@otfrom @BCAppelbaum generally speaking the plan from this administration is unlikely to be the one you want.
“nobody can be trusted with absolute power, least of all the demagogues who seek it. The one good thing Trump’s trade policies are achieving is to demonstrate this yet again. They are harbingers of chaos. The world’s challenge is to survive the folly. The US’s is to end it.” #MartinWolf https://www.ft.com/content/a3e6174c-25e9-4428-9109-16e37319e9e2
some people think it was a kind of ennui that left us open to fascism, citing perhaps Fukyama’s “last man” and a predicted rebellion against that status by those with “megalothymia”. 1/
i think it was not ennui but annoyance that left us vulnerable. people were just annoyed by pronouns and what one might call the microincriminations of “wokeness”. These seemed real, even pressing, while words like “fascism” or “tyranny” or “extermination camps” seemed hypothetical, overwrought. 2/
oops. /fin
“It’s a great idea, if…done right. Federal lands are a national resource, and the nation needs more housing… What cities like St. George need most—and what they mostly refuse to allow—are modest homes and apartments for…workers and families.” @BCAppelbaum https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/opinion/housing-crisis-federal-land.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(may i suggest microcities? www.interfluidity.com/v2/8772.html or just the sort of districts #MikeEliason would design and propose?)
if they had any sense they’d call the whole thing off and declare the weaker dollar a great victory.
every time i swipe the credit card, whatever bullshit i am blowing the money on, i am increasing my capital account surplus.
it’s been a long time, but i guess i’ll have to watch some 60 Minutes segments.
the same forces that pushed Obama to say “if you like your health insurance you can keep it” pushes an effective housing politics to concede “if you like your neighborhood, you can keep it”
in neither case is the constraint necessarily virtuous. perhaps it can be overcome. but it’s the same problem.
although the laundering itself remains illegal, providing extremely difficult to penetrate *money laundering services* has been effectively legalized, as long as the infrastructure is “digital assets”.
see @jp_koning https://www.moneyness.ca/2025/04/if-its-crypto-its-not-money-laundering.html
the most insidious propaganda by mainstream media is how it cheerfully chatters the days away as though we are living through ordinary times rather than a desperate national emergency.
@bigtuffal (there are just a few bright lights, sometimes from unexpected quarters, but i am grateful for them.)
@bigtuffal (princeton)
@bigtuffal not all universities have complied. it’d be an option for students. if they agree with you and no longer want the degree from the US institution, they can of course go elsewhere.
every university should offer students whose visas are arbitrarily rescinded pathways to complete their degrees via remote learning.
@Phil i spend much if my life thinking and writing about democracy, proposing reforms. but the administrative state we had was among the most transparent and accountable in all of history. it’s main flaw — a very serious flaw — was capture by monied interests. even as they burn it all down, that problem is exacerbated rather than remedied. freedom is high overdraft fees i guess.
@Phil i will concede that right now people who are not diehard MAGA are somewhat distressed and not in high spirits about things.
@Phil my kid was born in a country made unfree by plutocrats in 2013. i am no fan of the Obama administration, which saved the oligarchs and let regular people burn. https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/11/30/obama-was-the-most-destructive-political-figure-of-my-lifetime/index.html
now my son lives in a country being burned to the ground by plutocrats who think they are geniuses, and people like you who see the sometimes very real warts of the administrative state but fail to realize its prerequisite role to a modern, free society.
@Phil the conspiracy must be large. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37486680/
i’ve had four or five mRNA shots. am very glad to get them annually.
@Phil the best thing Trump did was operation warp speed, accelerating the vaccine that might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives of people with your politics if they’d not been fatally misinformed.
@Phil of course, he’s just pushed out the people responsible for that miracle, his one real achievement last time around.
kind of surprised administration flunkies aren’t hawking tawking points about how interest rates are rising because markets can anticipate the huge boom the president’s policies will bring, but stocks are down because tariffs will cut into Wall Street fat cat margins.