In reaction to several stories over the last few days in wildly different areas. There is no such thing as a permanent ban. There is no such thing as life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

In a recent post economist Bob Graboyes lists twelve strategies that won’t work for persuading him to vote for you:

1. If your message only works when shouted, you won’t persuade me.


“DONALD TRUMP IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY!!!!!” is a message that only tends to be delivered loudly and angrily—and shouting almost never persuades. (Say that sentence softly, with a smile, and you’ll sound a bit unhinged.) If you think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, calmly itemize his behavior on January 6, his unsettling third-term chatter, and his suggestions that the U.S. take Greenland by force. To help you distinguish between these modes of communication: Bernie Sanders, AOC, Chuck Schumer, and Jasmine Crockett always shout. Josh Shapiro, Ro Khanna, Abigail Spanberger, John Fetterman, and Ritchie Torres tend to discuss.

2. If you reflexively ignore or reject what I say, you won’t persuade me.
   I agree that President Trump’s behavior on January 6 was deeply unsettling, but, personally, I’m just as bothered by President Biden’s decision to allow protestors to surround the private residences of Supreme Court justices, day and night, for months. Dismiss my view out-of-hand, and your power to persuade evaporates. Acknowledge that my point is legitimate—even if you disagree—and you may still sway me.

He continues with ten more. Appealing as I might find his list, I’m afraid he’s whistling past a graveyard. If you don’t understand that expression, it means persisting cheerfully with a hopeless task. It’s hopeless for reasons I explained at length more than twenty years ago. Before smartphones.
Before X or Instagram or Facebook had the reach they do now. Relatively few of the brains of people under 60 work that way. Agonistic (that means combative, emotional) modes of expression work where logical discourse does not. The written word is becoming less and less meaningful.

Trump communicates the way he does because it works. Others are communicating that way because it works. It isn’t an Atlantic world any more. It’s an Instagram and X world.

Nearly everything he describes as something that won’t persuade him is an artifact of the modes of communication that are effective in this post-literate world. I despair of anyone taking his advice and, indeed, of democracy itself. I don’t believe it can survive in the post-literate world.

I haven’t written about the kerfuffle surrounding President Trump’s soliciting and the Qatari royal family, apparently, offering a new Boeing 747-8 aircraft to be used as Air Force One because it is a kerfuffle. Have we learned a thing that is new from it? Donald Trump has little understanding or even patience with the niceties of protocol or the law and has gauche tastes. We’ve known that for a long time. Indeed, his indifference/impatience with the law is one of my main reasons for consistently opposing his election to office. We haven’t learned a thing about the Republicans, the Democrats, or even the media. The Democrats and major media outlets hate Trump and the Republicans love him or, at least, are afraid to oppose him.

What I miss in all of the coverage is any intellectual curiosity. Air Force One is a Boeing 747-200BC. That’s a more than 40 year old aircraft. Why is the president of the United States flying around in a 40 year old aircraft?

Furthermore, Boeing has been under contract for new 747-8 aircraft to replace the old crates presently being used for Air Force One since 2016. And it’s my understanding that the 747-8 is already obsolete. Fewer than 40 747-8 passenger aircraft were built. Why is it taking Boeing so long?

IMO these are the questions that real reporters should be asking. Why aren’t they asking these questions?

I’ve got to say that I’m skeptical about this story reported by Tom O’Connor at Newsweek:

A group of Iranian dissidents has unveiled what it alleges to be a secret nuclear site dedicated to developing a weapon of mass destruction in Iran ahead of a new set of nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.

The goal, according to Alireza Jafarzadeh, spokesperson for the People’s Mojahedin of Iran, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MeK or MKO), is to persuade President Donald Trump to demand the total dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program in order to create an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.

“The nuclear program of the regime is a tool for their survival, if they accept to abandon their nuclear weapons program, that would clearly be a huge weakness of the regime,” Jafarzadeh told Newsweek.

“It will have a big impact within the regime as the population, which is already saying, ‘How in the world did we spend $2 trillion for nothing, of our wealth, of our money,’ would have more reason to want to overthrow this regime than they already had.”

and

Speaking at a press conference organized Thursday at its Washington, D.C., office, representatives of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claimed that the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research was covertly pursuing nuclear weapons-related research at a location known as the “Rainbow Site” in the Ivanaki area of the north-central province of Semnan.

The site, claimed to be operating under the guise of a paint factory overseen by the Diba Energy Siba company, was said to be involved in the production of a nuclear warhead, specifically for a hydrogen bomb, based on sources linked to MeK.

MeK is the leading faction of NCRI and claims to have an extensive network of members and activists within the Islamic Republic. MeK is designated as a terrorist organization by Iran due to its past involvement in violent attacks and was considered a terrorist organization by the United States as well until its delisting in 2012.

Satellite imagery was shared of the purported site as well as apparently associated off-site air defenses and military infrastructure. Jafarzadeh acknowledged, however, that the imagery did not immediately hold evidence of the alleged activities being conducted there, including the extraction of tritium necessary for the development of a hydrogen bomb and the production of warheads to carry such a weapon.

I would have significantly more confidence if the story were being corroborated by another source. It’s not that I think that the Iranian mullahocracy is pure as the driven snow. It’s more that I think that a group of “Iranian dissidents” has every motivation to lie about a program if they think it will convince the U. S. to go to war with the mullahocracy.

I should add that I have long been skeptical of any agreement with Iran that did not include unannounced third party inspections anywhere in Iran. We just don’t know how much we don’t know.

It has been announced that India and Pakistan have agreed to a ceasefire. Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam, Shivam Patel, Charlotte Greenfield and Aftab Ahmed report at Reuters:

SLAMABAD/NEW DELHI, May 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire” after a fourth day of strikes and counter-strikes against each other’s military installations.
Pakistan’s foreign minister also said both countries had agreed to a ceasefire “with immediate effect” and India’s foreign ministry said it would start at 5 p.m. Indian time (1130 GMT).

“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

There’s a good backgrounder on the conflict from Brij Khindaria at The Moderate Voice. Modern journalism suffers from the abandoning of the 4Ws style of reporting in favor of a point-of-view and the piece is distinctly from the Indian point-of-view.

Will the ceasefire hold? Stay tuned.

One of the reasons that the things being written—posts, columns, editorials, and just about every other kind of opinion piece—that are being written are so frustrating for me is that they are just too darned post-modern. Many if not most of the arguments made depend on peculiar or counter-intuitive definitions of things. That’s why, for example, I rarely write about “wokeness” or DEI. DEI, just to look at one of them, stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. You can sum up my views on that subject in one not particularly grammatical sentence. Diversity—yes; inclusion—yes;equity—no. As used “equity” means racial discrimination. That’s how Ibram X. Kendi defined it: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

In light of that in anticipation of some comments about what I think is a very good but puzzling post, I want to define some terms as I use them.

The post is Noah Smith’s post, “Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class”. In the post Mr. Smith neglects to define globalization, middle class, or “hollow out”. He also does not define “manufacturing” although from context he apparently means manufacturing finished good which is not how I would use the term. I would define manufacturing as any step from extraction through finished goods manufacturing. I would also point out that with organizations like Temu globalization now includes retail sales.

I think it is obviously true that globalization, particularly businesses extending their supply chains into China, has, indeed, hollowed out the American middle class. Let’s break that up into pieces. American businesses have extended their supply chains into China and that has had an adverse effect on American manufacturing employment.

and

Now let’s look at incomes:

Looks like “hollowing out” to me.

Just about everything else in Mr. Smith’s post is a red herring. It doesn’t make any difference if other countries are manufacturing less, too. It doesn’t make any difference if we don’t import as much as some other countries do. All that makes a difference is whether we have been globalizing (we have) and whether the middle class is being hollowed out (it is). Perhaps Mr. Smith can come up with an alternative explanation for what we’ve experienced. His post does not include that.

Just for the record I don’t defend President Trump’s tariff strategy and, especially, I don’t think it will be effective at bringing extraction and manufacturing back to the United States. I think that will require much broader reforms, particularly tax reforms to which I suspect Mr. Trump would reject.

One of the hottest topics today was India’s attack on Pakistan. The editors of the Washington Post declaim:

A plausible way out of this mess exists, and it could follow a familiar script: Both sides can declare victory. India appears to already have paid a price for carrying out its attacks with the loss of its fighter planes. Even so, India maintains that its strikes were sufficient revenge for the Pahalgam atrocity. Pakistan’s friends, including China, should now help find an acceptable narrative for their side, perhaps by claiming that the downing of the Indian planes has restored deterrence. There are signs that this might be happening. On Wednesday, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif indicated to Bloomberg TV that “if India backs down, we will definitely wrap up these things.”

Once both sides have stepped back from the brink, diplomacy will need to continue. India could reinstate the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan it had suspended after the Pahalgam attack, perhaps in exchange for visible efforts by Pakistan to rein in the terrorist networks operating within its borders. Most of all, Delhi and Islamabad should work to reestablish diplomatic and military back channels. Nuclear brinkmanship is hair-raising in any context; it’s even worse when the two sides are not communicating.

while Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume remarks:

Indians are right to wonder why Pakistan picks fights with a larger neighbor. It happens in large part because in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the army—steeped in hostility toward “Hindu India”—calls the shots. For India, ending the symbiosis between the Pakistani army and jihadism in the near term may not be possible. But New Delhi has no choice but to try.

Wednesday’s strikes send a message to Pakistan that it can no longer expect to target Indians with impunity and that it will be held responsible for groups that shelter on its soil. Even if the U.S. doesn’t play an active part in the conflict, it should wish India well. A less dangerous Pakistan would be a gift to the world.

A key problem is that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. That Pakistan should support Kashmiri terrorists is reckless on their part. Just as is the case in Israel and the Palestinians Pakistani militancy has resulted in the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. I have said for years that the most likely place for a nuclear war to begin is between India and Pakistan and the danger of that is probably higher now than at any time in the past. This would be a very good time for Russia and the United States to agree on their opposition to escalation of the conflict between India and Pakistan. Unfortunately, both countries are otherwise preoccupied.

Well, that was quick. The College of Cardinals has elected a Chicagoan to the papacy, Robert Prevost. He’s a Southsider and, reportedly, a Cubs fan. I think that we can infer from that that he’s tough.

From his selection of the name Leo XIV we can infer that he intends to modernize the Church and to concentrate on social justice.

I’m not sure what we can infer about why he was selected. That he is a native speaker of English and speaks French, Italian, and Spanish probably didn’t hurt. Having served both in North (United States) and South (Peru) America probably didn’t hurt, either. 53 cardinals are European, 37 from the Americas, 23 from Asia, 18 from Africa, and 4 from Oceania. I wouldn’t be surprised if the election doesn’t reflect worry about the United States on the cardinals’ part. Europeans have been worried about the United States for almost 300 years.

Update

His brother insists he’s always been a White Sox fan and doesn’t know how the rumor that the new pope is a Cub’s fan got started. At this point only divine intervention can help the White Sox.

John Halpin has a very interesting post at Liberal Patriot on what he terms “anti-politics”,

public opposition to traditional democratic norms and procedures ranging from radicalism and conspiracy theories to elite technocracy and one-man authoritarian rule

He goes on to characterize the two leading figures in right-wing anti-politics, Donald Trump:

Anti-politics in America is exemplified by two populist leaders from the right and left: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump is America’s leading master of a certain kind of anti-politics emanating from the nationalist right: against all established institutions they don’t control, dismissive of “elites” and “experts,” distrustful of elections and political processes that don’t advance their positions, disdainful of outsiders, and dedicated to the belief that only their leadership can break through governmental corruption to restore the country. Trump tries to achieve some ideological coherency in his approach, but his form of anti-politics ultimately boils down to an agenda based on his own whims, lifelong obsessions, demands for fealty, and attacks on anyone or anything that gets in his way.

Because of America’s two-party system, Trump has emerged as the world’s most successful practitioner of anti-politics, both in terms of taking over his entire party apparatus and in achieving notable election and governing successes. As seen in 2016 and 2024, there’s a relatively large constituency in the U.S. for his brand of anti-politics. Some right-wing populist and nationalist parties around the world have found governing success, such as Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary. But other populist leaders and parties tend to operate mainly as opposition forces rather than governing entities and end up toiling away with relatively small voter support and multiparty systems that block their influence.

No current right-wing populist leader in the democratic world truly matches the scale and success of Trump’s efforts to turn anti-politics into real governing power.

and left-wing anti-politics, Bernie Sanders:

In contrast, Bernie Sanders represents a more ideological form of leftist anti-politics based on the primary belief that everything in American life is a rigged game that favors the wealthy. Although Sanders competes for influence within the Democratic Party, he remains an independent. His supporters despise establishment politics. His solution for nearly every problem is always to attack the “oligarchs” and “billionaires” and to replace plutocratic government with some nascent form of democratic socialism built on high taxation, nationalized health care, a smaller military, green energy policies, and universal social spending.

Leftist anti-politics generally performs better in continental Europe than in America given historical left-wing activism in countries like France, Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Unlike Trump, however, Bernie Sanders has been less successful in capitalizing on leftist anti-politics within America’s two-party system. Sanders and his progressive followers clearly have amassed influence but have never taken over or transformed the Democratic Party the way Trump did on the Republican side. Although Sanders has built a fiercely loyal constituency, and enjoys decent personal popularity and support for his attacks on the rich, he faces a strong counterbalance from moderate Democrats while his national support is capped by Americans’ general resistance to higher taxes, more governmental regulation of the economy, and higher social spending.

My question is what is the endgame for anti-politics? Here’s what Mr. Halpin has to say about that:

One possible end game is that Trumpian anti-politics from the right cements its power in government and maintains electoral advantages for the next few presidential cycles as a cohesive plurality movement with the ability to reach majority status by bringing in other disgruntled Americans who like their disruption and change. Given the president’s political skills, the dynamics of the Republican Party, and the reality of the Electoral College, this is a plausible if difficult scenario for Trump’s successor to pull off. Anti-politics worked well for Trump in 2024 but the viability of this approach four years from now is uncertain.

Another possible outcome is that Trump’s second term ends up in a ditch, probably due to economic mismanagement and right-wing culture wars. This could allow leftist anti-politics to finally take over the Democrats and convince enough disappointed Americans among the larger electorate to give the opposite end of the ideological spectrum a chance to prove their worth. This scenario is plausible but not probable. It would first require centrist and moderate Democrats to give up their internal fight for control of the party and then would require mainstream Americans to take on notably more progressive economic and cultural views than they currently hold.

A third scenario is that anti-politics on the right and left fails in the eyes of many Americans who instead band together to back a “return to normalcy” as represented by something other than the Trump or Sanders wings of their respective two parties. Since Trump is in power and completely dominates his party, this would most likely have to come from a moderate or reform-minded presidential nominee giving voice to this sentiment from the Democratic side. Joe Biden was elected in 2020 based on this approach but he did not deliver the goods in the eyes of most Americans thus fueling another round of anti-politics from Trump.

I agree with him that any “return to normalcy” is likely to be short-lived for the simple reason that ordinary establishment politics, whether on the left or the right, has run out of gas. Trump illustrated that in 2016 when he ran over all of his Republican opponents for the nomination, a blow from which the party may never recover.

On the Democratic side of the ledger it would be hard to come up with a better epitome of the problems of Democratic politics than those encountered by the Biden Administration. You can’t do what they want to do without spending money. They won’t raise taxes because that would alienate their own funders. They won’t increase production because that would alienate their supporters for whom the environment is a significant of overwhelming importance. Spending more money beyond the increase in aggregate product, i.e. borrowing or just printing money, produces inflation which undermines your support among the bottom four quintiles of income earners, i.e. most of the country.

And that illustrates my problem with anti-politics whether the right-wing version or the left-wing. The numbers just don’t add up. Cutting taxes beyond a certain point makes it impossible to pay for the things you support while raising taxes beyond a certain point kneecaps the private economy.