I certainly don't think you're "being too hard on him", nor that you're not being hard enough. (Which reminds me of that wonderful interview with Shane MacGowan, where the interviewer says in passing that, as is well known, SMG drinks too much. He says "I don't drink too much", so she says "Oh, I suppose you think you don't drink enough", to which he unforgettably replies "No, I drink enough".)
I just don't necessarily think this is a helpful or nuanced way to think about people - I think most interesting people are multi-faceted, with complicated worldviews and opinions, and unless these skew very much to the "evil" side of the scale, as long as the people are bright, knowledgeable and interesting it can be worthwhile considering what they say. Even sometimes (maybe even often) when one doesn't agree with them on whatever the topic is.
When you make that observation immediately after I acknowledge my problems with Klein, it makes it seem like I am being too hard on him and I should ease up.
As another example, here is David Frum talking to Beto O'Rourke
https://youtu.be/6x0O7DgC3sA?si=5-kEtlCooj9AwFRE
Frum has some interesting insights, most notably about O'Rourke's candidacy compared to Tim Walz, but he opens with a discussion of Iran as the world's leader in sponsoring terrorism. I wonder how he would deal with the points made by Vaez.
These sorts of mistakes are ones that the US does time and time again. Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson when he proclaimed the Independence of Vietnam and the OSS guys who worked with him were saying that he was the person we should support. If we had moved towards Khatami's efforts, we might not be in the shitstorm we are now.
I was talking/thinking about purity politics, lj, a subject we have often discussed here on ObWi. You often refer to, or link to, Ezra Klein pieces, IMO very understandably, even though his Charlie Kirk comments were outrageous and no doubt he's behaved or expressed himself not absolutely as many of us would have liked/done on many occasions. But he provides interesting interviews, with interesting people, and he's an important voice to have on the NYT which is (if I understand correctly) still a hugely influential newspaper in the US media context.
It's back now. This morning it was absent in that thread, not in the others.
The FCC boss now threatens the licences of broadcasters that are not sufficiently enthusiastic about the 'but do not call it war' in Iran. And His Orangeness is enthusiastic about that, adding his usual 'dissent is treason' refrain.
But I assume their only sharp tool is to threaten media mergers with vetos, if lines are not toed (Be a good toad, will ye!).
@hartmut, I took the liberty of editing your comment to provide the blockquote formatting. I'm seing all the tools in the comment box on the site. Is your's still missing? If so, you might try a forced refresh.
At the moment the official GOP talking point is that the US and Iran are already at war for 47 years*, i.e. since 1979, so His Orangeness did not start a 'new' war and thus did not break his campaign promise.
*the talking point clearly points to that number given this ridiculous fumble:
Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tried to peddle the same talking point on Fox News, but he apparently got tripped up and instead said, “We have been at war with Iran since 1947.”
---
The toolbox has disappeared, so I had to go for [ ] for formatting. Hope it works.
Trump said, “Say, three and a half years from now, so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.”
Suddenly it becomes clear why he has started a war with Iran. Expect him to say, at some point, that what actually happened is that Iran declared war on us. Because, after all, he is always the victim. No matter how totally history has to be rewritten falsified to get there.
my view is very definitely that one doesn’t have to agree with every single thing someone has ever said or done to find their contributions useful, valuable or interesting.
That suggests that I am someone who has to agree with everything that someone has ever said or done before I find it valuable or interesting, I hope you realize how that could be taken badly. (and which isn't the case, btw).
While the Charlie Kirk paean is the most egregious, I've noted that Klein is often competing for that David Broder Bloviator in Chief position. Given where we find ourselves, it seems obvious to me that this inability to call out stuff back in the day goes some way to explaining why we are experiencing this dumpster fire.
Klein often says that he wants to 'steelman' a position (more often than not, one of Trump or the administration) when he has guests who are taking issue with those policies, but when he has guests who are defending those policies, he seems to soft pedal his points. The most recent time was this one, with Nadia Schadlow who served as a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term (and is a fellow at the Hudson Institute, which, if her argumentation is anything to go by, the place must be an ouroboros, eating its own tail). While there are a number of points where Schadlow falls into a painful silence, I wish he had taken some of Vaez's historical facts and set them in front of her.
The only reason that Ezra Klein interview is not more depressing is that I already knew about many of the missteps (from our point of view) that the US has made. Not just the many things that we have done wrong, but the multiple opportunities to do something right which we have ignored.
That's what makes the JPCOA so impressive. Under Obama, we (eventually) did something right. Of course, Trump insists that anything and everything that Obama did must be reversed. So, another opportunity squandered. And now he's making another huge mess (making messes being, arguably, his core "competency"). There's no way that ends well. The main question is: will it be a massive failure or an epic fail?
Still, making the heroic assumption that we manage to preserve our own nation, there is reason for hope. The last 3/4 century notwithstanding, Iran has remained open to good relations with the US. Maybe we will even get an administration which will take yes for an answer.
a number of American social scientists had been doing contract and consultation work for the Defense Department.
The challenge, always, is to figure out whether the work you are doing will be used for unethical ends. Sometimes, that's easy. But other times, it isn't -- especially with work which might, or might not, be used for unethical purposes. Social science has that issue, but so does medicine, engineering, etc.
It's easy, especially after the fact and with 20/20 hindsight based on more complete information, to say "Obviously this work...." It takes actual effort to work out what information the actors had, and the context they were working in. Pundits rarely, in my observation, are quite that industrious.
I've mentioned Giovanna Borradori's Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003) a few times here over the years. Borradori's book is her dialogues with Habermas and Derrida speaking with her separately, but responding to parallel questions about terrorism and philosophy in NYC not long after 9/11. It's an extraordinary work, giving the reader a chance to see both philosophers thinking and responding in real time to an extraordinary circumstance. I found it very approachable reading, so it might make a good introduction to anyone wanting to get a taste of Habermas's thinking, and an idea of the philosophical tensions between him and the post-structuralists.
I found Derrida's responses in the book to be very insightful and clarifying, and a good corrective to the straw man portrayals of him as fast-talking charlatan.
That someone can be me! If this is what lj meant, the transcript is included in this gift link (it doesn't start in exactly the same place, but goes on with the stuff in lj's video):
Regarding any past missteps by Ezra Klein (I'm thinking of, as I assume lj is, his comments after Charlie Kirk got killed), my view is very definitely that one doesn't have to agree with every single thing someone has ever said or done to find their contributions useful, valuable or interesting. And Ezra Klein is certainly a frequent provider of all three kinds of contributions.
Thanks. I hope it's ok if I use this as no open thread:
Juergen Habermas has died. I doubt many people made it through "The Theory of Communicative Action" but his (and Apel's) discourse ethics were certainly influential when I studied philosophy. The idea that the better argument will eventually win out, together with Gadamer's principle of charity, i.e. assuming that your interlocutor is rational and possibly correct, seems strangely antiquated in these times.
I only ever read "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" and took away that Habermas tried to valiantly defend Kantian reason against various irrationalists and postmodernist upstarts - however, I wasn't really buying it, especially since he seemed to contradict his own maxims by not really trying to understand where, say, Foucault and Derrida were coming from.
His concept of "Verfassungspatriotismus" (patriotism based on the constitution) was a useful corrective to the nationalist and xenophobic tendencies in Germany.
Finally, he recently made some contentious remarks about Ukraine ("compromise") and Gaza ("Jewish lives are a priority") which exposed the limits of his universalism, a generational shift in German intellectual discourse and left a bit of a sour aftertaste. But then this just showed that even the most rational thinkers are children of their time.
We are the corpses unless we decide not to be. But it's got to be soon. Time is short. Their only chance to survive, their final gambit, is savage, murderous violence against us.
And don't tell me they don't have the fascist, subhuman will to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vga2stK5bBo
If you can get beyond the paywall, this Fintan O'Toole piece describes the coming worldwide freakshow authored by the Christian Republican Conservative movement.
My immediate reaction to Trump's "invitation" was... Wait. Did you just invite China to bring their aircraft carrier in, and give them a chance to fly planes around measuring US carriers' premier radar signals, and getting a chance to bounce radar off F-35s? The US very carefully did not deploy F-35s over much of Syria while the Russians were there, because they didn't want the Russians to know what the returns were like.
Particularly funny, apart from the obvious, because China, for example, is being allowed by Iran to send ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz according to the C4 News I watched half an hour ago. It looks like Trump is still being advised by the same experts who didn't factor in closure of the Strait when planning the war...
Trump seven days ago, still very pissed off that Starmer had refused permission for the US to launch offensives from UK air bases:
“The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
Trump today:
“We have already destroyed 100 per cent of Iran’s military capability, but it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along, or in, this waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.” In what appeared to be an appeal to the UK and other nations, he added: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”
On “Iran and the US”
I certainly don't think you're "being too hard on him", nor that you're not being hard enough. (Which reminds me of that wonderful interview with Shane MacGowan, where the interviewer says in passing that, as is well known, SMG drinks too much. He says "I don't drink too much", so she says "Oh, I suppose you think you don't drink enough", to which he unforgettably replies "No, I drink enough".)
I just don't necessarily think this is a helpful or nuanced way to think about people - I think most interesting people are multi-faceted, with complicated worldviews and opinions, and unless these skew very much to the "evil" side of the scale, as long as the people are bright, knowledgeable and interesting it can be worthwhile considering what they say. Even sometimes (maybe even often) when one doesn't agree with them on whatever the topic is.
"
When you make that observation immediately after I acknowledge my problems with Klein, it makes it seem like I am being too hard on him and I should ease up.
As another example, here is David Frum talking to Beto O'Rourke
https://youtu.be/6x0O7DgC3sA?si=5-kEtlCooj9AwFRE
Frum has some interesting insights, most notably about O'Rourke's candidacy compared to Tim Walz, but he opens with a discussion of Iran as the world's leader in sponsoring terrorism. I wonder how he would deal with the points made by Vaez.
These sorts of mistakes are ones that the US does time and time again. Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson when he proclaimed the Independence of Vietnam and the OSS guys who worked with him were saying that he was the person we should support. If we had moved towards Khatami's efforts, we might not be in the shitstorm we are now.
"
I was talking/thinking about purity politics, lj, a subject we have often discussed here on ObWi. You often refer to, or link to, Ezra Klein pieces, IMO very understandably, even though his Charlie Kirk comments were outrageous and no doubt he's behaved or expressed himself not absolutely as many of us would have liked/done on many occasions. But he provides interesting interviews, with interesting people, and he's an important voice to have on the NYT which is (if I understand correctly) still a hugely influential newspaper in the US media context.
On “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran”
It's back now. This morning it was absent in that thread, not in the others.
The FCC boss now threatens the licences of broadcasters that are not sufficiently enthusiastic about the 'but do not call it war' in Iran. And His Orangeness is enthusiastic about that, adding his usual 'dissent is treason' refrain.
But I assume their only sharp tool is to threaten media mergers with vetos, if lines are not toed (Be a good toad, will ye!).
"
@hartmut, I took the liberty of editing your comment to provide the blockquote formatting. I'm seing all the tools in the comment box on the site. Is your's still missing? If so, you might try a forced refresh.
"
At the moment the official GOP talking point is that the US and Iran are already at war for 47 years*, i.e. since 1979, so His Orangeness did not start a 'new' war and thus did not break his campaign promise.
*the talking point clearly points to that number given this ridiculous fumble:
---
The toolbox has disappeared, so I had to go for [ ] for formatting. Hope it works.
"
Suddenly it becomes clear why he has started a war with Iran. Expect him to say, at some point, that what actually happened is that Iran declared war on us. Because, after all, he is always the victim. No matter how totally history has to be
rewrittenfalsified to get there."
I agree with him. We should settle by other means, as armed conservatives have recommended since I was knee-high to a Goebbels.
The Republican Party is Timothy McVeigh. Too bad fertilizer prices are stuck between a Hormuz Strait and 80 milllion vermin running the country.
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-muses-on-midterms-when-you-think-of-it-we-shouldnt-even-have-an-election
Bring it on.
On “Iran and the US”
my view is very definitely that one doesn’t have to agree with every single thing someone has ever said or done to find their contributions useful, valuable or interesting.
That suggests that I am someone who has to agree with everything that someone has ever said or done before I find it valuable or interesting, I hope you realize how that could be taken badly. (and which isn't the case, btw).
While the Charlie Kirk paean is the most egregious, I've noted that Klein is often competing for that David Broder Bloviator in Chief position. Given where we find ourselves, it seems obvious to me that this inability to call out stuff back in the day goes some way to explaining why we are experiencing this dumpster fire.
Klein often says that he wants to 'steelman' a position (more often than not, one of Trump or the administration) when he has guests who are taking issue with those policies, but when he has guests who are defending those policies, he seems to soft pedal his points. The most recent time was this one, with Nadia Schadlow who served as a deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term (and is a fellow at the Hudson Institute, which, if her argumentation is anything to go by, the place must be an ouroboros, eating its own tail). While there are a number of points where Schadlow falls into a painful silence, I wish he had taken some of Vaez's historical facts and set them in front of her.
On “Don’t know the words, but the tune sounds the same”
thanks, nous
On “Iran and the US”
The only reason that Ezra Klein interview is not more depressing is that I already knew about many of the missteps (from our point of view) that the US has made. Not just the many things that we have done wrong, but the multiple opportunities to do something right which we have ignored.
That's what makes the JPCOA so impressive. Under Obama, we (eventually) did something right. Of course, Trump insists that anything and everything that Obama did must be reversed. So, another opportunity squandered. And now he's making another huge mess (making messes being, arguably, his core "competency"). There's no way that ends well. The main question is: will it be a massive failure or an epic fail?
Still, making the heroic assumption that we manage to preserve our own nation, there is reason for hope. The last 3/4 century notwithstanding, Iran has remained open to good relations with the US. Maybe we will even get an administration which will take yes for an answer.
On “Don’t know the words, but the tune sounds the same”
The challenge, always, is to figure out whether the work you are doing will be used for unethical ends. Sometimes, that's easy. But other times, it isn't -- especially with work which might, or might not, be used for unethical purposes. Social science has that issue, but so does medicine, engineering, etc.
It's easy, especially after the fact and with 20/20 hindsight based on more complete information, to say "Obviously this work...." It takes actual effort to work out what information the actors had, and the context they were working in. Pundits rarely, in my observation, are quite that industrious.
"
I've mentioned Giovanna Borradori's Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003) a few times here over the years. Borradori's book is her dialogues with Habermas and Derrida speaking with her separately, but responding to parallel questions about terrorism and philosophy in NYC not long after 9/11. It's an extraordinary work, giving the reader a chance to see both philosophers thinking and responding in real time to an extraordinary circumstance. I found it very approachable reading, so it might make a good introduction to anyone wanting to get a taste of Habermas's thinking, and an idea of the philosophical tensions between him and the post-structuralists.
I found Derrida's responses in the book to be very insightful and clarifying, and a good corrective to the straw man portrayals of him as fast-talking charlatan.
On “Iran and the US”
That someone can be me! If this is what lj meant, the transcript is included in this gift link (it doesn't start in exactly the same place, but goes on with the stuff in lj's video):
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ali-vaez.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TVA.Pk5_.8_X0pkHJtduY&smid=url-share
Regarding any past missteps by Ezra Klein (I'm thinking of, as I assume lj is, his comments after Charlie Kirk got killed), my view is very definitely that one doesn't have to agree with every single thing someone has ever said or done to find their contributions useful, valuable or interesting. And Ezra Klein is certainly a frequent provider of all three kinds of contributions.
On “Don’t know the words, but the tune sounds the same”
pi + 0.01
"
A comment that refers to "irrationalists" would have been better for Pi Day, but Pi+1 is still appropriate, I guess.
"
Thanks. I hope it's ok if I use this as no open thread:
Juergen Habermas has died. I doubt many people made it through "The Theory of Communicative Action" but his (and Apel's) discourse ethics were certainly influential when I studied philosophy. The idea that the better argument will eventually win out, together with Gadamer's principle of charity, i.e. assuming that your interlocutor is rational and possibly correct, seems strangely antiquated in these times.
I only ever read "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" and took away that Habermas tried to valiantly defend Kantian reason against various irrationalists and postmodernist upstarts - however, I wasn't really buying it, especially since he seemed to contradict his own maxims by not really trying to understand where, say, Foucault and Derrida were coming from.
His concept of "Verfassungspatriotismus" (patriotism based on the constitution) was a useful corrective to the nationalist and xenophobic tendencies in Germany.
Finally, he recently made some contentious remarks about Ukraine ("compromise") and Gaza ("Jewish lives are a priority") which exposed the limits of his universalism, a generational shift in German intellectual discourse and left a bit of a sour aftertaste. But then this just showed that even the most rational thinkers are children of their time.
On “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran”
We are the corpses unless we decide not to be. But it's got to be soon. Time is short. Their only chance to survive, their final gambit, is savage, murderous violence against us.
And don't tell me they don't have the fascist, subhuman will to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Vga2stK5bBo
If you can get beyond the paywall, this Fintan O'Toole piece describes the coming worldwide freakshow authored by the Christian Republican Conservative movement.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/02/12/whose-hemisphere-venezuela-fintan-otoole/
It will be nuclear.
"
wj: I did consider putting the word experts in quotes, but rather thought it wasn't necessary!
"
Assumes facts definitely not in evidence.
"
My immediate reaction to Trump's "invitation" was... Wait. Did you just invite China to bring their aircraft carrier in, and give them a chance to fly planes around measuring US carriers' premier radar signals, and getting a chance to bounce radar off F-35s? The US very carefully did not deploy F-35s over much of Syria while the Russians were there, because they didn't want the Russians to know what the returns were like.
"
Particularly funny, apart from the obvious, because China, for example, is being allowed by Iran to send ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz according to the C4 News I watched half an hour ago. It looks like Trump is still being advised by the same experts who didn't factor in closure of the Strait when planning the war...
"
Trump seven days ago, still very pissed off that Starmer had refused permission for the US to launch offensives from UK air bases:
“The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
Trump today:
“We have already destroyed 100 per cent of Iran’s military capability, but it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along, or in, this waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.”
In what appeared to be an appeal to the UK and other nations, he added: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”
"
Kash Patel so wants to be shiny and chrome. Witness him.
"
Mad Max, you say? Don't forget about the water.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-desalination-water-oil-middle-east-12b23f2fa26ed5c4a10f80c4077e61ce
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.