Sineater

On this day:

1046
Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama.
1616
Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is banned by the catholic chuch
1770
Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, and a boy, are killed by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence) five years later. At a subsequent trial the soldiers are defended by John Adams.
1836
Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
1933
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.
1940
Members of Soviet politburo sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.

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The Cassidy Report diagnosed FDA as a bottleneck to innovation.

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This year there will be over 9 billion--BILLION--trips from China.

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Korea imports nearly all its fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, all of it brought in by tanker. About 70% of Korea’s oil imports and up to 30% of liquified natural gas come from the Middle East.

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Amanda Askell has been hired by Anthropic to teach Claude, its chatbot, the sense of right and wrong.

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Sineater

The last few years have been a concentration of questions and problems that have bobbed on the surface of America's stormy sea of self-definition and interpersonal governance. Obama's benign, enept power accumulation, the palace overthrow of the Biden Regency, and, now, this. Trump is a reaction to the last administrations, which have left us with huge problems whose only solutions seem to be traditionally unmanageable. Trump is bringing solutions outside the history of constitutional constraint.

Trump is philosophy-free, a casual utilitarian. He solves problems by decree. Wry and without philosophical roots, he is a difficult politician to pin down. He adopts as his justifications the bumper-sticker declarations of previous Leftist policies: patriotism, 'working families', and 'the children.'

Iran has been killing Americans for 40 years as national policy. We have been ignoring this as our own policy— and, in Obama's time, paid them off, like nuclear Barbary pirates.

The Latin American countries have been infiltrating drug damage and human trafficking into the country as routinely as interstate commerce.

The Biden Regency became the poster child for paralyzed neglect with their border non-policy.

We are now bombing Iran into oblivion, sinking mysterious boats in the Caribbean, stalking the streets for dark-complected men with accents.

Illegal immigration has dropped. Drug importation is down. Iran is gasping. Military success seems to justify the adventure.

The previous politicians created a vacuum. Trump is filling it, by hook or by crook. 

This looks, horribly, as if many Americans believe that their well-being cannot be managed lawfully in the modern world through Constitutional limits.