I remember in the 80s, when Trump started using his NYC job sites for local news coverage, how enraged I'd get seeing the hard-hats flock around him like groupies. But I think this distinction btw their shared cultural language despite opposed economic interests explains a lot about his appeal.

Ambivalence: When your adult son is in LA eating tacos with your lifelong best friend, and you're not there with them.

Can't decide whether Tony Blair as viceroy of Gaza is Third Way neoliberalism's jump the shark moment or its apotheosis.

Had a very thought-provoking discussion last night about the Trump-Peron comparison with our Argentine dinner guests, who argued convincingly that it's of very limited value and applies mainly to the charismatic populist style of politics they share.

Great thread. I've always felt a lot of the past 25 years can be explained by conflict mirroring and the US right's mimetic desire of the jihadist enemy. In addition to everything here, it was also: We have to be as brutal and reactionary as our enemy to defeat him.

New Good Authority post by me goodauthority.org/news/china-u...

This is the way.

Or as the case may be (and currently is), their sons.

Maybe some kind of party congress or something like that under Stalin or Mao could have come close, but probably not. This will likely be the largest gathering of generals and admirals in one location ever, in any country, and certainly by far for Americans.

Like all efforts at long-term prediction, these were pretty hit or miss, with no real immediate value for natsec. But they were one of the only formal govt efforts to look out at the long-term horizon. I'd be curious to see the draft 2025 report that got the whole thing canned.

Big if true.

AI as weaponized fomo.

"Only a plan for patriotic national renewal led by Labour will counter the rise of the populist Right" is the new "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

Great piece that really dials in on the double dilemma facing states seeking to regulate AI. There's a frantic sense that anyone who isn't an early adopter will be penalized, and for now US partnerships are the only game in town. So there's a trade-off in safety and sovereignty for fast movers.

What makes the liberal international order so slippery to examine is that it was institutionalized before it was theorized. I'm also going to argue that regional/global orders depend more on the predictability of action-reaction expectations than on the presence or absence of a hegemon.

One downside to this phrasing is that throughout history, the heretics, apostates and blasphemers were often more sympathetic (and often more spiritually & theologically compelling) than the established religious authorities that persecuted them.

It's this, which was built in Bay Ridge by a Ukrainian-born dentist guilty of insurance fraud on a lot bought from Blondie's keyboardist. Not making it up, check the link.

First @richardgowan1.bsky.social UNGA sighting in the wild!

Is this realist or idealist?

He was just doing immersive research for a role he's playing.

l'Europe de la défense n'est pas pour demain.

Trump II is really doubling down on its degrowth agenda.

ngl, the most surprising thing for me about Sarkozy's post-presidency is that Carla is still around. Figured that wouldn't last past the portail of Elysée.

Whoa. I haven't followed the case enough to know the ins and outs, but Sarkozy actually ending up in prison, rather than with another ankle bracelet, was not on my bingo card.

I didn't realize it when I worked it up, as my head was still a muddle of different ideas, but this article is essentially the outline of the book project I'll be working on for the next few months. Just worked up the introduction today, and I'm pretty excited about where it's headed.

Unrelated, but the fact that MoMA, alone among NYC museums, closed on Wednesdays back then instead of Mondays was perhaps the most frequent "customer management" issue to arise in the time I worked in the bookstore. It especially rankled the Germans, for whom it was unpardonably disordered.

I used to do this on my lunch-hour with Rothko canvases when I worked at MoMA in the late 80s, but on Wednesdays, when the galleries were closed to visitors.

"[W]hile the U.S. .. is busy exiting and undermining the liberal international order, the majority of states around the world remain committed to liberalized trade and its other foundational tenets, starting with respect for territorial sovereignty." There's really no such thing as global disorder.

Just occurred to me that another one of these is critical theory, from French post-modernism to "woke"/CRT: too absurd to take seriously, but so dangerous it must crushed at the source.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Trump II is how it has coopted all the phenomena of the 2010s-era that in their emergent forms were identified as existential threats to the state: Big Tech, networked platforms, super-empowered individuals, crypto, globalized MNCs. It's the anti-state state.

Now that he's gotten a taste of state capitalism, his appetite is Ubu-esque.

Funny that both the US and China are propping up the Argentine economy, but China is doing so in a way that puts the screws on the US farming sector.

For those who don't remember.

Reminds me of the Onion headline after Obama won in 2008 with the global financial system on the brink of meltdown.

Also, not sure where this occurred, but a heads-up NYer would have been looking for Subway entrances to cross the avenue underground.

The end of the video, where Macron audibly tells Trump he wants to talk with him and Qatar about Gaza, is a master class in how to use a captive audience for political communication.

Huge, but as Finbarr notes later in the thread, could have had a bigger impact 8-10 years ago.

The funniest thing is that he worries Trump would care or even notice that he disagreed

I never worked at that level and won’t pretend I did, I got out as an e-4. But these guys who are giving the orders for these Carribean strikes… they’ve got to have some kind of cite to authority when they get a lethal order right? These things have paperwork associated with them, right?

As always, in the debate between realism and liberal internationalism, my response is: Why not both?

I agree with Osita's broader point that the US is not a responsible stakeholder as global leader. But there's a lot of subtext to this particular person making this particular argument at this particular moment. This is a well-worn French line from a Sarkozy acolyte turned Macronist/Euro-Likudnik.

I'm not sure how likely this scenario is, but it's certainly possible. What's fascinating about a far-right takeover of the EU from within is that these movements have a theory of power at the national level but not at the EU level, beyond hardening borders and returning sovereignty to the states.

I think it was just one big event, tbh.

This from Chotiner is pretty epic: "Well, the next time someone brings up a terrible anecdote about Cambodia or Vietnam, I will definitely drop the Star Wars story to show that people have two sides."

This is a great thread. Particularly how the Secret Service’s eagerness to tout its find probably effed up a great opportunity to study this network’s operations.

In all honesty, writing this piece (gift link below) made me more optimistic than I've been in a while. Perhaps I'll do a companion piece to explain why, but I'll sketch out some of the reasons here. 🧵

My brand in five words.

Not optimistic but thought-provoking.

Hegemonic instability theory.

"For all of Trump’s radical differences from his predecessors, however, his America First foreign policy is an attempt to respond to the same shifts in global power that drove theirs. Whereas they strove to salvage the liberal international order ... he has chosen to abandon it." By me. Gift link.