Trump’s refusal to take the stand encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right. Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying.
This week’s featured post is “Alito’s Flags Aren’t the Worst of It“, concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling (with Alito writing the majority opinion) in a racial gerrymanding case.
This week everybody was talking about Alito’s flags
It all started last week, when the NYT revealed that an upside-down American flag flew over Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s home in Virginia for several days between the January 6 insurrection and Biden’s inauguration. An upside-down flag is a traditional distress symbol, and was used by the “stop the steal” movement that believed Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate. Alito blamed the flag on his wife, whom he said was responding to some kind of dispute with the neighbors. (He provided no further details, and also said that the dog ate his homework.)
Then Wednesday the NYT reported that a second insurrectionist flag, the Appeal To Heaven flag sometimes associated with Christian nationalism, flew over the Alitos’ vacation home on the Jersey shore in July, August, and September of 2023. (It’s not clear whether it flew continuously or sporadically.) This flag was also carried by January 6 insurrectionists.
Since its creation during the American Revolution, the flag has carried a message of defiance: The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule. “It’s a paraphrase for trial by arms,” Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University, said in an interview. “The main point is that there’s no appeal, there’s no one else you can ask for help or a judgment.”
According to the Supreme Court’s own Code of Conduct, which it released last November to demonstrate it was not completely lawless following revelations of Clarence Thomas’ corruption,
A Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.
The Court is currently hearing a number of cases related to January 6, and has already ruled that states cannot remove Trump from their ballots on 14th-Amendment participating-in-an-insurrection grounds. Alito’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned” by “an unbiased and reasonable person” in all these cases. But of course he will not recuse himself and Chief Justice Roberts will not demand that he do so, because in practice the Court has no code of conduct and does not recognize any judicial ethics.
Likewise Congress will not solve the problem. The filibuster will prevent the Senate from passing any binding code for the Court, and Republicans would never participate in an impeachment. I agree with Joyce Vance, that the only conceivably effective response needs to come from the voters:
This one, as I’ve written, is up to us, and to investing in the political cycle. Don’t despair, vote! … If you want a Congress that will pass ethics reform for the Supreme Court, as difficult of an endeavor as it may be to craft rules that will pass constitutional muster, then vote for people who will go on record as supporting it.
It’s unlikely we’ll get a majority large enough to impeach Alito or Thomas. But if it becomes clear that their in-your-face defiance of all constraints is a drag on the Republican Party, partisan interests may start to rein them in.
and international courts v Israel
This week, international courts made two moves against Israel. Last Monday International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Kahn sought arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas and Israel.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and two others are accused of various crimes associated with October 7, including the killings of several hundred Israeli civilians, taking hostages, rape, and so on.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant are accused of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and other related offenses.
Judges of the ICC have not yet approved the warrants. If they are approved, they may not have much effect beyond their influence on international opinion. Neither set of leaders is likely to surrender itself, and the ICC commands no military force able to bring them in.
President Biden denounced the prosecutor’s move:
The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
Friday, the International Court of Justice
ordered Israel to “[i]mmediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The Court also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing, to allow United Nations fact-finders to enter Gaza, and to report to the Court within one month regarding its compliance with the Court’s orders. The Court also reaffirmed its prior orders and reiterated its call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups.
Again, the international court has little ability to enforce this order, but it may have some effect on popular opinion around the world.
If you’re like me, you may not have previously realized the the ICC and the ICJ are separate entities. Both are located in The Hague. The difference seems to be that the ICC prosecutes individuals, while the ICJ adjudicates disputes among nations.
Another diplomatic blow to Israel: Spain, Ireland, and Norway will formally recognize a Palestinian state tomorrow.
and the Trump trials
Both sides have now rested their cases. The judge declared a break so that summations and jury instructions could occur without interruption by the holiday weekend. Summations begin tomorrow, and the jury should be ready to deliberate later this week.
What they will do is anyone’s guess. An outright acquittal seems unlikely, given the strength of the prosecution’s case. But to prevent a conviction the defense only needs to convince one juror. That juror doesn’t even have to believe Trump is innocent, just that the case against him hasn’t been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
To no one’s surprise, Trump himself did not testify, despite saying many times that he would.
He would have been better off not offering a defense at all. It would have looked like a power move: The government hasn’t proved its case, so we have nothing to answer.
Instead, the defense called one technical witness and then Robert Costello, who was a disaster. Not only was Costello disrespectful of Judge Merchan, leading the judge to clear the courtroom to tell Costello how close he was to a contempt of court ruling, but his presence allowed the prosecution to introduce emails Costello wrote that captured just how mob-like TrumpWorld is.
Emails between Costello and Cohen were read aloud to leave the indelible memory in the minds of the jurors that Trump and Giuliani were conspiring with Costello to make sure Cohen didn’t cooperate with the government. There is even an email from Costello to Cohen saying, “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained…sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places,” and one from Costello to his law partner saying, “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President,” (which they clearly were.) When Cohen didn’t sign on with him right away he told his law partner Cohen was “slow-playing us and the President…What should I say to this asshole? He’s playing with the most powerful man on the planet.” Didn’t he know who he was messing with?
Costello was supposed to undermine Michael Cohen’s credibility, but I suspect he enhanced it. The defense was trying to make Cohen look like a thug, but they overshot and made everyone connected with Trump look like a thug.
and Trump’s assassination claim
At some point years ago, “Trump lies” stopped being a headline; it happens every day, so it’s not news. But this week included a lie so brazen and so outrageous that it deserves attention.
In a fundraising email responding to right-wing media reports that offered a distorted reading of a newly-unsealed court filing in Trump’s classified documents case, Trump falsely claimed Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out” when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022.
In a separate post on his Truth Social platform Tuesday evening, Trump further said he was “shown Reports” that Biden’s DOJ “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” in their search of the property for classified documents.
So what’s real? FBI search warrants have boilerplate language that is actually about limiting lethal force:
law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.
In a court filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump’s lawyers left out the “only”, leaving “may use deadly force when necessary”. That document recently got unsealed, and Trump conspiracy theorists jumped on it online, eventually leading Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro to start discussing the “assassination plot” like it was a real thing, including imagining shoot-outs with the Secret Service. From there the wild story got back around the Trump, who pushed it for all it was worth. It’s not clear whether he realized that he started the misperception himself.
In reality, it has been known since the day it happened that the FBI had coordinated with the Secret Service and timed the raid so that Trump would be out of town. Trump knows this. MTG knows this. Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro know it.
Jack Smith has responded to this incident by noting the possible danger the rumor poses to FBI agents involved in the raid, who could be witnesses in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trial, if Judge Cannon ever allows it to happen. He has asked Cannon to modify Trump’s terms of release “to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
I can’t imagine the boot-licking Judge Cannon acknowledging that Trump lied or that his violent supporters predictably threaten the people his rhetoric targets. But she’ll have to respond somehow.
and you also might be interested in …
I can’t say I’m surprised that Nikki Haley has finally said that she’s voting for Trump. Did she previously say a lot of bad things about the Great Man? Join the club. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis — they all said bad things about him before abasing themselves to kiss the ring.
But the people who think Haley is now in the running to be Trump’s VP are crazy. Trump’s VP has to satisfy these conditions:
- You can’t outshine the boss. (That eliminates not just Haley, but MTG and Vivek as well.)
- You can’t have your own following independent of the boss. (So: not DeSantis or Haley.)
- You have to be willing to commit treason for Trump. (He’s not making the Mike Pence mistake again.)
- You must be willing to repeat whatever claim the boss makes, no matter how absurd or counterfactual. (That’s why so many VP wannabees showed up at Trump’s courtroom wearing matching suits and red ties.)
Just to remind us that there’s no situation so good that a person can’t screw it up, former NFL star Antonio Brown, who earned $80 million during his 12-year career, has filed for bankruptcy.
If you were worried at all about Amy Klobuchar’s ability to hang onto her Senate seat in Minnesota, you can stop. Republicans looks set to nominate an absolute loon.
Cory Doctorow says that “AIs and self-driving cars are the new jetpacks”. It turns out that there was never any reason to think Jetson-style jetpacks were feasible.
In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it. The jetpack in question — technically a “rocket belt” — was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000′. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.
But Moore was a great showman, and got it into our heads that jetpacks were an inevitable part of the future — to the point that many people my age lament “Where are our jetpacks? We were promised jetpacks.”
Doctorow explains how the same kind of hucksterism is happening today with self-driving cars and AI in general. Big things are always just a year or two away, and if the impressive demo videos are mostly fake, they’re not lies, they’re “premature truths”.
and let’s close with something thought-provoking
If you’re looking for blogs to read, let me suggest Jess Piper’s “The View from Rural Missouri“. She has that rare touch for telling personal stories that capture something larger. Two posts to get you started: “Losing My Religion“, about how she drifted away from her Evangelical upbringing, and “Daddy Died a MAGA” about how the right-wing echo chamber turned her father into someone she couldn’t recognize.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
It think it’s safe to say that this was the week where Biden officially led the Rules-Based International Order to its Abyssinia Crisis. After the ICC announcement and ICJ ruling to stop attacking Rafah, Israel’s response was to… bomb Rafah. America continues to arm and diplomatically support Israel, and has denounced the courts on Israel’s behalf. Instead of even paying lip service to the idea of international institutions and rules, America is loudly and proudly opposing the very concept of applying international law to Israel. You can’t even say this an aberration caused by Trump, because he’s been out of office for 3 years. It’s all being done by good liberal Joe Biden, and the entire system of international law seems powerless to stop him and his client state from doing whatever they want.
I don’t see how America’s claims of upholding international norms, rules, and rights will ever be taken seriously again. No country will trust the Rules-Based International Order because it’s now clear that there’s only one rule: the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
What you’ve described has been going on ever since the UN was established. The US is very selective about what parts of “international law” it will honor. In national security matters, the US ignores international rulings. This is unchanged, under Democratic and Republican presidents.
I’d prefer that the US abide by international law, even to its perceived detriment. Presidents, and the US Congress, prefer otherwise.
It’s always been like this, but they didn’t used to be so open about it. America and its allies used to make up some convoluted justification for how they were upholding these laws even while they broke them. Like, you didn’t have Israel tweeting about how The Hague won’t stop them before. That’s a new development in Israeli decay, and it’s a new development in American decay that they won’t bother making them to follow the script anymore.
Doesn’t help that this comes after 2 years of Slava Ukraini. Everything that’s supposed to make Russia a unique evil that has to be stopped is gleefully done by Israel, and Israel gets full American support. There’s no pretense of upholding any higher ideal like there used to be. All America can say at this point is that they get to treat the entire world like Melos, and what are you going to do about it? The only thing underpinning American hegemony at this point is force, and judging by how badly America’s wars in Ukraine and the Red Sea are going, that force isn’t going to last very long.
The problem is the anti-Zionist left refuses to recognize that they are promoting the Hamas agenda even as they assure us “we don’t support Hamas either.” The way to put pressure on Israel is to support a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish one. This isn’t just up to Israel; the Palestinians, the surrounding Arab countries, and the UN will have to be on board. This means giving up the “right of return” and settling the 5 million Palestinian refugees either in the West Bank and Gaza, or in other countries, giving up any option of them returning to the homes their great-grandparents left. It will also require addressing security concerns, meaning Palestine won’t be able to have its own military, and will have to be administered at least temporarily by a coalition of Arab states.
There will never be a Palestinian state until Israel’s existence and sovereignty is taken for granted.
The Rules-Based International Order has only one rule: The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
How does that explain civil rights advances?
Palestinians living under Israeli occupation have rights in the same way the Melians had rights. At least the Athenians had the honesty not to screech about how Melos is Hamas.
I guess Hamas has no agency at all, and the fact that a recent survey by Arab World has support for Hamas at 70% in Gaza is irrelevant. But keep saying “Hamas is terrible” while supporting their agenda.
Athenians: “For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses–either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Persians, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us–and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lakedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Also, Melos supports Hamas.”
To be more constructive, maybe I’ve been misunderstanding your position. Do you think America upholds a “rules-based international order” the way the Biden Administration says it does? If you don’t then I’ll stop joking about how Melos is Hamas.
America upholds a “what’s best for America” international order, and always has, just like every other world empire.
I’m not clear what the Athenians’ treatment of the Melians has to do with the current situation in Israel. Did an international body grant Athens independence at its founding that the Melians and their allies opposed? Did the Melians and their allies attack Athens after independence was granted and lose some territory as a result? Did the Melians fail to demand self-determination when their land was controlled by their allies, but when Athens captured it in a subsequent war begun by those same allies, suddenly independence became paramount? Did a large majority of Melians support the total obliteration of Athens and refuse any settlement that didn’t include aspects that would eventually result in Athens no longer existing as an independent country of Athenian self-determination?
None of that applies? OK, then you can stop “joking” about Melos because it has nothing in common with the current conflict other than being a conflict.
Thank you for your honesty about how the Biden administration is lying about a “Rules-Based International Order.” Most people wouldn’t be so frank about how Israel gets to brutalize Palestine into submission. Palestinians should just accept their dispossession and subjugation because daddy America has the strength to let its client state do whatever it wants. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, like the Athenians said.
We have to consider who’s truly strong, though. The IDF is so decayed that it can’t even take Beit Hanoun after 7 months, the US Navy has completely failed to reopen the Red Sea against an enemy that doesn’t even have a navy, and American war industry is so atrophied that it can’t even make shells for the Ukrainians. Do you think ruling through force like this is any more sustainable for America and Israel than it was for the Athenians?
I’m not sure where you’re getting your information about the state of American and Israeli war capacity – maybe from Russian or Iranian sources? Believe it or not, one reason Israel hasn’t captured the entirety of Gaza is because, contrary to accusations of “genocide,” they’re at least making an effort to target Hamas and avoid civilian casualties. Hamas could have prevented all this simply by surrendering 7 months ago. They didn’t because they think they can still win this. Do you agree? I mean, do you want Hamas to win? They are the underdog after all.
The problem with our sending arms to Ukraine has more to do with Mike Johnson delaying the military aid bill for 7 months. He’s no dummy, he knew that would be the end of his Speakership, and the only reason that didn’t happen is because he made some deal with the Democrats for their support.
There’s a certain element that anticipates the end of the American experiment with glee. Of course, every empire eventually comes to an end, and what follows isn’t usually an improvement. I’d like to postpone that day as long as possible in the hope that the people eventually choose leaders who will guide us toward a sustainable future.
You haven’t actually followed this war, have you? Let’s focus on Israel’s stated goal to destroy Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance, then either reoccupy Gaza or install a puppet government of rent-an-Arabs to run it for them. To do this, they have to actually take and hold the Gaza strip to make way for the new regime. The IDF clearly sucks too much to do this. It’s spent so long oppressing Palestinians in the West Bank they can’t deal with an enemy who can actually shoot back. They’ve claimed to have cleared the Palestinian resistance from northern Gaza several times, but every time they do Israel proper is hit by a new rocket attack from the north. This is before we even get into how IDF soldiers keep dying Looney Tunes deaths like having a Qassam fighter pop out of a hole and put a mine on their unscreened tank, get blown up standing next to piles of Explosives that a Qassam fighter shoots an RPG at, or get blown up by their own tanks.
If the IDF can’t even hold a suburb like Beit Hanoun or knock out the minor Palestinian factions like the PFLP or PIJ after 7 months, how can they achieve their stated goals? What is this war accomplishing other than the slaughter of civilians? It makes no sense from a military or political perspective, but it makes perfect sense if the goal is to collectively punish the people of Gaza for Israel’s humiliation on October 7th.
I see you haven’t been paying attention to how badly Ukraine has been going either. You don’t just go to the artillery store and buy shells with GDP, they have to be produced in factories. The problem is that NATO’s neoliberal war industry is a joke, and Russia’s state arsenals are outproducing all of NATO 3-1 when it comes to artillery, even before you throw in the shells they’re getting from North Korea. The Ukrainian army has been getting shredded as a result since they’re stuck fighting an industrial war without a war industry to back them up. It’s why Ukraine is going lose unless NATO remakes its entire political economy, and there’s no sign they even recognize that’s possible. It’s even worse now, because America started redirecting its remaining shells to Slava Israeli in October.
This is all why the rise and fall of modern Israel will go down as the dumbest chapter in the history of the Jewish people. We’ve had plenty of downfalls before, but none of them have been this ironic. We adopted all the vices of our oppressors and inflicted every evil that was done to us on another people, all so we could be safe, strong, and independent. What did we get? Israel, the least safe place on Earth to be Jewish, defended by the world’s worst army, and existing only to serve as shocktroopers for a crumbling empire that thinks you can fire GDP out of a cannon. What can you say at this point, other than lmao?
I’m probably following the war more closely than you are, because I’m not drooling with joy at the thought of Israel’s collapse and viewing the war through that lens. First, urban warfare is difficult, especially since Gaza is not a normal urban area, given that there are around 300 miles of tunnels beneath it. As the IDF clears one area and moves to a new one, Hamas simply returns to the cleared area. Netanyahu doesn’t seem to have a plan for this, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that his main goal is to prolong the war to stay in power and delay his eventual criminal prosecution. If he takes any steps to end the war, he loses the support of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and will very likely be voted out and replaced with a more liberal government. This is already creating a rift between IDF leaders and the government. At the same time, Hamas is proving to be little more than a band of thugs gleefully dying at the request of their Iranian benefactors. If you think the IDF is incompetent (it’s not, it’s one of the most effective armies in the world), the Arab armies must have among the worst ratios of competence to high-tech weaponry, and Hamas doesn’t even have that. It’s like a fight between the U.S. Marines and the cast of “West Side Story.”
The Putin shills have been bleating about Russia on the verge of winning since the illegal Ukraine invasion began. While the Ukrainians haven’t been able to expel the Russians, Russia hasn’t been able to pacify Ukraine either, and all of their energy is focused on holding the territory they’ve captured. Putin’s goal is to hang on until November; if Trump is elected, he knows he’s home free, and I would expect Zelensky to offer Donbas as a peace settlement. If Biden is reelected, Putin will declare victory and go home.
And yes, Israel is a dangerous place to live. It was a dangerous place for Jews even in the 1920s. Maybe they should have stayed in Europe where you seem to think they would have been safer in the ensuing decades. But please keep repeating “anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism” if that makes you feel better.
Let me see if I’ve got this right:
The IDF, which got crushed by guys flying thingamjigs on October 7th and can’t even knock out the PFLP, is an incredibly effective fighting force. They will do regime change in Gaza without clearing the tunnels or actually holding the territory. The fact that the Qassam Brigades keep popping up in the areas they’ve cleared is a sign that Hamas is incompetent and weak, and not a sign the IDF is lying and those areas were never actually cleared to begin with.
Ukraine will win an industrial war without a war industry backing them up. The fact that NATO is being outproduced 3-1 by the country that had the Hot Dog Coup isn’t important, neither is Ukraine being outshot 5-1 in an artillery war, Ukraine needing to draft half a million men to stay in the fight isn’t a sign they’ve taken horrific losses, and anyone who points out that this has been going horribly for them since their counteroffensive failed last summer is a Putin shill.
Jews are safest in the place where we have rockets being shot at us all the time. I should support Israel’s eternal subjugation of the Palestinians since as a Jew, I can never truly be safe anywhere else (even though it’s the only place I would have rockets shot at me). The idea that Jews and non-Jews can never truly live together is a fact of life, and not just internalizing what the antisemites believe. Any questioning of this means that I’m opening the door to Holocaust 2.
Am I understanding this correctly?
The IDF was mostly in the West Bank. The government ignored reports of Hamas activity. If you think Hamas “beat” the IDF on Oct 7, you must not be aware of what happened. Hamas didn’t engage with the IDF, they attacked a music festival and private homes. We can speculate that Netanyahu deliberately ignored the reports in the hope that there would be an attack, giving him an excuse to retaliate, but our opinion is meaningless. People in Israel are definitely thinking that.
Ukraine will survive as long as we fund them. No argument there, if it’s head to head between them and Russia, it’s no contest. What you seem to be missing is the value to the US of their willingness to stop Russia from advancing further, into Poland and the Baltic states. If you don’t want to look at the bigger picture, all I can say is I’m glad you’re not in the State Dept.
It’s easy to sit back in your comfortable home in the US and opine on how Jews aren’t safe in Israel. Were they safe in Europe in the 30s and 40s? As for “subjugation of the Palestinians,” they were offered their own country in 1948, and despite efforts to paint them as the equivalent of the Native Americans, most Palestinians today are also descended from immigrants. Now both you and they want a do-over, as if the last 100 years never happened.
What is “subjugating” the Palestinians is their own antisemitism. But as long as you view this conflict as the US Army vs. Sitting Bull, you aren’t “understanding it correctly.”
Israel isn’t invading an independent country. It is responding to the worst Arab terrorist attack against it since its War of Independence. You may disagree with its tactics, but if Hamas wouldn’t hide behind civilians, embedded like the cancer it is, civilian casualties would be reduced. And, of course, if Hamas wouldn’t pursue it’s explicitly stated goal of liquidating the state of Israel and killing every Jew it can, civilian casualties would be eliminated.
There’s no equivalence between Russia and Israel. American foreign policy – quite correctly – is the unquestioned support for the existence of the state of Israel while at the same time working privately to affect the tactics chosen to effectively address Hamas and its control of the West Bank. Attempting to hold either Western democracy to some sort of international purity standard is, at best, naive.
If the choice is between a single-state solution for the land west of the Jordan and a two-state solution that hasn’t eliminated, finally, a century of Arab refusal to accept the presence of Jews in it and their continuous violence against them, then an expanded Israel and the elimination of the Palestinian Territories it must be.
The Rules-Based International Order has only one rule: The strong do what they can while screaming HAMAS, and the weak suffer what they must.
Jetpacks have been big in movies and comic books for half a century: it turns out in the real world, they have big issues with control and fuel.
AI has been big in movies and comic books and science fiction for nearly a century. It turns out that in the real world it also has big issues with control and fuel. (Was it Sam Altman who said that AI was going to require energy-technology breakthroughs?) In fiction it’s easy to not worry about your fuel issues: in the real world, not so much.
To be fair to AI, we did have an already existing real world example of intelligence that didn’t have unsustainable energy requirements, as a model.
Of course their is equivalency between Hamas and Netanyahu.
Do you think Hamas’ actions have been beneficial for the people of Gaza? At least Netanyahu lives in the country he’s in charge of; you can’t say the same for Hamas’ leaders.
Another interesting post from “The View from Rural Missouri” about the benefits of running Democratic candidates in “red states”:
Instead of Leaving Rural America, Democrats Should Double Down on Running Candidates in Rural Races
https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/instead-of-leaving-rural-america
One quote:
“You want a rural message that resonates? Remind folks that their kids will not be returning home because of policies that decimated the economy and schools in their rural communities. Their grandchildren will be raised far from them.”
The problem with that tends to be asking people who would run as Democrats to live in an environment that is increasingly defined by xtian-fascist authoritarianism, as well as tactics of intimidation and violence against property and person for those who dare to object.
Yes, their kids will not be returning home, because anyone who can rub two brain cells together wants to flee the Gym Jordan, MAGA dystopia the right has created in its quest for religious control, widespread ignorance, and economic feudalism.
Did you read her blog post?
Yes. And?
She lives in a rural red state. She ran for office. She’s not talking about violence.
I read another account from a guy who ran for office in Montana. He also didn’t talk about violence. He said a couple of his neighbors told him that he was the only Democrat they’d ever voted for.
Maybe the violence isn’t as pervasive as we think it is. Not that it doesn’t happen, but isn’t as pervasive as we think it is.
3:12 PM post continued
The people who live there know better than you and I do what they’re getting themselves into by running for office.
Well, until recently, I lived for 12 years six miles south of Gym Jordan’s home town, surrounded by this mentality and corn or soybeans, and experienced first-hand the rise of first, the Tea Party in response to a black man winning the White House, and then its evolution into MAGA, all fueled by Rushbo, Faux Noise, and the even more extremist right-wing media.
Maybe I know exactly what they’re getting themselves into, even simply by displaying a sign of support for anything not praising Dear Leader in complete fealty, or simply having my party registration displayed at the local polling place. What’s your experience with it? Ever get a bullet shot through your window? Or have road signs around your property peppered with rounds? Or trucks tearing up your property?
I also lived in Montana for seven years prior to it, working on Obama’s 2008 campaign, where door-to-door training included advice on how to approach carefully to lessen the odds of being shot and to immediately leave at the sign of any resistance lest it escalate. It was more generally isolationist than cultist there, but even that’s changed with MAGA and increased xtian nationalism.
Again, what’s your experience with actually living amongst this mentality?
She’s asking for a Democratic Party that doesn’t exist. It’s been since John Dean that there’s even been a pretense of a 50-state strategy, one aspect of which was her idea of trying to increase turnout for local/state elections simply by fielding a candidate. The current DNC requires all candidates it backs to raise a substantial amount of money from friends and other personal contacts, and to commit to spending that money on DNC-only approved political vendors. Don’t want to do that? You’re on your own.
And, with the rise of MAGA, she’s asking for people willing to open themselves to anything and everything from becoming a social pariah for failing to accept the official MAGA catechism to explicit threats of violence that may well be acted upon, either on property or person.
It may well be that a lifelong resident of small community whose family is known may get a bit more protection from the consequences of “trying that in a small town” (a song that speaks clearly to what happens to people who dare to question getting in line and conforming), but that person is signing up for general ostracizing and being shunned, at a minimum.
The mistake big-city coastal Dems make is to equate the ignorant, arrested-development, self-delusional and destructive reactionary right people like Gym Jordan represent as being some sort of temporary and benign piece of Americana that’s a passing phase. It’s anything but, and it’s not interested (or capable of) discussion or debate, and fully committed to imposing its desires on anyone who objects, starting with the .45 that’s always no farther away than in the truck that they made sure you know they have and are ready to use to end any argument you don’t agree with.
You’re either one of us, or you’re the sworn enemy that needs to be eliminated. That’s why their grandkids are going to grow up far, far away.
I don’t have any doubt that was your experience. I don’t have any doubt that there are other places just like that. What I doubt is that every place is just like that.
The people who live in whatever place know better than you and I do what they’re getting themselves into by running for office.
The democratic party doesn’t have a 50-state strategy, but other organizations are filling some of the gaps
Blue Missouri
https://bluemissouri.org/
with similar programs in Ohio and Texas
Contest Every Race, operating in multiple states
https://www.contesteveryrace.com/