Puerilism

 The worst thing about the style of this new/old administration—well, after the perversity, the stupidity, the moral ugliness are all taken into account, perhaps—is just how juvenile they all seem. I won't say "young," because many of them are very much not young. But unmistakably juvenile—even the old ones. They are living embodiments of the "puerilism" that Johan Huizinga associated with the far-right politics of the 1930s—and which he saw as the opposite of all true youthfulness, playfulness, and humor.

The "puerilism" of the administration is most obviously on display in the actions of Musk's team of twenty-something "DOGE" hacks who are currently running around the federal government firing all the adults. But one can see it too every time J.D. Vance opens his mouth. 

The Rod

 As I opened my retirement account this afternoon and saw that once again whole percentage points of value had been erased from the stock market today, I winced. It hurt, as it always does. But at the same time, I accepted it. It seemed a measure of justice. We had it coming. 

The United States cannot threaten all of its allies and betray its friends and lord it over others with impunity forever. Eventually, the piper collects his due. As I saw the stock values once again in the red for the day, therefore, Rossetti's line came back to me: "the rod/ Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world."

Believe Beatrice

 Stripped of its trappings of period melodrama, Percy Bysshe Shelley's verse drama The Cenci is a modern story. In many ways—specifically—it's a #MeToo story. It's the story of a woman who is sexually victimized by a powerful man (her own father, in this case), and who is unable to obtain justice through the existing mechanisms of the state because no one will believe her accusations. 

It's essentially the same story that played out during the Pete Hegseth nomination to run the Defense Department. Hegseth faced accusations of rape and various kinds of abusive behavior toward women. He retreated behind the claim that the most prominent allegation against him was anonymous—conveniently leaving out the fact that the anonymity was due to a non-disclosure agreement that he insisted she sign. 

Another Carthaginian Peace

 During the first year of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, I spent a lot of time on this blog quoting John Maynard Keynes's line (written in the wake of the Versailles treaty) about the dangers of imposing a "Carthaginian peace" on a defeated adversary. I was very concerned about plans that some Western leaders were floating to seize Russian central bank assets and impose ruinous reparations on the country, after the war. I thought (and still think) this would be an unjust form of collective punishment for Putin's crimes that would chiefly harm innocent Russian civilians. On prudential grounds, I also thought it would breed generations of resentment and ultimately cause more conflict down the road. 

What I could not have foreseen at the time, however, is that—just three years later—the U.S. government would indeed be trying to impose a "Carthaginian peace" on one of the parties to the war—except, they would be trying to impose it on our ally, Ukraine, rather than on Putin's Russia. But I know of no other way to describe the mineral rights "deal" that the Trump administration is currently trying to force down the throat of Ukraine's (rightly) reluctant leadership. While Ukraine's negotiators originally floated the idea of a mineral rights partnership—as a way to appeal to Trump's "transactional" character—the U.S. seems to have twisted the original idea into a form of ruinous one-sided reparations. 

The Demokos Trap

 My mind changes by the day as to whether Trump is more likely to start a war in Taiwan by siding too aggressively with the pro-independence movement—or by siding too aggressively with the PRC! Either way, however, he seems to be intent on upsetting the current modus vivendi that—however imperfect it may be—has allowed the island to exist and flourish for decades in a state of relative autonomy, peace, and democratic freedom—without inviting outright conflict with the much larger and more powerful Orwellian superstate on the mainland. 

On the one hand, Trump's team has made a number of gestures that read to the PRC regime as escalatory. Most notably, Trump's State Department recently removed language from its website about not supporting Taiwanese independence—taking a step closer toward abandoning the "One China" policy that was key to normalizing relations with the PRC a half-century ago. (I wouldn't defend "One China" on the grounds of logic or morality, by the way—but it has certainly helped to keep the peace; and given the likely toll of an outright war for Taiwan, that is nothing to sneer at.)

Musk and the "Great Men"

 I feel the need to write a brief follow-up to my post yesterday about Elon Musk, since it seems the topic is even more in the zeitgeist than I had realized. I don't just mean the fact that Elon is in all the headlines (that's obvious, unfortunately); but, specifically, that people are debating just now how much he qualifies as one of the "great men" of history, how much he is vindicated by "results," etc. 

The latest dust-up appeared to start when a Musk biographer posted on social media that the Tesla founder is not as smart as people think he is. Nate Silver and others retorted that this is preposterous, leading to a debate over the "great man" theory of history. Someone compared Musk to Genghis Khan. Musk himself reposted a podcast episode about the history of the Mongol ruler. 

Momentous

 I periodically check in on a certain podcast that represents—one could say—the sort of "defense hawk establishment" perspective on U.S. foreign relations. The hosts are mostly drawn from center-right think tanks. They believe in NATO and U.S. military spending and the projection of U.S. power (in both soft and hard forms) abroad. They are what used to be known as the Republican mainstream. 

The second Trump administration has clearly presented them with a certain rhetorical dilemma. On the one hand, they can't exactly ignore the fact that Trump is dismantling all the things they claim to believe in. They can't pretend they missed the news that Trump has threatened to invade a NATO ally, sell out a democratic ally to Putin, and radically eviscerate U.S. foreign aid.

Results

 I was talking to a friend who lives in the Bay Area the other day. I pressed him for answers as to why so many people in the tech industry (even the few seemingly normal ones) still admire Elon Musk. I mean, every day reveals new abysses in his character of stupidity, ignorance, malice, incompetence, and creeping affinity for fascism. What could people possibly like about him at this point? 

I used as my exhibit a recent-ish piece by Noah Smith. The article argued that Musk has too much power (too true!). But I thought it was revealing of Smith's intended audience that—even in the course of making this point—he nonetheless has to genuflect briefly before the possibility that the true Musk may of course be a "stand-up guy." Apparently, that is still the default view in the Bay Area. 

Strange Labor

 Since the current U.S. presidential administration has repeatedly indicated that it wants to follow the lead of William McKinley by acquiring overseas U.S. territories—I thought it would be a fitting time this month to read J.A. Hobson's classic 1902 treatise Imperialism. There's a lot of insight to be gleaned from the book. But one of the most disturbing and memorable passages (I found) is Hobson's discussion of the problem of forced labor. 

As apologists for the British Empire will be swift to point out, the UK did not practice overt slavery in its colonies during the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Indeed, many European authorities during the "Scramble for Africa" period used their opposition to slavery as a supposed moral justification for the imperial project. Even the blood-thirsty King Leopold of Belgium, perversely enough, claimed to be "liberating" the Congo from the scourge of human slavery—even as he introduced an indistinguishable form of coerced corvée labor in its place. 

Somebody is Missing

 In today's "Dealbook" newsletter from the New York Times, the reporters note just how far Trump has managed to normalize the idea of doing business with Saudi Arabia in recent years—despite the Kingdom's horrendous human rights record. 

Trump himself attended the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's summit for foreign investors (the FII conference) this week in Miami Beach, Florida. While there, he publicly praised the Saudi officials in attendance. 

God and King and Law

 Trump took another dramatic step forward in his normalization of authoritarian rhetoric yesterday. As the New York Times reports: he specifically shared a picture of himself wearing a crown, accompanied by the slogan "Long Live the King." 

In reality, of course, Trump is not a king. He is the elected president of a republic that was formed through a revolution that overthrew a king, and which guarantees in its constitution a republican form of government to all its member states. 

1956 All Over Again

 Ever since it first became clear that the MAGA movement would eventually sell out Ukraine to the Kremlin, I've periodically quoted from E.E. Cummings's poem "Thanksgiving (1956)"—written in response to the highly reminiscent episode from that year, when the U.S. government abandoned Hungary to its fate at the hands of a Russian invasion.

The 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary served as proof, for Cummings, that the West was not actually going to defend the freedom of small countries when it counted—at least not unless it served their naked self-interest to do so. Rather, they would stand idly by as a "monstering horror" swallowed up those countries that had the temerity to protest against authoritarian rule. 

This Be The Post

 Politico ran a piece yesterday commenting on the as-yet-unconfirmed reports that Elon Musk's thirteenth child was just born to yet another woman. The article framed this as a source of tension in the neo-fascist MAGA movement—one that pits the "family values" social conservative stream against the tech bro culture that has embraced Elon's decidedly "non-traditional" family structure. 

But another way to see it is that the strange obsession with high birth rates is a unifying factor in an otherwise divided extreme-right movement. One of the few things that Catholic theocrats, xenophobic nativists/white nationalists, and Silicon Valley eugenicists can all agree upon—after all—is that high-status white males (if no one else) should be producing a lot of offspring. 

Duress

 After the war, the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt apparently tried to excuse his collaborationist stance toward Hitler's regime by invoking the Herman Melville story "Benito Cereno." (According to a forward to one of his works by Tracy Strong.) 

As you may recall, the twist at the heart of Melville's story is that the people who appear to be captaining the titular vessel are not actually the ones in charge. While they may seem to be acting out of their own free will, they are actually only doing so because they are in terror for their lives. 

Let's Hear It for the Sullivans

 The career prosecutors who resigned this week from the Eric Adams case in the Southern District of New York surely faced an unenviable dilemma. 

On the one hand, Trump's political appointees had issued an order that no career prosecutor could ethically obey. They could not in good conscience proceed with dismissing the prosecution for political reasons—especially not when the administration was apparently doing so as a tacit "quid pro quo" for Adams's cooperation on immigration enforcement (notably, the Department ultimately moved to dismiss the case "without prejudice"—ensuring that they could hold the threat of renewed prosecution over Adams's head going forward, as a way to secure his ongoing compliance). 

The Grave of Liberty

 Amid ongoing public alarm over whether or not Trump—in his push to expand executive power in unprecedented ways—might at some point simply refuse to comply with federal court orders and cause a constitutional crisis, it can't be a good sign that Trump chose to post a comment on social media today saying—in effect—that he views himself as above the law. 

My first thought, when I read the comment, was that it sounded like Carl Schmitt for Dummies. Trump was invoking an inchoate version of the Nazi theorist's concept of the "state of exception." And it should not be lost on us that several figures in Trump's orbit—including the Vice President—have been influenced by Schmitt in their ideological development. 

The Not Doing of a Thing

 Yesterday—inexplicably—the stock market roared upward again, with some major indices gaining more than a full percentage point. How could this be? I wondered. What could stock traders possibly have to be optimistic about right now? 

Our president is a madman trying to dismantle the federal government. He's provoking needless trade wars against our allies and upsetting the global order. We just had two straight days of worrying inflation data. The Fed chair indicated that interest rates will not not be coming down anytime soon. What could this market possibly be feeling good about? 

Someone Had Plundered

 Yesterday must have been a pretty deflating one for any foreign policy observers out there who still thought Trump's mercurial behavior might result in an unexpected last-minute shift toward favoring Ukraine's defense. All the signals from the administration in recent days tend to indicate—to the contrary—that they do indeed plan to execute the worst-case version of their threatened "America First" policy when it comes to the Eastern European nation fighting for its life. 

First, Hegseth went out of his way to tell European policymakers that the United States is fundamentally uninterested in supporting the continent's defense against territorial aggression. And then—later in the day—Trump had a call with Putin, the read-out of which suggested that he does indeed intend to sell out the Ukrainians. The terms he and Hegseth have identified for a "negotiated peace" to the conflict would essentially amount to unilateral concessions to Putin's war aims. 

Sane-Washing

 I was listening to a podcast on my walk home this afternoon, on which a group of scholars and commentators were providing a thoughtful "political and legal analysis" of Trump's recent "proposal" to bulldoze Gaza, permanently deport its entire civilian population, and redevelop it as a beachfront resort.

"Maybe it's a bargaining position," they suggested. "It's outside-the-box thinking that is already forcing some changes in the region," they said. "Transferism has always been closer to mainstream Israeli foreign policy thinking than many people suggest," they offered. 

Thirty Tyrants

 I was reading Robert Fagles's translation of Sophocles's Oedpius at Colonus yesterday. The introduction in the Penguin Classics edition tells me that the play was most likely first performed at what could be described as an all-around low-point in Athenian history. The city had recently faced a humiliating military defeat. After years of conflict with its neighbors, it was at the low ebb of its imperial fortunes. 

Even worse, it was facing occupation-from-within. The city's democratic institutions had been overthrown, and supplanted with a Spartan-backed dictatorship made up of thirty tyrants. (All of which is all-too-relatable, as we face the dismantling of our own democratic institutions at the hands of the Putin-backed dictators who have gained power over our own government machinery.)

Perverting Truth

 What's most unsettling about J.D. Vance—the thing that makes him so eerily effective in the dark wizardly of propaganda—is not only that he lies and cheats. Anyone could do that. It's that he always manages to seem so righteously aggrieved when he lies. It's like, at the very moment he's picking your pocket, he genuinely feels he has the moral high ground. He is the past master of putting on the "seeming-to-be-wronged-when-actually-you-yourself-are-doing-wrong" look (to quote Aristophanes).

This weekend's controversy about a fired "DOGE" employee is a typical example. The Wall Street Journal had earlier managed to link the 25-year-old employee to a social media account that posted overtly racist comments about Indian people and other minorities (the racism of the posts, by the way, was not something subtle or questionable. It was stuff like: "Normalize Indian hate" and "I was racist before it was cool").

Legal Rage

 Of all Pam Bondi's grotesque orders at the start of her reign as our new Attorney General, none knocked the wind out of me quite so much as her suggestion that the Justice Department would now try to lean on state prosecutors in order to secure new death penalties for the people whose federal capital sentences Biden had just commuted. 

Apparently, serving out the reminder of their lives in federal prison is not enough to satisfy the malice and vindictiveness of our new AG. The government must also pursue them to the ends of the earth, layering on a second prosecution and further capital sentence for crimes for which they've already been convicted and sentenced. 

Ni Shocked Ni Awed

 In this third week of the second Trump presidency, the Big Man himself seems just as unhinged as ever. But he has also gotten suddenly less scary. 

The game-changer for me was seeing how quickly Trump chickened out on his own tariff war. To be sure, the whole situation was alarming. For twenty-four hours, Trump held a loaded gun to the head of the world economy. He took the global system to the brink—for no reason at all—by declaring an unprovoked trade war against our closest neighbors and allies. It was the economic equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

2025: The Limit of Thought?

 A number of dates have been proposed over the years for the end of the world. Jesus estimated two thousand years ago that the apocalypse would be coming any day now. Sir Thomas Browne, writing more than sixteen hundred years after that, said it was "too late to be ambitious"—because the demise of human civilization was due at any moment. Two hundred years after that, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote (perhaps more metaphorically) that the world was imminently bound to "fall asunder, being old." 

Closer to our own time, many people looked to the year 2000 as a nice round number on which the world might choose to end. When the Y2K apocalypse failed to materialize, many New Age types turned to the Mayan Calendar to suggest that the end times were due in 2012. They even got a Hollywood movie out of the premise. 

Solidarity vs. Scapegoating

 It turns out, when you are utterly unhampered by morality, scruples, or any devotion to the truth, it's actually very easy to be a demagogue. Thus, there was no great tactical genius behind Trump's decision to redirect blame for an aviation disaster—that occurred on his watch—by blaming "DEI" (code for women, trans people, racial minorities, and people with disabilities). Anyone could have done it—it's the oldest trick of scapegoating in the book. Yet—it worked, for all that. 

What actually happened here? Let's review. The Trump administration came into office a couple weeks ago vowing to dismantle the federal government. They proceeded to do so—imposing a hiring freeze and trying to strip federal workers of civil service protections in order to replace them with MAGA goons. Then—just a couple days into their campaign of destruction—there was a critical failure at a major federal agency that appears to have been due to understaffing. 

Another Bubble Burst

 A friend sent me a cartoon earlier this week from the New York Times that offered a particularly bleak window into the state of the contemporary heterosexual marriage. My friend said he found the piece "unsettling" but insightful. I agree it's unsettling—and I would even grant that it's gesturing toward an insight—but I'm not sure it gets there. Or maybe it reaches a different insight from the one it intends.

There are a number of strange things about the piece. One is the title—which I'm sure was chosen by an editor, rather than the author, since it reflects very little of the cartoon's actual contents. The Times's chosen headline reads: "I Quit the Patriarchy and Rescued My Marriage." But in the course of the cartoon, it's by no means clear that she either quit the patriarchy or saved her marriage. 

Ease Has Demoralized Us

 Future historians will be hard-pressed to explain why the United States—at the very moment it was at the pinnacle of its global power—decided to blow up its own economy and take the rest of the world down with it. Why—when we were the world's only advanced economy to emerge more-or-less unscathed from the pandemic; why—when we were the most prosperous nation in the world, and had just managed to pull off a soft landing from the post-pandemic inflation without losing employment; why—with all these successes and the future looking bright—did we choose that moment to torpedo our own alliance system and sabotage our own economy by antagonizing our closest friends and trading partners? 

The true answer may come down to the quirks of one man—Trump—and his outdated 1990s obsession with NAFTA and his creepy preference for our nation's authoritarian adversaries (including China and Russia) over our friends and treaty allies. But let's suppose for an instant that there is some deeper sociological explanation that transcends the idiosyncrasies of one elected leader. Let's suppose, on some level, the American people wanted this. Why? Why destroy a global alliance system and economic order that overwhelmingly benefits our own nation and has secured to it an enviable position of prosperity and global leadership. Why are we doing this to ourselves? 

Perishing Republic

 It's hard not to feel that today marks the end in some way of the American experiment. Trump's unprovoked trade war against our two closest neighbors and allies—Mexico and Canada—may not be the single most destructive decision in the nation's history. But it stands out as among the most gratuitously destructive. 

Mexico and Canada, after all, did nothing to deserve this wanton act of aggression. Up to the moment Trump declared his new levies, they were willing to make any concessions that he asked of them. But ultimately, Trump didn't even post any demands. There was nothing he wanted from them, other than to attack them and needlessly eviscerate another set of crucial relationships with our nation's friends and partners. 

Montezuma's Revenge

 As of this morning, Trump is still saying he's about to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico—even though he signed a free trade agreement with them during his first term, and they remain a close ally, friendly neighbor, and one of our two largest trading partners. The Mexican government has tried to offer him concessions—but it seems there's nothing he actually wants in exchange (so much for that "Trump's tariffs are just bargaining leverage" theory). He's just pointlessly, vainly torpedoing our international relationships for its own sake. It's the ultimate acte gratuit. 

Mexico and Canada have, understandably enough, threatened to retaliate if Trump goes through with this. And who can blame them? It's Trump who started this trade war in the first place, without the slightest provocation from either of our allies. So I can't fault them for defending their interests. But a lot of Americans will suffer cruelly as a result—not least in our agricultural sector. And so, one of the many ironies of Trump's policy is that the people who will pay the price are not Mexican nationals—but U.S. farmers in states that voted overwhelmingly to return him to the White House. 

Spy on This

 In addition to his sweeping purge of federal officials who work on issues related to diversity, inclusion, and accessibility for people with disabilities—Trump has also expanded his witch hunt outside the reaches of government. One of his executive orders targeting DEIA programs—notoriously—directs officials to identify up to nine non-profit organizations to investigate for diversity- and accessibility-related thought crimes. The weird specificity of this number is especially chilling. Why nine, and not eight or ten? Its arbitrariness is part of the point—because the point is to make a show of arbitrary power. 

It's not clear that any federal agencies have yet opened such investigations (though this dark night of the nation's soul is still young, friends—give it time). But nonprofits were treated to a creepy little surprise this week nonetheless—as the New York Times reports—when an unexpected new sign-up appeared on their email lists. It would seem that an address belonging to the government's internal DEIA monitor—the same account the administration is using to goad government employees into ratting on one another about prohibited DEIA activities—has apparently been enrolled in all of their mailing lists.