Betrayed by Immoderation

 Yesterday, Trump appears to have moved from tongue-lashing Ukraine to actively trying to undermine their efforts to defend themselves. He has already pulled most forms of military aid from the country. Now, he seems to have gone even further, apparently blocking Ukraine from a key Pentagon platform for intelligence sharing (though U.S. officials deny anything has formally changed). 

In the past few days, Trump delivered a major form of diesel sanctions relief to Russia—overriding the clear intent of Congress in their recent bipartisan sanctions legislation—in exchange for no concessions whatsoever from Putin. Trump proceeded to blame our Ukrainian allies for being invaded. He also exerted verbal pressure on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. 

Save My Skin and Damn My Conscience

 Okay, so let me see if I'm following along accurately here. In the last few days, Trump has announced a major form of sanctions relief for Russian diesel in exchange for no concessions whatsoever from Putin. He then proceeded to blame Zelensky for the war, even as Russian bombs killed more Ukrainian civilians. He then declared a bilateral "energy ceasefire" between the two nations, which Putin proceeded to violate within hours. 

And still, Trump does not appear to be interested in applying any pressure on Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine. Instead, all he seems to want to do is to blame Zelensky for being invaded and to unwind whatever shreds of U.S. support are still in place for Ukraine. 

A Higher Level of Suffering

 The other day on his Substack, the blogger Noah Smith was warning that the availability of endless short-form video content on our smartphones risks trapping us in a kind of hedonistic dystopia: a place where reward-chemicals have become so readily accessible that much of the meaning is drained from life—since meaning can only be derived from struggle. 

He writes with despair: "Perhaps it’s in the fundamental nature of intelligence to hack its own reward function — to find a way to give up striving and building and loving, and to simply hit the dopamine button until it starves itself ecstatically to death."

A Little More Socialism Please

 Californians are getting ready to vote next month on Proposition 42, a measure that would forbid any future tax on wealth holdings. Gavin Newsom announced his endorsement of the proposal a few days ago, adding his voice to those of tech billionaires who sponsored the measure, as well as the Wall Street Journal editorial board, in opposition to the possibility of any tax on wealth as opposed to income. 

The reasons they cite are essentially the same old penguin ones we've discussed before. They point out that billionaires may simply leave the state to avoid paying. California will experience capital flight and end up poorer in public revenues than it was before the wealth tax. As the richest burghers among the Penguins intone, in Anatole France's novel Penguin Island: 

Slow-Motion Munich

 Ever since Trump came back into office, people have been warning that it seems like he is planning to betray Ukraine. But, no matter how inevitable it seemed that Trump would eventually pull a Neville Chamberlain and cut a deal with Putin to hand our ally over to the country that was invading them, the decisive moment never quite came. Instead, Trump would at times appear to suddenly and radically undermine our relationship with Ukraine; but then, the next day, he would backpedal. And so the cycle would continue. 

For all we know, Trump's remarks yesterday may not have been his final word on the subject either. Mere days from now, he may patch things up with Zelensky yet again and pivot to offering another round of halfhearted praise for our ally. Whatever Trump may do from day to day, however, the larger pattern is unmistakable at this point: he really is walking away from Ukraine, by whatever fits and starts. He may be acting less precipitously than Neville Chamberlain did in 1938—but this is still a Munich in slow motion. 

Hegseth's Snuff Film Studio

 Last week, following the horrific botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, I repeated as a sort of thought experiment Albert Camus's argument (in Reflections on the Guillotine) that every government that really claims to believe in the death penalty ought to broadcast footage of its executions as widely as possible, since they claim that the whole point of the killing is to "send a message." 

Be careful what you wish for, I guess. Because just days later, the Trump administration announced that they do indeed plan to livestream the public execution by firing squad of a man convicted for his role in a 2009 mass shooting (convicted, we should add, in the military justice system—a parallel legal system with fewer constitutional protections for defendants; though there seems little doubt of his guilt). 

Good Samaritans

 In a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein, Michigan Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was trying to explain what motivates his sense of mission to try to expand access to healthcare in this country. He told the story of a former patient of his—a woman struggling with homelessness and substance abuse—whom he encountered in the emergency room. 

After ordering the usual round of tests and treatment, he said he tried to convince her to stay in the hospital system for rehab. He prepared a whole treatment plan for her, and the hospital would have covered it. She refused these multiple offers of help, however, and left, claiming that her daughter was picking her up.