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Mark R. Stoneman

Historian, editor, and translator for hire (German to English). Longtime resident of Washington, DC, now in Conway, NH, as a caregiver (he/him).

  Politics & Rule

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    It did not hurt my feelings to see reports of a Putin limo going up in flames. I also enjoyed seeing how scared the president is of his own honor guard. See commentary on Silicon Bites #119, March 29, 2025. youtu.be… (6 min.)

    #ПутінХуйло #RussiaIsATerroristState

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    Operator Starsky (@starskyua.bsky.social) talks with Ben Hodges about the current strategic situation in and around Ukraine. youtu.be… (19.5 min.) 🇺🇦

    #СлаваУкраїні #RussiaIsATerroristState #ПутінХуйло

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    I’ve heard historian Timothy Snyder a lot in the past several years thanks to his fantastic public speaking, captured in freely available videos and podcasts. Today, I’ve finally begun reading him. First up: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Tim Duggan Books, 2017).

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    I heard the term deadcatting for the first time today.1 It means employing a shocking distraction to pull peoples' eyes away from what matters. Why a dead cat? Imagine throwing one on a table at which people are engaged in a heated discussion. Their focus will be pulled to the cat instead of lingering on whatever difficulty is before them. This dead cat strategy can overlap with scapegoating and the politics of division, as when Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating their neighbors' cats and dogs.2

    1. Jason Pack uses it on the Disorder podcast, late in ep. 107, March 18, 2025. ↩︎

    2. See Heather Digby Parton, “Donald Trump’s Dead Cat Strategy Puts the Pressure on JD Vance,” Salon, September 16, 2024. ↩︎

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    “If it’s good, let it be killed.” – Trump’s Insecure Ego

    Example no. 100,001: “Is planting trees ‘DEI’? Trump administration cuts nationwide tree-planting effort” by Eva Tesfaye, www.npr.org/2025/03/21….

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    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).

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    Putin Playing Trump for a Fool Again

    The 30-day partial cease fire that Putin and Trump agreed to is a one-sided joke.

    Russia probably needs relief from strikes on its energy infrastructure more than Ukraine does because the former depends on energy to finance its war. Ukraine, at least, has made it through another winter, when attacks on its energy infrastructure hurt the worst. Moreover, its air defenses seem to be more effective than Russia’s.

    The real kicker, though, are the accompanying demands and threats, which continue to assert Russia’s maximalist aim of destroying Ukrainian sovereignty by demanding it do nothing to improve its defense posture. Meanwhile, the White House and Kremlin “agreed to set up Russian and American expert groups to ‘resolve the war bilaterally,'” i.e., without Ukraine or the rest of Europe. Of course, the Kremlin issued yet another tired threat of “escalation.”

    Will the White House side with Russia again, despite the Kremlin playing Trump for a fool? It wouldn’t surprise me, given that Trump has no advisors who will tell him what he needs to hear. I hope I’m wrong.

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    I do not understand Democratic caucus politics in the U.S. Senate, but it seems to me that if Sen. Schumer lost the majority of his caucus on the cloture vote today, that ought to have consequences for his leadership position. Are there any rumblings of this sort in the Democratic caucus?

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    Deeply disappointed in the votes of my two senators for cloture and for submitting to a GOP budget that will harm New Hampshire’s residents. Yes, we’re a purple state. No, they should not be putting their jobs ahead of the state’s residents, let alone democracy. #NH #Shaheen #Hassan

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    Sometimes I hate my state: “NH’s new ID requirements send some would-be voters home to grab passports, birth certificates,” www.nhpr.org….

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    Ukraine has been proving the value of U.S. arms these past three years. Now Trump is using Ukraine to demonstrate the achilles heel of high-end American arms. Their effective use depends on the U.S. political system, which is proving vulnerable to malign domestic and foreign actors.

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    Cover of latest Stern magazine shows Trump and Putin bowing to each other over the corps of Ukraine. German text is discussed in main post.

    The title of this cover from a prominent German news weekly borrows from a famous Ronald Reagan quote: “Axis of Evil” (Die Achse der Bösen). Only this time a Republican president is casting the United States on the side of evil. The remaining text points to the “danger of war in Europe” and asks “what Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine means for us."1 The cover also mentions a statement by Joschka Fischer in an interview: “Germany needs conscription again."2

    POSTSCRIPT: See comments for connection to 1939

    1. “Us” could refer to Germany, given the magazine, but note the European flag that the two bowing men are standing on—with the corpse of Ukraine laid out face down between them. If the corpse is hyperbole, the betrayal and its geopolitical consequences are very real, ↩︎

    2. Fischer was a politician in the Greens who served as Germany’s popular foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. ↩︎

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    Orange, white, black, brown, and tan poster depicting nine women of various backgrounds engaged in different activities, including arts, activism, and blue-collar work. The accompanying text reads: 'Radical Women Annual Conference – 1976'. 'A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians': 'Women in the Labor Movement', 'Feminism and the Minority Woman', 'Gays and the Class Struggle.' 'Panels; Workshops; Role Playing; Dinner & Party, Saturday.' Held on Sat. and Sun., October 9–10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, along with addresses, phone numbers, and a few more details.

    A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians. 1976 poster by a Seattle organization called Radical Women.

    Via Library of Congress, Yanker Poster Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016649885/.

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    Does Felonious Husk even think about the probable consequences of his reliance on self-dealt government contracts come the midterm elections? Do his investors and boards? Add to that the destruction of his cars' reputation, and he is poised to fail hard.

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    French Senator Claude Malhuret describes what’s happening in the United States in stark terms and explains the consequences of Frump’s traitorous behavior for Europe: youtu.be….

    #MoscovianCandidate #RussiaIsATerroristState

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    Conflating Business Acumen, Reality TV Stardom, Electoral Politics, and Governance

    For a so-called businessman, His Magnificent Bigly Orangeness seems to know precious little about the relative predictability that businesses need in order to make informed decisions. For reality TV or the kind of show Jerry Springer had, however, constant chaos can increase viewership. Orangeman’s style of television was successful because many people enjoyed his schtick.

    The move from television to politics was natural. As long as he didn’t have to know things or govern, he could apply the same loud-mouthed, made-for-TV nonsense to the United States as a whole. NBC having already marketed him for years, it was easy to get his fans to jump on this new bandwagon.

    His politics of unrelenting chaos, finger-pointing, scapegoating, grievance rhetoric, and race-baiting has brought him to the White House twice. But achieving such success is not the same as getting the nation’s work done. His style of politics is no way to conduct international relations or basic governance at home.

    I know that he likes to have all cameras on him, but the United States has a wealth of experienced and talented people who could do the necessary work and give him all the credit. I’m sure they could also help him produce “must watch” TV moments with himself at the center.

    Unfortunately, no people with adequate knowledge and experience are in his administration. He has purposefully insulated himself from alternative viewpoints, while cowardly and venal Republican senators enable the practice. In this way, we get a common-law presidential spouse, First Gentleman Felonious Husk, in addition to the president’s legal spouse, First Lady Trump.

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    Conscription, Industrial Mobilization, and the Russo-Ukrainian War

    Russia’s war against Ukraine has been marked by an effort to avoid universal (manhood) conscription. It is the regime’s war, so to speak (a “special military operation”), not a people’s war.

    On the other side, Ukraine uses conscription because it is indeed a national or people’s war for them. It is a fight for their very survival. Russia is even treating each and every Ukrainian as a “legitimate” target. But even Ukraine has avoided calling up younger men. It seems they lack the political consensus to do so.

    I thought about this again when Vance made his historically ignorant accusation in the White House that Ukraine’s military manpower situation was so bad that they had to force men into the army. It’s as if Vance had never heard of the draft in the United States. Or he doesn’t know that “conscription” means “draft” in modern U.S. military history. Regardless, conscription is what countries do when they believe the national stakes are extremely high. If Vance had read any histories of war over the past couple centuries, he would know this.

    One notable exception to conscription in national or total wars: Britain tried to fight the First World War with only volunteers, and they succeeded up to a point. By 1916, however, they had to institute conscription as well (“Military Service”). Little wonder. That war in particular had a ravenous appetite for men.

    I’ve been thinking about the issue of conscription for another reason. Western leaders have spent the first three years of the Russo-Ukrainian War trying to prevent average citizens from feeling any pain. They’ve avoided spending the money necessary to mobilize our defense industries sufficiently to support a Ukrainian victory and form a credible deterrent to Russia (and China).

    This avoidance points to one or all of the following developments in democracies and authoritarian kleptocracies alike:

    1. The relationship between nation states and their peoples has changed substantially. Are people less patriotic? Maybe they are less willing to follow their leaders’s calls to war?
    2. Do nation states care more about consent than they used to? Or have they grown more timid? Perhaps they are acting on an everyday awareness of popular opinion gleaned from social media, for example.
    3. Are contemporary leaders more likely to follow popular opinion than lead it? Even Putin and Trump are hardly leading, unless one thinks gaslighting their nations and the world counts.

    I have no answer here. It just feels like the post–Cold War era of increasingly volunteer armies and neoliberal economic policies is being challenged by the demands of Mars and his acolytes, even if few have come to accept the consequences of this shift.

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    Not looking forward to higher fuel and food prices here in Northern New England just because Orange Turd doesn’t understand how regional markets work among friends and allies. #TrumpsEconomy #MoscovianCandidate

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    Two Suffragettes

    Black and white photo: Fay Hubbard full-length, standing, showing publication to young man, bag labeled 'American Suffragette' slung over her shoulder.
    Black and white photograph: full-length portrait of elderly woman, standing, facing slightly right, holding an umbrella and wearing a top hat and tails. She's got chains suggesting a pocket watch and wallet of some kind, but also a rose. She's also wearing a medal of some kind, probably the Congressional Medal of Honor.

    1. “Fay Hubbard, 13-year Old Suffragette” in New York on February 9, 1910.

      “Suffragette! Suffragette!” This is the cry of little Fay Hubbard as she goes through the crowd at the suffragette meetings in New York selling copies of the paper… Miss Hubbard is a niece of Mrs. E. Ida Williams, the recording secretary of the Suffragette…

    2. Mary Edwards Walker (1832–1919). Dr. Walker served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. She was a Medal of Honor recipient, a suffragette, and a dress reformer.

    Images via Library of Congress, PPOC, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/92510578/ and https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005684835/.

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    Playing Putin’s lapdog isn’t a good look for Trump. His ass is too big for the terrorist. But he is just as uselessly loud as the most annoying small dog. Oh, what a fierce creature would the orange one be, if his master were to remove his leash. Yip! Yip! Yip! #MoscovianCandidate

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    “U.S. military removes words ‘history,’ ‘respect,’ ‘dignity’ from digital presence as part of DEI review” by Gabriella Alcorta-Solorio, Texas Public Radio, February 28, 2025, www.tpr.org…. #NotTheOnion #MoscovianCandidate #FuckTrump

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    Poster encouraging purchase of war stamps and bonds to support the war effort, showing faces of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito.

    “Stamp ‘em out! Buy U.S. stamps and bonds.” Poster by Thomas A. Byrne. WPA War Services of La., circa 1941–43.

    Via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98518290/.

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    The Kyiv Independent’s Anna Belokur packs a lot into one of the best comments I’ve seen about the Trump-Vance debacle during Zelensky’s visit this past Friday (Feb. 28). See the first eight minutes of “Ukraine this Week,” youtu.be…. 🇺🇦🇺🇸

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