Commonplacing

    The game just got bigger, did you?

    – Helen Hunt playing Nancy Campbell in “A World On Fire” (PBS, 2020), s. 1, ep. 1.

    Congress was once the proud equal of the executive and judicial branches of our government. Now it stands drained of both power and respect, partly through abdication of its responsibilities and partly through the eager gathering of power by a burgeoning presidency. That phenomenon started with Franklin Roosevelt, and every President since has been unable to resist taking more decision-making responsibility on himself. The power to make war and to decide how our money is spent is no longer the unquestioned province of Congress …

    – “Fresh Blood for a Sick Congress,” Life, November 17, 1972, p. 42.

    Rule of Law

    Dwight D. Eisenhower’s address from the White House on September 24, 1957, regarding his use of federal troops in Little Rock makes for interesting reading. Here’s a taste (www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov…):

    The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts, even, when necessary with all the means at the President’s command.

    Unless the President did so, anarchy would result.

    There would be no security for any except that which each one of us could provide for himself.

    HT @[email protected]

    The ink of political fiction is blood.

    – Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom, chap. 2.

    The post-[1968] invasion regime in Czechoslovakia spoke of “normalization,” which nicely caught the spirit of the moment. What was, was normal.

    – Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (2018), chap. 2.

    📽️ Am watching “So Ends Our Night,” dir. John Cromwell (United Artists, 1941), a “story of people without passports” based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1939 novel Flotsam.

    A great line early on spoken by an Austrian police officer sending two stateless Germans across the border to Czechoslovakia in 1937:

    You refugees! It’s not like handling a first-class criminal. You’re detracting from the dignity of my profession.

    Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes!…

    Galileo: No. Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.

    – Bertolt Brecht, “Life of Galileo,” in Collected Plays: Five, trans. John Willet (Bloomsbury, 1995), scene 13.

    Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that “it can’t happen here,” which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

    – Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017), chap. 19.

    When the American president and his national security adviser speak of fighting terrorism alongside Russia, what they are proposing to the American people is terror management: the exploitation of real, dubious, and simulated terror attacks to bring down democracy.

    – Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017), chap. 18.

    When we take an active interest in matters of doubtful relevance at moments that are chosen by tyrants and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own political order.

    – Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017), chap. 14.

    You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case. This renunciation of reality can feel natural and pleasant, but the result is your demise as an individual—and thus the collapse of any political system that depends upon individualism.

    – Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (2017), chap. 10.

    Just arrived from Berlin to an empty Dulles airport in DC. Assumed because Heathrow outage. “No,” says my WashFlyer cabbie, the past month has been super slow. “Fewer tourists, fewer business people. This is not normal, believe me.” Says he’s looking for a new job because he needs to pay his bills.

    – Thomas Rid on Bluesky, March 21, 2025

    It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose—blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.

    – Masha Gessen, quoted in Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality, (Workman Publishing, 2017), chap. 3.

    Trump’s supporters, who felt increasingly anxious or displaced in the prevailing consensus reality, could see what was happening. But those of us who were relatively at ease—our field of vision was obstructed. So we scoffed and mocked as Trump put a half nelson choke hold on reality.

    – Brooke Gladstone, The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time (Workman Publishing, 2017).

    The Trump administration is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report — cutting sections about the rights of women, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community and more.

    The goal appears to be a far thinner report that meets the minimum standards required by the law, according to documents obtained by POLITICO, as well as a current and a former State Department official who were familiar with the plan.

    Nahal Toosi, Politico, March 19, 2025

    If you pretend this isn’t real, it’s very exciting.

    – Laurie Kilmartin on “Have I Got New for You” (U.S.), s. 2, ep. 4, March 8, 2025.

    Sometimes you got to Ukrainesplain shit to people.

    – Roy Wood Jr., “Have I Got News for You,” season 2, episode 3, youtu.be….

    Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.

    – Simone Weil, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” (1940)*

    * Quoted in Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (Anchor Books, 2002), 21.

    The one who deals the blow forgets.
    The one who carries the scar remembers.
    – Haitian proverb*

    * Quoted in Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism (St: Martin’s, 2022), front matter.

    Shit is Getting Conspiratorially Dark

    “Senior U.S. Official to Exit After Rift With Musk Allies Over Payment System” (Wasington Post) https://archive.ph/omS67

    Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide.… The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies…

    This Musk business is getting increasingly dark. Democrats and Republicans should fight this, except there aren’t any Republicans in government anymore.

    Valuing loyalty over expertise and allowing violence to become an end in itself can result in a deprofessionalized and demoralized military, especially if misguided wars end in defeat.

    – Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), concl.

    Democratic heads of state often see their departures from office as an opportunity to build on their leadership legacy. The authoritarian regards the end of being adulated by followers and controlling everything and everyone as an existential threat.

    – Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), chap. 10.

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