Fight the wind or ride the balloon Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “The Pentagon’s New Map” (2004) outlined how the sources of conflict in the world are concentrated in the non-integrating “gap” areas under cultural stress and disconnected from the broader economy. As in Barnett’s past work, “America’s New Map: Restoring Our Global Leadership in an Era of Climate Change and Demographic Collapse” (2023) looks to a future worth creating. The cultural stress in the U.S. these days, Barnett tells James Fallows on his podcast this week, is connected to America “losing its whiteness.” But that’s more connected to climate change than Americans of the Baby Boom generation care to admit. Fallows writes: Barnett is crystal-clear about climate change as a central driver of world politics, economics, and strategic tensions. And he emphasizes two related aspects of particular importance to the United States. —One is climate’s role as driver of migrations—mainly south-to-north around the world, since that’s more feasible than east-west migration across the broad oceans.
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If she can do it there, she can do it anywhere Greg Sargent on the latest accomplishments of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer: Few Democrats would deny that the party must win back working people. Yet one of the party’s long-term conundrums is whether they can pursue ambitious efforts to combat climate change without threatening those very workers’ wages or jobs. In coming days, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is set to sign a package of bills that would transition the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2040. The bills — which also include robust provisions for workers — are among the most ambitious efforts undertaken by any state to move toward a carbon-free future in a manner that is actively good for working people. Significantly, Democrats are testing this approach in a swing state in the heart of the industrial Midwest. […] Climate action tends to expose cracks in the Democratic coalition precisely because it aggravates existing tensions between the goals and interests of environmentalists and workers.
Not that some of us didn’t see it coming… Over the past few years people have argued over whether or not Trump and his movement were fascist. (I came down on the side of yes, quite some time ago..) But others made the point that the word has a specific meaning and Trump didn’t necessarily fit it perfectly. Tom Nichols, Never Trump conservative, was one of those people. In this piece he correctly describes him as a lazy, narcissistic, gadfly who doesn’t really care about anything but himself. He points out that he “had only two consistent issues: hatred of immigrants and love for foreign autocrats.” He writes: “Trump, as a person and as a public figure, is just so obviously ridiculous; fascists, by contrast, are dangerously serious people, and in many circumstances, their leaders have been unnervingly tough and courageous. Trump—whiny, childish, unmanly—hardly fits that bill” He warned that the indiscriminate use of the word word could blind us to the time when it might actually become accurate. He says that time has come: For weeks, Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric.
Don’t let them forget Trump or shirk who they’ve become Following up on the post below, here’s a great piece by Brian Beutler from his excellent newsletter Off Message. He recaps the infuriatingly terrible media response to Trump’s “vermin” comments, proving just how inured they’ve become to his escalating extremism. He notes that the outcry from regular people finally jolted them out of their reflexive “that old Trumps says the darndest things” reaction. But what do we do? But the question now—as days turn into weeks, and fresh stories vie for our attention—is whether this will be a passing kerfuffle, or one Republicans, as long as they support Trump, can never live down. Reporters have no shortage of Trump outrage porn to cover, and if Democrats can’t differentiate the vermin libel as something that transcends his more typical offenses, it will fade like most of the others. That’s the main source of my small misgivings over the couch-fainting, pearl-clutching way liberals have responded to it. “Ack, Hitler said that!” True enough, he did.
This man is demented — and the audience cheers Back when he was running against Clinton he used to say she belonged in jail and she was crook and that she didn’t “have the strength and stamina” to be president. It wasn’tsubtle by any means. But this … this is beyond grotesque. And his audience loves it. Meanwhile, speaking of stupid: Fine. Everything is fine.
You think Trump doesn’t mean you? What Sinclair Lewis did say in It Can’t Happen Here: “But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.” The more familiar quote misattributed to Lewis was just years ahead of its time. Whatever. The truth of it seems increasingly evident. Wrapped in the flag? ☑ Carrying a cross? ☑
The Speaker of the House has called an early recess for the Thanksgiving break because his Republicans members were so punchy from all the infighting and name-calling that they allowed a continuing budget resolution with no budget cuts to pass, mostly with Democratic votes, and couldn’t even work up a good old-fashioned cry. There are a few die hards who are still shaking their fists on the Capitol steps vowing never to let it happen again but nobody has the energy to cheer them on at this point: Their obsession with “individual spending bills” instead of omnibus legislation doesn’t really seem like the greatest idea at the moment since they can’t even get their own draconian spending bills to the floor much less pass them. So I’m not sure why they thought a government shutdown was going to shake anything loose. Not that it really matters. They have not done any actual legislating since this congress convened nearly a year ago so why start now? America is tired too — tired of their inane, infantile, behavior. And people are no doubt grateful to be spared any more of it for the next week or so.
Is social media fueling the economic angst This explains things a little bit to me: Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now. Unemployment remains low. Job opportunities are plentiful. Inequality is down, wage growth is finally beating inflation, and the economy has expanded rapidly this year. Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression — one that seems more in line with both consumer confidence data and President Biden’s performance in political polls. Several of the economy-related trends getting traction on TikTok are downright dire. The term “Silent Depression” recently spawned a spate of viral videos. Clips critical of capitalism are common. On Instagram, jokes about poor housing affordability are a genre unto themselves. Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the economy that is showing up in surveys of younger consumers and political polls alike. It suggests that even as the job market booms, people are focusing on long-running issues like housing affordability as they assess the economy.
Rescue Cubs! Two very young, orphaned mountain lion siblings were rescued and transported to Oakland Zoo yesterday morning by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) following their search for the kittens, which started yesterday morning. An adult female mountain lion, who CDFW suspects is their mother, was struck by a car and killed on Saturday, November 11th, along Highway 280, near the Hillsboro/Burlingame area. Over the weekend, residents reported seeing two cubs alone near the area, and they were found safe in one of the reporting residents’ backyard. Both kittens are female, approximately six to ten weeks old, and weigh five and five-and-a-half pounds, respectively. These kittens mark the 25th and 26th mountain lion rescues as part of the Zoo’s Rescue and Recovery Program for local wildlife in need. Upon arrival, at 11:30am today, Oakland Zoo’s Veterinary Hospital staff conducted a thorough health examination on both female cubs. The exam included virus testing, parasite treatment, and bloodwork testing. Additionally, vital fluids were administered to the visibly dehydrated kittens.
Who needs consultants? When opponents write your campaign ads for you? Vanity Fair: On Wednesday, Representative Chip Roy took to House floor to tear into his fellow Republicans, accusing them of doing literally nothing useful with their time in Washington—definitely not anything he could actually tell voters about in an effort to get reelected. “You know, we have had a tumultuous year of sorts, but in the eyes of the American people, they’ve been watching from afar wondering when this body, the people’s House, will stand up in defense of the people who send us here,” Roy said. “When are we going to do what we said we would do?” Taking aim expressly at his GOP colleagues, Roy added: “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something…and then do nothing about it. One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did.