The Pantomime Presidency

 Donald Trump is a stupid person. I've said this before, and I stick by it. I saw a video (can't find it) that was Edward Teller talking about John Von Neumann, who might have been the smartest person to ever live. Teller said that what made Von Neumann so smart was that he loved to think because he was good at it, but he became even better at it, precisely because he loved to do it. 

Trump doesn't like to think.

What's more, his feeble brain has been cooked by 70 years of mainlining bad television like a junkie shooting up heroin in 1970s Times Square, a period that Trump himself seems stuck in.

We have seen two instances of his TV presidency, his Pretendency, this week. The farcical, but still dangerous, military takeover of DC and his flop of a summit with Vladimir Putin. 

The DC thing is pure fascist theater. It's ridiculous and most of the law enforcement and military folks know that. It's not actually venturing into high crime areas, but rather patrolling the wealthier streets. It's part ridiculous theater and part authoritarian cowing of the DC class. They aren't patrolling Anacostia Flats, they're patrolling K Street.

Similarly, the summit was bullshit, because it was always going to be bullshit, because Trump can't be bothered with learning what he needs to learn to manage a guy like Putin. Instead, it creates optics - most of which favor Putin - as Trump vainly and in vain seeks the Nobel Peace Prize.

In other words, the main news stories of the week are Trump pretending to be strong and capable on TV, when anyone paying attention knows it's a colossal joke - just not a funny one.

AI Is Shit, Because It's Based On Online People

 AI is not actually "artificial intelligence," it's Large Language Model computing that crushes so much data that it can pass for a human, I guess. It is trained on the internet, and I don't know if you've spent any time on the internet, but boy howdy there is some fucked up shit on the internet.

The fact that it can pass for a person, at least to some extent, means that the potential for abuse is incredibly high. We had Jonathan Haidt come to campus to talk about social media and how toxic it is and phones are, but he ended by citing his worries that AI was simply going to be used for sex bots.

Well, guess what.

The fact that Meta allows AI pedophilia is something that I never thought I'd type. The fact that we are going to consume gargantuan amounts of energy to power lurid chat bots that mimic everything from children to celebrities and allow people to constantly push against boundaries of acceptable behavior is really blood chilling. I have a hunch before 15 years is out, we are going to have to decide whether you can prosecute a human being for raping a robot. I'm dead serious.

When video came out, it was amazing! You could watch all sorts of movies that you never could before. It did not take long, though, for porn to push its way to the back room of video shops. In fact, the reason we had VHS and not Betamax was because VHS was cheaper, lower quality and therefore preferred by pornographers. The internet was going to democratize knowledge and allow people all over the world to connect. It would be the death of authoritarianism by digital libertarianism. Instead, we got PornHub. 

AI will go the same direction. Yes, there are good applications for it. It makes for a superior search engine, or at least an easier one. You could Google "melanoma symptoms and Google would give you resources. Now, AI will summarize them for you.

Yay?

We've already seen Musk's AI - Grok - become a fascist (MechaHitler) because it was trained of his toxic Twitter. We will see AI become a vehicle for human depravity, not because the machines are depraved, but because we are depraved and while the tech bros will laud the miracles that AI might very well bring to us, they are going to make money off the depravity. 

I only say this because they always have.

Big City Blues

 Hitler famously lit the German Reichstag on fire to create an emergency to seize control of the government, despite not having a majority in the German parliament. There is some thought that he's using the carjacking of Big Balls in DC to create martial law there. As both Richardson and Krugman point out, Washington DC is near a 30 year low in crime. 

Today, most of my family and I drove through western South and North Dakota. It's beautiful. No, really, gorgeous. It's also incredibly barren of people. We drove for two hours or more where I don't think one person could see their neighbors houses. These were mostly ranches. After a while, we got into grain country and eventually, it got so that houses had sightlines to each other. Still, when we got to Dickinson, ND (population 25.695) the place felt really crowded. The town we come from in CT is roughly the same size and is completely unremarkable in any way, shape or form. Dickinson is the anchor town for roughly 50-100 miles in every direction.

So, Dickinson - population: not that many - felt bustling. No wonder the few residents who may have gone to Chicago or (gasp) NY think of it as anarchic. If you live in rural America, the big cities are noisy, crowded, smelly and aggressive. That means that when Faux News starts talking about the crime there and Trump wails about American Carnage, those attacks make a certain amount of sense to fearful people who just can't grok a big city.

The other thing that crops up is how these idiots constantly show a precinct or county map of the election that is saturated in red, because the Big Empty is GOP country and the Big Cities are Democratic. For all the apparent anarchy of these big cities, they work. Really well! They are the centers of America's wealth, enterprise and innovation. Big Cities are what makes America Great!

For all the nonsense about Democrats needing to reach "real Muricans" and other Trump voters, there is simply no way to reach these deep rural voters. They live on a different planet. Your best bet is that they just quit the political system out of frustration when Trump invariably craters the economy and kills their farm subsidies by accident.

The Destiny of Autocrats

 Krugman talks about the incompetence of Stephen Moore, Economists to Republicans. He quotes Hannah Arendt about how authoritarians prefer stupid loyalists to competent officials.

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

This gibes with the book I'm reading on the Return of Great Powers, with a focus on disastrous decisions like Putin's invasion of Ukraine. But if you're a dictator, you don't have people telling you the truth, so you make error after error. Trump is doing and will do the same.

The reason liberal democracy is the preferred form of government is precisely because it can self-correct, and it is for precisely this reason that I'm really worried about GOP efforts to inoculate themselves from accountability with gerrymandering.

UPDATE: Paul Campos notes Trump's manifest cognitive decline.

What Does It Mean?

 Driving through northeastern Wyoming...WYOMING...we stopped at a McDonalds in the only town for miles. There were three old coots in a booth and one of them was basically going on about how little we know about the would be assassin from Butler, PA. Now, for the record, I think he was just another alienated misfit who would've become a school shooter if Trump never came to town. 

Still, it was interesting to hear folks in the most Republican state in the Union speculating about conspiracies surrounding that event. Conspiracy theories thrive when people lose faith in normal informational channels. Almost certainly, it means nothing. Maybe it was just the one guy holding forth. The enduring stink of the Epstein stuff seems to be lingering. That has to be in part because the conspiratorial mindset that helped usher Trump into power has become unmoored from its original vessel.  

Whatever it takes to bring that orange fucker down.

AI And VC

 There's a long piece in the Times about Uber's problem with sexual assault and sexual misconduct. My wife sent it to me, because I was dismayed at how easily she came to getting comfortable in a Waymo on her last trip to California. To me, Waymo represents a terrifying venue for tech companies like Uber to fire their drivers, many of whom depend on driving for Uber or Lyft. Her point is that there are a lot of cases of Uber drivers engaging in everything from creepy behavior to rape. The Times article points out - and the Uber spokesperson argues - that statistically, the number of these incidents is small, but the absolute number of events is large. That is to say, the percentage of Uber rides that end in sexual misconduct is low, but it still happens a lot. What's more important is that the number really needs to be zero.

However, the argument that Waymo will save women from sexual assault or misconduct seems to miss the problem, which is that Uber has tools to dramatically reduce this problem, and they have often avoided implementing them. One tool is to record every trip, but if they do that, then they are admitting that their drivers are employees, and that has been a bright red line for them. They do not want to be responsible for providing health insurance or other benefits for what they term "independent contractors." 

They also had a plan to allow female riders to select only female drivers, but they shelved that when Trump was elected, in case you want to know where the heads are of major corporations today.

There is the problem of sexual assault, which predates Uber obviously. Then there is the problem of how Uber was run - it was a classic tech bro startup under Travis Kalanick. They wanted to grow, grow, grow, and efforts to preserve passenger safety were downplayed in order to grow the company and prepare for the all-important IPO.

That dynamic in some way, shape or form will be present as Waymo scales up. What's more, it will be present as AI scales up. We may already be seeing it.

Here is a chart of browsing searches for OpenAI. It collapses when school gets out. For all the hype and hoopla about what AI can do, it fundamentally is being used - at best - as a shortcut around the rigors of learning. The idea that AI will be able to cure cancer is appealing (especially since RFK is killing cancer research). The reality is that it's a cheating machine, and it is in the best interests of the people running those companies to insure that no restrictions occur when using their machine until it gets profitable.

The logic of Silicon Valley Venture Capitalism is an aggressive form of capitalism that is dedicated to rapidly scaling up a product, issuing an IPO and then cashing out. You can go from rags to riches pretty damned quick, but eventually you get to enshittification and poor customer experiences.

Waymo will cut corners if it means quick profitability. Not the BIG corners, because they have to show that they are viable. The little corners, the one that causes a problem once every 2000 rides. These are the same incentives that Uber faced, and Waymo is not special.

As for AI, it's painful as an educator and a parent to realize that what we think of as learning, the way we have learned for thousands of years, is going to be altered to suit the venture capitalists who want to leverage AI into billion dollar paydays. They could create safeguards - digital watermarks - that lets a teacher know if a student has used AI to generate their answers, but they won't, because they want to crush their IPO.

AI Utopianism is just rhetoric covering for AI Venture Capitalism.

It's Not The Ease Of The Work

 I haven't linked much to Yglesias recently (in part because I now seem to link almost exclusively to Richardson and Krugman). Today, however, he's so deep on his bullshit that I need to.

His argument is that people have devalued the Humanities because they are too easy. Now, there is absolutely grade inflation, and that grade inflation has hit Humanities harder than other disciplines. But nowhere does he offer a shred of evidence that these courses are easier than they used to be.

As a teacher and the parent of college students, I think the answer is far more about how you perceive your job prospects after you graduate. We have turned post-secondary education into a commodity that you develop in return for better job prospects when you graduate. One reason why STEM majors are more respected is not just that they are hard, but you will find a job after graduating and it will pay well.

If we just look at the Ivies (which is an outlier demographic), over a third of students are majoring in Computer Science, Econometrics or Applied Math. Our "adopted" Ukrainian son is at an Ivy and majoring in Applied Mathematics. He was looking at the Humanities BUT THEY WERE TOO HARD. He's ridiculously intelligent, and his intelligence is wired for math in a way that makes the difficulties of math more appealing to him. Roughly 15% of Ivy leaguers are majoring in History, International Relations or Political Science. Ideally, that number would be around 25%, but if you compare that to the 4% that are English majors, that says something, too.

Lets rack focus back to all US universities. Of all degrees awarded, 19% were in Business, 13% in "health professions", 7% in social science and history, 7% in biological and medical science, 6% in psychology and 6% in engineering. The key numbers there are the top two. The reason almost a third of college graduates are getting Business and Health Professions (not pre-med) degrees is that that is where the money is. These majors are not especially rigorous in the way that Engineering is. That doesn't stop kids from signing up.

At no point in Yglesias' argument does he offer evidence. It's all a priori assumptions.

Typical of a philosophy major.

Young Men

One group that broke for Donald Trump and allowed him to ooze back into the Oval Office was young men, aged 18-29. A lot has been written about Gen Z turning towards Republicans. I think that misses the point. Joe Biden won 18-29 year olds with 60% of their vote; Harris won it with 54% and actually lost men aged 18-29 by a single point. Her erosion among young voters - and I can't find the data, but I think it was mostly with young men - is what cost her the White House and plunged us into the orgy of corruption and incompetence that Trump brings with him like locusts.

This has naturally led to a million think pieces about how Democrats need to reach out to young men and go on Joe Rogan and Theo Von. I think that misses the point.

Author Jason Pargin makes the point that one thing that has young men upset is that we have de-masculinized work in so many ways, and this has an effect on certain groups of young men. Think of it this way: you're 24, you hated school and who were your teachers? Mostly women. You then want to get a good job, ideally doing manly things. Those jobs - construction, manufacturing - are tough to get, but you can get a retail gig. Who's your manger or HR director? Probably a woman, especially in HR. I'm sure there are male HR directors out there, I just haven't come across any.

Your whole life, women have been in significant positions of authority over you, and if you are stuck in a McJob, then you also aren't exactly prime dating material unless you're really charming. 

Resentment builds up, especially against women in positions of authority.

I don't think this is necessarily full-on misogyny. Sure, there are incels out there being venomous towards women, especially online. Overall, though, I think it creates a simmering undercurrent of resentment against women in authority and the way they exercise that authority. 

One thing I hate at work are these broad based emails that seem to suggest that everyone is making this one mistake and we all need to stop doing that. In fact, it's likely a couple of people but rather than deal with them, we get these mass emails. Now, I'm old and I'm less likely to take it personally, but it's still annoying and for young men, it feels oppressive.

Many of them will outgrow this. I did. I was - not quite resentful of women, but hurt by them when I was young. I tried to articulate it, but I was confused. It was just there and I doubt it made me more appealing to them.

I think a lot of young men carry some sort of anger about women controlling their lives until they grow up and realize it's not women doing that, it's just part of having a job or whatever. 

So, Democrats. If you want to win back young men, nominate a man. Unless you think Biden's strength with young voters was because of his youthful charisma, there seems to be a lot of evidence that young male voters just don't want to have a female president. I think they can grow out of it, and I understand not catering to a level of bigotry, but that's my suggestion. I don't like it, but I think it's true.

Great News

 Sherrod Brown is running for the Senate in Ohio. Let's hope Jon Tester joins him in Montana.

If these old war horses can find their way back to the Senate, then you are looking at Maine, North Carolina and possibly Alaska, Iowa and Kansas being the battleground. Yeah, yeah, I know...Texas and Florida.  I'll believe that when I see it. 

Cognitive Dissonance

 Both Richardson and Krugman look at the implications of Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn't like the employment numbers. As many have noted, this is a classic authoritarian move, something straight out of 1984:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command... And if all others accepted the lie, which the Party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

It is among the more remarkable ironies that Trump keeps screaming about "communists" in the Democratic Party, when his tactics most resemble Stalinist leanings. Lots of "conservative intellectuals" talk about a march through the institutions that was first suggested by Mao. Still, as we know, every accusation is a confession.

Ultimately, Orwell's statement has been taken to mean that the lies of an authoritarian regime become truth. I'm not sure how accurate that is. Soviet Russia had a ton of black humor about the difference between official statements and reality. In the end, the Soviet Union relied on extremely coercive controls to maintain their grip on power. This weakened them, to the point where the only way forward was to embrace openness, what Gorbachev called glasnost. Something Khrushchev was pushing in the mid-'60s, which is what led to his "retirement."

These closed systems don't work. They might work for a while if you're a New York builder/socialite who can lie and scam his way from one bankruptcy to the next, but the bankruptcies are the important thing. In the end, Trump's lying came face to face with reality, and reality won.

There are certain things we take as being fundamentally true in American politics. Often they are anecdotes that stand in for more complicated concepts. During the 1992 presidential campaign. George H. W. Bush was startled to discover the scanners used at grocery store checkouts. The guy had been Vice President or President for the previous 12 years. Of course he never did his shopping. Yet this became evidence that he was "out of touch" and was a reason he lost the election.

Maybe that's true? Or maybe there were macroeconomic events and the presence for a strong third party candidate that made Clinton's victory possible. 

Trump seems increasingly "out of touch." No figure, for instance, is keeping Epstein in the news than he is. You can fire all the statisticians and economists you want, but people are still noticing that prices for groceries are going up. People are going to notice when the price of manufactured goods goes up.

Trump, being Trump, is going to be SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS that the economy is the best in the history of the galaxy. If that's not true (and I don't think it will be) then that might even get through to the poorly engaged voter, who doesn't follow the news but does know that stuff is expensive.

Genuinely Scared

 Early on election night, I realized that my optimistic appraisal of the American electorate was badly flawed and that Trump would likely win. I drove out into the woods and screamed in rage and despair into the darkness. I wasn't sure how bad it would be, but I knew that the country had rejected decency and law in favor of a flawed view of the economy of 2019. 

So far, it has been objectively bad, but bad in a way that I think we can recover from. Yes, the Big Ugly Bill is a horror show; yes, people are being hurt; yes, the economy is being skewed even more towards the rich. You can point to dozens of terrible things this administration is doing or planning on doing. 

Yet, those actions can be undone. Bad bills can be replaced with good bills. America and the world will be worse off because Trump was returned to office, but the world is a resilient place and given time and the opportunity, we can return to a better state of affairs.

The gerrymandering plan being forced on Texas is shaking me up.

Abbott has always struck me as a less charismatic version of Trump. He lacks the gonzo appeal Trump apparently has for many, but he has the same anti-democratic impulses. When Trump asked him to redistrict, he rushed to do so. Texas Democrats have fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum, and now Abbott is talking about stripping them of their seats. Is that legal? I don't know, but I doubt that will stop him.

As Krugman notes, this is a sign of Trump's desperation. Republicans in Trumpistan do measurable worse when he's not on the ballot. The House is razor thin anyway, and every seat could matter in 2026. Forcing mid-decade redistricting on Texas, Florida and Ohio is a blatant attempt to short circuit democratic accountability. 

If it succeeds, that's the ball game. Seriously. I don't see how the country hangs together. We either become a dictatorship or the country fractures. Democrats have to win control of at least one house of Congress in order to exercise a check on the Mad King. If they fail to win either the House or Senate, then all the malevolent bullshit will become the new American normal. I doubt very much whether we would have anything approaching free and fair elections in 2028.

Now, there is another possibility. The descent into authoritarianism has - at least nominally - stayed within the bounds of law. So far, we don't have evidence of tampering with the counting of ballots. Putin and Orban didn't skew the counting, they just shaped the elections in ways that insured their victories. Gerrymandering is from that playbook. 

The Supreme Court enabled this with the Rucho decision that forbid Federal courts from overturning partisan gerrymandering. Even in that decision, they agreed that gerrymandering  might be undemocratic, but that they had no power to intervene. The Texas gerrymander almost certainly violates the Voting Rights Act, but does anyone expect the Courts to uphold that law? Roberts has been trying to overturn it since the the 1980s.

Now, as of this writing, California is thinking about changing their laws to gerrymander that state out of Republican hands. Illinois could do the same. New York...well, they are making the proper noises, but the NY Dems always fuck up, and in fact, fucked up a gerrymander attempt in 2021. 

A gerrymander war could preserve the chances of a Democratic House. There is even the chance that Republicans will create a "Dummymander" (a phrase I just heard) whereby they take districts that Trump won by 10 points and make the 5 point Trump districts. In a wave election, Democrats might win those seats. Right now, Republicans have gerrymandered Texas to create their partisan map. Texas' 3rd, 12th, 15th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 31st and 38th districts are all already R+11 or closer. Dilute those at all and a backlash election could tilt the map to Democrats - even in Texas.

However, the gerrymander war or even the dummymander would mean that Republicans could reach for more extreme measures to preserve their rule. Krugman's conclusion is scary, but accurate:

And what if these actions aren’t enough? Remember, Trump supporters, with his clear encouragement, already tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The important point is that right now Trump has immense power, thanks in large part to the cowardice of many of the institutions that should be holding him in check. But he’s also rapidly bleeding support, in large part because he’s completely failing to deliver on his economic promises.

That combination makes this an extremely dangerous moment. And if authoritarianism does come to America, don’t count on it being soft.

They are telling us how little respect they have for democracy. They said it when they refused to vote for impeachment after January 6th. They said it when they renominated Trump. They said when they rolled over for his awful legislation and illegal power grabs. They are saying by launching this gerrymander war. 

If they succeed in gerrymandering Texas, Florida and Ohio even more, and Democrats match them or they dummymander their way out of the majority in a wave election, why should we imagine that Trump and his fascist hangers on will accept that result peacefully?

The Remaining Guardrails

 As Trump's popularity declines, he lashes out more and more. Some of this is the stink coming off the Epstein mess, but the "Wrong Track" polling is also grim. For many center and left analysts, looking at how Trump has "governed" since he regained power, this is hardly a surprise. Tariffs, his budget, his deportations...these are all really unpopular. Also, he's just an asshole.

At the moment there are few guardrails to constrain him, but not none. The Courts have been at least somewhat reluctant to go along with his most egregious acts. The Supreme Court, however, has been less a restraint on him than many of us had hoped, even if we knew that hope was slim.

There are two remaining ways to bring this country back from the brink. When it comes to his tariff policies, it's worth noting that they are blatantly illegal. He simply doesn't have the power to do what he has been doing. What's more, the "agreements" he says he has are not really agreements. Going further, why should any country believe that Trump will honor the "deals" he makes, since he won't honor the existing treaty obligations? The supine Republican Congress won't take their constitutional powers back, so it's left to the Courts.

We haven't seen the Courts rein him in, but - and I concede I may be wishcasting here - these tariffs are not in the interest of American industry, especially the lunatic tariffs on raw materials like aluminum and steel. Yes, the red letter of the law is against Trump and the Supreme Court doesn't care about that, but this may be a case where the pro-plutocrat impulses of the Court overrule their fealty to the Mad King.

More troublesome is the gerrymandering issue. Trump is urging Texas to further gerrymander their state to deprive Democrats of perhaps five seats. California has threatened to retaliate. New York and Illinois are considering their options, while Florida does the same.

Gerrymandering is incredibly corrosive to our politics. Perhaps more corrosive than Trump himself, who will die in the next decade. Gerrymandering makes representatives more extreme, in order to placate their base and avoid a primary challenge. It deprives people of democratic choice in what is supposed to be the People's House. 

At the moment, we are relying on both the restraint of Texas lawmakers - yikes - in the face of retaliation. If they decide to go through with this, then we come back to the courts. I don't have much faith that the Roberts Court will uphold the shattered remains of the Voting Rights Act, but...maybe?

Maybe, again wishcasting, if Texas and other states go through with additional gerrymandering, that will create a backlash that swamps even R+10 districts. We are seeing something like that in special elections. 

Krugman has a long post about tariffs and their impact on GDP and it will actually be minimal (the costs come elsewhere besides GDP). Still, add that to deportations and the chaotic policy whims of the Mad King (like firing the head of BLS) and there are no significant headwinds. Any shock like a crypto crash could tip the country into a bad spiral. If that happens, R+15 districts might not be safe.

Still, the implications of a Supreme Court that refuses to enforce the actual law and constitution and a Republican Party hellbent on depriving voters of actual choice does not bode well for the future of American democracy, which - bruised and battered as it may be - is still clinging to life.

El Caudillo de Mar A Lago

 Surprise! The American economy, which had been the envy of the world last summer, is now seeing some noticeable signs of stagnation. The jobs report yesterday was not only weak, but the revisions downwards were striking. The expectation was 115,000 new jobs, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates it was 73,000. While that's notable, the real news was that - having access to more data - they revised downwards their previous estimates. The May estimate was 144,000 and the new number is 19,000; June was 147,000 and now is 14,000. If that trend holds, the July number should be revised down to negative job growth.

In some ways, the declining job growth is completely to be expected. Yes, tariffs have created a great deal of instability into the economy, so why would an employer expand her workforce when she might be looking at layoffs by the fall? Or if he's having to eat tariffs under the assumption they will be transitory, that means cutting back on wages by not hiring. Additionally, deportations have to depress economic activity, especially in the trades. Again, less aggregate demand. Throw in anecdotes of a decline in tourism and it would make sense that the only sector to see job growth is health care providers. 

Inflation, meanwhile, is a bit on the warm side at 2.7 - 2.9. That's not high, though it also means prices are still rising from the already inflated prices of the post-Covid supply crunch, so it feels like high. Additionally, if you really are seeing around 2.8 inflation during a possible contraction in hiring: well, hello stagflation. 

So, yeah, a bad report. 

More noteworthy than the bad report, though, is that Trump immediately fired the head of BLS for producing the report. 

This is basic Dictator 101 stuff. Any news that reflects badly on Dear Leader is to be suppressed and the best way to suppress it is to fire the experts who produce the bad news and replace them with toadies who will produce shiny, happy news. The problem, obviously, is that modern economies run on accurate news, not good news. On a fundamental level, markets are exchanging information before they are exchanging goods and services. The information moves first, and if Trump destroys some of the accuracy of the information, that will distort markets. 

If - as most economists believe - the softening economy is caused by the uncertainty of Trump's tariffs, adding uncertainty about governmental economic statistics, which were the gold standard, is simply injecting a lot more uncertainty into the markets.

The logic of TACO is that Trump did respond to bad news, like market crashes, and he changed course. If you censor the ability of people to get bad news, he won't course correct. That means any effort to count on him making a better decision in the face of contrary evidence is increasingly doomed.

This is exactly the reason why dictatorships fail. The question for us is the degree to which he drags us all down with him.

No, We Don't Have Any Tariff Deals

 It's the same bullshit every time. Trump launches tariffs, says he's going to force people to make "a deal." Then he announces a deal. It's not a bilateral statement by trade negotiators. It's Trump announcing a "deal" that almost immediately turns out to not be the actual deal. When we have Trump saying that he's ended six wars, it becomes an open question as to whether he's just incapable of not spewing bullshit everywhere or completely divorced from reality. (Cheryl Rofer makes this point, too)

That same cognitive frame applies to tariffs. What does he know or not know? What does he understand or not understand? If we take his words at face value - and I concede that's very problematic, as he is a compulsive liar - then he really does seem to think that other people pay the tariffs. I don't think that's spin, I think he believes that. 

Of course aside from his misguided understanding of trade and tariffs, which appears to be a sort of bone-deep ignorance, there is his basic personality trait of behaving like a mob boss.  Krugman points to his illegal tariffs on Brazil as an example of this.

If we look at Trump's long career in business, we see a guy who often was able to bully small contractors and suppliers by constantly suing and such. He declared bankruptcy to escape from consequences for his mismanagement. If it wasn't for the fucking Apprentice, he would have disappeared from the public eye completely. (I swear, between Mark Burnett and Rupert Murdoch, maybe Trump has a point about immigrants.) 

Trump would have to assume based on his entire career as a bully that being president allow him to be the biggest bully of them all. I mean, if he could coerce people as a marginal real estate developer, why wouldn't he be able to coerce the whole world as president? 

The reality - and we have no idea to what degree he understands reality at this point - is that sovereign nations are, indeed, sovereign. He has presumed he could threaten and bully and coerce countries, but when he couldn't "settle out of court" he just blatantly invents victories. 

Finally, if you were China or the EU or any other country, why should you believe that Trump will abide by the "deals" (more like concepts of a plan) that he says he's struck? He's breaking US law to wage these trade wars, and then he ping pongs crazily from one rate to another. There's zero reason to trust him because he is fundamentally untrustworthy.

UPDATE: It will be interesting if the Courts rescue the economy/capitalists from Trump's tariff insanity, but it will require them to read the clear letter of the law and apply it consistently to the way they have in the past so who knows?

A Fundamental Problem

 It is axiomatic that if you are complaining about the refs, you're in a "loser mindset." However, there are a couple of great examples of just how profoundly the press is failing us at this moment.

Richardson points to the revelations about Project 2025 last summer. When it leaked out, it was very, very unpopular. Democrats spent a week or two talking about it, but Trump denied he knew anything about it. (Which might have been technically true, as he is an idiot.) The press never really, well, pressed Trump on it. They took - at face value - the denials of a serial liar.

Krugman looks at how the media simply accepts certain frames from MAGA that are at factual odds with reality. Things like "other countries pay for tariffs" or "immigrant commit more crimes." Sure, halfway down the page, there will be a clarifying line that states the factual truth, but the headlines and the lede tend to take Trump and his minions at his word.

Finally, Marshall points out a fascinating glimpse into the dysfunction of the Federal government under Trump. On the surface, it's a report about the head of Pandemic Preparedness resigning, but the piece actually notes that no one really knows if that person was the head of Pandemic Preparedness. There are lots of places in the Federal government that are just kind of winging it. Hell, Marco Rubio has four jobs - Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Head of USAID and Chief Archivist. How is that OK?

Sure, you could make the argument that the press is more focused on the salacious story of Epstein and Trump, but this dynamic goes back a decade. It's not just sanewashing, but it's an issue with Trumpists asserting unreality, Democrats noting the unreality and the media reporting on the argument.

I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I'm pretty sure it's not "Kamala Harris needs to go on Joe Rogan."

Can't Believe I'm Writing About This

 Sydney Sweeney is an American actress who I'm pretty sure I've never seen in anything, yet she is ubiquitous. (I guess she was in Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, but I don't know who she played.) Anyways, she is in an ad for American Eagle Jeans with the very Dad Pun: "Sydney Sweeney Has Good Genes" as she cavorts in sexually suggestive ways.

Naturally, the internet has lost its damned mind. Because we have actual Nazis in significant positions of authority and eugenics a real part of fascist ideology, people have seized on the underlying ramifications of the ad: Hot Blonde Lady is the preferred genetic outcome. That's not, of course, what the ad says. It may be a preferred aesthetic outcome for some, but if the person in the ad were Ana de Armas or Lupita Nyong'o, would the joke work any less? Maybe there will be subsequent versions with non Aryan looking women, just to tweak the noses of those who are outraged.

But after all, the outrage is the point. Yes, it's the algorithms that force this topic into our faces, but the algorithm only works if we let it. We are steeped in our outrage over every little fucking thing. People see the ad as racist and eugenic. OK, I mean, I guess. Their outrage becomes counter-outrage on Fox and other Right wing spaces. The counter-outrage is used to justify the initial outrage. 

Meanwhile, we are all a little bit dumber, because we've shut off the higher parts of our brain function as we descend deeper into the outraged parts of our brains. 

Genocide

 I have been very reluctant to call Israel's conduct in Gaza "genocide." The reason is that I think that when you broaden the use of a very powerful word, you dilute the impact of it. When some folks started saying that expecting people to be on time was "white supremacy" and racism...suddenly racism isn't real. It's just a thing someone doesn't like.

Anyway, I've felt that the IDF was conducting war crimes and that the long term goal of the Israeli Right was slow motion ethnic cleansing.

I think what we are seeing in Gaza now rises to the level of genocidal intent. Of course, if my theory of language is right, then my and others calling it genocide has lost the punch it might have because people have been throwing that word around at various forms of urban combat. 

Still, we are likely to see more and more countries, including the EU, recognize a Palestinian state. The US veto will prevent full UN recognition, but the conduct of Israel has gotten worse and worse, when it should have been getting better and better. Hamas is crippled, Syria is neutralized, Iran is licking its wounds. Now is the time to "win hearts and minds" and instead we are seeing escalating crimes against humanity.

Unreality

 The reason why I feel "confident" that we will have a recession sooner rather than later is that unreality has a way of crashing down around us, when we apply it to economic issues. The housing bubble of 2005-8 was unreality. People willed themselves to believe something that was not true, because they wanted it to be true.

Richardson runs through a litany of untruths that the Trumpist GOP has embraced just in the past 48 hours. Trump is looting taxpayer money for his new Air Force One; he's slandering other people to distract from the Epstein mess; Markwayne Mullin refuses to admit to the concept of linear time. Meanwhile, Krugman notes that the "deal" we made with the EU is not a very good deal at all. It is substantially worse than the status quo he disrupted.

Reports are that businesses have indeed been eating some of the tariffs in the short run because Trump Always Chickens Out. However, once these tariffs reach a more permanent status, they will have to pass those increased costs on to consumers or else go out of business. Once that does happen, what is already disapproval of tariffs will skyrocket and become more intense. The political lesson of the last four years has been that people in advanced economies are not at all OK with inflation.

One of the things I've learned from Trump's rise is that people are not making sophisticated, reasoned decisions when it comes to political support. It's vibes all the way down.

A good example of this was when Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan. Super majorities of Americans wanted our commitment there ended. It had been 20 years. Yet, perhaps unavoidably, the withdrawal immediately became regime collapse and chaos. After that, Biden's approval rating fell - not just the overall one or the foreign policy one - but all of them. The "vibes" curdled after Kabul fell and he never really recovered.

It used to not be that stark, but here we are. Trump's meanness, his racist and sexist bullshit, his self-dealing - all of this has begun to stick in the public's mind. Maybe not at a specific level, but there's a ton of buyer's regret, especially from younger voters. When you drop the Epstein shit in there, you suddenly have an accumulation of bad vibes that extend to everything. Think of it as the same as when a restaurant gives you fries instead of a side salad and you slam them on Yelp across the board. 

You will likely never sever the link between Trump and MAGA, but the broad swath of Americans are not MAGA. 

Yes, at some point Democrats need to up their game, but it's tough when you have no single spokesperson, and when there is no looming election to focus voters' attention. 

If we get a crypto crash - a prime example of unreality - before the midterms, I could see Democrats having a very good election.

Groypers

 Richardson unpacks both a subtly inflammatory social media post from Homeland Security and JD Vance's rejection of American ideals.

One reason it's inflammatory is that it makes use of coded Nazi language (twin capital Hs, 14 words). One of the problems with Naziism, especially since World War II but even then, is that Fascists use "humor" and sarcasm to make outrageous statements and then deride people who take their words seriously. All the while this advances certain ideas and words that start out as "jokes" but become acceptable discourse through repetition. 

Recently, Musk and other Rightists have been resurrecting the word "retard" online as a slur. Given the fascination that everyone RFK to Trump to many many others have with genetics and even eugenics, it's hard not to see where they could be going with this. First, you use it as a slur, an insult to someone who you think is stupid, then it's not that far down the road to dehumanizing the developmentally disabled and embracing eugenics and forced sterilization.

We've done it before.

The Incompetence Is Unavoidable

 Adam Serwer famously said that with Trumpism, "The cruelty is the point." That leads us to sometimes see all the actions as motivated by cruelty - the Stephen Miller Effect. 

We now have a story of the State Department refusing visas to a Little League team. Longman suggests that this is done at Marco Rubio's request, but that feels like a rhetorical gambit. Scott Lemieux suggests this, too, as being designed as chaotic and cruel to dissuade anyone from trying to enter the country - legally or illegally. 

I think we have to consider the fact that America is a modern bureaucratic state that remains based on the rule of law, although that is getting more tenuous by the day. Still, if you are working within the Federal bureaucracy, you are getting a message about immigration that is loud but not entirely clear. You are getting orders that don't seem rational or feasible, so you struggle to implement them. Maybe some of it is malicious compliance, too, designed to highlight how ridiculous these edicts are. 

Authoritarianism is by definition stupider than democracy, because democracy admits of error and corrects for cause. In authoritarianism, the leaders can never be wrong, so they cannot course correct. We see some of that with the Epstein stuff, in that Trump can't retreat because he can't be "wrong" and can't go forward because there's incriminating stuff in there. So, we all look at him and wonder what the hell he's doing? Well, he's trapped in the "logic" of authoritarian rule, in the same way Putin is trapped in Ukraine.

All of this is, of course, bad. The fact that we have a stupid person, surrounded by stupid people, doing stupid things means that we will have more bad outcomes than good one. And if the stupid people get control of things like the Federal Reserve...

More Adventures In Dunning-Kruger

 One of the failures of DOGE was that it was a living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, whereby people who are competent in one area presume they are competent across the board. Musk thinks that, because he took a large amount of his inheritance and got into Pay Pal and batteries early, he is a savant across all sorts of fields, including government, which of course he has no idea at all how it works. Hell, you could say the same for Trump, in that he was highly successful at hyping and selling a fundamentally worthless brand and has governed that way, to poor effect. Josh Marshall relates how Jeff Bezos has destroyed the Washington Post, because he is thinking like a Tech Bro and not a journalist.

Paul Krugman has one of his long weekend discussions with Henry Farrell that eventually turns to discusses the right ward dash of Silicon Valley. I do question whether "Silicon Valley" has really moved rightwards, so much as they had serous qualms about Biden's anti-trust agenda. Still, losing those campaign funds must not have been fun.

The real insight from the dialogue is how many Silicon Valley Bros have developed their worldviews from reading science fiction. What's more, there is a particular fallacy at play here. There is a gestalt in these circles that the world of states and the entire current order is going to collapse, and that they will reign over the new tech utopia that arises from this collapse.

This is why the failure to steep people in the Humanities is so dangerous.

Here's what's going to happen if the current order collapses. Warlords. That's it. That's what happens when states fail. And those warlords are not impressed by the fact that you successfully leveraged you IPO earnings to fund another start-up that you blah blah blah.

The root of Dunning-Kruger is a narcissism that posits that you are a very special boy indeed, because you succeeded - in this case - in making money. However, as Obama said, "You didn't build that." Economic success occurs in America because up until last January, consistent rules and laws are applied equally. Once those rules and order collapses, you discover that you are not the heroic figure that you thought you were in your special little genius boy cocoon. You're just meat. What's more, you're an appealing target because of all that shit you have.

Peter Thiel and his ilk are simply delusional, if they think that their business acumen will mean jackshit if society collapses around them. When things like that happens, it takes decades, sometimes centuries, to return to equilibrium. 

Growing Unease

 Krugman notes that the recent "deal" with Japan is actually really bad news for the economy. One thing that struck me was a common thread I've heard from various media sources. Because TACO, most businesses have assumed that Trump will bluster a bit on tariffs, get some symbolic concession and then return to lower if not low tariffs. Instead, we have bizarre tariffs that actually seem to make things like Japanese cars more affordable than American cars, because of the way the steel and aluminum tariffs work.

While many expected to see empty shelves by now, we haven't seen even a massive inflationary shock. What's happened is that American retailers - operating on the TACO principle - assume that they can carry losses in the short run rather than lose market share.

What Krugman doesn't say, but worries me, is that American companies are eating through cash reserves and lowering profits to smooth the jagged edges off Trump's tariffs. Why this worries me is that a recession seems inevitable at some point. There are just a lot of blinking yellow lights. Plus, fraud is almost always a bad business practice and the Trump regime is riddled with fraud. At some point, the ability of the fraudulent to keep spinning plates ends and it all comes crashing down.

What happens if and when that happens and large numbers of corporations are cash poor? How will they be able to cushion the blow, especially since we've gutted the social safety net?

Enshittification And AI

 Paul Krugman has been writing about Cory Doctorow's thesis of "Enshittification." Basically, the model is that tech companies create a platform that creates "network effects" - the more people who use it, the better it is. The early days of Facebook, when it was so awesome to reconnect with people you hadn't seen in years or decades, is a great example of network effects.

Once you get enough users, you "enshittify" by exploiting your captured customer base - higher fees, more ads, more and more ads, worse customer service and experience. The general pissed off-edness of America in 2025 is at least in part a product of people being drawn together and then hating the platforms and experiences that bring them together. This backlash, posits Krugman, has led to the backlash against Big Tech.

Now, I don't think every Big Tech executive has become Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. There's an interesting read by an actual scientist about the delusions of tech billionaires. Basically, the ecosystem of Silicon Valley is geared towards the Start Up, whereby you hype some new platform or tech and get your IPO millions and then coast on to your next project. The problem is, according to Adam Becker, is that most of their ideas (especially Musk's and those like him) are just laughable, derived from adolescent infatuation with science fiction. 

Silicon Valley is not about science, it's about venture capitalism. Elon Musk is not a scientist, inventor or engineer, he's a VC guy with just enough scientific knowledge to create shit like the Cyber Truck.

Which brings me to AI.

AI is a great example of the Silicon Valley hype machine. Becker:

There’s also no particular reason to believe that the kinds of machines that we are building now and calling “AI” are sufficiently similar to the human brain to be able to do what humans do. Calling the systems that we have now “AI” is a kind of marketing tool. You can see that if you think about the deflation in the term that’s occurred just in the last 30 years. When I was a kid, calling something “AI” meant Commander Data from Star Trek, something that can do what humans do. Now, AI is, like, really good autocomplete. 

That’s not to say that it would never be possible to build an artificial machine that does what humans do, but there’s no reason to think that these can and a lot of reason to think that they can’t. And the self-improvement thing is kind of silly, right? It’s like saying, “Oh, you can become an infinitely good brain surgeon by doing brain surgery on the brain surgery part of your brain.” 

As as educator, I find AI deeply troubling. As a high powered search engine...OK. There is something nice about searching for something like "How to grow strawberries" and getting a decent summary of the conventional wisdom about how to make a wee strawberry patch. 

However, AI is pretty much just a hyper-powered predictive text machine. Right now, I could ask it to write an essay on a given prompt - By 1876, who had won the argument about the future of America, Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton - and I could get a B+ essay.

Sam Altman and other AI acolytes suggest that AI will be far more impactful. As Becker summarizes:

 (Altman)said something like, “Oh, global warming is a really serious problem, but if we have a super-intelligent AI, then we can ask it, ‘Hey, how do you build a lot of renewable energy? And hey, how do you build a lot of carbon capture systems? And hey, how do we build them at scale cheaply and quickly?’ And then it would solve global warming.” What Sam Altman is saying is that his plan for solving global warming is to build a machine that nobody knows how to build and can’t even define and then ask it for three wishes.

You can see the toxic tech positivity at work there. Then you get a combination of Groupthink and financial FOMO, where everyone jumps on the hype-train.

Meanwhile, in the real world, students are using AI to cheat and short circuit their learning and consuming massive amounts of energy to do so.

What will happen, if enshittification continues, is that people will become more and more reliant on AI for basic tasks that might have required them to acquire real-life skills (academic or otherwise) and then once companies have captured people into AI dependency, they will exploit them for profit.

The only reason to believe that is because it's what they have always done before.

The Danger In Trump's Weakness

 As I mentioned yesterday, Trump has seen a substantial drop in support. One poll had him at 50-50 support among white people. Those are dire numbers for a Republican. 

The problem is that when authoritarians are weak, they tend to lash out and try to sew discord and crisis. The fundamental rationale for a strong man is to counteract chaos and lawlessness. 

Enter the Epstein scandal. 

You already have a president who's seeing his approval crater over his tariffs and deportation cruelty. Now, every action he takes seems to scream that he is at the center of even more and more damaging revelations about his links to Epstein and the rape of children. All of this makes him extremely dangerous, as his constant desire to increase division and outrage has been his go-to tactic when faced with scandal.

His release of the FBI MLK files is just...bonkers. The House going on recess so that they won't have to vote on measures to release the "Epstein files" is...laughable. Listening to Trump is like listening to someone decompress in real time.

“We caught Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. ”We caught Barack Hussein Obama. They're the ones, and then you have many, many people under them…. And it's the most unbelievable thing I think I've ever read. So you ought to take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense, because this is big stuff, never has a thing like this happened in the history of our country. And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race, and the 2020 race was rigged, and it was, it was a rigged election. And because it was rigged, we have millions of people in our country, we have—we had inflation, we solved the inflation problem. But millions and millions of people came into our country because of that, and people that shouldn't have been, people from gangs and from jails and from mental institutions.”

Trump continued: "This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election. They did things that nobody's ever even imagined, even in other countries.”

How can you listen to that insane drivel and not be convinced that he's in charge of his faculties?

Krugman notes that Trump and his Gestapo are likely to launch an attack on New York similar to the one he launched on LA. He seems to think that - because everyone in MAGA thinks NYC is a hellscape - that images of ICE attacking immigrant neighborhoods will redound to his political benefit. It will give him an excuse to nationalize the Guard again and militarize American streets. 

The problem with this is that his efforts in LA made him distinctly less popular on the very issue of deportations and immigration in general. Trump knows about five musical notes on the Wingnut Wurlitzer and he will keep pounding on them in a discordant cacophony like a meth-addled chimp, because in the end that's the only tune he knows.

Maybe if armored cars show up in the streets of NY, Jake Tapper can stop flogging his "Biden is old" book and pay attention to what's actually happening now.

The Good News Hidden In The Bad News

 Josh Marshall points out the two very different dynamics we are seeing this summer. Trump's authoritarianism is very much on the march through the institutions. The various defunding and concentrating the power of the purse at the wrong end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The apparent creation of a secret police within ICE. The attacks on political opponents and "blue" areas of the country. Some of the batshit insane "content" emanating from the White House is a failed attempt to distract from Epstein, but still, he's leaning into some very alarming behaviors that extend beyond his usual rhetoric.

But - as Marshall notes - this is all pretty damned unpopular! If you burrow into his actual policies, they are ALL underwater, including his "strong" issues on immigration and deportation and the economy. His approval ratings are in the low 40s and falling. There is 23 point negative spread on prices and inflation; it's 17 points on jobs and the economy; it's 14 points negative on deportations.

Marshall's thesis - and I think it's accurate - is that you cannot turn America into Hungary if you're incredibly unpopular. Orban was popular. When Putin dismantled the poorly institutionalized Russian democracy, he was really popular. Populism isn't synonymous with popularity, but sometimes it is largely popular. 

Trump isn't. 

As the Epstein issue continues to plague him, he will act more and more outlandish in an effort to chum up the waters. Much of those efforts will likely make him MORE unpopular.

Middle Path On Israel

 Like, I think, the majority of Americans, I believe that Israel has a right to exist. I believe that there should be a Palestinian state. I believe Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th, and that they have continued to do so. I believe that the IDF has committed war crimes in Gaza, and that they have continued to do so.

I also believe that Netanyahu has made the Likud party in particular and the Israeli Right in general a political ally of the GOP.

Yglesias actually has a proposal that makes sense for whenever Democrats are allowed to govern again. It's unlikely to satisfy extreme partisans on either side of the issue, but it does makes broad political sense. He suggests that we should simply stop giving Israel aid.

Americans have a warped sense of foreign aid. They think it's a massive part of the budget, when it's actually pennies. This makes aid unpopular, and it's why Trump and Musk attacked it first. As with any large program, there were aspects of aid that were weird or problematic, but on the whole, foreign aid is incredibly effective.

However, sending aid to Israel only made sense when Israel was surrounded by enemies intent on its destruction. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are largely at peace with Israel. There is at least a possibility that Syria may make peace. That pretty much leaves a diminished Hamas and other Iranian proxies like the Houthi as the only belligerent forces arrayed against a much, much more potent Israeli military.

So, the rationale for giving billions in aid to Israel no longer applies. What's more, the ethical questions of being involved on either side are likely too thorny to untangle in a way that makes sense and satisfies various veto points. Simply withdrawing aid from Israel would divorce us from the entire mess and satisfy those who oppose foreign aid. 

Now, if this is going to happen, it would probably be best if President Shapiro or President Ossoff were to take the lead, but I don't see why that should be a problem. No aid for Israel as long as the Israeli government stands in the way of a two state solution.

Six Months

 We are one-eighth of the way through Trump's second Reign of Error and Terror. Hopefully at the halfway point, we will have control of one or both houses of Congress and can more effectively fight back. 

What is clear is that Trump's chaos and criminality are beginning to sink in with even the casually engaged American electorate. Here are some numbers via Simon Rosenberg:

Trump has become remarkably unpopular. In the new CBS poll Trump has dropped from 53%-47% (+6) in early February to 42%-58% (-16) today. That’s a 22 point drop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most major independent polls show a similar crash:

• 41% - 54% (-13) Quinnipiac

• 41% - 54% (-13) Ipsos/Reuters

• 41% - 55% (-14) Civiqs

• 41% - 55% (-14) Econ/YouGov

• 42%- 58% (-16) CNN

• 42%- 58% (-16) CBS

• 40%- 58% (-18) AP/NORC

There remains this assumption that Trump is immune to the basic thermostatic swings in American politics or that nothing every really touches the guy. That just seems obviously wrong. 

Trump motivates a specific type of voter, usually of lower educational attainment and not terribly plugged into the nuances of the political process. For them, the system is broken and Trump has told them "he alone can fix it." Trump is therefore part of the broad populist revolt against the trends of the 21st century, where experts are held in contempt and only a "strongman" can fix things.

One reason the Epstein thing is so threatening to him, is because the basic narrative about Epstein is that it is a prime example of elite impunity. His crimes were discovered in 2008 and he got a sweet plea deal. It was only subsequent reporting that brought his second arrest in 2019. Preying on young women is considered in the QAnon and QAnon-adjacent spaces to be a telltale trait of the "elite." 

Trump's base has nowhere to go if they finally realize that their chosen savior is, in fact, part of the problem. My guess is that they will simply stay home, disillusioned by having been duped by a career con artist. JD Vance is not motivating these voters.

The damage that Trump is doing to America and the world is real, but I don't want to overstate its permanence. Much of what Trump is trying to return us to is a world we left behind in the '60s and '70s. Few people actually want that. They wanted inflation to go down, they were gullible about Trump's business acumen and ascribed to him credit for the economy of 2017-19 that he didn't really deserve. 

There is damage still to be done. Putting a fascist good like Emil Bove on the Federal bench is one example, the gutting of American education is another, the economic hit from crushing immigration is a third. 

It's been bad. It will get worse, especially if the lights on the economy go from blinking yellow to flashing red (which I think they will). Stupid, evil people have their hands on the levers of power and if we have a real crisis, then we are really screwed.

It's a grim landmark, but it's behind us. We have more storms ahead.

Trump v Murdoch

 The Wall Street Journal has always been a contradictory institution. Its' editorial page is incredibly right wing, but its' reporting is top notch. So, the fact that the WSJ reported on Trump's deeply creepy birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein is just ten types of fascinating. 

First, we can be incredibly sure that the WSJ sourced the hell out of that letter. It's real, both because Trump will sue and because the WSJ brings receipts. The assumption is that they have more stuff, but are waiting to see what happens with this story.

The obvious question is whether they ran this by Rupert Murdoch before running it. We have CBS firing Colbert, but letting him stay on the air for almost a full year, now News Corps leveling a devastating broadside into the SS Trump.

As Patrick Choanec points out, it's not a million different stories about Trump's outrageousness; it's one story with many parts. Epstein is increasingly being seen by even staid media as a legitimate story, and it's being seen that way in large part because Trump is forcing them to do so. There is also the growing perspective among the more leftward media figures that Epstein represents not only his own horrific crimes, but the broad elite impunity that rich men enjoy, that Trump has enjoyed.

Epstein avoided jail for a long time and Trump has also avoided jail time, despite being convicted of 34 felonies. The fact that Murdoch's Journal is the conduit for even more damaging evidence of the criminal (as opposed to symbolic) connection between these two is really, really remarkable.

Does CBS Matter?

 There was a time when CBS - especially CBS News - was the premier network: "The Tiffany Network." Recently, CBS has kowtowed to Trump by settling a baseless lawsuit, gutting 60 Minutes and now firing Stephen Colbert who has consistently derided Trump. (It is interesting that Colbert will stay on the air for months, now free to say whatever the hell he feels.)

As disturbing as this truly is about how elite media sees itself in Trumpistan, I do wonder if this even matters. The problem with controlling CBS or the Washington Post or other venues is that media has become so diffuse that shutting down Colbert will only free him to migrate online. Conan O'Brien has been phenomenally successful after he was fired for no good reason, except making the suits uncomfortable.

The fracturing of media has been bad for our sense of shared national narrative. There is no Walter Cronkite to arbitrate the news for us. However, that fracturing also places it largely outside the control of a malevolent force like MAGA.

At least, I hope so.

When All You Know Is Lies...

 The Lying Liar for The Liar In Chief just admitted that Trump's noticeably swelling ankles is because of a condition called Chronic Venous Insufficiency. They explained away the odd coloration of his hand as being bruising from excessive hand shaking.

Maybe.

There are two problems with believing this.

The first is that Trump released his physical a few months back that was laughably laudatory. Basically, the only reason that Trump isn't competing in the 2028 Olympics is because of all the presidenting and America greatening that he's doing. Yet he has this condition - one that isn't exactly quick onset and one that has been noticeable for years - that didn't show up on his amazing physical.

The second is that because of all the lying, including that mentioned above, it's really hard to believe them this time. Maybe it's benign, maybe he has advanced heart or kidney disease. We cannot possibly trust what comes from the White House.

Is this a bid to attract sympathy because of Epstein? That doesn't seem like Trump's style.

Anyway, the actuarial table always win.

The Coming Chaos

 It is worth noting that we are only now coming up to the six month mark of Trump's second term. He has been rampaging through our institutions like rapid gorilla and done real damage to all sorts of democratic institutions. He has also made efforts to destroy basic competency. Again, I defer to Richardson.

Among the outrages to good government that are occurring this week:

- The immolation of 500 metric tons of famine relief foodstuffs.
- The incoherent and often contradictory policy towards Ukraine.
- Epstein.

With regards to destroying food enough to feed 1.5 million children, that's obviously wasteful in ways that defy calculation. Anytime some fucking Republican talks about "waste and fraud" this needs to be thrown in their face. Republicans do not care about "waste and fraud" they just want to hurt poor people.

The Ukraine issue was that the Trump White House is so fundamentally dysfunctional that some undersecretary basically cancelled military aid to Ukraine because Pete Hegseth is too busy making videos for Faux News and Marco Rubio is both an empty suit AND has too many jobs. There is no policy direction from the West Wing. It's just MAGA lunatics freelancing.

As for Epstein...who knows where this will go. Perhaps the slow rise in inflation that Krugman explains here is beginning to have an impact. What's notable - really notable - is that polling has Trump underwater on every single issue, even ones like immigration and "the economy" that have been his and Republican strong suits. When you're riding high, scandals don't bruise you as easily. Ask Bill Clinton. When people actually are angry with other stuff, then things like Epstein become shorthand for the general gestalt. Specifically with Epstein, it becomes "I didn't vote for this!" (You, in fact, voted for this.)

Again, we aren't six months in. Inflation is burbling up as markets try and figure out what will actually happen with tariffs. In Krugman's explanation, the combination of TACO and wholesalers stockpiling goods before "Liberation Day" has buffered prices from steep inclines. Sellers can eat a little profit to keep prices low, if they think the tariffs are going to go away. 

However, the real crisis is likely still to come. A government and economy increasingly built on fraud and incompetence will both create a crisis and be unable to cope with it. Texas' embrace of terrible governance both created the conditions of the Kerr County tragedy and then was unable to respond quickly to save anyone. That sort of tragedy is the collapse of institutions. It took five years for Bush to gut things like FEMA. Trump has done it in five months.

Stay safe out there. No one is coming to save you.

The Department Of Miseducation

 I have no response to the current Supreme Court's decision to allow the Executive Branch to unilaterally gut the Department of Education. It's obviously part of the Project 2025 Playbook that was so unpopular when it was leaked a year ago, that Trump disavowed it, only to make it his operating software in January.

The idea that a president can unilaterally fire civil servants with the express intent of ending a cabinet level department that was created and funded by Congress is basically tyranny. It is executive power unconstrained by law. What's more, we know full well that if President Ossoff fires 90% of ICE agents in January of 2029, the Supreme Court will rule that illegal. 

Or - perhaps more likely - the current ruling is a placeholder. They removed the stay, they did not rule the firings were OK. They will let Trump and his minions terrorize the Federal workforce, fire a bunch of people and then rule that he couldn't actually do that in late 2028. At that point, good people intent on public service will have zero desire to sign up to work for a capricious and senile old man intent on, you know, terrorizing the Federal workforce. The Departments that Trump targets will be gutted and hollow shells, but the Court will eventually rule, "Hey, you couldn't actually do that!" once there is the threat of a Democratic president.

To this point, the only institutions offering up even a modicum of resistance to Trump are the lower courts. As servants of the law, these judges - appointed by presidents of both parties - have been aghast at the nihilistic lawlessness of this presidency. As Richardson notes in the piece linked above, two thirds of the lawyers whose job it is to defend the administration have quit, either because what they are being asked to do is illegal, nonsensical or more likely both. 

Trump will increasingly be represented in District and Circuit courts by idiots like Alina Habba and Jeanine Pirro, and the administration will lose on the merits, only to have the Supreme Court stay any remedy until 2028-29.

Whomever assumes power after Trump - and I'm still going to assume that there will be actual elections in the future - is going to have to unwind a LOT of shit. The Supreme Court, however, could be the hardest institution to unfuck. 

Postures, Not Solutions

 Richardson has a nice run down of the history of immigration law and reform, stretching back to the Emergency Quota Act of 1922. Immigration laws have always been tied and constrained by racism and xenophobia, again, this period in American history is really not that new, it's just remarkably undemocratic. 

America has long wrestled with the tension between wanting and as often as not needing more workers and fears both of "others" and depressed wages. Right now, the main opposition to Trump/Miller's deportation scheme is the inhumanity of it, the indiscriminate cruelty. However, it seems fairly likely that this will create long term inflation, especially in agricultural goods. Other areas like construction and certain service areas - restaurants and hotels - could also see price increases.

Now, I and other thought we would be seeing inflationary effects from Trump's tariffs. There was widespread talk of the collapse of container shipping in the Pacific Ocean, for instance. That hasn't happened. Yet. It could be that suppliers had stocked up in anticipation of the tariffs or perhaps slowing overall demand has mitigated the effect of tariffs. Most likely both, but at the moment, MAGA is crowing about the fact that there aren't empty shelves at Target and Walmart.

Still, macroeconomics tends to have the last word. For instance, Good Yglesias showed up today to write about Javier Milei's early success in Argentina. It's a good, balanced take, in that it looks both at what Milei has done and more importantly hasn't done, while noting that Argentina has had false springs before. Basically, Milei ran as a right wing, chainsaw wielding populist, but he's largely governed as a neoliberal austerity guy who's getting help from the IMF. He did NOT do the crazy populist stuff, like abandoning the Argentine peso and replacing it with the US dollar. Instead, he just did what the textbook says and slash government spending (which does immiserate the poor) which - along with IMF help - has stabilized the peso in ways that allow for some business investment (which dried up in the face of runaway inflation).

What's more, Argentina has cycled through good periods and bad periods since it embarked on a series of disastrous macroeconomic policies under Peron. Left and right wing governments oscillate back and forth, occasionally seeing stability and then falling off a cliff. Argentina had nothing to do with causing 2008, but it was crippled nevertheless and has really struggled to recover (then Covid).

So, it's not like Milei is governing the way he campaigned, because he's an economist and "gets it." Meanwhile, Trump IS governing from the Project 2025 playbook - which was his platform, even if he tried to run away from it. In fact, the media's collective shrug when Trump said he wasn't running on the platform that he was actually running on was probably as big a reason we have a Trump presidency as any. 

Populism is best understood as a form of politics AND a portfolio of policies. Milei was a populist politician, but so far has not been a purely populist president. Trump, meanwhile, has taken decades of Republican demagoguery on immigration and placed it at the heart of his governing agenda. Sure, there's the Project 2025 war on basic science, but the beating heart of Trump's populism is hatred of immigration and globalization. (Although apparently the central nervous system consists of QAnon type conspiracy theories.)

For whatever reason, we have not seen quite the inflationary pressures from the combination of Trump's tariffs and his mass deportations of otherwise law abiding immigrants - legal or undocumented. It could be that inflation isn't as bad as predicted because we are already entering a reduction in consumer demand that usually presages a recession. One thing we can be confident of, is that whatever Trump winds up doing, it will not be because he is listening to what mainstream economists think. The contempt for elites and elite-created knowledge is very, very real.

Turn That Dial

 As Krugman notes, Trump's (Stephen  Miller's) mass deportation program is becoming less and less popular by the day. He suggests that images of paramilitary raids on Home Depot parking lots repels many Americans and I think that's true.

But - as with the Epstein stuff - the problem with MAGA and even "normie" Republicans is that what they believe is just utter bullshit. There is no army of MS-13 members terrorizing American cities.

You can't achieve a goal based on fantasy.

Epstein, Part II

 At least for the moment, the Epstein furor has not died down. At least in part, this is because Trump himself is screaming for everyone to stop talking about Epstein. MAGA remains furious, because they are so marinated in conspiratorial thinking that Epstein became a tentpole of their belief system. Trump's voluble defense of Attorney General Pam Bondi has only enraged people more. First of all, Bondi is transparently doing Trump's bidding. Secondly, goons like Dan Bongino have created entire personalities around Epstein/QAnon and they can't let it go that easily.

Again, my feeling is that there is not an "Epstein List" because there is zero chance that it would have remained secret all this time. Trump is all over those flight manifests, but if there really was a "list" I would wager that it would have been leaked during the recent presidential campaign. 

Here's the thing I don't get, though. Trump and Bondi are serial liars. I'm kind of shocked that they simply haven't fabricated a list. I'm hardly going to credit their deep faith in evidentiary integrity. So, maybe there is some smoking gun out there, and if they release a fake "list" then the sword of Damocles falls. 

Maybe. 

As Richardson notes, "Epstein" has managed to overshadow the impact of cuts to FEMA right in the middle if the response to the Kerr County floods and the declining popularity of Trump's immigration gestapo. The inevitable chaos of a Trump Administration unmoored to "adult" Republicans has produced a cascading series of scandals, problems and even tragedies. Most Americans are woefully uninformed about the daily goings on in their world, but the constant drumbeat of problems is merging with the salacious nature of "Epstein".

The hope for American democracy really has been that either the Right shatters along the fault lines of its' internal contradictions or that Trump screws up so bad, that his cultists simply drop out of the political process. "Epstein" has the potential to do both: creating a schism within the MAGA ranks while also prompting others to simply walk away in disgust (as Bongino seems to be doing).

Anyway, do you like butter on your popcorn? Or maybe flavored salt?

UPDATE: Cheryl Rofer accurately describes it as not fantasy breaking against reality, but fantasy against fantasy. Maybe that was the key all along? You can't dissuade members of a cult through reason and evidence, but through the disintegration of their fantasy.

Epstein

 I am generally hostile to conspiracy theories, but even I am struck by what's happening with the so-called Epstein Client List. This skepticism is overwhelmed, however, by the massive schadenfreude that I'm experiencing as we watch MAGA tear itself apart.

Since I'm congenitally skeptical of conspiracy theories, here's my take: There was no "list." Epstein would have been a fool to write those names down with information like "Alan Dershowitz, January 5th, 16 year old girl." To quote Stringer Bell, "Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?" Epstein would have wanted that information kept as close to him as possible; it's existence could let it fall into someone else's hands and destroy whatever leverage he felt he had.

Also, he killed himself, because the mad, depraved world he had created was crashing down and his life in prison would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. 

However, two things.

First, go ahead and run with this as Trump destroying the list. I love that Democrats are hammering Trump and Bondi for covering up the list and hiding links between Epstein and Trump. Those links are absolutely real, whether the list exists or not. The absence of proof is not the proof of absence, so there is really no way for Trump to deflect these attacks. If the list never existed, then Bondi can't prove she didn't destroy it. Go to town on that!

Second, this is already creating MAGA-on-MAGA violence (sadly only rhetorically at this point). This is because conspiratorial thinking is at the very heart of MAGA. Conspiracies are the refuge of the ignorant, and, well, if the shoe fits... Take Marjorie Traitor Greene's bizarre obsession with weather machines and Jewish space lasers. Because she is not only profoundly ignorant, but also profoundly incurious, rather than learn about climate change, why not just create a scientifically impossible conspiracy?

Of course, QAnon was one of the early avenues of Trump's rise to power, which was itself fueled by Trump's embrace of the Birtherism, itself a conspiracy theory. Even the idea that globalists (read: Jews) are outsourcing jobs, importing immigrants and implementing the Great Replacement Theory is central to Trumpist politics.

Trump is the hub from which a hundred conspiracy theories radiate outwards.

All of this means that you cannot really disentangle Trump from the unfortunately large number of Americans who marinate in conspiratorial thinking. This is why the Epstein shit is potentially really harmful for him and the various minions who are already drawing the long knives for each other. I don't care if both Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi lose their jobs, but if one of them does, that's great! (It will be Bongino, if anyone.)

A central tactic of Trump that he learned from Bannon is to "flood the zone" with shit. It is a constant struggle to know which outrage to focus on from day to day. However, while the tactic might work to fluster your enemies, it is also antithetical to decent governance (which we know Trump doesn't care about, but stick with me). What's more, the chaos within Trump's inner circle is an inevitable byproduct of the people he needs around him and the batshit lunacy that they swim in.

For every ounce of energy expended in Epstein crossfire, that's energy that can't be focused on dismantling the government, expending resources on creating an American Gestapo and destroying the rule of law. It's not a perfect cure, but "confusion to my enemies" is always a good step, especially when Democrats are largely excluded from power at all levels of the Federal Government.

If Epstein leads to a full on MAGA civil war (I'm skeptical, but these people really are nuts), that will be to the advantage of the country as a whole. 

UPDATE: You want to see how this brain rot plays out? Watch these bullshit.

The Politics of Information

 Paul Krugman did a two part video with Martin Wolf on inequality. In it, they ponder why working class people have embraced a right wing populism across the developed world. Sure, there's racial and cultural grievances, but that can't explain everything. 

They focus a bit on the way information travels. Obviously, we have both Fox News and its spawn who simply place their thumbs on the scale. The other issue is social media and it's mainlining of grievance and anger into our brain.

One thing they also talk about is the decline of unions, not just as political players, but as information networks. The talk about the lack of national consensus on the news as typified by the veneration of Walter Cronkite, but how much of the decline in that consensus was because of the rise of cable news and how much was this a decline in overall trust in institutions?

Chris Murphy has talked a lot about the atomization of our culture, especially the decline in church membership. It's an interesting argument, in that if we have no real cultural consensus, then any whacko - even or especially if they are at the pulpit - can become a consensus of one or at least a few. I suppose I could go further and think about my sons' college education, where they are both pursuing professional degrees, but they aren't learning the critical thinking skills typically associated with a liberal arts education.

Ultimately, is Fox News the cause or the symptom of our polarization? Hopefully, Rupert Murdoch dies soon and we can can see if his kids take the company in a different direction. If they did, maybe the discourse changes or maybe people turn to OAN and NewsMax.