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Friday, June 27, 2025

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 23 days ago, on June 4.

I've been busy working on the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025, which may seem a bit like "fiddling while Rome burns," but quite frankly, we'd all be much better off catching up with this year's still-remarkable parade of new jazz releases, including another bounty of dusted-off oldies, than we are helplessly watching Fox and CNN regale us with what little they can grasp of the world, and how little they -- let alone the actors and ideologues they report on -- understand of it. Jazz is, after all, music for people who take pleasure in thinking about what gives them pleasure, and often who are willing to expose themselves to the frontiers of human creativity. Politics is something nearly opposite: it hurts to even think about it, in large part because it's hard to recognize as human people who are so full of greed, petty hate, and lust for power, the class of people who promote themselves as others' expense, you know, the "newsmakers."

Note that the long comment on Ezra Klein and the long intro on Israel were written a couple weeks ago -- the latter after the bombing of Iran started, but I haven't tried to update it. Most of the tweets were collected as the popped up. (I could probably build whole posts out of them, but they'd be even more scattered than this forum is.) The music stuff has also been sitting around (but I should update the mid-year lists -- or more likely, I may keep adding to that section). Most of the rest of the comments are of recent vintage, even if the articles are a bit old. No doubt I'm missing some major stories. One I'm aware of is the New York mayoral primary, as a lot of my sources are thrilled by how well Mamdani has fared and/or afraid of what establishment Democrats may try to do to sabotage him. I'm going to go ahead and post whatever I have by bedtime, then return tomorrow to my jazz poll and whatever else I have need of working on.

Israel: I'm loathe to group articles, but there's too much here not to, especially given the rate at which it is piling up. I've been thinking about revolution lately. It's taken me a while because first I had to disabuse myself of the idea that revolutions are good things. That idea was deeply cemented in my brain because first I was taught that the American Revolution was a good thing, overthrowing monarchy and aristocracy to establish an independent self-governing democracy. Then the US Civil War was a second good revolution, as it ended slavery. Such events, as well as less violent upheavals like the New Deal and the movements of the 1960s made for progress towards equal rights and justice for all. Moreover, one could point to revolutions elsewhere that made for similar progress, although they often seemed somewhat messier than the American models. That progress seemed like an implacable tectonic force, driving both revolution and reform. And when you put more pressure on an object than it can resist, it either bends or breaks. So I came to see revolutions not as heroic acts of good intentions overcoming repression but as proof that the old order is hard and can only give way by shattering. France and Russia are the key examples: both absolute monarchies that could not reform, so had to be overturned. China, Vietnam, and Cuba were variations on that same theme. So was Iran, which was harder to see as any kind of shift toward the progressive left.

Meanwhile, leftists became more aware of the downsides of revolution, and wherever feasible more interested in reforms, reducing militancy to ritualized non-violent protest. On the other hand, while right-wingers also protest, they are more likely to escalate to violence, probably because right-wing regimes so readily resort to violence to maintain control. The result is that revolutions are more likely to come from the right these days than from the left. Which can be awkward for people who were brought up to see revolutions as progressive.

I'm bringing this up under Israel because Israel's far-right coalition government, going back to its formation before the Gaza uprising of Oct. 7, 2023, makes much more sense when viewed as a revolutionary force. The single defining feature of all revolutionary forces is independent of their ideologies, which are all over the map, but has to do with with simple discovery that people previously denied power now find themselves free to test their limits -- which leads them to act to excess, as long as their is no significant resistance.

This may seem surprising given that Netanyahu has been in power off-and-on since the late 1990s. While his sympathies have always been with the far-right fringe of Zionism, and he's consistently pushed the envelope of what's possible in Israel and the world, he has always before exhibited a degree of caution. But since Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who were long identified not just as outsiders but as criminals, joined his coalition, they have effectively driven Israel's agenda: the genocide in Gaza, expropriation and terrorism in the West Bank, military adventurism in Lebanon and Syria, and not starting a war with Iran. Only a truly revolutionary government can go so far off the rails so fast and so carelessly.

Once you dispense with the assumption that revolutions have to be progressive, you'll find plenty of other examples, both left and right, some (like the French) oscillating between two poles, some generated from below (like the French or Russian), some from guerrilla wars (like Cuba and Afghanistan), some were simply gifted (like the Red Army's installation of Kim Il Sung, whose decision to invade the South was not directed by Moscow, nor effectively throttled), or more relevant here Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as chancellor (the main difference between Hindenburg and Netanyahu is that the former died soon and was forgotten, whereas Netanyahu continues as the figurehead for a regime spinning out of control.

One might note that Israel has always been a revolutionary state (more or less). Ben-Gurion was more artful than Netanyahu, but he always wanted much more than he could get, and took every advantage to extend the limits of his power. Had he believed his own rhetoric in 1947 when he was campaigning for the UN partition plan, he would have legitimated his victory in 1950, but instead he still refused to negotiate borders, biding his time while building up the demographic, economic, and military strength to launch future wars (as happened in 1956, 1967, 1982, up to this very day. When his successor, Moshe Sharett, threatened peace, he seized power again and put Israel back on its war path. He was shrewd enough to caution against occupation in 1967, but as soon as war seemed to triumph, he got swept up in the excitement. Nothing stimulates the fanatic fervor of a revolutionary like seeing what you took to be limits melt away. Just look at Hitler after Munich, or Netanyahu after his American allies encouraged his long-dreamt-of program of extermination.

We should be clear that until 2023, Israel's "final solution" was just a dream -- not that it was never acted on (e.g., Deir Yassin), but most dreams, no matter how vile, are harmlessly forgotten. We can date it way back, easily through Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, perhaps to the foundings of Zionism with Herzl. And we know well that settler colonialism, even when one imagines and/or professes benign intentions, is conducive to genocide -- perhaps not inexorably, but we have enough of a sample to draw that conclusion. What allowed Israeli dreams to be turned into action was the realization that the restraints which had inhibited Israeli leaders in the past had lost all force, and could be ignored with no consequences.

• Richard Silverstein [06-06] Shin Bet's Palestinian Proxies Are Gaza Gangsters: I've read a ton of books on Israel/Palestine, but two I never got to but always wished I had are Hillel Cohen's books on Israel's manipulation of Palestinian collaborators: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (2008), and Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967. I imagine the series could continue up to the present day, and will whenever the relevant archives are opened. Given this history, that Israel should be organizing and even arming Palestinian gangs is hardly a surprise, but underscores more forcefully than ever the moral bankruptcy of the occupation. Another lesson that one should draw from this is the realization that if Israel wanted Palestinians to have a stable and docile government, they could easily find people to lead it, and deliver enough respect and dignity to keep those leaders democratically elected. That they don't so isn't due to the intransigent militance of the Palestinian masses, but to their conviction that they can win by grinding the Palestinians into dust.

• Zack Beauchamp [06-13] The Israel-Iran war hinges on three big things: "It's impossible to know how this war will end. But here's how to make sense of it." Section heads: "What is Israel's objective?"; "Can Iran fight back?"; "How does Iran think about the bomb after this?" All of these points are fairly superficial: the first draws way too much on what Israel says, much of which is obviously misleading; the others ignore what Iran says, and especially the question of whether Iran wants to fight back, or even to fight in the first place. Like many critics, this piece attempts to approximate objectivity by hedging while remaining trapped in a profoundly distorted cloud of propaganda. (The word I first thought of was noosphere, but I settled for a plainer term, which puts more emphasis on its distinctly political construction. Beauchamp is not an apologist for Israel, but he is also not fully independent of a society that accepts the legitimacy of hasbara.) Beauchamp followed this piece with more:

  • Zack Beauchamp [06-22]: Three ways Trump's attack on Iran could spin out of control: "How does this war end?" Which, of course, misses the obvious point, which is that Israel doesn't want this (or any) war to end. They'd be happy to keep periodically "mowing the grass," as they did for well over a decade in Gaza, and if that ever blows back on them, they'd be happy to demolish the entire country (especially given that the prevailing winds for nuclear fallout are blowing away from Israel). The only practical limit on Israel's warmaking is financial: as long as the US is willing to foot the bills, and the American political system is effectively a wholly owned subsidiary of pro-Israeli donors, they're happy to fight on, oblivious to the consequences.

  • Zack Beauchamp [06-18] Trump doesn't have a foreign policy: "What he has instead is the promise of chaos." Instincts not reason, a blind faith that chaos will always break in your favor. He surrounds himself with people who tell him he's on a mission from God. And so far he's gotten away with pretty much everything, so doubt and worry are for losers.

  • Eric Levitz [06-23] 3 ways Americans could pay for Trump's war with Iran: "The conflict could take a toll in both blood and money." Section heads: "How Trump's war on Iran could impact the economy"; "Trump's attack has put American soldiers in harm's way"; "Trump may have made an Iranian nuclear weapon more likely." These are all pretty likely, and much more is remotely possible. Israeli/US aggression against Iran is a species of the Madman Theory, which can only work if the other side remains sane. (Indeed, that's true for all deterrence theories.) One problem here is that the more successful you are at decapitating responsible enemy leadership, the more likely you are to promote someone who's lost his marbles.

• Chris Hedges [06-10] Genocide by Starvation. Also led me to:

  • Chris Hedges [02-19] One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: Interview with Omar El Akkad, who wrote a book with that title.

• Tony Karon [06-18] Tony Judt was right about Israel, wrong about the West. Bob Marley did warn us: "As long as we rely on the existing constellations of nation states, decolonization will remain a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained."

  So, all stakeholders need to understand that they're not dealing with the America they knew 30 or 20 or even 10 years ago. The crumbling edifice has entirely collapsed, and is unlikely to return. There will be no Pax Americana, because Washington no longer sees any incentive to taking that level of responsibility for anything. As the President sounds off like a cartoon gangster from an ancient Hollywood movie threatening to murder Iran's leader and to devastate its capital. The only sure bet here is that even if it did manage to topple Iran's regime, the U.S. of today has no interest in sticking around to manage the chaos that would follow. As Trump made clear in a recent speech in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is done with "nation-building." (And as it has proven in Iraq and Afghanistan, its unmatched ability to destroy things is paralleled by epic failure to build anything of use to it on the ruins.

  The end of the article is also worth quoting here:

  Gramsci might have called it a morbid interregnum in which the old is dying but the new is unable to be born. But as the late, great Mike Davis wrote in what turned out to be his farewell missive, "Everyone is quoting Gramsci on the interregnum, but that assumes that something new will be or could be born. I doubt it. I think what we must diagnose instead is a ruling class brain tumour: a growing inability to achieve any coherent understanding of global change as a basis for defining common interests and formulating large-scale strategies . . . Unlike the high Cold War when politburos, parliaments, presidential cabinets and general staffs to some extent countervailed megalomania at the top, there are few safety switches between today's maximum leaders and Armageddon. Never has so much fused economic, mediatic and military power been put into so few hands."

  Which means humanity only has a future to the extent that it can take power from those destructive hands, and collectively chart a different course independent of the tumor-stricken ruling classes called out by Davis.

  By the way, my favorite line in the Davis piece comes early: "In a world where a thousand gilded oligarchs, billionaire sheikhs, and Silicon deities rule the human future, we should not be surprised to discover that greed breeds reptilian minds."

• Ahmed Ahmed/Ibtisam Mahdi [06-20] 'The Hunger Games': Inside Israel's aid death traps for starving Gazans: "Near-daily massacres as food distribution sites have killed over 400 Palestinians in the past month alone."

• Orly Noy [06-20] Why everything Israelis think they know about Iran is wrong: "For historian Lion Sternfeld, Israel's regime change fantasies ignore realities inside Iran and risk repeating historic mistakes."

• Jamal Kanj [06-25] Ceasefire Not Peace: How Netanyahu and AIPAC Outsourced Israel's War to Trump? This article explains a lot about Israel's policy of sowing chaos throughout the Middle East, dating it to the 1982 Yinon Plan. That's one I was unfamiliar with, but it makes a lot of sense, and is consistent with a lot of otherwise bizarre behavior, like the practice of seemingly random bombings of Syria (and Lebanon and Iraq and now Iran) just meant to inflict terror. In 1979, after the Carter-brokered peace agreement with Egypt, Israel could have negotiated similar deals with Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and come up with some kind of decent implementation of their promise of "autonomy" for the remaining Palestinians, but instead they lashed out at Lebanon and doubled down on repression and settlement in the occupied territories. I don't know whether the Yinon Plan was a blueprint or just a reflection of the mindset which Begin had brought to power, but which was latent in previous decades of Labor Zionism.

• Vijay Prashad [06-25] Why the US Strikes on Iran Will Increase Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. This is pretty obvious, yet rarely seems to be factored into the war plans of the US and Israel, which invariably underestimate future risks. But there is little evidence that the US cares about nonproliferation anymore.

• Rahman Bouzari [06-26] Against Israel's New Middle East Vision. Israel "issued an evacuation order for Tehran"?

• Jeff Halper [06-24] Global Palestine: Israel, the Palestinians, the Middle East and the World After the American Attack on Iran.

• Medea Benjamin/Nicolas JS Davies [06-25] How the US & Israel Used Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran. Grossi is Director General of the watchdog group that is supposed to monitor nuclear power and weapons programs around the world. This has a lot of detail on its operations and how the information they collect can be abused.

• Richard Silverstein [06-23] Regime Change in Iran Will Not End Well.

• Asa Winstanley [06-10] Illegal police raid on my home won't stop me covering Gaza: "The police broke the law when they ransacked my house. When will they stop harassing pro-Palestine journalists?" Winstanley is British, author of the book, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: H ow the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (2023).

• Branko Marcetic [06-18] Tulsi said Iran not building nukes. One senator after another ignored her: "seems like an odd thing to do unless you really want to go to war."

Tom Collina [06-08] Killing the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures. It's not unusual for bad decisions to take years to mature into full-blown catastrophes. Not that he didn't produce enough immediate disasters, but the tragic costs of Trump's first term continue to emerge. Trump's surrender to Israel in scuttling the JCPOA, along with his let's-just-normalize-business-and-fuck-the-Palestinians Abraham Accords, as well as his signal that the US would always back Israel no questions asked, have lead directly to the current war and genocide. He bungled Ukraine and Afghanistan as bad, and probably North Korea too (although thus far Kim Jong Un has had the good sense not to embarrass him there). Back when Trump was first elected, I stressed that his presidency would result in four severe years of opportunity costs. The assumption there was that most of what he did wrong could later be reversed. That's proven difficult, and not just for lack of trying -- Biden not only didn't reverse Trump on Israel and Ukraine but made matters worse, and that's probably true, if less evident, for Afghanistan and North Korea as well. His second term is likely to be even more irreversible.

Jamal Abdi [06-29] How Biden Is to Blame for Israel and the US's 12-Day War Against Iran: "Biden's failure to reenter Obama's nuclear deal helped create the risk for a potentially catastrophic US war against Iran."

Jason Ditz [06-12] Israeli Minister Calls for Israeli Control Over Syria and Lebanon: So says Avichai Eliyahu, Heritage Minister and grandson of a former Sephardi Chief Rabbi, whose solution for Gaza is "they need to starve."

Jonah Shepp [06-21] 'Regime Change' Won't Liberate Iran: Not that anyone in Israel or the US cares a whit about liberating Iran. Nudging it from one orbit of misery to another, preferably lower one, is all they really care about.

Mitchell Plitnick [06-27]: What comes next following the US-Israeli war on Iran? Follows up on his previous article:

• Mitchell Plitnick [06-13]: How Israel and the US manufactured a fake crisis with Iran that could lead to all-out war. I think he's right that nothing that happened has turned out very satisfactorily for any party. However, his reason for Israel starting the war needs a bit of elaboration: "The purpose of 'Iran nuclear issue' sham is and has always been to create a regime-change bloc in Washington and Brussells to force the Islanic Republic from power." "Regime change" in Iran isn't a realistic goal, but it holds out the false promise of an end to the war other than complete failure, which helps keep the Washington and Bussells blocs bound to, and subservient to, Israel.

Jeremy R Hammond [06-26] Lessons Unlearned from Israel's Bombing of Iraq's Osirak Reactor: "The claim that Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 halted or set back Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability is a popular myth."

Elfadil Ibrahim [06-24] Israeli-fueled fantasy to bring back Shah has absolutely no juice. That the author even considers the hypothetical gives this idea far more credit than it deserves.

Sanya Mansoor [06-27] Israeli soldiers killed at least 410 people at food aid sites in Gaza this month: "Israeli soldiers and officers have said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians waiting for food in Gaza."

Yanis Varoufakis [05-06] In the EU nothing succeeds like gross failure: The astonishing case of Ursula von der Leyen. She is president of the European Union, elected for a second term, and recipient of some big deal prize, although she's mostly been in the news lately for her cheerleading of Israel's Gaza genocide.

• Francesca De Benedetti [06-26] Ursula von der Leyen Is Waging War on Workers.

Eric Alterman [05-08] The Coming Jewish Civil War Over Donald Trump: "Trump is offering American Jews a kind of devil's bargain: throw in with us against the antisemitic universities and campus rabble-rousers, but pay no attention as we dismantle the traditions and institutions that Jews value." This article has a lot of useful information, especially the first section which shows pretty clearly how Trump is still an anti-semite, and how his particular brand of anti-semitism is especially ominous for American Jews.

Gabrielle Gurley [05-20] Republicans Break the Weather: "The private sector can't match the value proposition of the National Weather Service, but companies work to entice Americans to pay up anyway. What happens if they can't?"

Phil Freeman [05-22] Why Do You Hate Jazz? Who, me? This is Freeman's monthly column, with his monthly batch of 10 jazz album reviews (5 I've heard, only one A- so far: Horace Tapscott), but his intro is a review of a book by Andrew Berish, Hating Jazz: A History of Its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse (2025, University of Chicago Press). Turns out that neither Berish nor Freeman hate jazz, and of course there are things one can learn from their chronicle of people who do. But I'm not exactly psyched to find out. It's a bit like trying to survey "unhappy families": there are so many, so different, and ultimately so pointless. I should, however, check out the other five albums Freeman likes.

Barry S Edwards [05-29] Why Did Americans Elect a Felon Instead of a Prosecutor: I would have started with the observation that a great many Americans actually admire criminals. As someone whose childhood was rooted in the years when the Hays Office Code was still in effect, I tend to date this to the emergence of TV shows like It Takes a Thief (1968-70) and movies like The Dirty Dozen (1967), which showed how bad people could be employed to "do good" as defined by American political powers, but said powers' culpability for criminal malfeasance goes back deeper, becoming even more obvious during the Vietnam War. But Edwards starts with mass incarceration. While that could be cited as evidence that Americans are sticklers for rules, it also exposes how arbitrary and capricious the police state is, which erodes confidence in what they call justice. In that system, it is easy to see prosecutors as cruel political opportunists, and "criminals" as their victims -- even when they're as guilty as Trump.

Also at Washington Monthly:

• Barry C Lynn [06-01] Resurrecting the Rebel Alliance: "To end the age of Trump, Democrats must relearn the language and levers of power."

• Philip Longman [06-01] The Secret to Reindustrializing America Is Not Tax Cuts and Tariffs. It's Regulated Competition. "From airlines to energy, shipbuilding to railroads, America became a capitalist superpower in the 20th century based on careful market rules. It can do so again."

• Bill Scher [05-30] What Elon Musk Learned (and Donald Trump Didn't) About Governing: "It turns out public policy is harder than it looks."

Jared Abbott/Dustin Guastella [05-30] What Caused the Democrats' No-Show Problem in 2024? "New data sheds light on the policy preferences of nonvoting Democrats in the last election." They add "it may disappoint some progressives," but it looks to me like data we can work with. Unlike the cartoon progressives characterized here, I don't have any real complaints that Harris didn't run on sufficiently progressive policy stances. The big problem she (and many other Democrats) had was that voters didn't believe they would or could deliver on their promises. And a big part of that was because they cozied up to the rich and put such focus on raising money that voters often felt they were an afterthought, or maybe not even that.

Sarah Viren [06-06] A Professor Was Fired for Her Politics. Is That the Future of Academia? "Maura Finkelstein is one of many scholars discovering that the traditional protections of academic freedom are no longer holding."

Ezra Klein [06-08] The Problems Democrats Don't Like to See: The co-author of Abundance defends his book and its political program, mostly from critics on the left, who see it as warmed-over, trickle-down growth fetishism that pro-business centrist ("new") Democrats have been have been peddling as the only viable alternative to whatever it is that Republicans have been peddling since Reagan or Goldwater. Unfortunately, both of these ideologies are often critiqued, or just labeled, as "neoliberalism": indeed, they have much in common, most notably the view that private sector capitalism is the only true driving force in the economy, even as it requires increasing favors from the public, including tolerance of high degrees of inequality, corruption, and deceit; the main difference is in ethics, where Democrats tend to be liberal (which is more often hands-off than helping), and Republicans tend to be laissez-faire (which is to say none, or more specifically that any pursuit of money is to be honored), not that they aren't quite eager to impose constraints on others (sometimes as "morality," often just as power). I wish we could straighten this terminological muddle out, as the net effect is to make the "neoliberal" term unusable, and the themes indescribable. This extends to "neoconservative," which has no practical distinction from "neoliberal": they are simply Janus masks, where the former is used to look mean, and the latter to look kind.

Klein's article originally had a different title: The Abundance Agenda Has Its Own Theory of Power. By the way, that link is from a reddit thread. I've never paid any attention to reddit, but the link has a number of interesting and insightful comments, including this one:

I think Ezra is largely right that the populist left needs to: a) work off of an actual coherent vision of the world and b) understand the risks of simplifying policy to simplify politics

To which someone else adds:

It's unironically even simpler than this and makes it wild that the progressives have been unable to figure out Abundance. The entire book and thesis can be boiled down to "the party of big government needs to make government actually work."

That's it. That's the whole thing. The rest of it is presenting theories for different areas that need more or less regulation, for enabling policy to take shape, etc. But that's literally the entire bag. . . .

It's not about a platform for winning elections, it's about materially making peoples' lives better so that they trust you when you say you want to do things.

One thing I've repeatedly tried to stress is that there are major asymmetries between the two big political parties. One is that while both parties have to compete to win votes -- for better or worse, most effectively by impugning the other party -- only the Democrats actually have to deliver on their promises by governing effectively. Republicans have cynically peddled the line that government is the problem, so all they are promising is to hobble it (for which they have many easy tools, including tax cuts, deregulation, corruption, and incompetence). Needless to say, when Republican administrations succeed in their sabotage, Americans are likely to vote them out, but by then they've dug enough holes that Democrats can never quite build their way out, let along deliver tangible benefits, leaving Republicans set up for the next round of political demagoguery.

So I think we should welcome whatever help Klein & Thompson have to offer toward making Democratic government more competent and fruitful. However, before one can implement policy, one has to win elections, so it's no surprise that Democrats of all stripes will focus immediately on the book's political utility. That's why Klein is perplexed: that the Democrats he was most critical of -- "blue-state governors like Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul and top Obama and Biden administration officials" who actually had power they could work with but have little to show for their efforts -- have embraced the "Abundance agenda," while "some of my friends on the populist left" have raised objections. He then goes on to develop his "theory of power," contrasting his own "more classically liberal" credo against "the populist theory of power," under which "bad policy can be -- and often is -- justified as good politics." This part of his argument is somewhat less than coherent -- even if I gave up my reluctance to accept his redefinition of "populism" -- and unlikely to be useful anyway.[*]

In his conclusion, Klein says:

So I don't see any contradiction between "Abundance" and the goals of the left. I don't think achieving the goals of the modern left is even possible without the overhaul of the state that "Abundance" envisions.

I haven't read his book[**], so I can't point to specifics one way or the other, but I also don't see the contradiction: there certainly are goods and services that we could use more of, and that's even more true elsewhere in the world. And it would be good to produce them more efficiently, at lower cost, and/or higher quality, which is to say that we should work on better systems and policies. But while I don't doubt that there is room for growth on the supply side, the larger problem for most people is distribution: making sure that everyone's needs are met, which isn't happening under our current system of price-rationed scarcity. A more explicit identification with the left, including more emphasis on distribution, and acknowledgment of other important issues like precarity, debt, and peace, would have improved his points about building things and trust.

It also would have made his agenda harder to co-opt by Democratic politicians who are basically bought and paid for by rich donors, who seem to be little troubled by rare it is that most of their voters ever benefit from the crumbs left over from their corruption. As Robinson points out, "They insist that their agenda is not incompatible with social democracy and wealth redistribution. But it's clearly a different set of priorities." It's a set of priorities that cause no alarm to the donor class, and may even whet their appetite, and that's why their agenda has the appeal it has, and is drawing the criticism it deserves.[***]

[*] In Kansas, where Thomas Frank and I were born, populism was a decidedly left-wing movement, mostly rooted in debt-saddled free farmers (like my great-grandfather, not that I know anything about his politics). Frank defends this view in The People, No! A Brief History of Anti-Populism (2020). Also see his especially biting critique of the business/financial wing of the Democratic Party, Listen, Liberal! Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (2016). It's easy to condemn liberals as elitist when they recoil so fervently against common folk, even if in theory they believe everyone should share in their blessings. As for theories of power, there are some that make sense. The largely forgotten Rooseveltian countervailing powers is one, with faint echoes in recent antitrust and pro-union work. Anarchists have a more negative theory of power -- negative both in the sense that power is intrinsically bad, and that in almost always generating resentment and blowback it is dysfunctional. As a child, I was exposed to the saying, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and I've found that to be true.

[**] I wouldn't rule out reading the book in the future, especially if I find myself in need of boning up on certain technical issues like housing and infrastructure development. I read Klein's Why We're Polarized (2020), and found it to be worthwhile, especially for citing and digesting a lot of technical political science literature. I certainly wouldn't read him to expose him as an idiot and/or crook, as Nathan J Robinson suggests in his review below. I also wouldn't read Matthew Yglesias's One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger (2020) for that reason, although I'd probably find even more evidence there.

[***] Aside from political agenda and policy mechanics -- various critiques on specific policies, especially their lack of concern for "intellectual property" rents, which is a major cost concern, a source of artificial scarcity -- there is a third strain of criticism, having to do with growth itself. There is good reason to acknowledge that sooner or later growth will have to slow and stabilize, or we will eventually fall victim to crashes. This was my initial reaction to "Abundance," and one I'd like to return to at some point, but while such crashes may hypothetically not be distant in the future, they could be much better managed if only people were more able to deal with immediately pressing political problems.

• Nathan J Robinson [06-13] Abandon "Abundance": "The latest Democratic fad sidelines equality and justice in favor of a focus on cutting red tape. This is not the path forward." After having complained about the masochism of having to read the book -- even after he's repeatedly made sport of dissecting much more obvious right-wing dimwits -- at least he admits this much: "Some of what's in Abundance is both true and important." The question this raises is whether, from a practical political standpoint, it does more good to cite Abundance in support of the "true and important" bits, or to discredit Klein & Thompson for the parts they get wrong, or that they use disingenuously. Robinson focuses on the latter, but that's what you'd expect from a critic (or just a rigorous thinker). For instance, he points out their use of motte-and-bailey arguments, which allow common sense to be turned into exaggerated claims, which when challenged can retreat into common sense. (I mean, who doesn't hate red tape?) Supporters can then pick and choose among such claims. For example, "Klein might personally believe in wealth redistribution and unions, but he's offered a great program for billionaires who don't want us to talk about the predations of the health insurance industry or big corporations crushing union drives. Let's talk about zoning reform instead!" He also points out how the authors ingratiate themselves with Democratic royalists by misrepresenting critics on the left: especially, "they spend more pages criticizing Ralph Nader and the degrowth movement (both politically marginal) than they do explaining how corporate power stands in the way of, for example, a universal healthcare system."

• Nathan J Robinson [2024-12-03] Matt Yglesias Is Confidently Wrong About Everything: "The Biden administration's favorite centrist pundit produces smug psuedo-analysis that cannot be considered serious thought. He ought to be permanently disregarded." Yglesias and Klein are bound together as co-founders of Vox, from which they both bounded for more lucrative pastures. Yglesias in particular has repeatedly been a pioneer in new ways to exploit the internet. I read a lot by him for a long time, finally losing interest when he left Vox for Bloomberg and Substack and made his bid for the Thomas Friedman market with his One Billion Americans -- which fits in here as a prototype for Abundance. Because this piece came out back in December (when I was avoiding any and all news sources), Robinson doesn't dwell on that connections, while dwelling on numerous other faux pas. (It's impossible for me to mention either Yglesias or Klein in my household without being reminded of their support for the Iraq War.) I also just discovered that Robinson wrote a review of One Billion People back on [2020-11-13]: Why Nationalism Is a Brain Disease.

Ben Rhodes [06-08] Corruption Has Flooded America. The Dams Are Breaking. I don't doubt that crypto represents yet another higher stage of corruption than ever before, but the dams broke long ago, most obviously in the "greed is good" 1980s, not that they ever held much water in the first place. "President Trump has more than doubled his personal wealth since starting his 2024 election campaign." But most of that is phony paper wealth, slathered onto his corpulence like flattery.

Henry Grabar [06-10] It's Robotaxi Summer. Buckle Up. "Waymo and Tesla offer competing -- and potentially bleak -- futures for self-driving cars in society."

Doug Henwood [06-13] We Have Always Lived in the Casino: "John Maynard Keynes warned that when real investment becomes the by-product of speculation, the result is often disaster. But it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins." I flagged this because it seems like an interesting article, but I can't read it because it's behind their paywall. Speaking of which, some more articles I clicked on but cannot read:

• Adam Serwer [05-27] The New Dark Age: "The Trump administration has launched an attack on knowledge itself." Starts talking about "the warlords who sacked Rome," suggesting that they were less culpable than Trump for the benighted period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Maybe, or maybe not. But having read Jane Jacobs' Dark Ages Ahead (2005), I'm inclined to view Trump and his minions less as instigators of a Dark Age than as an example.

• Adam Serwer [06-08] Musk and Trump Still Agree on One Thing: "Whatever they may be fighting about, they are both committed to showering tax cuts on Americans who already have more than they need."

Jeffrey St Clair

[06-13] Roaming Charges: From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Venice Beach: "It's becoming clearer and clearer every day that the South finally won the Civil War and the Insurrectionists won J6." Also: "The drones are coming home to roost." Also quotes Greg Grandin: "Only fools believed Trump is somehow antiwar. He's not a break with neocons but their evolution."

• [06-27] Roaming Charges: After Midnight: "Trump mega-bombed a mountain in Iran and called it peace." St Clair doubts the effectiveness of the bombing. I don't have any particular stake in that argument. Anything that was damaged in the bombing, including the people who were killed or maimed, can be replaced easily enough. The physics and technology of nuclear weapons have been understood since the 1940s. At the end of WWII, the US rounded up all of Germany's atomic physicists and holed them up on a farm on rural England. They had spent years fiddling and fumbling in their efforts to build even a simple reactor, but what confused them was their uncertainty that it might work. Within two days of hearing about Hiroshima, they figured out a functional design. They couldn't build one. That took the Russians four more years, not because they had to figure out how it worked, but because the materials were hard to come by, and the processes complex. It took France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea even longer, but they all did it, and the timelines have more to do with motivation than with skill. A number of other nations, most obviously Germany and Japan, have demonstrated they have all the skills they need. It is, after all, easier to get a bomb to blow up than it is to keep a power plant from melting down. Iran, too, has amply demonstrated that they have the necessary skills, and for that matter the materiel. Netanyahu was probably right way back in the 1990s that Iran could produce atomic bombs from their program within 3-5 years, or 6-12 months, or whatever time frame he was projecting to panic his people and allies. That Iran never met his timelines is primarily because they didn't see the point of actually having nuclear weapons. Perhaps they were thinking that if Israel and America could see that they could, that would be enough of a deterrent to keep them from being attacked. Perhaps that thinking even worked until now. The big problem with the "madman theory" is that it assumes the other side will always be the sane one, without bothering to examine one's own sanity in contemplating such a contest. Iran's quite rational notion of deterrence failed because Netanyahu and Trump have not only called Iran's bluff, they've upped the ante, giving Iran the one necessity it was lacking: motivation. The gamble is that Iran will still realize that nuclear weapons are useless, a fool's game. They only seem to have value as a deterrent, but that no longer works against Netanyahu and Trump, who act like they're daring Iran in hopes of burying the entire country under mushroom clouds. After all, what's the point of nuclear superiority if you can't use it to extort your enemies and force them to submit to your will?

  Also linked here:

  • Lucian K Truscott IV [06-24] Fake man starts fake war makes fake peace.

  Further down, St Clair spots a tweet by Stephen Miller:

  The commentary about NYC Democrats nominating an anarchist-socialist for Mayor omits one point: how unchecked migration fundamentally remade the NYC electorate. Democrats change politics by changing voters. That's how you turn a city that defined US dominance into what it is now.

  That's a fairly accurate description of New York City, but from the 1880s through 1910s, when borders really were open (albeit only for whites). The result was a long series of Irish-, Italian-, and Jewish-American mayors. And he's right that their descendents, mostly with Democratic mayors, led New York City to a dominant position in American finance and culture. They've also made it the richest and least affordable city in America, but even with all that wealth few New Yorkers see Republican nihilism as an attractive proposition.

Peter Shamshiri [06-16] The Politics of Eternal Distraction: "To some Democrats, everything Trump does is designed to distract you." It's taken Democrats an awful long time to realize that much of what Trump does is sheer distraction, so when they point that out, along comes someone to attack you for overstating your insight: after all, some of what Trump does is so plainly damaging that he needs this other crap to distract you from what he's really doing. I can't sort this out right now, but I'd caution against thinking that the "distractions" are the harmless parts: they often reveal what Trump is thinking, even where he doesn't have the capacity to deliver. That he even says he wants to do something profoundly stupid should make you suspicious of everything else, even if superficially plausible. But also you have to guard against getting carried away responding to every feint he throws your way. The word "distraction" can help in that regard, if immediately followed by redirecting back to something important.

Charlotte Klein [06-19] Are You a $300,000 Writer? "Inside The Atlantic's extremely expensive hiring spree." A certain amount of professional jealousy is inevitable with articles like this, and is indeed much of the interest. I mean, they could hire me for much less than any of these writers I've mostly never heard of, and I could write some genuinely interesting content -- mostly innovative engineering solutions to tricky political problems -- that won't read like everyone else's warmed-over punditry. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't want to write what they're so eager to pay for. I don't know who's footing the bills behind their current menu, but they're up to no good.

Scott Lemieux [06-19] Getting the war criminals back together: Quotes Elisabeth Bumiller seeking the sage advise of a washed up US General:

One person who sees little similarity between the run up to Iraq and now is David H. Petraeus, the general who commanded American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led the 101st Airborne Division in the initial invasion in Baghdad. "This is clearly the potential run up to military action, but it's not the invasion of a country," he said on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump, he said, should deliver an ultimatum to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and order him to agree to the complete dismantlement of his nuclear program or face "the complete destruction of your country and your regime and your people." If the supreme leader rejects the ultimatum, Mr. Petraeus said, "that improves our legitimacy and then reluctantly we blow them to smithereens."

Nobody's even talking about fixing Iran here. There's no warning that "if you break it, you own it." They just want to fuck it up, leave it bruised and bleeding in a ditch somewhere, washing their hands of the whole affair . . . unless they have to come back and do it again, which they probably will. Sheer nihilists, because that's the power they think they have.

Ryan Cooper [06-20] Climate Change Will Bankrupt the Country: "Climate-fueled disasters cost America almost a trillion dollars over the last year, far more than economists predicted." By "economists" he's referring to work by William Nordhaus, which he was critical of at the time and even more so now. The price tag will only continue to rise, and with it private insurance becomes increasingly untenable. While this will be bad for everyone, the ones with the most to lose are property owners and lenders, who will experience ever greater precarity, and no doubt will finally be driven to attempt to socialize their risks. This will be a huge political factor in coming years. The phrase "too big to fail" will haunt us. And while one may debate the merits of bailing out individual companies, the whole country poses a somewhat different problem: who's big enough to bail us all out?

Josh Dawsey/Rebecca Ballhaus [06-20] Stephen Miller's Fingerprints Are on Everything in Trump's Second Term: "The deputy chief of staff has played an outsize role in immigration -- and amassed more power than almost anyone else at the White House." Also on Miller:

• Pablo Manríquez [06-24] Stephen Miller's Financial Stake in ICE Contractor Palantir Raises Conflict Concerns.

Naomi Bethune [06-24] ICE Impersonators Proliferate Amid the Agency's Undercover Tactics: "Pretending to be an ICE agent to commit crimes is disturbingly easy."

David Klion [06-24] State of Exception: National Security Governance, Then and Now.

No More Mister Nice Blog: This might as well become a regular feature. I've skipped over a few pieces, mostly about the NYC mayor race, which are also of interest:

• [06-10]: Gosh, if only there were a way to test the premise that the LA protests are an "80-20 issue" favoring Republicans: "Hand-wringing Trump critics think America won't vote for a candidate who's linked to controversial protests, and they cling to this belief even though America just elected the guy who did January 6." He also offers some sound advice:

  Why can't Trump critics be advocates for their own side? Why must they echo right-wing critiques of the protest movement? Given the way most Americans consume news these days, I'm guessing that it might not register on many voters that the protestors are waving Mexican flags (and that they should see this as a moral outrage) until they start hearing about the flags from both sides. (Compare this to the war on "woke" language: I'm sure most voters have now heard the word "Latinx" far more often from centrist Democratic language police than they have from actual "woke" Democrats.)

  I'll say it again: If your critique of Democrats/liberals/progressives echoes right-wing critiques, shut up. You're just an extra megaphone for the right, which doesn't need any help getting its messages out. . . . So please stop the tone policing, and stick up for your side.

  My bold.

• [06-11]: Trump came into office wishing a mf'er would: "Two commentators I respect . . . believe that Donald Trump is militarizing Los Angeles out of weakness. I don't think that's true."

• [06-13]: Everyone knows that only Republicans are normal!: "They're engaging in totalitarian repression, obviously, but they claim they're freeing people." Exmaples of Republican "normalcy" follow.

  Republicans struggle with the idea that anyone could possibly want to live in a place where people are of very different ethnic backgrounds, speak different languages, and have different religious beliefs (or non-beliefs), just as they struggle with the idea that anyone could be unalterably gay or bi or pan or trans just because they aren't. They struggle with the idea that anyone would want to live in a city where you can do most of your errands in a fifteen-minute radius, because they're used to long drives whenever you have to run errands. Increasingly, they're selling the message that everyone wants a marriage consisting of a male breadwinner and a stay-at-home "tradwife" who gives birth to large numbers of children, after marrying young (and preferably as a virgin), and they can't believe anyone really wants a life that's different from that.

  It is true that Republicans have chosen to represent an imagined majority: a large bloc of people who can be characterized as "true Americans" and flattered as "patriots." They can be treated as a socially and economically cohesive bloc, with some sleight of hand added to line them up behind the true economic powers. This has always been true: it was built into the design of the Republican Party in the 1850s, when white, protestant free soil farmers and small-time business and labor actually formed something close to a majority of voters. That's baked into the initials GOP, which writers (including me) find irresistible because we tire of overly repeating words, especially "Republican." (It's effectively a proprietary pronoun. One of the many asymmetries of our warped politics is that Democrats don't have an equivalent pronoun or alias.) Republicans are skating on thin ice here: their "majority" is thinning out, haphazardly reinforced as various ethnic groups become honorary whites, and various sects are accepted as close enough to protestants (the new term is "Judeo-Christian," with "Abrahamic" in the wings, held back by the political opportunism of anti-Islam bigotry.) But the larger risk Republicans run is that they don't represent their voters at all well. They lie to them, they steal from them, they double-cross them whenever they see an opportunity to make a quick buck. On the other hand, Democrats are developing their own nascent myth of a majority built on diversity, equity, tolerance, mutual respect and aid, and solidarity.

[06-14]: Trump's muddled, on-and-off militarism won't split the GOP at all.

[06-18]: Jeb Bush was right about Trump and "chaos". Cites a piece by Jamelle Bouie ([06-18: Maybe Trump and Miller Don't Understand Americans as Well as They Think They Do), regarding Trump's polling slump.

[06-21]: Your right-wing neighbors still don't believe the Minnesota shoter was a conservative ideologue: I haven't yet cited any articles on the June 14 assassination of Democratic politicians in Minnesota, but the basic facts are available on Wikipedia (2025 shootings of Minnesota legislators), not for lack of interest or alarm but mostly a matter of timing. That right-wingers have worked overtime to twist the stories into unrecognizable shapes is unsurprising: if anything, it's standard operating procedure, and the examples are as telling as their penchant for gun-toting vigilantism. One of the most fundamental differences between right and left is that only the former believes that violence works, and will resort to it readily (and will lie about it afterwards, because that's even more part of their nature). Two earlier pieces on the shootings:

• [06-15]: Your right-wing neighbors think the Minnesota shooting were liberal-on-liberal violence.

• [06-17]: Republicans hate Democrats, and media liberals consider that an acceptable prejudice.

[06-22]: To your right-wing neighbors, this will be Trump's war only if it works. Cites a Joshua Keating article ([06-21]: This time, it's Trump's war) I had initially skipped over.

[06-23]: Will Democrats be too high-minded to respond to young people's war fears? I don't know what he means by "high-minded." What Democrats need to do is convey the view that any time Americans pull the trigger that represents a failure of American foreign policy, regardless of whether you hit the target or not. Of course, from 2021-25, Biden was the one demonstrating incompetence by not preventing war situations from developing and/or spreading. But why show Trump the slightest leniency when the voters cut them no slack?

[06-26]: In New York, I'm enjoying this billionaire freakout.

[06-28] The Supreme Court's Republicans know our side will never use the power they've potentially given us: The Supreme Court "ruled that lower-court judges can't protect even fundamental constitutional rights using nationwide injunctions."

The Supreme Court's Republicans aren't worried that the shoe might be on the other foot someday because they know the shoe will never be on the other foot. This is why they're willing to give Donald Trump nearly unlimited power: they know that any Republican would use the power in ways they like and no Democrat would ever use it in ways they dislike. They're giving powerful weapons to Trump and future party-mates because they know the enemy -- Democrats -- will never use those weapons.

Tweets:

• Alan MacLeod [06-05]: The most American leading ever: Kids could end up in foster care over lunch debt, Pennsylvania school district warns parents

• Adam Serwer [06-08]: Don't let Trump and Musk's feud obscure their fundamental agreement: Both men and the party they own are committed to taking as much as possible from Americans who need help in order to give to those who have more than they could ever want. [link to his Atlantic article: Musk and Trump Still Agree on One Thing]

  For years, commentators have talked about how Trump reshaped the Republican Party in the populist mold. Indeed, Trumpism has seen Republicans abandon many of their publicly held commitments. The GOP says it champions fiscal discipline while growing the debt at every opportunity. It talks about individual merit while endorsing discrimination against groups based on gender, race, national origin, and sexual orientation. It blathers about free speech while using state power to engage in the most sweeping national-censorship campaign since the Red Scare. Republicans warn us about the "weaponization" of the legal system while seeking to prosecute critics for political crimes and deporting apparently innocent people to Gulags without a shred of due process. The GOP venerates Christianity while engaging in the kind of performative cruelty early Christians associated with paganism. It preaches family values while destroying families it refuses to recognize as such.

  Yet the one bridge that connects Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush to Donald Trump is slashing public services while showering tax cuts on the rich. This is the Republican Party's most sacred, fundamental value, the one it almost never betrays. Whatever else Trump and Musk may fight about, they are faithful to that.

• Nathan J Robinson [06-09] goddamnit so many @curaffairs readers have requested a review of "Abundance" that now I'm having to write it. why do our readers want me to suffer[?]

  I commented: Why, compared to idiots you love writing about (like Peterson & Rufo), is Klein a sufferance? Maybe it takes more work to accept and build on what he offers than to trash it as not enough or some kind of sellout, but the idea that Dems need to build/deliver isn't wrong.

  When I clicked on post, I got a pop-up saying: "Want more people to see your comment? Subscribe." The days when social media companies were happy just to profit off our free content are obviously over. Now in their pay-to-play racket they view everyone as an advertiser, which will tend to reduce every comment to the credibility level of advertisements (i.e., none: advertising has been proudly post-truth for over a century, and indeed was born that way).

• Richard D Wolff [06-09] US liberals also enabled Trump. They let the right enlist them against the left after 1945. As the GOP right-turned authoritarian, a unified liberal-left opposition would have been real and powerful, unlike today's liberal-vs-left split opposition.

• Isi Breen [06-09]

  Has anyone written an article about how Abundance is a swan song for Obama's presidency? That it's less about doing anything new and more about getting back to the last time it seemed like the party had its shit together?

  Problem here is how can anyone still think that the Democrats had their shit together under Obama? He promised "change" and shrunk it down to virtually nothing. He lost Congress after two years, and never won it back, giving him an excuse to do even less than he was inclined to do. Even the articulateness he was famed for before he ran deserted him. (Or was it some kind of race to the bottom with the dumbing down of the American people?) I have dozens of examples, but one specific to "abundance agenda" is that Obama refused to pursue any stimulus projects that weren't "shovel-ready." (Reed Hundt, in A Crisis Wasted, has examples of things proposed but rejected because Obama and his locked-in advisors like Summers and Emmanuel wouldn't consider anything that smacked of long-term planning.)

• Kate Wehwalt [06-13]:

  It's crazy how in 40 years the internet made everyone stupid and ruined the entire world

  Nah. It just made you more aware of how stupid people already were.

• Kim, Bestie of Bunzy [06-19]

  Watching this man try to get rid of imaginary raccoons he thought were invading reminds me of what white people are currently trying to do [to] America to get rid [of] immigrants they think are invading

  This comes with a 0:43 video, where the captions read: "My dad had raccoons in his tree house. Nobody has been up there in years. He tried to get rid of them with a combination of . . . smoke bombs and firecrackers. Anxiously watching for fleeing raccoons . . . [the tree house catches fire and is destroyed]. No raccoons were seen or found." Much more of interest in Kim's feed. I didn't expect (i.e., couldn't have imagined) this one:

  Israeli Interior Minister Ben-Gvir accuses Mossad chief Barnea of starting a war: - Why did you provoke Iran! Barnea: - I didn't know Iran had such rocket capabilities!

  The head of Mossad "did not know"

  I've been imagining that Ben-Gvir was the architect of the war, and conjuring up rationales for him doing so. Netanyahu has been complaining about Iran's rockets ever since Israel pivoted against Iran after the 1990 Gulf War neutralized Iraq as Israel's chief bête noire (more like a boogeyman meant to frighten the US and make it subservient to Israel -- a card they've played many times, and which you still see working as US politicians clamor for war against Iran). What this suggests is not that they were unaware of Netanyahu's propaganda, but that neither Ben-Gvir nor Barnea believed Israel's own propaganda, which they both used for their own purposes. Long-range rocket attacks were a significant part of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, with Iraq using Soviet Scuds and Iran building their own (after exhausting their US-built rockets). Extending their range to reach Israel would have been easy, and didn't cross an obvious red line, like nuclear bombs would have. Still, to be a nuclear threat, as Netanyahu has long insisted Iran is, you both need warheads and some way to deliver them: Iranian rockets have always been an obvious part of the equation. (Same for North Korea, which has even larger rockets.) Israel has routinely blamed Iran for every rocket from Gaza, Lebanon, and/or Yemen, so claiming now that you didn't know Iran had "such rocket capabilities" is an admission that you thought the rockets from Gaza, etc., weren't serious threats. They were just propaganda foils.

• Pessimistic Intellect, Optimistic Will: Includes graphic of a press release by Hakeen Jeffries ("Democratic Leader"). Second and third paragraphs are solid points, although I wouldn't say that the kind of diplomacy the US needs to engage in at the moment is "aggressive": how about "serious"? or "constructive"? or just something that suggests you're not insane? However, before he could allow himself any of that, first Jeffries had to recite his pledge of allegiance:

  Iran is a sworn enemy of the United States and can never be permitted to become a nuclear-capable power. Israel has a right to defend itself against escalating Iranian aggression and our commitment to Israel's security remains ironclad.

  Not only is none of this true, and as articulated is little short of psychotic. Still, the real problem with always putting this pledge first isn't that it suggests you cannot think clearly. It's warning other people that you cannot or will not do anything about Israel's behavior because you're not even in charge of you own thoughts let alone actions.

• Matthew Yglesias [06-22]:

  Every president of my lifetime except Joe Biden actually started wars, but somehow he ended up getting lambasted from the right and the left for providing military supplies to allies as if that made him the greatest warhawk in American history.

  No one I'm aware of has tried to sort out a ranking of "greatest warhawks in American history," but even if one did, not being the "greatest" wouldn't be much of a compliment. Biden needed not just to not start new wars, but to end them. He not only didn't do the necessary diplomacy to end the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, what diplomacy he did do, combined with his unflinching supply of arms and money to support the war efforts, made it possible for the wars to extend and spread. (Ukraine is slightly different, in that sending arms there can be justified by the need to counter Russian aggression, but also in that there are clear opportunities for diplomatic resolution. Support for Israel, given their long history of aggression and domination, is impossible to justify.) And while you might credit Biden with ending the Afghanistan war, once again he failed to show any diplomatic skill or interest. His popularity sunk not because he ended the war, but due to the ineptness of his withdrawal. The only thing you can say for him is that he was painted into an untenable corner by predecessors, but it's hard to see where he even tried to right their wrongs.

• Ian Boudreau [06-26] Responding to a tweet noting that "mamdani's win has made the ny times, the washington post, fox news, trump, third way, and the democratic establishment very mad" citing a Washington Post Editorial Board article: "Zohran Mamdani's victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party: New York cannot take its greatness for granted. Mismanagement can ruin it."

  Wow, mismanagement of New York City - what a genuinely terrifying prospect! Siri who is the current mayor of New York City?

  I don't have the bandwidth to deal with what looks to Wichita like a remote mayoral primary, but is obviously big news for the media centers and for the electorally-oriented left. It's quite possible that left candidates are much better at articulating problems and proposing solutions than they are at administering and implementing, but couldn't that just as easily be due to the obstacles entrenched powers can throw into the way, including their cozy relationship with the establishment press? One thing for sure is that whatever management skills conservatives think they have aren't helped by the evils of their ideology.

  Jamelle Bouie adds: "i think i would take the hysteria over mamdani's ability to govern more seriously if half these people hasn't endorsed eric adams."

  Ryan Cooper quotes Paul Krugman: "centrist Democrats often urge leftier types to rally behind their nominees in general elections. I agree. Anyone claiming that there's no difference between the parties is a fool. But this deal has to be reciprocal."

• Don Winslow [06-28]:

  16 million Americans are about to lose their health insurance because 77 million Americans voted for this shit.

  

Mid-Year Music Lists: I usually collect these under Music Week, but it's probably easier here.

• Rolling Stone [06-05] [AOTY] The Best Albums of 2025 So Far: "What a year it's been for great music -- as opposed to, say, everything else."

• AV Club [06-26] [AOTY] AV Club's Best Albums of 2025 (So Far).

• Billboard [06-24] [AOTY] Billboard's 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• Consequence [06-02] [AOTY] The 30 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• Exclaim [06-02] [AOTY] Exclaim!'s 25 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• The Fader [06-06] Best Albums of 2025 (So Far).

• The Guardian [06-10] The best albums of 2025 so far.

• NME [06-26] [AOTY] The best albums of 2025 . . . so far!

• Paste [06-06] AOTY] The 40 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• PopMatters [06-26] [AOTY] The 70 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• RIOTRIOT [06-12] Sick of What I Want: The 30 Best Albums of 2025 So Far (#30-11) and (#10-1). Also of note: The End of the World Should Not Come Between Us: The 50 Best Songs of 2025 So Far.

• Slant [06-23] The Best Albums of 2025 . . . So Far.

• Spin [06-02] [AOTY] Best Albums of 2025 (So Far).

• Stereogum [06-02] [AOTY] The 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

• Treble [06-10] [AOTY] The 40 Best Albums of 2025 So Far.

Current count: 146 links, 12549 words (14967 total)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 23, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44388 [44357) rated (+31), 24 [27] unrated (-3).

I've got a ton of work to do today, and tomorrow, and probably well into the near future. Music Week is one part of that work, the one that's most tightly scheduled -- is supposed to be done each and every Monday -- but not as important as urgent work on the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025. I sent a batch of invitations out to my jazzpoll [at] hullworks.net list a week ago (back on June 13) offering July 1 as the deadline for submitting lists. I had meant to do list and website maintenance before the mailing, but things got out of hand, so I figured I should go ahead and send out what I had to the list I had (210 members), and catch up later. I'm still working on that. So what I figured I'd do here is to post a Music Week stub, so I can scratch that off my todo list today, and update it later, at which point (probably not today) I'll have more definitive news on the Poll, possibly other projects as well.

I'm omitting the reviews for now. They're all in the June archive. (The Bandcamp pages for my pick hits are also linked on my Bluesky feed.) It wouldn't be a lot of work to dig them out at this point, but their absence underscores that this is just a stub. On the other hand, I thought I could use this space to organize my thoughts on what I need to do today on the Poll. Otherwise I just have this cloud of thoughts clashing around in my brain -- which needless to say is already agitated over the beyond-insane Netanyahu-Trump attack on Iran, probably not the worst thing either has done but the most performatively pointless exercise in self-delusion . . . well, I can't think of a comparison.

But back to basics: Of those 200+ invites, I've received and counted 20 ballots so far. I'm not sure how that compares with past polls, but it doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the invites have been received much less taken seriously. I like this particular mail list because with it all I have to do is compose one message and hit "send" and it goes to everyone. But the list has been a massive headache in the past, because many email providers regard the messages as spam, so they get routed to rarely-checked spam folders and sometimes flat-out rejected. Moreover, it's impossible for me to monitor how much mail is delivered and read, which allows considerable operating room for my paranoia. I had some hope that this year would be better because the list is hosted on a new server and the vendor has a system for maintaining its reputation. But again, I have no metrics showing that is the case. (That is something I need to look into, but that will also be take a lot of time.)

I have an alternate method for sending out invites, which is to use the Thunderbird MailMerge utility to generate individualized emails, which I can then send out one-by-one -- a process which takes several very tedious hours. These messages are much more likely to be delivered. Given the large number of people who never got invites because I hadn't updated the list, I've reluctantly decided I have to do this again this week. I should also resend invitations to the initial list members who have not voted. The largest piece of work here was to figure out who's missing from the two lists. That much I largely got done yesterday -- leaving aside the question of whether invitations should be extended to new people (which is not something I'm terribly worried about). That leaves for today:

1. I need to edit the standard long-form invitation to produce a short-form version. The short-form gets straight to the point, trying to be less intimidating, with less emphasis on the fine points of rules and points, and fewer links that can add to spam scores. The short-form will be the basis of today's mass mailing.

2. I need to check a couple more website files, to make sure the information in them is consistent and coherent. At this point I'm not going to worry about the "-notes" files, which try to provide very detailed explanations of everything. I will still need to work on them after today. I also need to make a programming change to reflect the decision to sort totals on votes and tie-break with points, a reversal from past polls, but that can wait, as the totals aren't public yet. The key point here is that when someone receives an invitation, they need to be able to access the website for further information, including a reference copy of the invite. That's the point of the update.

3. Next thing is to write an email message based on the short-form invite, and run it through MailMerge, which will generate and queue up about 300 messages. (Although the program can send the mail, my ISP will start rejecting messages if sent too quickly. There may be a delay mechanism, but it's unclear how to tune it. Plus there is an advantage to not sending everything automatically.) I can then go through the folder and delete messages to people who don't need them. I can also individually edit the messages, not that I want to. The sent messages can also be used as templates for later invites. I usually send 5-8 messages in series, then take a break for a minute or two before sending the next batch. It takes several hours to send 200 messages.

4. Next I will compose and send a message to the jpadmin mail list, which consists of volunteers who have taken an interest in the Poll. I write to them whenever I do a website update and/or have significant news to share and/or want them to look at something. In this case, it will be the updated website, and the prospective voter list. I can send further invites based on their feedback, as well as my own further research.

5. Finally, I will need to update this Music Week post. More then. Maybe I'll get around to mentioning other projects. Perhaps I'll even come up with my own ballot.

New records reviewed this week:

Sophie Agnel/John Butcher: Rare (2024 [2025], Les Disques Victo): French pianist, released a solo album in 2000, a couple dozen albums since are nearly all shared with other free jazz figures, this the second I see with the British saxophonist. B+(**) [sp]

Sophie Agnel: Song (2022-24 [2025], Relative Pitch): Solo piano, seven songs simply numbered, 41:05 total. B+(*) [sp]

Yves Brouqui: Mean What You Say (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): French guitarist, has several albums since 2002, including a tribute to Horace Silver. This is a quartet with piano (Spike Wilner), bass, and drums, playing three originals, seven standards, including "Besame Mucho," "Caravan," and the title piece from Thad Jones. B+(**) [sp]

Gerald Clayton: Ones & Twos (2025, Blue Note): Pianist, debut 2009, father and uncle are famed as the Clayton Brothers as well as individually (John, Jeff). Title refers to two LP sides and a "turntablist concept" I neither understand nor can hear. Clayton also plays synths and organ, with trumpet (Marquis Hill), vibes (Joel Ross), flute (Elena Pinderhughes), drums (Kendrick Smith), and percussion/post-production by Kassa Overall. B [sp]

Michel Doneda/Lê Quan Ninh/Núria Andorrà: El Retorn De L'Escolta: A La Memòria De Marianne Brull (2023 [2024], Fundacja Słuchaj): French soprano saxophonist (also sopranino here), has a substantial discography going back to 1985, but little I have heard. One 53:32 piece with two percussionists. Brull (1935-2023) was a Swiss-born publisher of anti-Franco literature, who eventually wound up living in Barcelona. B [bc]

Signe Emmeluth/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/Axel Filip: Hyperboreal Trio (2023 [2025], Relative Pitch): Alto sax, bass, drums trio. Distinctive tone, reminds me of Jackie McLean. B+(***) [bc]

Alon Farber Hagiga: Dreams | Dream (2024 [2025], Origin): Israeli saxophonist (soprano/alto/tenor), came to my attention in 2005 with a FSNT release as Hagiga Quintet but had previous albums back to 1996, and continues to use the band name for this sprightly quartet, backed with piano, bass, and drums. B+(**) [cd]

Paul Flaherty: A Willing Passenger (2021 [2025], Relative Pitch): Avant-saxophonist, discography starts in 1982, is fairly substantial by now but he remains a pretty obscure figure. Bandcamp page has a story about a revelatory 2005 duo set with drummer Chris Corsano as part of a protest against GW Bush's second inaugural, called "Noise Against Fascism." This one is solo, alto & tenor, which can be rough going and is unforgiving: as I was my grading of Braxton's legendary For Alto (a D: "perhaps the ugliest thing I've ever heard"). B+(*) [bc]

Danny Grissett: Travelogue (2025, Savant): Mainstream pianist, tenor so albums since 2006, frequent side work (especially with Tom Harrell and Jeremy Pelt). Trio with Vicente Archer (bass) and Bill Stewart (drums), playing his originals and a couple standards. B+(**) [sp]

Kneebody: Reach (2025, GroundUP Music): Jazz group founded by former Eastman students Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), and Ben Wendel (tenor sax), plus Nate Wood (drums, also bass after Kaveh Rastegar left in 2019; this is their first album without him), debut 2005. Not exactly what I would call fusion, but doesn't distinguish itself clearly. B [sp]

Littorina Saxophone Quartet: Leaking Pipes (2024 [2025], NoBusiness): Four saxophonist from the Baltic Sea region: Maria Faust (alto), Mikko Innanen (alto, soprano, baritone), Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano, tenor), and Liudas Mockunas (sopranino, soprano, bass, lugging the latter on the cover pic). All contribute pieces, and they keep them sweet and succinct. B+(***) [cd]

K. Curtis Lyle/George Sams/Adi Du Dharma Joshua Weinstein/Damon Smith/Ra Kalaam Bob Moses/Henry Claude: 29 Birds You Never Heard (2022 [2024], Balance Point Acoustics): Spoken word by the poet, who has a previous album from 1971, two new ones in 2024, a book from 1975, not much more I can find, but he's been around, knows a lot, and has his way with words. Also with music here, backed by trumpet (Sams), bass (Weinstein & Smith), percussion (Moses & Claude). Reminds me of Conjure. A- [bc]

Joe Magnarelli: Concord (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): Mainstream trumpet player, started on Criss Cross in 1998, has close to 20 albums, lots of side credits where he frequents big bands (going back to Buddy Rich and Toshiko Akiyoshi, recently with Mike Holober and Dannyh D'Imperio). Quartet with Victor Gould (piano), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Rodney Green (drums), half originals, half standards. B+(**) [sp]

Mark Masters Ensemble: Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! (2024 [2025], Capri): Big band arranger/leader, debut was Early Start in 1984, features tenor saxophonist Billy Harper playing his own compositions -- they go back, at least to 1991. B+(***) [cd]

Mark Masters Ensemble: Sam Rivers 100 (2023 [2025], Capri): Big band tribute to Sam Rivers (1923-2011), playing his songs on his centennial birthday, with tenor saxophonist Billy Harper again prominent among the soloists. B+(***) [cd]

Camila Nebbia/Kit Downes/Andrew Lisle: Exhaust (2025, Relative Pitch): Tenor saxophonist from Argentina, has been prolific since 2015, joined here with piano and drums. B+(***) [bc]

Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio: Armageddon Flower (2024 [2025], TAO Forms): Avant-saxophonist from Brazil, based in New York, albums start around 1989, recording pace picked up considerably, probably 8-12 albums per year over the last decade. The pianist is his most frequent collaborator, stating with a duo in 1996, plus a trio that year adding William Parker. The string section here consists of Parker and Mat Maneri (viola), who also has duos and trios with Shipp and/or Parker going back to the late 1990s. A- [cd]

Andrew Rathbun: Lost in the Shadows (2025, SteepleChase): Canadian tenor saxophonist, based in Brooklyn but teaches in Kalamazoo, started on Fresh Sound New Talent in 1999, has been a regular here since 2006. Tenth album, a quartet with Nate Radley (guitar), Jay Anderson (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Felipe Salles: Camera Obscura (2024 [2025], Tapestry): Saxophonist (soprano/tenor plus various clarinets/flutes) from Brazil, teaches at UM Amherst, debut 2007. Original pieces, backed by piano (Nando Michelin), bass, drums, and string quartet. B+(**) [cd]

Frank Paul Schubert/Dieter Manderscheid/Martin Blume: Spindrift: Trio Studies (2022 [2025], Jazz Haus Musik): German saxophonist (alto/soprano), with bass and drums. Group has a 2020 album Spindrift, and it was a close judgment call whether to take "Spindrift" as the group name here, or as part of the title (the three artist names follow on a second line; I took the colon on the top line as a hint). B+(***) [sp]

Julian Shore Trio: Sub Rosa (2024 [2025], Chill Tone): Pianist, albums since 2009, trio with bass (Martin Nevin) and drums (Allan Mednard), playing originals plus a couple covers, including one from Brian Wilson. B+(**) [cd]

Ches Smith: Clone Row (2024 [2025], Otherly Love): Drummer, also vibes and electronics, roughly a dozen albums since 2006, last couple on this label have polled well, more side credits, many in interesting circles (Tim Berne, Marc Ribot, John Zorn). Quartet with two guitarists (Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman) plus bass (Nick Dunston). Some remarkable guitar herein, tricky rhythms, etc., so not sure what's holding me back. B+(***) [cd]

Ches Smith: The Self (2023 [2025], Tzadik): "One of the most versatile and in-demand percussionists in the Downtown scene" is a plausible boast. Solo, credit reads: drums, vibraphone, timpani, glockenspiel, chimes, tam-tam, percussion. B+(*) [sp]

Inés Velasco: A Flash of Cobalt Blue (2025, self-released): Composer, from Mexico, studied at Berklee, based in New York, first album, arranged for big band, with narration (title comes from a poem) by Jorge Esquinca and a vocal by Catey Esler. B+(*) [cd]

Dan Weiss Quartet: Unclassified Affections (2024 [2025], Pi): Drummer, composer, many side credits, has led albums since 2008, mostly postbop confections I didn't much care for -- although his 2024 album, Even Odds, proved the exception. He goes for interesting chemistry here, matching last year's poll-winning vibraphone player, Patricia Brennan, with former MOPDTK trumpet player Peter Evans and guitarist Miles Okazaki. B+(***) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Misha Mengelberg/Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects of Confucius (2000 [2025], NoBusiness): Piano and drums duo, recorded in Japan, on the latter's home turf. Coming in my playlist right after dazzling piano from Cecil Taylor and Irène Schweizer, this took a bit longer to sort out, but in the end he won me over. I suppose it's a bit like comparing Monk and Peterson (or maybe even Tatum), an analogy he would most likely find flattering. A- [cd]

Irène Schweizer/Rüdiger Carl/Johnny Dyani/Han Bennink: Irène's Hot Four (1981 [2025], Intakt): Swiss pianist (1941-2024), an astonishing player, especially in her duos with various free jazz drummers -- the ones with Bennink are among the best, but not alone. She started in the 1970s with Carl playing saxophones, clarinet, and accordion. A- [sp]

Cecil Taylor/Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (1988 [2025], Burning Ambulance): "Pioneering avant-garde pianist" (1929-2018), holds the record for most 4-star albums in Penguin Guide, partly because they're so consistent they're hard to sort among, partly because at any given moment the one you're listening to is likely to sound uniquely brilliant. It's easy to pick 1988 as his peak, not least because he recorded so much in Berlin that year. Duo with drums, one of many that year but Oxley was the one he worked with most in later years, and good reasons for that. A- [bc]

Old music:

Kenny Burrell With Art Blakey: On View at the Five Spot Café (1959 [1960], Blue Note): Guitarist, made his debut in 1956, recorded intensively through the 1960s and regularly up to 2016, at which point he was 85. Live album here was expanded for its 1987 CD, and has just reappeared in a 2-CD/3-LP Complete Takes set, but this stream just covers the 1960 LP release. With Tina Brooks (tenor sax), Ben Tucker (bass), the featured drummer, and either Bobby Timmons or Roland Hanna on piano. B+(*) [sp]

K. Curtis Lyle: The Collected Poem/For Blind Lemon Jefferson (1971, Mbari): Poet, from Los Angeles, in 1966 a founding member of the Watts Writers Workshop, later moved to St. Louis, where he met Julius Hemphill, who accompanies him on this, the only album attributed to him before two new ones in 2024. (Turns out he has a few side credits on albums by Hemphill, Baikida Carroll, and Oliver Lake.) B+(**) [yt]

Grade (or other) changes:

Wolf Eyes X Anthony Braxton: Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023 (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Edit to artist credit/title/recording date, reflecting some fine print I had missed. Original review is here. May deserve a revisit. Turns out this is not their only recording together. B+(*) [cd]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Jacob Garchik: Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time (Yestereve) [08-29]
• The Haas Company Featuring Jerry Goodman: Thirteen (Psychiatric) [08-01]
• Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch) [06-13]
• Jason Kao Hwang: Myths of Origin (True Sound) [07-07]
• Kaze & Koichi Makigami: Shishiodoshi (Circum/Libra) [07-11]
• Billy Lester Trio: High Standards (Ultra Sound) [09-12]
• Los Angeles Improvisation Ensemble: Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions (Denouement) [03-26]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44357 [44332) rated (+25), 27 [32] unrated (-5).

I made the cutover in reasonable time on Monday, but didn't get anything written until late, so this will be posted late. Big thing I've been doing is a fairly massive reorganization of what I refer to as the woodpile. We did a major renovation of the kitchen/dining area roughly 15 years ago, and it produced a lot of scrap wood that's been piled up in the basement ever since. Moreover, there is quite a bit of wood in the garage: one wall as a rack for stick lumber, and the opposite wall has a cage that I built that holds 4x8 sheets (plywood, MDF, underlayment, paneling, etc.), and there are lesser scraps of everything. As the woodworking tools are mostly in the garage, I wanted to move the wood from the basement to the garage and a nearby shed. That's involved building more storage for odd bits. I've averaged several hours a day on this for a couple weeks. Progress is slow, as everything gets harder the older one gets. But I'm hopeful of getting the wood sorted and moved by the end of the week. Next step beyond that will be building a kiosk that can be used as a staging area for recycling. Other storage projects are likely to follow, as well as a serious effort to sort the tools and hardware. And books and CDs, which are by far the largest categories.

Meanwhile, I've sent out a round of invitations to the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025. I'm still way behind on cleaning up the website, and perhaps more urgently on checking the mailing lists, which I suspect are missing a number of 2024 voters. I have three ballots counted so far, but another 10-12 sitting in my inbox. Deadline is June 30, so we still have a fair amount of time. I'm already finding new records I wasn't aware of. [PS: Trying to close this Tuesday evening, I have 10 ballots counted, with 2 more uncounted, and a similar number of promises, plus 2 notes from usually reliable voters regretting (or perhaps just thinking) they'll skip this round. Thus far we have votes for 106 albums (75 new, 31 old), 29 of which weren't previously in my tracking file, which previously stood at 502 jazz albums. The 2024 jazz tracking file wound up with 1572 albums.]

Two upgrades this week from Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide. I already had the Buck 65 and Willie Nelson albums at A-, and Tune-Yards at B+(*). I still have more work to do there (Arcade Fire, Ghost Wolves, Girl Scout, Justin Golden, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Bruce Springsteen). I've added the MY lists at AOTY into my Metacritic file, but haven't yet gone looking for more trouble. One list I'm aware of but haven't catalogued yet is the set from RiotRiot: Albums (30-11); Albums (10-1); and Songs.

I got rained out on Tuesday. We had a pretty severe storm blow through around 5 AM, which took down a lot of small limbs. The rain finally let up when I got up around 9, so after breakfast I opened the garage/shed up to work, but wound up spending a couple hours just picking up limbs, cuting them up, and packing them into the newly emptied trash can. I quit when I ran out of space, having not even started on the back yard. I broke for lunch, counted a few ballots, kept meaning to get back to it, until I heard thunder and had to pack everything back up. Still raining as I write this.

Tomorrow's going to be disrupted by a dentist appointment, and whatever I feel like doing after as opposed to coming home to work. I did manage to listen to some stuff today, kicking off with three straight A- albums under old music. They're not in Music Week yet, but are in the June archive if you care to go there (link up top). What I will do is refer you to the Loose Tabs draft file, which has two long sections, one on Israel as a revolutionary experience, another on the "abundance" political pitch.

So much shit is happening in the world these days that it's hard to just ignore it all, especially when it's so easy to see the delusions people in power are acting on. There is absolutely no sense to be made out of Israel's attack on Iran, nor is there any sense to be made out of Trump's willingness to take credit for starting the war. Netanyahu is effectively demanding that Iran finally fulfill his prophecy and build and use the nuclear weapons he claims he's trying to safeguard against. Still, the only realistic defense against nuclear war is peace, which is the one option Netanyahu is unwilling (or unable) to consider. Sure, it's possible that Iran will never take the bait, but who's going to admit that just proves how wrong Netanyahu has always been.

The real message that Israel is sending is their intention to do things so horrific that other nations will be so repulsed they may be driven to unthinkable measures just to stop them. The last time any nation has worked so hard to turn the world against them was Germany and Japan in starting WWII. (Even there, it is sobering to note that it wasn't genocide against Jews that motivated the UK, USSR, and USA to fight Germany and Japan, but direct attacks against their own imperialist interests.) It will be much harder for Israel to provoke devastating reaction this time, because most sensible people are wary of entering into war, especially to stop an arsenal of nuclear weapons. That seems to be part of their calculation for aggression.

When we look back at all this, we should realize that BDS was an opportunity to peacefully but firmly remind Israel that there must be limits to abusing the powers of a nation to inflict suffering on one's own people and others. It failed because Israel was able to organize corrupt support from the US and Europe, and in doing so, especially with "blank check" support from Trump and Biden, has only fed the arrogance of Israeli politicians, including some who were until recently regarded as criminals within Israel -- not a coincidence that America installed another escaped criminal as president.

PPS: Just as I was getting ready to post this late Tuesday evening, the internet went out, pushing this post into Wednesday. It stayed out all night, but was working by noon today. By then, I took a look at what I had written, and decided to add a few more words on Israel and Trump. One more point: both are convinced that the harder they get hit, the more their people will rally to their support -- a conceit that makes they especially reckless, especially given their inability to see that Iran's leaders understand that just as well. It was, after all, Hitler who turned Stalin and Churchill into heroes, erasing their long and lamentable histories of misrule.

New records reviewed this week:

Aya: Hexed! (2025, Hyperdub): British electronic music producer, last name Sinclair, second album under this name, released a previous one as Loft. Leans into metal toward the end. B [sp]

Hannah Cohen: Earthstar Mountain (2025, Bella Union/Congrats): Singer-songwriter from San Francisco, based in New York, fourth album since 2012. B+(*) [sp]

Michika Fukumori: Eternity (2023 [2025], Summit): Japanese pianist, moved to New York in 2000, fourth album since 2004, a trio with Steve Whipple (bass) and Adam Nussbaum (drums). Opens with seven originals, then stretches out with some covers (Kurt Weill, Fats Waller, a mashup of Chopin and Jobim, "Be My Love"). B+(***) [cd]

Ms. Ezra Furman: Goodbye Small Head (2025, Bella Union): Singer-songwriter, led band albums 2007-11, solo efforts since then, some seemed notable at the time although I can't say as I recall any of them. Too much of a mixed bag for me to try to sort out, but some interesting stuff if you care. (One track reminds me that Furman wrote a 33-1/3 book about Lou Reed's Transformer album.) B+(**) [sp]

Alexander Hawkins: Song Unconditional (2024 [2025], Intakt): British pianist, quite a few albums since 2008, this one solo. B+(**) [sp]

Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: How the Dust Falls (2025, Auricle): Japanese pianist, based in Ireland (which she's incorporated into past work), a second duo with the drummer -- they also have two trios with Barry Guy, all recommended. B+(***) [cd]

James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Abstraction Is Deliverance (2024 [2025], Intakt): Poll-winning tenor saxophonist, well-established quartet with Aruán Ortiz (piano), Brad Jones (bass), and Chad Taylor (drums) -- their fifth album. This starts out sounding like a hitherto unknown Coltrane masterpiece. It doesn't develop much beyond that level, but how much can anyone ask for? A- [sp]

Carol Liebowitz/Nick Lyons: The Inner Senses (2023 [2025], SteepleChase LookOut): Piano and alto sax duo, both very measured and precise. B+(***) [cd]

Lifeguard: Ripped and Torn (2025, Matador): Indie/postpunk band from Chicago, Asher Case the singer-bassist, second album. B [sp]

Ramon Lopez: 40 Springs in Paris (2024 [2025], RogueArt): Spanish drummer, moved to Paris in 1985, has dozens of co- and side-credits since 1992, including a solo album in 1998. This, again, is solo. B+(**) [cdr]

Momma: Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, Lucky Number/Polyvinyl): Dream pop band, led by Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten (both guitars, vocals, "additional instrumentation"), fourth album since 2018. Pretty much what I imagine the new Garbage album will sound like. B+(**) [sp]

Greg Murphy: Snap Happy (2024 [2025], Whaling City Sound): Pianist, eighth album since 2004, mostly trio with Obasi Akoto (basses) and Steve Johns (drums), plus guitar (Mark Whitfield) on three tracks, and a vocal (Sy Smith) on one. B+(**) [cd]

Billy Nomates: Metalhorse (2025, Invada): English singer-songwriter Tor Maries, first album (2020) was clearly influenced by Sleaford Mods, third album here is much more easy-going. B+(**) [sp]

Ploy: It's Later Than You Think (2025, Dekmantel): British tech house producer Sam Smith, second album, other releases and mixes going back to 2016, hits a nice spot and sticks there. B+(**) [sp]

Scowl: Are We All Angels (2025, Dead Oceans): Postpunk band from Santa Cruz, Kat Moss is the singer, second album after a couple of EPs. This has some real heft. B+(***) [sp]

Sherelle: With a Vengeance (2025, Method 808): Last name Thomas, first album after several singles/EPs/DJ mixes. Experts tab this as a cross between footwork and jungle. I'm not one, but that sounds about right. One vocal piece shows some potential that could be extended, but the hard fast beats suffice. B+(***) [sp]

Bartees Strange: Horror (2025, 4AD): American singer-songwriter, grew up in Oklahoma, originally Bartees Cox Jr., third album. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

African Jazz Invites O.K. Jazz (1961-70 [2025], Planet Ilunga): Vintage Congo soukous, designed for 4 LP sides, 28 tracks total, two batches credited to L'O.K. Jazz (Franco Luambo), one to L'African Jazz (Joseph Kabasele, aka Le Grande Kallé), the batch called "The African Jazz school - Style Fiesta 1961-1970" the only one with pieces that stretch beyond 3:00. B+(***) [bc]

Dave Burrell/Sam Woodyard: The Lost Session: Paris 1979 (1979 [2025], NoBusiness): Avant pianist, known on occasion to look back with delight, at the moment he was coming off an excellent Plays Ellington and Monk and a Lush Life I haven't heard, and would later go on to The Jelly Roll Joys. Here he's in a duo with Ellington's longtime drummer, whose name rarely shows up in sluglines. Mostly originals, some of which could be vintage rags, but they work in "Lush Life," "Sentimental Lady," and "Embraceable You." A- [cd]

Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea: 1974 & 1976 (1974-76 [2025], NoBusiness): Alto saxophonist (1931-86), best known for his work with Cecil Taylor, but his own albums are almost all worth checking out, and this one is crackling: two improv sets (27:52 and 26:10), the first with Karen Borca (bassoon), Hayes Burnett (bass), and Henry Letcher (drums), the second with Syd Smart (drums) and Burnett again. A- [cd]

Motoharu Yoshizawa/Kim Dae Hwan: Way of the Breeze (1993 [2025], NoBusiness): Japanese bassist (1931-98), credited here with "homemade electric vertical 5-strings bass," duo with Korean free jazz percussionist (1933-2003), who takes charge early with one of the most striking drum solos I've heard lately. Gets more complicated further on. A- [cd]

Old music:

Docteur Nico: Dieu De La Guitare (1954-70 [2018], Planet Ilunga): Famed Congolese guitarist Nicolas Kasanda (1939-85), started with Joseph Kabasele's L'African Jazz, split in 1963 with Rochereau to lead L'Orchestra African Fiesta. He left a couple hundred singles under variations of his nickname. B+(***) [bc]

Muriel Grossmann: Universal Code (2022 [2023], RR Gems): Saxophonist (soprano/alto/tenor), born in Paris, parents Austrian, based in Ibiza, heavily influenced by Coltrane's spiritual jazz tangent, a formula hard to resist. I missed this one, backed with guitar (Radomir Milojkovic), organ (Llorenç Barceló), drums (Uros Stamenkovic), and bass (Gina Schwarz, 3 of 9 tracks). B+(**) [bc]

Resilient Vessels: Live at the Cell (2020 [2021], RR Gems): Live set, from a residency organized by visual artist Josh Werner, who also plays bass here in a quartet with James Brandon Lewis (sax), Patrick Holmes (clarinet), and Ches Smith (drums). Pretty scintilating -- an element I missed in Lewis's new, but otherwise excellent, album. A- [bc]

Grade (or other) changes:

Robert Forster: Strawberries (2025, Tapete): Australian singer-songwriter, one of two in the Go-Betweens (1978-90), went solo after that, and seems to have excelled at recapturing the group's sound since Grant McClennan's death in 2006. This hits the spot more often than not. [was: B+(***)] A- [sp]

Lambrini Girls: Who Let the Dogs Out (2025, City Slang): British punk duo, started by others but here a duo of Phoebe Lunny (lead vocals/guitar) and Lilly Macieira-Bosgelmez (bass guitar/backing vocals), plus drums. First album after several singles and an EP I liked, 11 songs (29:25). This got enough hype I noticed it right away, but obviously didn't pay enough attention. Sound alone should have been good for a boost, even before deciphering the earned rage. [was: B+(*)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alchemy Sound Project/Sumi Tonooka: Under the Surface (ARC) [06-27]
• Ryan Keberle & Collectiv Do Brasil: Choro Das Aguas (Alternate Side) [07-18]
• Wheelhouse: House and Home (Aerophonic) [07-22]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 9, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44332 [44300) rated (+32), 32 [23] unrated (+9).

I published a Loose Tabs on Wednesday, June 4. I've added an article index, which is useful if you want to link to a specific section. I've fixed a couple typos, edited a tiny bit, and added some more reviews of the Jake Tapper book, although nothing I find all that revealing. [PS: I added some more reviews/notes on 06-10.] If I did have to do the research, the question I'd want to find an answer to is how the people advising Biden fail to recognize that his persistent low polling after leaving Afghanistan -- which should have been a big plus after 20+ years of repeated failure -- was a problem that Biden simply wasn't articulate and/or empathetic enough to talk his way out of.

I've really avoided working up any new material since posting, so the current scratch file doesn't have much, and isn't likely to for a while. There is so much really dreadful crap going on that it's hard to know where to begin, and harder still to decide when to stop. I will say that overhearing some 10-15 minutes of Fox News spin on Trump's deployment of national guard to quell "riots" in California was enough to convince me that Trump is picking this fight because he believes it generates reactions that he believes will help him (and hurt Democrats) politically. And it's not really even immigration policy where he thinks he has the advantage. What turns him and his fans on is the action, underscored by the performative cruelty. It doesn't really matter how many people he deports -- Biden and Obama generally topped his counts -- but how people perceive his commitment and toughness.

Not much to say about music here. I got a lot of the records below from Phil Overeem's list, plus the latest batch of reviews by Dan Weiss, and what I've picked up from the first few mid-year lists that I've factored into my metacritic file:

• Consequence [06-02] [AOTY] The 30 Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Exclaim [06-02] [AOTY] Exclaim!'s 25 Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Rolling Stone [06-05] [AOTY] The Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Stereogum [06-02] [AOTY] The 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far

New today and not counted yet: The Fader; Paste; Spin. Rolling Stone started off their list in typical form: "What a year it's been for great music -- as opposed to, say, everything else." But looking at my metacritic file, I'm not all that impressed: while my tastes rarely align with the critical consensus, the current top five strike me as exceptionally weak: FKA Twigs (*), Bon Iver (**), Japanese Breakfast (*), Horsegirl (**), Lady Gaga (***). Beyond that: Julien Baker & Torres (***), Mogwai (*), Black Country New Road (B), Lambrini Girls (*), Sharon Van Etten (*). Granted, I have five A- records between 14-20 (Lucy Dacus, The Delines, Craig Finn, Billy Woods, Jason Isbell). But my scale is skewed to favor records I like (also Robert Christgau and some of his close followers), and he has all but the thus-far-unreviewed Woods at A- or higher.

Speaking of mid-year polls, I'm thinking about running a jazz critics one, as I did in 2024. If so, I really should get invites out this week, with a June 30 deadline and an early-July publication date. Setting up the website should be easy enough, and firing off the mail list is easy if it works. (Last year it didn't work very well, but I have a new server this time, and supposedly it comes with a better reputation, although over-aggressive spam filters are still a risk.) One good reason for doing this would be to force me to do some prep work for the end-of-year poll.

Downside is that a lot of people who will vote in the annual poll aren't really up for a mid-year poll. But we got 90 ballots last year -- albeit only after a lot of laborious nagging -- and that produced some very useful information. And while I'm unimpressed with the non-jazz so far this year, this seems to be shaping up as a typically solid year for new jazz releases (although maybe not yet for rara avis). I haven't split my 2025 list into jazz and non-jazz yet, but I have a healthy 56 A/A- albums so far, which on first pass are evenly split 28-28.

I've been putting a fair amount of time into household tasks, which will continue for the foreseeable future. Big project this week has been to clean and reorganize the garage and shed, where along with much junk I have a lot of scrap lumber. I'm making slow but fairly steady progress, but it's taking a lot of time from my listening and writing, so things like the planning documents have been suffering.

New records reviewed this week:

Yugen Blakrok: The Illusion of Being (2025, IOT): South African rapper, third album since 2013. B+(***) [sp]

Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (2025, Matador): Indie band from Virginia, principally singer-songwriter Will Toledo, 13th album since 2010 per Wikipedia (first 8 were DIY, so 5th album on Matador since 2015 is more like it, with one of those a dupe from early days). Billed as a "rock opera," running 70:32 (or 127:47 deluxe), so no surprise that that I'm not able to focus enough to follow or care, but this is pretty consistently listenable, and may merit more serious consideration. B+(**) [sp]

Central Cee: Can't Rush Greatness (2025, CC4L/Columbia): British rapper Oakley Caesar-Su, first studio album after a couple mixtapes. Can't just idle around either. B+(**) [sp]

Sarah Mary Chadwick: Take Me Out to a Bar/What Am I, Gatsby? (2025, Kill Rock Stars): Singer-songwriter from New Zealand, based in Melbourne, 11th album since 2012 (per Discogs), one noted by Christgau in 2021. This one barely, with slow speak over spare piano, barely registers . . . until "I'm Not Clinging to Life," where she fights back. Interesting character, but music not so much. B [sp]

The Convenience: Like Cartoon Vampires (2025, Winspear): Indie rock guitar/drums duo from New Orleans, Nick Corson and Duncan Troast, second album, moves along. B+(**) [sp]

Cosmic Ear: Traces (2025, We Jazz): New free jazz group, mostly well known Scandinavians remembering and revering Don Cherry: Christer Bothén (bass/contrabass clarinet, ngoni, piano); Mats Gustafsson (tenor sax, flutes, clarinets, electronics, organ, harmonica); Goran Kajfes (trumpets, electronics); Kansan Zetterberg (bass, ngoni); Juan Romero (percussion, berimbau, congas); with "special guest" Manane N Lemwo (kangnan). A- [sp]

Amalie Dahl: Breaking/Building Habits (2024 [2025], SauaJazz): Danish alto saxophonist, based in Oslo, has several albums with her group Dafnie, this a quartet with guitar (Viktor Bomstad), vibes (Viktoria Holde Søndergaard), and drums (Tore Ljøkelsøy). The percussion is especially striking here. A- [bc]

Dickson & Familiar: All the Light of Our Sphere (2024 [2025], Sounds Familiar): Glenn Dickson (clarinet) and Bob Familiar (synthesizer) create ambient music that is complex and radiant, and possibly a bit tiresome. B+(**) [cd]

DJ Shaun-D: From Bubbling to Dutch House (2025, Nyege Nyege Tapes): As best I can tell, a Dutch electronica producer, born in The Hague, father Dutch, mother "Caribbean," may have some records as Shaun D and/or DJ Shaun -- De Schuurman, whose 2024 Bubbling Forever has much the same appeal, cites him as an influence, so presumably he's a bit older. B+(***) [sp]

Rocio Giménez López/Franco Di Renzo/Luciano Ruggieri: La Forma Del Sueño (2023 [2025], Blue Art): Pianist, from Argentina, fifth album since 2017, with bass and drums, playing a selection of jazz classics from Rollins, Parker, Coleman, Coltrane, Peacock, Monk, and Ellington. B+(***) [sp]

K. Curtis Lyle/Jaap Blonk/Alex Cunningham/Damon Smith/Kevin Cheli: A Radio of the Body (2024, Balance Point Acoustics): Lyle is a poet, originally from Los Angeles, was a founder of the Watts Writers Workshop in 1966, moved to St. Louis and recorded an album in 1971 with Julius Hemphill, but that seems to be all until this and another 2024 album. Blonk is a well-known Dutch vocalist and electronics/sound artist, and the others play violin, bass, and drums. B+(***) [sp]

Madre Vaca: Yukon (2025, Madre Vaca): Originally a quartet from Jacksonville, sixth album, now styles itself as a collective, but still a quartet on this sixth album, with three founders -- Jarrett Carter (guitar), Jonah Pierre (keyboards), and Benjamin Shorstein (drums) -- joined by Thomas Milovac (bass), who wrote 3 (of 8 songs; Carter 3, Pierre 2). B+(***) [cd]

Mean Mistreater: Do or Die (2025, Dying Victims Productions): Hard rock/heavy metal band from Austin, second album, cover couldn't be anything else even if the most conspicuous metal is just calcium. Janiece Gonzalez is the singer, with two guitars, bass, and drums. B+(*) [bc]

Ela Minus: Día (2025, Domino): Singer-songwriter from Colombia, studied at Berklee, now based in Brooklyn, second album, electropop (more or less), the catchiest refrain going "I'd love to save you but you've got to save yourself." B+(**) [sp]

MonoNeon: You Had Your Chance - Bad Attitude (2025, Floki Studios): Bassist Dywane Eric Thomas Jr., from Memphis, more than a dozen albums since 2012, some experimental/jazz, but this one is a set of eight idiosyncratic funk tunes (29:30) -- imagine Swamp Dogg starting with Prince instead of Muscle Shoals. B+(*) [bc]

Joe Morris/Elliott Sharp: Realism (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Two guitarists, the former also credited with "effects," the latter with "electronics," both have been on the fringe since it was called "avant-garde" (hype sheet says since 1983 and 1979, respectively). This sums their life's work up admirably. A- [cd]

Mourning [A] BLKstar: Flowers for the Living (2025, Don Giovanni): Cleveland group, formed 2015 by RA Washington and LaRoya Kent, fifth album, has soul and gospel in its history, jazz and electronics in its toolkit. B+(**) [sp]

Nao: Jupiter (2025, Little Tokyo): English neo-soul singer-songwriter Neo Jessica Joshua, fourth album since 2016. Choice cut: "Happy People." B+(***) [sp]

The Onions: Return to Paradise (2025, Hitt): Pop/rock band from Columbia, Missouri, (3) in Discogs, second album after a 2015 debut, the kind of band that would cover "Wonderful Wonderful" as surfer or maybe bubblegum but owes more to Les Baxter than to Chuck Berry. C+ [bc]

Sverre Sæbo Quintet: If, However, You Have Not Lost Your Self Control (2025, SauaJazz): Norwegian bassist, has a couple side credits but this looks to be his first as leader. All original pieces, quintet with three horns -- Heidi Kvelvane (alto sax/clarinet), Aksel Røed (baritone/tenor sax/clarinet), Andreas H. Hatzikiriakidis (trumpet) -- and drums (Amund Nordstrøm). B+(**) [bc]

Samia: Bloodless (2025, Grand Jury): Indie pop singer-songwriter, full name adds Najimy Finnerty, after parents who are actors of some note. Third album. B+(***) [sp]

The Sharp Pins: Radio DDR (2025, K/Perennial Death): Young (20) singer-songwriter from Chicago, also records as Lifeguard Dwaal Troupe, and A Towering Raven; this, after a couple DIY releases, seems to be the jangle pop project. My first impulse was to reject it, but then I started hearing things -- derivative, perhaps, not enough to stick with, but there could be something here. B+(*) [sp]

Deborah Silver/The Count Basie Orchestra: Basie Rocks! (2025, Green Hill): The singer has a previous album from 2016 called The Gold Standards, which are indeed good ol' good 'uns. The ghost band is directed by Scotty Barnhart these days, but no names jump out at me, at least until I find Patience Higgins in the "additional musicians," but the featured musicians are well known, including George Coleman and Wycliffe Gordon. I also recognize the songs, which run (chronologically) from "A Hard Day's Night" to "Every Breath You Take," most swung mightily to little avail -- "Tainted Love," "Band on the Run," "Joy to the World," and "Fly Like an Eagle" are beyond help, and "Paint It Black" is worse. Only song where they came up with a revealing new take was "Life's Been Good." B [cd]

Um, Jennifer?: Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark (2025, Final Girl): New York-based indie rock duo, Fig and Eli, offer "love-drunk and hate-fueled hallucinations," but also "a whimsical view of transness." B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

The Bitter Ends: The Bitter Ends (2022 [2025], Trouble in River City): St. Louis garage rock band, although I'd pinpoint their origins in 1960s punk, still richer melodically than 1970s punk or 1980s hardcore because they listened to AM and knew a hook when they stole one, but were definitely heading toward a rowdier and noisier future, with no real sense of how postmodernism would relativize everything. Most of this would fit right into Nuggets. Originally self-released, so technically a reissue. A- [bc]

Mazinga: Chinese Democracy Manifest: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (2024 [2025], Rubber Wolf?): Punk band from Ann Arbor, Discogs credits them with one previous album (1999), some singles/EPs (1997-2000, 2008). Bandcamp has some more singles/EPs from 2012 and 2024, as well as a 1996-2008 compilation. This looks like another comp: I can source 5 (of 10 songs) to 2024 releases, leaving 5 more unaccounted for (total 26:11). B+(***) [sp]

Sweet Rebels: The Golden Era of Algerian Pop-Raï: The Ecstatic Electro Sound of Original Raï Cassettes 1986-1991 (1986-91 [2025], We Want Sounds): Algerian music, dates back to the 1920s but developed explosively in the 1980s, especially in Oran, before Islamic fundamentalism and civil war tore Algeria apart (1991-2002), driving many musicians abroad. I was first introduced to the music with Earthworks' 1988 compilation, Raï Rebels, which includes several of the artists here, in this compilation of eight rare cassettes that works just as well. B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

Amalie Dahl/Henrik Sandstad Dalen/Jomar Jeppsson Søvik: Fairytales for Daydreamers (2022 [2023], Nice Things): Danish alto saxophonist, based in Oslo, free jazz with bass and drums. A 43:41 piece called "Chapter I" and a 12:05 encore called "Chapter II." B+(*) [sp]

Amalie Dahl: Memories (2023, Sonic Transmissions): Alto saxophonist, first solo album, four tracks, 32:15. B+(*) [sp]

Amalie Dahl/Jomar Jeppsson Søvik/Henrik Sandstad Dalen: Live in Europe (2023 [2024], Nice Things): Two trio sets a week apart, one from Prague (March 3), the other Brussels (March 10). B+(**) [sp]

Andy Haas/David Grollman: Act of Love (2023, Resonant Music, EP): Saxophone and percussion duo, Grollman also credited with balloon and voice -- reading poems written by his late wife, Rita Stein-Grollman, who died early 2023 from "the cruelties of the [Early Onset] Alzheimer's Disease." Short (7 tracks, 17:34) and rather harrowing, or perhaps cathartic. B+(*) [bc]

Les Rallizes Denudés: Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes ([2003], bootleg): Japanese experimental noise band, formed in 1967, active through 1988 and again from 1993-96, parts of their discography have appeared on Temporal Drift since 2021, including a live tape I've heard, Citta' '93, and evidently there is much more in the works: AOTY has a list of "86 Bootlegs (+7 unsorted dates/audience recordings), of which this item has been singled out by Phil Freeman for a AMG review (****), and which popped up on a Phil Overeem list, and is accessible on YouTube (full album, no track information or dates, 54:06). Presumably this was recorded somewhat earlier -- shortly before or after their hiatus is a fair guess. The historical uncertainty and lack of commercial packaging bothers me, as that's necessarily a part of my job reviewing, so I'm inclined to hedge. Also I'm not wild about the closing amplifier feedback, but for a long while, you could describe this as drawing a line from the Velvet Underground through Pulnoc and on toward oblivion, and that's interesting both as concept and revelation. B+(***) [yt]

Mazinga: Mazinga (1999, Reanimator): Ann Arbor punk group, first album after a couple singles/EPs, recorded less after 2000, with more singles/EPs in 2008, 2012, and 2024. Fifteen fast ones, 37:30, including a cover of "Mongoloid" (Devo), although I'm less happy that it's followed up with one called "That Yellow Bastard," but the closer ("No Rewards") helps. B+(*) [bc]

Deborah Silver: The Gold Standards (2016, Deborah Silver): Last heard fronting the Basie ghost orchestra in their romp through a batch of rock-era pop songs that will never become jazz standards, she presented the voice and phrasing of a capable standards singer, so I thought I'd check out this debut (and so far only other) album, where the standards are indeed golden -- "The Nearness of You," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Slow Boat to China," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "I Could Write the Book," etc. Alan Broadbent plays piano and arranged for a big band that's short on brass but long on reeds. She's about as good as I expected, but still this comes up a bit short. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Benny Benack III: This Is the Life (Bandstand Presents) [06-27]
• Dave Burrell/Sam Woodyard: The Lost Session: Paris 1979 (NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Ran Blake/Claire Ritter: Eclipse Orange (2019, Zoning)
• Anita Donndorff: Thirsty Soul (Fresh Sound New Talent) [06-06]
• Noah Haidu: Standards III (Sunnyside) [06-06]
• Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: How the Dust Falls (Auricle) [05-20]
• Litorina Saxophone Quartet: Leaking Pipes (NoBusiness) [05-16]
• Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea: 1974 & 1976 (NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Misha Mengelberg/Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects of Confucius (2000, NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Claire Ritter: Songs of Lumière (Zoning) [01-01]
• Jeff Walton: Pack Animals (none) [06-27]
• John Yao and His 17 Piece Instrument: Points in Time (See Tao) [07-11]
• Motoharu Yoshizawa/Kim Dae Hwan: Way of the Breeze (1993, NoBusiness) [05-02]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

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 21 days ago, on May 14.

I started this shortly after the last one, but added very little to it during the last week of May, before trying to wrap it up on June 3 (bleeding into June 4). Rereading the older material led to some editing and expansion, while the latter material is as slapdash and disorganized as ever, and I'm undoubtedly leaving more scraps on the table than I can possibly deal with in the moment.

PS: Posting this Wednesday afternoon, without the "index to major articles" or postscript, which I may try to add later. More loose tabs still open, and I'm finding more all the time, but I desperately need to break off and do some other work, and keep this from becoming an infinite time sink.

Ben Smith [04-27] The group chats that changed America. Evidently there's a whole world of private group chats dominated by billionaires -- Mark Andreessen's name keeps popping up -- where the affairs of the world are being hashed out (e.g., Group chats rule the world), far removed from public political discourse. Should we be surprised that these people are mostly fatuous assholes, with their experience of the world completely removed from almost everyone's daily life?

Jill Lepore [04-28] A Hundred Classics to Get Me Through a Hundred Days of Trump: "Each morning before the day's decree, I turn to a slim book, hoping for sense, or solace." I'm not sure that the framing of short, classic books helps much, although any connection to the known world could have helped one get through the days. But the history of those 100 days seemed pretty well thought out, until I got to this:

Trump won the Presidency in a free and fair election with a mandate to curb inflation, restrict immigration, cut taxes, support small businesses, and reverse progressive overreach, especially in employment and education. From his first day in office, he set about dismantling much of both the federal government and the Constitution's system of checks and balances. By declarations of national emergency, by executive order, and by executive action -- and frequently in plain violation of the Constitution -- Trump gutted entire departments of the federal government. He defied the federal judiciary. He rescinded funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. He lifted regulations across industries. He fired, forced the resignations of, or eliminated the jobs of tens of thousands of federal employees. He hobbled scientific research. He all but criminalized immigration. He denounced the arts. He abandoned the federal government's commitment to public education. He revoked civil rights and shuttered civil-rights programs, deriding the goals of racial equality, gender equality, and L.G.B.T.Q. equality. He made enemies of American allies, and prostituted the United States to the passions of tyrants. He punished his adversaries and delighted in their suffering. He tried to bring universities to heel. He bent law firms to his will. He instituted tariffs and toppled markets; he lifted tariffs and toppled markets. He debased the very idea of America. He created chaos, emergency after emergency.

Trump felled so much timber not because of the mightiness of his axe but because of the rot within the trees and the weakness of the wood. Many of the institutions Trump attacked, from the immigration system to higher education, were those whose leaders and votaries knew them to be broken and yet whose problems they had failed to fix, or even, publicly, to acknowledge. Now is not the time to admit to these problems, leaders -- from Democratic Party officials to C.E.O.s, intellectuals, university presidents, and newspaper editors -- had advised, for years, because this is an emergency. They refused to denounce the illiberalism of speech codes, the lack of due process in the #MeToo movement and Title IX cases, mandatory D.E.I. affirmations as a condition of employment, and the remorseless political intolerance of much of the left. Even after Trump won reëlection on a promise to destroy those institutions, they refused to admit to their problems, presumably because his victory made the emergency even emergencier.

This starts off ok, although "free and fair" aren't the first words I'd choose to describe the 2024 election. And while Trump had campaigned on that issue list, his promises were rarely more specific than "Trump will fix it." Sure, a lot of people placed blind faith in his leadership, but nearly as many recoiled from the prospect in horror. If by mandate you mean popular support for his actual policies, that's quite a stretch. The second half of the first paragraph does provide a nice thumbnail sketch of what he actually did, but it was virtually all by executive fiat, and cost him a good 5 points in approval rating.

The second half goes awry with the list of "leaders," which could be designated the Establishment Democrats. While it is certainly true that they refused to admit some obvious problems -- the main ones I would group as Inequality and War -- they seemed pretty satisfied with the status quo, and campaigned on keeping things as they currently were, or were going. The word "emergency" causes much confusion here. They used the word to gain a bit of legal leverage to go around an obstructionist Congress that they couldn't win and hold, partly due to gerrymandering but mostly due to poor political messaging. On the other hand, Trump used the word to describe a purely imaginary existential terror, which only he can fix because only he can right the propaganda machine that sold the idea to the gullible masses, but which he has little intention of fixing once he discovered the extra powers presidents can claim during "emergencies."

Still, where does the second half of the second paragraph come from? So we're going to blame the failure of the Establishment Democrats to defend their ivory towers and executive suites from Trumpian chaos on "the remorseless political intolerance of much of the left"? The left has never been in any position to dictate establishment policy. If they bought into #MeToo or D.E.I., it's because they had their own reasons. Perhaps they saw them as sops to the left, or to the people the left tries to advocate for? Or maybe they were just diversions from the more important matters of Inequality and War, which produced much of the rot Trump is inadvertently disrupting.

For what it's worth, I don't especially disagree with the anti-woke critique, just with the blame heaped on the left for pushing the anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ableist, etc., lines too far. If for some reason the powers-that-be overreact and "cancel" some racist/sexist/whatever jerk, why do we have to be the ones condemning illiberalism and demanding due process? Why do we have to pull our punches and defend free speech for Nazis? (And note that the ACLU actually does that, as that is their mission, and most of us support them for that.) I'm open to engaging in the left's perpetual practice of self-criticism, but sure, I can get a bit squirmish when admonished for the same faults by smarmy liberals, and even more so by outright fascists, possibly because they find it impossible to criticize the left without projecting their own sense of superiority.

But while much of what Trump has done in his first (and by no means his last) 100 days should be simply and resolutely undone, I wouldn't advise reflexively undoing everything. I don't doubt that there are bureaucrats who shouldn't be taken back, and dead wood programs that we're better off without, as well as much more that would benefit from a fresh rethink. I wouldn't rush to restore DEI programs, but I would restore the DOJ Civil Rights Division's enforcement budget, and encourage them to be more vigilant. I doubt you can undo his pardons, but you could add some more to spread out the effect: we should be more generous in forgiving those who trespass against us. And while I can't point to any even inadvertent blessings from Trump's foreign policy shake up, that's one area where a Biden restoration shouldn't even be contemplated.

At some point, it might be interesting to take Lepore's essay and strip it down to the plain history, skipping all of the Swift and Coleridge and Whitman fluff. Even knowing it's happened, such plain words are likely to still be sobering, shocking even. Lepore's idea may be that we can always look back to civilization. But perhaps civilization isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Scott Lemieux [05-04] Thelma and Louise economics: Starts with a long quote from Maia Mindel [05-01] Check Your Exorbitant Privilege!, which includes the Thelma & Louise ending scene video, in case you need that reference explained. Lemieux adds: "The biggest problem with Trump's trade war is that it's based on nostalgia for something that can't be reconstructed." And he ends with Trump: "We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we're essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we're saving hundreds of billions of dollars. It's very simple."

Brad Luen [05-04] Top 50 albums of the Fifties: The jazz list here is so good I'm hard-pressed to supplement it. The pop and rock, country and blues hit the obvious high points with best-ofs limited to 1950s releases (some since superseded; Lefty Frizzell is an obvious omission). The Latin and "Old World" lists give me something to work on.

Mitch Therieau [05-06] Can Spotify Be Stopped? Which raises, but doesn't answer, the question of why should it be stopped? I'm pretty skeptical of tech giants, but I subscribe to Spotify, and it gives me pretty good value. There are things about it that I don't like, and there is much more I just haven't taken the trouble to understand. I could imagine something much better, but most of the complaints I hear have to do with shortchanging artists and labels, and I don't really see that as my problem, or even as much of an economic problem. This is a review of Liz Pelly's book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

Nate Weisberg [05-06] Inside the Trump Assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "An agency lawyer and union representative opens up about the Trump/Musk rampage on the CFPB, what happens next, and why he's still optimistic." I think it's hard for people to recognize the extent to which the Trump administration has not only turned a blind eye to fraud and other white collar crime but has actively promoted it.

Samuel O'Brient [05-10] Bill Gates' major decision draws shocking response: He's says he's not only going to give away his fortune, but dissolve his foundation within 20 years. I've had very little kind of even nice to say about him or his company -- at least since 1984, when they had a good chance to hire me but passed because, like Trump, they "only hire the best people," and explicitly decided I wasn't one. But I'll save those sour grapes for the memoir. The Windows monopoly came later, as it was barely a demo program at the time: both the technical decisions that made it crappy software, and the business dictates that turned it into a profitable monopoly. So I've always viewed his philanthropy as whitewashing blood money. But dissolving his fortune shows a sensibility to human limits I never gave him credit for, one that appears to be as rare in high tech these days as it was a century ago among the Rockefellers and Mellons of yore. More radical still is the idea of dissolving a foundation, a major loophole in estate tax law that encouraged moguls to leave permanent monuments to themselves. I've long felt that foundations should be required to dispense all of their net income plus a fixed percentage of their endowment each year, so that they have limited lifetimes.

Joshua Schwartz [05-12] The hidden costs of Trump's 'madman' approach to tariffs: "The downsides of his trade policies are symptoms of a larger strategic flaw." Much to think about here, but my initial thoughts settle on how much I hate game theory. The madman theory assumes that your opponent is more rational than you are -- or at least is rational enough to avoid catastrophe -- so why can't you just reason with them and work out something sensible? And why make it some kind of contest of estimated power, when you know that even winning that game is at best temporary as the loss creates resentment that will eventually come back to bite you?

Jacob Hacker/Paul Pierson [05-13] How the economic and political geography of the United States fuels right-wing populism -- and what the Democratic Party can do about it. The authors have written a number of worthy books on American politics, including (at least these are the ones I've read and can recommend): Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005); The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement (2007); Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (2010); American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper (2016); Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequalilty (2020). This will probably turn into another one, but it's going to take some more work. I think the "density divide" is a mostly illusory artifact of other factors. (Democrats have gotten very bad at talking to anyone other than well-educated pan-urban liberals.) Even more inexplicable is "plutocratic populism." What passes for "right-wing populism" these days is basically the substitution of false issues for real ones. That Republicans can get away with this is partly due to their clever efforts, but also to the Democrats' chronic ineptitude at talking about real issues and exposing and deflecting the nonsense they face. Also from this group:

• Alexander Hertel-Fernandez/Shayna Strom [04-30] Designing economic policy that strengthens US democracy and incorporates people's lived experiences.

• Yotam Margalit [05-13] Countering right-wing populism: Identifying its cultural roots and charting a path forward.

Sharon Zhang [05-13] DNC Moves to Oust David Hogg After He Says Party Isn't Standing Up to Trump. He's 28, and has made the DNC nervous by organizing a PAC calling for primarying against ineffective elders, so they approved a complaint from a 61-year-old woman who lost, citing the election as a violation of the party's "gender parity" rules. (Why do Democrats have rules that are so easily lampooned?) They also voided the election of Malcolm Kenyatta to a vice-chair slot, who seems to be less controversial but collateral damage.

• Chris Lehmann [05-19] The DNC's Latest Feud Is an Exercise in Futility.

• John Ross [04-30] David Hogg Is Not a Threat to the Democratic Establishment: "He's offering the appearance of change without the substance." Still, isn't appearances what matters most to the DNC? Can they even conceive of substance?

Nathan J Robinson [05-14] The Myth of the Marxist University: "Academia is not full of radicals. There just aren't many Republicans, perhaps because Republicans despise the academy's values of open-mindedness and critical inquiry." I don't feel like really sinking into this, but I could probably write a ton. One thing is that in the early 1970s, I actually did have significant exposure to explicitly Marxist academics: there were a half-dozen in just the sociology department at Washington University, and a few more I knew of in other departments. That was an anomaly, and the Danforths were already moving to dismantle the sociology department when I left. They fired my main professor there, Paul Piccone, and as far as I know never got another academic posting. I knew a few more Marxists elsewhere, mostly through Piccone, and many of them had a rough time, despite being very worthy scholars. Marxists had two strikes against them: one was that they were on the wrong side politically, as universities have traditionally been finishing schools for the upper class (a role they've largely reverted to, not least by making them unaffordable to the masses); and secondly, they demanded critical thinking, which made them not just subversive, but smarter than more conventional thinkers. I can't quite claim that there's no such thing as a dogmatic Marxist -- many academics in the Soviet Union were just that, and ridiculous as a result -- but most of us saw Marxism not as an ideology but as a step on the way towards better understanding the world (and sure, of changing it for a better future.

Since my day, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there seems to have been a concerted effort to poison the wells and salt the earth of academia to deny any sort of legitimacy to Marxian thought -- a campaign effective enough that even Robinson, who isn't afraid of declaring himself a socialist, shies away from admitting any sort of Marxist sympathies. In some ways this doesn't matter. While the Marxian toolkit is exceptionally powerful, there are many ways to get to the truth of a matter. But we should recognize that the right's agenda isn't just to stamp out a heresy. It is to shut down critical thought, and turn the universities back into a system for training cadres who accept and cherish the inequalities and injustices of the present system. Understanding Marxism will hobble their agenda, but even if one remains ignorant of Marx and his followers, inequality and injustice will drive a good many people to resist, to question, to research, and ultimately to reinvent the tools they need to defend themselves.

Some more Current Affairs:

• Interviews:

  • [05-07] The Political Perils of 'Common Sense': Interview with historian Sophia Rosenfeld.

  • [05-29] A Lack of US Diplomacy Is Destroying the World's Security: Interview with former ambassador Chas Freeman "on US failures to pursue mutually beneficial diplomatic resolutions in China, Ukraine, and the Middle East."

• Nathan J Robinson:

  • [05-28] Andrew Cuomo Is Worse Than Even You Know: "Why on Earth is he a contender for mayor?"

• Rob Larson [05-08]: The Wall Street Journal Admits It — Capitalism is a Miserable Tyranny: "The 'free market' workplace subjects people to an ugly, naked hierarchy." Then it's not really a free market, is it? (Your word for the day: monopsony. Granted, it's rarely applied to how a company controls its own workers, but it's what allows them to do so. And like monopoly, it's power obtained by removing freedom from the market.)

• Alex Skopic:

  • [04-10] China Knows How to Deal with its Billionaires.

  • [04-17] Trump Is What Happens When You Give a Landlord Power: "He wants to 'own' Gaza and Greenland, and he treats immigrants like tenants he can evict at will. The rent-seeking class created Trump, and now he's governing as America's landlord in chief."

  • [05-16] How the AP Stylebook Warps Reality to Serve Power.

  • [06-02] How the Right Abuses Tolkien: "For Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and other figures on today's far right, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have become a cultural touchstone. Pity they don't understand the first thing about them." I don't know either, and don't care, but maybe you do.

Marci Shore/Timothy Snyder/Jason Stanley [05-14] We Study Fascism, and We're Leaving the U.S.: Three Yale historians pack up and leave Trumpland, in what looks less like a principled stand than a book promotion -- I'm not familiar with Shore (a specialist in Polish and Ukrainian intellectual history), but I've read books by Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom) and Stanley (How Fascism Works), and consider them useful (although, like most "threat to democracy" alarms, they fail to consider how little actual democracy they have left to defend -- a better book to read on this is Astra Taylor's Democracy May Not Exist but We'll Miss It When It's Gone).

I've pondered the fascism question quite a bit, and have no doubt that there are common ideas and attitudes among Trump and other Republicans, which become genuinely perilous when given power -- as has happened with Trump's election, and with his subsequent power grabs. When we look for historical insights, it is hard not to recall the early days of fascism: while the differences are considerable, few other analogies convey the gravity of what's happening, or the consequences should it continue.

David Klion [05-15] I Thought David Horowitz Was a Joke -- but He Foreshadowed the Trump Coalition: I wrote about Horowitz's obituary last time, but I figured this article is worth citing anew. One thing that could use a deeper look is the hustle that moved him into a position of prominence (editor at Ramparts) on the new left, and which found much more lucrative support when he moved to the far right (e.g., his son as Marc Andreessen's VC fund partner). Of course, it's not just hustle. More than that it's the ability to make yourself instrumental for people with the power to make you rich.

Jeffrey St Clair:

• [05-16] Roaming Charges: Sturm und Drang Warnings. Opens with a flurry of videos of ICE agents brutally attacking "suspects." Then there's "Trump grants white South Africans refugee status," with a picture that prompted Julie K Brown to quip, "I've never seen refugees with so much luggage." Much more, including this:

  There's not a single Congressional district where the support for slashing Medicare is more than 15%. Of course, this doesn't matter to MAGA. Unlike the Democrats, they sought power in order to use it, especially for malign unpopular policies, and they don't fret about the future political consequences. Imagine a party who won power and then fulfilled their promises for englightened popular policies, instead of worrying how it might piss off Wall Street?

  Of course, there is no such party. The Democrat establishment is Wall Street's first line of defense against any policy agenda that might restraint capital and/or redistribute wealth, regardless of how popular such programs might be.

• [05-23] Roaming Charges: White Lies About White Genocide: Starts with Richard Burton (more likely the 19th century imperialist explorer than the Welsh actor): "The more I study religions, the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."

• [05-30] When the Dead Speak and the Living Refuse to Listen. Emphasis added:

  The problem with writing about Gaza is that words can't explain what's happening in Gaza. Neither can images, even the most gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. Because what needs to be explained is the inexplicable. What needs to be explicated is the silence in the face of horror.

  Israel has been brazenly upfront about its plans to subdue Gaza, depopulate it of Palestinians, and seize the Strip for itself. Israel will not change. It hasn't deviated from this genocidal course since October 8, 2023. For 19 months, every Palestinian has been a target because Israel wants Gaza cleansed of Palestinians. Therefore, everyone can be bombed. Everyone can be starved. Everyone can be denied medical care and the mere essentials of life.

  I would have added to the second bold bit, "and no one else can change it." Or maybe I mean "will," but the distinction between "can't" and "won't" isn't likely to be tested.

• Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson [05-13] How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump: "At a fateful event last summer, Barack Obama, George Clooney, and others were stunned by Biden's weakness and confusion. Why did he and his advisers decide to conceal his condition from the public and campaign for reëlection?" This is a chunk from their book.

James Kirchick [05-20] All the President's Enablers: "Three books on Joe Biden's presidency jointly paint a devastating portrait of an ailing, geriatric leader surrounded by mendacious aides and grasping family members." Review of Tapper's book, along with the campaign tomes by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes (Fight) and by Chris Whipple (Uncharted) -- how weird that both books include "Wildest" in their subtitles?

Jennifer Szalai [05-13] A Damning Portrait of an Enfeebled Biden Protected by His Inner Circle: A review of Tapper's Original Sin, which "depicts an aging president whose family and aides enabled his quixotic campaign for a second term."

Ravi Hari [05-14] Joe Biden's memory lapses sparked concern among aides, new book reveals.

Michelle Goldberg [05-16] How Did So Many Elected Democrats Miss Biden's Infirmity?

Benjamin Hart [05-22] Jake Tapper Dissects Bidenworld's 'Big Lie': An interview with Tapper. One tidbit here is about how Mike Donilon, who seems to be the most culpable person in Biden's entourage, made about $4 million on failed campaign.

Andrew Rawnsley [05-22] Who's to blame for the Biden tragedy?

John Koblin [05-23] Everyone Now Has an Opinion on Jake Tapper: "A book the CNN host co-wrote has received positive reviews and appears to be a sales hit. But it also has generated intense scrutiny of him and his work."

Scott Lemieux [05-24] Joe Biden winning the 2020 nomination was probably suboptimal, but it was not an elite conspiracy: Evidently Tapper is pushing the line that it was. Looking at the list of candidates and their money suggests that something screwy was going on, especially with the donors (two of whom spent lavishly and ruinously on themselves).

Lloyd Green: [05-25] Original Sin: How Team Biden wished away his decline until it was too late.

Carlos Lozada [05-20] Biden Is a Scapegoat. The Democrats Are the Problem. Of course it is. It's always "THE DEMOCRATS." Even though straw polls often show generic Democrats beating generic Republicans, when actual Democrats lose, it's always the fault of "THE DEMOCRATS." There's such a mismatch between what they say and what they actually do, that it's hard not to suspect them of deceit, corruption, ulterior motives, and sheer sophistry. For some reason Republicans manage to avoid or belittle such suspicions, even while engaging in much more egregious misbehavior -- for some reason that seems to build up their brand as badass action figures, while for all of their behind-the-scenes machinations, supposedly brilliant Democratic operatives keep squandering tons of cash and losing elections that should be easy.

Norman Solomon [05-13] The Careerism That Enabled Biden's Reelection Run Still Poisons the Democratic Party: Original Sin "reveals top White House aides lying to journalists and trying to gaslight the public over Biden's decline." What should also be clear is that journalists sleepwalked through all four Biden years: they were blinded by naive bipartisanship, allowing Republicans to drive the few stories they bothered with, which meant that they constantly sniped at Democrats over bullshit (which did include Biden's age)) while ignoring real problems, like war and inequality, that Biden was helpless at, or in some cases simply uninterested in.

Stanley B Greenberg [05-29] The Real Original Sins: "What do Democrats need to do to win back voters' trust?"

Branko Marcetic [05-23] Will Democrats Learn From the Biden Disaster? Probably Not. Author wrote the only serious (not just left, which counts for a lot) pre-2020 election book on Biden (Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden) and has covered him extensively as president, so I expected him at least to review Original Sin, and was surprised how hard this piece was to find. As he points out, "In hindsight, many of the most cynical theories about what was going on in the Biden White House turned out to be true." And: "The careerism, elite myopia, and poor judgment that led the party establishment to run an ailing man the entire country could see was plainly unfit to be president don't seem to have gone anywhere."

New Republic:

• Michael Tomasky [05-19] What the Democrats Need to Learn From the Biden Cover-Up Fiasco: "As much as covering up the president's infirmity was a scandal for all involved, the Democrats' mortal sin was the one that was right out in the open." Which one? Presumably the Harris succession, which was consecrated with hardly a whiff of debate, locked in (like so much in the Democratic Party) by the donor elite, who didn't dare risk running a candidate with ideas of proven popularity.

• Alex Shephard [05-21] Was It Really a "Cover-Up" if We All Knew the Truth About Biden? I think he's wrong here. Nobody knew the truth, possibly including Biden. How could they? Biden was sheltered, with his inconsistencies and lapses explained away by people in a position to know better, but influenced by political exigencies they never acknowledged. In this void, Republicans spread all sorts of charges and innuendos, which lacked credibility because they're extremely biased liars -- as was obvious from every charge based on policy differences. The problem was that Biden's people got caught in their competency lie, which not only discredited them but gave Republicans credit for their whole kit and caboodle. Nor was competency the only lie Democrats got trapped by: ending the war in Gaza was the big one, but there were dozens more, especially their crowing about how great the economy was when some factors were hitting many people hard (like high interest rates).

• Osita Nwanevu [05-23] The Democrats Are Having a False Reckoning Over Joe Biden: "Party elites aer considerably more responsible for their woeful state of affairs than the former president." Probably true, but he is their leader, and his reputation in tatters exposes their own desperation and malfeasance.

Nicholas Kristoff [05-17] The $7 Billion We Wasted Bombing a Country We Couldn't Find on a Map: The price tag comes from Yemen Data Project and Defense Priorities. Given the multi-trillion dollar price tags on Iraq and Afghanistan, this number seems like a pittance. While the cruelty, waste, and ineffectiveness are obvious, I don't get why any journalists would write like this:

I understand American skepticism about humanitarian aid for Yemeni children, for the Houthis run an Iran-backed police state with a history of weaponizing aid. Yet our campaign of bombing and starvation probably strengthens the Houthis, making their unpopular regime seem like the nation's protectors while driving them closer to Iran.

How would Kristoff know how unpopular the Houthis are? They must have some kind of popular base, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to displace the Saudi- and American-backed police state that they overthrew. As for their alliance with Iran, what other option did we give them? And would Iran be such a problem if we weren't so obsessed with cutting Iran off and pushing them away?

Dave DeCamp [05-19] Trump's 'Golden Dome' Missile Shield Expected to Cost $500 Billion: That's a wild guess that nobody believes. The only chance it has of working is if no one tests it. The cost of a working system is unimaginable, because any conceivable system can just as easily be circumvented, and anticipating how many ways, and handling all of them, adds orders of magnitude to the cost. Israel's Iron Dome works because Israel is small, and has weak enemies, with primitive technology. Even so, to say it "works" is pretty generous, given Oct. 7, 2023. (If it worked so well then, why is Israel still at war 18 months later? I know, "rhetorical question"! They're at war to kill Palestinians and render Gaza uninhabitable, and the attack was just an excuse for something they wanted to do anyway. In this context, Iron Dome may have helped sucker Hamas into an attack that was more a gesture of unhappiness than a serious attempt to hurt Israel.)

Taking Iron Dome and gold-plating it isn't going to make it work better (but it will make it more expensive, which is largely the point to advisers like Elon Musk). Reagan's Star Wars plan in the 1980s never turned into anything more than graft, and there's no reason to expect more here. The waste is orders of magnitude beyond insane, but worse than that is the attitude it presents to the rest of the world: we dare you to attack us, for which we will show you no mercy, because we really don't care how many of you we kill to "defend ourselves." Every time I see something like this, I recall the scenario laid out in one of Chalmer Johnson's books, where he talks about how easy it would be for someone like China to put "a dumptruck full of gravel" on top of a rocket and blast it into low earth orbit, destroying all of America's communications satellites -- which would wipe out much of our internet service, weather forecasting, GPS, and pretty much all of the command and control systems the US depends on for power projection around the globe. That wouldn't make it possible for China to conquer America, let alone to replace the US as "global hegemon," but it would undermine America's capability to fight wars in China's vicinity. That was all with technology China had 20 years ago. Note that North Korea, which the US has given much less reason to be cautious, has that same technology today. But someone like Trump is going to think that a Golden Dome protects him from such threats, so he's safe from having to make any peace gestures. After all, look at how much peace the Iron Dome gave to Israel.

Kyle Chan [05-19]: In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The US Will Be Irrelevant. Dean Baker recommended this "very good piece," adding "it's not good for the home team. Trump's loony fantasies are not a way forward." Chan is a Princeton-based expert on "technology and industrial policy in China," so he's looking for nail he can hammer. China has a real industrial policy, and while it's tolerated quite a bit of inequality, it's ultimately rooted in a civic desire to raise the entire country out of poverty and into everyday wealth. The US has no such policy, nor for that matter much civic desire. Chomsky summed up the American system succinctly: one where profits are privatized, while liabilities are socialized. That reduces all of us to marks, where entrepreneurs (and mobsters) are free to rob everyone (even each other) blind. When Trump became president, he didn't change from private taking to public service. He just realized that being president gives him leverage to take even more, and unlike his predecessors, he has no scruples to get in his way. (Also that his courts have promised him immunity, although one wonders how much he can flaunt this being-above-the-law thing?)

The issue I have with this piece is the concept of "dominant," and for that matter the horse race illustration, which seems like a lot of projection. What China can and will do is reduce a lot of the dominance the US has long exercised over the global economy and its politics -- including the part known as "exorbitant privilege." What China cannot do is to replace us and become the same kind of "global hegemon" the US has been. Americans can't conceive of a world without a ruler, so they assume that if they lose power, it must be to someone else -- someone less benign than we are.

The US gained its power during WWII, when its economy, planned and directed by the most socialist government in American history, blossomed, producing widespread prosperity for most Americans, while the rest of the world was reduced to ruins. That disparity couldn't last, but as long as the US didn't abuse its power -- and at first its "open door" policies were much preferable to the old colonial extracters -- many nations were inclined to follow along. The main problems came when countries tried to assert their independence, especially if they ran afoul of America's championing of capital, with or without any form of democracy. The nations we habitually describe as enemies are mostly struggling for independence.

PS: Consider this chart from a Richard D Wolff [06-02] tweet, which shows "GLobal average net favorability of the US and China, which a decade ago was running pretty steady with the US around +20 and China around -7, but the US rating sunk fast with Trump to -1.5, while China has improved to +8.8.

Jodie Adams Kirshner [05-20] The Sun Sets on West Virginia's Green-Energy Future: "President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act was finally bringing jobs and industry back to the state. But not for long." The picture here shows Trump grinning with a couple other suits, backed by grim men in hard hats -- presumably coal miners -- and flags. Even if Trump manages to bring coal back, and the economics of that are unlikely, they will do so with automation instead of workers, few of whom will benefit. West Virginia's flip to the Republicans is sad and pathetic.

Theodore Schliefer [05-20]: Democrats Throw Money at a Problem: Countering GOP Clout Online: This is probably true, up to a point:

Democrats widely believe they must grow more creative in stoking online enthusiasm for their candidates, particularly in less outwardly political forms of media like sports or lifestyle podcasts. Many now take it as gospel that Mr. Trump's victory last year came in part because he cultivated an ecosystem of supporters on YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, in addition to the many Trump-friendly hosts on Fox News.

This mentions some projects vying for donors: Chorus, AND Media, Channel Zero, Project Echo, Double Tap Democracy. And notes that one was founded by "Rachel Irwin, who led a $30 million influencer program last cycle for Future Forward, the biggest Democratic super PAC." I'd love to see a full accounting of the $1B-plus that the Harris campaign burned through to such underwhelming effect. My guess is that tons of money have already been spent along these lines, to very little effect, largely because the donor-friendly messaging was didn't gain any traction with voters. Perhaps the donors themselves are the problem, and we'd be better off with shoestring-funded grass roots projects which at least have some integrity?

This piece came to my attention via Nathan J Robinson, who suggested putting some of that money into his magazine, Current Affairs, "if you genuinely want to build media that effectively challenges the right and is not just telling Democrats what they want to hear." (Which, by the way, is definitively not today's lead article: Lily Sánchez [05-19] We Still Need to Defund and Abolish the Police. What we really need is some better way to make the police work for us, to solve our problems, and one thing for sure is that requires some funding -- not necessarily for the things we currently fund, but something. "Defund the police" is a joke hiding behind a slogan, but damn few people are likely to go for the slogan, and the joke isn't even very funny -- least of all to people who are routinely victimized by crime, which if you count fraud is pretty much everyone. What they're basically saying is that the police are so dysfunctional you could get rid of them and wouldn't be worse off.)

But Robinson is right: the left press gives you much more bang for the buck than the grant-chasing opportunists who try to pawn themselves off as consultants. Politics today is much more about who you fear and hate than who you like let alone what you want. Republicans understand this, so they fund all manner of right-wing craziness, even when they get embarrassing, because they turn lots of people against Democrats, and they know two things: they can use that energy, and they don't need to fear that it will go too far, because they're convinced they can control it. (Granted, they are not always right, Hitler being a case in point.)

But Democrats don't get this: first, they fear the left, perhaps even more than they fear the right (e.g., Bloomberg spent $500M to stop Sanders, but only $25M to support Harris over Trump); and second, they don't see the value in using the left against the right (possibly because they think their muddled programs, like ACA, by virtue of being more "centrist," have broader appeal than something like Medicare for All, or maybe just because they don't dare offending their donors). To some extent they are right: media bias is such that Hillary Clinton was seen as more dishonest and more corrupt than Donald Trump, but it's hard to fight that with candidates as dishonest and corrupt as the Clintons.

The only Democrat who realized he could use the left was Franklin Roosevelt. He saw unions as a way to organize Democratic voters, but he also thought that capitalism could survive a more equitable distribution of profits, and that the nation as a whole would be better that way. Meanwhile, union leaders like John L Lewis saw that communists were among his best organizers, so he used them as well, while cutting deals that fell far short of revolution. All that went out with the Red Scare, since which liberals have been much more concerned with distancing themselves from the left than from the right -- even though the "democratic wing of the Democratic Party" has always been happy to fall in line behind their modest corporate-blessed reform efforts (while the trans-Democratic left has, since FDR's day, been vanishingly marginal).

The one thing Trump might be good for is to finally bury the hatchet between pragmatic Democrats and the more idealistic left. We need both. We need the left to push us to do good things. We need the pragmatists to figure out ways do them that don't provoke counterproductive backlash.[*] And both, but especially the left, need to expose the right for what they are, in terms so clear that no one can deny their truth.

[*] Note that they don't have a very good track record on this. Even after they got all of the affected lobbyists to sign off on Obamacare, severely limiting the system, Republicans generated a huge backlash just to exploit the political opportunity.

Andrew Day [05-20] Cut Israel Off — for Its Own Sake: There are lots of good reasons for taking this position. Even American Conservatives can do it. Even people who seriously love Israel and care for little else are coming around. That just leaves the mass murderers in Israel, their paranoid, brainwashed and/or just plain racist cohort, and their sentimental fools -- probably not paranoid, but brainwashed and/or racist, for sure -- in the west. More Israel, and here I'm more concerned with the growing sense of futility than with the daily unveiling of more atrocities (for some atrocities, look further down):

• Ori Goldberg [05-12] Israel Is Spiraling: "The government's genocidal fervor is ripping through the carefully constructed layers of self-delusion that power this country."

• Kenn Orphan [05-21] Palestine is the litmus test for every value the West holds dear. "And we are failing miserably."

• Yakov M Rabkin: [06-03] Will Israelis Repent for Gaza Genocide? Re-Humanization Takes Courage.

  Jewish tradition teaches that it is never too late to change course, to repent, and to make amends. Of course, to make such a sharp turn requires courage. A well-known Jewish insight is quite clear about it: "Who is the greatest of all heroes? He who turns an enemy into a friend." Most people in Israel vehemently reject as "exilic" this traditional Jewish wisdom that upholds peace as the supreme value. They see in it only "comfort of the weak." But, in fact, this is what real strength is all about.

• Taya Bero [06-01] Why is a pro-Israel group asking the US to investigate Ms Rachel? I never heard of her before I started seeing tweets highlighting her Gaza statements, but evidently she's a big deal in some quarters. While the Trump administration hopes to chill free speech across the entire opposite political spectrum (see Magarian below), Israel is the one subject that has already moved to active suppression. It's tempting to say that's because it's the hardest to make light of.

  Not that this particular government has any scruples about banning speech, assembly, or anything else they find disobedient.

• Melody Ermachild Chavis: [06-02] Gaza's Destruction Injures Israel Forever: Maybe it seems perverse to focus on the self-harm Israel is responsible for, when there are much more obvious victims -- vast numbers of Palestinians, of course, but also a few widely scattered Jews who get caught up in blowback or (at least as likely) "friendly fire."

  Some Israeli soldiers have themselves tried for years to warn of exactly what I am pointing out. Former soldiers founded the NGO Breaking the Silence, which has published testimony of Israeli soldiers revealing the brutal ways the occupation is sustained. Today, they are saying that if anyone thinks they are being a friend to Israel by defending its actions in Gaza or by staying silent, they are not. Friends don't let friends commit war crimes.

  Eventually, every war ends. And when this one ends, Israel's young men and women will return from combat bringing with them the wounds we can see and those that cannot easily be seen. They, and Israel, will be changed forever.

• Ibrahim Quraishi [06-02]: "These Could Be Our Children:" Israeli Women Opposing the War, an Interview.

• Gary Fields [06-03] Never Again?

  It is now imperative to acknowledge what people of conscience the world over know to be true: The State of Israel is operating a Death Camp for the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. By forcibly confining the Palestinians of Gaza within impassable bounds, while at the same time slaughtering and starving them within this confined space, the State of Israel has made a mockery of the slogan, "Never Again."

Sandeep Vaheesan [05-21] The Real Path to Abundance: "To deliver plentiful housing and clean energy, we have top get the story right about what's standing in the way." Review of Ezra Klein/Derek Thompson: Abundance, in which he finds much to nitpick, before moving on to more general problems. Among the most cutting:

It's not insignificant that Klein and Thompson's attacks echo the Trumpist agenda they disclaim. The affluent undoubtedly have more time and resources to spend advocating for their interests than the poor. But instead of calling for steeper progressive taxation and anti-monopoly policies that would rein in the power of the affluent, Klein and Thompson focus single-mindedly on red tape. Instead of calling for expanded state capacity to expedite environmental reviews (as they do for some government projects, like California's High-Speed Rail Authority), they suggest we should ditch environmental review entirely. And instead of making the case for strengthening and broadening democratic participation in land use policy, they imply we should simply jettison it altogether. . . .

This vision is undemocratic in both form and function. Diminishing public power over land use decisions means greater private control, which in turn means more deference to the whims of the market and more discretion for corporate executives and financiers -- in short, more oligarchy. That is exactly what Trump and Elon Musk are hoping to achieve by taking the chainsaw to federal agencies, and that is why, as Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini puts it, they are "hitting the professional-managerial class -- and hitting them hard." These points of overlap with Trump's agenda also matter politically.

Also related here:

• Dean Baker [05-27] Why Are the Abundance Boys Scared to Talk About Patent Monopolies? He later expanded this to [06-01]: My Abundance Agenda. Nothing here questions the value of producing more, but stresses that it does make a lot of difference just how you go about doing it.

• Ed Kilgore [05-29] The Abundance Agenda Revives an Old Democratic Rivalry: "Helping the public sector get tangible things done may be the only way to protect progressive interest and identity groups from MAGA." Huh? This looks like (and he's quoting Jonathan Chait) anti-left Democrat think they've found a cudgel in the "abundance agenda" to beat down the left, who they continue to identify not in class but in identity terms. This assumes two things: that the "abundance agenda" will be massively popular once one has the power to implement it; and that its appeal will be so obvious that Democrats advancing it will be able to win the elections they need to implement it. There is little evidence for either. I agree that Democrats have to promote policies that will attract massive political support, and that once they have the power, they need to deliver substantial tangible benefits. I don't doubt that increasing production is part of the solution, but unless it can produce useful goods and services, and be directed where needed, it's just another scam for supply-side trickle-down.

Greg Grandin [05-22] The Conquest Never Ends: Tie-in to the author's new book, Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World, which I've just started, but also ties in to Israel's echo of the Conquest in Gaza. Subheds here: "Conquest, Then and Now"; "From Cortés to Hitler"; and "The End of the End of the Age of Conquest," which sees Trump's ambitions to expand American power from Greenland to Panama alongside Israel's clearing of Gaza and Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a deliberate reversal from the decolonization movement that followed the demise of the German and Japanese empires in WWII. Of course, there are differences, not least being that Israel is operating shamelessly in plain sight, but as Grandin points out, the Spanish broke new ground in documenting their destruction and enslavement through the then-novel medium of the printing press.

Also at TomDispatch:

• William D Hartung/Ashley Gate [05-27] The Coming of a Values-Free Foreign Policy: "Donald Trump has ripped off the human rights veneer that once graced US foreign policy." Or that tried to hide the disgrace of US foreign policy? While on the one hand I'm pleased to cut the hypocrisy, there was something comforting in the thought that Americans felt the need to pretend they were doing good in the world. With Trump, it's all transactional, and much of that is directed into his personal accounts.

• Alfred McCoy [05-25] How American Soft Power Turned to Dust in the Age of Trump: "Why the world's richest nation is killing the world's poorest children."

• Juan Cole [05-29] Trump of Arabia: "Is Trump's Axis of the Plutocrats Marginalizing Israel?" I don't see how anyone can doubt that pro-Israel donors are getting their money's worth out of Trump. His support for clearing Gaza out is undoubtable, and he'll probably wind up negotiating a mass evacuation. Similarly, he has no concerns or scruples about whatever Netanyahu wants to do in the occupied West Bank. On the other hand, he seems less inclined than Biden to let Israel dictate his foreign policy beyond Israel's immediate borders. Happy as he is to cash Israeli checks, he realizes that the real money is in oil, and that oil-rich Arabs are eager to grease his skids. There are even rumors that he'll resurrect the Iran nuclear deal he scuttled in his first term. Others have noticed this, although they keep trying to imagine less crass motives:

  • Elfadil Ibrahim [05-19] Why Trump ghosted Israel: He likes 'winning': "Leaving Netanyahu off his itinerary of must-see leaders was tactical, not so much a strategic, move."

• Todd Miller [06-01] Donald Trump's Border World in the Age of Climate Change: "The United States, the world's largest historic carbon emitter, had already been spending 11 times more on border and immigration enforcement than on climate finance and, under President Trump, those proportions are set to become even more stunningly abysmal."

• Liz Theoharis/Aaron Scott/Moses Hernandez McGavin [06-03]: The Christian Nationalist Mission to Banish Trans People.

Mike Lofgren [05-24] Pete Rose, Donald Trump and the corruption of literally everything: "Our president's meddling in baseball history: Another reminder that he ruins everything he touches." Aside from Rose, the other names are ancient, with only Joe Jackson likely to receive any HOF consideration at all (some other names I recognize: Eddie Cicotte, a near-HOF quality pitcher also part of the Black Sox scandal, as were Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, and Lefty Williams; also: Benny Kauff, Lee Magee, Cozy Dolan; others I didn't recall: Joe Gedeon, Gene Paulette, Jimmy O'Connell, William Cox; I was surprised that Hal Chase was not on the list, but no one in MLB history has been so notoriously corrupt for so long -- probably not HOF caliber, but pretty comparable to a couple others who have been inducted; see Wikipedia for details on these and others). I always hated the way sports writers lionized Rose, so I tended to denigrate him. (I suppose Charlie Parker was another one I underrated because everyone else seemed to overrate him.) If I had to rank Rose, I'd put him somewhere just below Paul Waner, but well above Lloyd Waner. That Trump would favor Rose seems typical of both (sure, I'm less certain that Rose would reciprocate, but I wouldn't rule it out).

• George F Will [05-15] Pete Rose and Donald Trump, what a double-play combo: Will is categorically wrong on everything in politics, except that he hates Donald Trump, probably for the same reasons Churchill hated Hitler. Will's one saving grace is that he knows a lot about baseball, and writes about it intelligently and well. So when I wanted to compare notes on Rose and Trump, I landed here, where the key line is his description of Rose as "a monster of self-absorption." QED, I'd say.

Kenneth P Vogel [05-27] Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner: "Paul Walczak's pardon application cited his mother's support for the president, including raising millions of dollars and a connection to a plot to publicize a Biden family diary." Add his name to the list of examples "of the [Trump's] willingness to use his clemency powers to reward allies who advance his political causes, and to punish his enemies."

Yasha Levine [05-28] A Letter to My Fellow Jewish Americans: Starts with the killing of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC, by a shooter identified as Elias Rodriguez, predictably spun as "a pure act of antisemitism," because what other reason can there be for wanting to strike back at Israel?

So I want to say this to many of my fellow Jews in America: I know you are desperate to justify and deflect your support for Israel's actions. . . . This denial may work on you, but it has little power in the larger world. You've been sheltered for far too long, thinking that you and your children would never bear the cost of your political decisions. But here is the thing: What happened in Washington DC . . . there is a lot more of the same kind of violence coming our way. And it's all your fault. . . . Give up your biblical-nationalist fantasies before it's too late. We all live in one world. We're all connected. Continuing on this path will only bring ruin and death.

Jack Hunter [05-29] The great fade out: Neocon influencers rage as they diminish: "Mark Levin leads a dwindling parade of once important voices now desperate to stop an Iran deal. MAGA world is increasingly tuning out." They may be receding, but like a flood they've left their filth everywhere, deep in every crevice of the national security hive mind. Cleaning them out is going to take much more diligence than scatterbrained posers like Trump and Vance can muster.

Steve M [05-30] The New Sanewashing: Assuming Trump Has Ideas, Not Just Resentments and Personality Defects. This cites three examples, all from the New York Times within the week:

• Edward Wong [05-26]: Trump's Vision: One World, Three Powers?
• Edward Wong [05-29] Trump Makes a New Push to 'Decouple' U.S. From China.
• Glenn Thrush [05-29] Trump's Flurry of Pardons Signals a Wholesale Effort to Redefine Crime.

I sympathize with reporters who habitually seek to find some "method in the madness," but even if some in Trump's orbit would like to dignify his outbursts with some kind of underlying concept, Trump himself shows little interest in rationalization. As M puts it: "Trump's only idea here is: 'You're criminals. We're not.'" As for the Wong articles, "Donald Trump, geostrategist? Nahhh." His notion of a new tri-polar world order may be more realistic than the Clinton-Obama-Biden "indispensable nation" hypothesis, but even so he's way behind the curve, where even the lesser BRICS nations are charting their own courses, and Europe is only humoring American vanities as long as the demands (like buying F-35s) aren't too onerous.

More from No More Mister Nice Blog:

• [05-27] Democrats Need to Run on Their Policies' Coattails: Introduces Jess Piper, a Democratic Party activist who blogs as The View From Rural Missouri. (She doesn't say where, but in Applebaum and Joplin she gets there by driving south for four hours, so that puts her north of Kansas City, near the Iowa border. Joplin's 2.5-3 hours south of KC, and 3.5-4 hours east of Wichita. Piper is overly impressed with Anne Applebaum's Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, and for that matter with Heather Cox Richardson, who she reads "every morning," but unlike them shows little evidence of clamoring for foreign wars -- not least because she sees enough evidence of autocracy in Missouri to prioritize fighting it here.) Missouri is a former swing state that has turned into a Republican lock, but in recent years they've approved a number of referenda favoring issues like a $15 minimum wage and abortion rights -- issues that their elected Republicans then seek to nullify. The pitch: Democrats need to become recognized as champions and protectors of programs that are already popular. Which suggests they need to run on them, not just away from other Republican talking points.

• [05-28] Elissa Slotkin Almost Gets It. I could nitpick my way through this, but let's just say that Democrats need to find a leader who can channel Bernie Sanders' critique, in all of its intensity and passion along with his own unassailable credibility and integrity, yet not panic the donor class into self-destruction and caricature. Slotkin has some of what's needed, but isn't there yet.

  By the way, Sanders blew his chance in 2020, by running to the left to stave off Warren instead of ingratiating himself with the party centrists. I don't particularly blame him for sticking with his instincts: Trump did the same thing, but he didn't offend the donor class the way Sanders did (he was, after all, one of them, whereas Sanders is not). But the real reason Sanders beat Warren was not because he was farther left but because he had much broader appeal. I blame the "smart money" people for not seeing that what they needed to win wasn't ideological purity but someone who could get votes by credibly painting Trump as crooked and monstrous. On the other hand, they should have known that Sanders was at most a mild reformist, and even his most strenuous efforts would be tamed by the lobbyists and bureaucrats in their pockets, protecting their business interests. One almost suspects that the reason Bloomberg et al. panicked so was because they realized that the left critique of their ridiculous wealth was too right to permit any scrutiny.

• [05-29] That Origin Story for Trump's War on Higher Education Leaves Out a Few Facts: "Pro-Gaza campus protests are a pretext now. The war [he means Trump's war, or assault, on academia] would have happened anyway, because the right can't tolerate the existence of any institution it can't control."

• [05-31] Do Trump's Poll Numbers Improve Every Time We Beat Him? Here he develops a couple ideas from a Ross Douthat column, on Trump's ability to survive his own self-made crises:

  I worry that many Americans are having a reptile-brain response to Trump's push-and-pull on tariffs. Obviously, MAGA Nation is happy no matter what he does:

  

  But I worry that there's a psych-experiment quality to this:

  1. Trump arouses anxiety with new tariffs. Markets tumble.
  2. Trump removes/suspends all or some of the tariffs he imposed. Markets rally.
  3. Even though we're no better off than we were before step 1, voters feel as if progress is being made. Trump's poll numbers go up.

  Trump's poll numbers aren't terrible anymore because he's constantly doing things, and constantly telling us he's doing things. Biden did things that would have paid off in the long run, but most voters didn't know what he'd done because he was a terrible public communicator, and because Democratic presidents generally assume the public will simply know what they've done.

  Trump's decent poll numbers suggest that roughly half the country just wanted a president who seemed forceful, no matter what he was doing -- and if they don't like the specifics, they believe there are still guardrails to save them.

• [06-01] Trump Probably Doesn't Believe Biden Was Killed (but He Wants to Kill Biden's Presidency): Another example of how Trump doesn't just disregard truth but sees its violation as a stimulant, and how his fans find his lies all so very funny.

• [06-02] Stephen Miller Was Already Trying to Memeify the Colorado Attack Just Hours After It Happened: Well, sure, I agree that "Israel's brutality in Gaza is no justification for this." I am, however, a bit confused by this group (Run for Their Lives) and the final line: "US supporters of the Israeli hostages say they're scared but have vowed to keep demonstrating." In Israel, hostage supporters demonstrate against the government, which clearly has no interest in freeing the hostages (and indeed, would rather they had been killed than captured). But in the US, who are they demonstrating for or against? The simpler, clearer message here is to call for a cease fire and an end to the genocide, which would almost certainly lead to the hostages' release, as that message could be supported by both friends and critics of Israel. But if, as suggested here, the group's demonstrations are strictly against Hamas, their purpose here is nothing more than to rally support for Israel's genocide: the hostages are pawns of Israel as much as of Hamas. The meme, by the way, is something about "suicidal migration" ("a powerful term," "a term we should use more"). It's stupid, but sometimes that's the best they can come up with.

• [06-03] Democrats Aren't Doomed, Though They Should Be Less Doomed. This starts with Nate Cohn [06-03] Should Republicans Have Won in a Landslide?: "The question of whether Donald Trump cost conservatives a more decisive victory is a useful one to consider." This strikes me as fairly idle speculation, based on very little understanding of why Trump won and/or Harris lost. One thought that I do have is that while Trump may have had more negatives than many other Republicans, he alone was able to campaign on pure emotional energy (redemption, revenge, etc.). Any other Republican would have pulled the focus back toward policy, and Republican policies are notoriously unpopular -- which is a big part of why even Trump ducked Project 2025. And that's just the Republican side. Any chance that Democrats might run stronger candidates with better messaging? It's not like there's no room for improvement there.

Howard Dean [05-31] How Democrats can pull off a win under a GOP trifecta: Dismantle the "legal" drug cartel: Dean's leadership of the DNC produced major wins in 2006 and 2008, so Obama replaced him with a cronies who went on to squander Democratic majorities in Congress and in the States, leaving Obama as the only major Democrat to survive. I haven't noticed him name in ages, so I jumped on this. Not what I expected, but he has a good case against the rackets that manage pharmacy benefits. Just how Democrats can fight them without a power base isn't clear, but it should be a campaign issue.

Gregory P Magarian [05-31] Three ways the government can silence speech without banning it. "Among the present administration's chosen tools: making institutions stop or change their advocacy to get government benefits; inducing self-censorship through intimidation; and molding the government's own speech to promote official ideology."

Melvin Goodman [06-02]: Marco Rubio: The Secretary of Statelessness: One of the few hopes I have for Trump is the utter destruction and humiliation of Rubio, which seems to be well underway. He was the most unsavory of Trump's 2016 opponents, and by far the most ambitious of the 2024 cabinet picks, which is to say the one guy who still thinks he can outsmart and use Trump.

Tareq S Hajjaj [06-02] Aid massacre: Israeli forces kill 75 Palestinians at U.S.-run aid distribution center: "The Americans and Israelis set a huge trap for us to lure us here and kill us." Hajjaj had previous reports on the aid center from May 27 ("It looked like a large prison": Chaos ensures at U.S.-Israeli-backed aid distribution site in Gaza) and May 29 (Palestinians describe being treated like animals as chaos breaks out again at U.S.-run aid site in Gaza). Also:

• Abdaljawad Omar [05-30] The 'chaos' of aid distribution in Gaza is not a system failure. The system is designed to fail.

Blaise Malley [06-03] "Shameful, vindictive erasure": Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk's name from Navy ship: "announcing the renaming during Pride Month was intentional." One thing about the Trump administration is that no chance to offend is too petty for them.

Cheyenne McNeill [06-03] "Disgusting abomination": Elon Musk attacks "big, beautiful" spending bill: Needless to add, while vomiting the usual clichés about "this massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill," he also took exception to the removal of several cuts that would have specifically benefitted his companies. For more on this, see:

• Marc Caputo: [06-03] Four reasons Musk attacked Trump's "big beautiful bill".

Tweets:

• Jeffrey St Clair [05-17]: I've read this headline story [from Haaretz: Prominent French rabbi receives death threats over criticism of Israeli policy in Gaza] three times and it's giving me a migraine . . . The Rabbi's getting death threats for opposing a policy of starving children to death. Who's the real anti-Semite? The Rabbi or the Zionists threatening her life?

• Moira Donegan [05-18]: In what might be the logical endpoint of American Zionism, the Heritage Foundation has declared that pro-Palestinian activism is not just antisemitic, but is in fact a shadowy global conspiracy . . . led by Jews. [Link to NYT piece: The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement. Identified among the leaders of a global "Hamas Support Network" are "Jewish billionaires such as the philanthropist George Sorow and Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois."]

• Tony Karon [05-20] Imagine if Gary Lineker[*] had said this? Or any New York Times editor, or Democratic Party politician? Even Israel's Zionist parliamentary 'left' is making clear that Israel is not a "normal" state; it's a psychotic genocidal regime that must be stopped.

  In an interview with Israeli public radio yesterday, the leader of Israel's Democrats party, Yair Golan, said: "A sane country doesn't engage in fighting against civilians, doesn't kill babies as a hobby and doesn't set for itself the goals of expelling a population."

  [*] I had to look up Lineker, an English sports broadcaster (former soccer player) who has been blackballed by BBC for expressing "political views," although as far as I can tell not very radical ones.

• Aaron Rupar [05-20] Tim Scott on crypto legislation: "This bill must go forward because it's good news for the American people, especially the ones living in poverty." [Rupar adds: "let them eat shitcoins"]

• Mark Jacob [05-20]: Trump and RFK Jr. say today's kids are "the sickest generation in American history." Is that just a feeling? Here are some facts: About 46% of children born in the U.S. in 1800 did not live to see their 5th birthday. In 1900, the figure was 24%. Now it's under 1%. [Link to New York Times article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg/Dani Blum: Kennedy and Trump Paint Bleak Picture of Chronic Disease in U.S. Children: "A highly anticipated White House report blames a crisis of chronic illness on ultraprocessed foods, chemical exposures, lifestyle factors and excessive use of prescription drugs, including antidepressants."]

• Alejandra Caraballo [05-22] This [the Republican budget bill] passed 215-214. We're going to lose our healthcare because 3 senior Dems have died this year. We lost Roe because Ginsburg didn't retire. We lost the election because Joe ran for reelection. Our country is being destroyed because geriatric Dems can't retire and let go of power. [What power? More like personal ego perks.]

• James Surowiecki [05-26] [Linking to a Bernie Sanders ad and tweet, saying "75% of Democrats want the party to move in a more progressive, pro-working class direction. Is the Party leadership listening? Or will they continue with their ideology of maintaining the status quo?"]

  Joe Biden was the most pro-working-class president in 60 years, and working-class voters did not care.

  Nathan J Robinson replied: "one reason they didn't care is because half the time he could barely speak in complete sentences." Of course, the more obvious riposte was that the bar was pretty low, and Biden didn't deliver on most of the gestures he made, that he didn't make that many, and that few of them were bold enough to get attention. No doubt his inability to speak coherently about what he wanted was part of the problem. But also after a long career in the business-as-usual center of the Democratic Party, he didn't want much. But even if you buy Surowiecki's assertion, what about Harris? Biden may have been on the minds of those who hated him, but the name on the ballot was Harris, and how much working class support, or even rapport, did she offer? Clearly there was a block of voters who felt enough of a bond with Biden to vote for him over Trump, but didn't feel the same about Harris or Clinton, and they seem to have been the swing voters. It's unfair, and dumb, that Biden could win those voters when a pair of educated and wonky women with essentially the same platform could not, but the answer isn't to whine. It's to present a critique and a vision that voters (and not just donors) can get behind.

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Monday, June 2, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44300 [44276) rated (+24), 23 [22] unrated (+1).

Rated count well down this week. Main reason was I spent two days cooking, which are documented in the notebook here and here, and on Facebook here (second dinner just merited a comment to the initial post). Both came out of a desire to use up leftovers from an earlier and more ambitious Thai/Burmese dinner (cf. Facebook and notebook). I feel like I'm done with that sort of thing for a while, but am generally pleased with the food. While I"m conscious of my physical and (to some extent) mental decline, this is one area where I'm still capable of producing exemplary results. In some respects, perhaps better than ever: while I've always been able to follow complex recipes, I'm much better than I used to be at fixing mistakes and improvising enhancements.

Only two A- records this week, but a whopping 10 B+(***): seemed for a while like everything was landing there. Good chance a couple of those could have benefitted from the extra plays I gave Ochs and Truesdell -- not that my third play of Madre Vaca today has moved the needle beyond B+(***). I've struggled a bit picking out new records to check out, but a new list from Phil Overeem as well as the latest from Dan Weiss should help. A big part of finding as much as I do comes from knowing who to lean on.

My count of Bluesky followers was stuck at 102 for a week, then dropped before recovering. I haven't been posting much, but got to one of this week's two pick hits today. I skipped Truesdell because I couldn't find a playable link, although the previous volume, Lines of Color (an A- in 2015) seems to be on Soundcloud. Some info on the new album is here. Still, my forecast is for below-average reviewing for the next few weeks. While I'm unlikely to do much cooking, I have a lot of tasks around the house to attend to, and other things that will take me away from the computer. When on the computer, I hope to make more progress on my planning documents. I'm generating a lot of ideas -- far more than I can possibly act on, I'm afraid, but much that strikes me as worthwhile.

I also lost an afternoon last week when Robert Christgau's website got shut off. It took a good deal longer than it should have to fix, due to various miscommunications between Christgau, me, and the vendor. It's been resolved, and shouldn't recur. It reminded me that the tech stuff is more fun than the writing, not least because it can reach a successful conclusions, whereas writing never feels really done. (Cooking in this regard is more like programming, and possibly more satisfying.)

One thing I need to think about is whether to run a Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll. Target publication should be July 1, so this is about when I should send invites out. I don't quite feel up to it. Related to this is that we haven't had further discussions since Francis Davis passed. I haven't felt the need to move on, so haven't pressed the issue, it would be unfortunate to miss the opportunity.

I've avoided doing any work on Loose Tabs, but the last one came out on May 14, and the scratch file turns out to have a lot more in it than I remembered (4800 words), which is probably enough to dump out on its own -- especially as it's already becoming dated: only two tweets and a Roaming Charges since May 20, nothing since May 26. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to find a dozen or maybe even two open tabs (which I need to clean up, as I'm already getting snap complaints). So expect something on that front later this week, even if I don't put much more work into it.

I got my books from the big April 25 Book Roundup. I finished Pankaj Mishra's The World After Gaza before they came, so read Gideon Levy's The Killing of Gaza in the meantime. While Mishra went deep into the psyches that allowed and ultimately rationalized the genocide -- territory I was generally familiar with from Norman Finkelstein and Idith Zertal, although it resonates with books by dozens of other writers, and is more systematic than anything before -- Levy just batters you with a series of weekly columns, each with new details of the same old brutality, and many redundant salvos of his opinion that most Israelis have lost all sense of what they're doing, and ultimately of their own humanity. It was hard reading, but thankfully ended after less than six months, leaving it to the reader to fill in the following year, same as the old but even more craven.

After that, I moved straight into Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World, despite its daunting length. I'm still in the first section, but I'm already impressed by the novelty of describing the Spanish Conquest through the words of its dissidents, and not just Bartolomé De Las Casas. To get a sense both of the book and of its relevance today, see Grandin's TomDispatch piece, The Conquest Never Ends.

New records reviewed this week:

Tunde Adebimpe: Thee Black Boltz (2025, Sub Pop): Singer-songwriter born in St. Louis, parents from Nigeria, was lead vocalist in TV on the Radio (2004-14), first solo album. I've heard the band albums, but don't remember them at all (even the two I graded A-), but this is probably in the same ballpark, but with less ballast, which I'd guess makes it less impressive but more appealing. At least that's how this one leans. B+(**) [sp]

Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette (2025, Rhymesayers): Rapper Ian Bavitz, ten albums and more since his 1998 mixtape. B+(***) [sp]

Jon Balke: Skrifum (2023 [2025], ECM): Norwegian pianist, two dozen or so albums since 1991, this one solo. B+(*) [sp]

Bon Iver: Sable, Fable (2025, Jagjaguwar): Singer-songwriter Justin Vernon, fifth album since 2007, all well received, this one currently tied for 2nd place in my Metacritic file (with Japanese Breakfast, behind FKA Twigs). I've never seen the point, but the soul/funk effects have some appeal. This repackages Sable, his 2024 3-song 12:17 EP, on one CD, supplemented with the longer Fable (9 songs, 29:20) on a second. B+(*) [sp]

Miley Cyrus: Something Beautiful (2025, MCEO/Columbia): A pop star of some renown, 7 of her previous 8 albums (since 2007) have charted top-five. Big production, hits intermittently. B+(**) [sp]

Robert Forster: Strawberries (2025, Tapete): Australian singer-songwriter, one of two in the Go-Betweens (1978-90), went solo after that, and seems to have excelled at recapturing the group's sound since Grant McClennan's death in 2006. This hits the spot about half of the time. B+(***) [sp]

Joe Lovano: Homage (2023 [2025], ECM): Tenor saxophonist, backed here by what was once known as Tomasz Stanko's "young Polish trio": Marcin Wasilewski (piano), Slawomir Kurkiewicz (bass), and Michal Miskiewicz (drums). Starts with a piece by Zbigniew Seifert, followed by five Lovano originals. No shortage of talent here, but also no interest in raising the temperature from a dull chill. B+(**) [sp]

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Mixed Bag (2025, Summit): Originally a trombone player, sings, composes (4 of 11 here), arranges for big bands. Early albums include a Glenn Miller Project. Fourth album with this group (not his first big band). B+(**) [cd]

Ava Mendoza: The Circular Train (2024, Palilalia): Electric guitarist, approaches free jazz from an experimental rock framework, or maybe vice versa, which is one approach to fusion (or two?). Solo. Sings two songs. Covers "Irene, Goodnight." B+(*) [bc]

Larry Ochs/Joe Morris/Charles Downs: Every Day → All the Way (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Tenor/sopranino sax, bass, drums; the former best known for his work in ROVA, but has a long history of bracing free sax work, to which this is an excellent addition. A- [cd]

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: HausLive 4 (2024 [2025], Hausu Mountain): Guitarist, credits his first inspiration to Muddy Waters, started in rock bands like Trash Monkeys and Harry Pussy, but by 2009 was mostly doing solo improv, expanding to duos and sometimes more. recording Music for Four Guitars in 2021, then finding some extra guitarists to play it live -- the others here are Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parrish. B+(**) [bc]

PinkPantheress: Fancy That (2025, Warner, EP): British pop singer-songwriter Victoria Walker, one album, second mixtape, just 20:28. B+(*) [sp]

Preservation Brass: For Fat Man (2025, Sub Pop): This seems to be different from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band founded by Allan Jaffe in the 1960s and led by his son Ben Jaffe since 1989, but shares ties to the New Orleans jazz institution. Fat Man is the late drummer Kerry Hunter, who is credited as playing here. Six brass (including sousaphone), two reeds (tenor sax and clarinet), two drummers and a percussionist, and some vocals, playing trad jazz with considerable grit and polish. B+(***) [sp]

Marc Ribot: Map of a Blue City (2025, New West): A jazz guitarist of much note, he has done a wide range of things, ranging from fringe to fusion to agitprop to Postizos Cubanos and Ceramic Dog, tries his hand at intimate singer-songwriter fare here, mostly solo but with the occasional odd guest spot. Hard to hear much here, but some interesting bits. B+(*) [sp]

Viagra Boys: Viagr Aboys (2025, Shrimptech/YEAR0001): Swedish post-punk band, fourth album since 2018. Mixed bag, evidently by design, to dilute the fast and noisy ones. B+(***) [sp]

Jim White/Marisa Anderson: Swallowtail (2022 [2024], Thrill Jockey): Drums and guitar duo, the former an Australian with Chicago connections who's played in many rock bands since 1980 (and not the only Jim White you're likely to run across), Discogs credits him with 7 albums: 1 as the sole name, 2 as the first name (both with Anderson), 4 further down the slug line. Anderson, based in Portland, has a dozen albums since 2005, mostly solo, other duos with William Tyler and Tashi Dorji. B+(*) [sp]

Yeule: Evangelic Girl Is a Gun (2025, Ninja Tune): A "music project" from Singapore, fourth album, started as "glitch pop," this seems more conventionally pop. B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Nellie McKay: Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos (2003 [2005], Omnivore): Born in London, mother American, grew up in New York, holding dual citizenship. Has since become notable for interpreting others' songs, but wrote her own for her 18-song, 2-CD 2004 debut, which is reprised (or anticipated?) here. Without looking back, the demos don't sound stripped down, possibly because the main instrument is piano. Half (or more) of this makes me wonder whether I underestimated the debut, but caution keeps me from overestimating this nice reminder. Adds three bonus tracks (which do sound like demos). B+(***) [sp]

Moskito: Idolar (2001 [2025], Awesome Tapes From Africa): South African kwaito group, started with Mahlubi Radebe and Zwelakhe Mtshali, adding two more, first album. Not very polished, especially in the rap/vocals, but the beats have grown on me. B+(***) [sp]

Gerry Mulligan: Nocturne (1992 [2025], Red): Baritone saxophonist (1927-96), topped DownBeat's poll a record 29 straight times, with a previously unreleased tape from late in his career, a quartet with Harold Danko (piano), Dean Johnson (bass), and Ron Vincent (drums). B+(**) [sp]

John Surman: Flashpoints and Undercurrents (1969 [2025], Cuneiform): English saxophonist, plays all of them but here just soprano and baritone, plus bass clarinet, has had a notable career on ECM since 1981, but started in 1969 near the founding of the Anglo-European avant-garde with an eponymous album followed by groups called The Trio and S.O.S., and a Penguin Guide crown album, Tales of the Algonquin (1971) -- as well as side-credits like Extrapolation (1969, with John McLaughlin). Cuneiform has uncovered a couple more tapes from 1969 (Flashpoint, and Way Back When), and now this one, a rousing tentet with Kenny Wheeler on trumpet, three more saxophonists (Alan Skidmore, Ronnie Scott, and Mike Osborne), two trombones, piano, bass, and drums. This is rather extraordinary, but the overwhelming power can be a bit much. B+(***) [dl]

Ryan Truesdell: Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard Vol. 2 (2014 [2025], Outside In Music): Composer, arranger, conductor, appeared in 2012 with Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans, and followed that up with an excellent live "Gil Evans Project" album, Lines of Color (2015). This Vol. 2 comes from the same stand, and reminds us how impressive the interplay and the solos were. A- [cd]

Old music:

Syran Mbenza: Sisika (1986, Syllart): Congolese soukous guitarist-singer (b. 1950), played in several notable groups, with a few albums under his own name (or M'Benza). Five songs (28:08). B+(***) [sp]

Soft Works [Elton Dean/Allan Holdsworth/Hugh Hopper/John Marshall]: Abracadabra in Osaka (2003 [2020], MoonJune): Soft Machine was a Canterbury prog rock band that started as a vehicle for Kevin Ayers and Daevid Allen, who soon departed for other projects, as did drummer/vocalist Robert Wyatt, leaving a trio that having run out of vocalists gravitated towards jazz, especially when saxophonist Elton Dean joined. Their main run was from 1966-78, with several revivals and spinoffs (Soft Heap, Soft Head, Soft Ware, Soft Mountain, Soft Bounds, and from 2005-15 Soft Machine Legacy). This iteration -- with Dean, Allan Holdsworth (guitar), Hugh Hopper (bass guitar), and John Marshall (drums) -- cut one album before touring Japan, where this was taped. B+(***) [bc]

Soft Works: Abracadabra (2002 [2025], MoonJune): This was the quartet's studio album, released in Japan in 2003, and remastered, with two bonus "live in Tokyo" tracks. Appealing especially at first, but pretty much interchangeable with the live album. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alon Farber Hagiga: Dreams | Dream (Origin) [06-16]
• David Grollman/Andy Haas/Sabrina Salamone: SCRT (self-released)
• Greg Murphy: Snap Happy (Whaling City Sound) [06-06]
• Felipe Salles: Camera Obscura (Tapestry) [06-06]
• Julian Shore Trio: Sub Rosa (Chill Tone) [06-06]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, May 27, 2025

May archive (final).

Music: Current count 44276 [44235) rated (+41), 22 [22] unrated (+0).

I had thought I might try to get this posted late Sunday night. I've noticed that many of my tasks have to wait until a week day, and spending Monday on Music Week makes it hard to get the week started. As it turns out, this not only chewed up Monday but most of Tuesday as well. I know it doesn't look like it. The cutover occurred Monday morning, but seeing as how this was the last Monday of May, I had extra work to do in closing out the May Streamnotes archive and opening up a new one for June. Then I found that I was three months behind in the annual and artist index. That literally took the rest of Monday, plus a big chunk of Tuesday. But now I'm pleased to say that I'm caught up, for the first time in at least six months.

I posted a Book Roundup last Friday. I ordered four books thanks to my research:

• Andrew Boyd: I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor
• Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World
• Sarah Maza: Thinking About History
• Jathan Sadowski: The Mechanic and the Lulddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism

I've recently read the Carlos Lozada and Pankaj Mishra books, and found them both very useful. After finishing Mishra's study of how the Shoah has been politicized in ways that have ultimately been allowed Israel to commit genocide, I started reading Gideon Levy's The Killing of Gaza (from a previous Book Roundup, which provides a micro-journalist complement to Mishra's macro-historical survey: a lot of gory details, framed by the author's outrage. I get the point, and got it in real time based on skimpier reporting. The one fairly big thing in the book that hasn't been adequately reported is the evidently near-unanimous support the war has received from within Israel. Mishra provides some explanation for that, but here more details might help.

I've also bought and poked around some of the music books (generally, the ones with cover pics, including Glenn McDonald's book on Spotify), but haven't found much time to go deeper. Some issues there I would like to write up at some point.

I should also note that I answered a question on May 25, mostly about my listening habits. I have very little to add on the records below, and little to say about my near-future plans. Perhaps just that it's 2:30 AM as I'm trying to wrap this up, and these days I'm getting awful tired at that hour. So let's hit post and be done with it.

New records reviewed this week:

Marshall Allen's Ghost Horizons: Live in Philadelphia (2022-24 [2025], Otherly Love/Ars Nova Workshop): Alto saxophonist, joined Sun Ra in the 1950s and continues leading his ghost band as he's turned 101. Bandcamp page isn't very forthcoming about recording date(s) and credits -- says group founded 2022 and includes "guitarist DMHOTEP alongside an all-star cast of rotating musicians including Immanuel Wilkins, Yo La Tengo's James McNew, James Brandon Lewis, The War on Drugs' Charlie Hall, Wolf Eyes, and more." (Later info: the group first appeared in 2022, and this "collects 16 exploratory tracks from the ongoing series' first two years, captured live on stage at Solar Myth." The still incomplete list of musicians also includes William Parker, Eric Revis, Luke Stewart, Chad Taylor, and vocalist Tara Middleton. One vocal pegs Allen as 99. Another source mentions nine performances "between November 2022 and January 2024.") Some interesting material here, but there's a lot of it (88 minutes), and it's can be scattered and/or marginal. B+(***) [sp]

Eric Bibb: In the Real World (2024, Stony Plain/True North): Blues singer-songwriter, couple dozen albums since 1972, has a nice, easygoing manner for his songs. B+(**) [sp]

Bloodest Saxophone Featuring Crystal Thomas: Extreme Heat (2024, Dialtone): Japanese jump blues/swing band founded 1998 and led by Koda "Young Corn" Shintaro, seems to have made a breakthrough when Big Jay McNeely toured Japan for a pair of 2016-17 live albums. They reciprocated with In Texas, working with blues singers (Texas Blues Ladies, Texas Queens), finally settling on Thomas, who also plays a mean trombone. B+(*) [sp]

Chris Cain: Good Intentions Gone Bad (2024, Alligator): Blues singer-guitarist, "(4)" at Discogs, but he's been around, had three albums on Blind Pig in the early 1990s, second on Alligator (the first inevitably titled Raising Cain). Seems easy, but grew on me. B+(**) [sp]

Chuck D: Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon (2025, Def Jam): Public Enemy majordomo retains his signature sound, which sounds as hard-edged as ever, but the impact is blunted by the radio concept, which chops and screws everything. B+(*) [sp]

Paul Dunmall Quartet: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (2022 [2024], RogueArt): British avant-saxophonist (tenor/soprano), many albums, with Liam Noble (piano), John Edwards (bass), and Mark Sanders (drums). Joint improv, making it look easy as well as dazzling. A- [cdr]

Early James: Medium Raw (2025, Easy Eye Sound): Singer-songwriter James Mullis, from Alabama, third album, produced by Dan Auerbach, showed up on a blues list for could just as well be taken for a low-fi folkie. B [sp]

Bill Frisell/Andrew Cyrille/Kit Downes: Breaking the Shell (2022 [2024], Red Hook): Guitar, drums, organ. Label was founded by a former ECM producer, which may help explain the big names and small ambitions. B+(*) [sp]

Don Glori: Paper Can't Wrap Fire (2025, Mr Bongo): Australia-based songwriter Gordon Li, plays muiltiple instruments, uses various singers (sounding like typical "alt-r&b"), also employs a pretty fair saxophonist, likes Brazilian grooves, shows some promise but doesn't deliver much. B [sp]

Larry Goldings: I Will (2023-24 [2025], Sam First): Probably better known as an organ player, many albums since 1991, playe piano here, a trio with bass (Karl McComas-Reichl) and drums (Christian Euman), one original and five standards, the title tune from Lennon-McCartney. B+(*) [sp]

Homeboy Sandman & Brand the Builder: Manners (2025, self-released, EP): Even shorter than usual: four songs, 10:50. B+(*) [bc]

Ute Lemper: Pirate Jenny (2025, The Audiophile Society): German singer and actress, released her first Kurt Weill collection in 1987 (her only previous album was the original German cast recording of Cats), and has returned several times, with a side line of cabaret songs. B+(*) [sp]

Magnus Lindgren & John Beasley: The Butterfly Effect (2023 [2024], ACT Music): Saxophone and piano duo, the former playing tenor, clarinet, and flute. Originals by either or both, plus "Come Together." B [sp]

Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo': Room on the Porch (2025, Concord Jazz): The former has been warming up blues and roots songs since 1967, has written plenty of his own but has a genius for covers that rivals and has probably caught up with Ray Charles. The latter got a lot of hype in the 1990s when he tried to fill those shoes but failed. They finally got together, hyped as two "blues giants," in 2017 for a nondescript album, but this one is better, perhaps because it's loose enough to just let that genius seep to the surface. B+(***) [sp]

Fergus McCreadie: Stream (2024, Edition): Scottish pianist, several albums since 2018, this a trio with bass (David Bowden) and drums (Stephen Henderson). Some serious piano jazz. B+(***) [sp]

Nate Mercereau: Excellent Traveler (2024, Third Man): Guitarist, debut was the 2019 album Joy Techniques, appears on a couple albums with Carlos Niño (who gets a guest spot here, as does André 3000), otherwise this is solo, aside from samples. Listed as electronic, but shows up on jazz lists, but could work as some kind of experimentalist soundtrack. B+(***) [sp]

Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas: Totality (2025, Drag City): Two fringe jazz/rock bands from Chicago, the former led by bassist Joshua Abrams, with Jason Stein (bass clarinet), and Mikel Patrick Avery (drums); the latter with Cooper Crain (organ/keys), Rob Frye (flute/synth), and Dan Quinlivan (electronics). B+(**) [sp]

Nikara Presents . . . Black Wall Street: The Queen of Kings County (2022-23 [2024], Switch Hit): Vibraphonist Nikara Warren, from Brooklyn, granddaughter of Kenny Barron, group name recapitulates title of her 2021 debut album. Most tracks with trumpet (Alonzo Demetrius), tenor sax (Craig Hill), keyboards, guitar, electric bass, and drums, plus some extras (including several Barrons), working covers of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield in with the originals. B+(**) [sp]

Bruno Parrinha/Carlos "Zingaro"/Fred Lonberg-Holm/João Madeira: Enleiro (2024 [2025], 4DaRecord): Chamber jazz quartet, with bass clarinet, violin, cello, bass, emphasis on strings, but also free improv that is always in motion. B+(***) [cd]

Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band: Honeysuckle (2025, Family Owned): Actually just a trio, from Brown County, Indiana, with the Reverend on guitar and vocals, Breezy Peyton on washboard, and Jacob Powell on drums. Eleventh album since, with some guest spots. B+(**) [sp]

Dan Phillips Trio: Array in Brown (2025, Lizard Breath): Guitarist, leader of Chicago Edge Ensemble, trio here with Krzysztof Pabian (bass) and Avreeayl Ra (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Ron Rieder: Día Precioso! (2025, Meson): Composer, from Massachusetts, pictured with piano but not listed as playing here, second album, cover notes arrangements by Ricardo Monzón, 8 songs, 32:48, a mix of Afro-Cuban jazz, sambas, mambos, and tango. B+(*) [cd]

Scheen Jazzorkester & Fredrik Ljungkvist: Framåt! (2023 [2025], Grong): Norwegian big band, started as a jazz composers workshop in 2011, nine albums, most feature guest artists like the Swedish tenor saxophonist here, who composed all of the pieces here. B+(***) [cd]

Elijah Shiffer: City of Birds: Volume 2 (2024 [2025], self-released): Alto saxophonist, several previous albums including Volume 1 (2023), "dedicated to the birds of New York city," with a field guide on the cover, but the grooves are effectively a cutting contest with Kevin Sun (tenor sax), backed by bass and drums. B+(**) [sp]

Luke Stewart/Silt Remembrance Ensemble: The Order (2023 [2025], Cuneiform): Bassist, DC area, has a lot of projects over the last decade, the best known being Irreversible Entanglements, but he's also played on recent albums by David Murray and James Brandon Lewis, has two very good Silt Trio albums, and a Remembrance Quintet album. This combines those two groups, so you get three saxophonists (Jamal Moore, Brian Settles, and Daniel Carter, the latter also on trumpet), with Chad Taylor (drums). While much of this is very impressive, some of the horn thrash just wore me out. B+(***) [dl]

Melinda Sullivan/Larry Goldings: Big Foot (2024, Colorfield): Goldings is well known for his organ and piano work. First album for Sullivan, who Wikipedia identifies as a dancer, but she's effectively a percussionist here, with variations on tap dance, while Goldings plays piano figures on one hand, and synth baselines on the other. Some cuts add extra musicians, with Goldings' daughter Anna offering a vocal. B+(*) [sp]

Sumac and Moor Mother: The Film (2025, Thrill Jockey): Canadian-American metal band, five albums on their own since 2015, also have three collaborations with Keiji Haino before this one with jazz rapper Camae Ayewa. (This was preceded by a Moor Mother remix of a Sumac track on a 2024 EP.) She adds weight a message that they probably already considered, while they provide the gravity. Just "don't look away." A- [sp]

Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (2025, 4AD): Duo of Merrill Garbus (vocals, etc.) and Nate Brenner (bass, etc.), sixth studio album since 2009. I can't say as I've ever been impressed, amused and/or simply pleased, although I keep trying. (Friends love their albums, notably Robert Christgau, who has graded the series { A, A, A-, A-, A }, vs. my { **, *, **, B, B }.) Some interest here, but hard to hear her even with three plays. File under "distinctions not cost-effective." B+(*) [sp]

Kali Uchis: Sincerely, (2025, Capitol): Pop singer-songwriter, born in Virginia, father from Colombia, where she lived during her high school years, has a couple albums in Spanish as well as those in English, this her fifth since 2018. Hit or miss in the past, neither this time, although I could see getting comfortable in her groove. B+(**) [sp]

Nasheet Waits: New York Love Letter (Bitter Sweet) (2021-22 [2024], Giant Step Arts): Drummer, many side credits (both free and mainstream, perhaps best known for Tarbaby and Jason Moran), just his third album as leader (although Discogs counts over 20). With Mark Turner (tenor sax), Steve Nelson (vibes), and Rashaan Carter (bass), opening with two originals, with pieces by Moran and Andrew Hill before closing with two Coltranes. Turner, in particular, was having a very strong year. B+(***) [bc]

Michael Waldrop: Native Son (2024 [2025], Origin): Drummer, Discogs shows a 2002 album, I have four since 2015. Cover credits for Vasil Hadžimanov (piano) and Martin Gjakonovski (bass), recorded on their turf in Serbia, and small print for percussionists Brad Dutz and Jose Rossy (6 and 3 cuts, respectively). B+(**) [cd]

David Weiss Sextet: Auteur (2023 [2024], Origin): Trumpet player, FSNT debut 2001, some interesting albums/projects (including New Jazz Composers Octet), this one five originals plus covers from Freddie Hubbard and Slide Hampton. With Nicole Glover (tenor sax), Myron Walden (alto sax), piano, bass, and drums (EJ Strickland). B+(***) [sp]

Ben Wendel: Understory: Live At The Village Vanguard (2022 [2024], Edition): Canadian saxophonist, based in New York, ten or so albums since 2009, with a "world-class rhythm section" of Gerald Clayton (piano), Linda May Han Oh (bass), and Obed Calvaire (drums). Original pieces (one cover), well done. B+(**) [sp]

Carolyn Wonderland: Truth Is (2025, Alligator): Blues singer-songwriter from Houston, née Bradford, based in Austin, dozen albums since 2002, has some songs and a powerful voice. B+(**) [sp]

Carlos "Zingaro"/Flo Stoffner/Fred Lonberg-Holm/João Madeira: Na Parede (2023 [2025], 4DaRecord): Violin, guitar, cello, bass, pretty much the same avant-chamber jazz lineup as on bassist Madeira's other recent production (Enleiro, listed under Bruno Parrinha, replaced here by the guitarist; both records are, of course, joint improv). Although this seems like a self-limiting concept, but details really replay close listening. A- [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Ella Fitzgerald: The Moment of Truth: Ella at the Coliseum (1967 [2025], Verve): Previously unreleased live tape, from the year she moved from Verve to Capitol, which tried to throttle her jazz instincts and move her into covering contemporary pop songs -- two examples here are "Alfie" and "Music to Watch Girls By" -- but her band here was well stocked with Ellington horns (including Gonsalves, Hodges, and Carney on saxophones, Cat Anderson and Cootie Williams on trumpet) and she couldn't help but swing. B+(**) [sp]

Masahiko Togashi: Session in Paris Vol. 1: Song of Soil (1979 [2025], We Want Sounds): Japanese drummer (1940-2007), recorded this album with Don Cherry (cornet/flute/trumpet/percussion) and Charlie Haden (bass). A minor add to the Cherry discography, but he's not likely to be remembered for his flute. The drummer is worth focusing on. B+(**) [bc]

Masahiko Togashi: Session in Paris Vol. 2: Colour of Dream (1979 [2025], We Want Sounds): Same time and place, but less star power: Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone), Takashi Kako (a Japanese pianist based in Paris), and Jean-François Jenny Clark (bass). A minor add to the Mangelsdorff discography -- the German is less reknowned in the US than Cherry or Haden, but should be regarded as a comparably major figure -- and this suggests that Kako might be worth further investigation. B+(**) [bc]

Old music:

Nate Mercereau: Joy Techniques (Deluxe) (2019 [2020], How So): Guitarist, most tracks guitar synth, also credits for programming and percussion, but label says "no keyboards were used in the making of this record," and most tracks have Aaron Steele on drums. Deluxe version adds 4 tracks. B+(**) [sp]

Sumac: The Healer (2024, Thrill Jockey): Sources refer to them as "American/Canadian metal band." I'm always put off by the metal label -- not something I disapprove of in principle, but I've rarely found any reason to enjoy in practice -- but this album got enough widespread approval last year I'm surprised that I didn't get to it earlier. Fifth album since 2015. Four long pieces, for 76:08. Guitar/bass/drums, with Aaron Turner growling. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Coco Chatru Quartet: Limbokolia (Trygger Music) [06-00]: LP
• The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Mixed Bag (Summit) [05-23]
• Joe Morris/Elliott Sharp: Realism (ESP-Disk) [05-30]
• Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio: Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms) [06-20]
• Kathy Sanborn: Romance Language (Pacific Coast Jazz) [07-11]
• Deborah Silver/The Count Basie Orchestra: Basie Rocks! (Green Hill) [05-02]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Friday, May 23, 2025

Last Book Roundup was back on April 5, 2025, nearly a full year after the previous one on April 25, 2024. So much had happened since then, and so much had changed, that I decided to limit myself to books published in calendar 2024, holding back some 2025 releases that already demanded attention. This is but a first installment on bringing the lists up to date.

As usual, the post has two sections: a main one, where I single out 20 (or so) books that strike me as especially worthy of comment; and a second one, where I briefly note the existence of other interesting books. As the number of "briefly noted" books has grown, I've taken to grouping them by subject, first under main section books (which they complement), and now also in the second section -- in effect, a supplementary list to a major book I haven't found yet.

Needless to say, I've actually read very few of these books. I'll include a cover scan for those I have read, or at least have bought and intend to read. What I know comes from reviews, blurbs, samples, and/or comments on sites like Amazon. I'm a very slow reader, but compensate with these wide-ranging surveys. While I read a fair amount of journalism most days, I take books to be the standard for what we actually know. They take more time and are more permanent, which both allows and insists on more work and reflection.

Note: I've also added the occasional red star () for bullet items which seem most promising.

Internal links to authors/subjects (+ extended lists; the numbering has no meaning other than it saves me from having to count):

1. Andrew Boyd: I Want a Better Catastrophe + climate/activism
2. John Cassidy: Capitalism and Its Critics
3. Robert Chapman: Empire of Normality + neurodiversity
4. Tom Cotton: Seven Things You Can't Say About China + more
5. James Davies: Sedated + psychology
6. Glenn Diesen: The Think Tank Racket + Ukraine/Russia
7. Phil Freeman: Ugly Beauty + jazz
8. Fawaz A Gerges: What Really Went Wrong
9. David A Graham: The Project: Project 2025
10. Greg Grandin: America, América
11. Chris Hayes: The Siren's Call
12. Ezra Klein/Derek Thompson: Abundance
13. Michael Lewis: Who Is Government
14. Carlos Lozada: The Washington Book
15. Sarah Maza: Thinking About History
16. Mike McCormick: An Almost Insurmountable Evil + Biden hate
17. Glenn McDonald: You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song + Spotify
18. Pankaj Mishra: The World After Gaza + Israel, genocide, antisemitism
19. Benny Morris/Dror Ze'evi: The Thirty-Year Genocide + Turkey
20. Premilla Nadasen: Care
21. Clay Risen: Red Scare
22. Enzo Traverso: Revolution
23. Michael Wolf: All or Nothing + 2024 election
24. A few more books briefly noted:

Andrew Boyd: I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor (paperback, 2023, New Society): Subtitle continues: "An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers." In other words, this is the current state of the climate change crisis, one where we no longer have the luxury of thinking that we're only talking about a distant, easily manageable future but have seen enough to start realizing how unprepared we are even for what's happening now. Boyd starts out with several charts that plot "progress" vs. time, and winds up with the one I grabbed and pasted stage right. I'm not much of a catastrophist here, so that view may seem excessive, even where his point is "gallows humor." But what does matter to me is whether we face the very real problems in ways that work collectively, or stick with the current favorite, which is for everyone to buy guns and fend for themselves.

Many more climate change and/or activism books (seems like every Roundup brings another boat load):

• Clayton Page Aldern: The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains (2024, Dutton): A "neuroscientist turned journalist."
• Sunil Amrith: The Burning Earth: A History (2024, WW Norton): This starts in 1200, with three sections divided by 1800 and 1945, the author from Singapore.
• Paul Bierman: When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History and Perilous Future (2024, WW Norton): "Not another global warming polemic, but rather a compelling introduction to Greenland, glaciers, and how scientists drill down through ice to reveal the past."
• Tad Delay: Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change (2024, Verso).
• Dana R Fisher: Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (2024, Columbia University Press).
• Porter Fox: Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them (2024, Little Brown).
• Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy (2024).
• Genevieve Guenther: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It (2024, Oxford University Press).
• Malcolm Harris: What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis (2025, Little Brown): "Confirms [him] as a next-generation David Graeber or Mike Davis -- a historian-activist who shows us where we stand and how we got here." That involves combining his three ways into one "meta-strategy," which is probably right, but much easier said than done.
• Chelsea Henderson: Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics (paperback, 2024, Turner): How slow can you go? Well, for one thing, the lead blurb here is from Joe Lieberman.
• Dougald Hine: At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies (2023; paperback, 2024, Chelsea Green): When he says we're "asking too much of science," I think he's confusing it with capitalism.
• Rob Jackson: Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere (2024, Scribner).
• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: What if We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures (2024, One World).
• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson/Katherine K Wilkinson: All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (paperback, 2021, One World).
• Abrahm Lustgarten: On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America (2024, Farrar Straus and Giroux).
• Vanessa Machado de Oliveira: Hospicing Moderntiy: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism (paperback, 2021, North Atlantic Books).
• Joanna Macy/Chris Johnstone: Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power (paperback, 2022, New World Library).
• Andreas Malm/Wim Carton: Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown (2024, Verso): Malm previously wrote How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021).
• R Jisung Park: Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World (2024, Princeton University Press): Our focus on disasters helps mask many real and substantial other costs. There is so much that can be said about this that it's unlikely that anyone can say it all.
• Hannah Ritchie: Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (2024, Little Brown Spark).
• Susan Solomon: Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again (2024, University of Chicago Press): Refers to the ozone layer crisis, which was much easier, both technically and politically.
• Tom Steyer: Cheaper Faster Better: How We'll Win the Climate War (2024, Spiegel & Grau): The capitalist solution, from someone poised to make a lot of money off it. [PS: I had forgotten that he ran for president in 2020, and blew a lot of money in the process.]
• Leah Cardamore Stokes: Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States (paperback, 2020, Oxford University Press).
• John Vaillant: Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World (2023, Knopf): On the 2016 Fort McMurray, Canada fire.
• Jonathan Vigliotti: Before It's Gone: Stories From the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America (2024; paperback, 2025, Atria/One Signal).
• Adam Welz: The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown (2023, Bloomsbury): This one may be worth returning to, as it touches on an even more basic question than climate change, which is whether we want to allow some wild nature independent of human life, or intend to totally subvert it.
• Britt Wray: Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety (paperback, 2023, The Experiment).

John Cassidy: Capitalism and Its Critics: A history: From the Industrial Revolution to AI (2025, Farrar Straus and Giroux): New Yorker columnist, writes topically politician columns quite regularly, but his 2009 book How Markets Fail: The Rise and Fall of Free Market Economics was was one of the best books to come out of the 2008 financial crisis, and his earlier (2002) Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era looks solid enough. This looks to be very thorough, with The Communist Manifesto only appearing in Chapter Eight, a reminder that lots of people have had beefs with capitalism both before and independently after Marx. He notes that he started writing this book in 2016, in response to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Now you can read it as a historical supplement to Sanders' It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Or perhaps as an "Amen."

• Jathan Sadowski: The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism (paperback, 2025, University of California Press): More on this, including a quote, toward the end.

Robert Chapman: Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism (paperback, 2023, Pluto Press): Alternative term for "autism," author is "a neurodivergent philosopher" and professor, referred to here as "they," who "exposes the very myth of the 'normal' brain as a product of intensified capitalism." While I've never (as far as I know) been diagnosed as autistic, or assigned some peg on the spectrum, and I certainly don't have the superpowers of the French police archivist in Astrid, I am aware of seeing things and recalling details and relationships that few others recognize, so perhaps there is something to this "neurodiversity" beyond its euphemistic usage. As for capitalism, the author may be engaging in the usual leftist blame game -- which I tired of 50 years ago, but I can't deny that doing so here offers both insights and an ethical framework. It occurs to me that one can recast capitalism not as economics or culture but as a species of game theory, which forces people to think and act in certain prescribed ways -- so routine as to seem natural to most people, but patently ridiculous to the few who can see through and beyond them.

This opens the door to an extensive literature I've rarely noticed before (although I read a lot of RD Laing and Thomas Szasz back in my day, so I'm familiar with the dialectics of psychology and politics). Also, note more books on psychology below, under Davies.

• Beatrice Adler-Bolton/Artie Vierkant: Health Communism (2022, Verso).
• Alicia A Broderick: The Autism Industrial Complex: How Branding, Marketing, and Capital Investment Turned Autism Into Big Business (paperback, 2022, 2022, Myers Education Press).
• Micha Frazer-Carroll: Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health (paperback, 2023, Pluto Press).
• Eric Garcia: We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation (paperback, 2022, Harvest).
• Steve Silberman: NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (paperback, 2016, Avery).
• Judy Singer: NeuroDiversity: The Birth of an Idea (paperback, 2017, self): Short (82 pp).
• Sonny Jane Wise: We're All Neurodiverse (paperback, 2023, Jessica Kingsley).
• M Remi Yergeau: Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (paperback, 2018, Duke University Press).
• Ashley Shew: Against Technolabelism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (paperback, 2024, WW Norton): Relevant here, to the extent that labels like "autism" denote disability and lead into a wide range of social reactions some are calling "ableism." I should return to that literature later, but will leave it for now.

Tom Cotton: Seven Things You Can't Say About China (2025, Broadside Books): And yet here he is, saying them. What a profile in "speaking truth to power"! Actually, he's a Senator (R-AR), building a reputation as the GOP's top warmonger, as if that's going to be his key to the White House. Actually, lots of think tankers are peddling the same wares, but he is exceptionally blunt about it. His seven chapter heads say more about his psyche than his book does about China:

1. China Is an Evil Empire
2. China Is Preparing for War
3. China Is Waging Economic World War
4. China Has Infiltrated Our Society
5. China Has Infiltrated Our Government
6. China Is Coming for Our Kids
7. China Could Win

In case you're wondering where the coronavirus pandemic fits in, he brings it up in the first line of the Prologue, adding "I've never taken the claims of Chinese Communists at face value." Nor is he fazed by independent observations, or any understanding of how the world actually works. I've cited a bunch of anti-China sabre rattling previously, to which we can add (including a few books that don't strictly follow the "coming war" formula):

• Dmitri Alperovitch/Garret M Graff: World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century (2024, PublicAffairs).
• Robert D Blackwill/Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (2024, Oxford University Press): Both have long lists of BLOB credentials.
• Hal Brands: The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World (2025, WW Norton): AEI fellow, he's never met a Cold War he didn't like, expanding here from his previous book, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China (2022).
• Kerry Brown: Why Taiwan Matters: A Short History of a Small Island That Will Dictate Our Future (2025, St Martin's Press).
• Gordon G. Chang: Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America (2024, Humanix). Chang has previously written:
• Gordon G. Chang: China Is Going to War [Encounter Broadside No. 69] (paperback, 2023, Encounter Books).
• Gordon G. Chang: The Great U.S.-China Tech War [Encounter Broadside No. 61] (paperback, 2020, Encounter Books).
• Gordon G. Chang: The Coming Collapse of China (2001, Random House): This one is obviously a bit dated. Author has been plowing this field for a long time.
• Jonathan Clements: Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan (2024, Scribe US): Probably useful perspective, but within this debate reminds me of the sort of boosterism that Dan Senor and Saul Singer weaponized in Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle (2009).
• Fiona S Cunningham: Under the Nuclear Shadow: China's Information-Age Weapons in International Security (paperback, 2025, Princeton University Press).
• Eva Dou: House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company (2025, Portfolio): Big Chinese telecom company, often suspected of ulterior motives.
• James E Fanell/Bradley A Thayer: Embracing Communist China: America's Greatest Strategic Failure (2024, War Room Books).
• Emily Feng: Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China (2025, Crown).
• Keyu Jin: The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism (2023, Viking).
• Sulmaan Wasif Khan: The Struggle for Taiwan: A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between (2024, Basic Books).
• David Daokui Li: China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict (2024, WW Norton): A counterpoint from a Chinese economist who is tuned into that world view, with explanations very unlike the world domination ambitions US analysts are prone to.
• Driana Skylar Mastro: Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (2024, Oxford University Press).
• Patrick McGee: Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company (2025, Scribner): I'd edit the title, s/Greatest/Most Contemptible/, but that's an old grudge, and beside the point. If you view war as inevitable, as many think tankers do, you might view Apple as treasonous. On the other hand, Apple's links make war less likely, because they expose tangible risks, whereas deterrence theories are just hypothetical. Also note that Apple is just one of hundreds of big companies with political influence on both sides, but especially on the more corrupt American side.
• Grant Newshawm: When China Attacks: A Warning to America (2023, Regnery).
• Matt Pottinger: The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan (paperback, 2024, Hoover Institution Press): Argues for "a robust military policy," because nothing fights fire like more fire (and because that's who pays his way).
• Kevin Rudd: On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World (2024, Oxford University Press): Former Prime Minister of Australia.
• Michael Sheridan: The Red Emperor: Xi Jinping and His New China (2025, Headline).
• Michael Sobolik: Countering China's Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance (2024, Naval Institute Press).
• Anne Stevenson-Yang: Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy (paperback, 2024, Brixton Ink): Argues that under Xi, China has abandoned capitalism, and will suffer for it.
• Steve Tsang/Olivia Cheung: The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2024, Oxford University Press).
• Chun Han Wong: Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future (2024, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).
• Joel Wuthnow/Philip C Saunders: China's Quest for Military Supremacy (2025, Polity): Both work for US National Defense University.

James Davies: Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis (paperback, 2022, Atlantic Books). Notes that "In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year" -- an increase of 500% since 1980, yet "levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity." That may be because they're noticing things they had ignored before, or it may be a case of capitalist supply looking for demand -- a perennial in the advertising world. Or it may reflect the search for efficiency, combined with an indifference to care -- more capitalist traits. (One clue is the title: sedation may or may not be good for patients, but it can be a lot less trouble for "caregivers.")

The author has written about this before, and he's not alone.

• James Davies: The Importance of Suffering: The Value and Meaning of Emotional Discontent (paperback, 2011, Routledge).
• James Davies: Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good (paperback, 2014, Icon Books).
• James Davies: The Sedated Society: The Causes and Harms of Our Psychiatric Drug Epidemic (paperback, 2017, Palgrave Macmillan).
• Allen Frances: Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big-Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life (paperback, 2014, Mariner Books).
• Gary Greenberg: Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease (paperback, 2011, Simon & Schuster).
• Gary Greenberg: The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry (paperback, 2014, Penguin).
• Ethan Watters: Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (2010; paperback, 2011, Simon & Schuster): Argues that "the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: we are in the process of homongenizing the way the world goes mad." We're not just selling psychiatric drugs, we're marketing the "illnesses" that promote them. Which, come to think of it, is what we've done to ourselves since the invention of advertising.
• Robert Whitaker: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (paperback, 2011, Crown).
• Robert Whitaker: Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (paperback, 2019, Basic Books).
• Rob Wipond: Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships (2023, BenBella Books).

Glenn Diesen: The Think Tank Racket: Managing the Information War With Russia (paperback, 2023, Clarity Press): While this book is explicitly about how think tanks feed American militance against Russia, it's obviously relevant to the China sabre-rattling noted above (under Cotton). The bottom line: "The US adversarial relationship with Russia has sustained its exorbitant military spending over many decades." This opens with a section on "The Rise and Corruption of the Expert Class." No doubt they've created a lot of ideology on top of their graft, much of which is projection of America's own attempts to dominate an increasingly unconquerable world. Recent books on Russia follow the China pattern, except that it is easier to imagine future wars than it is to face current ones: before Putin's Ukraine invasion of 2022, efforts to rekindle the Cold War were common, but warnings of its consequences scarce; after Russia escalated, the first wave of American books were extremely anti-Russian, but now that the war has stalled, we're also seeing a few books that start to question American motives -- both leading up to the war, and in Biden's failure to attempt to stop it.

• Glenn Diesen: The Decay of Western Civilisation and Resurgence of Russia (paperback, 2020, Routledge).
• Glenn Diesen: The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order (paperback, 2024, Clarity Press).
• Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky: The Russian Way of Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Coercion, and War (paperback, 2023, Stanford University Press).
• Stephanie Baker: Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia (2024; paperback, 2025, Scribner): Hardcover noted previously; no indication of revisions here, although the policy has been notably unsuccessful.
• Jonathan Haslam: Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War Against Ukraine (2025, Belknap Press): While I have always blamed (and never excused) Putin for his reckless exploitation of the division within Ukraine in 2014 and even more so for his invasion of 2022, it is important to understand that his acts were done in a context largely set to US/NATO expansion, and in many ways should also be understood as grievous failures of American foreign policy. The early parts of this story are fairly well known, but the later parts need a fuller accounting, especially the period from when Biden took over to when Putin felt the need to invade. Not clear how far this goes, but it's a good start.
• Scott Horton: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine (paperback, 2024, The Libertarian Institute): Libertarian antiwar columnist, looks like he's collected his notes on US vs. Russia all the way back to "The Unipolar Moment" under George HW Bush, a total of 690 pp.
• Lucian Kim: Putin's Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine (2024, Columbia University Press): "He debunks the Kremlin narrative that the West instigated the conflict, and he instead identifies the root causes of the war in the legacy of Russian imperialism and Putin's dictatorial rule." Sounds like a caricature.
• Guy Mettan: Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria (paperback, 2017, Clarity Press): Swiss journalist, also has a more general book of interest: Europe's Existential Dilemma: To Be or Not to Be an American Vassal (2021).
• Leonid Nevzlin: Putin's Mafia State: A Story of Corruption, Control, and the Failure of Democracy in Russia (2024, self).
• Sergey Radchenko: To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power (2024, Cambridge University Press): Big book, 768 pp, more focused on Soviet era, but framed to feed those seeking to demonize Putin.
• Paul Robinson: Russia's World Order: How Civilizationism Explains the Conflict With the West (2025, Northern Illinois University Press): "Civilizationism" sounds like Samuel P Huntington, which these days should be a red flag.
• John J Sullivan: Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir From the Front Lines of Russia's War Against the West (2024, Little Brown): Was US ambassador to Russia under Trump and Biden (a little over a year each).
• Alexander Vindman: The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine (2025, PublicAffairs): Made his name testifying against Trump in the first impeachment.
• Andrew Wilson: Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship (paperback, 2021, Yale University Press).

There are also several books on Russia's use of mercenaries, which with Prigozhin dead may no longer be much of an issue:

• Anna Arutunyan/Mark Galeotti: Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin and the New Fight for the Future of Russia (2024, Ebury Press).
• Anna Arutunyan: Hybrid Warriors: Proxies, Freelancers and Moscow's Struggle for Ukraine (2022, Hurst; paperback, 2023, Neeti).
• John Lechner: Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare (2025, Bloomsbury).
• Jack Margolin: The Wagner Group: Inside Russia's Mercenary Army (2024, Reaktion Books).
• Candace Rondeaux: Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse Into Mercenary Chaos (2025, PublicAffairs).
• Owen Wilson: The Wagner Group: From Savage Global Mercenaries to Putin's Unlikely Nemesis (paperback, 2023, Gibson Square).

Phil Freeman: Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century (paperback, 2022, Zero Books): With two decades down, it's possible to start thinking of the 21st century as a distinctly different period of time from the decades that preceded it. While individual timelines align poorly with arbitrary decades or branded generations, statistics do add up. When I set up my record rating database, I divided jazz into 20-year chunks, based on when an artist or group name started recording. Counting names today, it looks like the expansion of jazz has been geometric: 1920s: 145; 1940s: 460; 1960s: 717; 1980s: 1649; 2000s: 3524. (I haven't started a 2020s yet, but there is no reason to think the expansion has slowed.) If I tried to characterized 20th century jazz in generations, I'd say: swing (1917-45), bebop (1946-65), avant and/or fusion (1966-1980), and postbop (1981-2000), although the edges are increasingly blurry, and nothing old ever really dies. After 2000, you get a massive expansion of all of the above, which lines up with the more general notion of postmodernism. Of course, few practical writers indulge in such inevitably faulty generalizations. It's easier, and more sensible, to come up with a list of musicians and profile them, as Freeman does here (42 names in 29 chapters): while he's somewhat broader than the similar Chinen and Mitchell books below, his map still leaves a lot of terra incognita.

• David R Adler, ed: The Jazz Omnibus: 21st Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association (paperback, 2024, Cymbal Press).
• Bill Beuttler: Make It New: Reshaping Jazz in the 21st Century (paperback, 2019, Lever Press).
• Nate Chinen: Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (2018, Pantheon; paperback, 2019, Vintage).
• Rick Mitchell: Jazz in the New Millennium: Live & Well (2014; paperback, revised ed, 2024, Dharma Moon Press).

Book writers are always slow off the mark, so there's much more written recently about older jazz. For example (including a couple items that don't seem to be on Amazon):

• Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year (2024, Knopf).
• Clifford Allen: Singularity Codex: Matthew Shipp on RogueArt (2021, RogueArt).
• William G Carter: Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life (2024, Broadleaf Books): Jazz pianist and Presbyterian minister, leads Presbybop Quartet.
• Josephine Baker: Fearless and Free: A Memoir (2025, Tiny Reparations Books): First English translation of the singer's autobiography, originally published in France in 1949.
• Con Chapman: Sax Expat: Don Byas (paperback, 2025, University Press of Mississippi).
• TJ English: Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld (paperback, 2023, William Morrow): Author has more books on organized crime than on music.
• Philip Freeman: In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor (paperback, 2024, Wolke Verlag).
• Jonathon Grosse: Jazz Revolutionary: The Life & Music of Eric Dolphy (paperback, 2024, Jawbone Press).
• James Kaplan: 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool (2024, Penguin Press).
• Aidan Levy: Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins (paperback, 2023, Da Capo): 800 pp.
• Rick Lopez: The Sam Rivers Sessionography: A Work in Progress (paperback, 2022, self): Massive, beautiful work. Soon to be a major motion picture.
• Rick Lopez: The William Parker Sessionography: A Work in Progress (paperback, 2014, self): I should also mention this. Lead blurb by yours truly (probably the only time that ever happened).
• Allen Lowe: Letter to Esperanza: Or: The Goyim Will Not Replace Me - Looking for Tenure in All the Wrong Places (2023, Constant Sorrow).
• Allen Lowe: If I Don't Live Forever It's Your Fault (2021, Constant Sorrow).
• Allen Lowe: "Turn Me Loose White Man" Or: Appropriating Culture: How to Listen to American Music 1900-1960 (2020-21, Constant Sorrow): Two volumes, comes with a 30-CD set.
• André Marmot: Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story of the UK Jazz Explosion (2024, Faber & Faber).
• Daren Mueller: At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz (paperback, 2024, Duke University Press).
• Michael Pronko: A Guide to Jazz in Japan (paperback, 2025, Raked Gravel Press): Author born in Kansas City, but lived in Japan 20 years, before moving on to Beijing. He also writes Tokyo-based mystery novels.
• Sam VH Reese, ed: The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins (paperback, 2024, New York Review Books): 176 pp.
• Ricky Riccardi: Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong (2025, Oxford University Press): "Celebrates Lillian 'Lil' Armstrong as the architect of Louis Armstrong's career." Previously wrote:
• Ricky Riccardi: What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years (2011, Pantheon).
• Ricky Riccardi: Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong (2020, Oxford University Press).
• Matthew Shipp: Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings (2025, RogueArt): 94 pp.
• John Szwed: Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith (2023, Farrar Straus and Giroux; paperback, 2024, Picador).
• Henry Threadgill: Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music (2023, Knopf): Autobiography.
• Judith Tick: Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song (2023; paperback, 2025, WW Norton).
• Larry Tye: The Jazz Men: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America (2024, Mariner Books).
• Elijah Wald: Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories (2024, Da Capo).

Fawaz A Gerges: What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East (2024, Yale University Press): Middle east expert based in London, was early on the scene in 1999 with America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests?, an insight that has served him well as an analyst -- especially in predicting the problems the Iraq War would exacerbate. The "Arab Spring" is widely regarded as a failure today, but did it have to be? What difference might it have made had the US generously supported efforts to support liberal democracy, peace, and prosperity for all, instead of its narrow economic interests and its ridiculous superpower conceits (including its willingness to sacrifice all other concerns to buttress Israel)? This primarily focuses on Iran and Egypt, on Mossadegh and Nasser, so doesn't get to my questions, but lays the groundwork.

David A Graham: The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America (paperback, 2025, Random House): Staff writer for The Atlantic, one of the few I'd read if I could, covers politics and national affairs, offers a short (160 pp) primer on the big plans the right-wing Heritage Foundation hopes to inflict on America through the clueless Trump administration. Although "think tanks" have long considered this sort of "thinking" their raison d'être, such plans rarely get taken seriously, as the actual "sausage-making" in Washington is done by the lobby groups that care for and feed our politicians, and they generally feel the less you know, the better. This one got some notoriety when a few journalists (like Graham) bothered to read it, provoking an embarrassed Trump to deny any involvement or interest -- an obvious lie, given that much of it was already tucked away in the wonkier corners of his campaign's website.

Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World (2025, Penguin Press): Big (768 pp) history of the entire Western Hemisphere, combining the United States and Latin America, showing how each affects and reflects the other. This is not the first time Grandin has looked south of the border for insights into American history: e.g., Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006); Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (2009); The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (2014); one might even note his Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman (2015).

Chris Hayes: The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource (2025, Penguin): I tend to automatically discount anything written by a "broadcast journalist," but Hayes' two previous books -- Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (2012) and A Colony in a Nation (2017) -- are both remarkably succinct and original attempts to deal with important and in some ways unexpected topics. Hard to say whether this makes three, but arguing against it is that attention is pretty close to his stock-in-trade -- he plies a trade where ratings are all-consuming -- and the concept is intrinsically hard to value. In particular, I wonder whether the point of many ploys isn't just to direct your attention away from elsewhere. For instance, while it may be horrifying to imagine what happens to the brains of people who follow Trump, the main point of much of what Trump does seems to be to keep you from thinking about Trump, and focus instead on the foibles of his opponents, or anyone who might just have an honest take on him. I'm reminded that the way airplanes escape anti-aircraft rockets is to flood the zone with false targets. If Trump isn't already doing that, I'd hate to imagine what he might do once he figures it out.

• Anna Kornbluh: Immediacy: Or, the Style of Too Late Capitalism (paperback, 2024, Verso): This looks like an interesting, more Marx-aware take on the same problem.

Ezra Klein/Derek Thompson: Abundance (2025, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster): I've seen many references lately to "abundance liberalism," which this seems to be its bible. It comes at a time when Democrats are shell-shocked by the loss to Trump -- especially those who are congenitally prejudiced against the left, and still hope to double down on the neoliberal gospel of growth. I sympathize somewhat with their "build" mantra -- Democrats have a big problem convincing people they will actually deliver on their promises, perhaps because they have a really poor track record, and much of what they do deliver has been neutered by lobbyists and donor concerns -- but isn't the problem somewhat deeper than just providing cutting through the permit process paperwork? While it's true that if you built more housing, you could bring prices down, the neoliberal economy is driven by the search for higher profits, not lower prices. Democrats have been trained to think that the only way they can get things done is through private corporations (e.g., you want more school loans, so hire banks to administer them; you want better health care for more people, prop up and pay off the insurance companies); you want green energy, so offer patent monopolies and tax credits. This is not just wasteful, it invites further sabotage, and the result is you cannot deliver as promised. Similarly, Democrats have been trained to believe that growth is the magic elixir: make the rich richer, and everyone else will benefit. They're certainly good at the first part, but the second is harder to quantify. Perhaps there are some details here that are worth a read, but the opposite of austerity isn't abundance; it's enough, and that's not just a quantity but also a quality. Klein's a well read guy, and his Why We're Polarized (2020) covers useful ground. Thompson I'm not so sure about, so we'll note his books and some others in this general arena:

• Derek Thompson: The Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (2017; paperback, 2018, Penguin Books): This looks like a possibly interesting book, but more likely to dazzle you with the breadth of his references -- sample chapter: Mona Lisa, "Rock Around the Clock," and Chaos Theory -- than with any depth of understanding. I suspect that what makes a hit has much less to do with design than with opportunity, which is notoriously hard to anticipate.
• Derek Thompson: On Work: Money, Meaning, Identity (paperback, 2023, Zando Atlantic Editions).
• Marc J Dunkelman: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress -- and How to Bring It Back (2025, PublicAffairs): Sample blurbs: "Anyone who has been frustrated with the inefficiency of government must read this book" -- Lizabeth Cohen. "For progressive politics to work, the public must have an affirmative view of government and its effectiveness" -- Rahm Emmanuel.
• Yoni Appelbaum: Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity (2025, Random House): Lead blurbs here (not interesting enough to quote) from Heather Cox Richardson and Jill Lepore.
• David Suskind: Growth: A History and a Reckoning (2024, Belknap Press): This probably deserves its own entry, but for now it seems relevant here, as the main problem I've found with the "abundance agenda" is its uncritical faith in growth.

Michael Lewis, ed: Who Is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service (2025, Riverhead Books): Introduction and final chapter by the editor, who previously wrote a terrific book about public servants under threat from Trump, The Fifth Risk (2018). In between are six more profiles, by Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, for a fairly broad cross-section. This seems to have started off as an op-ed series in late 2024, when we had a general sense of foreboding but hadn't yet reached the fever-pitched panic since inauguration day, when Trump revealed just how serious his revenge-seeking would be.

Carlos Lozada: The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians (2024; paperback, 2025, Simon & Schuster): Resident book critic at the Washington Post for much of this period, Lozada previously wrote What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (2020, so it's tempting to insert "First" before "Trump Era"), where he surveyed "some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation." Few subjects have been written about as widely and as intensively as Trump. It's easy to claim "I read books so you don't have to," but Lozada actually turns out to be a pretty useful guide for sorting through this vast thicket. (I've read a couple dozen of these books, and it tracks well with what I know.) This one covers more ground and more time, and is mostly assembled from reviews published in the moment, so I expect it to be somewhat shakier, but it covers books about important people that I have little if any desire to read, so the helping hand may be even more useful here.

Sarah Maza: Thinking About History (paperback, 2017, University of Chicago Press). I've been thinking a lot about history lately, sometimes going so far as to question whether we are even capable of understanding the present except through analogy through the past. Of course, the flip side of that is that our understanding of the past is inevitably filtered through the present -- a line I noticed here is that history is what the present needs to know about the past.

Mike McCormick: An Almost Insurmountable Evil: How Obama's Deep State Defiled the Catholic Church and Executed the Wuham Plandemic (paperback, 2025, Bombardier Books): An early frontrunner for most insane right-wing hatchet job of the year, not least for his tangent on Pope Francis ("an illegitimate pope, an unclean cardinal, a compromised president, his criminal vice president, and their win-at-all-cost operatives"), as well as his revelations of "how the Obama-Biden White House networked the Catholic Church into human trafficking along the Southern Border; how it schemed Ukraine into becoming a biological warfare threat to Russia; and how it collaborated to release the Wuhan Plandemic [sic] to upend President Trump's 2020 campaign." McCormick claims to know all this because he worked as "White House stenographer" over 15 years (presumably before his 2019 memoir, so not actually in the Biden White House).

• Mike McCormick: Fifteen Years a Deplorable: A White House Memoir (2019, 15 Years a Deplorable).
• Mike McCormick: Joe Biden Unauthorized: And the 2020 Crackup of the Democratic Party (paperback, 2020, 15 Years a Deplorable).
• Mike McCormick: The Case to Impeach and Imprison Joe Biden (paperback, 2023, Bombardier Books).
• James Comer: All the President's Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes That Made the Biden Family Rich (2025, Broadside Books).
• Miranda Devine: The Big Guy: How a President and His Son Sold Out America (2024, Broadside Books). The author also wrote:
• Miranda Devine: Laptop From Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide (2021, Post Hill Press).
• Rudy Giuliani: The Biden Crime Family: The Blueprint for Their Prosecution (2024, War Room Books).
• Joseph B Sweeney: Dangerous Injustice: How Democrats Weaponized DOJ to Protect Biden and Persecute Trump (2024, Real Clear Publishing).
• Kash Pramod Patel: Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy (paperback, 2024, Post Hill Press). Talk about politicizing DOJ, Trump picked Patel to run the FBI, to whit:
• Fred Chandler: Kash Patel: Kash Patel's Plan to Overhaul the FBI, Expose Corruption, and Restore Trust in Law Enforcement (paperback, 2025, independently published).

Glenn McDonald: You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song: How Streaming Changes Music (paperback, 2024, Canbury Press): Rock credit, data nerd, someone I was acquainted with before he became Spotify's Data Alchemist, devising algorithms to guide users into finding their preferred music, or that seems to have been the theory. I had my own thoughts along those lines, and might have considered his my dream job, so I picked up this book -- (along with Stephen Witt: How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero or Piracy (2015) -- but I haven't had the time (or, I suppose, interest) to delve deeper.

• Sven Carlsson/Jonas Leijonhufvud: The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance (paperback, 2021, Diversion Books).
• Maria Eriksson/Rasmus Fleischer/Anna Johansson/Pelle Snickers/Patrick Vonderau: Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music (2019, The MIT Press).
• Liz Pelly: Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025, Atria/Signal One).

Pankaj Mishra: The World After Gaza: A History (2025, Penguin): Big-picture historian, tackled the entire modern world in Age of Anger: A History of the Present, seems to be jumping the gun a bit here, as the genocide is far from over. But the bulk of the book is about how we remember the Nazi Judeocide, with a major chapter on how "never forget" dominates and pervades everything in Israel, followed by "Germany from Antisemitism to Philosemitism" and "Americanising the Holocaust." And as one of the few writers working today who thinks in genuinely global terms, he also includes chapters on "The Clashing Narratives of the Shoah, Slavery and Colonialism" and "Atrocity Hucksterism and Identity Politics." In short, this looks like a very deep book, although not one where Palestinians have much volition or responsibility.

Also note these additional new books on Israel's war against Palestinians:

• Atef Abu Saif: Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide (paperback, 2024, Beacon Press): A Palestinian novelist, previously published The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary, about the siege of Gaza in 2014.
• Refaat Alareer: If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose (2024, OR Books): Renowned Palestinian poet and literature professor, killed by Israel shortly after writing the title poem.
• Peter Beinart: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025, Knopf).
• Khaled A Beydoun: Eyes on Gaza: Witnessing Annihilation (paperback, 2025, Street Noise Books): Graphics by Mohammad Sabaaneh.
• Omar El Akkad: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025, Knopf): Born in Egypt, lives in US, author of a novel (American War, which imagines a future civil war here), offers his "heartsick break letter with the West."
• Mohammed El-Kurd: Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal (paperback, 2025, Haymarket Books).
• Didier Fassin: Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza (paperback, 2025, Verso).
• Isabella Hammad: Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (paperback, 2024, Grove Press): Short (96 pp), "shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing."
• Chris Hedges: A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine (paperback, 2025, Seven Stories Press). Famed war reporter, delivers "a scathing denunciation of the long violence of the Zionist project and its U.S. and European backers." Hedges has many books, from his early War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002) to his prescient American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007) to The Greatest Evil Is War (2022).
• Munther Isaac: Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza (paperback, 2025, Eerdmans): Author is a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem.
• Sim Kern: Genocide Bad.: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation (paperback, 2025, Interlink Books).
• Ibrahim Khalid: Israel's Genocide in Gaza: A Chronicle of Atrocities (paperback, 2024).
• Andreas Malm: The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth (paperback, 2025, Verso).
• James Robins: Blowing Up Everything Is Beautiful: Israel's Extermination of Gaza (2025, Arcade).
• Joe Sacco: War on Gaza (paperback, 2024, Fantagraphics): Short (32 pp) illustrated novella, returns to the scene of his previous books, Palestine (2001), and Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel (2009).
• Richard Seymour: Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization (2024, Verso): Mentioned this before, but note that the last chapter is obviously relevant here "Genocide: Shrouded in Darkness" (which follows "The Armed Shitstorm: Murderous Nationalisms," which is also relevant, itself following "War Machines: Cyberwar, Lone Wolves and Mass Shooters").
• Avi Shlaim: Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine (2025, Irish Pages Press): One of Israel's premier historians, author of one of the first comprehensive books I read on the subject, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2001).
• Dan Steinbock: The Fall of Israel: The Degradation of Israel's Politics, Economy & Military (paperback, 2025, Clarity Press): This looks more at what Israel's policies of ethnic cleansing are doing to the politics and economy of Israel itself, which is fraught with its own perils.
• Enzo Traverso: Gaza Faces History (paperback, 2024, Other Press): From Italy, but has taught in France and at Cornell, specifically on Jewish history and on The New Faces of Fascism, so easily sees through "the dishonest weaponization of anti-Semitism (in some cases by true anti-Semites on the far right) to attack supporters of Palestinian rights."
• Maya Wind: Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (paperback, 2014, Verso).

Needless to say, the Hasbara folks have been working on this too (plus a couple older books along the same lines, just less desperate):

• Yair Agmon/Oriya Mevorach: One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories (paperback, 2024, Maggid).
• David L Bernstein: Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews (paperback, 2022, Wicked Son).
• Elkana (Kuno) Cohen: OCT 7: The War Against Hamas Through the Eyes of an Israeli Command Officer (paperback, 2024, Viva Editions).
• Alan Dershowitz: Defending Israel: Against Hamas and Its Radical Left Enablers (paperback, 2023, Hot Books).
• Alan Dershowitz: The Ten Big Anti-Israel Lies: And How to Refute Them With Truth (paperback, 2024, Skyhorse).
• Seth J Frantzman: The October 7 War: Israel's Battle for Security in Gaza (paperback, 2024, Wicked Son).
• David Friedman: One Jewish State: The Last, Best Hope to Resolve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2024, Humanix Books): Foreword by Mike Pompeo.
• Josh Hammer: Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West (2025, Radius Book Group): Blurbs from Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Ben Shapiro, David Friedman, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and other exemplars of Western Civilization.
• Raphael Israeli: The Mind-Boggling October 7 Savagery: How Western Minds Were Boggled by Islamic Machinations (paperback, 2024, Strategic Book Publishing).
• Uri Kaufman: American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War, and the New Antisemitism (paperback, 2025, Republic Book Publishers).
• Adam Kirsch: On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice (2024, WW Norton).
• Richard Landes: Can "The Whole World" Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (paperback, 2022, Academic Studies Press).
• Bernard-Henri Lévy: Israel Alone (paperback, 2024, Wicked Son).
• Douglas Murray: On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization (2025, Broadside Books). My comment on the author's 2022 book, The War on the West: "Thin-skinned, xenophobic right-winger claiming victimhood 500+ years after Columbus." At least that's what I wrote when I found his previous book, The War on the West (2022). Before that he wrote The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017).
• Brendan O'Neil: After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (paperback, 2024, Spiked).
• Alon Penzel: Testimonies Without Boundaries: Israel: October 7th, 2023 (paperback, 2024, Spines).
• Adi Schwartz/Einat Wilf: The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (paperback, 2020, St Martin's Griffin).
• Rachel Shabi: Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism (2025, Oneworld): I suspect this book is nuanced enough it belongs in the previous section along with Beinart, but at this point I have little patience for bringing up antisemitism in any context. Author previuosly wrote We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews From Arab Lands (2009).
• Jake Wallis Simons: Israelophobia: The Newest Version of the Oldest Hatred and What to Do About It (paperback, 2025, Constable).
• Amir Tibon: The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands (2024, Little Brown).
• Gil Troy: To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream (paperback, 2024, Wicked Son): Troy has several previous books, including "the most comprehensive Zionist collection ever published, The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland -- Then, Now, Tomorrow (2018, 608 pp).
• Asa Winstanley: Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (paperback, 2023, OR Books): This predates 10/7, but shows the same tactics at work, here as a preëmptive strike against anyone critical of Israel.
• Lee Yaron: 10/7: 100 Human Stories (2024, St Martin's Press): Haaretz writer, not clear whether the stories are exclusively Israeli -- there is an acknowledgment of 30,000 Gazans killed between 10/7 and when the book was written -- but most seem to be. Kai Bird wrote a favorable blurb, so I wouldn't dismiss this one out of hand.
• Aeon History: A Concise History of the Jews: The People Who Wrestled With God, Ghettos, and Genocide to Achieve Modern Statehood (paperback, 2024, independent): 232 pp.

Some other recent (or not previously noted) books on Israel:

• Nasser Abourahme: The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony (paperback, 2025, Duke University Press): "That struggle is a form of anticolonial refusal that draws its power not from any decisive finality, but precisely from irresolution and keeping time open."
• Teresa Aranguren/Sandra Barrilaro: Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba (2024, Haymarket Books).
• Tony Greenstein: Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation (2022, Tony Greenstein): Shows how Zionism and antisemitism are symbiotic both in theory and practice, especially from the 1930s through the ingathering of Holocaust survivors. Written before the Gaza genocide, one could imagine a sequel where Netanyahu has metamorphosed into Hitler, and Biden and Trump have become alternative cheerleaders, like Ben Gurion and Jabotinsky.
• Yossi Klein Halevi: Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (paperback, 2019, Harper Perennial): I don't doubt that this is meant to convey the author's good intentions, but I doubt it will be taken as such, because it starts from such presumptions of a power imbalance.
• Ghassan Kanafani: On Zionist Literature (paperback, 2022, Ebb Books): First English translation of a 1967 book.
• Yardena Schwartz: Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2024, Union Square).
• Avi Shlaim: Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (2023; paperback, 2024, Oneworld).

Finally, some books on Jews in America with or without reference to Israel:

• Marjorie M Feld: The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism (2024, NYU Press).
• Joshua Leifer: Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life (2024, Dutton).

Benny Morris/Dror Ze'evi: The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924 (paperback, 2021, Harvard University Press): Israeli historian, did much to document the expulsion of Palestinians during Israel's "war of independence," later turned into a hard-right ideologue, so one suspects ulterior motives here, in attempting to reframe the more famous depredations against Armenians during the 1914-18 World War into a much broader framework of Turkish Muslims attacking Christian minorities. I read Taner Akcam: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (2007) quite some time ago, as well as some more general books on the rise of the Young Turks, the Balkan Wars, the end of the Ottoman Empire, and the revival of Turkish nationalism, but it turns out there are more books I hadn't noted:

• Peter Balakian: The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (paperback, 2004, Harper Perennial).
• Grigoris Balakian: Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 (paperback, 2010, Vintage): Great-uncle of Peter Balakian, who translated.
• Giles Milton: Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (paperback, 2009, John Murray).
• Lou Ureneck: Smyrna September 1922: The American Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide (paperback, Ecco).

Premilla Nadasen: Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (paperback, 2023, Haymarket Books): Capitalism has laid the foundation for many higher stages: I don't know whether Lenin was the first to identify imperialism as a higher stage of capitalism, but he turned that insight into a theory. The pace seems to be quickening of late with coinages like Naomi Klein's "disaster capitalism" and Yanis Varoufakis' "techno-feudaliam." Meanwhile, the quainter industry of post-capitalism has mostly focused on using technology to open up leisure time (Sweezy and Gorz among Marxists, but also Keynes and Bookchin and Frase). I've long been a leisure partisan, not for want of a work ethic but I've never much cared for greed-headed bosses. But lately I've been thinking more about the sense of worth one gets from good work, and how that kind of work has increasingly shifted from production to services and finally to care. So when I saw this book, I flashed on the idea that the subtitle might harbor a bit of irony, that increasing focus on care might offer the path where capitalism fades back into history. Of course, much of the focus here is on the exploitation of care workers and the tarnished care they offer. Of course, even within those confines, she has much to write about. But when you start to think about care work, the contribution that capitalism adds is almost entirely negative. As more and more of our work becomes centered on care, it behooves us to cut out the profit-seeking predators and rentiers who devalue and degrade the such socially important work.
Some related books here:

• The Care Collective: The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence (paperback, 2020, Verso).
• Leah Lakshmi Plepzna-Samarasinha: Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (paperback, 2018, Arsenal Pulp Press).
• Dean Spade: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (paperback, 2020, Verso).
• Dean Spade: Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together (paperback, 2025, Algonquin Books).

Clay Risen: Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America (2025, Scribner): A timely revisit to the period where the powers that be panicked the American public into adopting anti-communism as secular religion, a cause for rearmament and global outreach as the champion of the capitalist "free world," and sworn enemy of labor unions, anticolonial movements, and working people all around the world. Sen. Joe McCarthy lent his name to the crusade, which started before he jumped on the bandagon, and continued even after he proved to be an embarrassment. Anyone who recalls the era will recognize echoes today in Trump's harangues against "radical leftists," by which he means not just us few harmless idealists but millions more who are neither radical nor leftists (although some will be as they find they have nothing more to lose).

Enzo Traverso: Revolution: An Intellectual History (paperback, 2024, Verso): Italian Marxist, has a new book on Gaza Faces History, cited among the Israel/Gaza books, but much more in his back catalog, of which this seems relatively major. I've soured on the idea of revolution, but clearly the idea captivated many on the left in the 19th and 20th centuries, with 1789 and 1917 looming large.

• Enzo Traverso: The Jews and Germany: From the "Judeo-German symbiosis" to the Memory of Auschwitz (1995, University of Nebraska Press).
• Enzo Traverso: Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism After Auschwitz (paperback, 1999, Pluto Press).
• Enzo Traverso: The Origins of Nazi Violence (2003, New Press).
• Enzo Traverso: The End of Jewish Modernity (paperback, 2016, Pluto Press).
• Enzo Traverso: Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945 (paperback, 2017, Verso).
• Enzo Traverso: The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate (revised ed, paperback, 2019, Haymarket Books): Previous version was The Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate (2001).
• Enzo Traverso: The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right (2019, Verso).
• Enzo Traverso: Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (paperback, 2021, Columbia University Press).
• Enzo Traverso: Singular Pasts: The "I" in Historiography (paperback, 2022, Columbia University Press).

Michael Wolff: All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America (2025, Crown): Here I am still trying to figure out the election, and Wolff already has a 400 page book of intense reporting: "Threading a needle between tragedy and farce, the fate of the nation, the liberal ideal, and democracy at all, [he] paints a gobsmacking portrait of a man whose behavior is so unimaginable, so uncontrolled, so unmindful of cause and effect, that it defeats all the structures and logic of civic life." And then he squanders what little insight he has and calls it "one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history." How could it be a "comeback" when Trump never left? Even when Biden was in the White House, Trump was in our minds, not least because he was all over the media -- even the ones who supposedly hated him never let him go.

More early takes on Trump, Biden, Harris, and the 2024 election:

• Alex Isenstadt: Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power (2025, Grand Central).
• Jonathan Allen/Amie Parnes: Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House (2025, William Morrow). Also wrote quickie books on 2016 (Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign) and 2020 (Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency).
• Josh Dawsey/Tyler Pager/Isaac Arnsdorf: 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America (2025, Penguin). [07-08]
• Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson: Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (2025, Penguin Press): This examines Biden's decision to run for a second term, which froze the field of potential challengers, most critically preventing anyone from "the democratic wing" -- assuming Sanders would also pass as being too old -- from rising and possibly reinvigorating the Democratic Party. I've seen it suggested that the "real original sin" was picking Harris for VP in 2020, but had they sensed her weakness, they should have gotten past Biden much earlier, to let the primaries weed her out. More likely they just didn't care.
• Chris Whipple: Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History (2025, Harper Influence).

This has been followed by a tsunami of Trump triumphalism:

• Joe Concha: The Greatest Comeback Ever: Inside Trump's Big Beautiful Campaign (2025, Broadside Books).
• Dinesh D'Souza: Vindicatinig Trump (2024, Regnery): Cover notes: "New York Times Bestselling Author"; "Now a Major Motion Picture"; "Includes an Inrterview with President Trump."
• Newt Gingrich: Trump's Triumph: America's Greatest Comeback (2025, Center Street).
• Annie Karni/Luke Broadwater: Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress (2025, Random House).
• Chris W Klevik: Donald J Trump 47th President: The Greatest Political Comeback in American History (paperback, 2025, independent).
• Larry O'Connor: Shameless Liars: How Trump Defeated the Legacy Media and Made Them Irrelevant (paperback, 2025, independent).
• Salena Zito: Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland (2025, Center Street). [07-08]

I've noted a huge number of books on Trump in the past, but I'm still finding pre-election books I missed, like:

• Jonathan Alter: American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial -- and My Own (2024, Ben Bella Books).
• Russ Buettner/Susanne Craig: Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success (2024, Penguin).
• Joel B Pollak: The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days (2024, War Room Books).
• Jack Posobiec/Joshua Lisec: Bulletproof: The Truth About the Assassination Attempts on Donald Trump (2024, Skyhorse).
• Barbara A Res: Tower of Lies: What My Eighteen Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him (2020, Graymalkin Media).
• Fred Trump: All in the Family: THe Trumps and How We Got This Way (2024, Gallery Books).
• Mary L Trump: Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir (2024, St Martin's Press).
• Mary L Trump: The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal (2021, St Martin's Press).
• Steve Turley: Fight! How Trump and the MAGA Movement Are Changing the World (paperback, 2024, Turley Publishing).

A few more books briefly noted:

Dana Bash/David Fisher: America's Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violenc Election in American History (2024, Hanover Square Press): Bash is "CNN's chief political correspondent," so of course she'd have nothing better to do during 2024 than reminisce about 1872. Fisher is "author of more than twenty New York Times bestsellers."

Ron Chernow: Mark Twain (2025, Penguin Press): Big time biographer, short titles, long books (1200 pp). Needless to say, Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) gave him a lot to write about.

Sue Coe/Stephen Eisenman: The Young Person's Illustrated Guide to American Fascism (paperback, 2005, OR Books): The latter's "crystalline text," followed by the former's drawings -- not clear how well integrated they are, or whether any effort is made to distinguish fascism from run-of-the-mill right-wing acts and thoughts.

Maureen Dowd: Notorious: Portraits of Stars From Hollywood, Culture, Fashion, and Tech (2025, Harper): Or, "forget everything I wrote about politics in the last decade, let's talk about stuff that doesn't matter."

Ross Gay: Inciting Joy: Essays (2022; paperback, 2024, Algonquin Books): Poet turned inspirational author, following up on The Book of Delights (2022) and The Book of (More) Delights (2023).

Frederic Jameson: The Years of Theory: Lectures on Modern French Thought (paperback, 2024, Verso).

Robert D Kaplan: Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis (2025, Random House): Used to be a travel writer with a fairly good grasp of history. But then he "started thinking" . . . and hanging out with folks like his blurbist David Petraeus.

Edward Luce: Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet (2025, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster): Major biography (560 pp) of Jimmy Carter's answer to Henry Kissinger, which is to say no answer at all.

Dan Nadel: Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life (2025, Scribner).

Steve Oney: On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR (2025, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).

David Petraeus/Andrew Roberts: Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Gaza (2023; paperback, 2024, Harper): Only interesting thing here is that the paperback reprint changes the subtitle from Ukraine to Gaza. I would ask what kind of general would even want to claim Gaza as a war when it is plain genocide, but the question answers itself.

Vivek Ramaswamy: Truths: The Future of America First (2024, Threshold Editions).

Kenneth Roth: Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments (2025, Knopf): Former executive director of Human Rights Watch. Israel gets chapter 9.

Chuck Schumer: Antisemitism in America: A Warning (2025, Grand Central Publishing): Democratic Party leader in the Senate evidently thinks he has nothing more pressing or important to write about. He made clear where his true loyalties lie when he joined Netanyahu's Republicans in voting against Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal.

Rebecca Solnit: No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (paperback, 2025, Haymarket Books).

Jeffrey Toobin: The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy (2025, Simon & Schuster): Legal affairs journalist, has covered OJ Simpson, Timothy McVeigh, and the Supreme Court, timed this for general background as Biden and Trump were bound to issue a flurry of controversial pardons.

As I struggled to wrap this up, I kept poking around, looking for books related to the ones I already had written up, but inevitably found more items of interest I hadn't touched on at all, or that I simply wanted (assuming I'd have the time) to write more on. For one thing, we're due for an update on AI. Robert Wright has written a lot about AI in his newsletter, and has promised a book, but the publication date is still way out (November 18), and for me the title is even more disconcerting: The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. He's a smart guy who has a lot of useful insights into real world problems like how Americans think about foreign policy, but this is surely bullshit:

Wright provocatively suggests that to truly understand the significance of the AI revolution, we need to expand our perspective beyond the last century or even the whole history of technology and look back billions of years, across the entire history of life on Earth. All along, he says, evolution has been pushing life toward this technological threshold, which now confronts our species with a climactic challenge: Can we muster the political, moral, and spiritual resources needed to guide this technology wisely?

If we fail this challenge, the consequences for the whole planet could be grave. But if we meet the challenge—if we pass "the God test"—we can live in a world where humanity thrives, finding not just happiness but deeper meaning and purpose. We can be enriched and uplifted by, rather than imperiled by, awesomely intelligent machines.

I mean, I understand that all people -- and I certainly don't exempt myself from this, even if I'm more conscious of it than most -- when faced with the unknown, or just with new facts, translate them into their previously extant mental frameworks, no matter how poor the fit. So I'm not really surprised that a religion guy like Wright might come up with such an angle. (His books include: The Evolution of God, Three Scientists and Their Gods, The Moral Animal, and perhaps most pointedly, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.) Nor that an anti-religion guy like myself would recoil at such utter nonsense. I'm reminded here of Wolfgang Pauli's famous riposte: "That's not right. That's not even wrong."

But chances are, when we get down to details, I'm likely to find a lot to agree with Wright on. "Nonzero" may be bad teleology, but the concept has some real value in ethics, and that's something we need much more than God. When I think about AI, I'm reminded of what people thought about the internet back in the 1990s. They projected all sorts of scenarios, from techno-utopian to utterly dystopian, but for the last 25-30 years, we've just muddled through, adjusting when we can, sometimes giving up, but in the end (so far, anyhow) what we have is pretty much what we started with: a Reagan-Clinton neoliberal economy, where the internet is mostly advertising, not much more ubiquitous and obnoxious than it was with radio and TV. (Which, if memory serves, is a lot of both. Indeed, with my open source software, ad-blockers, and DVR, I'm probably assaulted by less advertising -- or less obvious advertising -- than I was in the 1980s.)

And while I'm not one to make light of advertising -- it may not be the root of all evil in capitalism, but it certainly turns the evil of capitalism into an art form -- I would still conclude that the internet is the best thing that has happened to at least my everyday life in my lifetime. But that doesn't mean that I'm happy it's turned out just as it has. As an engineer I see everything as opportunity for improvement. But I'm not much into "creative destruction" either. Sure, it works, but to say it's necessary require a pretty jaundiced view of humanity (which I rarely have, except when they do things as stupid as voting for Trump).

As I was cleaning up, I wrote a bit on John Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Critics, and decided I had enough to include this time. I also added a sublist item for Jathan Sadowski: The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, which is tied to Cassidy because both talk about Luddites, but also fit here because this strikes me as a smarter way of talking about AI and similar technologies. In particular, this quote from p. 12:

As capitalism develops -- and the easy, cheap ways of extracting value get more scarce -- the methods of accumulating capital and capturing profit have grown more complex and abstract. The relation is not always a direct connection between consumers, workers, bosses, and landlords who are making, buying, selling, and renting commodities in the great big Mall of Capitalism. Some of the biggest engines of capital to ever exist are based on financial instruments and digital platforms that pull profit out of pure speculation. These engines are collectively called "fictitious capital" because they are seemingly removed from the real economy of material things and physical processes. It is not always easy to discern how profit is made, who it is made for, and on what time horizons. We will get more into these dynamics and their consequences for technological capitalism in the chapter on innovation.

This isn't all that far from what Yanis Varoufakis has to say in Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, except without the confusing overkill metaphors. I should write more about this, and later, as this is one of the few books here that convinced me to order a copy. For now I'll note that the author's autobiographical sketch is not far removed from mine (although he was fortunate enough to have a science who wasn't a total asshole). And that I'm particularly looking forward to:

Chapter 5 uncovers the dynamics of labor in artificial intelligence, the Potemkin illusion of using hidden people to fake automation, and the capitalist dream of creating a perpetual value machine that will finally abolish the problem of human labor.

Current count: 30 links, 11388 words (13759 total)

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Monday, May 19, 2025

May archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44235 [44197) rated (+38), 22 [21] unrated (+1).

I published a Loose Tabs on May 14 (actually, late Tuesday night). I figured I should clear the decks, as I would be cooking on Wednesday and Thursday. I had shopped on Tuesday, and planned out a fairly grand Thai menu -- panang curry duck, pad thai, tom kha gai (soup) -- plus that Burmese tea leaf salad I wasn't able to pull off for my birthday dinner. I thought of pineapple upside down cake for dessert, with ice cream. I also picked up some odds and ends, which turned into three side dishes: cucumber salad, water chestnut salad, and grilled Japanese eggplant with Thai peanut sauce. I wrote up lots of notes as I worked. Rather than trying to recap them here, you can find them in my notebook.

The two days of cooking took my mind of writing, including reviewing any records. That's reflected in the reduced rated count this week, but not severely. I think we have a nice mix of exceptional records this week, although I did fall down on my promise to tweet about them on the fly. I don't feel like I'm getting much value out of Bluesky at the moment, although I'll concede that part of the problem there is I'm not putting much work into it.

I have very little idea what I'll be doing this coming week. I could try to wrap up a books file, but the amount of stuff worth mentioning is huge -- especially if you include the propaganda and nonsense that one can only ridicule.

New records reviewed this week:

Julien Baker & Torres: Send a Prayer My Way (2025, Matador): Two singer-songwriters with enough reputation for me to have checked out their solo catalogs -- three Baker, four Torres -- and accorded them respectable if unenthusiastic B+(*) grades (5, with ** for the first Torres, B for the middle Baker; Baker is also one-third of Boygenius, stuck at B for a widely-admired album and two EPs), merged here as "an American country duo," which means common songs with somewhat southern voices and (mostly) acoustic arrangements. The vocal contrasts help sustain interest, which may be all the songs ever needed. B+(***) [sp]

Jon Batiste: Beethoven Blues [Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1] (2024, Verve): Pianist from Louisiana, studied at Juilliard, was music director and bandleader on Colbert 2015-22, has since moved on to other projects, which this as the first of a promised series of solo piano explorations, with a mix of original pieces and covers. Given my ingrained antipathy to nearly all classical music, the best I can say here is that nothing here bothers me, and this is downright pleasant. B+(*) [sp]

Blondshell: If You Asked for a Picture 2025, Partisan): Singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum, grew up in New York, where her father ran a vaping products company, based in Los Angeles, second album, alternate title "More Songs About Bad Faith and Sexual Ambivalence." B+(**) [sp]

Buck 65: Keep Moving (2025, Handsmade): Rapper from Nova Scotia, started releasing albums around 1999, with 2003's Talkin' Honky Blues an early masterpiece, ran out of steam around 2014, but nearly everything since his 2022 reboot has been terrific. This one compiles 31 short, sharp pieces (51:25). A- [bc]

Mackenzie Carpenter: Hey Country Queen (2025, Valory Music): Country singer-songwriter from Georgia, first album, makes a nice impression. B+(*) [sp]

Lucy Dacus: Forever Is a Feeling (2025, Geffen): Singer-songwriter from Virginia, fourth album since 2016, not counting her share of Boygenius. This almost won me over with sound, and the lyric videos almost convinced me the words have weight. I don't normally factor politics into my reviews, but while I was sitting on the fence here, I read in Wikipedia of her referring to Obama as "war criminal" and took that as the tie-breaker. A- [sp]

Erik Friedlander: Dirty Boxing (2024, Skipstone): Cellist, several dozen albums since 1991. This one is backed by Uri Caine (piano), Mark Helias (bass), and Ches Smith (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Erik Friedlander: Floating City (2024, Skipstone): Discogs combines this as a second CD with Dirty Boxing, but Spotify has they as separate albums. Another quartet, with Mark Helias returning on bass, but the piano/drums replaced with guitar (Wendy Eisenberg) and voice (Sara Serpa). B [sp]

HiTech: Honeypaqq Vol. 1 (2025, Loma Vista): Techno group from Detroit, rapper-producer-DJs go by King Milo, Milf Melly, and 47Chops; two previous albums, 11-12 cuts but time probably comes up short. B+(*) [bc]

Jenny Hval: Iris Silver Mist (2025, 4AD): Norwegian singer-songwriter, studied in Australia, started in a gothic metal band, worked through a couple more bands, moved back to Norway, this her ninth solo album, plus she has two more as Lost Girls, and four novels. The metal influence may have contributed to the C+ album in my database, but it's an outlier. I certainly don't mind this one, but can't say I'm following it carefully. B+(***) [sp]

Salif Keita: So Kono (2025, No Format): Legendary Malian griot, started with Les Ambassadeurs, still going strong at 76. B+(**) [sp]

Alex Koo: Blame It on My Chromosomes (2024 [2025], W.E.R.F.): Belgian pianist, sings some (but not especially well), mother is Japanese, father was a missionary sent to Japan, fifth album since 2014. B+(*) [sp]

Jinx Lennon: The Hate Agents Leer at the Last Isle of Hope (2025, Septic Tiger): Irish poet with music, 16 albums since 2000, has messages, stories, and anger -- more than I can digest, but enough to respect. B+(***) [sp]

Model/Actriz: Pirouette (2025, True Panther/Dirty Hit): Boston rock band, new-wavish, Cole Haden the singer, second album. B+(**) [sp]

Willie Nelson: Oh What a Beautiful World (2025, Legacy): Per Wikipedia, Nelson's 77th solo studio album (I have 114 albums rated under Nelson's name), a collection of a dozen very good Rodney Crowell songs, a nice production with a singer still good enough to cover anything. Seems too easy, but at his age what more can you hope for? A- [sp]

Enrico Pieranunzi/Marc Johnson/Joey Baron: Hindsight: Live at La Seine Musicale (2024, CAM Jazz): Italian pianist, many recordings since 1975, a long-running trio with bass and drums -- his association with Johnson goes back to 1992, with various drummers (Billy Higgins, Paul Motian) until Baron took over in 2009. B+(**) [sp]

Simona Premazzi/Kyle Nasser Quartet: From What I Recall (2024 [2025], OA2): Piano and saxophone (tenor/soprano), backed by bass (Noah Garabedian) and drums (Jay Sawyer). B+(**) [cd]

The Gary Smulyan and Frank Basile Quintet: Boss Baritones (2024, SteepleChase): Two baritone saxophonists, Smulyan by far the better known, with a steady stream of albums since 1997 (including a Tough Baritones with Ronnie Cuber), while Basile mostly has side-credits with big bands (starting at UNT in 1999). Backed here by piano (Steve Ash), bass (Mike Karn), and drums (Aaron Seeber). Anyone expecting a rousing sax joust will be disappointed, but not much: these are nice guys who prefer to swing and bop in tandem. B+(**) [sp]

Billy Woods: Golliwog (2025, Backwoodz Studioz): Rapper, from DC, mother a lit professor from Jamaica, father a "Marxist intellectual" from Zimbabwe, tenth solo album since 2003, not counting collaborations, most notably in Armand Hammer. Dense, rambling, hard for me to get a solid handle on this, but I have no doubt there's much to return to when/if I can find the time. A- [sp]

Neil Young: Coastal: The Soundtrack (2023 [2025], Reprise): Solo album, "features 11 songs selected from Young's 60-year career, recorded live on his 2023 tour," cast as a soundtrack for a video tracking the tour. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

James Moody: 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note March 26, 2005 (2005 [2025], Origin): Bebop saxophonist (1925-2010), mostly tenor, also played quite a bit of flute, joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and was a regular in his various bands, while he established his own career with "Moody's Mood for Love" in 1952. He opens this 80th birthday bash singing "Benny's From Heaven," badly at first but so infectiously he won me over. He opened with a solid band -- David Hazeltine (piano), Todd Coolman (bass), and Adam Nussbaum (drums) -- then brought out the stars for the back stretch: Jon Faddis (trumpet), Paquito D'Rivera (alto sax/clarinet), Slide Hampton (trombone), plus guest spots for Randy Brecker (trumpet) and Cedar Walton (piano). He turns this into an old-fashioned bebop revival, reprising his hits as well as "Cherokee," "Birk's Works," and "Bebop" itself. A- [cd]

James Moody: The Moody Story: James Moody Septet 1951-1955 (1951-55 [2025], Fresh Sound, 3CD): Saxophonist (1925-2010), started on alto but mostly played tenor, played in an army band during WWII, then joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1946, and even now is probably best known for his work in later Gillespie bands. After a few years in Europe, he returned to the US, and recorded these early sessions for Mercury and Prestige. Various lineups here, but aside from the odd vocalist he appeared in septets, with Dave Burns (trumpet) prominent enough to get larger type on the box. [NB: Volume 1, which covers 1951-54, is not available to stream, so is unheard here. This grade only covers Volume 2 (1954-55) and Volume 3 (1955), which I've played, but the separate volumes only seem to exist for streaming.] B+(***) [sp]

Pink Floyd: Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII (1972 [2025], Columbia): Live concert from 1972, released as a film in 1974, and newly remastered, so the songs here predate their mega hit albums -- The Dark Side of the Moon came out in 1973, but there are two takes of "Echoes" (from 1971's Meddle) prototype here. B+(*) [sp]

Louis Stewart & Jim Hall: The Dublin Concert (1982 [2024], Livia): Irish guitarist (1944-2015), a couple dozen albums from 1975 on, plays host here to the more famous American guitarist (1930-2013). Easy does it. B+(**) [bc]

Sun Ra: Inside the Light World: Sun Ra Meets the OVC (1986 [2024], Strut, 2CD): "OVC" stands for Outer Space Visual Communicator, a device Bill Sebastian invented, "a giant machine, played with hands and feet, that allowed artists to create and finger-paint with light similar to how musicians create and explore sound with their instruments." I doubt the visuals make any difference, although Sebastian could hardly hope for a more fortunate alliance. B+(***) [sp]

Horace Tapscott's Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971 (1971 [2025], The Village): A phenomenal pianist from Los Angeles, also notable as a community organizer, ran this not-quite-big band at least through 1979's Live at I.U.C.C.. Starts strong with a 25:03 version of John Coltrane's "Equinox," with Al Collins on tenor sax, two trumpets (Butch Morris and Walter Graham), two trombones, two bassists, drums and congas. The following pieces, with vocalist Linda Hill and "word musician" Kamau Daáood are no less wonderful. A- [bc]

Hiroshi Yoshimura: Flora (1987 [2025], Temporal Drift): Japanese ambient musician (1940-2003), first album 1982, this one only released in 2006, after his death. Starts mostly piano, shifting later to contemplative synth tones -- which recall early Eno ambients, reportedly an influence. B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

Armonicord: Esprits De Sel (1977, L'Électrobande): French free jazz band, formed 1973, this their only album until a live tape from 1975 surfaced in 2023, only name I recognize is Juke Minor (baritone/sopranino sax, flutes, contrabass clarinet, guimbri, also wrote the liner notes and composed all but the Django Reinhardt cover), joined here by Jean Querlier (alto sax, oboe, English horn, flute), Joseph Traindl (trombone), Odile Bailleux (harpsichord), and Christian Lété (drums). Rough in spots, but vital. B+(***) [yt]

The Buttress: Endofunctor (2023, self-released, EP): Rapper Bethany Schmitt, from New Jersey, second album (per Discogs, this one short at 9 songs, 21:53; the other, from 2011, even shorter, at 6 songs, 6:13), title here "a mathematical function that leads back into itself," with an analogy to satanism, an interest that suggests an abusive Christian upbringing. The murkiness is no doubt intentional. B+(**) [sp]

The Buttre$$: Structural Stabilization of an Historic Barn (2011, self-released, EP): Early work, six pieces, 6:13, noise exercises generated on EMU modular synthesizer, not the worst I've heard, but not something I'm much interested in. B [bc]

James Moody: In the Beginning (1949 [2017], Inner City/Solid): Possibly the tenor saxophonist's earliest records, the first five tracks released as Max Roach Quintet (with Kenny Dorham trumpet, Al Haig piano, and Tommy Potter bass), the other seven as James Moody Quartet & Orchestra (with Art Simmons piano, Buddy Banks bass, and Clarence Terry drums). B+(**) [sp]

James Moody: Moody's Mood for Blues (1954-55 [1994], Prestige/OJC): Tenor saxophonist (some alto), compilation originally relesed in 1969, draws from four sessions, most originally released on the short albums Moody and James Moody's Moods (art work for both on cover, although half of the latter is skipped). A mixed bag of blues, ballads, standards ("Over the Rainbow," two takes of "It Might as Well Be Spring"), and bebop, with two Eddie Jefferson vocals and one where Ilona Wade channels Billie Holiday. B+(**) [sp]

James Moody: At the Jazz Workshop (1961 [1998], Chess/GRP): Reissue of Cookin' the Blues, which came out in 1965, plus some extra cuts. Septet again, Howard McGhee (trumpet) the best known, plus trombone, baritone sax, piano, bass, and drums, with Eddie Jefferson singing on three tracks. B+(**) [sp]

James Moody: Homage (2003 [2004], Savoy Jazz): Nothing in my database for him between 1961 and 1996 -- years when he got by with his Las Vegas gigs and road work but I also missed at least a dozen albums on Muse, Vanguard, and Novus. After Dizzy Gillespie died in 1993, he mounted something of a comeback up to his death in 2010. This is a good example of his rich tone and easy flow. Raps a bit at the end. B+(**) [sp]

Torres: What an Enormous Room (2024, Merge): Singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott, sixth album since 2013, one I didn't bother with at the time, figuring she had settled into a rut and I wouldn't have anything to say anyway. Slightly better than that, but still don't have much to say. B+(**) [sp]

Joanna Wang: Modern Tragedy (2018, Sony): Singer-songwriter, originally Wang Ruolin, from Taiwan but raised in Los Angeles, a dozen or so albums since 2008, some with titles in Chinese (this one has a Chinese title on Spotify, but Discogs gives English titles for album and songs, which are mostly in English). B+(**) [sp]

Carl Winther/Richard Andersson/Jeff "Tain" Watts: WAW! (2023 [2024], Hobby Horse): Piano/bass-drums trio, just last names on the cover. The Danish pianist started in his father's group -- Jens Winther (1960-2011), played trumpet -- and has led his own groups since 2010. B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Larry Ochs/Joe Morris/Charles Downs: Every Day → All the Way (ESP-Disk) [04-11]
• Bruno Parrinha/Carlos "Zingaro"/Fred Lonberg-Holm/João Madeira: Enleiro (4DaRecord) [04-25]
• Scheen Jazzorkester & Fredrik Ljungkvist: Framåt! (Grong) [04-01]
• Carlos "Zingaro"/Flo Stoffner/Fred Lonberg-Holm/João Madeira: Na Parede (4DaRecord) [04-25]

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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

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 15 days ago, on April 30.

I made a rather arbitrary decision after midnight Tuesday evening to post what I had at the moment. I'm pretty sure I have up to a dozen tabs still open, but I'm not expecting to have much free time Wednesday or Thursday, and didn't want to leave the thing hanging. If/when I do find time, I may add more here (if I think something fits), or save it for next time. One thing that kept me from closing was that I tried to answer a couple questions, and couldn't quite figure out the second (suppressed for now). Good chance I will focus on that next.

More 100 Days Pieces:

• The Guardian: [04-29] Tracking Trump - everything that's happened in the president's first 100 days: A day-by-day timeline, in LIFO.

• Sidney Blumenthal: [04-30] After 100 days, Trump has destroyed Trumpism.

• Harold Hongju Koh [05-02]: One Hundred Days of Lawlessness.

Norman Solomon: [04-30] The US left Vietnam 50 years ago today. The media hasn't learned its lesson: "The myth that news coverage turned Americans against the war persists. In fact, it was largely complicit in perpetuating the conflict." I'd go so far as to say that the value of a free press in a democracy is that it uncover the facts and framework so that we can properly evaluate and judge our politicians. American mass media has been pretty deficient on that score in general, but especially when it comes to matters of war. Solomon offers numerous examples of how easily the architects of the Vietnam War gamed the media. Sure, in the end, what we saw overwhelmed what we were told, to such an extent that many of us still distrust most public institutions: Trump's charges of "false news" work because that's been our experience forever.

American presidents have never come anywhere near offering an honest account of the Vietnam war. None could imagine engaging in the kind of candor that the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg bluntly provided when he said: "It wasn't that we were on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

Two months after taking office in early 1977, President Jimmy Carter was dismissive when a reporter asked if he felt "any moral obligation to help rebuild" Vietnam. "Well, the destruction was mutual," he replied. "We went there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese. And I don't feel that we ought to apologize or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability."

A dozen years later, Ronald Reagan told a gathering at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington that the war had been a "noble cause" — "however imperfectly pursued, the cause of freedom."

While announcing formal diplomatic relations with Vietnam in July 1995, President Bill Clinton felt compelled to fabricate history. "Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives," he said. "They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people."

At the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington in May 2012, President Barack Obama spoke of "honoring our Vietnam veterans by never forgetting the lessons of that war" — which included "that when America sends our sons and daughters into harm's way, we will always give them a clear mission; we will always give them a sound strategy." But Obama was far along in replicating the tragic folly of the Vietnam war.

Yanis Varoufakis: [04-30] Trump and the Triumph of the Technolords: "Trump is a godsend for Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the other technofeudal lords. Any short-run loss from his tariff delusions is a small price to pay for an agenda that would deregulate their AI-driven services, bolster crypto, and exempting their cloud rents from taxation."

Ed Kilgore: [05-01] Marco Rubio Might Have His Jobs, But He's No Henry Kissinger: Huh?

Chas Danner: [05-03] Trump Loses Another Election Abroad: "Australia's Labor Party looked doomed a few months ago. Now, thanks in part to Trump, it's expanding its majority." The thing I don't quite understand is why the center-left parties in Australia and Canada were considered sure losers before Trump showed them that yes, indeed, things could get much worse. Sure, this fits in with the line that Harris lost as part of a global reaction against incumbents (that also wiped out the Tories in the UK).

• Yanis Varoufakis: [05-06] Why the centre will not hold: Voters want the system upended: Starts with the Canada and Australia elections, although one could also look at the UK, and France, where the runoff system effectively keeps Le Pen out of power. For the moment, Trump is scary enough to drive voters to alternatives, but what more are the centrists offering other than not being Trump? Not solutions, scarcely even acknowledgment of concerns, but more of the "business as usual" that is generating such widely felt problems. And because they're not solving problems, or visibly attempting, and because they're reluctant even to assign blame and identify enemies (especially the ones they cultivate as donors), they lose all credibility -- even their dire warnings about boogeymen slip by the wayside, until someone like Trump gains power and reminds us how much worse it can get. One big point here is that the wins in Canada and Australia were achieved not at the expense of the far right, but by panicking the left into joining the center, even though the center has nothing positive to offer.

• Wolfgang Munchau: [05-05] The death of the centre-right: It failed to address an alienated electorate: This is more of a Europe thing, as our two-party system only allows for left-right branding, even when both are for all intents and purposes centered -- meaning under the thumb of the same donor class and its dominant ideology -- leaving their branding options mostly negative: the Democrats are a mixed bag of liberal, left and center who can only find unity as anti-right; the Republicans are more homogeneous, but still are better defined as anti-left than as conservative, libertarian, authoritarian, or anything else. I would add that those stances are more emotional than logical or practical, which allows the center to cater to or humor them without sacrificing power or policy. (Although I'd also point out that the left has a coherent critique and program, and that the right doesn't, which gives the right an advantage for campaigning but makes governance a disaster.) Multiparty systems in Europe allow for more personal profiles: far-right and far-left vs. center-right and center-left are not just points on a political scale but, given the dominance of emotion over logic in voting, are becoming distinct personality types. In this scheme, as the system fails and panic increases, the far-factions increase at the expense of the center. But as this happens, and especially as the far-right become more ominous to those with centrist leanings, the center-right becomes the empty quadrant: they pale in emotional satisfaction to the far-right, they aren't needed to defend against the far-left, and they cannot be trusted by even the center-left to keep the far-right down (as the center-left has habitually done to the real left).

Alexander Nazaryan: [05-04] Who's to Blame for the Catastrophe of COVID School Closures? "A new book tries to make sense of a slow-motion (and preventable) mistake that affected millions of children." The book is An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions, by David Zweig, who is interviewed here, and allowed to spout his opinions with no review. It isn't obvious to me that the closures were bad decisions, or that they had long term consequences, let alone catastrophic ones, but I also find it hard to credit strawman attacks on caricatures of a left that has never come close to exercising the sort of power they are blamed for. This ends with the interviewer asking "are you optimistic that officials will handle the next pandemic better when it comes to school closures?" To which Zweig answers: "I think a significant portion of the public just simply won't tolerate it the way they did last time." So next time will be worse, not just because we learned nothing but because the do-nothing agitators have only been further empowered.

Note that I'm not arguing that the closure policy was ideal or even right, and certainly not that we shouldn't review what happened and learn to do better. I'm not surprised that "remote learning" is less effective for many students, but surely it could be improved much over the current practice of just blasting students with data. Perhaps it requires more individual teacher attention, not less? Also, I admit that my views are rooted in my own ancient experience with a school system that taught me little and tortured me much. One thing I learned later is that at least some, perhaps many, students will learn on their own what they can't learn in school.[*] One thing I really hate is Zweig's attitude that every minute/day/month that a child is deprived of full bore, high-pressure education is a moment totally and irretrievably lost that will mar the person forever. I could point to the practice of tiger parenting here, but I see that more as an internalization of rat race capitalism, and its perverse reduction of human values.

[*] I am probably an outlier in terms of my ability to pick up expertise in purely academic subjects, which was possibly aided by my being freed from the school system at a tender age (15). But I've known others who loathed school and deliberately underachieved, but on their own went on to master not just the rote practice but the science and logic of the trades that interested and engaged them. I've learned as much from them as I've learned from anyone with a proper academic pedigree. Even so, I admit that there are things that I've been unable to learn on my own, where the discipline of coursework could have made the difference. In particular, I've long noted with regret my inability to advance in mathematics after my standard -- and frankly not very good[**] -- curriculum was broken. (I've compensated somewhat by reading books about mathematics, like Philip J Davis/Reuben Hersh: The Mathematical Experience and John Allen Paulos: Innumeracy, two general surveys I highly recommend, as well as more esoteric fare like Douglas R Hofstadter: Gödel, Escher, Bach, James Gleick: Chaos: Making a New Science, and Benoît Mandelbrot: The Fractal Geometry of Nature.

The exception (there always is one, isn't there?) was in 6th grade, when I had a very elderly -- and much despised by everyone else I knew -- math teacher who embraced the temporary vogue for New Math, and introduced me to sets and number theory -- concepts not only interesting in themselves but which provided nearly all of the math I eventually needed for a career in software engineering. It is worth quoting from the Wikipedia page here:

Parents and teachers who opposed the New Math in the U.S. complained that the new curriculum was too far outside of students' ordinary experience and was not worth taking time away from more traditional topics, such as arithmetic. The material also put new demands on teachers, many of whom were required to teach material they did not fully understand. Parents were concerned that they did not understand what their children were learning and could not help them with their studies.

But also note what they were opposed to (and eventually managed to shut down):

All of the New Math projects emphasized some form of discovery learning. Students worked in groups to invent theories about problems posed in the textbooks. Materials for teachers described the classroom as "noisy." Part of the job of the teacher was to move from table to table assessing the theory that each group of students had developed and "torpedo" wrong theories by providing counterexamples. For that style of teaching to be tolerable for students, they had to experience the teacher as a colleague rather than as an adversary or as someone concerned mainly with grading. New Math workshops for teachers, therefore, spent as much effort on the pedagogy as on the mathematics.

In other words, New Math might encourage students to learn on their own and to think for themselves. When I moved on to 7th grade, it was back to the rote learning of Old Math, where I learned little of note but the A grades were easy, and I lost interest -- especially after my 9th grade science teacher was so horrible I not only ditched that as a career inclination but never took another science course (and as such had diminished use for more math).

Kenneth Rogoff: [05-06] Trump's Misguided Plan to Weaken the Dollar: "The so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord, proposed by Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran, aims to reduce the United States' current-account deficit by weakening the dollar. But this plan is based on a deeply flawed understanding of the relationship between the dollar's global status and US deindustrialization." I've been asking this same question: if the goal is to square away America's current accounts deficit, wouldn't it be more straightforward to just weaken the dollar -- making US exports cheaper to others, which should result in us selling more, while making imports more expensive, some of which could easily be replaced with cheaper domestic supplies -- than to raise tariffs, which make trade less efficient while inviting retaliation? I've long assumed that the "strong dollar" was dictated by the political clout of finance, because the main effect of the trade deficits has been to feed money back into the finance system, making the bankers (if not necessarily other capitalists, like manufacturers) all the richer. Those in finance have little reason to reduce the trade deficit, because it's already working just fine for them. Rogoff offers a couple reasons why an attack on the dollar wouldn't help with the deficit, and concludes "the idea that tariffs can be a cure-all is dubious at best," but doesn't really answer my question. He is, by the way, a former chief economist from IMF, and co-wrote a famous book called This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which I don't recall all that well reviewed. He has a new book more specifically on this subject: Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead.

• Ezra Klein: [05-02] Trump vs. the Dollar: Interview with Kenneth Rogoff. An interview, which gets into more depth about "exorbitant privilege": where the idea came from (it was originally, as you might guess, a sneer, but has since been adopted as some kind of divine right), what benefits it bestows, and how insecure they may be. (What is lacking, I think, is details on exactly who benefits, and how much or little that may matter to the rest of us.) The bottom line is here:

  It has stabilized for the moment because Trump has retreated partly. But what I thought might have taken 10 or 15 years to happen took place within a week. And we're never going back.

  So our exorbitant privilege, our lower borrowings -- never going back to what it was. We may have lost a quarter percent, a half a percent, just permanently higher.

  We can have a recession to bring them down -- and we can get into that -- but I don't think that bell will ever get unrung.

  One especially interesting line is: "Americans know they've been good, but they don't know they've been lucky." That's pretty common among evidently successful people. Rogoff follows this observation with sports metaphors, so I'll drop in a couple more: "born on third base, but thinks he hit a triple." You might counter with Branch Rickey's "luck is the residue of design," but few other people ever cultivated luck as assiduously as Rickey. Donald Trump was born with so much luck he's spent a lifetime squandering it and still gets by on nothing but.

Adam Gurri: [05-07] Why We Need a Reconstruction of the Liberal Public Sphere: "How media systems work, how ours came to be, and where we go from here." Son of media guru Martin Gurri -- I have a copy of his 2018 book The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, which seemed like it might offer some insight into the Trump-addled media circus, in spite of (or perhaps because) its author having wound up voting for Trump in 2024 (on extremely specious "free speech" grounds); I may have clicked here expecting Martin -- has "worked all over the adtech ecosystem," but also founded Liberal Currents ("an online magazine devoted to mere liberalism"). This is a long piece I've barely skimmed and can't especially recommend but the subject is important enough to bookmark it and return at some future point: Democrats desperately need to learn better ways of talking to and about other people, because recent approaches don't seem to be working at all. I don't know what the answer is, in part because it's hard to see how anything can effectively counter the forces that are fragmenting and denigrating consciousness with their relentless barrage of misinformation and misinterpretation. But I am pretty sure that nostalgia for "the Big Three" era isn't the answer, or even a part of it. That was, after all, the system that gave us the Red Scare, the Cold War, and especially Vietnam, and was still largely intact trumpeting Reagan's "morning in America," Bush's "new world order," and another Bush's "global war on terrorism."

• Adam Gurri: [04-29] Unfit to Be the Ruler of a Free People: The Anti-American Presidency of Donald Trump: "The Trump administration is an affront to everything good that America has become and everything America has ever sought to be." This piece aligns the author with the liberal democrats who have always sought to see the sunny side of America idealism, and therefore regard Trump as an abomination, rather than as just an especially ripe and pungent instance of rot that's deeply embedded in American history. Choosing sides in this debate is a distracting parlor game, when it's much easier for both to agree that Trump and his legion are hideous and need to be stopped. Still, I will note that those who have tried to rescue patriotism and piety from the Republicans have had not only had very little success, they've become objects of ridicule for the very people they try to convert. (I was especially struck by how Trump made light of Obama's habitual "God bless America" speech ending, obviously a lie because they all agree he's a Muslim terrorist driven by his hatred and lust to destroy America. )

Gaby Dal Valle [05-07]: Grifters thrive under Trump's scam-friendly administration: "Gutted watchdog agencies and unprecedented 'influence peddling' means unrestrained fraud." This is the essential story of the Trump administration, the one you can be sure of adding new installments to each and every week. This is also Trump's main vulnerability, as his graft is only barely more popular among rank-and-file Republicans -- who are so easily motivated by the slightest stench of scandal on the Democratic side -- as with Democrats and independents.

Sarah Jones [05-07]: The Christians Who Believe Empathy Is a Sin: "When suffering is irrelevant, anything can be justified." I don't exactly understand why, other than because their politics depends on desensitizing to cruelty. Ends with: "The social contract is held together by empathy, which is why authoritarians fear and despise it so much. All they can offer is a net."

Orly Noy [05-07]: What a 'peace summit' reveals about the state of the Israeli left: "Well-meaning dialogue workshops, panels on distant political solutions, but no mention of genocide: these are privileged distractions we can no longer afford." I spent over a year, from Oct. 7, 2023 through Nov. 6, 2024, documenting and denouncing Israel's genocide -- a word that will suffice for what's happening, which admittedly is much more than that, but also no less -- but I've largely bypassed the subject since then. This does not represent a change in my views, or a lessening of concern, but simply a choice to focus my limited time and energy on matters that are less glaring and/or are open to possible solution. While I may have been overly optimistic that Harris, had she won and transitioned from campaign to governing (from sucking up to donors to actually having to grapple with real problems), would have compelled Israel to limit its goals, I was certainly correct that Trump would rubber-stamp whatever Israel's leadership wanted. Given that force is not a viable option -- no opposing force has the means, much less the desire, to go up against Israel (and the US) -- the Houthis and/or Hezbollah are at most minor irritants -- and that war wouldn't be a good idea anyway, and that US support can be counted on, the only way this ends is when Israel itself decides to stop it. Hence, our hopes are limited to efforts like this "peace summit," political efforts that gnaw away at blanket US/Europe support for Israel, and the resilience of the Palestinian people, who are paying the price for our confusion and indifference. As usual, if you want latest news, see this website, MondoWeiss, Middle East Eye, etc.

• Basel Adra: [05-06] Palestinians awoke to bulldozers. Their village was destroyed by noon: Note that this was in the West Bank (not Gaza), the village Khilet al-Dabe.

• Qassam Muaddi [05-09]: Exterminating Gaza was always Israel's plan, but now it's official.

• Ofer Cassif: [05-09] Israel laid out its harrowing plan to take Palestinian territories in 2017. Now it is happening.

• Faris Giacaman/Tareq S Hajjaj [05-06] Israel is creating a power vacuum in Gaza by backing armed looters -- and killing anyone who tries to stop them.

• Mitchell Plitnick [05-02] Biden staffers admit what we all knew: White House lied about ceasefire efforts.

• Dave Reed [05-10] Weekly Briefing: Israel plots ethnic cleansing under Trump's cover.

• Thomas L Friedman [10-09] This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally: No, he hasn't flipped. He still has "zero sympathy for Hamas" ("a sick organization"), and sure, it's taken him an awful long time to get to a point that should have been obvious even before the Oct. 7 uprising, but his extreme reluctance qualifies him as a bellwether. A tweet mentioning this piece starts, "when you've lost Thomas Friedman." If appeals for murdered children would have gotten to you, you'd already be clamoring for a cease fire, if not much more. Friedman only cares about something else: realpolitik. He recognizes that genocide is a bad look for Israel, and that it is bleeding support for the land and people he so cherishes, and under these circumstances, he sees that blanket US support only encourages politicos like Netanyahu to do worse things, to bleed more support.

  One way to look at this is: if you care for Palestinians, you've long recognized Israel as a force intent on your destruction, so your response is to two-fold: to elicit sympathy for your people, and to applaud their heroism and resilience in the face of occupation. You also have negligible political influence, especially where it matters most, in Israel and the US -- and especially to the extent that your aims can be viewed as a zero-sum game at Israel's expense. If your concerns are more general, if you oppose injustice and its enforcement in all forms, then you should be able to recognize Israel as a major offender, and seek remedies, starting with a ceasefire, that restore justice. You, too, have negligible political influence, at least in the US, as is evident by America's deep commitment to global power projection, and by America's generous support for regimes that have a history of abusing human rights. But at least your group is one that the real powers in pre-Trump America feel the need to pay lip service to. (Trump doesn't feel any such need, which makes him an object lesson on what happens when you don't at least pretend to have any scruples.)

  But there is a third group of people who have good reason to oppose Israel's genocide, and that's those who genuinely love their idealized notion of Israel, and wish nothing more nor less than to rescue their ideal from the racist/murderous reality that can no longer be ignored or excused. Their remedy of last resort is "tough love": Friedman's title cannot have been easy for someone who's spent 30+ years propagandizing Israel as America's greatest ally, but he at least recognizes the leverage point, and at long last sees no better option. This puts him midpoint on a scale that started with early "tough love" adopters like Peter Beinart and (somewhat later and more equivocally) Bernie Sanders, and will likely continue even beyond Friedman. When you still find Israel-lovers, work on them: ask how can they profess love of Israel and concern for the safety and well-being of Jews and still excuse what Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir have done? They have no answer, and need to see that. When they fall back on their hasbara, dispel it -- it's really quite easy, as at root its irreducible claim is that God's Chose People have a right to dominion over all others. (If you are one of them, you should recognize that the proposition is ridiculous. If you are not, you have no other recourse, as your side has been chosen for you.) And if they still refuse, they are lost -- as is any nation based on such obstinate self-regard. But we should be clear that anyone who still supports this Israeli government is no friend of the Israeli people and nation, or of Jews anywhere. It is they who are promoting anti-semitism.

• Hanin Majadli: [04-09] This Intolerable Gap Between Jewish Memory and Palestinian Reality:

  I blame Israel's school system and the State of Israel for having introduced the Holocaust into my veins. . . . This intolerable gap between the memories of the Jewish people and the reality of the Palestinian people, between the insistent pledge of "Never Again" and what is happening now, in the present, is something that burns one's heart, something almost inconceivable. This is the gap between an Israeli society that opens its heart, at least ostensibly, to a painful historical memory while ignoring, sometimes brutally so, the pain that it itself is responsible for.

David Armstrong: [05-08] The Price of Remission: "When I was diagnosed with cancer, I set out to understand why a single pill of Revlimid cost the same as a new iPhone. I've covered high drug prices as a reporter for years. What I discovered shocked even me."

Jeffrey St Clair [05-09]: Roaming Charges: 100 Days of Turpitude: Starts with more on the new pope than I ever thought to ask. Although, for the record, see: Pope Leo XIV Calls for Peace in Gaza, End to Israeli Blockade on Aid. Of course, St Clair has much more than that.

Michael Tomasky [05-09]: You Won't Believe How Much Richer the Trumps Have Gotten This Year: Estimate is $3 billion in three months. A big chunk of that comes from crypto: whereas lesser crooks could be accused of "selling out," Trump gets to buy in, on terms that all but guarantee profits. And given his ability to direct public money to private ventures, his "investors" could be able to recoup plenty in his allotted four years. This flows into another [04-25] story specifically on crypto: "Trump Just Did the Most Corrupt Thing Any President Has Ever Done." That may seem like a big claim, but whoever's the runner up is nowhere close.

Nia Prater [05-09] A Few of the Many Lowlights of Jeanine Pirro, Trump's Newest U.S. Attorney. Trump nominated the Fox host after finding his original pick, Ed Martin, a counsel for January 6 rioters, "would be unable to survive Senate confirmation." It's hard to see how anyone who would object to Martin would be reconciled to Pirro (who "compared January 6 rioters to Revolutionary War soldiers").

Chas Danner [05-09] A Too-Deep Dive Into Trump's Doll Comments. For more on this:

• Margaret Hartmann [05-09] Trump Declares War on 'Country' of Mattel: He wants to drive Barbie off the market.

Liza Featherstone [05-09] Kamala Harris 2028? Hard Pass. "Brat Summer is over and never coming back." She had a solid poll lead coming out of the convention. She had tons of money. Her opponent was a fraud and a nincompoop, and was promising to wreak mayhem on his supposed enemies. And to my mind, at least, she was likable as well as competent. (Maybe I was just a sucker for the cooking videos?) Sure, there were things about her campaign that bothered me, but the choice was so stark and her favor was so huge that I decided just to trust her. She had a theory about winning, and while I didn't particularly agree with it, it wasn't necessarily unworkable. So when she failed, it was just as easy to blame the voters as to blame her. (Pace Hillary Clinton, who did much more to deserve her loss.) But whatever the reason, she's just not substantial enough to keep running. (The only major party candidate to lose repeatedly was William Jennings Bryan, who you may or may not like but at least he stood for things. The only one to come back after a loss was Richard Nixon, and he was much worse than a serial loser. Third party candidates like Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, and Ralph Nader at least had stands, but anyone can be a "lesser evil," which was ultimately the bottom line for Harris, as for Biden.)

Steve M [05-10] The Rise of Fascism and the Tabloidization of Government: All of his posts are worth reading, but I want to quote from this one:

The dumbing down of America, on this and many other subjects, is a consequence of the politicized tabloidization of the news by Fox and other outlets. Let's look at what news ought to be and what it is now, thanks to Rupert Murdoch and other weaponizers of tabloidization.

We know what the news should ideally be: stories that tell us what we need to know about significant events in our communities and in the world at large. Tabloidization changes this formula: Instead of telling us what we need to know to understand our world, tabloid news tells us whatever makes our pulse race, and presents it all in the most emotion-inducing way possible. An editor of The Sun in Britain said that the paper should "shock and amaze on every page."

The evil genius of Murdochism is that it's politicized tabloidization. Fox doesn't present the news. It presents news (and pseudo-news) stories crafted as narratives of good and evil, with evil always represented either by liberals or by groups associated with liberals (people of color, sexual minorities, college professors, and so on). The top stories are whichever stories are most successful at getting viewers' blood to boil. . . .

Fox was intended to mislead ordinary Americans about what's really important, but it wasn't intended to mislead the people who run our government. Now, however, our government is run by people who also have Fox brain. They don't think they need to focus on issues Fox ignores, and they don't think they need to understand anything at a deeper level than what you get from Fox content.

Also see:

• Steve M: [05-07] Punishment Is All They Want. Starts with a tweet from Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) saying: "The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci." I don't believe that Democrats should attempt to match the glee with which Republicans wish to consign their enemies to unspeakable hells, but Democrats do need to get much stronger at assigning blame for what ails Americans, and promising to fix those problems, especially by removing those responsible from power. Once removed from power, there is something to be said for forgiveness and forgetting, because falling into the sadistic vengeance trap is not just bad for the victims, but for those in power as well.

Ammar Ali Jan [05-10]: India and Pakistan Are on the Brink of Catastrophe: "Many Hindu nationalists termed the recent Pahalgam terror attack 'our October 7' and now call for Pakistan to be 'reduced to rubble.' Even under a tenuous cease-fire, nationalist saber-rattling is colliding with the collapse of international law." This is always the risk when you install a government whose primary identity is hatred of others. Of course, there are differences, which should be sobering: Pakistan has 240 million people, whereas Gaza only had 2 million. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, where Hamas had little more than sticks and stones. On the other hand, Israel has shown what unopposed power can do, and few nations have followed their exploits more enthusiastically than India has.

Joan C Williams [05-10]: The Left Has to Speak to Average American Values -- or Perish: Interview with the author of White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (2019), has a new book out, Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. Pull quote: "What working-class people know is that their parents' or grandparents' families looked quite different from theirs, and everything seemed to work then. Now nothing seems to work." I'm old enough to recognize what she's talking about from my own family and neighborhood, but I'm not feeling nostalgic about it; more like resentment, and relief that those times are behind us. I don't disagree that what we have now isn't working as well as it should be, but I prefer solutions based on what we've gained, not on what we've lost. Still, with the future unfathomable, people spend most of their time looking back, and that suggests some ways to talk about present wrongs. We do need help talking, because the standard Democratic Party spiel isn't cutting it. Speaking of which, which article led me to this:

• Hillary Clinton [03-28] How Much Dumber Will This Get? Well, how much dumber are you going to make it? She starts: "It's not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it's the stupidity." Sounds like a distinction without much difference, but I'm always wary when someone like her calls others out for hypocrisy. We'll give her a pass on "stupidity," because she's much more useful as an example of how worthless, and sometimes dangerous, smarts alone can be. But Trump, sure, he's so stupid that even his denials ("stable genius," "person, woman, man, camera, TV") are ipso facto proof. His stupidity is so vast one really needs to be more specific. To wit, Hillary continues:

  We're all shocked -- shocked! -- that President Trump and his team don't actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What's much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That's dangerous. And it's just dumb.

  The rest of the op-ed is a long lecture excoriating Trump for sins against conventional (deep state? blob?) foreign policy -- "reckless with America's hard power," "shredding our soft power," "more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America's adversaries," "cozying up to dictators," "blowing up our alliances," "we also lose the qualities that have made America exceptional and indispensable" -- punctuated by bursts like "dumb" and "not smart." Even when she complains about "undermining the rule of law at home," "flagrant corruption," and "tanking our economy and blowing up our national debt," she's preoccupied with its foreign policy impact ("trashing our moral influence"). It has long occurred to me that her biggest mistake in 2016 was how much desire she had specifically for the role of Commander in Chief. Has any presidential candidate ever won, or even run, on a pro-war platform? Not even Trump has been that stupid.

  PS: My wife offered an answer to my rhetorical question: Kamala Harris. I get the point without quite sharing the feeling. Biden's wars, unlike Bush's, were things he stumbled into, out of bad luck, misplaced loyalties, and a deficit of understanding and will to do anything about them. Harris, following past vice-presidents, made no real effort to distinguish herself, and way too often parroted the deadly clichés of Washington defense-speak, which is pretty much what Clinton did, but with extra relish.

Dave DeCamp [05-12] US Replaces B-2 Bombers at Diego Garcia Base With B-52s: This caught my eye because my father helped build the first B-52s over 70 years ago, when I was a child. He continued to work on refitting and refurbishing the planes until he retired. As noted, the "main difference" between the bombers is that the B-2 has "stealth," but perhaps more important is that the B-52 can carry more bombs, and not the so-called "smart" ones: it is a tool for indiscriminate mass bombardment against an "enemy" that lacks modern anti-aircraft defense. "Between March 15 and May 6, the US launched over 1,000 strikes on Yemen."

Peter Linebaugh/Marcus Rediker [05-13]: A World Turned Upside Down: "Christopher Hill's history from below." Hill was one of the three great Marxist historians of British history, usually listed first ahead of Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson, either alphabetically or by period. This reviews a new biography, Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian, by Michael Braddick. I've been reading a lot of Hobsbawm recently, because his period is closer to mine, but early on I was much more into Hill, perhaps because his period in British history directly flows into American history.

Scattered tweets:

• James Surowiecki: [04-30] Starts by quoting Attorney General Pamela Bondi:

  Today is Fentanyl Awareness Day. In President Trump's first 100 days we've seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 Million lives.

  So each and every fentanyl-laced pill would, if normally distributed, have killed six different people? How does that even work? Even if each and every dose was potentially fatal, how does it move from a dead body to another living body? Wouldn't the second, third, and later generation doses weaken or decay or diffuse? And when you're killing so many people wouldn't there be some reaction that limits the spread? As Surowiecki notes, she's counting "one third of all Americans," even before revising her figures to "258 million lives. That's 75% of all Americans."

• Sara B: [04-30] Happy 80th anniversary of Hitler killing himself in his bunker to all who celebrate, which, as I now understand, is not everybody.

• Meidas Michele: [05-04] Just an image, which reads:

  Trump officially entered the psychotic emperor phase. He's not coming back. The Pope image was it. That was the line. He crossed it and kept walking. This isn't trolling anymore. This is clinical delusion. The tariffs on movies. Reopening Alcatraz. These aren't policies. This is a man deep in a psychotic loop thinking revenge is leadership and trolling is governance. Every time he does something more insane, MAGA cheers louder. And every cheer convinces him he's still the chosen one. So he takes it further. No one's driving the bus anymore. They're just throwing gasoline and screaming kumbaya and Hallelujah.

• Rick [05-06]: Just an image, which reads:

  If we deported MAGA men age 17 to 50 & replaced them with immigrants the violent crime rate would drop 70-80%, Crimes against women & children would be almost zero.

  I'm not sure what data supports this hypothesis, but it's been widely reported that immigrants are much less prone to violent crime than natives, and the male age demographic certainly is, so if you could do this, you probably would see some movement in that direction. Of course, you can't do this, and whatever benefit you might see in crime reduction would be trivial compared to the disruption and backlash such a policy would produce, but the meme has a certain didactic value, as long as you understand that it's really just a joke.

• Mariah [05-07]: Another image:

  Anyone else notice how all of a sudden no one's eating our cats and dogs anymore? No one's performing sex change operations in schools or aborting babies after birth anymore. The price of eggs doesn't matter and a recession isn't a bad thing, it's just a necessary growing pain.

• Alan MacLeod [05-13]

  Real democracy is pleasing opinion columnists at a newspaper owned by the world's richest man. For more on how Bezos destroyed the Washington Post, read my report into the outlet.

  This was an article from 2021, so he likely has more he can add. What he does offer is a reference to a 2024 piece by Ishaan Tharoor on El Salvador: The inescapable appeal of the world's 'coolest dictator', Nayib Bukele.

  MacLeod started his thread with praise for Claudia Sheinbaum as the "world's most popular leader" (80% approval rating). Later down my feed, I find a faux link to another Washington Post op-ed, by León Krauze [05-09] Mexico's democracy is fast eroding under Scheinbaum's rule. Somehow these same hackneyed charges get paraded out any time any nation puts someone more/less left into power -- a template that goes back to attacks on Franklin Roosevelt -- yet right-wingers are never held to the same standard.

Obituaries:

• Trip Gabriel: [04-30] David Horowitz, Leftist Turned Trump Defender, Is Dead at 86: I remember him as an editor at Ramparts and the author of one of the first books highly critical of historical American foreign policy, The Free World Colossus (1965), which I probably still have upstairs. After he flipped to the right, he published tons of books, but as far as I could tell never made a lick of sense -- typical titles include: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004); The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (2017); Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America (2017)); Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win (2020); and I Can't Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America (2021). Also:

  • David Klion [05-15] I Thought David Horowitz Was a Joke -- but He Foreshadowed the Trump Coalition

This is old, but I'm reading Carlos Lozada's The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians, and the book is made up of previously published book reviews, so most of the chapers are readily available online. This one I especially recommend:

Carlos Lozada [2021-09-03] 9/11 was a test. The books of the last two decades show how America failed. On the day, I was well aware of the history of American interventions in the Middle East, including Sharon's counter-intifada that was already underway in Israel and PNAC's plots to project US power throughout the region (their alignment with Israel's far right amplified by post-Cold War delusions of America as the world's sole "hyperpower"). So I saw the attacks as further proof of US mistakes, but also as an opportunity to change course and get right with the world, because doubling down -- as Bush and his loyal opposition did with scarcely a moment's reflection -- would only bring further pain and suffering, and ultimately ruin for all. (As, well, it did.) Mine was a very isolated position at the time, so I'm gratified to see a reviewer like Lozada come around to it eventually.

The books reviewed here are [* ones I've read, 7 of 21; order is from the article illustrations]:

• [*] Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004)
• [*] Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)
• Peter Bergen: The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden (2021): the latest of several books Bergen wrote on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, starting with Holy War, Inc. (2001)
• Richard A Clarke: Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (2004)
• Jim Dwyer/Kevin Flynn: 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (2005)
• Garrett M Graff: The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (2019)
• Bob Woodward: Bush at War (2002)
• [*] Jane Mayer: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (2008)
• David Cole, ed: The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (2009)
• The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (2014)
• Robert Draper: To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq (2020)
• [*] Anthony Shadid: Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (2005)
• [*] Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006)
• [*] Dexter Filkins: The Forever War (2008)
• Craig Whitlock: The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War (2021)
• The US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2007)
• David Finkel: Thank You for Your Service (2013)
• The Iraq Study Group Report (2006)
• Spencer Ackerman: Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021)
• [*] Karen Greenberg: Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy From the War on Terror to Donald Trump (2021)
• The 9/11 Commission Report (2004)

I skipped all of the official reports and document collections, and I tended to focus more on early books (when I felt more need for research) than on later ones (which seemed unlikely to add much to what I already knew). The recent books by Ackerman and Draper look likely to be valuable. I'm curious about the Graff book to see how it dovetails with my memory. Of course, I've read more in this area. Omitting the large number of books on Israel, as well as most of the more generic books on US politics, Islam, and oil, here's a rough list (whittled down from here, sorted by year published):

• Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (2000): First book in English on the Taliban, predates 9/11 and the US invasion.
• Tariq Ali: The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002): NLR Marxist, understood everything instantly.
• Max Boot: The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (2002): Not on 9/11 or aftermath, but very influential for those who wanted to justify military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. For the rest of us, a comprehensive catalog of American military misadventurism (e.g., look up "butcher and bolt").
• Dilip Hiro: Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm (2002)
• Gilles Kepel: Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2002): Published in France earlier, US edition includes a brief coda on 9/11. This is by far the best book on Jidadist thought all across the Muslim world, certainly to date, and probably still.
• Lewis Lapham: Theater of War (2002, New Press)
• Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (2002): One of the "clash of civilizations" hawks' favorite intellectuals.
• William Rivers Pitt/Scott Ritter: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know (2002)
• Shibley Telhami: The Stakes: America and the Middle East: The Consequences of Power and the Choice of Peace (2002)
• Tariq Ali: Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq (2003)
• Joan Didion: Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003)
• Sheldon Rampton/John Stauber: Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq (2003)
• Jonathan Schell: The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (2003): More general book, but prophetic title.
• James Carroll: Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War (2004): Also wrote an important historical book on the US military: House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (2006)
• Seymour Hersh: Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (2004)
• Gilles Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2004)
• Mahmood Mamdani: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004)
• James Mann: Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (2004)
• Michael Scheuer [Anonymous]: Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (2004): CIA analyst.
• Rory Stewart: The Places in Between (2004): Travel narrative across Afghanistan before US invasion.
• Nicholas von Hoffman: Hoax: Why Americans Are Suckered by White House Lies (2004)
• Andrew Bacevich: The New American Militarism: |How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005): The first of his many books on how Americans kicked "Vietnam syndrome" and learned to love war again.
• Larry Beinhart: Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (2005): One of the best books ever on lying in American politics.
• Aaron Glantz: How America Lost Iraq (2005)
• Michael Klare: Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (2005)
• George Packer: The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq (2005): Big Iraq war supporter changes his mind.
• Scott Ritter: Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (2005)
• Paul William Roberts: A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq (2005)
• Evan Wright: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (2005): Embedded reporter on the road to Baghdad, basis for an HBO series.
• Tariq Ali: Rough Music: Blair Bombs Baghdad London Terror (2006)
• Ira Chernus: Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin (2006)
• Noam Chomsky/Gilbert Achcar: Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy (2006)
• Patrick Cockburn: The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (2006)
• Michael R Gordon/General Bernard E Trainor: Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (2006): The embedded view from command headquarters.
• Frank Rich: The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina (2006)
• Louise Richardson: What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006): Not just Jihadists.
• Scott Ritter: Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change (2006)
• Thomas E. Ricks: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006)
• Nir Rosen: In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq (2006): First report from an unimbedded reporter in Iraq.
• Ali A Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (2007)
• Susan Faludi: The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (2007)
• Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East (2007): Massive reporting from all over. Previously wrote the definitive book on Lebanon, Pity the Nation (1990).
• Dahr Jamail: Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (2007)
• Lewis Lapham: Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration (2007)
• Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007): I've skipped over several other books on Iran, but this one has a lot of insight into how Israel uses Iran to manipulate the US (and why the US lets it).
• William R Polk: Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, From the American Revolution to Iraq (2007)
• Tariq Ali: The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008)
• Chris Hedges/Laila Al-Arian: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (2008)
• Eugene Jarecki: The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril (2008)
• Fred Kaplan: Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (2008)
• Ahmed Rashid: Descent Into Chaos: The US and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008)
• Juan Cole: Engaging the Muslim World (2009)
• Gregory Feifer: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (2009)
• Karen Greenberg: The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days (2009)
• Seth G Jones: In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2009)
• Jon Krakauer: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009)
• Gretchen Peters: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda (2009)
• Thomas E Ricks: The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (2009)
• Tariq Ali: The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010)
• Andrew Bacevich: Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (2010)
• John W Dower: Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (2010): Historian of Japan, wrote two major books, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986), and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (2000).
• Tom Engelhardt: The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (2010)
• Chalmers Johnson: Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope (2010): Former CIA analyst, final volume in a brilliant series of books that started with Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000), one of the first books sensitive to the amount of self-harm America's empire cost. I've read them all, including The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004) and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007).
• Geoffrey Wawro: Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (2010)
• Nir Rosen: Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World (2011)
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (2012)
• Kurt Eichenwald: 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars (2012)
• Michael Hastings: The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Story of America's War in Afghanistan (2012)
• Rashid Khalidi: Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013): Palestinian historian, so most of his books focus there (I have read several), but US ability to interact with the Arab world is sharply limited to Israel's demands, so you can't really separate the two interests.
• Jeremy Scahill: Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013)
• James Risen: Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War (2014)
• Andrew Bacevich: America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (2016)
• Rosa Brooks: How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales From the Pentagon (2016)
• John W Dower: The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II (2017)
• Steve Coll: Directorate S: The CIA and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2018)
• Tom Engelhardt: A Nation Unmade by War (2018)
• Matt Farwell/Michael Ames: American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the US Tragedy in Afghanistan (2019)
• Tariq Ali: The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan: A Chronicle Foretold (2022)

This is, by the way, an incomplete list of books I've read by several authors: Gilbert Achcar, Tariq Ali, Andrew Bacevich, Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole, Steve Coll, Chris Hedges, Dilip Hiro, Chalmers Johnson, Fred Kaplan, Jon Krakauer, Robert D Kaplan, Rashid Khalidi, Lewis Lapham, Jane Mayer. The above list seems to tail off after 2012, which is roughly when the Obama surge in Afghanistan burned out. (The Michael Hastings book was pivotal, in that it was shortly followed by the sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the shelving of his counterinsurgency strategy, which had no support from troops who had little desire either to fight and even less to aid Afghans.) I wound up paying no attention to the handful of books on ISIS, or on the drone wars that were surging elsewhere. Besides, there was much more to read about elsewhere, especially in US politics.

At some point, I should revisit this list and try to draw up a shorter, more useful annotation. That obviously looks like a lot of work right now, but Lozada's piece is a good framework to start. I don't think his methodology of focusing on commission reports, document caches, and reporters with direct access to their sources (like Woodward) is better than my approach of mostly working through critics I'm familiar with and inclined to agree with (like Ali, Bacevich, Chomsky, Engelhardt, Hedges, Johnson, and Lapham), but if my preferred critics are right, the more conventional sources should ultimately fit into their understanding -- as they do.

By the way, a couple more personal 9/11 book remembrances:

• Bruce Bernard/Terrence McNamee: Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope (1999): Big pictorial history with over 1000 images chronologically from 1900 into 1999. I spent much of the day of 9/11 thumbing through this book, which helped me keep the day's events in context.
• Barbara Crossette: The Great Hill Stations of Asia (1998): A few days after 9/11, I went to the bookstore in search of historical background. I found nothing that seemed directly appropriate, but wound up buying this book on British imperialism in India, which reminded me of Jan Myrdal's brilliant Angkor, which showed how European imperialists mentally translated their disabilities into badges of superiority.
• Robert D Kaplan: The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (2001): I also, in fairly short order, wound up reading most of Kaplan's travel/history books, including his most famous Balkan Ghosts (1993) and his valentine for the Afghan mujahideen, Soldiers of God (1990, reprinted 2001). His work helped me formulate a framework for understanding the region, although I tended to draw opposite conclusions from his, and I gave up on him as he became increasingly entangled in the US war machine.

Another old article link:

Alison L LaCroix: [2024-06-10] What the Founders Didn't Know -- But Their Children Did -- About the Constitution. This is a useful précis of her book, The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms, which covers legal arguments about federalism in the 1815-61 period. As noted, these debates have been resurfacing of late, especially around issues like abortion, gay marriage, and marijuana which states have often treated variously but which touch on constitutional rights that should be universally protected.

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