#(something which was in-line with American and International policy)

[charlesoberonn]

It's called Accusation in a Mirror and it's very intentional as part of their propaganda, going back to Joseph Goebbels:

"Accuse the other of which you're guilty."

You can see a clear example of it in the Republicans' attempt to smear Biden for the kind of nepotism and corruption that Trump did openly during his presidency.

[mariacallous]

Wading through the latest dreck from the 2024 campaign, it seems that a racist congressman from Louisiana has demanded that the mythic dog-and-cat-eating, “vudu”-practicing Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, slurred by Donald Trump on the national debate stage earlier this month, “better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.” Or else. Under pressure from colleagues in the House on Wednesday, the congressman, Clay Higgins, deleted the social-media post. Then hours later he told CNN that he stood by it anyway: “It’s all true. . . . It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off.” Asked about the controversy, House Speaker Mike Johnson called Higgins “a dear friend of mine” and a “very principled man.” As for the tweet, Johnson, an ostentatiously devout Christian, replied, “We move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

Outrage is an impossible emotion to sustain in this age of manufactured political outrage. I know it; Higgins and Johnson surely know it, too. Indeed, they are counting on it. Who, after all, will remember this particular bit of hate speech next week, when there will undoubtedly be so many newer, fresher outrages to be upset about? But still. Maybe pause a minute on this one. While Democrats agonize over the proper levels of policy detail required to prove Kamala Harris’s suitability for the Presidency, Trump and his acolytes have gone deep into the racist recesses of the American psyche to run a campaign meant to stir the passionate hatreds and deepest insecurities of their followers.

J. D. Vance recently made the mistake of publicly admitting the artifice inherent in all this. In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate was asked about the alleged Haitian pet consumption and why he and the former President kept bringing up a story that had no basis in fact. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” he said. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” When Bash expressed shock at his admission, Vance backpedalled, but barely, claiming that he had, in fact, heard “firsthand accounts” from his constituents, causing him to spread the rumor, never mind that they were swiftly debunked. “But,” he concluded, “yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’s policies.”

Days of coverage ensued about what he did or did not admit in the interview, lost in which was the important point that this was not a “gotcha” story about a single errant statement from Vance but a core belief that has underpinned the MAGA approach to politics since Trump’s demagogic début, nine years ago. The jokes about Trump’s “they’re eating the dogs” debate line might have missed the point, which is that when the laughter fades, the slurs remain. This is how propaganda works. Ask Congressman Higgins.

I was reminded of this when I received a call from Fiona Hill, the top National Security Council aide on Russia for much of Trump’s Presidency. Hill told me that she was stunned by how similar Vance’s defiant embrace of the radicalizing power of stories, whether true or not, was to the views advanced by Vladimir Putin’s chief international propagandist, the Russia state-television personality Margarita Simonyan: So what, in effect, if we make stuff up? “I was just really struck: RT and VT—Vance-Trump—are the same,” she said. “It’s the same weaponization of migration and disinformation.”

The episode recalled for Hill an incident early in Trump’s Presidency, in November of 2017, when Trump tweeted out several inflammatory videos from a British far-right group purporting to show attacks carried out by Muslim immigrants. British officials contacted Hill, urging her to get the White House to have Trump pull down his tweets and disavow them. But, she said, when she brought the concerns to the White House press staff, which was then run by the current governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she was rebuffed. Hill was told that Trump was simply using the videos to further his domestic political agenda. When Sanders was then asked about the tweets by reporters, her response was an uncanny preview of Vance’s recent remarks: “Whether it’s a real video,” she said, “the threat is real.”

Vance’s justification for the Springfield slur—that he was really making a point about “Kamala Harris’s policies”—is a reminder of another one of the big lies powering this election: the charade that Trump is actually an ideological MAGA warrior engaging in legitimate and substantive policy dispute, and that that policy agenda is what makes him appealing to his otherwise unrepresented followers. This canard has been one of the most persistent fallacies we’ve heard from Republicans about Trump, a category error that fundamentally misses what kind of politician he really is.

I was reminded of this often overlooked point while moderating a book launch for “The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within,” an important new academic work by Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former national-intelligence official covering Russia and Eurasia, and two academic colleagues, Erica Frantz and Joseph Wright. Their study places Trump in the international category to which he properly belongs—that of an aspiring autocrat who has taken over the Republican Party and turned it into a “personalist” vehicle for himself, the type of party that, in the authors’ words, exists “primarily to promote and further the leader’s personal political career rather than advance policy.” This is now a global phenomenon, the authors found—from Brazil under Bolsonaro and Turkey under Erdoğan to less cited cases in El Salvador, Georgia, Poland, Senegal, and Tunisia. Putin’s Russia, regrettably, is the modern archetype, a template going back more than two decades that the others have followed.

Where does all this leave the non-MAGA Republican? We actually know the answer to this one: they are hunkered down, still largely planning to vote the party line, averting their eyes, ignoring the slurs, and pretending that Trump and his campaign are something other than what they are. Nikki Haley offered a pretty clear version of the contortions required by the hard-core Republican partisan who both hates Trump and is voting for him anyway, because, well, the policy. During the début of Haley’s new Sirius XM radio show, on Wednesday, she struggled to explain why she was now publicly endorsing a man that she called “toxic” and “totally unhinged” just a few months ago. She said that she had not forgotten his campaign’s personal attacks on her—including, apparently, putting a bird cage outside of her hotel room to emphasize his insult of her as a “bird brain”—but that she was willing to overlook the insults now, because “politics is not for thin-skinned people” and she needed to think of “the good of our country.” She then listed the economy, the border, national security, and “freedom” as reasons why she would make such a sacrifice. Uh-huh.

To the extent that Trump is promoting policy in 2024 at all, his proposals largely revolve around a single theme: he will wave his magic wand and make problems go away. At the G.O.P. Convention in Milwaukee, he promised, “Under my plan, incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back, and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before.” In his rallies, he pledges to end the war in Ukraine “in twenty-four hours.” The Republicans’ all-caps political platform, which was approved at the Convention in Milwaukee after being personally dictated, in part, by Trump, contains planks such as vows to “STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC” and “MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN.”

Earlier this week in Georgia, Trump appeared at a campaign rally that was billed as a policy rollout for his plans to inaugurate “a new age of American industrialism.” In between extolling his proposed tariffs as a brilliant scheme to “take other countries’ jobs,” Trump, the policy maven, questioned Harris’s intelligence and patriotism, attacked electric cars (except those manufactured by his supporter Elon Musk), and said immigrants were “coming from all over the world” to ruin the country. Trump’s signature moment in this rally, as in other recent speeches, was when he recounted his takeaway from the two assassination attempts against him: “People say: It was God, and God came down and He saved you because He wants you to bring America back.” Still think this is about policy? Kamala Harris might need an eighty-two-page economic plan printed out on glossy paper, but not Trump. His was sent from Heaven above to rescue us. 

[theculturedmarxist]

thoughts on the democrat party

Personally I think the Dems are doing "their best" with Biden. From what I can see the shape that American society has taken due to corporate monopolization has influenced the party in such a way that it has divested itself from the necessary talent to either govern or develop a new intellectual framework to deal with emerging circumstances. Biden is the best they've got because party power has been monopolized by all the geriatric party bosses, who have spent decades weeding out any potential party rivals and self selecting for mediocrity and the kind of intellectual narrowness necessary to carry the nebulous Dem party line.

The Dems have been outfoxed at every turn in spite of their comparative popularity to the Reps because as awful as it is, the Reps at least have a vision of the future and how to get their, which the Dems absolutely lack, and you can't beat something with nothing. So the Dems default to the "norms" set by the Republicans whenever the Ds manage to get power, which only serves the Republican agenda as eventually they'll just get in power again and pick up where they left off.

Biden is actually the best they can do, because they have no one of any vision to energize the base, and even if they did they don't have the clout to either direct the party or attract investment from donors. The fact that an octogenarian with dementia is at the head of the party and nothing can be done about it points to how serious the problems in the party have become.

>At what point do the Dems just collapse from the institutional rot you're describing?

I'm not sure, really. I haven't really thought about it.

I suppose we might be seeing the first indications of such a collapse now. I think the marks of a healthy institution are for it to a) be able to identify, incorporate, and cultivate new talent, b) to have an internal well of theoretical and practical knowledge to draw from, and c) to utilize the previous two in novel ways in order to work towards some kind of future ideal and/or to deal with novel circumstances, both benign and malignant.

It's much more complicated than just Trump as a person, but him and the circumstances surrounding him are a novel, malignant circumstance as far as the Democratic Party is concerned, and one that it had failed to deal with after 8 years of wrangling with it. Bernie Sanders is another facet of this malignant novelty, and the party's manner of dealing with him is ironically why they're incapable of dealing with Trump. As far as the party runners are concerned, Sanders and other members of the 'progressives" in the party are a tumor to be combated. Even their mild reforms run counter to party orthodoxy and are not to be tolerated, and anywhere they might seriously challenge that orthodoxy, like we saw when they prevailed in Nevada, they have to be crushed. They're allowed to showboat and make their little tirades, but when it comes to any sort of actual challenge to party policy there are various means of chastening them, like we saw recently with AIPAC crushing the "squad" and making AOC cry.

So this rigidity has made adaptation and innovation basically impossible. There's just the status quo, and if you want to get anywhere in the party you have to serve that status quo with a practically religious devotion. The party is now overflowing with empty suits like Kamala and Buttigieg, the sort of mediocrities that have no real values, no real intellect, and whose only talent is being able to say with some level of conviction whatever currently serves the party's interests. Unfortunately for them, the party's interests are diametrically opposed to the general population's interests, so while they might be able to get up in front of a tv and deliver a speech someone wrote for them which will make PMC types on twitter and the MSNBC hosts they follow swoon, there's nothing there to attract average people and convince them to vote for them. They've heard it all before and because there's very little material difference to them in being fucked by a Republican or Democrat president, they don't really care.

So the crisis now is that they have nothing to beat Trump with, and no way to fix this situation. Even if they had the talent to fall back on, Biden himself represents a significant amount of clout within the party itself, and the party's convention rules mean that all the delegates they gave him are his to do with as he pleases, and for whatever reason refuses to give them up, probably because he's a) a bastard and b) his progressing dementia is bringing out all his worst qualities, and making the magnanimous play for the benefit of others is not something that Biden would ever, ever do.

Right now we're witnessing all the powers and interests behind the party trying to come to grips with these circumstances. The young, attractive party members that would be worth funding like AOC are unacceptable because the donors won't accept their politics, so giving them actual power within and over the party is out of the question. The old party hacks like Clinton or Pelosi wouldn't accept this either because it would threaten their own power and security. Anyone that would be acceptable to the party bosses lacks the ability to attract enough sections of the party donors and voters to be viable. They lack the charisma to appeal to the people, and Obama's ability to line them up behind themselves with "it's me or the pitchforks" type of rhetoric.

However this election shakes out, it won't change the fact that the Democratic party is in the grip of a small number of extremely powerful party bosses that can't be dislodged for various reasons, and that as long as they're alive they're going to do whatever it takes to maintain their positions. As long as they do, no one of any real talent is going to make it anywhere in the party, and as long as that's true it's only going to continue to stagnate. And even if Obama, Pelosi, Biden, Clinton, and the rest of the bosses died tomorrow, that still wouldn't bring much effect because the ideology of the bourgeoisie behind the party is rigidly devoted to the status quo out of political and economic necessity. With all that said, their party remains viable only as long as the status quo remains viable, and that is quickly becoming not the case. They've been able to indulge in this stagnancy only because they've been able to minimize or externalize all the worst effects of it, but between climate change, the ascendancy of BRICS, the war in Ukraine they're losing, the war in Palestine they're losing, the cold war over Taiwan they're losing, the ongoing COVID pandemic, the incipient Avian Flu pandemic, and many, many other very severe problems developing in and around the country, that indulgence becomes increasingly untenable.

So to sum up, we might be witnessing the early stages of an ongoing and possibly irreversible collapse at this very moment.

[juliens-bakery]

hi sorry this is so long ! this question may seem out of the blue, apologies, but why are so many boygenius fans on here, like, shameless liberals who won't tolerate any criticism of Biden? to be clear I'm not talking about your blog, I scanned it and it was so refreshing to see someone actually critical of the Dems and their instrumental role in the genocide. like, I see popular blogs in the fandom making aggressive posts that are basically “you HAVE to vote blue” and *yet, crucially*, they haven't reblogged anything actually critical of Biden? it seems the only time they talk about politics is to proselytise about how you HAVE to vote blue despite the *genocide*, and nothing negative about the actual policies, just scolding anyone to the left of them and saying hey biden's actually not that bad domestically !

i'm a POC boygenius fan from the global south and it's just something I've been observing keenly knowing that the external policies of that country will always hang over my head like a looming threat, whether blue or red is in power internally. and when young voters in that country do, for once, take cognizance of the devastation enacted on *our* countries by their govs, these liberals crawl out of the woodwork to scold them, then go back to posting about the latest julien-lucy sighting or whatever. it's surreal to see.

again, sorry for the unprompted rant, it's just been eating at me for so long and this blog just seems like one in the fandom that I can still trust. I just needed to get this off my chest. i fell in love with bg in 2020 I'll go back to streaming them now <3.

hi! thank you for this ask, it's been very thought-provoking for me, and i really do appreciate the trust. and no worries about the length, i'm about to one-up this shit.

it is a little hard for me to answer this question fairly. for one, the boygenius-sphere has changed a LOT since i started here (7 years! it's a long time!), and so a lot of my mutuals that i've had since are no longer here (shoutout @remembermydog though, we still here <3) and a bunch of new people have come through. so i'm really not as plugged in with the broader fandom space as i used to be, and i don't really follow a ton of new blogs these days, so i can't really say that i've seen everything that you've seen for myself.

that being said, even if i've had less ability to share your experiences, i do think what you're saying has a lot of truth to it. the obvious thought is that boygenius fans are disproportionately white, which naturally lends itself to that sort of optimism about the extant systems of power. fundamentally, i think, it is very difficult for a white person in that country to reconcile themselves with the idea that the extant systems of power were always bad to begin with and have never been fit for purpose, b/c they've always worked well enough for them. like, there's no innate moral value with being white or not, but it's not the most surprising correlation either. (and yes, i'm aware that boygenius fans are also disproportionately queer women, which counterbalances that optimism to a very real degree).

the frustrating thing is that there are so many people who refuse to even entertain the idea that some people have a moral line over which they will not cross. and i do think that there can be a moral obligation to do an unpleasant distasteful or "bad" thing in order to achieve better ends. but there's always balance between the depth of the wrong and the value of the ends. and everyone has to decide for themselves where that balance lies for them. if i was american, i don't think i would vote this year, for a bunch of reasons. i don't think i would begrudge anyone voting for biden, especially if they thought that trump would send even more bombs (although frankly i have no fucking idea what trump would do). i've voted for trudeau in years when i really didn't want to because of the voting patterns of my particular district. i am about to be an extension of the canadian legal system, which has inflicted incredible amounts of harm to indigenous people and many others.

voting for biden and not voting for biden are both moral compromises. the only question is: how much blood are you willing to get on your hands as you fight for a better world? everyone's line is different (and not everyone's line is acceptable). i think i'd be more comfortable with not voting, because i think joe biden is among the very guiltiest people for this genocide. so maybe i don't want to support and reinforce that guy! and fundamentally, a party that wins elections has much less incentive to change. and the thoughtless and condescending dismissal of these ideas that really infuriates me. so i am really sorry that your experiences of this space have been tainted in this way. there are lots of good and thoughtful people, and these years have been the most fulfilling period of my internet life. but it's a space full of people on the internet just like any other, and so i don't really think it's uniquely bad, but neither is it uniquely good. i've made a nice little space for myself, and i really hope you can find that too <3.

thanks for the ask. there were a lot of things i needed to get off my chest.

[phoenixyfriend]

International Taxes

Ko-Fi prompt from Ethan:

All I know about tariffs is that they're special taxes for international trade but people talk about them all the time. Please help explain

So we are going to talk about three things here:

Tariffs

VAT

Customs/Duties

I'll be using the US for most of my examples, because that's what I know best... and also because it's a very convenient example for the way VAT works on an international level.

Tariffs

You are correct that tariffs are special taxes for international trade. These are essentially fees that are applied to products being shipped in and out of a country in order to promote domestic product or impact a foreign one.

A common example is US steel. The United States has a fairly robust steel industry, and the government promotes that industry domestically by applying tariffs to imports. Back in 2018, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel imports and 10% on aluminum (something that the WTO said was illegal, but that's not relevant right now). The steel tariff had previously been a range of 8-30%, implemented by Bush in 2002. Prior to that, the steel tariff had generally been under 1%.

In applying that tariff, the federal government prioritized domestic purchasing. If domestic product is nominally $90 for one unit, and foreign product is $80, then it is cheaper and more appealing to buy from a foreign producer. With a 25% tariff, the foreign product is now functionally $100 per unit, making it more appealing to buy domestically. While the actual cost of the tax is born by the producing country, in the case of import tariffs, the result is the raising of costs when selling internationally.

Tariffs are also applied to specific countries. Once again using a Trump example, a $50 billion tariff was applied against China in 2018. This had negative impacts on the economy, as it led to worries of a trade war; China did retaliate by applying tariffs directly to specific products from the US, including wine and pork.

High tariffs theoretically lead to an increase in domestic trade, but they also lead to higher rates of smuggling. They are also a form protectionist policy, which was at its height in the 19th century for the US.

VAT - Value Added Tax

If you look up VAT, you get a lot of explanations that talk about how it is a tax that is levied against the consumer on the basis of the cumulative value of the product, and generally things are confusingly worded, so I'll save you some time:

It's sales tax.

If you are American like me, that's all it is. It's a different name for sales tax.

You get something for $8 at the store, but the final cost is $8.42? Those 42 cents are the VAT.

What does that have to do with international trade? Isn't that a domestic thing?

Well, yes and no. We'll start by comparing the US to most European countries.

See, the US has a different application of VAT than a lot of other places. In the US, sales tax is added at the very end of a purchase for the vast majority of places. This is because there is no federal sales tax. Instead, taxes are set by the state, county, and city governments. Take a look at this map of New York, and you'll see how much sales tax varies by just a few miles.

Given how much a pricing can vary from one town to the next, large corporations generate a greater profit by listing prices in their pre-tax form, and then adding that tax at the end. The consumer knows that there will be a higher price at the counter than is listed, because the standard in the US is to not include that tax. So your Arizona Iced Tea will be a $1 in Portland and $1 in Queens County, matching that promise on the can... but you'll still be paying $1 in Portland and $1.09 in Queens, because only one of those areas has sales tax, despite both being in the same country.

This works out for the retailer, because the consumer does not blame them for raising prices across county lines, if there is a sales tax hike. The thought of "it's cheaper ten miles down the road, I'll get to it later," followed by never getting to it and thus never making a purchase, is rarer, because the listed price is still the same. It also means having to print or design fewer price tags; imagine having to manually change every price in a supermarket magazine! Every coupon needs to have its price changed by a few cents, to account for tax!

...or you can just print the same magazine with the same prices and write "plus tax" after the listed cost.

All this to say, Americans are used to adding sales tax at the end, and knowing that the price they see is not the price they'll pay.

Other countries Do Not Do This.

I mean, some do. But we're talking about the ones that don't, which includes the entirety of the EU, India, some of Japan, and the country I actually have extensive experience with: Serbia.

I am currently in Serbia, which means I'm in a country with a sales tax/VAT that is higher than I'm used to (20% on most goods, 8% on essentials). In every store I've been to, the tax is included in the listed price. If it says 87 rsd on a carton of milk, I will be paying 87 rsd at checkout. The baseline price is 80 rsd, and then there's the 8% tax, and the final price is 86.4, which gets rounded up to the 87 that is listed on the tag.

If you aren't accustomed to thinking about VAT like in the US, online shopping can be... a trial.

If I purchase something from, say, Canada, and have it mailed to the US, I am given the sales tax as part of the purchasing process. It will format the receipt as the product plus sales tax. This is familiar to me.

To someone from the EU who does not purchase internationally (specifically from the US, Canada, or other countries that don't include sales tax in the sticker price), this tax can often come as a surprise.

And, finally, in some cases... the will be paid at the very end, at the point of pickup, along with customs. I recently purchased something from an English creator that was manufactured in Germany and then shipped to Serbia. I anticipated that I had paid the VAT for Serbia when purchasing the product. It was instead added at the point of purchase, as Serbia is neither in the EU nor in a trade agreement with the relevant countries that would allow for me to pay the VAT online, I had to pay the 20% in addition to customs when picking up the package from the postal office.

Despite not being a tariff or customs/duty payment, VAT can have a direct impact on international purchasing.

Customs/Duties

Customs and duties are taxes applied to products based on those product characteristics.

There is overlap with tariffs. As a consumer, you are... not going to be very affected by the difference between customs and tariffs.

Customs are like VAT, in that they are paid by the consumer rather than by the manufacturer.

You can think of tariffs as a fee that a manufacturer pays to sell something internationally (though that cost is often passed on to the consumer), and customs as a fee paid by a consumer to receive that good.

Hope this helps!

(And if anyone here is more familiar with the subject than I am, please feel free to add on or correct me! I'm generally pretty good about international policy, but I'm not an expert, and this subject can be a complicated one.)

(Prompt me on ko-fi!)

[compacflt]

okay "normie median Biden voter ice" got me. That's funny. But also so true! It prob took him a bit to vote dem too (though I believe that Ice would have never voted for Trump). Would love to hear more thoughts on Ice and Mav's politics. Also the list of who they would have voted for if you're willing to share.

i do worry that posting my extremely in-depth headcanons about some of this stuff will have the JKR “wizard shit” effect on my writing and ruin it a little, but ask and ye shall receive

copy-pasted straight from my list of “unhinged compacflt!top gun headcanons” that ive been keeping since september: on ice & mav's politics

16. Since their friendship began, Ice has always told Maverick who to vote for, since Maverick doesn't care enough to pay attention to national politics. They are begrudging ConservaDems (conservative political views, would vote conservative every election if Republicans weren’t actively sending them to war/actively promoting fascism). Ice’s voting record (and after 1988, Mav’s too) 1980-2020—note that he has always considered himself an “educated moderate”: 1980: Reagan. 1984: Reagan. 1988: Bush. 1992: Bush. 1996: Clinton (reaction to aftermath of PGW. Doesn’t care that Clinton enacted DADT because “I’m not [redacted], so it doesn’t apply to me”). 2000: Gore (refusal to vote for another Bush). 2004: Kerry (Mav votes Bush this year out of spite as he and Ice are going through their break-up). 2008: McCain (Navy loyalty). 2012: Obama (liked him as a person/worked closely with him, didn’t like his policies so much). 2016: Clinton (no other alternative). 2020: Biden (actually liked/previously worked with Biden, and now actively married to another man and therefore had to make some liberal concessions). 2024-onwards they will vote for any Democrat as long as they aren’t a “socialist.”

17. Also, Maverick didn’t vote in 2016. Partially because in my universe the TGM mission takes place that November, very near the election, and he has bigger fish to fry (something Ice will later take him to task for), and partially because I genuinely think he wouldn’t be able to stomach either mainstream candidate and probably would’ve voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, which might have torn his relationship with Ice to shreds a few days before schedule. “Are you fucking kidding me? Johnson? Pete, this moron’s moronic party wants to abolish the driver’s license—” / “—Yeah, and then I could ride your sweet wheels with no problem whatsoever—maybe he’ll abolish pilots’ licenses, too, I’d like to see that—” / “If you vote for Gary fucking Johnson, I will very happily stop footing the bill for your piece-of-shit airplane, and you can see how useful your pilot’s license is then—” / So Mav didn’t vote in 2016. 

35. In terms of what he Tweets: I do foresee, post-retirement, Ice basically becoming a neoliberal military intellectual type on Twitter a la Mark Hertling (look him up on Twitter). Bio: “Retired @SECNAV. Advisor @WhiteHouse and @VoteVets. Contributing writer @TheAtlantic. Interested in geopolitics & modern warfare. Aviator, husband, Padres fan. [American flag emoji]” Only posts pictures of himself and Maverick at three specific annual events: 1. their wedding anniversary (“36 years with this fool and he’s still surprised to find out that I like the F-5 better than the A-4 #happyanniversary”), 2. every EAA Airventure (huge airplane convention), 3. San Francisco’s Fleet Week (which of course they MUST attend, they even headline it in 2018). Informative, analytical, highly-respected. Maybe goes on CNN or NBC all the time to talk about civil-military relations shit (aversion to FOX since the start of the Iraq War). Gonna say he had like four really viral threads about Russia and Ukraine in April or May and so has 300k followers or something like that. He has a personal website that links back to his Twitter and every essay he writes for international publications, with a pretty braggadocious bio (something along the lines of “Tom Kazansky has directly almost started global nuclear war twice in his life, and in the thirty-year gap in between, sold the Swiss half their entire goddamn Air Force and directed an entire Fleet during the Iraq War”). Lots of tweets like “Military aviation hot take: Compared to the F-22, the F-35 is a waste of money. Source: husband with 400+ hours of F-35 experience.” / “[Quote tweet of Russian Foreign Minister boasting about Su-57 production lines] Oh, so you guys finally figured out how to make more than one every other year?” / “Analysis of the failure of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, from an ex-US Pacific Fleet Commander’s perspective: a short [thread emoji] [This thread gets 26k likes and 4k retweets]” / “This weekend my husband & I flew in to @EAA Oshkosh #OSH19 & took home first place for best P-51. Not to brag, but.” (A reply to this tweet: “Sir, you really know how to bury the lede that your husband is Adm. Pete ‘Maverick��� Mitchell. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.” / @TKazansky: “What, was it not obvious? Who else could it have been?”) Also, I see him writing a whole bunch of op-eds for international political magazines a la Tom Nichols (look him up on Twitter too). Writing analyses of recent geopolitical/military events for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Bulwark, the Navy Times, the Atlantic, Bellingcat, etc. Not so much focused on domestic issues (but VoteVets [socially progressive vets’ group] board member, and ardently pro-democracy, yay!). He’s a smart guy.

37. This is not a headcanon, just kind of a… a real-life implication. My Ice was Deputy Commander of Third Fleet in 2003, meaning he’d have been there in command of the USS Abraham Lincoln when President Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard that ship in May less than 2 months after the initial American invasion of Iraq. Very premature & embarrassing. Ice would’ve been in direct contact with Bush/Cheney/NSC bureaucrats many, many times during the war. I genuinely believe this is what pushed him over the edge into firm liberal territory.

[man-and-atom]

As much as we hear about the “anti-nuclear Left”, we have long cherished suspicions that there is nothing particularly “Leftist” about antinuclearism. Indeed, it seems generally opposed to the top-level goals espoused by the international labour movement, of less work and more of the good things of life for everyone.

This one-sided focus on the costs of action without considering the costs of inaction runs throughout Ramana’s book. His priority is proving why nuclear is no solution, not in proposing what could be a solution. He emphasizes the cost of doing something but totally neglects the cost of not doing it.

In that vein, it is good to see a dismantling of anti-nuclear positions from a publication which sees itself as a voice for the radical Left. The writer is not as strong as one might wish on certain factual points — most notably, fast-neutron reactors are so far from being a novel approach to atomic power, that the first power-generating reactor was of this type — but is very well-equipped to show just how bad is the fit between the anti-nuclear cause and the ideology some of its most vocal proponents attach themselves to, as well as how incoherent their positions really are.

Rutgers anthropology professor David McDermott Hughes concedes that if we give up both fossil fuels and nuclear power (and presumably large-scale hydro, too), it will indeed be difficult if not impossible to maintain a reliable grid. However, Hughes argues that this isn’t a problem — it’s a solution. He suggest that society needs to simply stop expecting constant electricity. Rather, Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico, home to regular interruptions to the power supply, provide models of “just and feasible ways of living amid intermittency.”

Professor Hughes’ ideas of social justice are… well, something else, to put it politely.

If we want to speed up decarbonization while delivering a prosperous, high-energy, egalitarian reindustrialization that will heal the economic wound that has driven the rise of global Trumpism, the Left must abandon outdated, evidence-free 1970s antinuclear ideology, neo-Malthusian degrowth rhetoric, and other eco-austerity politics. It is an insult to the millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck to be told by middle-class intellectuals that they consume too much. Instead, climate activists need to align with the industrial trade unions on the front lines of the clean energy transition, which strongly support nuclear energy and industrial policy for the high-quality, unionizable jobs they provide. Antinuclear politics, along with its technophobia, and antipathy toward industry, has been a colossal mistake. We need to rediscover the Left’s commitment to defending industrial modernity against counter-Enlightenment nostalgia and promising a far superior industrial modernity than capitalism could ever deliver.

Now the question : will this message be heard?

[smellenoftroy]

Argentina and Never Ending LIES of Privatization

Of all the things that infuriate me about Western coverage of Latin America, none are so angering than the way the West and the Neolib bootlickers across the world talk about every U.S.A backed anti-Communist, Neoliberal despot as if any of their violent, greedy, economically destabilizing "Reforms" are in any new.

Around 10:50, the Ghoul on the right asked Ramiro Tosi, Economist, ex-Argentina Undersecretary of Finance, if Milei's "Fiscal Responsibilty" (Social Mass Murder) is even possible in Argentina. As if overwhelming neoliberalism has not been the defacto economic policy since the Junta took control in 1976.

Not a single Peronista that has been able to win an election has even had the courage to undo any of the damage that the deregulatory regime of the Martinez De Hoz. A man with connections to David Rockefeller and Henry Kissenger and U.S business ties, who was given carte balance to reshape the Argentine economy after the Military took over.

The Ghoul then, corroborates Milei's schizo-speech about "The fall of the west" to "orientalism" and "Weakness" tip-toeing around his nationalist warmongering, to focus on his statements about *his kind of government being a rare species in the West and In Europe.

Psychotic lies, all of it.

Are we operating under the assumption that in a decade that has brought about monstrously unpopular rightist economic restructuring in just about every polity, from France to Brazil, that Milei is some sort of lone wolf?

Are we not seeing a Internationalized class realestate exploiters destroy the housing market of every Liberal nation on earth, while the Politicians just continuously pass legislation to make it easier for them to continue this murder? Aren't European Farmers on strike due to "economic restrucuring" that includes removal of tax credits and subsidies for agriculture, but completely keeps subsidies for Coal barons and Financial Speculators under the guise of, "incentivizing innovation"

The ease with which Liberal institutions simply shift their language into one that implies that we're all living under a Socialist Bloc, you'd think Gorbachev's reign was still just a glint in the Pizza Hut's wet dreams.

It is important to note this rant is about the coverage from Deutsche Welle, a German State News organization with that often Hosts American/ British news anchors when covering international topics. (to sucker in the yankees, and feed them their slop)

Side Track==>

I have long since stopped paying attention to American News outlets, since the veil of strategic disinformation is so transparent, media coverage is closer to dinner theatre than journalism. Anyone watching and engaging with anything that comes out of an American Journalist's mouth has to have suspended their disbelief in order to enjoy the show.

Much like how a Superman fan knows that Superman's disguise being easily seen through is something done for the audience's benefit; and thus they willing ignore it's unbelievability in order to enjoy the show, Informed News watchers willing engage with the blatant lies and doublespeak of their preferred News source in order to enjoy the slow dissent into hell that Fox and NYT narrate over. Ultimately European News agencies are no different. But their priorities are slightly different, and thus are able to things like "socialized healthcare is an undeniable good" and "Not every immigrant is a criminal rapist" without being sent before the House of UnAmerican Activities.

Side Track over==>

The "Economist" (Monetary Astrologer) ecchos the Ghoul's statement.

The ready made liar, as images of labour strikes and bread lines appear, says that there has never been economic deregulation in Argentina.

A BOLD FACE LIE, Anyone living in reality can discredit.

So often we are forced to put up with stories about right wing dictators in the Global South who are willing to give the people "Tough Love" and make "harsh decisions", as if everyone living south of the United States is a child who needs a parent to spank them.

But all of these stories are deliberately divorced from any reality or history that has actually happened in the Global South.

The Financial Astrologer, those German Ghouls propped up to sell out his people, likely for more money than the Union leadership who are so desperately trying to prevent this catastrophe, make in a years worth of Union dues, happens to have been Undersecretary of Finance (keynesian make-work for pathological exploiters) in a previous government.

Let's see what policies his party spearheaded when it was power.

What kind of blind Utopianism has he spearheaded that lead Argentina down such a decline.

The First result for his name is some kind of Think tank he directs. There doesn't appear to be a wikipedia article on him so we'll go with this as our first insight.

To save you all some scrolling all you need to know is that this man is currently the "independent Director" of Banco Macro, which is the

"the second largest domestically-owned private bank in Argentina, and the sixth-largest by deposits and lending"

Naturally is a graduate of Applied Capitalist Thought from a Prestigious University in Argentina so this man has always been a professional profiteer, but what about his tenure in government?

Surely directing a massive bank didn't interfere with his duties, carrying out the Marxist agenda of the pre-Milei Argentine government?

Westerners have created in their mind this idea of the whole of Latin America socialist dystopias that haven't learned about the greatness of the Free market.

When in reality the FIRST PLACE that those PSYCHO CHICAGO BOYS set up a government was in Latin America under the auspices of a military dictatorship funded by the United States.

None of this is new, none of this has worked, and yet the show continues. The slow dissent is lovingly guided by a friendly voice.

[sab-cat]

Nov 30, 2023

"The New Yorker" has called this Elon's shadow rule. Some say Elon Musk is like an unelected official, right? He has a tremendous amount of power, whether it's with his Starlink satellites in Ukraine, which are on the front lines of the war with Russia, whether it's the E.V. charging stations across the country. Remember, Elon Musk's company, right, Tesla, controls 60 percent of the E.V. charging stations around the country. So the Biden administration, as you mentioned, can't push its green energy policies without working with Elon Musk. We can't send astronauts from American soil to the International Space Station unless we work with SpaceX. So the government has no choice but to play nice and to do business with this very mercurial, erratic business leader who is becoming increasingly unhinged by the day. And some U.S. government officials say it's just too late. We wish we could have done something sooner, but this entrepreneur just has so many deep inroads into the federal government at this point.

[nicklloydnow]

“While China celebrates its victory over fascism, perhaps it would be helpful to discuss exactly what sort of benefits China has gained from victory over the “fascists.” This requires us to take a look at what “fascism” actually is.

Key characteristics of fascism include strong, often belligerent, nationalism; corporate organization of state, economy and society; and either state-­sponsored socialism or heavy state investment in the economy.

A look at these key characteristics of fascism and comparing them to China’s current political, economic and social systems, one would have to ask which conquered which: Did China conquer fascism, or did fascism conquer China?

China has certainly not been lacking in nationalist bellicosity since 1945. And as China’s military capabilities and economic clout have grown, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, experts and politicians alike have expressed concern over China’s increasingly vocal discontent with the international system in general and US policies in particular. China’s continuing claims to Taiwan, as well as its growing adventurism in the South China Sea and the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, further demonstrate China’s growing assertiveness.

The corporate organization of state, economy and society in China almost goes without saying. Although economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s attempted to create a sense of local economic initiative and decentralization of authority, the latest reports show Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOE) gaining market share in China and edging private enterprises out.

(…)

Moreover, anyone who believes that the CCP is no longer a Marxist-Leninist organization is only partly correct: China is no longer ideologically Marxist, but it is certainly Leninist. The top-down Leninist party structure and its concentration of power among a group of top party members resembles more closely a CEO and board of directors of a corporation than it does any other authority structure. Indeed, authoritarianism in any form, regardless of economic organization, strongly resembles fascism.

Even though Beijing has in the past touted “greater democratization,” that democratization occurs within the CCP itself and not within greater Chinese society.

What “greater democratization” within the CCP has amounted to, it seems, is that individual party members and certain groups within the party are allowed to express their ideas to some extent. However, in the end they must toe the party line after the party leadership makes decisions. This still demonstrates a strong downward flow of authority. This is still a Leninist-style corporatist state.

Taking these developments into account — China’s growing nationalism, increasing government involvement in the economy (while still paying lip service to Marxist socialism) and the corporate organization of the state, economy and society — one has to wonder exactly what the Chinese government is celebrating. Are they celebrating China’s victory over fascism, or are they celebrating fascism’s victory over China?”

“To the casual observer it didn't appear a steep sum. It was less than the cost of a single modern fighter jet. Taiwan already has on order more than $14bn worth of US military equipment. Does a miserly $80m more matter?

While fury is Beijing's default response to any military support for Taiwan, this time something was different.

The $80m is not a loan. It comes from American taxpayers. For the first time in more than 40 years, America is using its own money to send weapons to a place it officially doesn't recognise. This is happening under a programme called foreign military finance (FMF).

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, FMF has been used to send around $4bn of military aid to Kyiv. It has been used to send billions more to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Egypt and so on. But until now it has only ever been given to countries or organisations recognised by the United Nations. Taiwan is not.

After the US switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, it continued to sell weapons to the island under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act. The key was to sell just enough weapons so Taiwan could defend itself against possible Chinese attack, but not so many that they would destabilise relations between Washington and Beijing. For decades, the US has relied on this so-called strategic ambiguity to do business with China, while remaining Taiwan's staunchest ally.

But in the last decade the military balance across the Taiwan Strait has tipped dramatically in China's favour. The old formula no longer works. Washington insists its policy has not changed but, in crucial ways, it has. The US State Department has been quick to deny FMF implies any recognition of Taiwan. But in Taipei it's apparent that America is redefining its relationship with the island, especially so given the urgency with which Washington is pushing Taiwan to re-arm. And Taiwan, which is outmatched by China, needs the help.

(…)

He says the $80m is the tip of what could be a very large iceberg, and notes that in July President Biden used discretionary powers to approve the sale of military services and equipment worth $500m to Taiwan. Mr Wang says Taiwan is preparing to send two battalions of ground troops to the US for training, the first time this has happened since the 1970s.

But the key is the money, the beginning of what, he says, could be up to $10bn over the next five years.

Deals involving military equipment can take up to 10 years, says I-Chung Lai, president of the Prospect Foundation, a Taipei-based think-tank. "But with FMF, the US is sending weapons directly from its own stocks and it's US money - so we don't need to go through the whole approval process."

This is important given that a divided Congress has held up billions of dollars worth of aid for Ukraine, although Taiwan appears to have far more bipartisan support. But the war in Gaza will undoubtedly squeeze America's weapons supply to Taipei, as has the war in Ukraine. President Biden is seeking war aid for Ukraine and Israel, which includes more money for Taiwan too.

(…)

The assessment of long-time observers is blunt: the island is woefully under-prepared for a Chinese attack.

The list of problems is long. Taiwan's army has hundreds of ageing battle tanks, but too few modern, light missile systems. Its army command structure, tactics and doctrine haven't been updated in half a century. Many front-line units have only 60% of the manpower they should have. Taiwan's counter-intelligence operations in China are reportedly non-existent and its military conscription system is broken.

In 2013 Taiwan reduced military service from one year to just four months, before reinstating it back to 12 months, a move that takes effect next year. But there are bigger challenges. It's jokingly referred to as a "summer camp" by the young men who go through it.

(…)

In Washington there is a strong sense that Taiwan is running out of time to reform and rebuild its military. So, the US is also starting to retrain Taiwan's army.

For decades, the island's political and military leaders have leant heavily on the belief that invading the island is much too difficult and risky for China to attempt. Rather like Britain, Taiwan prioritised its navy and air force - at the expense of its army.

(…)

But now China has the world's largest navy and a far superior air force. A war-gaming exercise conducted by a think-tank last year found that in a conflict with China, Taiwan's navy and air force would be wiped out in the first 96 hours of battle.

Under intense pressure from Washington, Taipei is switching to a "fortress Taiwan" strategy that would make the island extremely difficult for China to conquer.

The focus will switch to ground troops, infantry and artillery - repelling an invasion on the beaches and, if necessary, fighting the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the towns and cities, and from bases deep in the island's jungle-covered mountains. But this puts the responsibility for defending Taiwan back on its outdated army.

"After the US cut relations in 1979 our army experienced almost complete isolation. So they are stuck in the Vietnam War-era of US military doctrine," Dr Lai says.

This didn't worry Taipei or Washington until more recently. Through the 1990s and 2000s Taiwanese and US companies were building factories across China. Beijing was lobbying to join the World Trade Organization - and did. The world embraced the Chinese economy, and the US thought trade and investment would secure peace in the Taiwan Strait.

But the rise of Xi Jinping, and his brand of nationalism, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have blown apart those comforting assumptions.

(…)

Taiwan's vulnerability is forcing Washington to act. It's why Taiwanese ground troops are being dispatched to the US to train and US trainers are coming to Taipei to embed with Taiwan's marines and special forces.

But William Chung, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, says Taiwan still cannot hope to deter China by itself. This is the other lesson from the war in Ukraine.

"International society has to decide whether Taiwan matters," he says. "If the G7 or Nato think Taiwan is important for their own interests, then we have to internationalise the Taiwan situation - because that's what will make China think twice about the cost."

Dr Chung says China's behaviour has, unwittingly, been helping Taiwan do just that.

"China is showing it is expansionist in the South China Sea and the East China Sea," he says . "And we can see the result in Japan where the military budget is now being doubled."

(…)

There is now fierce debate in Washington about how far the US should go in supporting Taiwan. Many long-time China watchers say any public commitment from the US said would provoke Beijing rather than deter it. But Washington also knows that Taiwan cannot hope to defend itself alone.

As one long-time China watcher put it: "We need to keep quiet on the whole issue of strategic ambiguity, while arming Taiwan to the teeth."”

[donewithcapitalistfrayers]

Rob Wallace ("marxist epidemiolgoist" guy, used to work at CDC before getting purged for connecting US agriculture policy to swine flu outbreak) wrote 5 days ago:

Double binds are imposed to protect a system breaking apart home and abroad. For nearly a year, U.S. officials and their media stenographers pummeled China for its Zero COVID program, as it aimed to snuff COVID outbreaks cold.

This month New York Times's columnist Li Yuan (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/business/xi-jinping-china-party-congress.html) continued wiping the panda-like tears of Chinese businessmen, who, following bourgeois revolutions since 1789, expected they'd be running China by now, if not out-and-out by various chambers of commerce and the strategic envelope of cash perhaps by the respectable corruption of PAC donations and the revolving door: quote / In his second term, which began in 2017, Mr. Xi kept private enterprises on a much tighter leash. The government cracked down on businesses, sending some of the country’s most successful businesspeople into early retirement or self-imposed exile. China’s harsh “zero-Covid” policy has left the economy in the worst shape in decades. To Chinese in the business elite, who grew accustomed to the privilege and attention their success brought, the Big Boss, as many of them refer to Mr. Xi, doesn’t care about the economy or people like them. In his opening address at the party congress, Mr. Xi mentioned “security” 52 times, “Marxism” 15 times and “markets” three times... Many businesspeople have lost a lot of money under “zero-Covid,” which has shuttered cities and locked millions of people in their homes for weeks at a time as the government seeks to eliminate the coronavirus. “Under the leadership of this dictator, our great country is falling into an abyss,” said a hardware tech executive in Shenzhen. “But you can’t do anything about it. It pains and depresses me.” endquote/

For our laptop bombardiers, Zero COVID represents as much a dangerous counter-example for the world that governance has something to do with the health and well-being of their populations as a bottleneck on the supply lines of global corporations based abroad. These latter had expected China—long thought a tributary economy, I write in Fault in Our SARS—to continue to grease those lines with the deaths of thousands of Chinese put back on the factory floor.

Now that China is experimenting with the lighter touch global business asked for, U.S. outlets are also pummeling the country for the outcomes Beijing had hoped to avoid. A Bloomberg News report the local paper here headlined "Easing COVID rules backfiring in China" noted (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-21/china-s-covid-zero-returns-as-deaths-emerge-raising-reopening-doubt):

quote/ Surging infections are threatening to overwhelm some of the country's biggest and most important cities, with local officials stymied over how to control the contagion without the usual tools of mass citywide testing and snap lockdowns. Three COVID deaths in the capital Beijing, the first in more than six months, provided a reality check for a population that's been shielded from the pathogen by the stringent approach.It's creating a make-or-break moment for China's leaders, who must decide whether to accept the rising case count that ultimately inundated every other major country, or revert to the tried-and-true control measures that have put a stranglehold on their economy. endquote/

China is to be censured for whichever direction it chooses, including now its "relapse" to Zero COVID, as Bloomberg put it, and for asking people to stay home that Monday. Mondays, as CDC Director Garfield argues, are awful because they require sacrifice.

If such expectations are to be imposed abroad, they are good enough to be internalized by the American people as signs of metaphysical fortitude.

The CDC, the White House, and their supporters hot-potato the resulting contradictions upon Americans, who, the system claims (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/health/virus-cdc-guidelines.html), demanded government's abandonment.

[mariacallous]

The fundamental problem for American presidents who have attempted to work with Benjamin Netanyahu is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not care what American presidents think. An exceptional English orator who was raised in Philadelphia, Netanyahu believes that he can outmaneuver and outlast American politicians on their own turf. “I know America,” he said in a private 2001 conversation that later leaked. “America is something that can easily be moved.” This attitude constituted a sharp break; in the past, even hard-line politicians like the maverick general turned premier Ariel Sharon responded to pressure from American presidents.

But during Bill Clinton’s presidency and again during Barack Obama’s, Netanyahu changed the equation. He repeatedly blew off American entreaties on issues including the peace process and Iran, and turned his willingness to stand up to U.S. presidents into an electoral selling point with his base. Faced with this unprecedented recalcitrance, different Democratic administrations tried different tactics for wrangling Bibi. Some attempted to compel his compliance with hard public pressure, only to have Netanyahu wait out a U.S.-imposed settlement freeze, then agitate against the Iran nuclear deal in Congress and the American media. Others attempted to settle disputes privately with Netanyahu, on the assumption that the Israeli leader would respond better if not openly antagonized.

None of this worked and none of it arrested Netanyahu’s drift further to the right. As both vice president and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden had a front-row seat to these failures. So did his close-knit foreign-policy team, including longtime staffers such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Recognizing the errors of the past, they have charted a different course aimed at outmaneuvering Netanyahu, seeking to succeed where their predecessors did not. This approach predates the current Gaza conflict, but has reached full expression in the past months. It explains why Biden has full-throatedly supported Israel against Hamas while simultaneously assailing the country’s hard-right governing coalition. And it offers a glimpse at the administration’s intended endgame for the war—and for Netanyahu himself.

In 2015, I visited another country with an ascendant right-wing populist leader: Hungary. Today, the country is essentially aligned with Russia against America and its allies. At the time, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was escalating his rhetoric against the European Union and the West. As part of the trip, my group met with officials at the American embassy, who explained their impossible predicament: Whenever Western countries would publicly pressure Orbán on his policies, he would refashion that pressure into electoral support, leaving his critics with no good options. Stay silent and he would win; speak up and he would also win.

Right-wing populists such as Orbán and Netanyahu thrive on posturing against outside antagonists, using external criticism to bolster their bona fides as strongmen who can stand up to the international community. This insight has shaped Biden’s approach to Netanyahu—not by preventing the president from publicly fighting with the prime minister, but by influencing which fights he picks. Simply put, Biden has opted to challenge Netanyahu on issues that splinter his support rather than consolidate it. In practice, this means strategically targeting policies where Netanyahu is on the wrong side of Israeli public opinion and forcing him to choose between his hard-right partners and the rest of the country.

Netanyahu’s disastrous attempt to overhaul the Israeli judiciary offers a case in point. The proposed legislation was drafted by right-wing hard-liners with no opposition input and would have subordinated Israel’s courts to its parliament. The attempted power grab provoked the largest sustained protest movement in Israeli history. Polls repeatedly showed that most Israelis opposed the overhaul and wanted lawmakers to come up with new compromise reforms conceived by consensus. And so that’s precisely what the Biden administration began calling for.

“Hopefully, the prime minister will act in a way that he is going to try to work out some genuine compromise,” Biden told reporters in March. “But that remains to be seen.” In July, he repeated the same point to Netanyahu, then reiterated it to the press: “The focus should be on pulling people together and finding consensus.” As the State Department emphasized at the time, “We believe that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of support.” By placing himself firmly on the side of the Israeli majority, Biden was able to prevent Netanyahu from turning his criticism into an electoral asset. After all, it’s hard to paint someone as anti-Israel, as Netanyahu once did with Obama, when they are expressing the opinion of most Israelis.

Biden understands that Netanyahu’s position is a precarious one. His governing coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote, and took power only because of a quirk of the Israeli electoral system. The coalition relies on an alliance of unpopular far-right parties to stay afloat, whom Netanyahu must appease to remain in office. Biden has exploited this weakness and repeatedly poked at it. Rather than directly confronting Netanyahu, he has called out his extremist partners and in this way heightened the contradictions within Netanyahu’s coalition, undermining its stability and gradually eroding its support in the polls.

In July, Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that Netanyahu’s government has “the most extremist members of cabinets that I’ve seen” in Israel, noting that “I go all the way back to Golda Meir.” This past week, at a campaign event hosted by a former chair of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, Biden went even further, singling out a far-right minister by name. “This is the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” the president said. Itamar “Ben-Gvir and company and the new folks, they don’t want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution.” This was Biden’s approach in action: criticizing Israel during wartime in front of a pro-Israel crowd, and doing so in a way that nonetheless denied Netanyahu any opening. As long as it’s Biden versus Ben-Gvir, rather than Biden versus Bibi, the president holds the upper hand.

Biden has brought the same strategy to bear on the issue of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has accelerated under the cover of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Netanyahu’s coalition is unable to clamp down on these extremists and their terrorism because it is beholden to these extremists. But most Israelis have no desire to mortgage the security of Israel and its indispensable relationship to the United States in favor of some far-flung hilltop settlers in West Bank regions that few Israelis could locate on a map.

Knowing this, Biden has begun unrolling a series of unilateral measures intended to raise the price of settler violence and pit Netanyahu and his allies against the Israeli public. Earlier this month, the administration announced visa bans on those implicated in settler violence, spurring similar actions by the EU, Britain, and France. “We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Blinken said. “As President Biden has repeatedly said, those attacks are unacceptable.” This past week, the U.S. froze the sale of more than 20,000 M16 rifles to Israel over concerns that they might find their way into the hands of violent settlers.

Hamas’s October 7 slaughter has put Biden’s approach to the ultimate test. Like most Israelis, he wants to see Hamas vanquished. And like most Israelis, he does not trust Netanyahu and his far-right allies to do it. This has left the president with few appealing options. Publicly denying Israel support during what it sees as an existential war wouldn’t just go against Biden’s personal values. It would collapse all the credibility he has accrued with the Israeli public through his careful diplomacy during his presidency. And it would give Netanyahu the American antagonist he desperately craves, providing the floundering premier with a lifeline he would use to reunite the right behind him.

To avoid this outcome, Biden has backed Israel’s military campaign, but worked nonstop to shape its contours and limit its fallout on civilians and the rest of the region, tapping into the reservoir of goodwill he has built with the Israeli public. The president has also upped the pressure on Netanyahu by assailing his coalition partners and explicitly calling for a new, more moderate Israeli government. U.S. officials have leaked that they think Netanyahu will not last, and Biden has told the Israeli leader to think about what lessons he’d impart to his successor.

In other words, Biden has once again placed himself on the side of the Israeli majority, in order to undermine Netanyahu and shape the political future of the entire country. It’s one of the biggest bets of his presidency, and when the guns finally fall silent, it could determine the fate of the broader Middle East.

[stevesociety8]

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? And what has the Department of Education to do with the classical education movement? For Tertullian, the second-century church father, the question was whether Hellenic culture and philosophy might divert Christians from the truth revealed in scripture and the incarnation. Of course, as reflected today in classical education itself, historical Christianity has long used the tools of Athenian wisdom in the work of theology, as faith seeks understanding. But the tension remains, between man’s rationalizing and the gift of faith. 

The contemporary classical education movement was birthed in renunciation of all the Department of Education stands for. Indeed, nothing about the timing should be thought of as merely coincidental. The ED was signed into law on October 17, 1979, and began operations the next year. As I discovered during my year as a Novak Journalism fellow researching the history of the classical education movement, the earliest schools we can put in that category were founded around exactly the same time. 

In January of ’79, National Review reprinted Dorothy Sayers’s “Lost Tools of Learning” (1947). The essay inspired John Schmitt to establish the Trivium School in Lancaster, Massachusetts, in October of that year and Douglas Wilson to found Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, in 1981. In between, Cair Paravel Latin School was independently established in 1980 in Topeka, Kansas. And in 1981 — imitating Schmitt’s Trivium — the Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, Indiana, opened its doors. 

So it must seem strange to look to the movement these four schools started for inspiration when considering reforms of ED, representing as the department does all their founders sought to escape. But today, more than four decades on for each, classical education has grown into a great force of cultural revival in this country; while ED has, like the cancer cell, only grown for growth’s sake — a failure. One enlargement may, in fact, have something to teach the other, in particular about the end of formal education.

We must bring our aim a little lower than the reader likely hopes, in line with a closer target than the ideal universal public education of the American people. The Department of Education, as part of the administrative state, is an effort at the rationalization of human life and centralization of civil society totally at odds with the highest aspirations of contemporary classical schools. One cannot be made into the facilitator and manager of the other. What ED does, and what it is, is totally modern. What the classical education movement seeks to do, and what it is, is a postmodern project of recovery and construction — dwarves on the shoulders of giants — bringing a pre-modern inheritance forward to the present, past a century of positivism and progressivism. 

Moreover, we must acknowledge that the classical appellation is a contested one, that this movement and project is alive with debates internal to itself as it seeks its own essence and more fully developed excellences — classically, virtues. Even if ED could be made a fit vehicle for the spread of “classical schools,” it would only elevate this lively conversation into policy negotiations among bureaucrats. Classical education is not a method. 

At the simplest, some argue, classical education is an acculturation, familiarizing ourselves (Americans, Westerners) with that which was familiar to our ancestors: Latin and Greek, classical literature and history. Perhaps it is also, derived from Latin studies, apprenticeship to the trivium: the grammar, logic (or dialectic), and rhetoric of language and therefore of intellectual knowledge and thought. It is a liberal education, fit for free people, and so, in the American sense, democratic. Yet the humanist tradition it springs from finds its roots in hero worship and the schooling of princes, and so is aristocratic, too. Is a classical education essentially Christian? It is necessarily political. Do classical schools form hearts as well as minds? They are, in many ways, still far too modern. 

All of this and more like it makes up the vital ferment that shows that “classical education” is in fact a movement, that the growth and multiplication of the schools that claim that title is something alive. How different is discussion of our public schools. But there is one more theme — not a dichotomy, but a matter of emphasis — which could be taken up whole by any future secretary of the Department of Education in administering the nation’s schools. The pioneers and principals of classical schools often speak of two academic purposes for their institutions: they offer a “terminal education,” and they aim to shape “lifelong learners.” Taking only the tools already at its disposal, with some modest construal, so too could ED. 

What do the classical school educators mean by this? A terminal education describes a complete formal education; it recognizes that schooling must end, even if education never does. And so schooling must include everything necessary to equip students to live a virtuous life without the guidance of their teachers. A terminal education is ordinary. Lifelong learning, then, is what follows from a complete formal education; a student makes his way through life adding to his education, incorporating new knowledge into that which he carries with him. It is limited only by the capacities of the individual—his abilities, his continued wonder, and his desire to know. Placed on top of basic schooling, lifelong learning is extraordinary.

The task of the public school, and thus the task of the Department of Education, is this same task. To have a functioning republic, in which political equality is upheld by law and social practice, the normative public school must provide an ordinary education that is sufficient for living the life of a just citizen. The standard K-12 program must set out to be enough, terminal, an end of its own. The expectation that every student apply for college, let alone go, has been a disaster, as, on the tacit expectation of remedial courses later, it has freed teachers and school systems of their obligation to give pupils the building blocks of a decent life. 

Perhaps, too, the only way to end the so-called school-to-prison pipeline would be to take the idea of compulsory education, standardized testing, and public schooling at face value, to treat this fundamental education as not just limited but limiting: A student cannot and will not graduate — will not be freed from truancy law — until a certain competency is demonstrated on a standardized test, marking this terminal education’s completion.

All lifelong learning is extraordinary in that it goes beyond the basic standard. ED and the public school teacher have an obligation to the extraordinary student, too, as they prepare for higher education and an intellectual life beyond that, too. While tracking is inimical to the formative spirit of a classical school’s terminal education for lifelong learning, under the quantitative management of a government department it is the tool ready at hand. Moreover, it is the only instrument fit to the preservation of the civic equality or democratic ideal that public education is meant to protect: unless even the poorest brilliant student can test out of the chaos of the common classroom, only the wealthiest zip codes will provide a public school that readies its students for lifelong learning. 

Even with conservatives returning to power in Washington, the intellectual and spiritual chasm between the classical education movement and the Department of Education is in no danger of closing soon; it is the product of essential divisions not only in our national political culture but in our historical epoch. That being the case, far more likely is that fissures split along similar fault lines among the institutions of classical education, as people grow complacent in the countercultural aspect of cultural renewal. But maybe, still, Athens can learn something from Jerusalem.

[locustheologicus]

The choice in the election is not between two competing blueprints for border management. Harris is proposing practical reforms to fortify the border and overhaul the immigration process in line with the nation’s labor needs and humanitarian aspirations. Trump proposes an exclusionist project that would not only bring turmoil and hardship to communities across the country but would also do long-term damage to the U.S. economy and undermine the United States’ global reputation as a place of opportunity and freedom.

This is a good and thorough article on the actual policy choice that we can expect from candidates Trump and Harris on immigration. The author’s ultimate assessment is this.

Trump’s purge does not offer functional solutions to a broken system that would make the border more secure. Instead, his nativist agenda would spread divisive conflict and mainly serve to fortify his presidential powers and enhance his image as the leader of an incipient authoritarian project. Harris offers something entirely different, a pragmatic program based on respect for immigrants, in which she rejects “the false choice” between securing the border and creating an immigration system that is “safe, orderly, and humane.”

If you can read the article (you may need a subscription) I suggest you do so because it is very thorough. If not here is what the bottom line is regarding the policy we can expect.

Harris said she would impose new penalties to ban unlawful crossers from any access to asylum, speed up deportations, and bar deportees from returning for five years. Repeat offenders would face severe criminal charges, Harris also said she would work to open legal pathways for undocumented immigrants, especially the farm workers who make up nearly half of the nation’s agricultural labor force and those who came as children, known as Dreamers. But the core of her program is one frequently repeated commitment: if elected president, she will resurrect and sign the border security bill. In its current form, the bill is heavy on Republican enforcement priorities and does not address Democrats’ most long-standing reform demands, particularly for pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, farm workers, and spouses of American citizens. The bill stops short of building out an asylum system that would provide timely but also fair decisions, ensure due process, and support lasting resettlement for migrants who are legitimately fleeing persecution. If Harris wins the White House and takes up the bill, it will be only the starting point for intense negotiations in what will inevitably still be a closely divided, bitterly polarized Congress.

In comparison this is what the author suggest about Trump’s policy.

Trump promises a massive operation. He says he will invoke an obscure statute, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to mobilize multiple law enforcement agencies, the National Guard, and U.S. military troops to repel the “predatory incursion.” Miller speaks of setting up “vast holding facilities” along the border, reminiscent of the internment camps where Japanese American citizens were confined during World War II. Trump has made it clear the roundup could be violent. Many of the immigrants Trump has vowed to deport are in the United States legally. To achieve the scale of deportations he envisions, Trump’s plan calls for a far-reaching countrywide dragnet. Agents would go house to house and raid workplaces in an offensive that would sweep up many people who are not criminals, disrupt businesses and schools, and forcefully separate families. They would go hunting among the 11 million undocumented people in the country. Nearly three-quarters of those immigrants have been settled in the United States for more than a decade, long since gaining steady work, paying taxes, buying homes, and melding productively into the society.

Immigrants are unfortunately easy to vilify these days. Candidate Trump has created a very negative image that is terribly inaccurate but with the failed policies and tremendous swell of immigration into this country the image has endured. It is woefully inaccurate and illogical portrayal of this community but logic and accuracy are not so much a priority these days.

So these are the policies we can expect from our two candidates. Immigrants will need to brace for a stricter procedure after November 5th, that is inevitable. Yet the difference between these two positions are very stark.

[cherryblossomshadow]

The Rashida Tlaib For President Scenario

There is more than one way to win leverage for Palestine.

Hamilton Nolan

Dec 16, 2023

As 2023 draws to a close, the left wing of American politics finds itself in its most familiar position:

being told to suck it up and fall in line.

An election year looms. The Democratic president faces a far worse fascist Republican rival … Even as protesters fill the streets around the country, the Left finds itself mostly ignored in Washington. Their objections are met with the classic sneer:

What are you gonna do, vote for Trump?

.

Joe Biden’s 2020 election, and at least the first couple of years of his administration, are notable for the fact that he did open the door to the left wing of the party, giving it significant influence—something that was not often true with his Democratic predecessors. In May of 2020, after Biden had more or less clinched the nomination, he formed a “Unity Task Force” in which his people came together with people picked by Bernie Sanders to create a set of policy recommendations that definitively set the White House on course left of where it would have gone otherwise. Likewise, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and their allies had a hand in the selection of personnel that resulted in some picks that have been meaningfully more progressive than Biden-world would have naturally been. In a vacuum, if you had asked me in 2019, I would have expected the Biden administration to suck in the same basic ways the Clinton and Obama administrations did.

That has not been the case, and it is because Biden allowed himself to be pulled left. That stuff matters.

.

Things are looking grimmer going into 2024. The relevant question for us now is: Why did the Left manage to get real influence with Biden four years ago, and how can we make that happen again, fast?

The simple answer is that in 2020, Bernie was running for president.

Even though he lost, he ran a very competitive campaign. He had a large base of support. He had significant political capital. Biden, a man with little internal ideology, is a pragmatist, and recognized that a coalition approach would be stronger than waging an intra-party battle with disgruntled progressives.

.

It is true that a Biden loss to Trump would be a catastrophe, and should not be brushed off idly; on the things that Biden is good on, Trump is bad, and on the things that Biden is bad on, including Israel, Trump is worse. That doesn’t mean, though, that there is no political room for the Left to maneuver.

.

I do not believe it would be possible to mount and run a successful primary challenge to Biden at this point. It would be possible, however, for a left wing candidate to launch an independent presidential campaign explicitly designed to suck votes away from Biden in key swing states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, etc.

Any member of “The Squad” could launch such a campaign, but the most obvious candidate would be Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, and the loudest and bravest voice speaking out against US policy on Palestine.

So I will refer to this as the Tlaib Scenario, as shorthand. It would be a campaign created not to win the presidency, but to create negotiating leverage inside of the Democratic Party. “Listen to us,” it would say to Biden, “or we’re all going to hell together.”

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Politics is not just a two-dimensional winner-take-all game between red and blue teams. When evaluating proposals like this, it can be useful to think less like a political pundit and more like someone who is negotiating a union contract. (Please unionize your workplace in order to understand this comparison.) One interesting feature of contract negotiations is that

when the union rep walks into the room with the employer to negotiate, the ideal position for them to be in is that of the person saying, “I can only hold these maniacs back for so long!”

In other words, it is valuable for the employer to believe that the workers themselves are a bunch of angry, irrational zealots, bent on retribution against the evil boss, who should be pacified at once before they do something crazy. Then, the union negotiator becomes the voice of reason, trying to help the boss navigate a safe path away from potential chaos. “I know the workers are asking for a lot of money here,” the union rep can say sympathetically, “but they’re pissed. They’re ready to strike. They don’t care if this whole damn company fails. Help me help you.”

.

Today, the proposition to the Left is: Vote for Biden, as is, because your only alternative is worse. With a left candidate in the race, that proposition would no longer apply. You can be sure that a significant enough number of leftist voters would gravitate to a candidate like Tlaib. The relationship between the Democratic Party and the Left would then change. It would go from, “Biden is the best you have, so accept it,” to, “Biden needs to do something to earn the votes of those on the Left.” That change is significant.

.

Likewise, the negotiating leverage of Rashida Tlaib would change drastically. Today, she and her allies are relatively isolated, a minority inside the Democratic Party. (A growing minority, yes, but not growing fast enough to stop the bombs.)

As a presidential candidate, she would become someone who held Biden’s reelection in her hands.

Her ability to play spoiler would mean that somehow talking her down would become a necessary step in the Biden’s campaign success. He would be forced to deal with her.

If Candidate Tlaib could extract a positive policy change that could save thousands of Palestinian lives, she could end her threat to undermine Biden and consider it a success.

And what would be the rational response from Biden, in this scenario? The rational response, with his own future on the line, would be to negotiate a meaningful enough change in his policy towards Israel and Palestine to convince Tlaib not to torpedo his reelection. Democrats could get mad about a left wing challenger to Biden, but ultimately math is math. If Tlaib could credibly threaten to pull five percent away from Biden in those swing states—and I think that she could—then

they would need to negotiate with her or lose.

And, after a lot of screaming, they would.

The beneficiaries of those negotiations would be the Palestinians.

[americantwinmoverus]

Things You Should Know About Interstate Moving Services 

When moving a long distance, it’s a huge undertaking. It can be difficult for you to know where to start and how to proceed. Many questions might come to your mind when organizing an interstate move. This can only be solved if you hire an interstate moving company in Annapolis, MD.

Before you connect with interstate movers, you should know a few important things about them. These details can help you make the right decision.

International moving services: Things to keep in mind

Should provide adequate insurance 

Ask your international moving company about the insurance policy it holds. With adequate insurance coverage, your belongings will be safe if something happens during transport and they are damaged or lost. 

 Please don’t trust your company based on verbal communication; ask for proof before signing any contract. Policy means that you are working with a legitimate business and it is taking its responsibility seriously. 

The insurance policy should be comprehensive, covering all your requirements. Take proper precautions before deciding. 

Offer better moving services 

The services of interstate movers in Annapolis, MD, aren’t limited to moving your belongings from one state to another. Their services should be comprehensive to help you in the best way. To hire movers as per your requirements, ask your family and friends.  

Inquire about the time interstate moving service providers will take to move your belongings. Make sure the company offers date-specific quotes and gives you a timeframe. Other than this, check the moving limitations of the company. 

Lastly, find out if the interstate moving company will pack and unpack your items or if you have to hire a separate entity for the same. You might come across companies that provide both packing and moving services. 

Logical for long-distance moving 

Interstate moving services offer convenience. They pack and move an entire household, avoiding traveling back and forth across state lines. With interstate movers, you don’t have to worry about renting a truck or finding the vehicle size as they provide affordable transportation. 

To get the most out of your moving services, you should choose between full-service and partial-service. A full-service interstate move means the company will pack everything and transport it to your new destination. You have to sit back and relax. 

On the other hand, a partial-service move means the company will not pack up items that will be difficult or time-consuming to transport. These items include large appliances, furniture with sentimental value, artwork, and anything fragile or valuable. 

Some interstate movers in Annapolis, MD, offer storage options, which allow you to store your items until you are ready to use them. 

More professionals than others 

Not all interstate moving service providers are the same. Some are more professional than others. A professional interstate moving company in Annapolis, MD, is licensed, insured, and has all the necessary tools to handle your belongings. The best part is that such a company will arrive at your home or office on time. Also, the employees will be informed. 

A professional company charges in the most structured way, following the market trends. Know how the services are charged in the industry and find a service provider that follows the same concept. 

Work with professional interstate movers in Annapolis, MD

No matter how big or small your move is, partner with a professional interstate moving company, such as American Twin Movers. We offer affordable moving services with all the essential tools and techniques. We promise to transfer your belongings without harm or damage.