State of the Discussion

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.

>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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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.

"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.

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.

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.

It says something about the character of these people that they would lie about making someone cry - not that they made someone cry and denied it, but that they didn't make someone cry while falsely claiming they did.

What kind of people are they trying to appeal to?

I'm sure it has more to do with making the protesters look like weak little babies than beating their chests about making someone cry, but it boils down to the same thing as far as I can tell.

The next few lines too, which I love for how they render the mess of us.

...
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself.

And a part of you,
For my part is the chorus, and the chorus
Is more or less a borderline between
The you and the me and the it of it.

What strikes me about that part of the speech, though, is that it says the exact opposite of what they will try to spin it as saying.

Oh yes. I'm tempted to say "subtlety is not their strong point" but in reality, basic comprehension is not their strong point. Nor would it be the first time they spun something as precisely the opposite of what it actually is. (Or the second, or third, or fifteenth.)

“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.”

seems like this is not too far from the original meaning of "woke", and the related "overstand" from black American culture.

you're alert and aware of the situation. you're not hiding from the truths that make it what it is. that gives you some power to change things.

Fletcher - (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.)

I'm sure you are correct. It saves their listeners the burden of checking out the speech for themselves and trying to make sense of it.

What strikes me about that part of the speech, though, is that it says the exact opposite of what they will try to spin it as saying. Carney is mentioning Havel's greengrocer as a way of saying that he's no longer signaling compliance. He's not calling for quiet, Czech-like endurance, he wants more active resistance.

We all get that because we can read (or listen). The RW pundits' purpose, though, is twofold: to keep their listeners from seeking it out for themselves, and to spread their misrepresentation widely enough and repeat it enough times that they can game the AI bots into giving their disinformation more prominence and make it seem reasonable and valid.

Michael Cain - I think Carney is talking about Canada's energy reserves in order to set them up as an alternative. He's basically outlining the game theory of multilateral and iterative trade as an antidote to the US strategy of All Prisoners Dilemma All The Time. I think it's a plea for the middle people to look to each other and isolate the bullies.

wj - as far as future histories go, John Shirley's Eclipse Trilogy is by far the most on-the-nose thing I have seen as an alternative perspective from which to see our current moment, which is why it continues to scare the crap out of me. I think Paolo Bacigalupi also does an excellent job of future history, and is equally depressing.

What we really need is more gritty anti-dystopian futures, and more optimistic visions in which the world manages to choose Door #2 and it somehow works and creates a better world. Those are the works that nurture hope while we take down the signs in the window that pretend that the old stories are still working.

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 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.

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.