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The response to truth is often even more truth; that is why regimes fear even small bits of it.

– Victoria Amelina, Looking at Women Looking at War, trans. Daisy Gibbons (St. Martin’s Press, 2025), Part I (“Among the Guiding Stars—Oleksandra Matviichuk I”).

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Lecture – Timothy Snyder on Belarus: Revisiting a Central European History, Wien Museum, June 27, 2025, youtu.be….

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The United States is not a forgotten Elysian island. Our two oceans connect us with the rest of the world; they do not separate us. They are carrying, at this moment, machine tools, automobiles, raw materials, and all manner of manufactured goods to the whole world and they are bringing here other materials, such as rubber, tungsten, and tin, that are absolutely essential to the continuance of production at even its present level. They protect us, still, from armed attack upon our soil, but they do not protect us from assaults upon our economy or upon the public mind. They in no way relieve us of the responsibility of doing everything that a great nation can do to maintain a world order in which the interests of its people, and the values that they cherish, can survive and improve.

– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), p. 9.

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Disability pride colors of red, yellow (or gold), white, blue, and green. Follow a link for a description of the design and its meaning.

July is Disability Pride Month.

To learn more, see Lola Méndez, "What Do the Colors on the Disability Pride Flag Mean?," Good Housekeeping, February 17, 2025.

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Placing will above reason; the ideal over reality; appealing, unremittingly, to totem and taboo; elevating tribal fetishes; subjugating and destroying the common sense that grows out of human experience; of an oceanic boundlessness, Naziism … is the enemy of whatever is sunny, reasonable, pragmatic, common-sense, freedom-loving, life-affirming, form-seeking, and conscious of tradition.

– Dorothy Thompson, Let the Record Speak (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939), p. 3.

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Will Rogers, the great American entertainer and social commentator of his time, saw Adolf Hitler in 1933 as a familiar figure: “Papers all state that Hitler is trying to copy Mussolini. Looks to me it’s the KKK he’s copying.”

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap 6.

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If you understand Russian singing or can read German subtitles, have a listen to “Mama, this is Ukraine” (youtu.be…). It is a forbidden Russian soldier’s song that pulls no punches.

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This announcement is alarming:

Effective July 7, 2025, the National Archives at College Park, MD, will become a restricted-access federal facility with access only for visitors with a legitimate business need. It will no longer be open to the general public. Security officers will enforce these restrictions, and your cooperation is appreciated.

– The National Archives at College Park, Maryland

It is unclear what “a legitimate business need” means or who will make that determination. Are they planning to review the research plans of individual scholars?

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Strategic bombing’s limited efficacy:

The question that has dominated strategic warfare since it emerged a century ago remains the central question today: Does strategic warfare work? For the moment, the answer seems to be no; at the very least, it cannot on its own win wars or … induce an adversary to change its posture.

– Raphael S. Cohen, “The False Promise of Strategic Bombing,” Foreign Affairs, February 18, 2025, archive.ph….

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I know the U.S. blundering into an attack on Iran is the big story of the moment, but these weird examples of MAGA idolatry caught my eye: bills to rename WMATA to WMAGA, to make their leader’s birthday a national holiday, and to print $250 bills with said leader on them (Washington Post, archive.ph…). Extreme self-parody, I guess. Would also mean more opportunities for ridiculing the has-been reality TV star turned worst president.

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Disgusting:

I’ve said it before, Russians and Ukrainians are one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. There’s an old rule that wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that’s ours.…

– Vladimir Putin, June 20, 2025.

Via Meduza and The Kyiv Independent.

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I never thought I’d be living in a country whose government and law-enforcement officials are actively hostile to the populace and the rule of law.

Latest example: Federal Agents Arrest NYC Comptroller & Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander At Immigration Court.

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Grey, wet sky with wild green field framed by a tree on each side and filled with trees in the background. The colors are all dampened by the light rain.

Seen behind the firehouse in Conway Village this morning during a drizzly walk.

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Book cover for Silvie by Jennifer Sattler. Silvie, the protagonist, is a pink flamingo.

Here's the latest book in my rotation of things I read to my granddaughter via FaceTime: Jennifer Sattler, Silvie (Random House, 2009). She adores the imaginative story and the lovely, friendly art.

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Yikes! I just heard a report from the German broadcaster ARD that Iran doesn’t have any air-raid shelters for its civilians. The report was about Tehran, but I don’t imagine it’s better anywhere else in that country.

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Lots of people turned out for the protest in Conway today—big and little, young and old, two-legged and four-legged… 🇺🇸

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Fortify yourself with this timely IMY2 cover of an old favorite: “For What It’s Worth” (Buffalo Springfield) youtu.be….

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Western journalists are … taught to report various interpretations of the facts. The adage that there are two sides to a story makes sense when those who represent each side accept the factuality of the world and interpret the same set of facts. Putin’s strategy of implausible deniability exploited this convention while destroying its basis. He positioned himself as a side of the story while mocking factuality. “I am lying to you openly and we both know it” is not a side of the story. It is a trap.

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 5.

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Putin has correctly surmised that lies unite rather than divide Russia’s political class. The greater and the more obvious the lie, the more his subjects demonstrate their loyalty by accepting it, and the more they participate in the great sacral mystery of Kremlin power.

– Charles Clover, quoted in Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap 5.

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No war was taking place, and it was thoroughly justified.

– Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 5, regarding Russian propaganda in 2014.

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Using or threatening to use military force to counter mostly peaceful civil unrest is not a sign of strength. Our malicious fool of a president is a morally bankrupt coward. The emperor has no clothes.

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Smoke from wildfires in central and western Canada is affecting air quality in northern New England again today.