Monday, November 24, 2025

Loose Tabs

Note that I previously weighed in on the elections, the shutdown, Dick Cheney, Jack DeJohnette, and more in my [11-12] Notes on Everyday Life.

Also that I've completely lost control of the collection process here. This column has never been more than a collection of notes, and its publication has tended to be driven less by a sense that now I have something complete to say than by the realization that my notes are fading into the deeper recesses of history, losing relevance day by day, and I should kick them out before they lose all purpose and meaning. Still, while much is missing, many of the things I do latch onto elicit serious thoughts, which I hope will be useful, and not too repetitive. Editing in these quarters is very haphazard. I apologize for that, but options are few when you're already running late. I do hope to do a better job of editing my Substack newsletter. I may even return there with a reconsideration of what I'm posting here, as I did on Sept. 24 with my More Thoughts on Loose Tabs.

Given how much other work I have to do today, tomorrow, and the rest of the week, I might as well post this today (Monday, Nov. 24). It's already pushed Music Week off until Tuesday, at the earliest. I may return with change marks here, or may just move on to the draft file — probably depends on the story. Meanwhile, I'm restarting my day with the Deluxe Edition of Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come, which I reviewed here.

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 ? days ago, on October 21.

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

Topical Stories

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

November Elections: November 4 was the first significant chance voters had to re-evaluate the choices they made a year ago. Democrats won pretty much everywhere, despite little evidence that voters are very pleased with their current Democratic leadership. By far the most publicized election was the mayoral race in New York City, so I'll separate that out in a following section.

And more specifically, Zohran Mamdani:

  • Zohran Mamdani [09-08]: New York City is not for sale.

  • Astead W Herndon [10-14]: Inside the improbable, audacious and (so far) unstoppable rise of Zohran Mamdani. Pull quote from Mamdani: "Being right in and of itself is meaningless. We have to win. And we have to deliver." Also quotes Mark Levine, saying Mamdani "is the first nominee in memory that has made a concerted effort to reach out to people who were against him in the primary."

  • Nathan J Robinson [11-05]: Follow Mamdani's example: "This is how you run. This is how you win. This is the politics we need right now. Democratic socialist candidates can inspire people again, and fight the right effectively."

  • Nia Prater [11-06]: ICE wants NYPD cops who are mad about Mamdani: "The agency put out a new recruitment ad that tries to promote and capitalize on postelection angst within the NYPD."

  • Thomas B Edsall [11-11]: Steve Bannon thinks Zohran Mamdani is a genius. It's not a feint. Much here about the mobilization of the youth vote, especially how Mamdani's mobilization of the youth vote dramatically expanded the electorate, which made it possible to overcome the enormous advantages Cuomo had in money and regular party support. As for Bannon, the key quote is: "Modern politics now is about engaging low-propensity voters, and they clearly turned them out tonight, and this is kind of the Trump model. This is very serious."

  • Paul Krugman [11-17]: The plutocrats who cried "commie": "About that 'fleeing New York claim." This cites a pre-election article claiming to have a poll showing that "Nearly a million New Yorkers ready to flee NYC if Mamdani becomes mayor — possibly igniting the largest exodus in history." Post-election: not really.

  • Brett Wilkins [11-21]: After threats throughout NYC campaign, Trump lauds Mamdani at White House: "'I feel very confident that he can do a very good job," Trump said of Mamdani after their White House meeting. 'I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually.'" The pictures of an uncharacteristically beaming Trump have circulated widely, at least in my circles. I'm not particularly interested in unpacking their meaning, but should note this odd twist.

  • Astead Herndon/Cameron Peters [11-22]: How Zohran Mamdani won over Donald Trump — for now.

Federal government shutdown:

  • Cameron Peters [10-17] Why is this government shutdown so weird? "Four questions about the ongoing deadlock, answered by an expert." Interview with Matt Glassman ("a senior fellow at Georgetown" and "author of the Five Points newsletter"). I don't know him, but a glance at his latest Linkin' and Thinkin' post is more than a little interesting. I'm getting less from his shutdown analysis here. "Weird" just isn't much of an analytical tool.

  • Dean Baker [10-21]: Roadmap to the shutdown: This is a pretty good summary of the issues.

  • Michael Tomasky [11-10]: Once again, Senate Democrats show they don't get who they represent: "The party was riding high on election wins, a fractured GOP, and a flailing Trump. And then the Senate Surrender Caucus handed Republicans a win." The "Surrender Caucus" names: Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, Angus King, Jacky Rosen, Jeanne Shaheen.

  • Andrew Prokop [11-10]: Democrats were never going to win the shutdown fight. Note that Prokop was advising against shutdown from the beginning. One thing he doesn't appreciate is that in shutting down the government, Democrats acted like they cared enough about Trump's abuses to fight against him. There aren't many ways one can do that.

  • Ed Kilgore [11-10]: Why Democrats couldn't hold out any longer on the government shutdown: "It only took eight Senate Democrats to decide the pain outweighed the gain, and now the party must decide whether to fall into civil war or move on."

  • Joan Walsh [11-10]: The bill to end the shutdown is full of giveaways to Republicans.

  • Corey Robin [11-12]: Democrats caved in the shutdown because of the filibuster. "For Democrats, the main issue in the shutdown wasn't electoral backlash — it was the filibuster. Leadership feared its removal, viewing it as a safeguard to keep the party's rising left wing in check." This doesn't make a lot of sense. The filibuster allows a large but determined minority to obstruct bills that have thin majority support. The left may be rising, but they are nowhere near the range where the filibuster works. I'm not aware of anyone on the left who thinks the filibuster is a good idea. For now, the filibuster does allow Democrats to hold up bills like the continuing resolution, but Republicans could at any point have ditched the rule (as they've already done for presidential appointments). Since the filibuster more often helps Republicans than Democrats, there's an argument that it would be good for forcing the Republicans to get rid of it. But the "surrender caucus" kept that from happening, perhaps because they wanted to preserve the filibuster. But if so, it wasn't from fear of the left. It's because they wanted to preserve what little leverage they have from being Democrats willing to break ranks. Even though Schumer didn't vote to surrender, I can see him thinking preservation of the filibuster helps his leverage. Robin quotes a piece arguing that some Senate Republicans want to preserve the filibuster as an excuse "to avoid doing things they don't see as sound policy or politics without infuriating Trump." If so, it's them, as opposed to the Democrats they needed to cave in, who are breathing a sigh of relief at the filibuster's survival.

Gambling and sports: My interest in sports has declined steadily since the 1994 baseball lockout broke my daily habit of box score analysis, although over time the political metaphors and the cultural spectacle have also taken a considerable toll. My dislike of gambling goes back even further, and not just to my mother (who loved playing cards, but never for money). The combination is toxic, but that doesn't begin to convey the many levels of disgust I feel. So what, now we have a scandal? That's even more predictable than providing free guns and ammo to psychopaths.

Dick Cheney: Dick Cheney died, at 83. I'm showing my age here, but for sheer political evil, no one will ever replace Richard Nixon in my mind. I'm not alone in that view. I've loathed Bob Dole ever since his execrable 1972 campaign — not that I didn't dislike his 1966 campaign, or his tenure in the House — but I had to concede that he had some wit, especially for his quip on seeing a "presidents club" picture of Carter, Ford, and Nixon: "see no evil, hear no evil, and evil." But if you're 20-30 years younger than me, Dick Cheney could have left you with the same impression. I'll spare you the details, which like Nixon were foretold decades before his ascent to real power, other than to remind you that the great blogger Billmon regularly referred to the Bush years as "the Cheney administration." If you're 20 years younger still, you probably have Trump in that slot — he's the only one who exercises power on that level, although the cunning behind it is harder to credit as sheer evil (but maybe that's just proof of the great dumbing down).

Epsteinmania, again: Back in the news, by popular demand I guess, or at least by Congressional demand.

Major Threads

Israel:

  • Spencer Ackerman [10-15]: Sharm El-Sheikh shows that the US has learned nothing from Gaza: "Palestinians are expected to accept the same deal that led to October 7: permanent subjugation under the guise of 'prosperity.'" Tell me more about this "prosperity" stuff. Even if Trump's buddies make a killing on some real estate/finance transactions doesn't mean that anyone in Gaza will get a fair share of the gains — especially if they don't have the political power to support their claims.

  • Michael Arria [10-17]: As support for Israel drops, the mainstream media is becoming even more Zionist: "Support for Israel is plummeting among the US public, but Zionism dominates mainstream media more than ever. Several recent high-profile examples show the staggering disconnect between the media establishment and its viewers."

  • Avrum Burg: Former speaker of the Knesset, still trying to keep something he believes in:

    • [10-20]: More ethics less high-tech: I saw this in Mazin Qumsiyeh's newsletter as his "quote of the day," but the link was mangled:

      In global interviews and conversations, one question keeps returning: how could the Jews, a people who once saw themselves as a moral messenger for all humanity, commit such horrific crimes in Gaza? It is a question that cuts to the rawest nerves of our identity, our faith in our righteousness, and our understanding of who we are. . . .

      How cruel the irony. The so-called start up nation, proud to call itself the only democracy in the Middle East, has created the most sophisticated and repressive death industry in the region, exporting its poisonous fruits to any authoritarian buyer for profit. The cult of security has turned high tech into an endless military service. Civilian companies develop for the defense establishment new tools of killing, occupation, and violation of human rights, while the army feeds the civilian market with skilled manpower and profitable technology. Thus an entire economy has been built on domination, oppression, smart sensors, and a dead conscience. . . .

      The Judaism I grew up with was a moral system, not a cult of power. A way of life that sanctified life, not death. It placed the human being, not the land, at its center. It did not seek to rule the world but to repair it. . . .

      Israel after the crimes of Gaza does not need more advanced tanks or sophisticated algorithms. It needs an education system that teaches people to think and to feel. . . . For in the end, all the technology in the world, every smart system, every precise weapon, is worthless when placed in the hands of a hardened heart. Like ours have been in these terrible years.

    • [10-12]: The showman, the reconciler and the cynic — who this trinity must succeed: "Netanyahu will kick and scream, but Trump and Blair can drag Israel into a brighter future for the Middle East." Of course, he's much too generous to all three, but at least he realizes that there is no "brighter future" with Netanyahu still anywhere near power.

  • Lydia Polgreen [10-23]: What happened in Gaza might be even worse than we think. I think that's very likely, and in this I'm concerned not just in whether the counted deaths reflect reality but in the overwhelming psychological toll this war has taken, and not just on Palestinians, but on others not comparable but still significant. I think most people find what has happened to be beyond imagination, even ones close to the conflict but especially those of us who are well buffered from the atrocities, and even more so those trapped in the Israeli propaganda bubble.

  • Qassam Muaddi [10-24]: Trump's push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel. Starts with a Vance quote about Israel not being a "vassal state," but the bigger revelation is that Trump seems to be breaking free of the notion that the US is a vassal state of Israel. Much of Netanyahu's credibility within Israel is based on the belief that he possesses magical power to manipulate American politicians, and that belief starts to fade when he slips. The subordination of American interests to Israeli whims really took hold under Clinton, and reached its apogee with Biden, but mostly depended on American indifference to consequences, which genocide is making it harder to sustain. And as Netanyahu slips, Israel is not lacking for others who would like to take his place, whispering sweet nothings into the ears of Americans while keeping a steady course.

  • Robert Gottlieb [10-25]: From Apartheid to Democracy - a 'blueprint' for a different future in Israel-Palestine: A review of a book by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man and Sarah Leah Wilson, From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine, which "describes in granular detail the conditions for dismantling apartheid in Israel-Palestine." While I'm happy to see people inside Israel thinking along these lines, I have to ask what world they think they are living in? Democracy has always been a struggle between interest groups to establish a mutually satisfactory division of power. It has sometimes expanded to incorporate previously excluded groups, but mostly because an established insider group thought that expansion might give them more leverage, but it's never been done simply because it seemed like a good idea. Yet that seems to be the pitch here:

    Thus, the Blueprint places the onus on the State of Israel — as the state exercising effective control over all peoples in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza — to meet its international legal obligations by ending its crimes and respecting the rights of all people under its rule. Only once Palestinians have political, civic, and human rights equal to Israeli Jews living in the Territory will Palestinians and Israelis be able to democratically determine what political structures and outcomes best server their collective, national, political, ethnic, and religious interests. The Blueprint is not a plan for achieving national self-determination; it is a plan to create the conditions under which achieving self-determination and deciding political issues of governance are possible.

  • James P Rubin [10-27]: The only thing that can keep the peace in Gaza: Author is credited as "a senior adviser to two secretaries of state, Anthony Blinken and Madeleine Albright," which suggests that the only thing he's qualified to do is to write New York Times op-eds. He proves his cluelessness here by focusing on the "international force for Gaza," which he sees as necessary to fill "the growing security vacuum in Gaza." At every step on the way, he puts Israel's phony security complaints ahead of aiding Palestinians. Israel has always been a source of disruption in Gaza, never of stability. Their removal is itself a step toward order, which can be augmented by an ample and unfettered aid program. Granted that the supply lines need a degree of security to prevent looting, but the better they work, the less trouble they'll elicit. Rubin's claim to fame here seems to be that he's spent a lot of time talking to Tony Blair about this. Blair is pretty high up on the list of people no honest Palestinian can trust in. Rubin's earned a spot on that list as well.

  • Jamal Kanj [10-27]: How Israel-First Jewish Americans plan to re-monopolize the narratives on Palestine.

  • Vivian Yee [10-27]: US assessment of Israeli shooting of journalist divided American officials: "A US colonel has gone public with his concern that official findings about the 2022 killing of a Palestinian American reporter were soft-pedaled to appease Israel." The journalist, you may recall, was Shireen Abu Akleh. The Biden administration "found no reason to believe this was intentional," and attributed it to "tragic circumstances."

  • Abdaljawad Omar [10-27]: Israel seeks redemption in the Gaza ruins: "Throughout the Gaza war, Israel has debated what to call it. The military says 'October 7 War,' while Netanyahu wants 'War of Redemption.' What's clear is that Israel believes it can only resolve its ongoing cycle of crisis through genocidal violence." Notes that name chosen for the military operation was originally "Swords of Iron" (derived from "Iron Wall": "the fantasy of unbreakable security through permanent domination"), but that's hard to distinguish from every other exercise in collective punishment inflicted on Gaza since 2006. The military preference "fixes the war to a date of trauma, as if to anchor the nation's moral position in the moment of its own suffering," which is to say that they see one day's violent outburst as justifying everything that came after, the details hardly worth mentioning. But that at least treats the war as a collective national experience. Netanyahu's "War of Redemption" is his way of saying that the war (by which we mean genocide) simply proves that he and his political faction were right all along. This makes it a war to dominate Israel as much as it is a war to destroy Palestine.

  • Adrienne Lynett/Mira Nablusi [10-26]: From the margins to the mainstream: how the Gaza genocide transformed US public opinion: "Two years into the Gaza genocide, public opinion on Israel, Palestine, and US policy has undergone a profound shift. A close examination of poll data shows Palestine is no longer a niche issue but one with real electoral consequences." Which might matter in a real democracy, but in a nation where politics is controlled by the donor class, Israel still exercises inordinate influence. Still, as long as Israel remains a niche issue — something a few people feel strongly about, but which most people can ignore — I doubt that shifting opinion polls will have much effect. But it's impossible to be a credible leftist without taking a stand against genocide and apartheid. And Democrats need the left more than ever, because they need to provide a credible, committed, trustworthy opposition to the Trump right.

  • Haaretz [11-14]: Israel's violent Jewish settlers are neither marginal nor a handful.

  • Mattea Kramer [11-20]: Trump's most original idea ever: An unexpected con to end free speech: Trump has taken the classic fascist focus on suppressing free speech and dressed it up as a noble campaign to protect Jews from antisemitism — their code word for any criticism of Israel, even if it's plain as day that Israel is committing not just atrocities but genocide. But I'm not sure the irony works here, because I'm not sure it's ironical. There isn't that much daylight between Israeli and American fascism, especially when it comes to suppressing truths and ridiculing justice.

Russia/Ukraine: Nothing much here until Trump, or wheover speaks for him in such matters, issued his "28-point plan" to end the war. Reaction predictably, much like his 20-point Gaza plan, splits between those who realize that Trump's support is necessary to end the war, even if it is ill-considered, and those willing to suffer more war for the sake of some principles, no matter how impractical. Examples of both follow below, and the ones I list are far from exhaustive. Perhaps at some point I'll find time to look at the "plan" and tell you what I think should happen, as I did with Gaza here and here. (By the way, the second piece was partly written with Ukraine in mind, if not as an explicit subject.)

Trump's War and Peace: We might as well admit that Trump's foreign policy focus has shifted from trade and isolation to war and terror.

Trump Regime: Practically every day I run across disturbing, often shocking stories of various misdeeds proposed and quite often implemented by the Trump Administration -- which in its bare embrace of executive authority we might start referring to as the Regime. Collecting them together declutters everything else, and emphasizes the pattern of intense and possibly insane politicization of everything. Pieces on the administration.

  • Daniel Larison

  • Jonathan V Last [11-03]: Donald Trump is a Commie: I scraped this quote off a tweet image, before trying to figure out its source (this appears to be it):

    On Friday I wrote about the Trump administration's latest foray into national socialism:

    • Trump wants to build nuclear power plants.
    • He has chosen Westinghouse to build them.
    • He will pay Westinghouse $80 billion for the projects.
    • In return he has compelled Westinghouse to pay him the government 20 percent of any "cash distributions."
    • Between now and the end of January 2029, the government can compel Westinghouse to go public via an IPO, at which point the government will be awarded 20 percent ownership of the company, likely making it the single largest shareholder.

    This is literally seizing the means of production. But to, you know, make America great again. Or something.

    Other of Trump's national socialist policies include:

    • Refusing to enforce a 2024 law requiring the sale of TikTok until he was able to compel that business be sold at an extortionately discounted price to his political allies.
    • Creating a Golden Share of U.S. Steel for his government.
    • Requiring Nvidia and AMD to pay the government 15 percent of all revenues from chip sales to China.
    • Acquiring a 10 percent ownership stake in chipmaker Intel.
    • Acquiring a 15 percent stake in rare earth producers MP Materials, a 10 percent stake in Lithium Americas Corp., and a 10 percent stake in Trilogy Metals Inc.
    • Creating a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile."
    • Taking steps to create a sovereign wealth fund to be used as a vehicle for government investment.
    • He has demanded that Microsoft fire an executive he does not like and demanded that private law firms commit to doing pro bono work on behalf of clients he chooses for them.

    At first this read like a right-wing parody rant against socialism, but the adjective "national" deflects a bit. Still, some of these steps aren't totally bad — e.g., I can see some value in "a sovereign wealth fund to be used as a vehicle for government investment," but I wouldn't trust Trump (or Clinton or Obama) to run it.

Donald Trump (Himself): As for Il Duce, we need a separate bin for stories on his personal peccadillos -- which often seem like mere diversions, although as with true madness, it can still be difficult sorting serious incidents from more fanciful ones.

Democrats:

  • New York Times Editorial Board [10-20]: The partisans are wrong: moving to the center is the way to win: Their main evidence is that 13 Democrats who won in districts Trump won are less left than average Democrats, and 3 Republicans who won in districts Harris won are less right than average Republicans. Duh. For a response:

    • Nathan J Robinson [11-04]: The case for centrism does not hold up: "The New York Times editorial board is wrong. Principled politics on the Bernie Sanders model is still the path forward." I basically agree, but I rather doubt that the issues are well enough understood or for that matter can even be adequately explained to make much difference. The bigger question isn't what you stand for, but whether you stand for anything. Why vote for someone you can't trust? Sure, someone else may be even more untrustworthy, and many of us take that into consideration, but you can never be sure, and the less you know the more confusing it gets. If the only thing that mattered was the left-right axis, the centrists should have an advantage, because they promise to expand on their left or right base. But centrists are deemed untrustworthy, partly because they try to straddle both sides, and because the easy out for them is corruption. Sanders stands for something, and you can trust him not to waver. But also if all politicians were honest, the left would have a big advantage, because their policies design to help more people. Conversely, when centrists flirt with and then abandon leftist policies, it hurts them more, because it undermines basic trust. Clinton and Obama may have won by straddling the middle, but as soon as they got elected, they joined the establishment and betrayed their trust. Right-wingers are more likely to get away with discarding their platforms, because people expect less from them, so have fewer hopes to dash.

  • Timothy Shenk [09-29]: Democrats are in crisis. Eat-the-rich populism is the only answer. I've read the author's Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy, which made some interesting choices in the search for pivot points in American politics, but not his more recent Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, which tries to anticipate history by focusing on similar figures whose legacies are as yet unclear: Stanley Greenberg and Doug Schoen. Here he tries to draw a line between Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Zohran Mamdani in New York. "Eat-the-rich" is a gaudy image I'm not partial to, but they do make juicy targets, especially when you see how they behave when they think they have uncheckable power.

  • Chris Hedges [11-03]: Trump's greatest ally is the Democratic Party: Easy to understand this frustration with the Democratic Party, especially its "leadership," but harder to find a solution. I'm especially skeptical that Hedges' preference for "mass mobilization and strikes" will do the trick.

    If the Democratic Party was fighting to defend universal health care during the government shutdown, rather than the half measure of preventing premiums from rising for ObamaCare, millions would take to the streets.

    The Democratic Party throws scraps to the serfs. It congratulates itself for allowing unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on for-profit health care policies. It passes a jobs bill that gives tax credits to corporations as a response to an unemployment rate that — if one includes all those who are stuck in part-time or lower skilled jobs but are capable and want to do more — is arguably, closer to 20 percent. It forces taxpayers, one in eight of whom depend on food stamps to eat, to fork over trillions to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and endless war, including the genocide in Gaza.

    The defenestration of the liberal class reduced it to courtiers mouthing empty platitudes. The safety valve shut down. The assault on the working class and working poor accelerated. So too did very legitimate rage.

    This rage gave us Trump.

    I'm more inclined to argue that what gave us Trump wasn't rage but confusion. Democrats deserve more than a little blame for that — they haven't been adequately clear on what they believe in (perhaps, sure, because they don't believe in much) nor have they done a good job of articulating how their programs would benefit most people (perhaps because they won't, or perhaps because they're preoccupied with talking to donors at the expense of voters). Still, this is mostly the work of what Kurt Andersen called Evil Geniuses. Give them credit, not least of all for making Hedges' reasoned complaint sound like enraged lunacy.

Republicans: A late addition, back by popular demand, because it isn't just Trump, we also have to deal with the moral swamp he crawled out of:

  • Zack Beauchamp

    • [10-17]: Inside the war tearing the Heritage Foundation and the American right apart: "A Heritage insider alleging 'openly misogynistic and racist' conduct shines a light on the right's inner workings." Much ado about Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Kevin Roberts.

    • [10-27]: The GOP's antisemitism crisis: "Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and the looming Republican civil war over Jews." Author puts a lot more effort into untangling this than the subject is worth. The natural home for anti-semitism (prejudice against Jews in one's own country) is on the right, because it depends on a combination of malice and ignorance, and that's where the right thrives. The left is, by its very nature supportive of equality and tolerant of diversity, so it is opposed to prejudice against anyone. The Israel lobby has tried to play both sides of this street. With liberals, they stress the common bond of American and Israeli Jews, each with its own history of oppression, as well as their common legacy of the Holocaust. With the right, they emphasize their illiberalism, their common beliefs in ethnocracy and the use of force to keep the lesser races in place. With Christians, they can stress their joint interest in Jewish repossession of the Holy Land (albeit for different purposes). And with even the rawest anti-semites, they welcome the expulsion of Jews from the Diaspora. However, the more Israel breaks bad, the easier it is for the right to sell anti-semitic tropes not just to white nationalists but to Blacks and Latinos who recognize racism when it becomes as obvious as it is in Israel.

  • Merrill Goozner [11-06]: Republicans have stopped pretending to care about health care: "The long-term medical cost crisis can't be solved without universal coverage. For the first time in US history, the GOP doesn't even have a concept of a plan."

  • Hady Mawajdeh/Noel King [11-15]: The insidious strategy behind Nick Fuentes's shocking rise: "How a neo-Nazi infiltrated so deep into the Republican Party."

  • Christian Paz [11-22]: What Marjorie Taylor Greene's feud with Trump is really about: "MTG isn't turning against MAGA. She's trying to save it." Since this piece appeared:

Economy and technology (especially AI): I used to have a section on the economy, which mostly surveyed political economics. Lately, I run across pieces on AI pretty often, both in terms of what the technology means and is likely to do and in terms of its outsized role in the speculative economy. I suspect that if not now then soon we will recognize that we are in a bubble driven by AI speculation, which is somewhat masking a small recession driven largely by Trump's shutdown, tariffs, and inflation. In such a scenario, there are many ways to lose.

  • Whitney Curry Wimbish/Naomi Bethune [10-02]: Microsoft is abandoning Windows 10. Hackers are celebrating. "Advocacy groups warn this will leave up to 400 million computers vulnerable to hacks or in the dump." Also: "But about 42 percent of Windows computers worldwide are still using Windows 10." My counter here is that any orphaned technology should become public domain. In particular, any orphaned software should become open source. Moreover, there needs to be minimum standards for support, beyond which it can be declared as orphaned, so we don't just wind up with a lot of tech controlled by sham caretakers. I could see payouts as a way of expediting the transfer of technology to the public domain, so companies have some incentive to let go of things they don't really want anyway. I'd be willing to consider a staged approach, where instead of going into the public domain, the tech is initially transferred to non-profit customer/user groups, who can take over the support function, and possibly decide later to give it to the public. Of course, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by getting rid of patents and other forms of censorship in the first place.

  • Zephyr Teachout [10-15]: So long as oligarchs control the public square, there will be corruption: "It's time to break up Big Media, Big Tech, and the finance system that binds them together."

  • Eric Levitz [11-04]: The most likely AI apocalypse: "How artificial intelligence could be leading most humans into an inescapable trap." He wobbles a lot between things that could be good and things that could be bad, but the latter don't quite rise to the level of apocalypse, unless he really expects the people who own the AI to use it to target and wipe out the no-longer-needed workers. I don't quite see how that works. His point that the way to avoid this "apocalypse" is to build socio-economic support institutions to spread out benefits and reduce risks. He sees AI as a resource bounty, like discovering oil and minerals, and gives Norway as an example of one country that handled its newfound wealth relatively well, as opposed to Congo, which hasn't.

  • Dean Baker: I've cited several of his pieces elsewhere (on shutdown, health care expense), but much more is worth citing, and he is an economist:

    • [11-05]: New York Times pushes blatant lies about neoliberalism. Always, you may be thinking, but specifically an op-ed by Sven Beckert [11-04]: The old order is dead. Do not resuscitate. Which argues that "capitalism is a series of regime changes," and notes that "If Davos was the symbolic pilgrimage site of the neoliberal era, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference may be emerging as the spiritual center of a new order." So it sounds like he's come to bury the old neoliberalism, but his new regime smells suspiciously like the old regime, except run by people whose only distinguishing characteristics are meaner and dumber.

  • Dani Rodrik [11-10]: What even is a 'good' job? Good question.

Miscellaneous Pieces

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

Daron Acemoglu [01-26]: A renewed liberalism can meet the populist challenge: Liberalism is an honorable political philosophy, which for most of its history has helped not just to increase individual freedom but to more broadly distribute wealth and respect. (Unlike conservatism, which has rarely been anything but an excuse for the rich and powerful lording it over others.) However, something is amiss if this is the best you can do:

At its core, liberalism includes a bundle of philosophical ideas based on individual rights, suspicion of and constraints on concentrated power, equality before the law and some willingness to help the weakest and discriminated members of society.

That "some willingness" doesn't get you very far. That reminds you that these days liberalism is defined not by what it aspires to but by what it's willing to discard to preserve self-interest. Meanwhile, those who still believe that individual rights can be universal have moved on to the left.

Henry Farrell [10-16]: China has copied America's grab for semiconductor power: "Six theses about the consequences." Mostly that the adversarial relationship between the US and China can easily get much worse. Or, as the last line puts it: "The risks of unanticipated and mutually compounding fuck-ups are very, very high."

Yasmin Nair:

  • [03-15]: It's freaky that movies are so bad, but AI is not the problem: No, capitalism is. Although what's freaky is how much the speculative wealth of capitalism is being propped up by the idea that whoever controls AI will dominate the world, much like how private equity companies buy up productive companies, loot them, and drive them into bankruptcy.

    PS: I found this piece from a Nathan J Robinson-reposted tweet. I was rather taken aback to find this on the bottom of the page:

    Don't plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent.

    I'm probably safe here in that I cited her article, but just to be clear, while I often paraphrase arguments put forth by other writers in cited articles, nothing I wrote above was actually derived from her article, which I barely scanned. The title simply struck me as an opportunity to make a point, so I ran with it — as indeed I'm doing here. I did do some due diligence and searched my archives, and found that I had cited Yasmin Nair twice before:

    • Yasmin Nair [2024-03-27]: What really happened at Current Affairs?: I described this as "looks to be way too long, pained, deep, and trivial to actually read," but noted that I once had a similar experience.
    • Yasmin Nair [2024-08-23]: Kamala Harris will lose: Cited with no comment. While this was written in August, I didn't pick it up until I was doing my post-election Speaking of Which [2024-11-11]. Her ideas were pretty commonplace among left critics back in August (which is not to say they had been plagiarized, either from or by her), and were largely vindicated by her loss. Her main points were: Harris stands for nothing; Democrats are taking voters for granted; Even liberal and progressive values are being shunned; COVID is still around. The latter is a somewhat curious point she doesn't do much with, but it's rather extraordinary how quickly and thoroughly lessons and even memories of the pandemic were not just discarded but radically revised.

    My own view was that Harris had made a calculated gamble that she could gain more votes — and certainly more money, which she actually did — by moving right than she stood to lose from a left that had no real alternative. Given that, I didn't see the value in either arguing with her experts or in promoting her left critics. Her gamble failed not because she misread the left (who understood the Trump threat well enough to stick with her regardless) as because her move to the right lost her cred with ideologically incoherent voters who could have voted against Trump but didn't find reason or hope to trust he.

  • [11-12]: Kamal Harris's memoir shows exactly why her campaign flopped: A review of her campaign memoir, 107 Days: "In her new book, Kamala Harris insists she only lost the election because she didn't have enough time. But she accidentally demonstrates the real reason: she's a terrible politician."

  • [04-10]: Kamala Harris and the art of losing: Same article, pre-memoir. Just a stray thought, not occasioned here, but one big difference between Haris and Mamdani is that she was obviously reluctant to leave her safe zone, which made her look doubtful, while Mamdani seems willing to face anyone, and talk about anything. Perhaps one reason is that he seems to always speak from principles, but he doesn't use them as cudgels: he's confident enough in what he stands for to listen to challenges, and respond rationally. Nair's charge that Harris has no principles may be unfair, but unrefuted by her campaign.

Thomas Morgan [10-14]: A universe of possibilities within their resource constraints: "all about the new album Around You Is a Forest." Morgan is a jazz bassist of considerable note, out with his first album as a leader after 150+ albums supporting others. The album was built using a computer program called WOODS, which takes input from a musician and turns it into a duet of considerable variety and charm.

Sean Illing [10-26]: Why every website you used to love is getting worse: "The decay of Google, Amazon, and Facebook are part of a larger trend." Interview with Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. I've been reading a book called The Shock of the Anthropocene, which invents a half-dozen synonyms (Therocene, Thanatocene, Phagocene, etc.), but misses Doctorow's Enshittocene. Still, when I mention this concept to strangers, they grasp its meaning immediately. It's that obvious. I recently read Doctorow's The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, which covers much of the same ground.

Nathan J Robinson:

  • [10-08]: The rise of Nick Fuentes should horrify us all: "A neo-Nazi is trying to fill the void left by the failures of the two major parties. Unless Americans are offered a visionary alternative, Fuentes' toxic ideology may flourish."

  • [09-30]: The right's latest culture war crusade is against empathy: "Blessed are the unfeeling, for they shall inherit the GOP. Books, sermons, and tweets now warn that 'toxic empathy' is destroying civilization." Cites recent books by Allie Beth Stuckey (Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion) and Joe Rigney (The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits).

  • [11-18]: There have to be consequences for advocating illegal wars: "Yet again, the New York Times' Bret Stephens advocates the overthrow of a sovereign government. Why do the readers of the 'paper of record' tolerate this dangerous propaganda?" Pundits like Stephens have a long history of failing upward, because their services are always in demand no matter how shoddy their track record: they're not paid for getting it right, just for saying the "right" things. As for consequences, Robinson proposes to give anyone who cancels their New York Times subscription a free year of Current Events.

Dylan Scott

  • [11-04]: Why are my health insurance premiums going up so much?: "One of the Democrats' best political issues is to defend the Affordable Care Act. Is it worth defending?" Up to a point, but valuable as it is, it was never more than a stopgap solution to some glaring problems (like exclusion of benefits for "previous conditions").

    • Dean Baker:

      • [10-03]: Health care cost growth slowed sharply after Obamacare: This is a key story that is easily overlooked, largely because Republicans have carped endlessly about "Obamacare," and because doing so has obscured the trends before passage.

        In the decade before Obamacare passed, healthcare costs increased 4.0 percentage points as a share of GDP — the equivalent of more than $1.2 trillion in today's economy. By contrast, in the 15 years since its passage, health care costs have increased by just 1.4 percentage points.

      • [11-03]: Why is healthcare expensive? While the ACA slowed down increases in health care expenses, it didn't eliminate the really big problem, which is monopoly rents ("the costly trinity: drugs, insurance, and doctors").

  • [11-14]: Meet the newly uninsured: "Millions of Americans will soon go without insurance. We spoke with some of them."

Danielle Hewitt/Noel King [11-22]: The 2 men fueling Sudan's civil war: "The fall of El Fasher and Sudan's ongoing conflict, explained by an expert." Alex DeWaal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts.

Some notable deaths: Mostly from the New York Times listings. Last time I did such a trawl was on October 21, so we'll look that far back (although some names have appeared since):

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas, but maybe I should just use it to bookmark some of our leading horribles.

  • Corey Robin [11-11]: Responds to a complaint by Paul Begala that: "Zohran Mamdani had the weakest win of a successful New York Democrat in 35 years." Begala compares Mamdani's 50.4% to Eric Adams (67%) and Bill DeBlasio (66-73%), without noting that turnout this time was 40% vs. 23-26% in recent elections, so Mamdani actually got a third more votes than any of his predecessors. In the comment section, Glenn Adler explains:

    Begala might have added that splitting the vote is the predictable result when losers of Democratic Party primary elections refuse to 'vote blue no matter who,' and choose to contest the general.

    But how many losers of Democratic primary elections for mayor of New York ever do such a thing? In the last 50 years only two, both named Cuomo.

    After losing a crowded primary to Ed Koch in 1977, Mario Cuomo lost again to Koch in a run-off, and ran again and lost to Koch in the general. With the party vote split, Koch received precisely 50% of the vote. (And, contra Begala, few would have called Koch's win 'weak'.)

    The campaign manager in this three-peat defeat? Andrew Cuomo.

    My wife worked on a financial newspaper in the late '80s, and one of the older editors reminisced about playing basketball with Cuomo when they both attended St John's Prep: "Mario was the only player who used to steal the ball -- from his own teammates!"

    A motto for the Cuomo family crest?

  • Rick Perlstein [11-18]: Responding to Richard Yeselson: "Hating Ezra Klein—as opposed to just disagreeing with him when you think he's wrong—is a weird, yet common pathology expressed by leftists here."

    For me, rooted in a pattern since his desperation to elevate Paul Ryan as worthy good-faith interlocutor. Charlie Kirk is the apotheosis: seeing politics as an intellectual game between equal teams, "left" and "right," systematically occluding fascism's rise. I hate him for it.

    It gets the better of his deeply humane impulses. And makes him far more powerful than he deserves to be, because there will always be a sellers market for anyone who helps elites play up the danger of "left" and play down the danger of "right."

    I'm pretty sure I don't hate Klein — I mostly find his interviews, essays, and the one book I've read (Why We're Polarized, not the Abundance one) to be informative and sensible, albeit with occasional lapses of the sort that seems to help him fail upwards (a pattern he has in common with Matthew Yglesias and Nate Silver). On the other hand, in my house I can't mention Klein without being reminded of his Iraq war support, so some people (and not only leftists) find some lapses unforgivable. (On the other hand, Peter Beinart seems to have been forgiven, so there's something to be said for making amends.)

  • Jeet Heer [11-21]: In response to a tweet with a video and quote from Sarah Hurwitz, where she argues that "Jewish schools should ban smartphones to keep youths from seeing the carnage in Gaza." I'm quoting there from Chris Menaham's tweet. The actual Hurwitz quote is: "I'm sorry if this is a graphic thing to say, but . . . when I'm trying to make arguments in favor for Israel . . . I'm talking through a wall of dead children." Heer responds, "if this is the case, maybe you should really reconsider your job?" My wife played me much more of Hurwitz opining, and I found the thinking to be really circular, but it really boils down to a belief that Jews are really different from everyone else, and that only Jews matter, because "we are family." That may explain why some Jews, feeling very protective of their "family," are willing to overlook "a wall of dead children," but how can anyone think that argument is going to appeal to anyone outside the family? "We're family" is something you tell your family, along with "and I love you," but before pointing out the atrocities members of your family have committed, sometimes in your name. But, let's face it, sometimes your family screws up real bad, and you have to do break with them to save yourself. For example, the Unabomber was turned in by his brother. That couldn't have been easy, but was the right thing to do. Mary Trump wrote a book, which was uniquely sympathetic to her cousin, but didn't excuse him. Too many Jews to list here have broken with Israel over the genocide, and many of them over decades of injustice toward Palestinians. That Hurwitz hasn't suggest to me that she has this incredibly insular worldview, where the only problem facing the world is antisemitism, because the only people who matter are Jews. If you take that view seriously, you might even argue that genocide in Gaza is a good thing, because it's pushing the world's deep-seated antisemitism to the surface, so you can see that Zionism is the only possible answer. But unless you're Jewish, why should you care? And if you are, why deliberately provoke hate, especially in countries like the US where most people are tolerant of Jews?

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