Right-Wing Fellow Travelers

 I was fleetingly curious yesterday to see what Trump had found to talk about in his 250th anniversary speech—given that all the traditional themes of our American civic religion are off-limits to him. He can't talk about how we're a nation of immigrants—since we are apparently no longer proud of this, and Trump is trying to undo the fact. He can't talk about how our history represents a gradual unfolding of greater rights and justice, since here too: Trump is trying to reverse this trajectory. 

So when it comes time for Trump to celebrate two and a half centuries of American history, I wondered, what would he find to say? 

A Crawling Prosperity

 We all recall that disgraceful ruere in servitium—dubbed at the time the "Great Accommodation" — that followed Trump's second election and the start of his second term—when formerly Trump-critical billionaires stepped forward one by one to "bend the knee," as people called it at the time. 

Mark Zuckerberg went—seemingly overnight—from a liberal donor who backed immigration causes to a chain-wearing Trumpophile who described the president as "badass"; the head of Palantir went from endorsing Kamala Harris to being a right-wing zealot who makes excuses for Trump's extrajudicial killings in even less time. 

Compromise, That Old Serpent

 The other day on his Substack, Matt Yglesias was writing about how all the DSA progressives who have recently been winning primary elections are 99% indistinguishable from their "establishment" rivals, except that they use the word "oligarchy" and are even more mad at Israel. 

Ha! I thought; Zing! Pow! Good one!

Both sides of the Democratic civil war in the blue state primaries, he argues, are "well to the left of the median voter" already. Neither of them—establishment nor DSA "populist"—is actually making the pivot to the center that will be needed to win elections. 

Trans Athletes

 The Supreme Court's decision in the trans student athletes case got kind of buried in the headlines earlier this week, since it was released the same morning as the surprisingly reassuring birthright citizenship decision. 

I went back to look up the opinion last night, though, and it really is a nasty little piece of work that probably would have received more attention, had the Court not released such a blockbuster positive ruling on the same day. 

Rolling in Riches

 So, by the latest news accounts, Trump's meme coin turned out to be exactly the pyramid scheme it looked like. According to the New York Times yesterday, Trump's crypto business followed the classic life cycle of most such financial scams. 

The token first skyrocketed in value—leading on many innocent people to risk their savings on an investment in the coin. By now, however, it has apparently lost between 80 to 97% of its peak value. 

"New and Great Friends"

 So I guess now the Trump administration is blatantly blocking the Venezuelan opposition leader's efforts to return to her own country in order to help with earthquake relief—presumably because we find it more convenient to have the country's current authoritarian leader govern without elections indefinitely, so long as she remains in effect a U.S. puppet. 

In case anyone was still wondering whether that commando raid on Maduro was really about "supporting Venezuelan democracy"—here's your answer. The same government that kidnapped Maduro is now so wedded to his successor regime that we won't even help the country's democratic opposition set foot in her homeland in the midst of a catastrophic earthquake. 

Betrayal of Everyone and Everything

 Bret Stephens wrote the other week that Donald Trump is a man "whose very essence is betrayal of everyone and everything." I don't always agree with Stephens—particularly not on the wisdom of going to war with Iran—but I agree with him here. 

Trump betrayed the people of Venezuela by first disingenuously claiming to want to "free" them from Maduro—and then partnering up with his no less authoritarian successor regime, sidelining the Venezuelan democratic opposition, deporting Venezuelan asylum-seekers to torture prisons, and canceling Temporary Protected Status for the country.