“‘The Republicans go for the jugular; the Democrats go for the capillaries’ — Kevin Phillips … With the recent release of the long-withheld, but little anticipated Democratic National Committee ‘autopsy’ of the 2024 presidential electoral loss, we’re back to the perennial questions of which issues should receive priority; how should messaging and narrative around those issues be crafted; which wing(s) of the party should be amputated before their rot infects the entire organism, suburban soccer moms or inner city youth; and on and on. All good questions, but ultimately, in present circumstances, unanswerable except in the most platitudinous, hand-waving ways. The most fundamental dilemma resides in the Faustian bargain the party entered beginning in the 1970s, and the result of that bargain is neatly captured in Sheldon Wolin’s 2010 coinage ‘the inauthentic opposition.'” (05/27/26)
“As ‘safe spaces’ on Western university campuses continue to multiply, it has become clear that institutions designed to defend free thought are now breeding grounds for illiberal conformism. Higher education no longer trains students to grapple with dissent. It teaches them to avoid intellectual conflict at all costs. This conformism has not been limited to the lecture hall. It has spread outwards into companies, the media space and public life.” (05/27/26)
Source: Aaron Ross Powell’s Blog
by Aaron Ross Powell
“For most Americans—and particularly for the culturally reactionary ones who form Trump’s MAGA base—American history isn’t really history. It’s not a series of actual events to be studied objectively and probed thoughtfully. It is instead American lore. Like learning everything there is to know about Star Wars or about Warhammer 40,000 or about the endless variety of heroes who make up the Avengers, American lore is a comprehensive story any new event can fit into. And that you, if you’re American, can fit yourself into, too.” (05/26/26)
“When Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that any agreement with Iran must be ‘great and meaningful,’ or there would be no agreement at all, he appeared to be drawing a wall between himself and Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He wanted to make clear that even if negotiations were underway, they would be Trumpian negotiations: tougher, more forceful, and the ‘exact opposite’ of an agreement he had spent years denouncing as a symbol of weakness. But that statement revealed less strength than contradiction. A president who once treated Obama’s diplomacy with Iran as appeasement now has to sell his own diplomacy as victory.” (05/27/26)
“Around 200 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and roughly 200 more work for the 12 district banks around the country. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could assign some of the Fed economists to assess whether the current valuation of the stock market is consistent with the Fed’s projections for the future growth of GDP and profits. Unless their arithmetic is very different than the stuff the rest of us use, they will have to conclude that stock valuations are not consistent, unless today’s crop of stockholders expect very low future returns. That seems unlikely, but that is the alternative to saying that the market is in a bubble.” (05/27/26)
“Unlike concerns about censorship on college campuses, which have received a lot of media attention, when guest speakers are disinvited or shouted down, few people care much about the extent to which school authorities may suppress student speech in a public junior high or high school. The assumption is that due to their age and relative immaturity, most of what they contribute to the marketplace of ideas at their school will have little, if any, value. Furthermore, the primary mission of a school is to educate its students, and student speech can be disruptive or distracting. As such, it may appear to be obvious that teenagers should not be able to exercise the same free speech rights that college students may exercise. However, position strikes me as harder to defend than most people acknowledge.” (05/26/26)
“In the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just off Highway 9, there is a restaurant that has become a community icon. It has a redwood-paneled dining room with exposed roof timbers that was built in 1912 and a historic bar with a wood-burning fireplace. For over a century, the people in this isolated town have treasured this gathering place. Near downtown Los Angeles, along a busy commercial boulevard, a family-owned Mexican restaurant has thrived since 1925 …. Countless independent businesses in California remain prosperous despite a regulatory environment that throws at them rules that are often unreasonable, even in conflict with each other, from agencies at the local, county, regional, and state levels. These agencies are staffed with bureaucrats who are not merely indifferent to the challenges small businesses face while attempting to comply with their edicts; many of them are actively hostile.” (05/27/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn, / because the world has gone insane, / and there are chatbots in our skulls, / and our eyes have been crossed out with black ink. / They are building a UFC arena on the White House lawn / so the president can watch men fight in a cage / while the Paramount Plus audience watches military recruitment ads that are marketed to teenagers / and a podcast plutocrat interviews men with bloody hands / as shame-soaked survivors sleep on the sidewalk in Washington DC, / as Cuban parents light a candle and skip another meal, / as Lebanese medics die in double-tap airstrikes, / as billionaires cackle about stripping all human knowledge / and selling it back to us as a subscription service, / as we shovel fistfuls of mood stabilizers down our gullets / to keep us functional enough to turn the gears of industry …” (05/27/26)
“I’m not saying AI is superintelligent or can decide better than you can. I’m saying that if you — like me — spend an hour or so doing research before voting on local seats, AI can aid that research very effectively. And if you don’t do that research — because you weren’t willing to waste an hour on it before — AI makes it so much faster that you might want to start.” (05/26/26)
“Yesterday, we commemorated those men and women of the United States who lost their lives prematurely in the various wars fought by and in the United States of America. But it is important to remember, and commemorate (mourn) those other than the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – and their civilian support forces – who died. There is no war, whether declared or not, whether internal or external, that does not have many more casualties. And almost always, in external wars, it is the enemy who suffers the greater number of dead. And the civilians, not the support forces, but the ordinary civilians. Let us also pause to remember those, of whatever nation, with whatever stake in the outcome of the war or whatever the conflict is called.” (05/26/26)
