Strongman's Accomplices

On this day:

350
Roman usurper Nepotianus, of the Constantinian dynasty, proclaims himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome at the head of a group of gladiators.
1140
French scholar Peter Abelard is found guilty of heresy.
1839
In Humen, China, Lin Tse-hsü destroys 1.2 million kg of opium confiscated from British merchants, providing Britain with a casus belli to open hostilities, resulting in the First Opium War.
1932
Lou Gehrig and teammate Tony Lazzeri hit four home runs in one game, and hit for the natural cycle, respectively. These two feats are both less common than a perfect game, which has occurred twenty-one times in one hundred and twenty years.
1937
The Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson.
1940
World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk ends with a German victory and with Allied forces in full retreat.
1940
World War II: The Luftwaffe bombs Paris.
1969
Melbourne-Evans collision: Off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half.
1982
The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov, is shot on a London street. He survives but is permanently paralysed.
1989
The government of China sends troops to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square after seven weeks of occupation.

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"[classics] teaches you 'to read difficult things. ... In a global environment of fact-dodging, misreporting, conspiracy theories, fake news, and outright lies, skills in reading difficult things are those that the world most needs."--Mary Beard

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Bass secured a spot on the November ballot and Pratt was running in second place as of early Wednesday morning, ahead of progressive city councilwoman Nithya Raman. These are the best candidates for mayor in LA's drifting hulk.
The electoral talent search for Maine senator seems to settle between a 120-year-old career politician and a Nazi.

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Apparently, accusations of being a Nazi are true unless you have Nazi tattoos.

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Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist congressional candidate endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, deleted a previous Twitter account that included thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist.

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The metaphor of “running different software” that fathers sometimes use turns out to be a reasonable approximation of what the neuroimaging shows in new fathers.

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Tom Steyer, running for California governor, spent over $200 of his own money on the race. Is that reasonable?

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Strongman's Accomplices

The American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US senator — a retired Navy captain and combat veteran — for reminding service members they must not obey illegal orders. He posted a grotesquely cruel message on social media, jeering the deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. He sent his press secretary to warn CBS News that unless it broadcast a presidential interview in its entirety and unedited, "we’ll sue your ass off.” He deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, then announced that the United States was now “in charge” of that country, and “we’re going to be taking oil.” He summoned Justice Department attorneys to berate them for not moving fast enough to prosecute his critics and opponents. And when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, the White House instantly pronounced her a “domestic terrorist” and refused to open an investigation into the shooting.

This is not normal political combat. It isn’t just more of the partisan roughness that Mr. Dooley had in mind when he remarked that “politics ain’t beanbag.” This is unabashed White House thuggishness, a vengeful aggressiveness that makes no effort to disguise itself by pretending to care about constitutional norms or democratic values. And all of it is cheered by tens of millions of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of President Trump’s cascade of gratuitous cruelty, insults, and threats.

When the president was asked in a recent interview whether he recognizes any check on his powers, he didn’t bother with euphemisms. “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

For anyone who takes the American constitutional system seriously, that statement is genuinely terrifying. Not because Trump is wrong but because — let’s face it — he’s right.

The British statesman William Gladstone praised the US Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” For more than two centuries, the self-correcting durability of the constitutional framework the Framers devised has rightly been regarded as a masterpiece of statesmanship.

But now the checks and balances on which that system depends are failing. Built into the constitutional architecture was an assumption of public virtue. It was not designed to contain a president who would openly declare himself restrained only by his own (nonexistent) morality and whose outrages would be endorsed by a major political party.

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The Trump phenomenon isn’t an aberration our constitutional machinery can correct. It is the failure the Founders anticipated when they warned of what happens after virtue collapses and applause replaces judgment. The Constitution still exists on paper. What is disappearing is the public will to enforce its meaning. A republic does not fall when a strongman declares himself unchecked. It falls when millions hear him say it — and approve.--from Jacoby

Jacoby's pretty rough on Trump because he's implying this dangerous phase of our republic is somehow limited to him, or characterized by him. Rather, the country has struggled with its ideals since its inception.  It is the basis of the Civil War, the battles between amoral political parties, the essence of those politicians who claim they plan on "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." These people are not ignoring America's principles; they don't like them.

Politicians eager to seize the wealth of citizens or gerrymander a state are not redirecting the nation; they are changing its nature. Politicians who would pack the court are trying to bypass the very checks and balances that have allowed the country to succeed. Trump is philosophy-free, but he is no aberration. You don't fight repeated, pointless wars, allow erosion of fundamental American rights, and amass $38 trillion in debt without true incompetence and a deep disregard for the citizenry. Trump is a problem, but he is only the current iteration of a long line of them. And, as the results of incompetence, greed, ambition, and cynicism circle the landing strip,  there will be more to come.