It’s interesting, but I realise I don’t really have favourites. I read the arguments of the various commentators, and sometimes I think they’re worthwhile, and sometimes not. Quite frequently, people with whom I’ve deeply disagreed on other subjects say things I think are worth considering, or a hopeful sign from commentators who might influence a constituency with whom I very much disagree (like David Frum), and I take some comfort in that.
I've been thinking about this a bit. Definitely one of those chacun son gout sort of thing, but Snarki's observation twigged why I don't like Bobo, which is that everything seems to be in service of defending a GOP position and every observation seems to be linked to that.
It reminds me of the banning of Tacitus/Trevino from here. IIRC, he accused _Edward of promoting Islam when he quoted a Saudi cleric on some point. But (again iirc), the final step was when he came in under a different name to participate and try and put the same point across. As cleek mentioned, back in the day, he was part of the thrust and parry of the site, but there are (or at least were) norms and pretending to be someone else was a step too far. I feel like the site was proven right when he found a job that had him playing up the sodomy charges against Anwar Ibrahim because the government wanted him out of the picture. (and in a bizarre turn, Anwar Abrahim ended up forming a coalition with the guy who tried to throw him in prison and is now the current PM)
Now, Brooks hasn't pretended to be someone else, but that unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position suggests that what he says is driven by considerations outside of what I would think are important.
wj's response to Brooks's ritual performance of balance calls to mind one of the books I read early in my Ph.D. studies when I was building my Media Studies chops: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, by Alexander Galloway. The central idea there being that what makes the modern networked world continue to function is not deregulation, nor is it centralization - it's the informal and changeable rules that negotiate the conflicts between those two poles, which Galloway identifies as protocol.
In the US, that protocol was largely a function of what we call The Deep State. Congress makes laws. Private citizens make products. The Market exists as a fluctuating hologram of the shifting dynamics between those two. The Deep State oversees the negotiations between those two in order to steer the overall system and keep it functioning within acceptable parameters for both sides. (His digital analogy for this is the system of protocols that allowed TCP/IP to work with the DNS system to facilitate information exchange.
Galloway was, like most of the Media Studies people writing in the moment between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, a bit of a utopian technolibertarian. He did point out that the authoritarian nature of DNS
allows whole realms of the Web to be blacked out with the flip of a switch, but the belief was that those things would self-correct as protocol adjusted to keep the system moving.
We are living in the moment when protocol has been destroyed in order to prevent the system from moving to preserve the privilege of the powerful. Without the federal bureaucracy, and with the legislative branch neutered, we have only the executive and the judicial, operating top-down with no negotiation.
Anyway, thought I'd mention the book in case any of the (more) tech savvy (than me) here wanted to find it and take a look.
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
It seems clear that he has missed a couple of relevant details:
1) several decades of diligent work by the Federalist Society have produced a court system, now including the Supreme Court, which is no longer a reliable strong defender of those democratic values. With a bit of venue shopping, it's often possible to get a judge who is an ideologue rather than a jurist. When that's not possible, the majority on the Supreme Court is -- the main check there being that they can only hear a limited number of cases, so some precedents guarding democracy remain. For now.
2) turns out the Congress depended on tradition and good faith on the part of its members in order to function reliably. Gingrich started chipping away at that, and McConnell raised bad faith to a high art. At this point, one has to search really hard to find a Republican Congressman who shows signs of having ever heard of good faith. Or has something resembling a backbone; at least until their reelection is seriously threatened.
3) a lot of the institutions in the Executive Branch were staffed by people who are actually experts in their field. The Civil Service Act protected them from politics, so they could do their jobs. But thru a variety of ploys, the Civil Service Act has been neutered for those who will not knuckle under to the ideologues placed at the top.
In short, on the national level, those institutions are far less robust than we thought they were. The state and local levels are still solid, at least in the places most of us live. But their ablility to resist Federal overreach is limited, especially when it entails use of the court system.
As for our people, we always knew we had those among us who disliked democracy -- at least when the results were not perfectly aligned with their views of the moment. But there are rather more than we thought. Worse, there are way too many who simply can't (or at least couldn't) believe anyone would be elected and then trash the system. They are learning ("Hey, I didn't mean you coud do that here!"), but whether it will be soon enough remains to be seen.
We may yet avoid a Rome-style collapse.** But it will be a near run thing.
** Domestically. In international relations that ship has sailed. And won't return, at the earliest, until everyone in the world currently past their teens has not just passed from the scene but died.
i’ve been thinking the same thing. if you disregard the direction of the things he’s done and only focus on their magnitude, it’s hard to say he hasn’t changed far more than anyone since FDR. the problem is that all he’s done is negative.
I agree.
Regarding his consequentialism in domestic policy, everybody here is without doubt a better judge of it than I.
But in foreign policy terms alone, he has single-handedly destroyed your allies' trust in the (within reason) goodwill of America, and therefore of a roughly stable world order. Nobody sane ever expected the US to act against its own interests, but it was taken for granted that your interests would not be seen purely in terms of short-term financial gain and might making right tout court.
The open contempt for your European and other allies by Trump and J D Vance, enthusiastically approved and magnified by their appalling henchpeople, has been an extraordinary wake up call. Everyone knows that every nation contains these kinds of amoral, ignorant bigots, but nobody really expected that the greatest power in the world, and one of the originators of the post-war settlement, would produce politicians who allowed one its two main political parties to become their creature.
>I remember him saying that Trump was ‘the most consequential president in our lifetime’
i've been thinking the same thing.
if you disregard the direction of the things he's done and only focus on their magnitude, it's hard to say he hasn't changed far more than anyone since FDR. the problem is that all he's done is negative.
also, re Tacitus the blogger - he's a reason a few of us are here. back in the mists, his blog was a place where people could try to seriously discuss things (the Iraq invasion being the primary thing). and a lot of the early ObWi crowd were also Tacitus regulars. there was even interlinking. some of us followed those regulars from Tacitus to ObWi. for a while, Travino seemed like one of the sane Republicans. he grew out of it.
I understand that one can’t blame the original Tacitus for the sins of the nouveau Tacman, but I have to wonder about the connection in Brooks’ mind.
LOL, classic!
As requested, I went looking for Jamelle Bouie's response, but it's not out yet, obvs.
as you note, Brooks is certainly not a favorite of mine.
Nor of russell's, and probably various others here. It's interesting, but I realise I don't really have favourites. I read the arguments of the various commentators, and sometimes I think they're worthwhile, and sometimes not. Quite frequently, people with whom I've deeply disagreed on other subjects say things I think are worth considering, or a hopeful sign from commentators who might influence a constituency with whom I very much disagree (like David Frum), and I take some comfort in that.
I guess, quite properly, everybody's mileage varies....
Thanks for the David Brooks link, though let me rag on it a bit. I wish he had spent a little less time the previous 2 years claiming that everyone who was pointing out the direction this clown car was rolling had their hair on fire and a little more time putting up some resistance, even if only by observing it in a column or at a speaking event. I remember him saying that Trump was 'the most consequential president in our lifetime', which sounds a lot like the sentence in the reference letter "When you come to know him as we know him, you will appreciate him as we appreciate him."
The column has Brooks going back to Tacitus, but it would have been nice if he invoked Tacitus to discuss some other points of the MAGA movement, perhaps noting after one of those circle jerk cabinet meetings that 'Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies' or, in considering the whole cult of MAGA "In their ignorance they called it culture, when it was part of their enslavement."
Brooks has spent a lot of time claiming that the judiciary would ultimately function to stop Trump and that what people should do is stay at their desks. He's still playing the same games when he says
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
I think in response to the line about how everyone needed to stay at their desks, Jamelle Bouie said that this is really hard when the desk is being sold for parts. (I hope you can post Bouie's reply to Brooks, he's weighed in a few times in response, I think, and I'm sure that it will be worth reading)
Battle hardened vets on the blog can also note that Tacitus was the nom de blog of one Josh Trevino (the tilde over the n came later), who got into some problems with editorials on Malaysian politics, but, like a bad penny, pops up again and again. I understand that one can't blame the original Tacitus for the sins of the nouveau Tacman, but I have to wonder about the connection in Brooks' mind. The Tacitus quote "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" embodies one notion that has gotten us into this mess, so a little reflection might be in order from Brooks, though that is not his strong suit.
Again, apologies for ragging on the article, but as you note, Brooks is certainly not a favorite of mine.
Sir Rod Stewart released a video statement about Trump's diss of UK soldiers.
That Tacticus quote is right on the money-which is why the actions in Portland and Minneapolis are so important and inspiring. There's no giving in to cynicism there and a strong assertion of the moral values the dictator is trying to destroy.
OK, on lj's formulation that this thread is about American reaction (as opposed to foreign reaction) to Trump, this is David Brooks in today's NYT. I know he is not any kind of favourite on ObWi, but since it is decades since I read Tacitus I was very struck by this:
Tacitus was especially good at describing the effect the tyrant has on the people around him. When the tyrant first takes power, there is a “rush into servitude” as great swarms of sycophants suck up to the great man. The flattery must forever escalate and grow more fawning, until every follower’s dignity is shorn away. Then comes what you might call the disappearance of the good, as morally healthy people lie low in order to survive. Meanwhile, the whole society tends to be anesthetized. The relentless flow of appalling events eventually overloads the nervous system; the rising tide of brutality, which once seemed shocking, comes to seem unremarkable.
As the disease of tyranny progresses, citizens may eventually lose the habits of democracy — the art of persuasion and compromise, interpersonal trust, an intolerance for corruption, the spirit of freedom, the ethic of moderation. “It is easier to crush men’s spirits and their enthusiasm than to revive them,” Tacitus wrote.
I suppose that it all bleeds together, but my thought was that this thread might focus on foreign reaction to Trump, while the other post was about the mental gymnastics the people who support Trump engage in.
I keep thinking of it as Trump's Bored of Peace. Because he certainly does seem to be. Who needs peace, as long as he's got a supply of "losers" (whether ICE thugs or the US military) to do the fighting and dying for him.
Sorry, I didn't know we were discussing the very same thing on two threads, this and the Moral Insanity one! I must say, I think the name of that one is perfectly appropriate.
Yup. Four educational deferments, and eventually one bone spur exemption. But it's OK, we do know that his own personal Vietnam was risking STIs, and that was the "front line" he bravely risked...
I’m sure you can imagine, even if you haven’t seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump’s and Hegseth’s comments.
All the worse given tRump's phantom bone spurs. The f**king gall...
That poem is exactly right. In terms of civic involvement, sociopathy is the norm with R base voters, combined with self-aggrandizement and self-pity. I wonder if there has always been a percentage of the population that is like this or is or were they created by Faux and the rest of the hate propaganda network? Or always there, but more apparent now, give the decades Republicans have spent encouraging this mindset?
Meanwhile, talking of Moral Insanity, this is an extract from The Critic. I don't agree with the entirety of the piece (fairly reflexively anti-Europe), but you can't disagree with this:
Trump’s latest insult was to sneer that non-American troops who served in Afghanistan “stayed a little back”. This ignobly underplays the sacrifices of thousands of coalition troops — including those of 457 Britons who died — and is being received with outrage online. Actually, I am not sure I have ever seen such bipartisan condemnation.
Something else that Trump said seemed almost worse, though. “We’ve never needed them,” he said, dismissively, of his NATO allies. Now, I actually agree that the US didn’t “need” NATO support in 2001. It didn’t need to embark on a foolish and destructive war in Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people before the Taliban simply took control again. But it certainly claimed to need a “worldwide coalition”. So, if anything, Trump should be apologetic rather than dismissive. He is sneering at people for not sacrificing enough for the sake of American hubris.
Given that, for example, coalition casualties in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 included:
USA 7.96 deaths per million of population Denmark 7.82 deaths per million of population
UK 7.25 deaths per million of population
I'm sure you can imagine, even if you haven't seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump's and Hegseth's comments. One I've just seen from someone called Andrew Fox, alongside a picture of a chestful of medals, says
I always thought it was super nice of the Americans to give me that badge for “staying a little off” from the front lines.
It’s nice to be appreciated!
American friends, especially my former brothers in arms - I’m sorry your President shames you daily. You deserve better.
>What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
the same kind of insecure oafs who think mocking people who aren't just like them improves their lives, who think rolling coal is a good response to people who are just trying to ride a bike, who think life-size decals of a tied-up Biden make their trucks cool, who think mor gunz is mor tuff, who think a C-list celebrity game-show host and twice-divorced incest-curious NYC real-estate hustler is a good man simply because he makes a good show out of hating Democrats: the Republican base.
"Ve haf vays of making you (look like) cry(ing)"
Our agentz are sooo tuff, that ve can make the worst of the worst (certainly all members of Friends of Antigua) look like frightened old n-word ladies. Gif us moor time and ve make them look like toddlers and infants next. Ve haf az of jet not decided whether to add or remove bullet holes buy our magick Ey-Aye.
So, just like how all the "sources" in Russia went dark right after Trump first took office, and met privately in the Oval Office with the Russian Ambassador?
The GOP has elected TWICE a guy who is objectively a traitor to the US. And they're proud of it.
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
Before the conference, his [Kash Patel] staff says he’s unhappy because he doesn’t like meetings in office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants Premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He’d like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like: Hold on. Is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of meeting? The schedule is set, and every Five Eyes partner is doing this. They can’t just say that he’s not participating and instead he wants to go to a Premier soccer game. This is a job, guys.
...
On that trip, the heads of intelligence for the Five Eyes went to Windsor Castle and met with the king. There was a photo taken of all the Five Eyes people, some of whom are nondisclosed, meaning their affiliation with the British intelligence service isn’t public. The Brits forwarded that picture as a keepsake for the individuals. They prefaced it with, This isn’t to be shared. But Kash has decided he wants to post it on social media. They have people trying to negotiate with the Brits about whether that’s possible. They’re fighting with the director’s office, like: You cannot post this. Do not do that. And they’re arguing, He wants a picture out.
On “Moral insanity”
It’s interesting, but I realise I don’t really have favourites. I read the arguments of the various commentators, and sometimes I think they’re worthwhile, and sometimes not. Quite frequently, people with whom I’ve deeply disagreed on other subjects say things I think are worth considering, or a hopeful sign from commentators who might influence a constituency with whom I very much disagree (like David Frum), and I take some comfort in that.
I've been thinking about this a bit. Definitely one of those chacun son gout sort of thing, but Snarki's observation twigged why I don't like Bobo, which is that everything seems to be in service of defending a GOP position and every observation seems to be linked to that.
It reminds me of the banning of Tacitus/Trevino from here. IIRC, he accused _Edward of promoting Islam when he quoted a Saudi cleric on some point. But (again iirc), the final step was when he came in under a different name to participate and try and put the same point across. As cleek mentioned, back in the day, he was part of the thrust and parry of the site, but there are (or at least were) norms and pretending to be someone else was a step too far. I feel like the site was proven right when he found a job that had him playing up the sodomy charges against Anwar Ibrahim because the government wanted him out of the picture. (and in a bizarre turn, Anwar Abrahim ended up forming a coalition with the guy who tried to throw him in prison and is now the current PM)
Now, Brooks hasn't pretended to be someone else, but that unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position suggests that what he says is driven by considerations outside of what I would think are important.
"
Don't recall who originally wrote it, but "Bobo" Brooks has an MO:
Yak about some social 'problem'.
Zoom out to 40,000 feet to 'analyze' it.
Zoom in to land on the GOP position.
Cash check from NYT.
"
wj's response to Brooks's ritual performance of balance calls to mind one of the books I read early in my Ph.D. studies when I was building my Media Studies chops: Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, by Alexander Galloway. The central idea there being that what makes the modern networked world continue to function is not deregulation, nor is it centralization - it's the informal and changeable rules that negotiate the conflicts between those two poles, which Galloway identifies as protocol.
In the US, that protocol was largely a function of what we call The Deep State. Congress makes laws. Private citizens make products. The Market exists as a fluctuating hologram of the shifting dynamics between those two. The Deep State oversees the negotiations between those two in order to steer the overall system and keep it functioning within acceptable parameters for both sides. (His digital analogy for this is the system of protocols that allowed TCP/IP to work with the DNS system to facilitate information exchange.
Galloway was, like most of the Media Studies people writing in the moment between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, a bit of a utopian technolibertarian. He did point out that the authoritarian nature of DNS
allows whole realms of the Web to be blacked out with the flip of a switch, but the belief was that those things would self-correct as protocol adjusted to keep the system moving.
We are living in the moment when protocol has been destroyed in order to prevent the system from moving to preserve the privilege of the powerful. Without the federal bureaucracy, and with the legislative branch neutered, we have only the executive and the judicial, operating top-down with no negotiation.
Anyway, thought I'd mention the book in case any of the (more) tech savvy (than me) here wanted to find it and take a look.
"
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
It seems clear that he has missed a couple of relevant details:
1) several decades of diligent work by the Federalist Society have produced a court system, now including the Supreme Court, which is no longer a reliable strong defender of those democratic values. With a bit of venue shopping, it's often possible to get a judge who is an ideologue rather than a jurist. When that's not possible, the majority on the Supreme Court is -- the main check there being that they can only hear a limited number of cases, so some precedents guarding democracy remain. For now.
2) turns out the Congress depended on tradition and good faith on the part of its members in order to function reliably. Gingrich started chipping away at that, and McConnell raised bad faith to a high art. At this point, one has to search really hard to find a Republican Congressman who shows signs of having ever heard of good faith. Or has something resembling a backbone; at least until their reelection is seriously threatened.
3) a lot of the institutions in the Executive Branch were staffed by people who are actually experts in their field. The Civil Service Act protected them from politics, so they could do their jobs. But thru a variety of ploys, the Civil Service Act has been neutered for those who will not knuckle under to the ideologues placed at the top.
In short, on the national level, those institutions are far less robust than we thought they were. The state and local levels are still solid, at least in the places most of us live. But their ablility to resist Federal overreach is limited, especially when it entails use of the court system.
As for our people, we always knew we had those among us who disliked democracy -- at least when the results were not perfectly aligned with their views of the moment. But there are rather more than we thought. Worse, there are way too many who simply can't (or at least couldn't) believe anyone would be elected and then trash the system. They are learning ("Hey, I didn't mean you coud do that here!"), but whether it will be soon enough remains to be seen.
We may yet avoid a Rome-style collapse.** But it will be a near run thing.
** Domestically. In international relations that ship has sailed. And won't return, at the earliest, until everyone in the world currently past their teens has not just passed from the scene but died.
"
What GftNC said.
"
i’ve been thinking the same thing.
if you disregard the direction of the things he’s done and only focus on their magnitude, it’s hard to say he hasn’t changed far more than anyone since FDR. the problem is that all he’s done is negative.
I agree.
Regarding his consequentialism in domestic policy, everybody here is without doubt a better judge of it than I.
But in foreign policy terms alone, he has single-handedly destroyed your allies' trust in the (within reason) goodwill of America, and therefore of a roughly stable world order. Nobody sane ever expected the US to act against its own interests, but it was taken for granted that your interests would not be seen purely in terms of short-term financial gain and might making right tout court.
The open contempt for your European and other allies by Trump and J D Vance, enthusiastically approved and magnified by their appalling henchpeople, has been an extraordinary wake up call. Everyone knows that every nation contains these kinds of amoral, ignorant bigots, but nobody really expected that the greatest power in the world, and one of the originators of the post-war settlement, would produce politicians who allowed one its two main political parties to become their creature.
"
>I remember him saying that Trump was ‘the most consequential president in our lifetime’
i've been thinking the same thing.
if you disregard the direction of the things he's done and only focus on their magnitude, it's hard to say he hasn't changed far more than anyone since FDR. the problem is that all he's done is negative.
also, re Tacitus the blogger - he's a reason a few of us are here. back in the mists, his blog was a place where people could try to seriously discuss things (the Iraq invasion being the primary thing). and a lot of the early ObWi crowd were also Tacitus regulars. there was even interlinking. some of us followed those regulars from Tacitus to ObWi. for a while, Travino seemed like one of the sane Republicans. he grew out of it.
"
I understand that one can’t blame the original Tacitus for the sins of the nouveau Tacman, but I have to wonder about the connection in Brooks’ mind.
LOL, classic!
As requested, I went looking for Jamelle Bouie's response, but it's not out yet, obvs.
as you note, Brooks is certainly not a favorite of mine.
Nor of russell's, and probably various others here. It's interesting, but I realise I don't really have favourites. I read the arguments of the various commentators, and sometimes I think they're worthwhile, and sometimes not. Quite frequently, people with whom I've deeply disagreed on other subjects say things I think are worth considering, or a hopeful sign from commentators who might influence a constituency with whom I very much disagree (like David Frum), and I take some comfort in that.
I guess, quite properly, everybody's mileage varies....
"
Thanks for the David Brooks link, though let me rag on it a bit. I wish he had spent a little less time the previous 2 years claiming that everyone who was pointing out the direction this clown car was rolling had their hair on fire and a little more time putting up some resistance, even if only by observing it in a column or at a speaking event. I remember him saying that Trump was 'the most consequential president in our lifetime', which sounds a lot like the sentence in the reference letter "When you come to know him as we know him, you will appreciate him as we appreciate him."
The column has Brooks going back to Tacitus, but it would have been nice if he invoked Tacitus to discuss some other points of the MAGA movement, perhaps noting after one of those circle jerk cabinet meetings that 'Flatterers are the worst kind of enemies' or, in considering the whole cult of MAGA "In their ignorance they called it culture, when it was part of their enslavement."
Brooks has spent a lot of time claiming that the judiciary would ultimately function to stop Trump and that what people should do is stay at their desks. He's still playing the same games when he says
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
I think in response to the line about how everyone needed to stay at their desks, Jamelle Bouie said that this is really hard when the desk is being sold for parts. (I hope you can post Bouie's reply to Brooks, he's weighed in a few times in response, I think, and I'm sure that it will be worth reading)
Battle hardened vets on the blog can also note that Tacitus was the nom de blog of one Josh Trevino (the tilde over the n came later), who got into some problems with editorials on Malaysian politics, but, like a bad penny, pops up again and again. I understand that one can't blame the original Tacitus for the sins of the nouveau Tacman, but I have to wonder about the connection in Brooks' mind. The Tacitus quote "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" embodies one notion that has gotten us into this mess, so a little reflection might be in order from Brooks, though that is not his strong suit.
Again, apologies for ragging on the article, but as you note, Brooks is certainly not a favorite of mine.
"
Sir Rod Stewart released a video statement about Trump's diss of UK soldiers.
That Tacticus quote is right on the money-which is why the actions in Portland and Minneapolis are so important and inspiring. There's no giving in to cynicism there and a strong assertion of the moral values the dictator is trying to destroy.
"
OK, on lj's formulation that this thread is about American reaction (as opposed to foreign reaction) to Trump, this is David Brooks in today's NYT. I know he is not any kind of favourite on ObWi, but since it is decades since I read Tacitus I was very struck by this:
Tacitus was especially good at describing the effect the tyrant has on the people around him. When the tyrant first takes power, there is a “rush into servitude” as great swarms of sycophants suck up to the great man. The flattery must forever escalate and grow more fawning, until every follower’s dignity is shorn away. Then comes what you might call the disappearance of the good, as morally healthy people lie low in order to survive. Meanwhile, the whole society tends to be anesthetized. The relentless flow of appalling events eventually overloads the nervous system; the rising tide of brutality, which once seemed shocking, comes to seem unremarkable.
As the disease of tyranny progresses, citizens may eventually lose the habits of democracy — the art of persuasion and compromise, interpersonal trust, an intolerance for corruption, the spirit of freedom, the ethic of moderation. “It is easier to crush men’s spirits and their enthusiasm than to revive them,” Tacitus wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/opinion/trump-authoritarian-power.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G1A.6RhQ.aLVPTM4t9pmB&smid=url-share
On “Carney’s speech”
I suppose that it all bleeds together, but my thought was that this thread might focus on foreign reaction to Trump, while the other post was about the mental gymnastics the people who support Trump engage in.
"
I keep thinking of it as Trump's Bored of Peace. Because he certainly does seem to be. Who needs peace, as long as he's got a supply of "losers" (whether ICE thugs or the US military) to do the fighting and dying for him.
"
So, utterly unsure where to post this but - I haven't been that keen on the Guardian's newish cartoonist, but this did seem perfect:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/jan/22/ben-jennings-donald-trump-board-of-peace-cartoon
"
Sorry, I didn't know we were discussing the very same thing on two threads, this and the Moral Insanity one! I must say, I think the name of that one is perfectly appropriate.
On “Moral insanity”
Yup. Four educational deferments, and eventually one bone spur exemption. But it's OK, we do know that his own personal Vietnam was risking STIs, and that was the "front line" he bravely risked...
"
All the worse given tRump's phantom bone spurs. The f**king gall...
"
That poem is exactly right. In terms of civic involvement, sociopathy is the norm with R base voters, combined with self-aggrandizement and self-pity. I wonder if there has always been a percentage of the population that is like this or is or were they created by Faux and the rest of the hate propaganda network? Or always there, but more apparent now, give the decades Republicans have spent encouraging this mindset?
"
Meanwhile, talking of Moral Insanity, this is an extract from The Critic. I don't agree with the entirety of the piece (fairly reflexively anti-Europe), but you can't disagree with this:
Trump’s latest insult was to sneer that non-American troops who served in Afghanistan “stayed a little back”. This ignobly underplays the sacrifices of thousands of coalition troops — including those of 457 Britons who died — and is being received with outrage online. Actually, I am not sure I have ever seen such bipartisan condemnation.
Something else that Trump said seemed almost worse, though. “We’ve never needed them,” he said, dismissively, of his NATO allies. Now, I actually agree that the US didn’t “need” NATO support in 2001. It didn’t need to embark on a foolish and destructive war in Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people before the Taliban simply took control again. But it certainly claimed to need a “worldwide coalition”. So, if anything, Trump should be apologetic rather than dismissive. He is sneering at people for not sacrificing enough for the sake of American hubris.
Given that, for example, coalition casualties in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 included:
USA 7.96 deaths per million of population
Denmark 7.82 deaths per million of population
UK 7.25 deaths per million of population
I'm sure you can imagine, even if you haven't seen them, the responses ricocheting around the world from former servicemen to Trump's and Hegseth's comments. One I've just seen from someone called Andrew Fox, alongside a picture of a chestful of medals, says
I always thought it was super nice of the Americans to give me that badge for “staying a little off” from the front lines.
It’s nice to be appreciated!
American friends, especially my former brothers in arms - I’m sorry your President shames you daily. You deserve better.
On “Rememory”
>What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?
the same kind of insecure oafs who think mocking people who aren't just like them improves their lives, who think rolling coal is a good response to people who are just trying to ride a bike, who think life-size decals of a tied-up Biden make their trucks cool, who think mor gunz is mor tuff, who think a C-list celebrity game-show host and twice-divorced incest-curious NYC real-estate hustler is a good man simply because he makes a good show out of hating Democrats: the Republican base.
"
"Ve haf vays of making you (look like) cry(ing)"
Our agentz are sooo tuff, that ve can make the worst of the worst (certainly all members of Friends of Antigua) look like frightened old n-word ladies. Gif us moor time and ve make them look like toddlers and infants next. Ve haf az of jet not decided whether to add or remove bullet holes buy our magick Ey-Aye.
On “Moral insanity”
So, just like how all the "sources" in Russia went dark right after Trump first took office, and met privately in the Oval Office with the Russian Ambassador?
The GOP has elected TWICE a guy who is objectively a traitor to the US. And they're proud of it.
"
Well, this administration had already gotten our (pretty nearly all ex- by this point) allies to stops sharing some info. Just because they can't be trusted. If Patel publishes this, expect them all to just walk away. US satellite intel will take time to replace, so they may keep up with restrictions on which of their people can talk to us. But even that will be just a limited, temporary expedient.
After all, it's about intelligence. And for this administration, intelligence seems to be generally anathema.
"
this is just insane.
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2026/01/the-best-guy-in-trump-adminsitration.html
On “Carney’s speech”
Pro Bono - The whole of the UK, even Farage, is furious with Trump over his remarks about the rest of NATO
Rightly so. He's a moral contagion. He is the hollow man. He is a headpiece stuffed with straw.
He is the reason no one should ever again trust the US. Collectively we are petty, ungrateful, and untrustworthy.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.