“What’s it going to take for us to wake up…?” I thought I’d lived through history during the assassinations of the 1960s, the Apollo 11 moon landing, Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, September 11, and the election of the first Black president. Then came Trumpism, COVID, and the upending of constitutional order. This feels more like the end of history. Heather Cox Richardson makes history her business. She brings that perspective to Elon Musk’s nuttiness even as “the lug nuts on the wheels of the Musk-Trump government bus” seem to be coming off. Fellow historian Timothy Snyder concurs, posting, “Something is shifting. They are still breaking things and stealing things. And they will keep trying to break and to steal. But the propaganda magic around the oligarchical coup is fading.” Let’s hope. Richardson writes from Maine: Historian Johann Neem, a specialist in the American Revolution, turned to political theorist John Locke to explore the larger meaning of Trump’s destructive course.
Reading
The New Yorker is responsible for the twentieth-century’s American high-brow voice.
So, Merz is likely Germany’s next Chancellor. He’s said one good thing:
“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.
“After Donald Trump‘s statements, it is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
Excellent. The first step in recovery from being a slave, or vassal, is admitting the problem and deciding to stand up.
No wonder DJT hates Volodymyr Zelenskyy On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (ICYMI: Ukraine did not start it, DJT.), coverage in The Washington Post and The New York Times spotlights U.S.-Ukraine relations and what Donald Trump’s fluffing of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin means for the world more than it addresses what Ukraine continues to suffer at Putin’s hands. CNN on this anniversary leads with the war’s impact on Ukraine itself: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday hailed Ukraine’s “absolute heroism” as he marked the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, and as European leaders began arriving in the capital Kyiv in a show of support for the embattled country. “Three years of resistance. Three years of gratitude. Three years of absolute heroism of Ukrainians. I am proud of Ukraine!” Zelensky wrote on X alongside a video showing scenes from the frontline and Ukrainian civilians supporting war efforts during the grinding conflict. “I thank everyone who defends and supports it. Everyone who works for Ukraine.
I’m here to sound the alarm about the greatest crisis of our time—and it has nothing to do with the usual suspects: climate change, AI taking our jobs, or something about TikTok. It’s the two-sentence headline. Yes, those insidious double declarations that now infest every opinion section, every analysis, every “think piece” about how modernity is falling apart (it is).
Now you might be wondering: Two sentences? Really? Isn’t that just efficiency? Why complain about a little clarity in an otherwise messy world? And to that, I say, “Exactly.” Journalism, at its core, was never meant to be tidy. It was meant to ramble, to overwhelm, to occasionally bury the lede so deep you’d need a headlamp to find it. The two-sentence headline is destroying that sacred chaos. Worse, it’s making us think in neatly packaged dichotomies, and if there’s one thing the human mind abhors more than nuance, it’s being spoon-fed the illusion of nuance.
February 24, 2025 The *&%$!#! Baseball Study Why Are Fans of Fact-Focused Teaching Still Citing a Small, Unconvincing Experiment from the ’80s? By Alfie Kohn Traditional education has more often been practiced by default than explicitly defended. For the last few years, however, we have witnessed a defensive, defiant embrace of instructional strategies that turn back the clock, notably a ... Read More
The post The *&%$!#! Baseball Study appeared first on Alfie Kohn.
- by Aeon Video
- by Andrew F March
- by Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Officers have been using technology used by Israel during its operations in Gaza and the West Bank
The last few years haven’t been easy for Die Linke. Following the 2021 elections, in which the party barely scraped back into parliament, Germany’s left-wing party descended into a two-year faction fight, ultimately ending in the very public departure of leading figure Sahra Wagenknecht in October 2023. By then, its polling numbers had dipped to […]
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Zarina Zabrisky explores Trump’s new alliance with Putin and the dark economic and ideological forces behind this new phase in the war
This is what it’s come to. A right wing podcaster troll is now working at the highest levels of the FBI with virtually unfettered power under a similar right wing troll as his boss. He does have law enforcement experience as a NY police officer for four years and a secret service agent for nine. So there is that. But it’s his record as a right wing gadfly that really qualifies him for the job as Kash Patel’s deputy. As you can see above, he is uniquely suited to the job of wreaking revenge on MAGA enemies. It’s his raison d’etre. The job doesn’t require confirmation so I assume he’ll be starting right away.
The last several decades of what is termed the neoliberal era has led to some fundamental changes in our social and economic institutions. It was led by the interests of capital reconfiguring what the polity should be doing, given that most of the significant shifts have come through the legislative or regulative capacity (power) of…
I think we knew that the feds under Trump would not zealously go after gun crimes. It was always going to be a free-for-all. But this is a little bit different. President Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed FBI director, Kash Patel, is expected to take on another top law enforcement role in the administration as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to a White House official and two other sources familiar with the plan. Patel’s appointment could be made official as soon as next week with a swearing-in ceremony, the sources said. The ATF, a law enforcement agency housed in the Department of Justice, is responsible for enforcing federal laws regarding the illegal use, sale and trafficking of firearms and explosives, as well as the illegal diversion of alcohol and tobacco products. It has been a frequent target of Republican lawmakers who perceive the agency as infringing on the Second Amendment, particularly as former President Joe Biden empowered it to regulate the sale of “ghost guns” and close a loophole that eased the process of buying a firearm.
And it’s extremely dangerous I wrote earlier about the reporting that Musk is threatening to shut down Starlink, his satellite service on which Ukraine depends for all its communications unless they capitulate to Trump’s demands to allow him to seize whatever natural resources he wants and hand their country to Putin. The idea that this man has such power over world events is like something out of a James Bond film. Only there’s no James Bond, just GOP cowards, feckless Democrats and a plodding judiciary. It’s actually much worse than I realized. Josh Marshall wrote this thread on BlueSky last night, jumping off an earlier post about what historically happens when someone becomes more powerful than the sovereign (“over-mighty subjects”) which, in our American democracy, is something called “the American people.” Musk is a quintessential “over-mighty subject” perhaps the mightiest ever: A couple years ago the Times did a really strong package about the power of SpaceX. Not only is SpaceX.
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