stories]: This piece should have been an easy lay up. Instead, Walsh has done the impossible, and come up with four stories even more inane and useless than the Epstein Files:

    1. America's dangerous debt spiral: maybe if he was talking about personal debt, but he means the old federal debt sawhorse, which Trump is pumping up (but lying about, because deficits only matter when Democrats might spend them on people).
    2. A global hunger crisis: he's talking about places like Nigeria, with just one side mention of Gaza, even more casual than "surges in food prices driven by extreme weather"; while climate change could be a major story, the most immediate food crises in the world today are caused by war.
    3. A real population bomb: the complaint that American women aren't having enough babies.[*]
    4. A generational security challenge: here he's complaining about America not being able to produce enough ships and missiles, with the usual China fearmongering, but no regrets about squandering stockpiles on Ukraine and Israel.

    The title works as clickbait, as I imagine there are lots of people out there thinking there must be more important matters than Epsteinmania. And I could imagine this as an AI exercise: gimme four topics that sound big and important but aren't widely covered, except for scolding mentions by fatuous frauds. Still, as usual, natural stupidity is the more plausible explanation — at least the one my life experience has trained my neurons to recognize.

    To some extent, the Epstein-Trump scandal recapitulates the conspiracy-mongering after Vincent Foster's death. I don't care about either enough to sort out the sordid details. But this got me wondering about a 1990s edition of "Four stories that are more important than Vincent Foster's death." I'm not going to hurt my brain by trying to imagine what Walsh might come up with, but these strike me as the big stories of Clinton's first half-term:

    1. Clinton's surrender of his "it's the economy, stupid" platform, which he campaigned and won on, to Alan Greenspan and "the fucking bond market," effectively embracing Reagan's "greed is good" policies and "the era of big government is over."
    2. Clinton's surrender to Colin Powell of his promise to end discrimination against gays in the military, which was not only a setback for LGBT rights but the end of any prospect of a peace dividend following the end of the Cold War, as Clinton never challenged the military again; they in turn were able to dictate much of his foreign policy, laying the groundwork for the "global war on terror," the expansion of NATO, the "pivot to Asia," and other horrors still developing.
    3. Clinton's prioritization of NAFTA, which (as predicted) demolished America's manufacturing base, and (less publicized at the time) undermined the political influence of unions and triggered the mass influx of "illegal immigrants" — factors that Republicans have taken advantage of, not least because they could fairly blame worker hardships on Democrats.
    4. Clinton's health care fiasco, a bill so badly designed and ineptly campaigned for that it set the right to health care back by decades (while ACA was better, it still contained the corrupt compromises of the Clinton program, and still failed to provide universal coverage).

    It took several years to clarify just how important those stories actually were (or would become). It's taken even longer to appreciate a fifth story, which is arguably even greater and graver than these four: the commercialization of the internet. At the time, this was regarded as a major policy success, but one may have second thoughts by now. The Clinton economy was largely built on a bubble of speculation on e-businesses. While some of that bubble burst in 2000-01, much of it continues to inflate today, and its effect on our world is enormous.

    But in 1992-93, Republicans were so disgusted as losing the presidency to a hayseed Democrat like Clinton — especially one who claimed to be able to do their pro-business thing better than they could — that they latched on to petty scandal. They flipped the House in 1994, largely on the basis of checking account scandal. Bringing down Clinton was a bit harder, but started with flogging the Foster story. It grew more important over time, despite everyone agreeing that there was nothing to it, because it ensconced Kenneth Starr as Clinton's permanent prosecutor, uncovering the Lewinsky affair, leading to the sham impeachment, and more significantly, his circling of the wagons, which turned the DNC into his personal political machine, eventually securing Hillary Clinton's doomed nomination, and Trump's rise to power.

    I'm not really sure yet which four stories I'd pick if I had to write this article — mostly because there are so many to choose from, and they overlap and are replicated and reflected in various guises everywhere the Trump administration has influence. While the wars trouble me the most, and gestapo tactics initially directed at immigrants are especially flagrant, one also cannot ignore the gutting (and extreme politicization) of the civil service, the use of extortion to dominate various previously independent institutions (universities, law firms, media companies), the carte blanche given to fraud and corruption (with crypto an especially flagrant example of both), and the utter debasement of the "rule of law."

    There are also a whole raft of economic issues, which only start with fraud and corruption, but mostly stem from a shift of effective power toward corporations and their financier owners, increasing inequality and further entrenching oligarchy. The emerging Trump economy is not less efficient and less productive, it is increasingly unfair and unjust, and much fuller of precarity, which will sooner or later cause resentment and provoke resistance, sabotage, and possibly even revolution. Inequality is not just unfair. It is an acid which dissolves trust, faith, and good will, leaving only force as a means of preserving order. Sure, Trump seems cool with that, as well as the Hobbesian hell of "war of all against all," figuring his side has a big edge in guns, and maybe God on his side. But nearly everything we do in the world depends on trust that other people are going to be respectful, civil, orderly. It's hard to imagine coping in a world where our ability to trust the government, other institutions, and other people has decayed, stranding us in a savage jungle of predators.

    You might be wondering why I haven't mentioned climate change yet. I've long described failure to act on it as an opportunity cost — a choice due to political decisions to prioritize other things (like war), but so many opportunities have been squandered that one suspects more malign (or at least ignorant) interests. Although one cannot doubt human responsibility, it is effectively a force of nature now, beyond political agendas, so the more urgent concern is how does government copes with inevitable disasters. With Trump, no surprise that the answer is badly — even worse than under Biden — and not just in response but in preparation, even to the ability to recognize a disaster when one occurs.

    Climate change may well be the factor that destroys Trump: he can't keep it from happening, he has no empathy for victims when it does, he lacks the ways and means to respond adequately, and having denied it at every step along the way, he has no credibility when his incompetence and/or malice is exposed. It undermines his very concept of government, which crudely stated is as a protection racket, as the people who normally pay him for favors will soon find they are anything but protected. Sure, lots of poor people will be hurt by climate change, but the rich can take little comfort in that, because they own the property that will be devalued and in some cases destroyed — and even if it doesn't hit them directly, the insurance spikes will do the trick. Businesses and lenders will go under because they can't bear the risks, and no amount of blame-shifting Fox propaganda is going to cover that up.

    I could say similar things about AI, automation, and other technological advancements, but the issues there are more complex. Suffice it to say that Trump's let-the-market-and/or-China-decide stance (depending on who chips in the most) won't work. There is much more I could mention. Civil rights enforcement is dead. Does that mean old-fashioned racism will rebound? Antitrust enforcement is dead (provided you bribe the right people, as Paramount just did). Federal grants for arts and sciences are pretty much dead. So is any chance of student loan relief. There is very little but your own scruples to keep you from cheating on your taxes, and who has those these days? Want to talk about pollution? Measles? We're not even very far down the list.

    And the kicker is, instead of having all this ridiculous stuff to complain about, we're really in a position to do some extraordinarily good things for practically everyone on the planet. What's holding us back is a lot of really bad thinking. And it's not just Trump and his toady Republicans and their rabid fanbase, although they're easily the worst. I spend a lot of time reading Democrats on strategy, agenda, media, etc., and they still fall way short of what is needed, due to lack of understanding and/or will power. I'd like to think that they at least are capable of empathy, understand the concepts of civil rights and a government that serves all people, and are at least open to reason, but all too often they leave you in doubt.

    By the way, only later did I notice that none of Walsh's stories implicate Trump. He gets a glancing mention in the debt story, as Gaza does with hunger, but he's effectively saying that everything else involving Trump is even less important than Epstein. I limited my alternate to Clinton stories, because they were easier to weigh against Foster. There were other big stories of Clinton's first half-term, like the dissolving of the Soviet Union, the founding of the European Union, the Oslo Accords, and even the Hubble Telescope, but I tried to keep my head in the game. Walsh seems to be hoping for another game entirely: one where we can pretend Trump doesn't matter.

    [*] There are lots of ways to debunk this. See John Quiggin [07-22] The Arguments for More (or Fewer) People, including many valid comments. One of this cites a book — Adam Becker: More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity — as "required reading for understanding where these people are coming from and why they are all completely insane."

Israel/Palestine: The atrocities hardly need me keeping track. What interests me more is how and when people see them, and realize that something else has to be done.

  • David Wallace-Wells [06-25] The Judgment of History Won't Save Gaza. No, but denying where Gaza fits in the long history of mass killing won't excuse Israel either. That the notion that "being on the right side of history" should be a motivation for good behavior may seem quaint in a culture that celebrates Breaking Bad, but in most times, most people have preferred to think of themselves as decent and virtuous. That such sentiments are scorned in today's Israel and America is not something to brag about. But even in a basically apologetic piece, here's a quote on what Israel has actually done:

    Reporting from the United Nations shows that today, nearly every hospital in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed, as have most schools and mosques. According to the United Nations Satellite Center, in less than two years, nearly 70 percent of all structures in Gaza have been possibly, moderately or severely damaged — or destroyed. As of January, U.N. figures showed nine in 10 homes were damaged or destroyed. About 90 percent of the population has been displaced, with many Gazans multiple times. A study published in January by The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, suggested that nearly 65,000 Palestinians had been killed by traumatic injury in the first nine months of the war — a figure 40 percent higher even than the estimates suggested by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The study also estimated that more than half of the dead were women and children; some estimates of the share of civilian casualties run higher. More than 175 Palestinian journalists have been killed.

    Those figures have been disputed, by Israel and many of its supporters, as has the degree to which this war has killed proportionally more civilians than many of the most gruesome military offensives of recent memory (Falluja, Mosul). But as you read about the recent targeted strikes on Iran, which according to the Israeli military killed a number of senior military and nuclear leaders, it's worth reflecting on reporting by +972 magazine, from earlier in the Gaza conflict, that for every low-level combatant that Israel's military A.I. targeted, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians in a strike — and that, in at least several instances, for higher-ranking figures, as many as 100 or more civilian deaths were tolerated. (Last April, I wrote about +972's reporting, much of which was later corroborated by The Times.)

    In recent weeks, the most horrifying news from Gaza has been about the attacks on those lining up for desperately needed humanitarian aid. Earlier in the conflict, it was especially striking to watch Cindy McCain — the head of the World Food Program and the widow of Senator John McCain, so much a stalwart supporter of Israel that his laughing face has been used in memes about the recent strikes in Iran — raise the alarm about the critical levels of hunger throughout Gaza. In May, she warned of famine — as she had been, on and off, for about a year. After that alarm-raising, a new food-distribution system was soon established. According to the U.N. human rights office, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since then, while waiting for food.

  • Peter Beinart [06-30] A New Playbook for Democratic Critics of Israel: "Zohran Mamdani's primary victory shows pro-Palestine candidates how to win without abandoning their values."

  • Muhannad Ayyash [07-13] Calling for world to account for the Gaza genocide: Review of Haidar Eid: Banging on the Walls of the Tank, which "reveals a disturbing but irrefutable reality: the world has abandoned the Palestinian people to be annihilated as a people in the most calculated and brutal fashion possible."

  • Bret Stephens [07-22] No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza: While the New York Times is legendary for their supplicant bias towards Israel, none of their columnists have more militantly cheered on the complete and utter devastation of Gaza than Stephens has. The only surprise here is that he doesn't come right out and embrace the genocide charge, but evidently whoever pulls his strings urged him to be a bit more circumspect. (Although his main argument that Israel isn't committing genocide is his brag that if Israel wanted to do so, they would have killed a lot more than 60,000 Palestinians.) Obviously, there's no point arguing with someone like him. Henceforth, we should just make sure to identify him always as "Holocaust Denier Bret Stephens."

  • Alice Speri [07-22] Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication.

  • Jason Ditz:

  • Aaron Maté [07-27] As Gaza starves, Trump tells Israel to 'finish the job': "The Trump administration abandons ceasefire talks just as aid groups warn of 'mass starvation' in Gaza, and Israeli officials admit to yet another murderous lie."

  • James North:

  • Aaron Boxerman [07-28] In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide: Notably, B'Tselem finally opens its eyes.

  • Malak Hijazi [07-29] Don't stop talking about the famine in Gaza: "Israel wants you to believe that airdrops and symbolic aid trucks will solve the famine in Gaza. Don't believe them. These measures are not meant to end hunger, only to quell growing global outrage as the genocide continues unchecked."

  • Branko Marcetic [07-29]: How much is shoddy, pro-Israel journalism worth? Ask Bari Weiss. "As her Free Press is poised to seal a $200 million deal with the mainstream news giant CBS, let us reflect on why."

  • Katrina Vanden Heuvel [07-29] A New Report Exposes How Major American Corporations Have Been All Too Eager to Aid Israel's Atrocities in Gaza: "It also reveals our nation's now undeniable complicity in what has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century."

  • Qassam Muaddi

    • [07-31]: As Gaza starvation shocks the world, Witkoff is in Israel to push for a ceasefire deal. Really? Just a day before, Muaddi wrote US pulls out of Gaza ceasefire talks, and nothing here really contradicts that. We should be clear here that while it's possible for Israel to negotiate with Hamas for release of the few hostages who have managed to survive the bombardment (and Israel's own Hannibal Directive), a ceasefire is something Israel can (and should) implement unilaterally. If Trump wanted a ceasefire, all he has to do is convince Netanyahu to stop the shooting and bombing. And if he has any trouble, he can halt Israel's supply of bullets and bombs. That he hasn't done this so far strongly suggests that he doesn't want to, possibly because he's a monster, or because he has no will in the matter. Once you have a ceasefire, there are other things that need to be negotiated. My preference would be for Israel to renounce its claim to Gaza and kick it back to the UN, which would have to then deal with the Palestinians, with aid donors, the US, etc. My guess is that once Israel is out of the picture, the UN would have no problem getting Hamas to release the hostages and to disband and disarm. Israel could claim their victory, and would be left with defensible borders. (This would, of course, leave Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory, and in external refugee camps, with their own serious issues, but they're less pressing than ending the slaughter and starvation in Gaza.)

    • [08-13]: Starvation chronicles in Gaza: "I'm mostly tired of expecting the world to end this. I need to sleep. I have to wake up early to go look for food."

    • [08-14]: Israel swings between plans to occupy Gaza and resuming ceasefire talks: "As the Israeli army announced it was preparing plans for the occupation of Gaza City, initial reports indicate the ceasefire negotiations may resume, leaving open the question of whether Netanyahu's occupation plan is a negotiating tactic." Or (more likely) the negotiation rumors just another feint?

  • Michael Arria:

  • Philip Weiss [08-01]: Israel's international isolation has begun: "US and global politics surrounding Israel are shifting rapidly as the world recoils in horror at Israel's starvation of Gaza."

  • Jack Hunter [08-01]: How MTG became MAGA's moral compass on Gaza: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has bucked her president, called for yanking aid to Israel, and was the first Republican to call what is happening 'a genocide'." By the way, I'm getting the impression that Responsible Statecraft is increasingly betraying its Koch roots and leaning right. Hunter is merely the writer most desperate to tout MAGA Republicans (including Trump) as peace icons.

  • Stavroula Pabst [08-01] Admin asked if US approves Gaza annex plan, says go ask Israel: More evidence of who's calling the shots for Trump foreign policy.

  • Mitchell Plithnick [08-01] Interview with Prof. Joel Beinin: No transcript, but I listened to all 1:09:31 of this. One side comment here was Beinin's note that the Jewish population had collapsed following the destruction of the 2nd temple (AD 70), with only a small minority adopting the new Rabbinic Judaism, which defined Judaism up to now. The implication is that as Jews turn against Israel, most will simply cease to identify as Jewish, while some will attempt to come up with a redefinition of Judaism that frees itself from Israel. I haven't found anything he's written on this, except complaints from some Zionist sources about his interpretation of Jewish history.

  • Francesca Fiorentini [08-01]: The 7 Worst Plans for Gaza: Don't bother. The article is a joke piece, and not a funny one. Besides, we already know the worst plan, which is for Israel to continue doing what it's done for 650+ days now, until they finally admit that all the Palestinians have died, just to spite Israel, who tried so hard to keep a few alive for decades, because war was the only way of life Israelis ever knew.

  • Aaron Boxerman/Samuel Granados/Bora Erden/Elena Shao [08-01] How Did Hunger Get So Much Worse in Gaza? Maybe because the aid trucks are used as bait for snipers? But that's just worse compared to what? Way before 2023, Israelis were restricting food imports to Gaza — their euphemism was "putting Gazans on a diet."

  • Mehdi Hasan [08-02]: The US is complicit in genocide. Let's stop pretending otherwise. I'm skeptical that "the US government, enabled by the media, is an active participant in Israel's atrocities in Gaza." Complicit? For sure. One could probably go further and argue that Israel could not, and therefore would not, be able to commit genocide, at least in this manner, without US material and diplomatic support, which under both Biden and Trump has been uncritical and unflinching, sometimes even beyond what was asked for. I also think the US has a deeper responsibility for Israel's turn toward genocide, even if much of the ideological underpinnings was imported from Israel, starting with the neocon embrace of Israel's far-right anti-Oslo opposition in the 1990s. (The Project for a New American Century started with a position paper on Israel's "defense of the realm.") But it's hard to be a participant in a reality you're so dedicated to pretending isn't real. I think it's probable that most Americans who still side with Israel are merely misinformed and/or deluded, and not fully in line with genocide. However, such negligence is hard to excuse for people who have a public responsibility to know what Israel is doing, and to implement US policy according to our own best interests. Hasan isn't wrong to include them among the "participants," even though their actual role is often passive and banal — words that have previous uses in describing people who not just tolerated but facilitated holocausts.

  • Aviva Chomsky [08-03] On Creating a Cover for Genocide: "Preventing criticism of Israel by defining it as antisemitic."

  • Julie Hollar [08-04]: Mainstream media largely sidelined starvation story, until it couldn't: "A deep dive into coverage shows a shocking lack of interest until now, and even then the reporting is skewed away from culpability."

  • Richard Silverstein:

  • Nathan J Robinson [08-05]: Why Won't US Politicians Say "Genocide"? Starts with a long list (with links) of organizations that have.

  • Max Boot [08-05] I still love Israel. But what I'm seeing is wrong. "It's still possible to love the country and condemn this war. But it's getting difficult." Original title (per Jeffrey St Clair, who added "imagine what it takes to finally turn Max Boot's war-mongering stomach") was "I hate the war in Gaza. But I still love Israel." I don't mind when people say they love Israel, as long as they understand that ending the war is the only way Israel can save itself.

  • Tareq S Hajjaj [08-07] Israel claims it's allowing aid into Gaza, but its 'engineering of chaos' ensures the aid doesn't reach starving Palestinians: "As limited aid trickles into Gaza, Israel's strategy of 'engineering chaos' by shooting at aid-seekers and permitting looters to steal aid ensures that food doesn't get to starving Palestinians."

  • Qassam Muaddi [08-07] Leaked Cabinet transcript reveals Israel chose to starve Gaza as a strategy of war: "Netanyahu chose to blow up the ceasefire and starve Gaza's population in order to force a surrender from Hamas, while top military and security officials favored moving to the second phase of a ceasefire, leaked cabinet meeting minutes reveal."

  • Abdaljawad Omar [08-08] The war without end in Gaza: "Israel's latest plan to occupy Gaza City reveals that the assault on Gaza is more than just a war over territory. It is a war to extend, and dictate the tempo of killing and destruction — to exhaust Gaza into submission." My main quibble here is that "submission" implies survival. Israel wants Gaza to be depopulated, either by death or by exile, and they don't care which (although as Deir Yassin in 1948 showed, they've long understood that mass murder is effective at driving exile).

  • Jonathan Ofir [08-08] 4 out of 5 Jewish Israelis are not troubled by the famine in Gaza: 79%.

  • Asaf Yakir [08-13] How War Became Israel's New Normal: "It is a mistake to think that Benjamin Netanyahu is solely responsible for Israel's genocide or that removing him would bring it to an end. To win support for war, he has mobilized large swathes of Israeli society, from liberals to the far right."

  • Ali Ghanim [08-12] Anas al-Sharif Was My Friend. Here's Why Israel Feared Him So Much. "On Monday, Anas, 28, was targeted, along with three other Al Jazeera journalists, in an Israeli strike on a tent complex around Al-Shifa Hospital."

  • Elfadil Ibrahim [08-14] Why Egypt can't criticize Israel for at least another two decades: "A record gas deal exposes a strategic vulnerability as Cairo trades political autonomy for energy security."

  • Martin Shaw [08-16]: When Genocide Denial Is the Norm: "Genocide scholar Martin Shaw argues that ending Israel's genocide in Gaza and isolating Israel on the international stage must become the cause of every country that claims to represent human values."

  • Angel Leonardo Peña [08-16] How Zionism is leading the reactionary wave worldwide: "Zionism is no longer hiding in the shadows, as it once did, supporting global reactionaries with training and support. It has now taken center stage as the vanguard of the global right, and all reactionaries are following." Back in the 1930s, one thing nearly all fascists had in common was anti-semitism. Today the nearly universal common thread is their embrace of Israel, especially as genocide becomes more obvious. The argument that criticism of Israel is proof of antisemitism is not just wrong; the opposite is much closer to the truth.

  • Tony Karon [08-17]: Anti-Semitism, Zionism and "the Americanization of the Holocaust: Much to recommend here, including this quote from Hagai El-Ad:

    We're approaching the moment, and perhaps it's already here, when the memory of the Holocaust won't stop the world from seeing Israel as it is. The moment when the historic crimes committed against our people will stop serving as our Iron Dome, protecting us from being held to account for crimes we are committing in the present against the nation with which we share the historical homeland.

Russia/Ukraine: During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to end this war "in a day." Of course, he had neither the diplomatic skills nor the inclination to actually do that — and he spent his day on other priorities, like pardoning his insurrectionists and organizing his gestapo — but even observers as skeptical as me of his peace credentials and foreign policy aims thought he'd be more likely to end the war than Biden's neocons, who saw the war as nothing more or less than an opportunity to bleed a hated foe dry. Granted, the terms would be less than ideal, but at this point ending the war on any terms is preferable to slogging on "to the last dead Ukrainian" (which seemed to be the Biden/Zelensky policy). I've never bought the line that Trump is Putin's stooge. Still, Putin holds most of the cards here, and it's been clear for some time that the war would only be settled on his terms. That Trump couldn't move faster was partly due to his own incompetence, but also because Putin decided to press his advantages: to gain more ground, while Trump made plain his disinterest in supporting Ukraine (not that he had reservations about allowing Europe to buy American arms to fight Russia).

The first stories below, from Aug. 1, reflect the moment Trump turned hawkish on Ukraine. Less than two weeks later, there seems to be a deal float, starting with a face-to-face meeting. There is not a lot of reason to expect this to pan out. (The meetings with Kim Jong-Un went nowhere, but mostly because Trump's security cabal was run by deep state saboteurs like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. No doubt similar people are still around, but buried deeper in the bureaucracy.) Whether this one does is almost totally up to Putin. If he can get most of Russian-speaking Ukraine and relief from most sanctions, he should be happy to let the rest of Ukraine go their own way. It's hard to see what more he could demand with any chance of agreement, and the downside is he pushes most of Europe into being even more aggressively anti-Russian than the US has been under Biden. Plus he gets a chance to make Trump look good — not something Trump can readily do on his own.

The last stories immediately follow the Trump-Putin summit on August 16, during which nothing was concluded, as the next step will be for Trump to meet with Zelensky.

  • Eli Stokols/Paul McLeary [08-01] Trump, escalating war of words with Russia's Medvedev, mobilizes two nuclear submarines.

  • Anatol Lieven [08-01] Trump vs. Medvedev: When talking tough is plain turkey: "Exchanging nuclear threats like this is pure theater and we should not be applauding." The war of words started over Trump's threats to impose sanctions if Russia doesn't comply with a ceasefire in 10 days." This led to Trump publicly positioning nuclear submarines to illustrate his threat to Russia, in a rare attempt at nuclear blackmail. Lieven argues that "Medvedev and Trump are both trying to look tough for domestic audiences." I doubt that either people much cares, but the leaders' personal machismo is on the line. What is truly disturbing about the Trump position is that the one thing Putin is least likely to accept is an ultimatum that would expose him as weak. On the other hand, rejection would make Trump look weak, so he's walked into his own trap.

  • Tyler Pager/David E Sanger [08-08]: Trump Says He Will Meet With Putin in Alaska Next Week: "Trump also suggested that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would include 'some swapping of territories,' signaling that the US may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to cede land."

  • Stavroula Pabst:

  • Anatol Lieven [08-09] Trump's terms for Russia-Ukraine on the right course for peace: "A meeting in Alaska, while putting land concessions on the table, is an essential first step." I've separated this from his earlier piece, because events intervened. Holding out any degree of hope viz. Trump strikes me as foolish, which is why I say it all comes down to Putin. But if Putin really did want to make Trump look good, why wait until now?

  • Norman Solomon [08-09] Democrats should give peace a chance in Ukraine: Democrats need to align with peace and social justice movements everywhere, pushing diplomatic solutions to conflicts that also recognize and advance human rights, regardless of power politics, narrow economic concerns, and the arms lobbies. But they need to prioritize peace, which is something the Biden administration failed to recognize — and which tragically cost them the 2024 election. The one advantage they have over Republicans is that they lean, at least in principle, toward social justice. Unfortunately, US foreign policy, under Democrats as well as Republicans, has reduced such views to hypocrisy, which has done immense damage to their reputation — both around the world and among their own voters.

  • Michael Corbin [08-12] Trouble in Russian economy means Putin really needs Alaska talks too: "Mixed indicators signal wartime growth has plateaued." I haven't really sorted this out. I don't think that economic considerations is going to dictate Putin's policy, but they must be somewhere in the back of his mind.

  • Harrison Berger [08-14] Stephen Cohen's legacy: Warnings unheeded, a war without end: "At his own peril, the late historian used his considerable influence to challenge rather than echo establishment narratives about Russia and Ukraine."

  • Zachary Paikin [08-14]: On Ukraine war, Euro leaders begin to make concessions — to reality: "The spirit going into Alaska will continue to be cautiously optimistic, as long as the parties with most at risk don't get in their own way."

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [08-15]: Deal or no deal? Alaska summit ends with vague hints at something: "There was no ceasefire, but none of the new sanctions Trump threatened, either. Whether this was a 'win' or 'loss' depends on who you ask." Why ask us? We're only "experts"! A lot of people were quick to pick on Trump for failing to bring home a peace deal, but that assumes he has a lot more power than he actually has. The main power that the US has is to underwrite the indefinite extension of the war, as Biden did from 2022 on. One side can get a war going and keep it going. But making peace requires some agreement from both sides, where one side is unambiguously Putin. So all Trump could hope for was for Putin to give him something he could take back to his side, which minimally includes Zelensky, NATO, and the EU. Whether what he brought back works depends on how good an offer Putin made, but that he brought it back signals that he's abandoned Biden's "fight to the last dead Ukrainian" plot. Now we have to see whether the "allies" were just going along with Washington, or have red lines of their own.

  • Adam Pasick [08-17]: What to Know About Russia-US-Ukraine Peace Talks: Actually, there doesn't seem to be much to know here. Trump got his marching orders from Putin in Alaska. He now has to face Zelensky and other European leaders (including NATO and EU's über-hawk Von Der Leyen) in Washington. If they buckle, and given the loss of US support bankrolling the forever war they might, then presumably there will in short course be an agreement that will cede the Russian-speaking Ukrainian territories (Crimea, Luhansk, and Donbas) to Russia, and leave the Ukrainian-speaking parts of Ukraine free and independent, with both sides agreeing not to fight any further. That's basically what could have happened in 2014, when a pro-western faction seized control of the Kiev government, and Crimea and Donbas revolted and declared their independence. Something like that happened peacefully with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. It's never been clear why something along those lines didn't happen in Ukraine, but many nationalists — including, obviously, some Russian ones, but they are far from alone — are attached to their territorial ambitions, plus there was the underlying geostrategic interest of the US in advancing NATO at Russia's expense.

    The 2014-22 war was basically one waged by Ukraine to reconquer lost territory, even though there is little reason to think that the people living there preferred Kiev over Moscow. Putin sought to reverse that war by invading in 2022, which allowed Russia to gain some extra territory in the south, establishing a land bridge between Donbas and Crimea, mostly because Ukrainian forces were preoccupied with defending Kiev and Kharkhiv in the north. Ukraine reversed some of their losses late in 2022, but their 2023 counteroffensive failed, and the war has largely been stalemated ever since, with some minor Russian gains in Donetsk recently.

    Since the Russian offensive failed in 2022, it's been clear that Russia would not be able to overturn the Kiev government, let alone occupy western Ukraine. It's also been clear that Ukraine would not be able to dislodge Russian forces from territory that favors Russia, and that Russia has much greater depth which would allow it to wage the war much longer than Ukraine could. That Ukraine has been able to fight on as long and hard as it has is largely due to American and European support, which is waning. It is also clear that the impact of sanctions against Russia has not dimmed their will to continue the war. The idea that Russians would turn against Putin also appears fanciful. However much one may dislike the idea of allowing any nation to conquer part of any other, there is no practical alternative to a peace which largely vindicates Putin's decision to invade. The US under Biden refused to consider any concessions, which allowed (encouraged?) Zelensky to take a maximalist stand. Trump, on the other hand, seems inclined to respect Putin's needs. His problem is squaring them away with the minimal needs of Ukraine and their European partners.

    Whether he can, I suspect, will depend more on how reasonable a deal Putin is willing to offer than on Trump's hitherto clueless "art of the deal." However much Russia resented NATO, the fact that America was always in charge used to moderate the risk NATO posed to Russia. If Putin doesn't offer something Ukraine/Europe can live with, they're liable to break with Trump and continue the fight on their own. A Europe provoked to break with the US could become much more of a threat to Russia than NATO ever was (not an existential threat, in that Europe will never conquer and occupy Russia, but it could be more effective at isolating and shunning Russia).

    I'm not bothered by Putin's insistence on no ceasefire. While my approach would be to start with a ceasefire, Putin is wary that offering one first would allow Ukraine to drag out future negotiations (much like the US has never come to terms with North Korea, 72 years after that ceasefire). While any killing that occurs between now and whenever is unnecessary and probably meaningless, it is more important to get to a proper peace deal sooner rather than later. And while Putin is an intensely malign political figure, it is better for all concerned to establish some sort of civil relationship with Russia post-bellum — as opposed to America's usual grudge-holding (again, see North Korea, also Iran, and for that matter Afghanistan).

    Personally, I would have liked to see this worked out better, but no one involved cares what I think. They're going to operate according to their own craven impulses. But I wouldn't worry too much about the details, as long as we get to some kind of peace. Justice is a much taller order, but better to pursue it in peace than in war.

    The NY Times has more on Ukraine here, where the latest title is "Trump Backs Plan to Cede Land for Peace in Ukraine."

  • Anatol Lieven [08-17]: Why Trump gets it right on Ukraine peace: "In Alaska he found reality: he is now embracing an agreement without demanding a ceasefire first, which would have never worked anyway." I wrote the above before getting to this piece. Nothing here changes my mind on anything. Lieven is right to point out that "Trump is engaged in a form of shuttle diplomacy." He needs to get both sides to agree, but he only has leverage over one side, so he only gets the deal that Putin will allow, and that only if Putin allows a deal that Zelensky can accept. He's gambling that both are agreeable, in which case he hopes to snag a Nobel Peace Prize before he blunders into WWIII. That at least is a motivation one can imagine him considering. Anything else is laughable: e.g., Lieven's line that "We should at least give [Trump] credit for moral courage." Also hilarious is "Putin is hardly the 'global pariah' of Western political and media rhetoric." It's almost like Lieven thinks he's such a big shot pundit he imagines that his flattery might sway Putin and Trump to do the right thing. Rest assured that even if they do, it won't be for the right reasons. And neither will admit that it was someone else's idea.

Trump administration: Practically every day, certainly several times every week, I run across disturbing, often shocking stories of various misdeeds proposed and quite often implemented by the Trump administration. Collecting them together declutters everything else, and emphasizes the pattern of intense and possibly insane politicization of everything.

Current Affairs:

  • [08-06] Our 200th News Briefing! I signed up for the free peak at this when it originally came out, but they soon moved it off Substack, and it doesn't normally seem to be available on their website, so I lost track of it. (I'm still signed up for something on Substack, which mostly seems to be funding appeals.) Still, as a tribute to round numbers, this sample is available. Some interesting stuff here, but nothing I'd pay money for.

  • Andrew Ancheta [05-21] Why You Should Fix Your Own Stuff: "Companies like Apple and Microsoft don't want you to repair your own tech, because they make a fortune from planned obsolescence. But learning to do it yourself brings empowerment." Few things bother me more than business schemes to make their products independently repairable. The right-to-repair bills mentioned here would help, but we need to go further, and make all software and hardware open source and interoperable. And while I can personally attest that being able to repair your own stuff feels good, there is so much stuff that's so complicated that no one can understand how to repair it all. I'd like to start thinking about repair cooperatives, and publicly funding them.

  • Nathan J Robinson

    • [07-24] Rise of the Idiot Interviewer: "Podcast bros are interviewing presidents and power players without doing basic research beforehand. The result is a propagandistic catastrophe."

    • [07-30] Living in Omelas: "When we face the suffering that our civilization is built on, what are our obligations?" Starts with a Ursula Le Guin story, but eventually circles back to Gaza.

    • [2024-10-01] Surely AI Safety Legislation Is A No-Brainer: "Radical Silicon Valley libertarianism is forcing us all to take on unnecessary risks, and the new technology is badly in need of regulation." Not a new piece, but new to me. I've done essentially nothing with AI so far, but probably should start working with it. I'm already finding Google's searches to be significantly improved with it (and not just because the web page links are almost exclusively commercial crap). But I have no idea how you go about regulating it to ensure any degree of safety. What I am fairly sure of is that the profit motive ensures that it will be used for purposes ranging dubious to nefarious, so one was to reduce risk would be to cut back on profit motives.[*] However, it is very hard to regulate industries without their cooperation — indeed, the main force for license requirements is the desire to limit competition — because our political system is designed so that special interests compete, while the general interest has no lobby.[**] So I wouldn't be surprised to find most of the push to regulate coming from the companies themselves, not so much to protect users as to validate their own business models.

      [*] One simple way to do this would be to declare and nothing developed with AI can be patented or copyrighted. You could go a step further and declare that nothing that can be reverse-engineered with AI is eligible. The arguments for doing this are pretty obvious. Needless to say, we're not going to see a lot of lobbying to limit patents and copyrights, although the AI companies will probably lobby for laws to limit their exposure for whatever harm AI may cause. We'll hear that without limitation of liability, the industry will be stifled, which means they won't be able to make as much money, or be as careless in making it.

      • [**] By the way, I have a solution for this: tax lobbying expenses at 100%, so that in order to spend $1 on lobbying, you also have to donate $1 to a public fund for counter-lobbying. That way every side of every issue gets equal weighting, so winners will be determined on their merits. Same thing can apply to political donations. It would take some work to set up a fair and effective distribution system, but I have a bunch of ideas for that, too.

  • Grady Martin [07-29] The "Careless People" Who Make Up Elite Institutions: "Sarah Wynn-Williams' bestseller is a disturbing exposé about the inner workings of Facebook. But Wynn-Williams herself is complicit in the harms she criticizes, and so is her entire class of elite strivers."

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

Laura Snapes [2024-09-30] Farewell to the car CD player, source of weirdly deep musical fandoms. Some time after I bought my 1986 Audi, I replaced the radio with a CD player. Same with my 1994 Nissan, unless it came with one (I'm a bit unsure, but if it did, it was gone within a week). The 2006 Toyota had one by default, but we opted for the 6-CD changer. I don't think I ever loaded more than one CD at a time, but it came with extra speakers, and made a statement. When I started contemplating a new car just before 2020 happened, I was dismayed to find virtually nothing offering CD players, or even radios that could be ripped out and easily replaced. When we finally gave in and bought our new Toyota, all we could get was a 10.5-inch media/info console with bluetooth, wi-fi, one usb port, and a bunch of trial subscriptions. I spent our first week driving in silence, except when the wife insisted on NPR, which was painful.

Thomas Frank [2024-11-09] The Elites Had It Coming: Just stumbled across this, not recalling it but thinking, of course, this is what he would say the day after the election debacle. Turns out I did cite this piece in my post-election Speaking of Which, even pulling out a quote indicting Democrats as "their most brilliant minds couldn't figure [Trump] out." In rereading the piece, I'm more struck by the two paragraphs above the one I quoted:

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, put together a remarkable coalition of the disgruntled. He reached out to everyone with a beef, from Robert Kennedy Jr. to Elon Musk. From free-speech guys to book banners. From Muslims in Michigan to anti-immigration zealots everywhere. "Trump will fix it," declared the signs they waved at his rallies, regardless of which "it" you had in mind.

Republicans spoke of Mr. Trump's persecution by liberal prosecutors, of how he was censored by Twitter, of the incredible strength he showed after being shot. He was an "American Bad Ass," in the words of Kid Rock. And clucking liberal pundits would sometimes respond to all this by mocking the very concept of grievance, as though discontent itself were the product of a diseased mind.

Elie Mystal [07-02] Democrats Should Become the Pro-Porn Party. I was surprised to see this, and welcome it, but don't hold out much hope. Democrats have long sought to portray themselves as exemplars of probity, even to the point of allowing themselves to be caricatured as elitist scolds, with the suggestion that they are really just virtue signalling hypocrites. Perhaps they're still reeling from the Cleveland-era charges of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"? (Not far removed from their preference for blue over red, which can be linked back to McCarthyite-era red scares, something they felt vulnerable to because, like communists, they tended to at least pay lip service to the notions of equal rights and social justice. The purpose of red-baiting was not just to attack and isolate communists but also to tar the liberals, who when they ran scared discredited themselves, isolating themselves from their most principled and committed allies.)

Prohibition was at the heart of those charges, and so it remains: the belief that "improper" personal behavior can and should be repressed by those in power. While people with good intentions can be tempted by prohibitionism — the temperance movement being a prime example — its real constituency is on the right, because they are the ones who believe in power, which in hard and/or soft form is the only way they can maintain their unjust social and economic hierarchy. While they happily invent their own morality to suit their interests, it's even easier to ride on old religious prejudices, especially as they have a ready constituency, led by their own authoritarians. Moreover, labeling some people as deviants seems to make the others feel superior, and that is the definition of social hierarchies.

Democrats could oppose these right-wing schemes by defending every targeted group, but that lets the right set the framework for the debate, taints you, divides you, and dissipates energy with many isolated defenses. Much better to articulate a general principle, and show how prohibition and other prejudices spread to harm others, ultimately including the people who initially approved. To some extent Mystal does this, seeing porn as a free speech issue, and personal access to it as a question of privacy. Democrats mostly agree as far as law — Mystal cites a Kagan dissent against Alito & Thomas — but muddle their defense by trying to show their disapproval of acts, speech, and thoughts they would stop short of prohibiting. This fails on all counts: it reinforces the right-wing view that they're right and you're evil; it makes you look and sound guilty; it offers the targets of their hatred little reassurance that you'll defend their rights, or that you even care much about them. You'd be much better off making a strong defense of key rights, including free speech and privacy, then making it clear that their defense extends to things like porn, regardless of whether one personally approves or not.

Some Democrats have made some effort here (in terms of not just defending but showing some respect for targets of attack), at least on issues like abortion and even the T in LGBTQ, but drugs (beyond marijuana) and sex work still seem to be taboo. (Whether there's a political constituency to be gained there is hinted at but not much discussed. A lot of people enjoy porn, even if few will champion it in public.) A big problem here is that anti-porn forces try to shift the question to the question of children — conventionally under 18, which is several years past the point where people start taking an interest in sex and really should understand. I'd go further than Mystal and argue that all age restrictions on viewing porn should be abolished. (I could see where acting in porn might be a different concern, but there are lots of areas where I doubt the value of being so overly protective and controlling of adolescents — the matter of younger children is certainly less clear cut.) Still, porn seems to me like a relatively low-priority issue, unlikely to gain much traction, although more clearly articulated views of free speech and privacy might help, especially to counter the rampant bigotry of the right.

  • Elie Mystal [07-30] The Rule of Law Is Dead in the US: "The rule of law presupposes that there are rules that provide a consistent, repeatable, and knowable set of outcomes. That's no longer the case.".

Kevin Munger [07-14] Attention is All You Need: On the collapse of "literary culture," and social media as "secondary orality," followed by a primer on how AI works. Title collides with Chris Hayes' recent book on attention, so Munger recommends "best experienced through the medium of an Ezra Klein podcast, then also mentions "Derek Thompson's report on the end of reading, which leads to a joke about their recent book, Abundance.

Nate Chinen [07-15] The Times, A-Changin': Reports on a leaked "internal memo" of a shake-up in the New York Times arts coverage, where "veteran critics" Jon Pareles (pop music), Margaret Lyons (TV), Jesse Green (theater), and Zachary Woolfe (classical music) "will soon be taking on unspecified 'new roles,' while the paper searches for replacements on their beats." I was pointed to this by Piotr Orlov, who concluded "The whole episode simply reaffirms a basic Dada Strain [his blog] tenet: the need to organize and build our own institutions. (And maybe stop chasing the ever-more poisoned chalice.)" I've believed that much since the early 1970s, as soon as I ran into the notion of controlling the "means of production"; which is to say, even before I first encountered, and developed an immediate distaste for, the New York Times. Chinen's reaction is milder, perhaps a lingering effect of having tasted that poisoned chalice, tempered by personal familiarity. And, for now at least, the four still have jobs, and may come to find opportunities in writing less routine coverage, as well as behind-the-scenes influence. But the more disturbing aspect of Chinen's piece is the broader shift of media megacorps, which is really what the Times has become (the newspaper itself just a facade from an earlier era), to monetizing novel forms of attention grabbing, which increasingly substitute for critical thinking. As a non-reader (or a hostile one when I do glimpse something), I've long regarded the New York Times as some kind of black hole, where good writers cash in and become irrelevant, rarely if ever to be seen or heard again. Jon Pareles has long been a prime example: I remember him fondly from his 1970s reviews in Crawdaddy, notably for introducing me to musicians I had never heard of, like George Crumb and Dudu Pukwana. Many more have followed, willing cogs in their machine. Jon Caramanica, for instance: Chinen reports that he's given up "the word," finding a new calling making "popcast" videos. Sounds like a waste to me, but I guess they've figured out how to make money out of it, and for them, what else matters?

Bob Boilen [07-16] The end of public radio music?

Ryan Cooper [07-17] How Did Elon Musk Turn Grok Into MechaHitler? "The malfunctioning xAI chatbot provides some insights into how large language models work." For starters, it appears they haven't overcome the oldest maxim in computer science: "garbage in, garbage out."

Paul Krugman [07-22] Has Brazil Invented the Future of Money? "And will it ever come to America?" I'm not familiar with this concept, but it's long been obvious to me that we could save a huge amount of money if we set up a public non-profit utility to handle payments.

Last week the House passed the GENIUS Act, which will boost the growth of stablecoins, thereby paving the way for future scams and financial crises. On Thursday the House also passed a bill that would bar the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or even studying the idea.

Why are Republicans so terrified by the idea of a CBDC that they're literally ordering the Fed to stop even thinking about it?

I'd go much farther and wipe out much of the existing banking industry, which is predatory and counterproductive. It's unclear to me that there is anything worthwhile that banks can do more efficiently and/or productively than a public service utility. Given that government can borrow less expensively than private banks — especially if you overlook the favorable terms banks receive from government — this can extend to most routine loans. Everyone could be provided not just a free checking and savings account, but a credit card. (Note that many other forms of loans, like mortgages and student loans, are already backed by government, so would cost less to administer directly.)

As Krugman notes, the finance industry has a lot of lobbying clout in America, and this is directed at preventing consideration of alternatives. (Same for the better known but actually smaller health care and oil industries.) So we are, at least for now, screwed, repeatedly. Inequality is effectively a measure of the political power that elites have to concentrate surplus value in their own hands. Other nations, like Brazil, don't have to get sucked into this trap, and as such, especially as the rot of the so-called Washington Consensus becomes more obvious, can offer us laboratories for alternative approaches.

I've read Krugman regularly for many years, but I didn't follow his move to Substack. Looking at the website, these are a few posts that caught my eye (although some are cut short, so there's some kind of shakedown involved):

  • [04-03]: Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy? "Trump's tariffs are a disaster. His policy is worse." The basic analysis is solid. The suggestion that the methodology could have been cooked up by AI is amusing. The top comment by George Santangelo is worth quoting:

    Tariffs aren't imposed by Trump for economic reasons. Trump has found the ultimate grift. Put tariffs on everything and wait for the requests to remove them, industry by industry, company by company. In return, Trump or his family or his pals receive money, business, information and any other advantage for the removals. Who will know whether a real estate development by Jared Kushner for the Saudis results in an advantageous price for the land and development fees for the Trump organization? It's the perfect corrupt plot. Any and all United States monies are subject to theft by the ultimate thief.

    I chopped off the "BTW" bit, relating to Trump's convictions and impeachment. The latter is an impossible reach, so it might be better to just admit that Trump — with his packing of the courts and personal takeover of the DOJ — is above and beyond the law, and make voters face the consequences of that. Along the way, just try to document the many ways (criminal or not) Trump and his cronies line their pockets from his administration's arbitrary and often irrational actions.

  • [07-16]: Trump's parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit. "Right now, images largely determine the outcome."

  • [07-29]: I Coulda Made a Better Deal: "What, exactly, did Trump get from Europe?" His "better deal" was none at all.

  • [07-30]: Fossil Fool: "How Europe took Trump for a ride."

  • [07-31]: The Media Can't Handle the Absence of Truth: "And their diffidence empowers pathological liars." More on the gullibility of the media. Their assumption is that both sides have slightly tinted views of reality, allowing them to interpolate. But that breaks down when one side goes bonkers, and they lack the critical faculties to determine which. (Of course, they fare even worse when both sides are grossly wrong, as on Israel.)

  • [08-01]: Trump/Brazil: Delusions of Grandeur Go South: "Trump thinks he can rule the world, but he doesn't have the juice."

  • [08-03]: The Economics of Smoot-Hawley 2.0, Part I: "Tariffs will be very high as far as the eye can see. What does that mean?"

  • [08-05]: The Paranoid Style in American Economics: "Remember, every accusation is a confession." The subtitle is a truism that should be pointed out more often. The main thing I learned in my high school psych class was the concept of projection: how we ascribe to others our own sick motives and ambitions. Thus the US thinks China wants to rule the world. Thus Bush thought Saddam Hussein would nuke New York if we didn't prevent him from developing any form of nuclear deterrence. Thus a bunch of white idiots think that any loosening civil rights would turn blacks into slave masters. Most often when you accuse someone else of nefarious motives, you're admitting to your own.

  • Greg Sargent [07-30] Krugman Wrecks Trump's Europe Deal: "Scam on His Voters: An interview with Paul Krugman, who "explains at length why [Trump's trade agreement with Europe is] actually a big loss for our country — and especially for his MAGA base."

  • Krugman also has a series of papers on "Understanding Inequality" published by Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality:

    1. Why Did the Rich Pull Away From the Rest?
    2. The Importance of Worker Power
    3. A Trumpian Diversion
    4. Oligarchs and the Rise of Mega-Fortunes
    5. Predatory Financialization
    6. Crypto: This one is still paywalled, and despite the "Part VII" in the title may not be part of the series, but he offers it has a case study, "seen as a sort of hyper-powered example of predatory finance, influence-buying and corruption." Points listed: 1. The strange economics of cryptocurrency; 2. Crypto as a form of predatory finance; 3. How crypto drives inequality; 4. How the crypto industry has corrupted our politics.

Catherine Rampell [07-23] 11 tips for becoming a columnist: Washington Post opinion columnist, now ex, started writing about business for the New York Times, has done TV punditry at CNN and MSNBC. I've cited her 10 times in Speaking of Which, but my recall is vague.[*] This seems like generally wise advice, so I thought I'd check up on what else she's written in her last days:

  • [07-17] Democrats risk taking the wrong lessons from Trumpism: "Replicating Trump's populism is not the answer." Lead picture, and much of the article, is Zohran Mamdani, but she also mentions Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and "new convert" Chris Murphy, while exempting "more pragmatist, technocrat-driven" Democrats like Obama. But consider her definition:

    After all, that is the unifying theme of populism: Promise voters they would have a better life and nicer things if not for [insert scapegoats here]. Identifying a cabal to blame can help win elections, but it is not a great strategy for governing. . . . But the rhetoric from the populist left and right has some similarities: You would have nice things if not for the corrupt elites keeping them from you. . . . The common tendency to respond to complicated social problems with scapegoats, slogans and simple solutions explains why a populist everyman such as Joe Rogan can seemlessly transition from Feeling the Bern to jumping on the Trump Train.

    Several (well, many) things come to mind here. Identifying enemies is common to all effective politics. This is because most people need to personify the forces affecting them, rather than just blame abstractions (isms, groups, secret cabals, etc.). This only seems unusual because mainstream Democrats, desiring to be all things to all people, shy away from opposing anyone (or limit themselves to safe targets among the powerless — scapegoats, as you say). Left and right (and for that matter middle, in their own muddled way) share the trait of identifying enemies and promising benefits to others. But the differences in who they blame and what they promise are considerable, so why ignore that? Once you look, there are obvious differences between left and right. For starters, the left blames people who actually exercise substantial power, whereas the right blames phantoms and ascribes them with mythical power. (Ok, some of their targets are real, like unions, public interest groups, and honest Democrats, but few wield substantial power.) And the left tries to offer real solutions. The right may try to appeal to the same people and issues as the left, but they blame false villains, and offer ineffective solutions. So sure, they may be able to confuse some folk like Rogan, but note that Rogan only switched to Trump after Democrats excluded Sanders — although in Rogan's case, that Trump appeared on his program but Harris refused may have mattered more.

    One more point here: Rampell, like many recent left-adverse liberals, uses "populism" derisively, as a crude attempt to smear sincere leftists by associating them with right-wing demagogues. There are many problems with this[**], but the one I want to note here is that it betrays a distrust in the ability of most people to understand their own best interests and to govern themselves. The implication here is that we know better, and you should defer to our superior understanding — which is conditioned by their own economic interests and cultural values. It shouldn't be hard to understand why the anti-elitist impulses that most people hold might kick in here, especially given the track record of "pragmatic Democrats" like Clinton and Obama. There are lots of things one can say about Trump's demagoguery and how it exploits the worst impulses of popular opinion, but to call it "populist" implies that the fault lies in the people, and not in their manipulators. After all, what are anti-populist liberals but higher-minded manipulators?

    One more quote, which offers a good example of how cynically centrist-liberals distort leftist programs to arrive at nothing but a defense of the status quo:

    Rich people and corporations can definitely afford to pay higher taxes, as I have argued many times. But the reason we don't have Medicare-for-all (as designed by Sanders) is that Americans don't have the stomach for the middle-class taxes such a huge expansion of the safety net would require.

    Even if you seized the entire wealth of every billionaire in the country — i.e., impose a 100 percent wealth tax — that would pay for Medicare-for-all for just over a year. Forget free college or other Scandinavian-style welfare-state expansions that the fabled billionaire money tree is also earmarked for. But anyone who points out math problems like this, or suggests some less ambitious alternative, is tarred and feathered as a corporate shill or handmaiden to the oligarchs.

    I count about five major fallacies here, but we could split hairs and double that. One actually tilts in favor of her argument: a lot of the wealth counted by rich people is illusory, based on inflated values for assets, bid up by other rich people desperate for assets. So there are practical limits to how much wealth one can tax away. On the other hand, destroying all that imaginary value wouldn't be a bad thing. Moreover, whatever real value there is, is redistributed, mostly to people who can put it to better use. Moreover, even if you can't satisfy desired spending by only taxing the rich, that doesn't mean you shouldn't tax the rich. They're the obvious place to start, because they have most of the money, and they can afford it.

    New welfare services don't have to be fully funded out of new revenues. In many cases — health care being an obvious one — they directly replace current expenses. There's much more along these lines. For what it's worth, I think Democrats are hurting themselves in proposing to only raise taxes on the rich. There is certainly a lot of room to do so, and doing so would have some positive benefits beyond raising revenues that can be put to better ends, but to fix the worst problems of inequality, we also need to work on the rules and policies that create so much inequality. As that is done, the rich will have less money to tax away, so the mix of revenues, like the mix of wealth, should spread out. As long as income and estate taxes are strongly progressive, it shouldn't be a problem to set the overall tax level according to desired expenses and make up the funding with consumption taxes. Any service that can be done better and/or cheaper by a public utility is a good candidate for public funding, especially if metering it would be harmful. Those cases should be net savings for the whole nation, even if they appear as tax increases. We already do this in many cases, but it's easy to think of more that can be done better (e.g., banking).

    [*] Sample titles, which despite some both-sidesism suggests why an increasingly Trump-friendly WP might be disposed to get rid of her:

    • It's almost like the House GOP never care about deficits after all
    • A year after Dobbs, House GOP proposes taking food from hungry babies
    • Supposed 'moderates' like Nikki Haley would blow up the government
    • Efforts to kill Obamacare made it popular. Trump says he'll try again.
    • Trump can't find anyone to spot him $464 billion. Would you?
    • Two myths about Trump's civil fraud trial
    • The internet was supposed to make humanity smarter. It's failing
    • Those who would trade democracy for economic gain would get neither
    • Hot tip: Both parties should stop bribing voters with tax cuts [on exempting tip income]
    • Voters prefer Harris's agenda to Trump's — they just don't realize it. Take our quiz.

    [**] As a Kansan, I associate populism with the 1892-96 People's Party, a left-democratic movement that emerged in response to the ultra-conservative Grover Cleveland and the oligarchic takeover of the Republican Party. They were especially successful in Kansas, so I tend to view them as part of my political heritage (as does Thomas Frank; see especially his book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism; some reviews are still interesting, such as Aaron Lake Smith [Jacobin], and James Traub [NY Times], which also covers a Gene Sperling book that looks better than expected).

Will Hermes [07-23] Nick Drake, Long a Folk Mystery, Is (Partly) Revealed: "A 42-track collection built around two found recordings helps illuminate the creative process of the revered but elusive icon, who died in 1974."

Moira Donegan [07-26]: Columbia's capitulation to Trump begins a dark new era for US education: "The university's agreement reveals its willingness to bend to the administration's will and undermines an American myth." The agreement includes paying "a $220 million fine," and more:

The deal that resulted gives the Trump administration everything it wants. A Trump-approved monitor will now have the right to review Columbia's admissions records, with the express intent of enforcing a supreme court ban on affirmative action — in other words, ensuring that the university does not admit what the Trump administration deems to be too many non-white students. The Middle Eastern studies department is subject to monitoring, as well, after an agreement in March.

The agreement is not a broad-level, generally applicable regulatory endeavor that applies to other universities — although given the scope of the administration's ambitions at Columbia, it is hard to say whether such a regulatory regime would be legal. Instead, it is an individual, backroom deal, one that disregards the institution's first amendment rights and the congressionally mandated protections for its grants in order to proceed with a shakedown. "The agreement," writes the Columbia Law School professor David Pozen, "gives legal form to an extortion scheme." The process was something akin to a mob boss demanding protection money from a local business. "Nice research university you have here," the Trump administration seemed to say to Columbia. "Would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

That Columbia folded, and sacrificed its integrity, reputation and the freedom of its students and faculty for the federal money, speaks to both the astounding lack of foresight and principle by the university leadership as well as the Trump movement's successful foreclosure of institutions' options for resistance

Ben Schwartz [07-30] Jay Leno's Phony Case for Balanced Comedy: "The former Tonight Show host thinks a dose of bothsidesism will punch up the late-night scene."

David A Graham [07-31] The Warped Idealism of Trump's Trade Policy: "The president once promised he'd prioritize Americans' bottom line above all else. He's abandoned that pledge."

Paul Starr [07-31]: The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform: "American history offers three general strategies of repair and renewal." But has the need for reform ever been so acute? Or so fraught with obstacles based on entrenched pockets of power? He offers three "levels": The post-Watergate model; Changing the Supreme Court; Amending the Constitution.

Pankaj Mishra [08]: Speaking Reassurance to Power: Basically a long rant about the fickleness of the American intelligentsia, so eager to celebrate any note of freedom tolerable to the ruling class, and so reticent to break ranks when that same ruling class turns tyrannical and bloody.

Why 'King of the Hill' Is the Most Significant Work of Texas Culture of the Past Thirty Years. Cartoon series, ran from 1997-2009, gets a reboot, after Hank and Peggy spend their last years working in Saudi Arabia, and return to Texas retirement, finding their old world changed in oh so many ways — one being that their son, Bobby, has become a German-Japanese fusion chef. We've seen 4-5 episodes so far, and they bounce off in interesting directions. (My wife has probably seen the entire original run. I've only seen enough to get the general idea.)

Steve Kopack/Monica Alba/Laura Strickler [08-01] Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after the release of weak jobs report: "Without evidence, Trump called the data 'rigged' and implied that BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer manipulated the numbers 'for political purposes.'" Fake data is something that only Trump is entitled to, and everyone else must line up behind his lead. I rarely do this, but here's the actual Trump "truth":

Last week's Job's Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That's why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!

  • Haley Brown [08-08] They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?

  • Edward Helmore [08-02] Republicans slam Trump's firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics chief.

  • Chris Lehman [08-14] The Case Against EJ Antoni: Meet Trump's pick to destroy the BLS. Actually, he needs no introduction, as he's one of the few right-wing hacks so awful I recognized the name immediately. As Lehman puts it:

    But killing the messenger who brandishes bad economic news is only half the battle for the ambitious MAGA fateful; to really get things rolling, you need to promote a practiced bootlicker into the new policy void. And this is where central casting appears to have unearthed Antoni, who is basically the economics version of Chris Rufo—a mendacious talking head who will do virtually anything to distort the basic terms of inquiry in order to arrive at an ideologically predetermined outcome.

    Lehman digs up damning testimonials, even from conservative economists (Kyle Pomerleau at AEI: "He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he's showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them"). Lehman also notes that BLS doesn't just send out press releases. Its statistics feed directly into the economic policy machinery, affecting millions of Americans through things like the COLA (cost of living adjustment) used to calculate Social Security benefits.

Dean Baker [08-01] Bringing Back Stagflation, Lower Growth, and Higher Prices: "When Trump talks of turning the economy around, he speaks the truth — he just gets the direction of change wrong." This does us the favor of sorting out and summing up the economic reports on Trump's first six months, and looks ahead, expecting growth to continue slowing and prices to continue rising, even though those factors are supposed to cancel each other out. Further deterioration in the trade balance was not supposed to be the result of tariffs, but here you go. (Tourists spending money in the US count as imports, and Trump's gestapo tactics are warning people away.) All this was before Trump's latest move to make the numbers more "politically correct." Whether future numbers can be believed is impossible to know, but many voters had no problem disbelieving Biden's relatively decent numbers. By the way, Baker's blog is always worth reading:

Ryan Cooper [08-01] COVID Contrarians Are Wrong About Sweden: "Trying to 'let it rip' in early 2020 was a disaster."

David Daley [08-01] How the GOP Hopes to Gerrymander Its Way to a Midterms Victory: "In a series of mid-decade redistricting gambits, state legislatures are looking to rig next year's congressional balloting in advance." We're basically in a race where Republicans are trying to lock down centers of power to make it near impossible for Democrats to regain power by merely winning elections. Daley has especially focused on the gerrymandering issue — his first book on the subject was Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy (2016), and his latest is Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections — but they've done much more, all stemming from their belief that government "of, by, and for the people" is an intolerable risk to their special interests.

Jeffrey St Clair, plus some more from Counterpunch:

  • [08-01] Roaming Charges: Something's Gone Wrong Again: First half on Israel, and does as good a job of summarizing the atrocities and factoring in American complicity as anything in that section. A brief section on famines around the world reminds me not to make light of Walsh's 2nd story, but that's because he doesn't sacrifice credibility by softballing Gaza, where "the risk of famine is total." He also notes a New York Times example I don't recall from North's articles (St Clair's highlight in bold):

    While Israel allows some food into Gaza, it has drastically reduced the number of places from which food is distributed, forcing Palestinians to receive food aid from a handful of sites that are hard to access. In a crude form of crowd control, Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot and killed scores of Palestinians along routes leading to the new food distribution sites, forcing civilians to choose between the risk of gunfire and the risk of starvation.

    Isn't this not just the textbook definition of terrorism but an extraordinary, hitherto unexampled instance of it? While killing is an obvious metric of the war, pegging the number at 60,000 — about 3% of Gaza's population — risks underestimating the psychological impact. (Israel lost about 1% of its Jewish population in the 1947-49 War of Independence, which is generally remembered as a time of extraordinary trauma — by the way, about two-thirds of those were soldiers, so the civilian impact was much less, although still horrifying, I'm sure.) But death is just one of many metrics for Gaza: the most obvious being the 90% displaced, and at least that many malnourished. Figures like that are driving up the death rate — which I suspect is increasingly uncounted — but the much more widespread effect is psychological. We don't have a word for one army systematically trying to drive a whole country insane, because no one has ever done anything like that before, but that's a big part of what Israel is doing right now. And the chances that they don't fully comprehend what they're doing are almost inconceivably slim.

    As for the people who've just realized that Israel is committing genocide, St Clair cites an article by Raz Segal in Jewish Currents dated October 13, 2023: "A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it's carrying out in Gaza. Why isn't the world listening?" That, by the way, was about the same date when I realized that Israel was not going to stop with a particularly draconian revenge tantrum but fully intended to, as more than a few of their fans put it at the time, "finish the job."

    Much more, as usual, seguing to ICE, the heat dome, fire season, pollution, and much more. This item is worth noting:

    Under Jair Bolsonaro, the proportion of Brazil's population suffering from food insecurity reached 23%. Today, 19 months into the 3rd Lula administration, the UN has announced this proportion has dropped below 2.5%. Brazil has been removed from the FAO UN World Hunger Map.

    Trump, by the way, is threatening Brazil with high tariffs unless they drop the prosecution of Bolsonaro and regulation of US social media companies.

  • [08-08] Roaming Charges: Empire of the Downpresser Man: Starts with the latest batch of ICE atrocities. Cites (but doesn't link to) a piece by Max Boot: "I hate the war in Gaza. But I still love Israel." In a similar vein of bad people having second thoughts about their evil commitments, St Clair quotes Alexander Dugin: "I come to very sad conclusion: Donald Trump is totally mad. It is the shame. We loved him."

  • [08-15] Roaming Charges: From Police State to Military State: Starts with the question of crime in DC. Then ICE and/or Israel. Among the tidbits is this Newsweek headline: "Intersectional Communist Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats Can't Quit Obamaism." This is like the answer to the question of after all the garbage up front, what's the dumbest word you can possibly end this headline with? Another amusing bit: in Gallup's latest "most popular political figures" poll, the richest man in the world came in dead last, 5 points behind Netanyahu, 12 behind Trump.

  • Danbert Nobacon [08-08] Economic Terror and the Turbochuggf*ck in Texas: I'm not sure the neologisms help, like "capitrickalist free malarketry" and even "entrapocracy" (which turns out to come from a song title), but the rant about "toxic business activism" and the "Kochtopus" isn't wrong.

  • Nafis Hasan [08-08] War and the Cancer-Industrial Compex: An excerpt from a new book: Metastasis: The Rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and the Horizons of Care.

  • Thomas Knapp [08-08] Attack of the Bubble Boys: On Trump and Vance, "isolated and coddled lest contact with regular human beings harm them."

  • Michael Zoosman [08-08] Bearing the Mark of Cain for Naming the Gaza Genocide. A founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty regrets that he waited until July 2025 to use the word "genocide" re Israel, and bears witness to the level of "vitriol and recrimination" he's since received.

Adam Gabbatt [08-03] 'He has trouble completing a thought': bizarre public appearances again cast doubt on Trump's mental acuity. I expect I'll be able to find an article like this every week for the remainder of his term. These stories are easy sells because we're so used to associating age with dementia that we think to note exceptions. And of course, some are retribution for the political savaging of Joe Biden's never-all-that-astute mental acuity. Biden had been muddled and gaffe-prone for so long that it was hard to discern actual age-related deterioration from his norm. Trump benefits even more from the camouflage provided by having been crazed and inane for decades now. He himself has claimed that his incoherent rapid-fire hopping among disconnected topics is really just proof of his genius, and the world is starkly divided between those who never believe a word he says and those who celebrate every morsel of "genius" (not caring whether they believe it or not — they're fine with anything that hazes the normies, and Trump is the world champion at that). Same dynamic appeared in his first term, but pre-Biden, the focus was more on Trump's psychopathology, another fertile field for speculation and confirmation bias. While anything that discredits Trump is welcome, we should always bear in mind that the real problem with Trump is his politics, and that having won the 2024 election his administration has little further need of him, so his debilitation is unlikely to offer much comfort.

Adam Bonica [08-03] The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine: "How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns."

Rhonda Ramiro/Sarah Raymundo [08-06] How US imperialism blackmails the world with nuclear weapons, from Hiroshima to today: "Since the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, US imperialism has driven nuclear proliferation worldwide. Current nuclear flashpoints, such as Iran, show how the US continues to use nuclear blackmail to reinforce its dominance." There are two theories behind nuclear weapons: deterrence and blackmail. Neither involves using them, unless one tragically miscalculates and has to do so for credibility. But sane people see no possible value in nuclear war, or in war for almost any other purpose, so they have no desire to test deterrence. Roughly speaking, from 1953 through 1993, the US accepted the deterrence theory, and sought a "detente" with the Soviet Union, rather than pushing its luck with blackmail stratagems (like Nixon's "madman theory"). Since 1993, the US has become more aggressive, but is still cautious when faced with nuclear-armed "foes" like Russia and China (or even North Korea), while growing very aggressive with its conventional weapons. Israel conceived their nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against larger Arab enemies, but that threat evaporated with the 1979 treaty with Egypt, and even more so with the 1991 defeat of Iraq. Since then, their nuclear threat has allowed them to bomb Syria and Lebanon with impunity, as neither nation has any ability to retaliate against Israel. Since the 1990s, Israel has recognized that Iran is capable of producing a nuclear weapons, which could undermine Israel's blackmail threat. So Israel mounted a propaganda campaign to play up the Iranian threat, mostly to hold the US alliance firm (Americans have still not moved beyond the 1979-80 hostage crisis), However, as Israel has turned genocidal, they've found that their credibility depends on showing that they can and will strike Iran, and that they can and will use US forces to reinforce theirs. If Iran's leaders actually believed in the logic of deterrence and/or blackmail, they will proceed directly to developing and deploying their own weapons. There is no evidence yet that this is happening, but either way we should understand that the fault lies in the original adoption by the US and Israel of the nuclear arms race.

More nukes (turns out that FDR jumped the gun: the day that has really stood out "in infamy" is August 6):

  • Tony Karon [08-07]: A Hiroshima-Gaza connection? "Curiously enough, it's Israel's leader that claims the US nuclear massacre of 200,000 mostly civilians in Japan in 1945 legitimizes the genocide for which he's wanted at The Hague."

  • Peter Dodge [08-08]: 80 Years at the Brink, Time to Change the Narrative.

  • Eric Ross [10-12]: Hiroshima Remains an Open Wound in Our Imperiled World.

    Not everyone in the Allied nations shared in the prevailing atmosphere of apathy or even jubilation over those nuclear bombings. Before the second bomb struck Nagasaki, French philosopher Albert Camus expressed his horror that even in a war defined by unprecedented, industrialized slaughter, Hiroshima stood apart. The destruction of that city, he observed, marked the moment when "mechanistic civilization has come to its final stage of savagery." Soon after, American cultural critic Dwight Macdonald condemned the bombings in Politics, arguing that they placed Americans "on the same moral plane" as the Nazis, rendering the American people as complicit in the crimes of their government as the German people had been in theirs.

    American scholar Lewis Mumford likewise regarded that moment as a profound moral collapse. It marked, he argued in 1959, the point at which the U.S. decided to commit the better part of its national energies to preparation for wholesale human extermination. With the advent of the bomb, Americans accepted their role as "moral monsters," legitimizing technological slaughter as a permissible instrument of state power. "In principle," he wrote, "the extermination camps where the Nazis incinerated over six million helpless Jews were no different from the urban crematoriums our air force improvised in its attacks by napalm bombs on Tokyo," laying the groundwork for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . . .

    In a 1986 keynote address before the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem, "The Final Solution to the Human Problem," [Carl] Sagan argued that Hitler "haunts our century . . . [as] he has shattered our confidence that civilized societies can impose limits on human destructiveness." In their mutually reinforcing preparations to annihilate one another, erase the past, and foreclose the possibility of future generations, he concluded, "the superpowers have dutifully embraced this legacy . . . Adolf Hitler lives on."

    This reminds me of the argument that Hitler succeeded in his campaign to destroy Judaism, not so much by killing so many Jews as in turning the survivors into Nazis.

James K Galbraith [08-07] The Trump Economy? Some Reagan Parallels: "In contrast with the now sober-seeming Reaganites, Trump has taken credit for the economy from day one." Well, not every day, especially with the recent flurry of "fake news."

Melvin Goodman [08-08] Trump's Policies Will Make China Great Again: Well, "great" is greatly overrated, but it's so much a part of Trump's mentality it's tempting to taunt him with for failing on his own terms. In economic terms, China doesn't need America any more. One questions whether they ever did: whether it was just western conceit to see the rest of the world as developing in our footsteps, repeating our same mistakes. For instance, their recent shift from coal to solar has turned them from followers to leaders. Trump, on the other hand, is trying to smash us into reverse.

David D Kirkpatrick [08-11] The Number: "How much is Trump pocketing off the Presidency?" Plenty of detail here, but the bottom line is $3.4 billion.

Bhaskar Sunkara [08-11] Democrats Keep Misreading the Working Class: "Many in the party see workers as drifting rightward. But new data show they're more progressive than ever on economic issues — if Democrats are willing to meet them there." Related:

  • David Kusnet [07-17] How the Left Lost the Working Class — and How to Win Them Back: "To avoid becoming the foil for Right Populism, Left Populists need to respect working-class values of work, family, community, patriotism, and the aspiration for stability and security." I think he's confusing the Left with Democrats here. If you look at the polling for Bernie Sanders, who actually speaks "working class" (as opposed to Elizabeth Warren, who prefers "middle class" although she has a similar meaning and equivalent policies — what's missing is the sense that she's one of us), the Left polls pretty well, as do nearly every Left economic issues. Sure, the "cultural" stuff is more mixed, but Sanders' very liberal views on those matters isn't much of a deal breaker. Center Democrats lost the working class with their trickle-down rationalizations for their pandering to neoliberal businesses (mostly tech and finance) that turn out to be as predatory as the old robber barons. Republicans won a few votes with lies, demagoguery, and salt-of-the-earth flattery, but to call such rhetoric — and that's literally all it is — Populist just betrays your own insecurity with working class folk. [PS: I just wrote that reacting to the headline. Turns out this is a review of Joan C Williams: Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. I liked her previous book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America [2017], so I figure she's mostly on solid ground, and that her use of "Left" instead of "Democrats" targets her prospective readers. Kusnet, by the way, is a former Clinton speechwriter, but from 1992-94, when he was still looking for working class votes, and not just foundation donors.]

Ian Bremmer [08-11] Can Democracy Survive AI? Two better questions are: Can democracy survive capitalism? And can capitalism survive AI? I'm not saying that AI is some kind of value-neutral technology that could equally be put to good or evil purposes. It potentially changes a lot of things. But it is a power tool, and the politico-economic system decides who gets power and how they can use it, and right now all this power is in the hands of a few megalomaniacal capitalists. Regulation may take some of the edge off, and allow for some breathing room, but unless it changes who owns AI and what they can do with it, the threats not only remain but multiply. And note that my first question predates AI. Capitalists, operating under their own logic, have already destroyed much of what passes for democracy in the US. AI is only going to make this worse, at least in the short term. As for the long term, that's harder to speculate on. As Marx was not even the first to realize, capitalism is inherently unstable. AI could make it even more unstable — and if it's any kind of intelligence at all, it probably will.

Sheila Jordan, jazz singer extraordinaire, died on August 11, age 96. [PS: See Notes on Everyday Life for my piece on her.] I read about her failing health a few weeks ago — like so many Americans, she was struggling with the costs of home hospice care, as if agreeing to die wasn't sacrifice enough — but I hadn't noticed that she released an evidently new album this January. [Portrait Now, with Roni Ben-Hur (guitar) and Harvie S (bass), recorded in 2023, and released in time for her last tour date, in Chicago.] Here are some pieces, starting off with obits, plus a few older pieces:

Nicholas Liu [08-13] The Case Against Business Schools: I don't doubt that they teach a few useful practical skills, and sure, you can call them "finishing schools for capitalism's managerial aristocracy," but their real reason for being is to counteract any ethical impulses their students may have, to make them more ruthless and efficient economic predators. Any reference to "social responsibility" is just camouflage, following the Churchill-Rumsfeld quote that "the truth is so precious it must be surrounded by an armada of lies." This refers to a book by Martin Parker: Shut Down the Business School: What's Wrong With Management Education (2018).

Aaron Regunberg [08-13] Establishment Democrats Are Going to Torpedo the 2026 Midterms: "Having failed to learn the key lesson from last year's defeat, party leaders are promoting moderate candidates to run against populist progressives in next year's elections." Steve M called this "the most disheartening thing I read yesterday."

Ian Millhiser [08-14]: Justice Kavanaugh just revealed an unfortunate truth about the Supreme Court: "The Court has a special set of rules for Trump." A couple more pieces by Millhiser, plus some related pieces:

Zach Beauchamp [08-14] The "weirdos" shaping Trump's second term: "A liberal writer explains her journey through intellectual MAGAland." The writer in question is Laura K Field, who has a new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, which is about how a few "intellectuals" are using Trump to advance their own peculiar thinking -- the book page mentions Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance, but the interview focuses more on Michael Anton, and mentions Adrian Vermeule and Sohrab Ahmari. First, can we stop with calling them "weirdos"? That doesn't clarify anything, and may make them seem cuter than they merit. Second, while MAGA is useful to these "thinkers," MAGA doesn't need them, because whatever MAGA is, they aren't ideologically driven. At most, they pick up ideas to support gut instincts, with Trump the most obvious case of all. So understanding their "thinking" doesn't help us much, either with their political appeal or with their consequences.

Eric Foner [08-14] The Education of a Historian: "Freedom is neither a fixed idea, nor the story of progress toward a predetermined goal." One of America's preeminent historians reminisces, starting with his star-studded leftist family. Excerpt from his new book, Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays.

Adam Shatz [08-16] 'Like a Hymn': "The jazz pianist Amina Claudine Myers has spent her career weaving jazz, blues, gospel, and classical music into a distinctively personal idiom."

Tweets:

  • Daniel Gilmore [08-01]:

    Increasingly firm in my belief that if Trump had gotten into office and basically just fucked off—golfed, took some bribes, traveled a bunch—he'd be at like 50-55% approvals. Every single day of the ~6.5 months he's been back in power thus far has been an exercise in bleeding himself out.

    To which jamelle added:

    oh absolutely. the issue is that trump is too vindictive to have just let sleeping dogs lie. he wanted to get revenge on everyone that aggrieved him in his first term. i am 100% certain, in fact, that the project 2025 stuff was sold to him as a tool for getting that revenge.

  • Joshua Ehrlich [08-17]: Response to "what's your take on the moment we're living through in 50 words or less":

    we are living in a time of profound suffering and profound opportunity. restoring the post-war status quo is not a solution, and the real roadblock to fixing our country is that nearly all of the will to be innovative is on the side of the fascists.

    I doubt I'd call it "innovation," but they are willing to break convention with little or no concern for consequences, which makes them appear to be dynamic -- something people who don't know any better are easily impressed by.

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