From where I stood, a few yards back from the scrum last Wednesday afternoon, it looked, at best, to be a savage caricature of our national divide: On one side, militarized men demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters screamed for justice.
But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
*** Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are understanding the stakes in a different way.”
My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I'm looking forward. But it's weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.
Well, you certainly get no argument from me on the role played by the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society or the SCOTUS. And the roots of this have certainly been long in the growing, long before any dream of a Trump presidency. It just seems impossible to me to contemplate the particularly poisonous confluence of current circumstances without the craven behaviour of the GOP.
lj, I went back and read that Brooks piece more carefully. I must say, when he writes:
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.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 he is deluded, although I hope not. But it seems crazily optimistic in a way that even wj isn't these days.
However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an "unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position", it seems to me that
the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump's character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it's odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I have no desire or need to defend David Brooks, but also no desire or need to automatically or instinctively condemn him. This may be because I have not been reading him all my life, and have not formed a fixed idea of him from which I find it difficult to depart. But we are in a time of flux - I'm happy to retain the ability to be open to the ways in which people's views or prejudices might change, and to the ways in which they may be able to change the attitudes of people with whom I am in general disagreement.
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 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....
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.
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...
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.
lj: I had never read the whole of The Cure of Troy, only the end. The beginning which you quote is absolutely wonderful. I've just ordered the book - thank you for bringing this to ObWi.
I should have said, I haven't read the Atlantic piece yet, I've only just got home, but it was the Fiona Hill stuff I thought ObWi people might particularly be interested in, not necessarily the rest. Also, there is a proper transcript!
And this is a gift link to David Frum's interview with Fiona Hill in the Atlantic today, headlined Why Trump Sides with Putin. As you know, I think he's worth reading for an insight into sane conservative thinking, and Fiona Hill is a truly impressive person.
Is Donald Johnson the same person as Donald of yesteryear? If so, it's really good to see you back.
Here is Carole Cadwalladr on the Carney speech. She also included a transcript at the end, which I have deleted. I hope I've taken out enough links so that this won't go into moderation:
A rupture, not a transitionMark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday really is worth your time. It made some of the front pages today but the news cycle moves so fast that it’s already yesterday’s news. Part of the challenge of this moment - and I believe the job of journalists - is to focus on the signal, not the noise. And if you have time to take in one thing properly, this week, I’d suggest it’s this. It does what a great speech should do: it gives us the language to process and understand what is happening. It does so from a position of moral clarity. And it includes a call to action to what remains of the liberal world. It’s a huge relief to have a world leader simply naming what’s happening. That is the first step. But, it actually goes further in that it calls out the “lie” of the “rules-based order” that the “rules” were for some but not all. That’s been so abundantly proved by the global response to what’s happening in Gaza but it’s also not an outlier. America has been the world’s policeman and sometimes that’s looked less like a Victorian bobby on the beat and more like a beat-the-shit-out-of-you ICE officer and calling that out is a refreshing blast of honesty. He begins it with the story of a shopkeeper living under Communism from a book by Vaclav Havel, the Czech writer and dissident turned President. The news reports focussed on what Carney said about NATO’s article five but it’s what he has to say about truth that’s even more urgent and important.
“Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite.” He doesn’t believe in it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
"Havel called this living within a lie. The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.
“Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We join its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
“This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
“So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
“This bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
The end of the speech includes a call back to the Havel story:
“We are taking a sign out of the window.
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending…”I lived in then-Czechoslavakia in 1990. It was less than a year after the Velvet Revolution, and inevitably I read a lot of Havel. I’ve been thinking about that time recently, not least because of the great historical fortune I had to be young and free in a hugely exciting moment in which the world was literally opening up before us. So exciting that I took a year out of my degree to go and teach English to a bunch of sports journalists who worked for the newspaper affiliated with Havel’s party. It’s why I found Carney’s choice of story so interesting because I suspect that the book that this is taken from, The Power of the Powerless, is a text that is going to increasingly speak to us in the months and years to come. Words matter. That’s one of the central points of Havel’s essay. And also the outcome of it. After its publication in 1978, his idea that “living in truth” was both a radical and an achievable act reverberated across Eastern and Central Europe. This account, published by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, describes its direct galavanizing impact on Polish factory workers. We can’t respond and act to this hugely consequential geopolitical moment if we are complicit in the denial of our leaders and media. This is a week in which the world we have known has swung on its axis. We cannot simply carry on as if it’s business and normal. It’s why Starmer’s underplayed reaction is so deeply dangerous. We can all understand why, we see the reasons clearly, but not speaking the truth, now, is deeply corrosive. That is the subtext of Carney’s speech. And there is a deep and dark hinterland behind it. We’ve been lucky through a golden age of peace and prosperity but as he so clearly articulates, that age is gone. Ahead lies dragons. It’s why we have to listen to these voices from the past. In my newsletter on Monday, I said that the most powerful and on point thing I’d read or heard was an interview in the New Yorker by the conservative historian Robert Kagan. Given the inadequacy of the UK response, I emailed Robert to see if he’d speak to me about what we should be doing in this moment. This is the impromptu Zoom call I had with him which we published in The Nerve yesterday. It’s a quick watch or listen - 17 minutes - but like Carney he names what’s happening and he’s very very clear on the risks: to both the US and Europe.
Oh, and by the way, the NYT editorial board today say that during his administration he has enriched himself to the tune of $1.5 billion. Wow, brazen corruption in full view. It's almost funny after the accusations about the Biden Crime Family:
Oh my God, I'm just listening to Trump's press conference. It's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. He's currently boasting about how many ICE guys are "hispanics", and how great hispanics are. But the overwhelming impression is of a crazy old guy with dementia just going on, and on and on in a totally uncontrolled, rambling fashion with zero sense and concept of a message. Jesus Christ. How is it possible that anyone can see this and not think this man has to be removed from the presidency?
Open thread, so - this gift article (headlined Americans are Turning Against Gay People) from today's NYT talks about an astonishing resurgence in America of anti-gay sentiment. wj in particular always uses the decline of homophobia in America as an example of social attitudes getting better, and I totally believed that that was the case (not just because of what wj says). This, if true, is pretty horrifying:
People I love, respect and value keep sending me podcasts, videos etc which often last more than an hour. I feel like I absolutely cannot commit that kind of time (or even half that time) to something I know nothing about, no matter the recommender. That's why I am incredibly grateful to anything that releases transcripts. I am a really fast reader, and take in information much more easily by means of text!
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America’s gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
By the way, in case this wasn't clear, I meant the GOP's "enthusiastic support" of the ICE project!
The irony of Dear Leader’s criticisms of the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on protesters is pungent.
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America's gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
GtNC is scaring the crap out of me.
Sorry, wonkie - I was pretty damn scared myself when I read that. I'm just hoping Carole Cadwalladr went a bit over the top about it, but we shall see by other reactions.
Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2). 1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
“This should precipitate a whole new global crisis. It’s an unprovoked military assault on a sovereign nation in breach of international law. What should worry us more is if it doesn’t…
Trump isn’t just a rogue, out-of-control president, America is a rogue state. And the longer we fail to acknowledge that, the more danger we are in.”
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Moral insanity”
This (the reaction of the Minneapolis public) is rather inspiring. You could say it's an example of Moral Sanity:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/minneapolis-uprising/685755/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCZ3XpunvY7eUEOPAgaybJ3M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
From where I stood, a few yards back from the scrum last Wednesday afternoon, it looked, at best, to be a savage caricature of our national divide: On one side, militarized men demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters screamed for justice.
But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
***
Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are understanding the stakes in a different way.”
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I'm looking forward. But it's weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.
On “Moral insanity”
Well, you certainly get no argument from me on the role played by the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society or the SCOTUS. And the roots of this have certainly been long in the growing, long before any dream of a Trump presidency. It just seems impossible to me to contemplate the particularly poisonous confluence of current circumstances without the craven behaviour of the GOP.
"
lj, I went back and read that Brooks piece more carefully. I must say, when he writes:
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.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 he is deluded, although I hope not. But it seems crazily optimistic in a way that even wj isn't these days.
However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an "unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position", it seems to me that
the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump's character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it's odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I have no desire or need to defend David Brooks, but also no desire or need to automatically or instinctively condemn him. This may be because I have not been reading him all my life, and have not formed a fixed idea of him from which I find it difficult to depart. But we are in a time of flux - I'm happy to retain the ability to be open to the ways in which people's views or prejudices might change, and to the ways in which they may be able to change the attitudes of people with whom I am in general disagreement.
"
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.
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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....
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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”
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
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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...
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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.
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lj: I had never read the whole of The Cure of Troy, only the end. The beginning which you quote is absolutely wonderful. I've just ordered the book - thank you for bringing this to ObWi.
On “Carney’s speech”
I should have said, I haven't read the Atlantic piece yet, I've only just got home, but it was the Fiona Hill stuff I thought ObWi people might particularly be interested in, not necessarily the rest. Also, there is a proper transcript!
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And this is a gift link to David Frum's interview with Fiona Hill in the Atlantic today, headlined Why Trump Sides with Putin. As you know, I think he's worth reading for an insight into sane conservative thinking, and Fiona Hill is a truly impressive person.
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/01/david-frum-show-fiona-hill-putin/685690/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCYlUR-Z45medwbxb50sy-dg&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
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Is Donald Johnson the same person as Donald of yesteryear? If so, it's really good to see you back.
Here is Carole Cadwalladr on the Carney speech. She also included a transcript at the end, which I have deleted. I hope I've taken out enough links so that this won't go into moderation:
A rupture, not a transitionMark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday really is worth your time. It made some of the front pages today but the news cycle moves so fast that it’s already yesterday’s news. Part of the challenge of this moment - and I believe the job of journalists - is to focus on the signal, not the noise. And if you have time to take in one thing properly, this week, I’d suggest it’s this.
It does what a great speech should do: it gives us the language to process and understand what is happening. It does so from a position of moral clarity. And it includes a call to action to what remains of the liberal world.
It’s a huge relief to have a world leader simply naming what’s happening. That is the first step. But, it actually goes further in that it calls out the “lie” of the “rules-based order” that the “rules” were for some but not all.
That’s been so abundantly proved by the global response to what’s happening in Gaza but it’s also not an outlier. America has been the world’s policeman and sometimes that’s looked less like a Victorian bobby on the beat and more like a beat-the-shit-out-of-you ICE officer and calling that out is a refreshing blast of honesty.
He begins it with the story of a shopkeeper living under Communism from a book by Vaclav Havel, the Czech writer and dissident turned President. The news reports focussed on what Carney said about NATO’s article five but it’s what he has to say about truth that’s even more urgent and important.
The end of the speech includes a call back to the Havel story:
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending…”I lived in then-Czechoslavakia in 1990. It was less than a year after the Velvet Revolution, and inevitably I read a lot of Havel. I’ve been thinking about that time recently, not least because of the great historical fortune I had to be young and free in a hugely exciting moment in which the world was literally opening up before us.
So exciting that I took a year out of my degree to go and teach English to a bunch of sports journalists who worked for the newspaper affiliated with Havel’s party.
It’s why I found Carney’s choice of story so interesting because I suspect that the book that this is taken from, The Power of the Powerless, is a text that is going to increasingly speak to us in the months and years to come.
Words matter.
That’s one of the central points of Havel’s essay. And also the outcome of it. After its publication in 1978, his idea that “living in truth” was both a radical and an achievable act reverberated across Eastern and Central Europe. This account, published by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, describes its direct galavanizing impact on Polish factory workers.
We can’t respond and act to this hugely consequential geopolitical moment if we are complicit in the denial of our leaders and media. This is a week in which the world we have known has swung on its axis. We cannot simply carry on as if it’s business and normal.
It’s why Starmer’s underplayed reaction is so deeply dangerous. We can all understand why, we see the reasons clearly, but not speaking the truth, now, is deeply corrosive. That is the subtext of Carney’s speech. And there is a deep and dark hinterland behind it.
We’ve been lucky through a golden age of peace and prosperity but as he so clearly articulates, that age is gone. Ahead lies dragons.
It’s why we have to listen to these voices from the past. In my newsletter on Monday, I said that the most powerful and on point thing I’d read or heard was an interview in the New Yorker by the conservative historian Robert Kagan.
Given the inadequacy of the UK response, I emailed Robert to see if he’d speak to me about what we should be doing in this moment.
This is the impromptu Zoom call I had with him which we published in The Nerve yesterday. It’s a quick watch or listen - 17 minutes - but like Carney he names what’s happening and he’s very very clear on the risks: to both the US and Europe.
On “Rememory”
Oh, and by the way, the NYT editorial board today say that during his administration he has enriched himself to the tune of $1.5 billion. Wow, brazen corruption in full view. It's almost funny after the accusations about the Biden Crime Family:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/20/opinion/editorials/trump-wealth-crypto-graft.html?unlocked_article_code=1.F1A.0fka.QvU7sikLo6lz&smid=url-share
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Oh my God, I'm just listening to Trump's press conference. It's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. He's currently boasting about how many ICE guys are "hispanics", and how great hispanics are. But the overwhelming impression is of a crazy old guy with dementia just going on, and on and on in a totally uncontrolled, rambling fashion with zero sense and concept of a message. Jesus Christ. How is it possible that anyone can see this and not think this man has to be removed from the presidency?
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But would we have the same time for the person who points to accepting white South Africans to the US as springing from the same sort of impulse?
No. There is no rational justification for making that case, unlike the Ukraine example.
On “An open thread”
Open thread, so - this gift article (headlined Americans are Turning Against Gay People) from today's NYT talks about an astonishing resurgence in America of anti-gay sentiment. wj in particular always uses the decline of homophobia in America as an example of social attitudes getting better, and I totally believed that that was the case (not just because of what wj says). This, if true, is pretty horrifying:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/opinion/heated-rivalry-gay-prejudice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.L4lQ.cS0Hh2JNow0A&smid=url-share
On “Talarico”
This seems to be a pretty reasonable (if edited) and readable transcript of the Talarico interview. Gift link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-james-talarico.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FFA.H4qd.fA8B5EQEiib4&smid=url-share
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People I love, respect and value keep sending me podcasts, videos etc which often last more than an hour. I feel like I absolutely cannot commit that kind of time (or even half that time) to something I know nothing about, no matter the recommender. That's why I am incredibly grateful to anything that releases transcripts. I am a really fast reader, and take in information much more easily by means of text!
On “An open thread”
Fuck that guy and his glib dismissiveness. Fuck his lack of empathy for anyone outside of his own in-group. I wish him a heavy lesson in karma.
Seconded
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As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America’s gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
By the way, in case this wasn't clear, I meant the GOP's "enthusiastic support" of the ICE project!
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The irony of Dear Leader’s criticisms of the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on protesters is pungent.
As is the enthusiastic support by the party which has always justified America's gun laws by the hypothetical need to have the means to defend oneself if a tyrannical government goes after the people.
GtNC is scaring the crap out of me.
Sorry, wonkie - I was pretty damn scared myself when I read that. I'm just hoping Carole Cadwalladr went a bit over the top about it, but we shall see by other reactions.
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Oh God again....
(I have had to take out all the clips, photos etc because links.)
Peter Tiel's New Model Army
The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster
Carole Cadwalladr
Jan 11
This newsletter is going to cover three crucial subjects today:
How Britain’s national security is hopelessly compromised. We’ve sold out our military to a key Trump ally in what I believe is a catastrophically naive and dangerous deal. (If you’re American, this affects you too.)The global war on truth. And why sticking to the facts is now a radical act.How we fight back. In which I post a whole smorgasbord of inspiring videos that I grabbed off social media that you didn’t know you needed.I’ve never started with a bulleted list before but then I can’t remember a NATO country threatening to invade a NATO country before either. I figured you might need 3) after reading 1) and 2).
1) The UK’s national security is hopelessly compromisedThis morning, the BBC ran an interview with Peter Mandelson, the self-described ‘best pal’ of Jeffrey Epstein and until he was sacked, the UK ambassador to Washington.
Mandelson’s firm, Global Counsel, also represents Palantir, the US surveillance defence company founded by Trump ally, Peter Thiel. When Keir Starmer visited Washington, a trip arranged by Mandelson, he had only two meetings: one with Trump and one with Palantir.
If we never heard from Peter Mandelson again, it would be too soon. And yet here he is, all over the national broadcaster refusing to apologise to Epstein’s victims and praising Trump’s “graciousness”.
But this was not all. Because also on the BBC this morning was his client, Louis Mosley, the CEO of Palantir UK and the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
I’m not linking to either of these videos because they were both absolutely abject failures of journalism. This is the second time Mosley has been invited onto this same Sunday morning show as some sort of legitimate political pundit.
He is no such thing. His company is an integral part of the US defence and homeland security apparatus and the illegal data gathering operation carried out by Elon Musk’s DOGE to say nothing of its involvement in profiling kill targets for the IDF in Gaza. The only circumstance he should be on the BBC is to be subjected to a journalistic grilling, not asked a couple of softball questions on his views on global politics.
The UK Ministry of Defence has just signed a new £240 million contract with Palantir. Actually, it’s not a contract, it’s more than that. The UK government describes it as “a strategic partnership”. A “partnership” entered into without any sort of competitive tender that was announced during Trump’s visit to the UK and which disastrously compromises our entire national security infrastructure.
We have embedded a notorious US military surveillance company whose founder is a close ally of President Trump into the heart of our military at a moment in which the US is threatening to invade our NATO ally, Greenland.
If you’re British and reading this, please send it to your MP. The level of understanding in UK politics and media about Silicon Valley’s alliance with Trump and the geopolitical and security consequences of this appears to be non-existent.
If our national security rests on US technology, we have no national security.
It sounds like writerly hyperbole to describe the UK as a vassal state, but I mean it in its most literal sense. It’s explicitly stated in the ur-text of Trump’s White House’s foreign policy, the National Security Strategy document, that US companies will be used as instruments of state power. There is no hidden agenda here: Trump has set it all out. (For a breakdown of this document and what it all means, see this week's piece in the Nerve by former British diplomat, Arthur Snell.)
What will it mean to embed American software into the UK military? Well consider, Tesla. You don’t really buy a car when you buy a Tesla, you rent the software that remains the property of Elon Musk industries who can choose to immobilise your car or any feature of it at any time.
Palantir is the most terrifying of the US companies but it’s also just one of a whole raft of compromising, self-sabotaging deals that the UK government has entered into. The UK ‘Sovereign Cloud’ has been contracted out to Oracle, owned by another key Trump ally, Larry Ellison, the man whose son is behind the disastrous buyout of CBS and the upcoming US TikTok takeover. And then there are deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon, BlackRock, Nvidia and Scale AI.
And this was the “win”, the brilliant triumph that Keir Starmer pulled from the jaws of defeat in the trade tariff negotiations. It is the opposite of that: it’s surrender, the cost of which won’t just be measured in pounds or dollars. I fear the cost could be much, much higher, paid in blood and pain.
It barely even registered this week that Trump announced he was increasing the US military’s budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
I wrote this in last week’s newsletter, on Saturday morning, hours after the US attacked Venezuela and before America woke up:
Trump’s actions should provoke a global crisis, I said. And it should worry us more if it doesn’t. A week later, the news is in: prepare to be more worried
2) The global war on truth..and what it means when your own PM joins itI’m posting this interview between Gary Gibbons of Channel 4 News and Keir Starmer on Monday because it feels like a crucial moment that we should footnote and mark.
Starmer, an international human rights lawyer, is unable to say the attack on Venezuela was in breach of international law. This is the leader of a G7 nation, unable to confirm that black is black and white is white.
All week, pundits in the UK media have wanged on about how Starmer couldn’t have his “Hugh Grant moment” - a reference to the scene in Love Actually in which he Prime Minister Grant stands up to President Billy Bob Thornton (after seeing him making moves on his lady crush) and missed the far bigger point.
It’s the same pundits and journalists who applauded Starmer’s actions in sucking up to Trump, laying on a state visit, a royal banquet, the full works and celebrating the “win”, a deal that didn’t land Britain with a disastrous trade tariff.
But what they failed to point out is that Starmer paid Trump’s ransom - the disastrous, self-sabotaging tech deals detailed above. It’s not that Starmer risks “offending” Trump or is “caught in a bind” or “is in a tricky position” or any of the other phrases I’ve read and heard all week, it’s that he - and we - have been captured.
These deals represent the corporate capture of the UK state including, our cloud capacity, National Health Service, and now our military establishment. And the blindness, ignorance and ongoing denial is the most dangerous thing about this moment.
Starmer’s inability to speak the truth is not diplomacy. It’s evidence.
We are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump fascist project. We’ve sold out everyone in America who’s trying to fight back against it. Worst of all, we can’t even see it yet.
I’m not using the f-word lightly or facetiously. I’ve avoided it for a year. But what is so dangerous right now is the assault on truth, on facts, on the evidence of our own eyes. What is happening right now in America is fascism. And we, the UK, are now up to our necks in it too.
3) How to fight backCongratulations! You’ve got through the depressing bit of the newsletter. This last section is a compendium of clips and images that I’ve seen this week that is the evidence you need that nothing is hopeless.
This is Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis. He’s using the f-word too.
A masked paramilitary gunman murdered a Minneapolis citizen in cold blood, and this is what the city’s mayor told ICE at his press conference. “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
It’s a painful contrast to Keir Starmer and a necessary corrective. What Trump is doing is meant to scare us. And not being scared, speaking the facts, taking the piss and recording it all on your phone are all radical acts. All week, I’ve been collecting individual responses to hard power ranging from the courageous to the creative to the comedic.
I loved this footage of an Uber driver that embodies all three of these qualities. Watch him taking on US border guards who asked to see his ID. Why, he asks them? You have an accent, one of them says. “You’re going by accents now?” he says incredulously. “You guys need psychiatric checkups,” he tells them when they ask where he was born. He satirically taunts them until they eventually give up.
This was how London greeted the news of the Venezuela strike. A “nonce” is Britspeak for “paedophile”.
I also loved and admired this woman’s response to ICE agents who stopped to threaten and intimidate her for following their vehicle. I don’t want you to make a bad decision, the ICE agent tells her. “That’s funny coming from you!” she says smiling away at him.
And this is another brilliant official, Rochelle Bilal, the sheriff of Philadelphia, pointing out all the ways that the actions of the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good were in violation of both “legal law” and “moral law”. ICE, she said, was “made-up, fake, wannabe law enforcement”.
I know, I know, this is probably too much content. But consider this a public service, I’m saving you from the algorithmic scroll which threw up this for me: Canadian comedian Trent McClellan dressed up as a NICE agent to terrorise tourists in Halifax. His weapons are Canadian-levels of courtesy and free candy. It’s from two months ago but I only just clocked it and I think it’s a really useful reminder that none of this is normal. This is normal:
Finally, it’s been extraordinary to witness what’s happening on the streets of Iran. You’ll have seen the incredible rivers of protestors flooding the streets of cities all across the country. That’s what people power looks like. Is it finally the revolution that Iranians have been longing for? The world is holding its breath.
I’m not sure who this woman is but this week’s newsletter is dedicated to her and the people of Iran and, especially, the incredible, gutsy, powerful women who have simply had enough.
Thank you to everyone who’s reading this. It’s one of my own personal rays of hope. If you like it, please share it with your friends and family and tell me in the comments whether I’m right, wrong, too doomery, not doomery enough, whether you like the vids and anything else that strikes you.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.