Time for Fukuyama-posting, folks:

Didn't DeWever tank the effort to transfer frozen Russian funds to the Ukrainians? Do we really need to listen to him moralize on this?

Homage to Catalonia, but the NKVD are all this guy

US is playing hardball on the issue. It has issued bellicose démarches to a wide range of states, including allies, which, I am told, are full of reference to Trump, highly aggressive & threatening—"like something one would have expected from the Nazis or Soviets in the 1930s", one person told me.

This makes the situation even more dangerous. Their actions don’t feel like manipulation to them. They feel like common sense. They genuinely believe the narratives they spread, making them even more erratic and harder to counter.

Lippmann warned that democracy only works if the public has access to accurate information. But today, people don’t just lack good information - they actively reject it in favour of what fits their worldview, because their entire information ecosystem reinforces those beliefs.

DOGE isn’t just about government efficiency - it’s about purging federal agencies of workers who won’t fall in line. By mass-firing employees and forcing them to prove their worth, they’re reshaping the government into an institution that only serves those in power.

Oh great. Lying about a foreign leader again. Now Trudeau is going to have to come out publicly and contradict the President, and Trump will respond with more 51st state crap and tariff threats.

This strikes me as the first indicator that the ugly polling is putting stress on the Trumpists. The post says "be more extreme!" The message underlying that post is (probably? possibly?) saying "you're dragging me down, go fix that or you're under the bus. Now go make your numbers go up."

Ah, an answer to the question "wonder where Conor's been?"

Andy helped make all this our new reality. He can take his sanctimonious criticism and stuff it. www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/the-...

But many, including Americans, confuse this design for a lack of capacity and/or will. Which I would argue is a geopolitical miscalculation.

I’d argue that Europe today is militarily “weak” as a result of intentional policy, both within and without (the U.S.). It was seen as DESIRABLE, by everyone, compared to the alternative.

If this is just negotiating gambit by Trump on Ukraine, why does he begin with maximalist positions for allies - Denmark and Greenland, Canada as the 51st state, Gaza as an American possession - and a raft of concessions for a chief American adversary in Russia?

They're still anti-interventionist, but somehow also rabidly revisionist, agitating for territorial expansion. Because they're an incoherent mess.

If Trump, Musk, and the crew abolish USAID, NED, and other such entities, can those entities be re-established by a future administration? It is only February 2025, but Americans ought to be thinking about “after.”

if you are dooming in my mentions but are not for instance actively preparing to flee the country or otherwise reacting in earnest as if you believe the shit you’re saying, I’m going to start blocking. nobody needs that

helping put a con artist, a coterie of nazis, and a ketamine addled oligarch in charge of the most powerful state on earth does actually have some consequences!

The United States has real enemies in this world -- Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. Canada and Mexico are not our enemies. Neither is Denmark. Don't let Trump and his movement deceive you.

A proposition for you: "America First" and American greatness are in conflict. America has been greatest when it has been world-embracing -- open, confident, strong. Not closed, fearful, cramped.

It's about INCENTIVES NOT CHARACTER. Framers didn't foresee parties & thought Electors would block demagogues! But Republicans' ambition/concern for self-preservation lead them to back Trump. Critics who repent advance (Rubio, Vance) or at least survive (Graham). If not, they're purged (Cheney). 1)

The stove-touching will continue until morale improves

The GOP is a party of political violence. It has sanctioned paramilitary action and made clear that violence on its behalf is acceptable That’s the stark reality. Under Trump, the party belongs in the same conversation as the British National Party, Front National, pre-2015 Jobbik, Golden Dawn

I agreed with most of the policy decisions Biden made. I also recognize he’s leaving office as unpopular as any President in my lifetime and the vibes were never great. I think it’s fair to acknowledge all that rather than trying to make it all good or all bad.

"Russification of America" is a phrase worth remembering. Also Elon should read up on Berezovsky and the other first gen Russian oligarchs and see how that worked out for them.

There’s a bad conspiracy theory going around that Bob Woodward claims in his book ‘War’ that the AFU allowed 30,000 Russian troops to quietly withdraw from Kherson due to US pressure on Kiyv. It’s false on all counts. 1/

My theory is that the political-operative-economic-enthusiast-types who replaced the killjoy trained economic advisers are usually optimizing on what polls well today, not thinking through what polls well a year from now. Hence opposition to higher interest rates, tariff repeal, etc.

We are going to get Suezed and the big brained takeaway of the American people will be that it proves Trump was right to destroy our alliances because our allies did not honor the alliances we destroyed.

This past week has probably turbocharged popular anti-American sentiment throughout the globe. It's going to get worse. Much worse. And all politicians are going to have to lean into it. Result; alliances will fray.

I feel like Dems need to wait for some majoritarian issue to pop up that they can lean into and until that happens it’s best not to do too much shouting.

It's probably worth thinking through how messaging etc. can succeed with the media as it is, inane bullshit and personality-driven drama, instead of important stories. Don't think the media is going to change. Don't think anyone has the tools or a gameplan to force the changes seen as necessary.

There is, unfortunately, no law of nature that says democracy can’t be brought down and wars can’t be started by a bunch of clowns with enough support from people, parties, and institutions who enable them. It’s all just a farce - until these goons and buffoons are in power. That’s where we are.

This is a better-phrased statement of an idea I've tried to express for a while now:

Where the tech is going to have the most growth now is in very applied areas, just building the machine isn’t going to get them the answers they want and certainly to your point does not warrant the hype. Chasing AGI instead of stumbling upon it is a fools’ errand.

Contrary to what people like Harris and Schumer feel constrained to say, today shouldn't be regarded as a triumph for American democracy. It should be viewed as confirming that the United States has *one* political party that will peacefully cede power when it loses an election. Until & unless... 1

It’s only a victory for constitutional democracy when both parties recognize the legitimacy of the other side winning elections. Not when one does and the other doesn’t.

And anyone who cites the prosecutions of Trump—who actually did commit crimes and has the status of a convicted felon this very day—is at best a useful idiot, and at worst a knowingly dishonest propagandist for the dismantling of the rule of law.

The time to stand up and say this is wrong is now. All of the phony issues people pretend to get upset about don’t hold a candle to this. The GOP is creating pretexts to throw political opponents in jail, when they have committed no crime. This is very scary and utterly evil.

The way GOP politicians are coalescing around a completely made-up narrative that Liz Cheney should be prosecuted should terrify the American people. I know we have gotten numb to the outrages, but this is truly next level. What happened to Navalny in Russia could happen here.

Wanting Greenland for national security reasons is almost explicitly stating Russia is a major national security threat, and defending against it requires drastic actions. Doesn't exactly jibe with the "abandon NATO, screw Europe" view prevalent in Trump-world.

I might have more to say later, but all the reviews of Carter's presidency emphasize his character, his success in the Mideast, and inflation/gas prices. But left out of all that: His Cold War policies were abject failures and left America in a precarious situation by 1980. /1

Incidentally, this is what the US as a European security guarantor buys us. Anyone advocating giving up the Euro-Atlantic security architecture should at least be pushed to explain - explicitly - what they see as the advantage of sacrificing the items laid out below.

Simplifying for efficiency is bad, but simplifying for accessibility can be good. In a post literate society, the more entry-points the better. The kind of person who reads a simplified work is infinitely more likely to read the original than someone who is deterred by the complexity.

In a transactional relationship, even if the US is your best option, they might drop you at any time, which means you need to hedge.

At some point - and that point may already have been reached - a number of countries around the world are going to quietly start investing in, if not a US disengagement strategy, at least a US risk mitigation strategy. And the smarter ones will pretend it's not happening, even as it is.

I don’t know who the best choice for the position would be, I just know it’s not smart to be elevating socialists when the average voter is convinced that’s what your party is and part of why they prefer Donald Trump.

In this case it was a colossal own goal by the capital L Left. The rush to push a racialized angle to the incident is what transformed the case from something that should have stayed w/in the discourse in major urban areas re: resentment towards the mentally ill into a right wing cause celebre.

No that's my point it's not about anything except driving up the other side's negatives by blaming them for ~literally everything~. No need to defend anything Dems do. It's only Rs fault.

Between Khanna endorsing working with the Elon commission to, what, slash defense spending or some other stupid shit, and Bernie signaling support for Gabbard because she's anti-American to her core and a daggar aimed at the heart of the intelligence community, banner day for the red-brown alliance.