My old buddy/bête noir Dan Drezner brings me this message, Are "Wikipedia-Surfing Kissinger Wannabes" Killing the Political Risk Field?, jumping off a fulminatin’ post by one Tina Fordham, a serious, totally non-amateur political risk chick who now runs her own company, Fordham Global Foresight. Writing in the Financial Times, Tina ripped a new one for…
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Banning TikTok pushes buttons right and left.
Why ban TikTok? Because China! Because Internet! Banning TikTok may or may not be the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but for many Democrats and Republicans, it is a much needed balm for all their wounds, or so they are so foolish to believe. Democrats and Republicans are unhappy because neither can command the support…
Yo, “conservatives”! Haven’t you heard? You’re totally f*cked!
Yes, it’s schadenfreude time around the Literature ‘R Us corral once more, and, yes, it is morally lazy in the extreme to snicker at the other side’s weaknesses without considering one’s own, but life is short, after all, and we’ll soon be in the clay, so before we submit to the clammy embrace of viscous…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 2: Matthew Continetti and The Right
A few years ago, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, in response to a couple of engaging (relatively) meas culpas—Matthew Continetti’s The Right The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism and Tim Miller’s Why We Did It—I began preparing an update. I originally planned to…
Shorter India: “The United States of ‘America’? Isn’t that one of those little western countries?”
That’s the perspective from New Delhi, Varanasi and Chennai, as reported by NYT guy Roger Cohen in his long post, Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World, suggesting that the Biden administration’s moralizing attempt to turn the current world situation into Cold War II isn’t playing too well beyond the Atlantic community of nations, almost…
Shorter Ross Douthat: Donald Trump is my daddy!
Yes, ole Ross is in love, with you know who! When all seemed lost, gushes our boy a leader emerged who persuaded the G.O.P. to abandon its fixation on deficits and just run the economy hot, who endorsed universal health insurance and pledged to protect entitlements, and who acknowledged that the Iraq war had been…
Congressional Progressive Caucus speaks common sense to power: DC goes insane
If you live within 200 miles of our Nation’s Capital, you probably heard that enormous squeal of terror last week when, on October 22, 2022, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden making the not too remarkable suggestion—one would think—that the current bloody war in Ukraine can only be brought to…
Yo, Francis Fukuyama! Righteous rage may be hazardous to your health! And mine too!
Francis Fukuyama, who is probably my most favorite living neo-Hegelian, has sadly gone off the rails more than a little with this ecstatic, triumphalist treatise, Why Ukraine Will Win, which sounds to me a lot like the late Charlie Krauthammer on steroids and scotch circa 2004, rejoicing over the new American empire, on which, he…
“Don’t worry about the Iranians,” says Shay Khatiri. “They’re a bunch of sissies!”
Why should we bomb the Iranians? Hell, why shouldn’t we? That’s what Shay Khatiri says, over at the Bulwark . Sure, “the state of Iran’s nuclear program is unclear.” (Translation: we don’t even know if they’re thinking about building a bomb.) But, hey, you can’t be too careful. There’s sure to be something we can…
Memo to Peter Beinart: Physician, heal thyself!
AV fave rave Daniel Larison has a post up1 quoting Peter Beinart from an interview Pete did with John Glaser of the Cato Institute as follows: We also don’t have…we don’t really have a learning process that I think then shapes the public debate. So one of the things that’s really frustrating to me, and…