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.
I listened to a good bit of tRump's "speech" on the radio this morning. I didn't plan on it. It was on when I turned on the radio in my office. I kept listening in the way you might slow down to look at a bad, multi-car accident on the highway.
It was shockingly - in no particular order - ignorant, incoherent, boastful, dishonest, and belligerent.
The idea that the person speaking was the President of the United States addressing global leaders in front of however many members of the press from the world over is hard to reconcile.
It was worse than Michael Scott's most embarrassing presentations on "The Office" without being funny. The man is plumbing the depths of self-parody "like no one's ever seen before, let me tell you."
i think the US will recover from Trump pretty well. he's exposing a lot of cracks in the foundation, sure. but we've discovered and fixed a lot of such cracks before.
I'm trying to figure out how to interpret the part of Carney's speech where he promises to pour another trillion dollars into tar sands development. I haven't thought of one that isn't some sort of Trump appeasement.
Over half a century ago, Robert Heinlein's "Future History" included a period where the United States was in the grip of a totalitarian theocracy. Sadly, the only part he seems to have missed was that it is not (yet) religion based. At least as far as its initial leader is concerned.** Sadly, the only question yet to be answered is how the succession will be determined.
I realize that, as the resident optimist, I should be talking about how we will bounce back once Trump leaves the scene. Certainly I hope that happens. But it's increasingly difficult to expect it. Alas, Carney is probably correct about where the world goes from here.
** Well, he also predicted the US would be totally isolationist (as in cutting off all interaction with the rest of the world) throughout this. The rest of the world, at this point, probably hopes it works out that way. And sooner rather than later.
Carney’s speech was great, in part because he admits that the old order was both useful and also a sham and a lie. They supported it because of its many benefits and ignored the hypocrisy and double standards.
Here is Assal Rad, an Iranian- American who mostly tweets about Gaza, who has family in Iran, doesn’t like the regime, feared for her family’s safety during the recent slaughter by the government but also hates the sanctions that cratered the economy, as Bessent bragged in Davos—
“To be clear, “this bargain no longer works” because it’s targeting them.
They had no problem with a false international order that targeted and subjugated brown people.”
She is absolutely right.
The NYT had an analysis of the speech which totally ignored that aspect. I give Carney a lot of credit for admitting it but any new rules based order should stop pretending this crap is acceptable.
Or in other words, no more genocides and crimes against humanity committed by the self- proclaimed good guys. Hold all war criminals to account to the extent possible and stop this lying.
If we rebuild from the ashes of Trump, let’s not go back to the happy days where we murder people and it doesn’t matter because we aren’t crass about it.
Back to lurking. Any further comments from me would just be more of the same.
it's shocking how fragile all of this is: that a single dimwitted blowhard like Trump could knock it all down. and that nobody in the US has both the power and the inclination to rein him in.
First Ursula von der Leyen tells it like it is, now Mark Carney. It has taken too long, but world leaders are finally realizing that appeasement works exactly as well today as it did in the 1930s (and as well as it ever has in the schoolyard, when bullies stand with their expectant hands out).
This speech is a barnburner. Though not the perfect politician we all wish for, Carney is the leader Canada needs right now. Hard to remember that Canadians were thiiiis close to electing a Trump-wannabe candidate until His Orangeness blathered about the 51st state and Canadian voters reacted with rage. Had they not done so, Canada would now be a footstool for the US to rest its dirty jackboots on. Instead, their PM is telling the rest of the world: there is a path forward, we are choosing it, and we invite you to join us on it. And with a literate metaphor, no less!
(Give it five minutes or so, and you'll hear US Republicans zeroing in on a single word in that entire speech -- communist -- and firing up their outrage engines accordingly.)
GftNC -- 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:
Well, it's been true since the beginning of his first campaign for President that every accusation he made was actually a confession. This is just a small addition to an enormous pile. He simply cannot imagine that anyone would fail to exploit anyone and anything they could, just like he does.
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:
Biden's cabinet was qualified and within normal parameters, and he at least was competent in his lucid moments. Trump's are all Project 2025 dictator wannabes and Coup Cuck Clansmen, and he himself has always been awful.
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.
when a political party loves power more than anything, it can excuse almost anything.
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?
Weimar was also far progressed beyond imperial Germany in cultural things (including full equal rights for minorities, in particular Jews, and full equality for women seeming just around the corner).
Then came the Nazis and after WW2 a conservative restauration under Adenauer. Women reached de jure equality not before the 1970ies (before that husbands still had veto power despite nominally equal rights as per the West German constitution).
A throwback of a half or even a full century is thus easily possible and the US reactionaries have imo a fair chance to achieve that in our lifetimes.
lj -- I’m not sure how much we can bang that drum to indicate our inherent goodness. The fact that he was the first nominated (by a major political party) and went directly on to being elected makes him seem more like an outlier than a true indicator.
I'm not arguing for inherent goodness. Just that we've gotten better. Or less bad, if you prefer.
As for Obama being an outlier, I wouldn't dispute that. He's definitely an exceptionally gifted politician. I'd say the most gifted in my lifetime. But within (my) living memory, no black man, no matter how gifted, could have done what he did. Or even gotten within a thousand miles of getting the opportunity to try. That's a solid indication of progress. IMHO, of course.
If you doubt that progress has been made, consider what the chances would have been, in 1960, of a major political party nominating a black man for President. Let alone of him winning. “Inconceivable” is the word.
I'm not sure how much we can bang that drum to indicate our inherent goodness. The fact that he was the first nominated (by a major political party) and went directly on to being elected makes him seem more like an outlier than a true indicator.
wj - I think that, as a nation, we are in the process of moving past it. I say “as a nation” because, while I think that more and more of us have moved past it, clearly there are still a huge number who have not.
As a nation I think we have been here before, which is to say that as a nation we are currently in the midst of the sort of self-sorting that leads to us actually being two nations mixed up in one sack. We have two very different nationalisms facing off and in open conflict with each other.
The question is whether this leads to a forced reunification (as in the Civil War) or into some form of collapse, or just a prolonged dysfunction and are supplanted on the world stage.
I am not optimistic that we can put the toothpaste back into the tube this time.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Carney’s speech”
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
"
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.
"
I listened to a good bit of tRump's "speech" on the radio this morning. I didn't plan on it. It was on when I turned on the radio in my office. I kept listening in the way you might slow down to look at a bad, multi-car accident on the highway.
It was shockingly - in no particular order - ignorant, incoherent, boastful, dishonest, and belligerent.
The idea that the person speaking was the President of the United States addressing global leaders in front of however many members of the press from the world over is hard to reconcile.
It was worse than Michael Scott's most embarrassing presentations on "The Office" without being funny. The man is plumbing the depths of self-parody "like no one's ever seen before, let me tell you."
"
i think the US will recover from Trump pretty well. he's exposing a lot of cracks in the foundation, sure. but we've discovered and fixed a lot of such cracks before.
"
I'm trying to figure out how to interpret the part of Carney's speech where he promises to pour another trillion dollars into tar sands development. I haven't thought of one that isn't some sort of Trump appeasement.
"
Over half a century ago, Robert Heinlein's "Future History" included a period where the United States was in the grip of a totalitarian theocracy. Sadly, the only part he seems to have missed was that it is not (yet) religion based. At least as far as its initial leader is concerned.** Sadly, the only question yet to be answered is how the succession will be determined.
I realize that, as the resident optimist, I should be talking about how we will bounce back once Trump leaves the scene. Certainly I hope that happens. But it's increasingly difficult to expect it. Alas, Carney is probably correct about where the world goes from here.
** Well, he also predicted the US would be totally isolationist (as in cutting off all interaction with the rest of the world) throughout this. The rest of the world, at this point, probably hopes it works out that way. And sooner rather than later.
"
Okay, delurking.
Carney’s speech was great, in part because he admits that the old order was both useful and also a sham and a lie. They supported it because of its many benefits and ignored the hypocrisy and double standards.
Here is Assal Rad, an Iranian- American who mostly tweets about Gaza, who has family in Iran, doesn’t like the regime, feared for her family’s safety during the recent slaughter by the government but also hates the sanctions that cratered the economy, as Bessent bragged in Davos—
“To be clear, “this bargain no longer works” because it’s targeting them.
They had no problem with a false international order that targeted and subjugated brown people.”
She is absolutely right.
The NYT had an analysis of the speech which totally ignored that aspect. I give Carney a lot of credit for admitting it but any new rules based order should stop pretending this crap is acceptable.
Or in other words, no more genocides and crimes against humanity committed by the self- proclaimed good guys. Hold all war criminals to account to the extent possible and stop this lying.
If we rebuild from the ashes of Trump, let’s not go back to the happy days where we murder people and it doesn’t matter because we aren’t crass about it.
Back to lurking. Any further comments from me would just be more of the same.
"
Testing first.
"
Here is von der Leyen's speech
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_26_150
"
it's shocking how fragile all of this is: that a single dimwitted blowhard like Trump could knock it all down. and that nobody in the US has both the power and the inclination to rein him in.
heckofajob, Framers.
"
First Ursula von der Leyen tells it like it is, now Mark Carney. It has taken too long, but world leaders are finally realizing that appeasement works exactly as well today as it did in the 1930s (and as well as it ever has in the schoolyard, when bullies stand with their expectant hands out).
This speech is a barnburner. Though not the perfect politician we all wish for, Carney is the leader Canada needs right now. Hard to remember that Canadians were thiiiis close to electing a Trump-wannabe candidate until His Orangeness blathered about the 51st state and Canadian voters reacted with rage. Had they not done so, Canada would now be a footstool for the US to rest its dirty jackboots on. Instead, their PM is telling the rest of the world: there is a path forward, we are choosing it, and we invite you to join us on it. And with a literate metaphor, no less!
(Give it five minutes or so, and you'll hear US Republicans zeroing in on a single word in that entire speech -- communist -- and firing up their outrage engines accordingly.)
On “Talarico”
whoa! blast from the past! I've dropped you an email!
"
I like Talarico. He is good at speaking plainly, which is a skill that I had to develop. There is a lot of value in that, IMHO.
BTW, LJ -- I'm von.
On “Rememory”
Well, it's been true since the beginning of his first campaign for President that every accusation he made was actually a confession. This is just a small addition to an enormous pile. He simply cannot imagine that anyone would fail to exploit anyone and anything they could, just like he does.
"
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
"
Biden's cabinet was qualified and within normal parameters, and he at least was competent in his lucid moments. Trump's are all Project 2025 dictator wannabes and Coup Cuck Clansmen, and he himself has always been awful.
"
Maybe one shouldn't start with the baseline assumption that immigration is a problem.
"
ask Grok to make you a list of all the times Biden threatened to blow up NATO because one of our allies wouldn't give us part of its territory.
"
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.
when a political party loves power more than anything, it can excuse almost anything.
Déjà vu all over again.
"
when a political party loves power more than anything, it can excuse almost anything.
"
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?
"
Weimar was also far progressed beyond imperial Germany in cultural things (including full equal rights for minorities, in particular Jews, and full equality for women seeming just around the corner).
Then came the Nazis and after WW2 a conservative restauration under Adenauer. Women reached de jure equality not before the 1970ies (before that husbands still had veto power despite nominally equal rights as per the West German constitution).
A throwback of a half or even a full century is thus easily possible and the US reactionaries have imo a fair chance to achieve that in our lifetimes.
"
I'm not arguing for inherent goodness. Just that we've gotten better. Or less bad, if you prefer.
As for Obama being an outlier, I wouldn't dispute that. He's definitely an exceptionally gifted politician. I'd say the most gifted in my lifetime. But within (my) living memory, no black man, no matter how gifted, could have done what he did. Or even gotten within a thousand miles of getting the opportunity to try. That's a solid indication of progress. IMHO, of course.
"
If you doubt that progress has been made, consider what the chances would have been, in 1960, of a major political party nominating a black man for President. Let alone of him winning. “Inconceivable” is the word.
I'm not sure how much we can bang that drum to indicate our inherent goodness. The fact that he was the first nominated (by a major political party) and went directly on to being elected makes him seem more like an outlier than a true indicator.
"
wj - I think that, as a nation, we are in the process of moving past it. I say “as a nation” because, while I think that more and more of us have moved past it, clearly there are still a huge number who have not.
As a nation I think we have been here before, which is to say that as a nation we are currently in the midst of the sort of self-sorting that leads to us actually being two nations mixed up in one sack. We have two very different nationalisms facing off and in open conflict with each other.
The question is whether this leads to a forced reunification (as in the Civil War) or into some form of collapse, or just a prolonged dysfunction and are supplanted on the world stage.
I am not optimistic that we can put the toothpaste back into the tube this time.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.