The Weekly Sift

Jimmy Carter deserved better than to have his funeral pushed out of the headlines by a climate-change-related disaster, much less by Trump’s wild ravings about conquering Greenland.

As always, I recognize the inadequacy of a one-person weekly blog to cover an ongoing regional catastrophe, so I’m not going to try to do justice to the LA fires. And what drew my attention about Trump this week wasn’t his threats to break our treaty with Panama or turn on our NATO ally Denmark. Instead, I was struck by his quick response in using the California fires to tell defamatory lies about Governor Newsom and environmental policies in general.

The news media occasionally fact-checks Trump’s statements, but the larger story is going unreported: Previous presidents — and responsible leaders at all levels — have responded to disasters by reinforcing reliable sources of information, fighting rumor and panic, and promoting the community’s impulse to draw together. Trump does the exact opposite: To him, a disaster is an opportunity to tear us apart, not pull us together.

This is big, and I call attention to it in this week’s featured post “A Disastrous Development in Our Response to Disasters”. That should be out before 9 EST.

The weekly summary has a little about the wildfires, some coverage of the Carter funeral, Trump’s bizarre threats of conquest, his minor legal setbacks, and a few other things. I’ll aim to have that out by noon.

The normal thing to do in the last week of the year is to do a year-in-review post, but I find I just can’t. The national story of the year is Donald Trump’s election to a second term, and my personal story is that my wife died at the beginning of December. I’ve been avoiding all the “goodbye to 2024” articles, because there’s just too much to say goodbye to.

Instead, the featured post this week focuses on how the MAGA coalition (which already couldn’t produce a majority vote for Trump) has begun to splinter even before their candidate even takes office. “Cracks in the MAGA Coalition” will cover the dissension between Trump’s working-class voters and his top donor, Elon Musk. (Strange thing: If you’re a working person, the richest man in the world is not your friend.) Also: the difficulties forming a working majority in the House, and the impossible expectations the Trump administration faces going forward. That should be out around 10 EST.

The weekly summary will cover Jimmy Carter’s death at 100; Trump’s aggressive comments against Greenland, Panama, and Canada; the Ethics Committee report on Matt Gaetz; and a few other things before closing with an alternative to New Years resolutions. I’m aiming to post that around noon.

About my wife: Deb was a constant but hidden presence on this blog. She was a sounding board for all the ideas, and frequently called my attention to phrases or metaphors that were unfair or would unintentionally offend some readers. She was my tireless cheerleader, who often encouraged me to take on topics that seemed impossible to cover adequately by the end of the week.

And finally: About a month before she unexpectedly died, the photographer at our godson’s wedding captured an expression that I saw often, but which had never managed to make it into photographs. May you all someday have someone who is still looking at you this way after 40 years.

I can’t start this week’s Teaser without talking about last week’s, which has drawn 124 comments so far, almost all of which were supportive and compassionate. Many of them began something like “We’ve never met, but …” and then went on to say something about what role the Sift plays in their lives.

I honestly didn’t know that many people read the Teasers. I view Teaser-readers as the inner circle of Sift readers. They’re not coming to this blog because somebody told them about a particular article, they show up to find out what I’m going to do this week. That’s why I’m chattier and more personal in the Teasers.

I process by writing, so eventually I’ll have to say something about grief in general and mine in particular, the way C. S. Lewis did. Probably that will show up on my religious/philosophical blog Free and Responsible Search, but I’ll link to it here. (Coincidentally, the post currently on the top of that blog, which I wrote without suspecting my wife would die a few weeks later, tells you a lot about our relationship.) Writing Deb’s obituary was cathartic in its own way. All along, I had been the household PR person who kept our friends informed during her various illnesses, and this was one last chance to play that role.

Anyway, I was touched by the wave of affection in the comments. The people in my flesh-and-blood community have also been tremendous, and I am being very well supported.

But the world keeps spinning: This week’s featured post is about Democrats not getting ahead of ourselves. “The ball is in Trump’s court” revolves around the idea that Trump has raised expectations he can’t fulfill, and that we won’t know how to run against MAGA candidates in 2026 and 2028 until we know how those expectations fail. So it’s way too soon to talk about candidates and campaign themes. It should post maybe 9:30 EST.

The weekly summary will cover the ongoing public discussion about the CEO assassination and the killer, who has been caught. Also, the signs of powerful people bending their knees to Trump, updates on the turmoil in several foreign countries, and a few other things. I’ll try to get that out by noon, but it might slip.

I started the week with the intention of reading and summarizing some of the many articles that have been appearing about how to resist the incoming Trump administration and its expected attacks on democracy. But in the last few days I’ve discovered something about myself: I still haven’t fully recovered from the profound disillusionment of the election. I still can’t find in myself the hard base of determination that a principled resistance requires, or even the fire of anger. I’m still processing my feelings of disappointment in my countrymen and sorrow for what my country will soon face. I hope to get past this phase soon, and do pass on a few resistance tips I’ve gleaned from the limited research I’ve done.

So I decided to write about that instead. The featured post “Resisting, eventually” should be out before 10 EST.

The weekly summary will cover the new Trump appointees, plus what we’re learning about one of the previous ones: Pete Hegseth, whose own mother has called him “an abuser of women”. Then there’s the collapse of the ruble, and what Russia’s problems might mean for their allies, particularly the Assad regime in Syria and the ruling party in the nation of Georgia. Then there are Trump’s tariff threats against Mexico, Canada, the BRIC countries, and practically everyone else. A few other things are buried in my bookmarks somewhere, and then I’ll tell you about the “Satanist coloring book” a Catholic organization warned me about in a fund-raising letter, and how it led me to a dark-humor marketing site you definitely should NOT use to get amusing Christmas gifts for your friends. (I refuse to be responsible for any demons your friends’ kids might accidentally set loose.)

I’ll try to get the summary out by noon.

It’s another week with two featured posts: one I planned and one that just jumped out at the last minute.

The planned post is the obvious one: What’s up with these ridiculous appointments Trump is announcing? That post “Caligula’s Horse and other controversial appointments” should be out before 10 EST.

The other mainly calls your attention to a recent New Yorker article about “the ambience of information”. Trump won largely because voters believed a lot of things that weren’t true — crime is up, immigrants are dangerous, and boys are taking over girls sports, just to name the most significant ones. Harris’ message, on the other hand, never seemed to penetrate. For example, people would go on complaining that she had no policies, no matter how many she had or how she promoted them.

The New Yorker article points out something new in the information environment: voters who make up their minds based on information they “rub against” rather than read or absorb in any traditional fashion. I’ll summarize the point in “Harris lost the war of ambient information”. That should be out shortly.

That leaves a few things for the weekly summary to cover: the Musk “government efficiency” department, the exodus from X to BlueSky, The Onion buying InfoWars, Nazis marching in Columbus, and a few other things. I’ll try to get that out by noon.