I think we also need to examine the religious doctrine that has been systemized in Project 2025. It is in cooperation with the oligarchs and I think already has momentum with the overturning of Roe especially because the anti-abortion portion of it is the religious one meant to suppress women. This religious scheme is real and significant I think.
When you drill down into Catholic doctrine on abortion, there is nothing about any "right to life." It is flat out that God wants people to be ensouled, be good, then sit at His right hand glorifying Him. Why an All-Everything theistic God needs praise, I don't know. In this regard, abortion and birth control are no different. In other words, birth control being next would be entirely consistent.
Here's an unofficial point about God's need for praise, which I think makes sense if one accepts the hypothesis that God exists. (For 'hypothesis', see what LaPlace supposedly said to Napoleon.) God does not NEED praise, or anything else, from people (or Man, in the old phraseology). But it is human to sing the praises of what we find wonderful! All literary history attests to that. So, not singing the praises of God is just abnormal, not the position of a functioning human being.
This is pretty much lifted from C S Lewis, who to my mind did a lot of clear thinking base on the God hypothesis, which I need hardly say I do not see as compelling.
"A law which violates an innocent person’s natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law." Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae 90)
This is based on the assumption that a fertilized egg or fetus is a person. Of course a living, breathing human has a right to life. Why aren't they concerned about the hate and violence perpetuated against real people?
Well, you have me there. By 1995 I had fallen so far away from the Church that I failed to notice the update to Humanae Vitae (1968), which spoke of God's design for marriage.
I agree, plus it excludes Catholic, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhism, Shinto etc. The first Amendment gives freedom to all religion (including that of Indigenous Americans) But of course Project 2025 includes deleting the entire Constitution.
My understanding of Musk, based on information from the 2023 authorized, Isaacson biography, is that the 53 year old wonderkid is the most qualified manic to bring Trump to the boiling point.
Since Elon is primarily concerned with the preservation DNA, and has a tentative grasp of humanity, and The Donald is a megalomaniac who has outlived his welcome, we’re looking at a anthropological experiment in self-destruction.
My advice is that if you can subsist on blueberries and “the sound of music,” you should definitely head for the hills!
My expectation is that Trump will spend the next 4 years hoovering up every dollar that he can from anyone willing to pay for any and all considerations from the government. He will pay little attention to anything the government does except the DoJ which he will wield as his hammer of vengeance. He will sign any executive order placed in front of him without regard to the consequences and he will scream bloody murder about voter fraud and the deep state when his party is routed in the midterms.
If that's not what you meant, my apologies. That way of thinking, for anyone who is engaging in it, is what Dr. Snyder calls "surrendering in advance."
You are correct, I think it's also dangerous to be naive about how bad this could be. People can't even wrap their heads around elections being fake here and it's not a particularly hard thing to do with the level of control the GOP has
The novelist Joseph Hayes wrote a book I’ve always remembered: 'The Third Day'. It chronicles the adventures of a man who comes to his senses one day in New York City with the realization that he’s lost his memory. Using bits and pieces from his wallet and some intuition, he eventually finds his way to the front door of what he assumes is his rather large house in the country. Facing the door, with his hand raised to the knocker, he contemplates with significant apprehension the fact that he has no idea who or what will confront him when it opens, and what are all the past events which will inform his relationships with those inside.
Every year that I taught elementary school US and ancient history, I opened my new history class with that story, asking the kids to imagine themselves in such a situation. MY reasoning, of course, was to give them the one essential reason for the study of history.
Dr. Snyder’s piece is a vivid illustration of that reasoning. And Trump is the exemplar of the problem of a ‘Leader of the Free World’ who doesn’t know or much care about any of it, operating only in the transactional present.
The "Great Deportation" that he is orchestrating, well he isn't doing the orchestrating, he is not smart enough to organize something on that scale.
I maintain that they really don't care about deporting these individuals.
Greg Abbott, of Texas fame, is willing to let the federal government build camps on state property. He's offering a huge number of acres for the project & we all know that the private prison contractors are lining up to provide the "beds" for these detainees while they await deportation.
Now, consider the deportations themselves, many of the countries around the world will not accept these people. Really what the new administration wants to do is to lock up the immigrants, you know get them out of society so it's really not necessary to deport them, making them disappear into huge camps in Texas will work. You know, out of sight out of mind. That's really all the trump administration needs to do.
Then think about what to do with all those people, hmm, lease them out as "laborers" perhaps, you know to cover the cost to maintain them? The prisons, state & federal government get paid to lease out the laborers & the laborers get nothing. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
We are about to become pariahs in the world! I hope we're ready to fight for the rights of those people rounded up because if we don't eventually we'll be on the list for "deportation".
American democracy, never fully realized—"a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all [people] are created equal,” that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, under government of, by and for all—is humanity's and civilization’s greatest spiritual and socio-political achievement.
250 years ago ... America’s founders liberated the world from the tyranny of greedy, cruel, power-hungry monarchs and dictators who claimed absolute, God-given, patriarchal, social-political-economic power and control.
I’m apprehensive about what will play out. But I suspect it will include diversion and false reassurance to his base, costing the real resistance valuable time. Propaganda is a formidable foe in any scenario. I was encouraged by a conversation in my local used book shop about doubling down on our democracy, and not giving in to the very strong pull of taking a break. I agree, it’s our generation’s turn.
Two things to remember … The United States has a LONG history of voting — the people believe they have a right to vote, and the people do not all agree with each other on WHAT they’ll vote. They believe that is their right …
AND the United States has a recent decades-long history of Middle Class and relative general prosperity.
It will be harder to pull the wool over that many eyes when democracy is perverted and the economy goes against the majority.
The pandemic DID damage the economy for the majority of us, and the Right got people to blame the Left for all of it, instead of the Orange A-Hole who let the pademic sneak up on him and us …
But I still think it’ll be tough for oligarchs to keep the people in line, as they were able to do in Russia, where strong men were the rule, not a aberration. In Germany, the people were angry about how the country had been treated after WWI, made to pay reparations, etc., and were ripe for someone who promised to make THEIR country great again … {!!}
Most Americans DO think this country is pretty great …
Thinking about that one point, is that what Trump has been doing? Trying to recreate the German anger over how it had been treated, convince Americans this country has been mistreated by the world? Is he trying to make us all feel like Germany felt after WWI? Is THAT where his rhetoric leads ….?
Will it really "be hard to pull the wool over that many eyes"? This administration was elected. And I maintain they won for four main reasons: racism, misogyny, stupidity, morality. The Hispanic men don't want a women to tell them what to do. A good portion of the country doesn't want another black president, the electorate has been dumbed down to the point that they believed all the lies they have been told, and morality you ask? Yes, the lack of morals for that number of people to vote for a convicted felon, an adjudicated molester, a liar, a cheat, a Conman, a cruel vindictive child, that tells me their are no morals, damn Evangelicals, hypocrites to support a disgusting example of humanity & portray him as touched by god! What god? Tell me where in that damn Bible that someone like this is "the chosen one"?
There are lots of places in the Bible that describe DT- as the “anti-Christ”. I’m really surprised, and disappointed, that decent “Christians” haven’t made that point on a larger scale.
Very interesting post, Timothy! But I do wish you had a copyeditor . . . (my fave typo in this: "baked [sic] pictures of his wife"). Anyhoo, as is my wont, I am going to complicate your historical-cum-prediction perspective. I think that the situation in Israel, which I also suspect is being engineered by a Putin-Netanyahu-Musk-Trump alliance, is going to be a significant component in the way the "new" world order reconfigures the global system. And for that I would turn to the British Empire and the Balfour Declaration (1917), which was beautifully designed to both get the Jews out of Europe and provide a westernized ally in a region both Britain and France wanted to control after a century of imperialist wars in Africa and the Middle East. The 19th-c imperialist wars fought in Africa, the Crimea, the Balkans, and the eastern Mediterranean (about which most Americans know absolutely nothing) pitted the imperialist powers of France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire against each other in a series of shifting alliances. By the Crimean War (1850s) it had become clear that the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and everyone wanted a piece of it, especially as petroleum was becoming an important commodity. But what to do about those pesky Muslim countries? Victoria could marry off her numerous children to western and Russian Christian monarchs, but that didn't fly as a strategy to neutralize Persia, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Trans-Jordan. Control of the Indian Subcontinent meant that the border with the Ottoman Empire was permeable but the British Raj was far stronger than anything the Ottomans could pull out. And then World War I happened and the Ottoman Empire was up for grabs. Enter the Jews of Europe: the perfect cannon fodder for the British to dump in the middle of Trans-Jordan. They would either be slaughtered (which was a-okay with the Brits) or they would westernize this region without all the Christian baggage of Crusades rhetoric attached. It took World War II and Germany's "Final Solution" to drive European Jews out of Europe, but their original strategy--to create a Jewish Homeland that was nonetheless westernized and more secular in its government than biblical--was exactly what the Brits and Europe wanted. But from the very beginning, the notion of Israel was based on the premise of the removal of another indigenous people and the neutralizing of neighbors, which was supported by the western powers because it furthered their own ends. As Israel became more and more autocratic--and the Radical Right more and more powerful--it took on the trappings of Putin's Russia: religious exclusivity; loss of civil liberties; censorship; us-v-them mentality. With Netanyahu, whose level of corruption is epic, the Putin cabal has its puppet.
Thank you for letting me know where the huge gap in my reading of history is—and please suggest a good source for sorting it out. I know very little about the Balkans except for the prejudices of a Serb, stuck in the late 1900’s. Trying to find my two books on the Balkans from that period, see ing only the disorder of bookshelves.
As you undoubtedly know, there are multiple "notions" of Israel. The Balfour Declaration was only one. The motivations of the settlers between 1917 and 1947 comprised other "notions." And the people who created the State of Israel had multiple "notions" not all of them in harmony. Some of these have very little to do with protecting Jews in the world and everything to do with western power politics. As I am sure you know already.
"But like Catherine, Putin has favorites that are close to power: Musk and Trump."
And Putin has enablers, such as strange bedfellows David Duke, Jill Stein - and Christian Nationalist operative and Charles Koch bagman, ChristoFascist Leonard Leo
Before Trump laid down at Putin’s feet, G.W. Bush looked into Putin’s heart and saw it was good. Before that, KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke sold Americans hungry for a strongman, on Putin as The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism. Behind it all - an assault on representative government, government regulation, and equitable taxation. Funded by corporate and private interests bent on undoing: Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal (conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection); FDR’s New Deal (relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system); LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation and Great Society programs to end poverty; and all American progress.
These possible scenarios seem absolutely fantastic, unbelievable, but, after all a good part of the history we all know seems unbelievable. Who would have thought that the Prime Minister of a small island would take on the German war machine after its ally France had fallen and with the help of an initially reluctant people defeat it along with a surprising partner, Russia. As they say, you can’t make things like this up.
At this time, I favor thinking 'in the box'. What will we the people do to stop 'Trumpomuskovia' or "Heilungeheuertrump"? How about stopping several of those he named for appointments in 'our' government? By in the box, I am thinking of learning from our journalists:
'How Kennedy Has Worked Abroad to Weaken Global Public Health Policy'
'The health secretary pick and his organization have worked around the world to undermine longstanding policies on measles, AIDS and more.' (NYTimes by By Selam Gebrekidan, Justin Scheck, Sarah Hurtes and Pete McKenzie)
Nov. 30, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET
'Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is in line to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next Trump administration, is well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism in the United States'.
'But Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show.'
'He has done this by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.'
He, his organizations and their officials have interfered with vaccination efforts, undermined sex education campaigns meant to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa, and railed against global organizations like the World Health Organization that are in charge of health initiatives.' (NYTimes) There is more dangerous stuff that he is responsible for. See the gifted link below.
Vance's positions are as terrible as trumps. But he definitely lacks the charisma of Trump and Hitler, that ensorcels people to ignore their real interests via blind faith. I'm not sure he is up to being a Fuhrer that the core will follow the same way they adore trump.
I'm not sure how charismatic Putin is. If not very, that weakens my arguments IF the current oligarchs support Vance. And THAT will depend on the economy; oligarchs don't like to see their profits and investments plummet any more than anyone else.
Reading history has certainly helped me. I'll never know as much as you but after 4.5+ years of reading at least 8 hours every day, I see everything, even the most ordinary things, in an entirely different way. Am now halfway through Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. Any book by Prof. Mazower is bound to be good, and this one is. His insights into history are remarkable.
Brilliant, thank you. I've thought for some months that the "plan" is to declare Trump incompetent under Art. 25 and install Vance, who seems to be the one the billionaire boys from South Africa prefer. He's half Trump's age and far more biddable (for now). He does lack the funky charisma (if you can call it that) of Trump, but Putin was never entirely charismatic, either, just bombastic, and that works very well for the masses, whether muscovite or maga.
These scenarios do and have helped people in those positions keep us relatively safe for a very long time. Unfortunately for all of us, such people were voted out in much of the country, and at the top.
I think we also need to examine the religious doctrine that has been systemized in Project 2025. It is in cooperation with the oligarchs and I think already has momentum with the overturning of Roe especially because the anti-abortion portion of it is the religious one meant to suppress women. This religious scheme is real and significant I think.
Yes. See Leonard Leo & Opus Dei.
When you drill down into Catholic doctrine on abortion, there is nothing about any "right to life." It is flat out that God wants people to be ensouled, be good, then sit at His right hand glorifying Him. Why an All-Everything theistic God needs praise, I don't know. In this regard, abortion and birth control are no different. In other words, birth control being next would be entirely consistent.
Here's an unofficial point about God's need for praise, which I think makes sense if one accepts the hypothesis that God exists. (For 'hypothesis', see what LaPlace supposedly said to Napoleon.) God does not NEED praise, or anything else, from people (or Man, in the old phraseology). But it is human to sing the praises of what we find wonderful! All literary history attests to that. So, not singing the praises of God is just abnormal, not the position of a functioning human being.
This is pretty much lifted from C S Lewis, who to my mind did a lot of clear thinking base on the God hypothesis, which I need hardly say I do not see as compelling.
He lost me right off in Mere Christianity.
"A law which violates an innocent person’s natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law." Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae 90)
Also, God does not need praise.
This is based on the assumption that a fertilized egg or fetus is a person. Of course a living, breathing human has a right to life. Why aren't they concerned about the hate and violence perpetuated against real people?
Well, you have me there. By 1995 I had fallen so far away from the Church that I failed to notice the update to Humanae Vitae (1968), which spoke of God's design for marriage.
Renaming the Department of Health to the Department of Life is a real proposal. You are absolutely correct
Oral tissue will be thrilled that someone's taking the part of life for its own sake.
I agree, plus it excludes Catholic, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhism, Shinto etc. The first Amendment gives freedom to all religion (including that of Indigenous Americans) But of course Project 2025 includes deleting the entire Constitution.
I completely agree with you. I have written much about this.
There's just so many competing interests it's absurd.
I think JD and the Heritage crew want the old south, and the mass deportations are, to them, a means to what is effectively slavery.
I thing Musk wants 90s Russia, and thinks he'll get that helping Putin, but Putin ultimately just wants to destabilize us.
But the part that really scares me, is the Trump doesn't seem to care as long as he gets to be dictator. He just needed Musk/Putin to help him cheat.
Trump ran to stay out of jail 😸
That too-
My understanding of Musk, based on information from the 2023 authorized, Isaacson biography, is that the 53 year old wonderkid is the most qualified manic to bring Trump to the boiling point.
Since Elon is primarily concerned with the preservation DNA, and has a tentative grasp of humanity, and The Donald is a megalomaniac who has outlived his welcome, we’re looking at a anthropological experiment in self-destruction.
My advice is that if you can subsist on blueberries and “the sound of music,” you should definitely head for the hills!
Babette: “ Wooden Ships”
And those calls they shared which we know nothing about.
Remember whe all those GOP senators spent the 4th of July in Russia? Now here they are talking about the "second American revolution"
My expectation is that Trump will spend the next 4 years hoovering up every dollar that he can from anyone willing to pay for any and all considerations from the government. He will pay little attention to anything the government does except the DoJ which he will wield as his hammer of vengeance. He will sign any executive order placed in front of him without regard to the consequences and he will scream bloody murder about voter fraud and the deep state when his party is routed in the midterms.
Do you really think we will have midterms???
We will, they'll just be fake Russia elections. I don't think people will notice until 2028 is fake
Then why don't you just go surrender now? This kind of fucking bullshit by allegedly-intelligent people is exactly what the enemy wants.
Way to jump to conclusions.
I said nothing about surrender I'm just going to focus my efforts where they matter and not on elections that are already obviously fraudulent
If that's not what you meant, my apologies. That way of thinking, for anyone who is engaging in it, is what Dr. Snyder calls "surrendering in advance."
You are correct, I think it's also dangerous to be naive about how bad this could be. People can't even wrap their heads around elections being fake here and it's not a particularly hard thing to do with the level of control the GOP has
The novelist Joseph Hayes wrote a book I’ve always remembered: 'The Third Day'. It chronicles the adventures of a man who comes to his senses one day in New York City with the realization that he’s lost his memory. Using bits and pieces from his wallet and some intuition, he eventually finds his way to the front door of what he assumes is his rather large house in the country. Facing the door, with his hand raised to the knocker, he contemplates with significant apprehension the fact that he has no idea who or what will confront him when it opens, and what are all the past events which will inform his relationships with those inside.
Every year that I taught elementary school US and ancient history, I opened my new history class with that story, asking the kids to imagine themselves in such a situation. MY reasoning, of course, was to give them the one essential reason for the study of history.
Dr. Snyder’s piece is a vivid illustration of that reasoning. And Trump is the exemplar of the problem of a ‘Leader of the Free World’ who doesn’t know or much care about any of it, operating only in the transactional present.
The "Great Deportation" that he is orchestrating, well he isn't doing the orchestrating, he is not smart enough to organize something on that scale.
I maintain that they really don't care about deporting these individuals.
Greg Abbott, of Texas fame, is willing to let the federal government build camps on state property. He's offering a huge number of acres for the project & we all know that the private prison contractors are lining up to provide the "beds" for these detainees while they await deportation.
Now, consider the deportations themselves, many of the countries around the world will not accept these people. Really what the new administration wants to do is to lock up the immigrants, you know get them out of society so it's really not necessary to deport them, making them disappear into huge camps in Texas will work. You know, out of sight out of mind. That's really all the trump administration needs to do.
Then think about what to do with all those people, hmm, lease them out as "laborers" perhaps, you know to cover the cost to maintain them? The prisons, state & federal government get paid to lease out the laborers & the laborers get nothing. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
We are about to become pariahs in the world! I hope we're ready to fight for the rights of those people rounded up because if we don't eventually we'll be on the list for "deportation".
American democracy, never fully realized—"a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all [people] are created equal,” that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, under government of, by and for all—is humanity's and civilization’s greatest spiritual and socio-political achievement.
250 years ago ... America’s founders liberated the world from the tyranny of greedy, cruel, power-hungry monarchs and dictators who claimed absolute, God-given, patriarchal, social-political-economic power and control.
Now, it’s our turn ...
I’m apprehensive about what will play out. But I suspect it will include diversion and false reassurance to his base, costing the real resistance valuable time. Propaganda is a formidable foe in any scenario. I was encouraged by a conversation in my local used book shop about doubling down on our democracy, and not giving in to the very strong pull of taking a break. I agree, it’s our generation’s turn.
Two things to remember … The United States has a LONG history of voting — the people believe they have a right to vote, and the people do not all agree with each other on WHAT they’ll vote. They believe that is their right …
AND the United States has a recent decades-long history of Middle Class and relative general prosperity.
It will be harder to pull the wool over that many eyes when democracy is perverted and the economy goes against the majority.
The pandemic DID damage the economy for the majority of us, and the Right got people to blame the Left for all of it, instead of the Orange A-Hole who let the pademic sneak up on him and us …
But I still think it’ll be tough for oligarchs to keep the people in line, as they were able to do in Russia, where strong men were the rule, not a aberration. In Germany, the people were angry about how the country had been treated after WWI, made to pay reparations, etc., and were ripe for someone who promised to make THEIR country great again … {!!}
Most Americans DO think this country is pretty great …
Thinking about that one point, is that what Trump has been doing? Trying to recreate the German anger over how it had been treated, convince Americans this country has been mistreated by the world? Is he trying to make us all feel like Germany felt after WWI? Is THAT where his rhetoric leads ….?
Egad.
Will it really "be hard to pull the wool over that many eyes"? This administration was elected. And I maintain they won for four main reasons: racism, misogyny, stupidity, morality. The Hispanic men don't want a women to tell them what to do. A good portion of the country doesn't want another black president, the electorate has been dumbed down to the point that they believed all the lies they have been told, and morality you ask? Yes, the lack of morals for that number of people to vote for a convicted felon, an adjudicated molester, a liar, a cheat, a Conman, a cruel vindictive child, that tells me their are no morals, damn Evangelicals, hypocrites to support a disgusting example of humanity & portray him as touched by god! What god? Tell me where in that damn Bible that someone like this is "the chosen one"?
Exactly my thoughts. Thank you for writing the brutal truth.
There are lots of places in the Bible that describe DT- as the “anti-Christ”. I’m really surprised, and disappointed, that decent “Christians” haven’t made that point on a larger scale.
Very interesting post, Timothy! But I do wish you had a copyeditor . . . (my fave typo in this: "baked [sic] pictures of his wife"). Anyhoo, as is my wont, I am going to complicate your historical-cum-prediction perspective. I think that the situation in Israel, which I also suspect is being engineered by a Putin-Netanyahu-Musk-Trump alliance, is going to be a significant component in the way the "new" world order reconfigures the global system. And for that I would turn to the British Empire and the Balfour Declaration (1917), which was beautifully designed to both get the Jews out of Europe and provide a westernized ally in a region both Britain and France wanted to control after a century of imperialist wars in Africa and the Middle East. The 19th-c imperialist wars fought in Africa, the Crimea, the Balkans, and the eastern Mediterranean (about which most Americans know absolutely nothing) pitted the imperialist powers of France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire against each other in a series of shifting alliances. By the Crimean War (1850s) it had become clear that the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and everyone wanted a piece of it, especially as petroleum was becoming an important commodity. But what to do about those pesky Muslim countries? Victoria could marry off her numerous children to western and Russian Christian monarchs, but that didn't fly as a strategy to neutralize Persia, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Trans-Jordan. Control of the Indian Subcontinent meant that the border with the Ottoman Empire was permeable but the British Raj was far stronger than anything the Ottomans could pull out. And then World War I happened and the Ottoman Empire was up for grabs. Enter the Jews of Europe: the perfect cannon fodder for the British to dump in the middle of Trans-Jordan. They would either be slaughtered (which was a-okay with the Brits) or they would westernize this region without all the Christian baggage of Crusades rhetoric attached. It took World War II and Germany's "Final Solution" to drive European Jews out of Europe, but their original strategy--to create a Jewish Homeland that was nonetheless westernized and more secular in its government than biblical--was exactly what the Brits and Europe wanted. But from the very beginning, the notion of Israel was based on the premise of the removal of another indigenous people and the neutralizing of neighbors, which was supported by the western powers because it furthered their own ends. As Israel became more and more autocratic--and the Radical Right more and more powerful--it took on the trappings of Putin's Russia: religious exclusivity; loss of civil liberties; censorship; us-v-them mentality. With Netanyahu, whose level of corruption is epic, the Putin cabal has its puppet.
Thank you for letting me know where the huge gap in my reading of history is—and please suggest a good source for sorting it out. I know very little about the Balkans except for the prejudices of a Serb, stuck in the late 1900’s. Trying to find my two books on the Balkans from that period, see ing only the disorder of bookshelves.
"Black Lamb & Grey Falcon" by Rebecca West is my go-to book on the Balkans. I highly recommend it.
Thank you. I remember wanting to read it and not taking time. I look forward to taking time, perhaps in this hiatus from politics.
Virginia, also see my post--which for some reason wouldn't load here.
I'm having the same trouble, Linda. Here and at Heather Cox Richardson's.
Yes--there too. I think it is a substack thing: perhaps trying to limit the length of replies???
But this narrative instrumentalizes Jews, like both Russian and Western perspectives often instrumentalize Ukraine. Whose "notion of Israel"?
As you undoubtedly know, there are multiple "notions" of Israel. The Balfour Declaration was only one. The motivations of the settlers between 1917 and 1947 comprised other "notions." And the people who created the State of Israel had multiple "notions" not all of them in harmony. Some of these have very little to do with protecting Jews in the world and everything to do with western power politics. As I am sure you know already.
"But like Catherine, Putin has favorites that are close to power: Musk and Trump."
And Putin has enablers, such as strange bedfellows David Duke, Jill Stein - and Christian Nationalist operative and Charles Koch bagman, ChristoFascist Leonard Leo
Before Trump laid down at Putin’s feet, G.W. Bush looked into Putin’s heart and saw it was good. Before that, KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke sold Americans hungry for a strongman, on Putin as The Great White Hope of Christian Nationalism. Behind it all - an assault on representative government, government regulation, and equitable taxation. Funded by corporate and private interests bent on undoing: Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal (conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection); FDR’s New Deal (relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy, and reform of the financial system); LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation and Great Society programs to end poverty; and all American progress.
These possible scenarios seem absolutely fantastic, unbelievable, but, after all a good part of the history we all know seems unbelievable. Who would have thought that the Prime Minister of a small island would take on the German war machine after its ally France had fallen and with the help of an initially reluctant people defeat it along with a surprising partner, Russia. As they say, you can’t make things like this up.
At this time, I favor thinking 'in the box'. What will we the people do to stop 'Trumpomuskovia' or "Heilungeheuertrump"? How about stopping several of those he named for appointments in 'our' government? By in the box, I am thinking of learning from our journalists:
'How Kennedy Has Worked Abroad to Weaken Global Public Health Policy'
'The health secretary pick and his organization have worked around the world to undermine longstanding policies on measles, AIDS and more.' (NYTimes by By Selam Gebrekidan, Justin Scheck, Sarah Hurtes and Pete McKenzie)
Nov. 30, 2024, 5:02 a.m. ET
'Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is in line to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next Trump administration, is well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism in the United States'.
'But Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show.'
'He has done this by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.'
He, his organizations and their officials have interfered with vaccination efforts, undermined sex education campaigns meant to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa, and railed against global organizations like the World Health Organization that are in charge of health initiatives.' (NYTimes) There is more dangerous stuff that he is responsible for. See the gifted link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/30/world/africa/rfk-jr-kennedy-international-work-public-health-policies.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d04.DmkY.DPejxAqUapCh&smid=url-share
Vance's positions are as terrible as trumps. But he definitely lacks the charisma of Trump and Hitler, that ensorcels people to ignore their real interests via blind faith. I'm not sure he is up to being a Fuhrer that the core will follow the same way they adore trump.
I'm not sure how charismatic Putin is. If not very, that weakens my arguments IF the current oligarchs support Vance. And THAT will depend on the economy; oligarchs don't like to see their profits and investments plummet any more than anyone else.
Thanks for another great essay, Prof. Snyder.
Reading history has certainly helped me. I'll never know as much as you but after 4.5+ years of reading at least 8 hours every day, I see everything, even the most ordinary things, in an entirely different way. Am now halfway through Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. Any book by Prof. Mazower is bound to be good, and this one is. His insights into history are remarkable.
Brilliant, thank you. I've thought for some months that the "plan" is to declare Trump incompetent under Art. 25 and install Vance, who seems to be the one the billionaire boys from South Africa prefer. He's half Trump's age and far more biddable (for now). He does lack the funky charisma (if you can call it that) of Trump, but Putin was never entirely charismatic, either, just bombastic, and that works very well for the masses, whether muscovite or maga.
History warns. It would be wonderful if these scenarios helped people in positions of responsibility to make good choices.
Vestigia terrent 👣
These scenarios do and have helped people in those positions keep us relatively safe for a very long time. Unfortunately for all of us, such people were voted out in much of the country, and at the top.
What a horror show. All the more terrifying for its potential reality.