The Teacher of Crime

 You can always count on Trump to exploit any tragedy as an excuse to smear and stigmatize a vulnerable group. In the wake of the shooting in D.C. of two national guard members, Trump of course wasted no time in blaming Afghani nationals collectively, and calling for a halt to all further migration from that war-torn nation (even though U.S. intervention over decades is a large part of what made it so war-torn). 

Now, on Thanksgiving weekend, Trump has broadened his attack to include immigrants of every nationality and legal status. Borrowing a term from European white nationalists, Trump called openly on social media for "reverse migration"—a term that in Europe is generally understood to refer to a call for the ethnic cleansing of non-white people from the continent, regardless of their citizenship status. 

Bloody Faith

 A decade or two ago, the values of liberal democracy seemed so securely entrenched in a hegemonic position in world thought, that many on the Left believed they could thumb their noses at them with impunity. Many of us thought that—in a world where seemingly every available shade of opinion in the mainstream parties fell somewhere within the liberal-democratic axis—the biggest threats to left-wing values could only come from "neoliberalism" and "neoconservatism." 

This led many of us to make common cause with post-liberal conservatives, "communitarians," and "trad cons"—since they seemed, for the moment, to share the same enemies. This was the era when you could see Norman Mailer getting interviewed in the pages of the American Conservative, say, and think nothing of it. They both opposed the Iraq War—right? So what was there for them to disagree about? 

The Tribute That Vice Pays to Virtue

 The most insufferable thing about neoconservatism—back in its heyday—was always its rank hypocrisy. The neoconservatives of the Bush era supported war; they supported militarism; they supported torture and surveillance and indefinite detention and other cruel abuses of executive power. But all the time, they dressed it up in sanctimony. They said: we are doing these things because we are more in favor of democracy and human rights than you are. We are doing it because we want to see liberal democracy triumph everywhere. 

In short—even when they were bombing civilians and sending people to CIA black sites—they still declared it was all in the name of universal values. (Which is why Harold Pinter ironically entitled his poem about the Bush administration's chauvinism and aggression "Democracy," for instance.)

The Spoon River Clarion

 In recent days, the Intercept reported on a federal case in Texas in which a young man has been indicted literally just for possessing and transporting anarchist zines. There is no question that the material in these magazines is First Amendment–protected. So, how could moving them around be a crime? 

The feds' theory of the case is that he was deliberately moving these magazines in order to hide evidence that could incriminate his girlfriend. But there is nothing at all incriminating about these materials. All they could reveal, if investigators found them, was that his girlfriend had an interest in anarchism as an ideology—or, at the very least, was reading about it. 

Which—again—is not a crime. 

A Menace Which Was Worse

 Trump's recent ultimatum to Ukraine to accept a Russia-friendly "peace" deal before Thanksgiving amounts to a pretty obvious case of appeasement. But people on both the left and the right have tried to muddy the moral clarity of the issue by portraying the Ukrainian government as just as flawed as Putin. 

Everyone knows that Putin is a dictator. But the "America First" brigade can also point to Ukraine's lack of wartime elections (permitted under the Ukrainian Constitution) to say: "but see, Zelensky is an unelected dictator too." 

Let's Not Invade Nigeria and Venezuela

 The timing of a major attack on a Catholic school this week in Nigeria is—I confess—a bit uncanny—and not at all helpful for those of us who oppose U.S. military intervention in the country (though this is, to state the obvious, hardly the worst or most important thing about it). 

For weeks, after all, Donald Trump has been catering to evangelical voters by railing against alleged anti-Christian persecution in the country. But when he first started talking about it—it wasn't all that clear exactly what he had in mind. 

Peacock vs. Southey

 Thomas Love Peacock is often regarded—perhaps due in part to his irresistible name—as a "light" novelist. He wrote short social satires, we are told—comedies ending in marriage—with alliterative titles—which all feature a group of pedants and eccentrics gathering in a country estate somewhere in order to debate various philosophical and political issues. 

Indeed, all of this is true; but only up to a point. The description I have just given you, of the default Peacock novel, accurately describes Headlong Hall (his first novelette); Nightmare Abbey (minus the usual alliteration); and Crotchet Castle—works that do indeed belong to the tradition of "learned comedy" (much like those of Swift, the elder Samuel Butler, or Laurence Sterne). 

The Projection of the Self

 The excellent newsletter Garbage Day had a piece out earlier this week about the latest Epstein revelations. They dwelled in particular on the fact that one thing we learned from the newly-released data trove of Epstein emails was just how close the pedophile financier was, in life, to Steve Bannon. 

This is—to say the least—richly ironic. Bannon, after all, has probably been more responsible than any other figure in politics for mainstreaming right-wing populist ideology. His whole ostensible worldview is a quasi-conspiratorial one, in which a corrupt and Machiavellian "globalist" elite exploits and abuses ordinary people for their own profit. 

De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum?

 Back in September, when a generation of progressives was being cancelled from the right for saying something negative about Charlie Kirk after his death—another group of liberals was being cancelled from the left for saying something positive about him. Ezra Klein was one of the people in the latter category. He landed in hot water with his fellow progressives, for daring to pen something approximating praise of the deceased right-wing podcaster. 

"Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way," read the title of Klein's piece, published the day after his assassination. And to be sure—the authors of op-eds in the New York Times rarely get to choose their own headlines. But in this case, the title was not inconsistent with the contents of the piece itself. 

Kings Must Murder Still

 In Trump's tirade yesterday—in which he laced into an ABC journalist for daring to question Trump's royal guest about his complicity in the 2018 murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi—one word particularly stood out to me: "insubordinate." That's what Trump called the woman who asked the question (among many other cruel things): "insubordinate." 

Insubordinate? To whom? Who exactly does she supposedly work for here? Trump? Or the crown prince of Saudi Arabia? 

Hide the Shame!

 The revelations that have emerged from the massive data trove of Jeffrey Epstein emails released last week have obviously been pretty distasteful. But—for the most part—I haven't found them particularly destabilizing to my worldview or to my understanding of human nature. 

After all: most of the people who have been further discredited—as we've learned the extent of their friendship with Epstein over the years—already seemed like jerks or creeps to start with: Woody Allen, Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz, etc. And that's not even to mention Steve Bannon or Trump—about whom no revelation, however dark, could possibly surprise me at this point. 

Imperial Rhetoric

 I spend so many days of the week now basically agreeing with Bush-era neoconservatives on subjects like Trump, or Vladimir Putin, that I often forget what a chasm still separates our views. If I was in need of a reminder, though—Bret Stephens's column yesterday in the New York Times gave it to me. 

"The Case for Overthrowing Maduro," it was called. And yes, it amounted to a standard Bush-era argument for deploying U.S. military force to topple a Third World dictator. 

Democracy: Training Grounds for Virtue

 For weeks now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has been launched on what seems to be the world's most improbable redemption arc. 

At first, she just broke with her party on the Epstein files and Israel. But I didn't think much of this at the time. Some observers theorized that these moves represented an emerging effort to distance herself from Trump—but I wasn't persuaded. I could think of a much darker through-line connecting these cases. 

Cobbett's Snuff

 The New Yorker ran a piece yesterday about the age of political assassination we seem to have entered—represented by the multiple attempts that have been made on Trump's life; the killing of Charlie Kirk; and the murder of the United Health CEO Brian Thompson just over a year ago. 

The author of the article rightly criticizes the "cult of personality" that has sprung up around the alleged Brian Thompson assassin, Luigi Mangione; but it appears that cult is here to stay regardless.

I Number Him in the Song

 When the news broke the other week that Dick Cheney had died, I didn't, at first, know what—if anything—I wanted to say about it. 

On the one hand, I could say—with Shelley—"I hated thee, fallen tyrant!" This man was, after all, one of the bete noires of my youth—a dark wizard of the Bush administration who was at least partially responsible for the torture program, extraordinary rendition, the invasion of Iraq that cost a hundred thousand civilian lives, the fact that there are still human beings pining in Gitmo to this day with no charge or trial or prospect of release, and more. 

Where Extremes Meet

 I never could quite bring myself to buy into the Wilhelm Reich theory that the psychic origin of fascism lies in sexual repression. After all—so much of the modern far-right seems grounded much more in a psychology of indulgence. The implicit promise of today's extremist movements often seems to be the release from all inhibitions—the relaxation of any moral norm or cultural taboo that could conceivably constrain one—rather than the repression of one's drives. 

But I had to give Reich's notion a second look yesterday, after listening to Ezra Klein's interview with John Ganz about the "groyperification" of the American right. Because one thing that their analysis of Nick Fuentes revealed is that the cult of sexual self-denial does indeed play a central—if rather paradoxical—role in the extreme right "Groyper" movement. 

Insolent Praise

 Recently, global human rights watchdogs completed a review of the U.S. air strike in April that killed more than 60 African asylum-seekers at a detention camp in Yemen, in the early months of this administration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they concluded that, yes, the strike was indeed a war crime—an unjustifiable attack on a civilian target that served no discernible military objective. 

This was the same strike, let us recall, that senior administration officials were discussing over that notorious Signal chat that they accidentally leaked to a journalist. The chat shows Vance, Hegseth, and others crowing over the results of the strikes—even as we now know they were snuffing out the lives of more than 60 innocent civilians. 

Reprieve

 The Associated Press reported yesterday on a case from Oklahoma in which the governor's last minute clemency spared the life of a death row inmate, Tremane Wood, just hours before he was slated for execution. 

This last-minute act of clemency is surely to be applauded. But a gruesome twist in the story came when the inmate—shortly after learning that his life would be spared—reportedly collapsed in his cell due to "dehydration and stress." He had to be rushed to the medical unit, where the same state government that had been set to kill him mere hours before now strove (successfully, as it proved, for now) to save his life. 

The Empty Breadbasket

 Gordon Comstock—the (anti?)hero of George Orwell's excellent novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying—about the dilemmas of the would-be starving artist—suffers from a fate that many of us can relate to. 

On the one hand, Comstock's family perceives him as "clever." He is good in school. He reads books. He has intellectual aspirations. They therefore assume he will go far and "Make Good." Indeed, Comstock's sister trusts that he will be the one to redeem the family fortunes. 

Court Intrigue

 When the news broke yesterday about Trump's name showing up in the Epstein emails, I confess that I mostly just rubbed my palms together in typical Resistance lib glee. "Oohoo boy, looks like more bad news for Trump! Gimme gimme!" I said. 

A friend called me up shortly afterward, though, to say: "actually, I think we just lost the midterms." The latest round of Epstein headlines—in his view—were the best thing that could have happened to Trump; and the worst that could have happened to Democrats. 

Do tell, I said.

The Lesser-Known Orwell Novels

 This week, I've been reading some of those overlooked and often half-forgotten books from the middle of George Orwell's career: the realist novels of the 1930s, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up for Air. They are deeply strange and surprising books. I don't say I dislike them. To the contrary, I found them both entertaining and highly readable. 

But what strikes one most about them is how different they are from the Orwell we know from the essays and the political writings. 

Whereas the Orwell I idolized in my youth was a democratic socialist, compelled to stake a clear moral position on every issue of the day—these two books from the middle of his career are fiercely, provocatively apolitical—with an almost philistine contempt for socialist do-gooders and anti-fascist democracy-defenders, and for many of the causes we now most associate with Orwell. 

The Ruin of the State

 It is morally abhorrent that Trump has been going out of his way to deny food stamps benefits to hungry families throughout this federal shutdown. I know this intellectually. But—for whatever perverse reason—it was only an Associated Press story that ran over the weekend—about the impact of this policy on people's pets, specifically—that really brought home its human impact to me. 

Trump's decision to fight a district court judge's order—mandating the disbursement of SNAP payments to the states—and to threaten various penalties against states if they proceeded with paying out full food stamps benefits anyway—has meant that many impoverished families faced food insecurity this week. And, as a consequence—the AP points out—this often means hunger for their animals as well. 

The Violence of Neurotic Guilt

 We know we've reached a low point in modern history when the "mainstream" conservative movement seems to be openly debating with itself whether to make common cause with Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. But that appears to be what's happening this week—in the wake of Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes—and Kevin Roberts's bizarre decision to go out of his way to defend it.

In just the past week, seemingly—the main dividing line within the MAGA movement has become whether or not to join forces with Fuentes's extreme-right "Groyper" movement. Tucker Carlson, the ever-repulsive Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule, and the leadership of the Heritage Foundation seem to be on team Neo-Nazi.

Smoked into Spirit

 The New York Times ran a gut-wrenchingly sad story earlier this week about a Guatemalan woman who was shot to death in Indiana for mistakenly entering the wrong house. 

She was working an ordinary day on a cleaning job. But she accidentally tried to enter a house that was in front of the one she was supposed to clean. For her mistake, she received a bullet to the face. 

Torture Without a Memo

 The Bush administration's post-9/11 torture program (which was briefly back in the news this week due to the death of Dick Cheney, and the various obituaries that were published afterward to chronicle his career and try to assess his legacy) was surely among the low points of my lifetime, when it comes to U.S. human rights abuses. 

From the standpoint of the human rights campaigner, however, it at least had the advantage of being a specific policy. It therefore could be reversed. It could be seen as a temporary aberration. And one could measure progress against it. When the Obama administration took power and rescinded the torture memos (even though they kept up many other abuses of power under the War on Terror), one could notch a victory. At least we knew that one awful moral blot on our history was behind us. 

Après-moi

 For the last several days, Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans to do away with the filibuster. In response, they have raised all the obvious objections to this plan from a GOP perspective: Democrats will eventually come to power again. Without the filibuster, they would be free to enact a far-reaching agenda. They might even use simple majority votes to enact DC statehood and thereby secure a permanent legislative majority in the chamber, etc. 

Trump's response to this was revealing. He said—in essence—that Republicans just need to use their post-filibuster powers to change so many election rules, before the midterms, that Democrats will never be able to win an election again. 

Pinkertons of Prey

 I think we're starting to notice a pattern here. First, we see a hospital report or cell-phone footage of ICE agents tackling a protester—or inflicting violence or tear gas on a random civilian who happened to be in the vicinity at the wrong time. There is a wholly justified outcry from the public. 

And so, ICE starts to blame the victim. They say: "Oh, they rammed our vehicle; oh, they were throwing stones; oh, they were impeding our activities; oh, we were afraid for our safety (even though we are heavily armed, and they are not)."

Bertrandism vs. Mamdani-ism

 Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral elections Tuesday elicited a number of high-handed, sneering remarks from centrist- to center-right commentators. Several of them even used a version of the same phrase. "There’s just not that much to be achieved through 'soak the rich' rhetoric"—Matt Yglesias wrote yesterday. Bret Stephens, writing in the New York Times, similarly dismissed Mamdani's DSA platform as nothing more than battle plans for "soaking the rich." 

I'm reminded of Bertrand's monologue to Jim Dixon, in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, about the political agenda of the postwar British Labour Party: 'But their home policy... soak the rich ... I mean ...’ He seemed to be hesitating. ‘Well, it is that, pure and simple, isn’t it? I’m just asking for information, that’s all. I mean that’s what it seems to be, don’t we all agree? I take it that it is just that and no more, isn’t it?" 

Blown to Smithereens

 Earlier this week—as you may have already forgotten—Donald Trump threatened to resume U.S. nuclear testing after a thirty-year hiatus. The reason, he said, was that the other side had done it first. 

This, however, was simply not true. No one had broken, or even threatened to break, the testing ban but Trump. 

What appears to have happened is that Trump misinterpreted a news headline from days earlier. What had happened—as the news media widely reported—is that Russia had tested nuclear-powered weapons.