Politics & Rule
Sergio Olmos, “A surprising immigration raid in Kern County foreshadows what awaits farmworkers and businesses,” Cal Matters, January 10, 2025, calmatters.org….
“If this is the new normal, this is absolute economic devastation,” says one local economist.
This and more recent stories suggest that ICE was chomping at the bit before the rotten orange began his second term.
Finished reading Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020). Highly recommended. Good antidote to feelings of confusion and helplessness in these troubled times.📚
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.
“Heeding Trump, Air Force won’t teach recruits about Tuskegee Airmen” by Sig Christenson, San Antonio Express News, January 24, 2025, expressnews.com….
A video describing the exploits of the groundbreaking African American airmen, who flew combat sorties during World War II, has been removed from the instructional curriculum for new recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the hub of Air Force basic training.
According to Politico, Vance broke a tie vote for the Colon-in-Chief’s choice of Sec Def.
All Democrats opposed Hegseth. Three Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—and, notably, former GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—voted against him.
Seems McConnell no longer has any influence at all over his caucus. Or he elected not to use what little he might still have. Somehow fitting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune sure has some strange notions about military professionalism. (“Senate is preparing to confirm Hegseth…” apnews.com…) The GOP circus is playing a dangerous game with our national security.
Sharpies seem like a pretty good metaphor for a manbaby’s presidency.
I’m trying to remember how long it took me to get used to Orange Oaf in the White House last time. Was it six years? Longer? It took me no time at all to grow used to his departure from the Oval Office.
Now that I’m more than 20 years older than Martin Luther King, Jr., ever had a chance to become, his youth at the time of his murder is much clearer to me, much starker. It makes his achievements seem that much greater and his death all the more painful.
Pictured above: photos of two buttons and a poster from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library, image IDs 57281864, 57281854, and 58250348.
Sherrilyn Ifill, “It Is MLK Day. Do Not Despair. This Year Especially, We Have Work To Do.” sherrilyn.substack.com…
This funny old German postcard about “the end of the world” caught my attention because of tomorrow’s big event in Washington, DC, Orange Oaf’s return to the White House. The card feels somewhat prophetic, but the earlier threat it references was celestial, not human. Many people were panicking because Earth was expected to pass through the tail of Halley’s Comet on May 19, 1910.
One of the signs to the right in the postcard advertises “Airplanes for rent | Deliverance from the apocalypse!” The other offers big jugs of gasoline, each containing enough to reach (reichend ) the moon, or pungent enough for the odor to carry (riechend ) that far. The airplanes, dirigibles, and hot air balloons for escaping to the moon look as fanciful as their purported purpose.
Source: Newberry Library, John I. Monroe collection of fantasy postcards, NL116N96.
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.
I have some sympathy for Orange One’s fear of the cold. He’s an emperor with no clothes, after all.
“Proposed Legislation Threatens a Backslide on U.S. Democracy” by Samantha Karlin, newlinesmag.com…, January 16, 2025.
Lede: “A new House bill purports to counter terror financing, but it reads a lot like the ‘foreign agent’ laws used to quash dissent in Russia and Hungary.”
Feeling sick about next Monday, January 20. Fortunately, I’ll be with family and nowhere near a TV.
I’m assuming the poignant service for Jimmy Carter in the National Cathedral went over TFG’s head and he got bored. Mercifully, the CSPAN camera didn’t linger on his mug for very long.
A book that manages to historicize a century of strongman regimes in an accessible and readable way while maintaining intellectual and scholarly rigor is a helluva thing. If you haven’t yet read Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020), I highly recommend it.
Strongman regimes … turn the economy into an instrument of leader wealth creation, but also encourage changes in ethical and behavioral norms to make things that were illegal or immoral appear acceptable, whether election fraud, torture, or sexual assault.…
Rulers who come into office with a criminal record … have a head start. They know that making the government a refuge for criminals who don’t have to learn to be lawless hastens the ‘contagion effect.’ So does granting amnesties and pardons, which indebt individuals to the leader and make blackmailers, war criminals, and murderers available for service.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, chap. 7.
Who would the strongman past and present be without those crowds that form the raw material of his propaganda? His secret is that he needs them far more than they need him.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, chap. 5.
Propaganda is also a system of attention management that works through repetition.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen, chap. 5.