Group items tagged

Francis married Claude in May 1514 and, in October of the same year, Louis XII married the young and beautiful Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. Had she conceived a son, all Francis' hopes would have been dashed. Yet, less than three months after his marriage, Louis XII was dead and the 20-year-old Francis was proclaimed king of France on January 1st, 1515

He inherited Charles VIII's claim to the Kingdom of Naples, which included Sicily and most of southern Italy. He claimed certain territories along the ill-defined border between France, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire, whose Habsburg overlord was the future emperor, Charles V. Francis also wanted the city of Tournai, conquered by Henry VIII in 1513, to be returned to France. For roughly 20 of his 32 years as king, Francis was preparing for war, active in it, or managing its consequences in expensive and convoluted diplomacy

Barely nine months after his accession, in September 1515, Francis conquered Milan, after defeating a Swiss mercenary army at the battle of Marignano

He secured this prominence through peace treaties and alliances, culminating in his inclusion in the 'Universal Peace' of 1518, agreed in the name of Pope Leo X but actually organised under the auspices of Henry VIII, who felt a keen and life-long rivalry with Francis

Francis had hoped to impress and intimidate Henry into committing himself as an ally against Charles V, whose power in Italy unnerved Francis

appreciated that securing and maintaining the support of interest groups, particularly the nobility, was vital to effective kingship

He made an ill-advised pre-emptive strike against imperial territory in the Netherlands and Spain in early 1521

Disappointed by Charles V's lack of support for his own claim to France, Henry once more turned the tables on the emperor. A renewed Anglo-French alliance enabled Francis to repudiate the treaty of Madrid and led indirectly to a more acceptable agreement

Francis maintained peace with his English counterpart until 1542

He never finally secured Milan from Charles but he did, nevertheless, maintain his dynastic rights against the emperor's potentially overwhelming power. This he did in part by allying with the papacy, with various Italian states, with the heretical Henry VIII and with the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. These last two alliances scandalised Catholic Europe, but keeping Charles' enemies close for as long as he could assisted Francis in projecting royal power well beyond the borders of the French state throughout his reign

Another important factor in Francis' capacity to project this power was his widespread reform of crown fiscal administration after his return from Spain in 1526. These were prompted first and foremost by the need to pay huge debts incurred in the war and in securing peace with Henry and Charles

His sale of judicial offices set up long-lasting difficulties for the monarchy

Francis was taken to Spain as the emperor's prisoner. France was left vulnerable to its enemies and to internal dissent, which Louise de Savoie, as her son's regent, had much to do to overcome while trying to secure Francis' release. She immediately sought the assistance of the English and sympathetic Italian states, who were wary of the immense power of Charles V in the wake of his triumph at Pavia

Daily life there was never as elaborately choreographed under Francis as it would be under his successors. He is perhaps second only to Henry IV in his reputation for informality and spontaneity as a French king.

The 'big boy' had come close at times to ruining everything, but had also made France a power to be reckoned with and made his own mark on its history

Under Francis, the court of France was at the height of its prestige and international influence during the 16th century.

A simplistic answer would be that such pressure does not conflict with free speech because the First Amendment applies only to government censorship, not to restrictions imposed by individuals.

Many of the reasons why Americans object to official censorship also apply to the suppression of speech by private means. If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truth—as the metaphor of “the marketplace of ideas” suggests—we should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens.

If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source.

But although social restraints on speech raise many of the same concerns as government censorship, they differ in important ways.

First, much of the social pressure that critics complain about is itself speech.

When activists denounce Yiannopoulos as a racist or Murray as a white nationalist, they are exercising their own right to free expression. Likewise when students hold protests or marches, launch social media campaigns, circulate petitions, boycott lectures, demand the resignation of professors and administrators, or object to the invitation of controversial speakers. Even heckling

one of the central tenets of modern First Amendment law is that the government cannot suppress speech if those harms can be thwarted by alternative means. And the alternative that judges and scholars invoke most frequently is the mechanism of counter-speech.

Put bluntly, the implicit goal of all argument is, ultimately, to quash the opposing view.

Counter-speech can take many forms. It can be an assertion of fact designed to rebut a speaker’s claim. It can be an expression of opinion that the speaker’s view is misguided, ignorant, offensive, or insulting. It can even be an accusation that the speaker is racist or sexist, or that the speaker’s expression constitutes an act of harassment, discrimination, or aggression.

In other words, much of the social pushback that critics complain about on campus and in public life—indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness—can plausibly be described as counter-speech.

It’s worth asking, though, why expression that shames or demonizes a speaker is not a legitimate form of counter-speech.

To argue that a speaker’s position is racist or sexist is to say something about the merits of her position, given that most people think racism and sexism are bad. Even arguing that the speaker herself is racist goes to the merits, since it gives the public context for judging her motives and the consequences of her position.  

Besides, what principle of free speech limits discussion to the merits? Political discourse often strays from the merits of issues to personal or tangential matters. But the courts have never suggested that such discourse is outside the realm of free speech.

Cohen v. California, “We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.”

Are these forms of social pressure inconsistent with the values of free speech?  That is a more complicated question than many observers seem willing to acknowledge.

The problem with this argument is that all counter-speech has a potential chilling effect. Any time people refute an assertion of fact by pointing to evidence that contradicts it, speakers may be hesitant to repeat that assertion.

Fine, the critics might say. But much of the social pressure on campus does not just demonize; it is designed to, and often does, chill unpopular speech.

This highlights a paradox of free speech, and of our relationship to it. On the one hand, Americans are encouraged to be tolerant of opposing ideas in the belief that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market

On the other hand, unlike the government, Americans are not expected to remain neutral observers of that market. Instead, we are participants in it; the market works only if we take that participation seriously, if we exercise our own right of expression to combat ideas we disagree with, to refute false claims, to discredit dangerous beliefs

This does not mean we are required to be vicious or uncivil. But viciousness and incivility are legitimate features of America’s free speech tradition

This, one suspects, is what bothers many critics of political correctness: the fact that so much of the social pressure and pushback takes on a nasty, vindictive tone that is painful to observe. But free speech often is painful.

Many critics, particularly on the left, seem to forget this. Although they claim to be promoting an expansive view of free speech, they are doing something quite different. They are promoting a vision of liberalism, of respect, courtesy, and broadmindedness

That is a worthy vision to promote, but it should not be confused with the dictates of free speech, which allows for a messier, more ill-mannered form of public discourse. Free speech is not the same as liberalism. Equating the two reflects a narrow, rather than expansive, view of the former.

Does this mean any form of social pressure targeted at speakers is acceptable? Not at all. One of the reasons government censorship is prohibited is that the coercive power of the state is nearly impossible to resist

Social pressure that crosses the line from persuasion to coercion is also inconsistent with the values of free speech.

This explains why violence and threats of violence are not legitimate mechanisms for countering ideas one disagrees with. Physical assault—in addition to not traditionally being regarded as a form of expression —too closely resembles the use of force by the government.

What about other forms of social pressure? If Americans are concerned about the risk of coercion, the question is whether the pressures are such that it is reasonable to expect speakers to endure them. Framed this way, we should accept the legitimacy of insults, shaming, demonizing, and even social ostracism, since it is not unreasonable for speakers to bear these consequences.

a system that relies on counter-speech as the primary alternative to government censorship should not unduly restrict the forms counter-speech can take.

Heckling raises trickier questions. Occasional boos or interruptions are acceptable since they don’t prevent speakers from communicating their ideas. But heckling that is so loud and continuous a speaker literally cannot be heard is little different from putting a hand over a speaker’s mouth and should be viewed as antithetical to the values free speech.  

Because social restraints on speech do not violate the Constitution, Americans cannot rely on courts to develop a comprehensive framework for deciding which types of pressure are too coercive. Instead, Americans must determine what degree of pressure we think is acceptable.

In that respect, the critics are well within their right to push for a more elevated, civil form of public discourse. They are perfectly justified in arguing that a college campus, of all places, should be a model of rational debate

But they are not justified in claiming the free speech high ground. For under our free speech tradition, the crudest and least reasonable forms of expression are just as legitimate as the most eloquent and thoughtful

a pol who seeks to gain power by demonizing ethnic-minority groups and threatening their core rights is engaged in a special category of leadership failure.

My hope is that people rediscover why we had those norms, and rediscover the spirit of them, not just the dead letter. And if Trump serves as a midwife to that process, then thank you Donald Trump. I guess I have to hope that, because the alternative is Idiocracy on an accelerated time line.

One gets the sense from our current political class that, for example, torture and unconstrained drone strike assassination isn’t actually morally wrong as long as you adopt a furrowed brow and a constipated facial expression, sigh loudly, and say in your most patronizing voice, “This hurts me than it hurts you. I’m sorry I have to do this.” It’s adopting the “serious” tone that matters, not the actual content of your actions.

Trump can exist because our norms have become hollowed shells of what they purport to be. Our norms have been gamed. It feels very much like we’ve gotten to a point where people in many of our institutions, in positions of authority, follow the letter of the law about civic decency, but have almost entirely abandoned the spirit of the law. Trump just takes the last little leap and ditches the letter of the law too.

Our norms of civic decency were evolved for a reason. Watching Trump violate those norms is a really good reminder of why we evolved those norms in the first place. On the other hand, those norms have been profoundly subverted and corrupted for a while now, and used as often as mere cover for all manner of awfulness.

They don't think much would change one way or the other if Donald Trump were elected. The political system has failed them so badly that they think it can't be repaired and little's at stake. The election therefore reduces to an opportunity to express disgust. And that's where Trump's defects come in: They are what make him such an effective messenger.

The more he offends the superior people, the more his supporters like it. Trump wages war on political correctness. Political correctness requires more than ordinary courtesy: It's a ritual, like knowing which fork to use, by which superior people recognize each other

Some “politically correct” codes of conduct, like “Muslim Americans should be treated as equal citizens whose rights are not at all abrogated because some of their co-religionists are terrorists,” help to prevent the U.S. from perpetrating horrific injustices against innocents and serve to uphold the guarantees of our founding documents. Other “politically correct” codes are little more than arbitrary etiquette that people educated at selective colleges use to feel superior to others,

In between the core norms that are vital to democracy and the most frivolous demand for political correctness there is a lot of contested territory. Trump’s rise represents large swathes of that territory being seized by people who reject elite pieties.

citizens who oppose Trumpism are going to have to take a careful look at everything that falls under the rubric of political correctness; study the real harm done by its excesses; identify the many parts that are worth defending; and persuade more Americans to adopt those norms voluntarily, for substantive reasons, not under duress of social shaming or other coercion.

Trumpism cannot prevail in a contest of logic and rationally differentiated controversies; but in a contest of emotion, tribal loyalty, and stigmatizing out-groups, I’m no longer sure that it can be beat.

Lately Trump has been doing what comes naturally to him — dictating tweet-like statements, calling into conservative talk shows, and generally stirring up trouble. "I like this better than Twitter," he claimed on Newsmax. "Actually they did us a favor. This is better."

Trump has shown no courtesy to President Joe Biden since leaving the White House.

On the phone with one of his biggest sycophants, Newsmax's Greg Kelly, on Monday evening, Kelly speculated about Biden's mental faculties, prompting Trump to say "there's something" going on with Biden. Trump then questioned "whether or not he understands what he's signing" when bills cross his desk.

Trump is the first US president to lose re-election in nearly thirty years.

Trump, of course, proudly stands as the GOP antithesis of Bush 41. President 45, as some of his allies now call him, lest they identify him as "former," was uncharacteristically quiet upon leaving the White House. But he set up an office in Florida within days and began issuing statements that were widely picked up by the media — a cheap replacement for his account on Twitter, which banned him in the wake of the Capitol riot.

"The code of the presidents club is to get out of the way and let the new commander in chief have a year or two," CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.

Since then, he has gradually increased his visibility, with emails to members of the media from "45 Office" so far in March, twice as many as in February

"Trump's unique in that he wants to make a lot of racket and garner attention after leaving the White House,"

Trump said "people have seen some silence" from him, "but actually, if you take a look at what's happened over the last period of time, we're sending out releases. They're getting picked up much better than any tweet."

Trump also teased plans for "our own platform,"

Trump told Boothe that he now believes official statements to the public are "much more elegant than a tweet, and I think it gets picked up better. You're seeing that."

"Picked up" was the key phrase. The need for pickup — meaning attention from the American news media — is at the heart of Trump's post-presidential actions.

And he is continuing to push the incendiary claims that led up to the January 6 riot, about winning the 2020 election and Biden stealing it from him, despite pleas even from within his own party to stop lying.

Trump seemed self-aware about his media approach during a podcast taping with Lisa Boothe, which was released on Monday morning. Trump was Boothe's inaugural guest — which means the podcast does not yet have a high profile or a massive following. Trump said in a statement that she has been doing "an outstanding job" on Fox, so perhaps he wanted to give her new podcast a boost.

Brinkley likened Trump to "an active political hand grenade, ready to blow up the US political system any way he can.

Last week Trump called into Fox for a live interview with Maria Bartiromo. The next day his comments to Bartiromo were in heavy rotation on other right-wing networks and outlets.

To Kelly, he hedged about the possibility of a new social platform, saying that "something will happen with social media if I want it to happen."

In terms of who this guy is and who you are absolutely nothing has changed. And yet here you are—arguing with him on Twitter or Facebook. And you, yourself, are being brought to the brink of insanity. But you can’t seem to stop. You have to respond or read the comments of the other people responding and your cortisol and adrenaline levels are spiking and your blood pressure is rising and you’re suddenly at risk of a heart attack

And the ugly truth is that you’ve become addicted to arguing with the “End Is Nigh” sandwich board guy

Anti-vaccers, anti-maskers, Qanon, cancel-culture, Alex Jones, flat-earthers, racists, anti-racists, anti-anti-racists, and of course the Twitter stylings of our Dear Leader.

Back in 2011 Chamath Palihapitiya left Facebook and said of his former company, “It literally is a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

I’m here to make the case that all modern social, political, and sociological ills can be traced to social media. It is single-handedly responsible for the tearing apart of our social fabric which Palihapitiya so presciently predicted

It’s not “part of” the problem. It is the problem: An insidious malware slowly corrupting our society in ways that are extremely difficult to quantify, but the effects of which are evident all around us.

maybe you don’t even know why you’re doing it. But you can’t stop, won’t stop.

Before the internet people socialized in relatively small, geographically constrained groups. They had friends and colleagues and relatives and they communicated with these people largely in person or via the phone using the rules of engagement that have been evolving generations.

(1) The fact that your phone in your pocket guarantees that you can get your fix at every minute of every day.

(2) The unfortunate reality that media organizations are so starved for content that every time something outrageous garners a small buzz on social media they immediately project and amplify it out to the masses.

Of course, these are patently insane ideas that don’t deserve consideration. But there you are considering them

These include facial movements, and vocal intonation or more global cues such as “does this person look and smell like they haven’t showered for a week?” These are tried and true and essential components to a healthy social “network.”

it’s all brought to you exclusively and specifically by social media. It is exacerbated by two things:

But along came the internet and the EIN guy became an anonymous Internet denizen who could insert himself into conversations across the globe. First he did this on listservs and chat rooms and message boards. Then he did it in the comments sections. And with the advent of social media, he did it right in your face, courtesy of The Algorithm

EIN guy is now just part of the crowd. And what’s worse, while every town has one EIN guy, the internet has allowed all of the EIN guys to find each other so that now they think they’re just as normal as everyone else.

Now you’re doubting yourself, too, because it’s one thing to ignore one crazy guy—but a crazy movement?

No—you can’t ignore that—it’s your duty as a responsible citizen to quash it before it gets out of control and you don’t even realize that instead of quashing it, you’re now part of it.

Because what EIN guy always wanted—more than anything—was for the normies to stop walking past him. He wanted them to notice him and argue with him because that would be a sign that what he had to say was important and legitimate.

Social media has made it possible for deranged people to break through what I think of as the holistic herd immunity of sanity which geography has traditionally conferred

And once they broke through, thanks to social media, the traditional media decided to start elevating them.

journalistic outlets now rush out to broadcast anything weird enough to draw an audience

Maybe the earth is flat?! Maybe Qanon is right?! Maybe vaccines are super dangerous ?!

In such an environment the only place for the “End Is Nigh” guy to get an audience is on the street corner

So what’s the answer? It’s shockingly simple. Leave all social media. Try it for one month.

There are very real actions that social media companies can take to help move things back towards sanity. People like Tristan Harris and Jaron Lanier and Roger McNamee have been discussing this for years. But social media companies aren’t going to do anything helpful so long as the incentive structure is what it is today.

Like most evil things that are bad for you, social media has enough attractive, useful, and even beneficial components to give you the false impression that it’s actually a good thing. Or at least harmless

In the future, we may be able to defang and declaw it and everyone can have it as a pet. But that’s somewhere down the road when Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the most powerful man in the world.

If Justice Thomas’s questions differed from those of his colleagues, it was in their courtesy. He almost never interrupted lawyers, though he asked pointed follow-up questions if there was time left.

Over the course of the last term, Justice Thomas mused about the ballooning salaries of college football coaches, said a police officer’s supposed “hot pursuit” struck him as a “meandering pursuit,” commented on the “sordid roots” of a Louisiana law enacted to advance white supremacy and wondered how public schools should address students’ comments “about current controversies, like protests or Black Lives Matter, antifa or Proud Boys.”

“He is an excellent questioner, and an important voice on the court,” said Gregory G. Garre, a lawyer with Latham & Watkins who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Garre said Justice Thomas’s questions at the court’s first phone argument, over whether Booking.com could trademark its name, refocused the court with a smart analogy. The justice asked how an internet domain name differed from a 1-800 phone number, noting that 1-800-PLUMBING is a registered trademark.Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer pursued the point, and Booking.com prevailed, in Justice Ginsburg’s last majority opinion.

“I think it’s unnecessary in deciding cases to ask that many questions, and I don’t think it’s helpful,” he said at Harvard Law School in 2013. “I think we should listen to lawyers who are arguing their cases, and I think we should allow the advocates to advocate.”

When he did speak from the bench, the effect could be electrifying. In 2002, for instance, the courtroom was riveted when he shared his reflections on the meaning of a Virginia law that banned cross burning, recalling “almost 100 years of lynching” in the South by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups.

The justices hope to return to the courtroom when the new term starts in October. Once he is back on the bench, will Justice Thomas revert to his usual taciturnity?

But it’s also fair to say that Justice Thomas may well prefer the orderly questioning of the current format as opposed to the feeding frenzy that can dominate when the justices are on the bench together.”

"If any court suggests 'Remain in Mexico' is illegal on its face, we could go from 12 (asylum seekers) today to 200 tomorrow," said Mary Jo Miller, head of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Refugee Aid, which organizes food, clothing and other donated goods for asylum seekers. "If any of those court cases go against Trump, we could immediately see people coming back to Phoenix. We're afraid we'll lose all these resources, then the substantive cases will be decided, we'll see a flood again, and won't have the capacity to serve them."

In recent weeks, several of the grassroots Phoenix groups have crossed the border to bring supplies or aid to asylum seekers and shelters in those cities.

Many asylum seekers are desperate for such help, since legal restrictions against seeking employment in the United States make it tough for them to pay attorneys on their own.

From December 21, 2018, through the end of September, ICE said its Phoenix office released about 43,100 asylum seekers, nearly 20% of those released from across the southern border states this year.First Church United Church of Christ, which took in 120 people in its first hosting in October, was among those that reached out to the International Rescue Committee for help, said Ellie Hutchison, the church's outreach director

He welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution in July 1789, when he was a month short of his 20th birthday—not just because he was a republican, but also because by removing class barriers it opened up new prospects politically and personally. But when he found himself in revolutionary Paris five years later, 26-year-old general Napoleon faced an alarming world governed by two things he had never had much experience of: money and sex.

The lure of making money briefly eclipsed his military ambitions as he speculated on buying and selling the properties of émigré or guillotined nobles, and importing often-smuggled luxuries such as coffee, sugar and silk stockings. Although his dislike of what he called “men of business” never left him, neither did his determination never to be short of ready cash. When he came to power he always had with him a cassette of gold coins. He also saw money as the key to achieving the goals he set himself, creating new institutions and building public works.

His sexual insecurity and distrust of women only deepened his unwillingness or inability to engage with others, hampering his diplomatic relations, which he saw as showdowns in which he had to be seen to win. He could never see that a judicious concession might win him greater advantages; had he prolonged the peace of Amiens by allowing Britain to keep Malta in 1803, for example, he could have used the respite to reinforce his position, rebuild France’s economy and his navy.

As appalled as he was by Josephine’s promiscuity, Napoleon was entranced by her supposedly aristocratic background. He would be even more excited by that of his second wife, the Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise. As she was a great-niece of the late Marie-Antoinette, he would refer to his ‘uncle’ king Louis XVI and reveled in the fact that his father-in-law was the Emperor of Austria.

He continued to build on this image so successfully that he could turn a less-than-glorious episode in Egypt into the stuff of legend and persuade many in France that he was the predestined savior of the nation. This enabled him to seize power and begin rebuilding France from the ruins of the Revolution.

While he was destroying the might of Austria, Russia and Prussia by his spectacular victories at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, he received reports from Paris that people were longing for an end to the fighting so they could get on with their lives. By then, his extraordinary luck, leading from triumph to triumph, had begun to make him believe his own propaganda, that he was the darling of destiny. Yet the aura of glory could not mask an underlying frailty.

While he was on the retreat from Moscow, a group of generals tried to seize power by announcing he had been killed in battle. The plot failed, but it revealed to Napoleon that his whole edifice of imperial glory had feet of clay. On hearing of his death, nobody reacted as they would have had he been a real monarch—by saying ‘the Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor’ and proclaiming his son’s accession to the throne.

He went on fighting a battle that was long lost, desperate for a resounding victory he believed might redeem what, for all the bluster, was his irredeemably low self-esteem. Ironically, it was only after he had lost his throne and was even denied the courtesy of being addressed as a monarch by his British jailers on the island of Saint Helena, that he managed to recover this and project an image of grandeur in defeat that still fascinates people today.

Caesar Rodney, who signed the declaration of independence, is described by the History Channel’s website as “the founding father you’ve probably never heard of”

His victory speech at the Chase Center on the Riverfront, and his transition events unveiling cabinet picks at the Queen theatre, have drawn thousands of supporters and journalists. Suddenly thrust centre stage, the city and state are emerging – at least momentarily – from the daunting shadow of New York, Washington and neighbouring Philadelphia.

“I’m sure he’s proud of this state and he’s going to show it off the best he can. At a time that things seem so dark and so bleak, it’s nice to have a little light shone on the place that you live and work. Not everyone has that.”

The aura of the presidency can lift small-town America out of obscurity.

Now it is the turn of Biden’s modest home to get name-checked on the nightly news.

“Joe’s being elected has created this curiosity about Wilmington that people just never had before.

It might be said to be fitting that Donald Trump – whose brash personality is reflected by garish Trump Tower in New York and opulent Mar-a-Lago in Florida – is about to be supplanted by a man who honed his common touch in Delaware, a low-key state whose riches are less instantly obvious

“Our train station is small, our convention space is much smaller than you find in the big cities. We have an intimate scale to the city, which I think is a pretty accurate reflection of Joe Biden.”

Owens said: “Because we’re a small city, I feel as though we’re connected. We have a very strong sense of self and unity. Everyone knows each other. In some neighbourhoods in the big cities you grew up on your block so you know people on your block. In the city of Wilmington, you know people throughout the city and that’s one of the unique things.

we don’t have an Empire State building, we don’t have a Rockefeller. In Washington you have the monuments; we don’t have that here.

Local tourism officials are also hoping for a post-pandemic boom courtesy of their local hero.

over in America, it seemed to be a riff on “Live free or die”, the actual state motto of New Hampshire. To me it looked more like live free and die. Continue congregating secretly or publicly in groups exceeding 10,000 for prayer, weddings and other celebrations? Check. Cover only your mouth, free your nose? Check. Social distancing? You gotta be kidding.

Flying back to Sydney on US election day was momentous. It also felt like whiplash. The Australian governments swung into action even before we stepped off the plane in Sydney. Once in the terminal it was full-on with precise coordination across jurisdictions and levels of government – immigration, biosecurity, state health authorities, police, army, air force

It embarrassed me that an air force officer was pushing my baggage trolley as he escorted me to my room. Of course this wasn’t a courtesy: he was there to make sure that I was securely locked in my room without a key, open window or balcony for escape.

Australia has shown that the response to a pandemic needs to be strict. Lives and a nation’s economy hang in the balance. The response needs to be evidence-based. Precise. Coordinated. Thorough. Caring. Impartial. Transparent. Legally enacted and enforced. Strongly led and clearly communicated. Tough. Really tough. Because that’s what it takes to control a pandemic.

Republicans in the Trump years have gotten used to competing under rules biased in their favor. They have come to fear that unless the rules favor them, they will lose. And so they have learned to think of biased rules as necessary, proper, and just—and to view any effort to correct those rules as a direct attack on their survival.

What I wrote in 2017 has only become more true since: “We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered.”

“No one could do anything to stop him.” No one has stopped Trump from directing taxpayer dollars to his personal businesses.

Trump’s clemency to Stone reminded others who might hold guilty knowledge—people like Paul Manafort and Ghislaine Maxwell—of the potential benefits to them of staying silent about Trump.

How did Trump get away with using a public power for personal advantage in this way? There’s nothing to stop him. The Constitution vests the pardon power in the president.

a second-term Trump could demand that associates break the law for him—and then protect them when they are caught and face punishment. He could pardon his relatives—and even try to pardon himself.

Abuse of Government Resources for Personal Gain

Mr. Trump’s aides said he enjoyed the frustration and anger he caused by holding a political event on the South Lawn of the White House, shattering conventional norms and raising questions about ethics law violations. He relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him,

No one has stopped him from defying congressional subpoenas looking into whether he was violating tax and banking laws. No one has stopped him from hiring and promoting his relatives.

Trump has a lot to hide, both as president and as a businessman. The price of his political and economic survival has been the destruction of oversight by Congress and the discrediting of honest reporting by responsible media

No one has stopped him from using government resources for partisan purposes. No one has stopped him from pressuring and cajoling foreign governments to help his reelection campaign.

No one has stopped him from using his power over the Postal Service to discourage voting that he thinks will hurt him.

The Hatch Act forbids most uses of government resources for partisan purposes. By long-standing courtesy, however, enforcement of that law against senior presidential appointees is left to the president. It’s just assumed that the president will want to comply. But what if he does not? The independent federal agency tasked with enforcing the Hatch Act, the Office of Special Counsel, has found nine senior Trump aides in violation of the law, and has recommended that Trump request their resignation. He has ignored that recommendation.

“No one could do anything to stop him.” In his first term, Trump purged the inspectors general from Cabinet departments and punished whistleblowers. In a second Trump term, the administration would operate ever more opaquely to cover up corruption and breaches in national security.

The Justice Department would be debauched ever more radically, becoming Trump’s own law firm and spending taxpayer dollars to defend him against the consequences of his personal wrongdoing. The hyper-politicization of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments would spread to other agencies.

Directing Public Funds to Himself and His CompaniesIn the 230-year history of the United States, no president before Trump had ever tried to direct public dollars to his own companies—so no Congress had ever bothered to specifically outlaw such activity.

Trump’s superpower is his absolute shamelessness. He steals in plain view. He accepts bribes in a hotel located smack in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. His supporters do not object. His party in Congress is acquiescent. This level of corruption in American life is unprecedented.

A willingness to line the Trump family’s pockets has become a mark of obeisance and identity, like wearing cowboy boots during the George W.  Bush administration

The result of this almost-universal Republican complicity in Trump’s personal corruption has been the neutering of Congress’s ability to act when corruption is disclosed.

Republicans in the House cheerfully support Trump when he defies subpoenas from Democratic chairs, setting a precedent that probably will someday be used against them.

Abuse of the Pardon PowerOn July 10, 2020, Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime associate Roger Stone. As Stone’s own communications showed, he had acted as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks in 2016. Had Stone cooperated with federal investigators, the revelations might have been dangerous to Trump. Instead, Stone lied to Congress and threatened other witnesses.Just as Stone was supposed to go to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. Commutation was more useful to the cover-up than an outright pardon. A commuted person retains his Fifth Amendment right not to testify; a pardoned person loses that right.

In a second Trump term, radical gerrymandering and ever more extreme voter suppression by Republican governors would become the party’s only path to survival in a country where a majority of the electorate strongly opposes Trump and his party. The GOP would complete its transformation into an avowedly antidemocratic party.

Inciting Political ViolenceTrump has used violence as a political resource since he first declared his candidacy, in the summer of 2015. But as his reelection prospects have dimmed in 2020, political violence has become central to Trump’s message. He wants more of it

“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Fox & Friends on August 27. Two nights later, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters headed into downtown Portland, Oregon, firing paintball guns and pepper spray, driving toward a confrontation during which one of them was shot dead.

The people best positioned to regulate the level of political violence in the country are local police, whom Trump has again and again urged to do their work in ways that support him, no matter how “tough” that requires them to be. The police are represented by unions often aligned with the Trump campaign

“I can tell you,” Trump said in a March 2019 interview with Breitbart News, “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

Trump’s appeal is founded on a racial consciousness and a racial resentment that have stimulated white racist terrorism in the United States and the world, from the New Zealand mosque slaughter (whose perpetrator invoked Trump) to the Pittsburgh synagogue murders to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. In recent weeks, political violence has caused those deaths in Kenosha and Portland

It’s a trick of authoritarian populists like Trump to proclaim themselves leaders of “the people,” even as large majorities of the electorate reject them. The authoritarian populist defines “the people” to exclude anyone who thinks differently. Only his followers count as legitimate citizens.

Legend has it that in the 1870s, “Boss” William Tweed, the famously corrupt New York City politician, taunted his critics by saying, “What are you going to do about it?”* Trump’s relentless defiance of law and decency does the same. Congress has done nothing. So it’s up to voters.

Luckily, she also has a solution.

One might argue that a realer, not to mention healthier, manifestation of Black affirmation would come from more concrete markers of progress than the dutiful hand-wringing of well-meaning white people about their forebears’ sins.

A compelling reason for fostering white guilt would be that if doing so led white Americans to go out and foster change in society.

but is white guilt necessary to or the best way to effect societal change?

For the civil rights victories of the 1960s, it wasn’t

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were undeniably huge advances, even if they did not (and they did not) end racism or completely level the societal playing field. In any case, all of this did not happen because white people became guilty nationwide.

But even phrased as complicity, the charge requires not just the occasional acolyte but the white populace as a whole to feel guilty about things people did not individually do, that were often done in the deep past rather than by their parents and that were done within a vast societal system, the operations of which even experts disagree on.

Technology was the accelerant, in that television illustrated the civil rights movement in a way that radio and newspapers could not.

The mid-20th-century American (white) Everyman tended to lack the visceral sense of revulsion at racism that we now take for granted as at least a courtesy norm.

In his classic “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,” Gunnar Myrdal observed that “even the white man who defends discrimination frequently describes his motive as ‘prejudice’ and says that it is ‘irrational.’” In other words, the Everyman acknowledged racism but felt no need to disavow it.

it seems that somehow, no matter what we say or do, white people are never guilty enough and white guilt is supposed to go on in perpetuity

Might it be that the effort to make white people any guiltier than they are is a Sisyphean effort?

We seek for enlightened white people to acknowledge that they are complicit — to use a term especially popular in recent years — in a system constructed for the benefit of whites

America’s white majority, and with them America’s political leaders, got behind tangible change because segregation as policy, and the violence required to maintain it, was pragmatically inconvenient on the world stage during the Cold War standoff.

What’s more, I don’t completely trust white guilt. It lends itself too easily to virtue signaling, which overlaps only partially, and sometimes not at all, with helping people.

people can actively foster change without harboring (or performing?) a sense of personal guilt for America’s history.

Black America likely will not overcome without some white assistance. But I’m not convinced that the way this happens is with white people’s cheeks burning in shame over their complicity. Maybe they can just help.

Japan’s complicated relationship with vaccines can be traced to successful class-action lawsuits brought against the health ministry by a small number of parents who claimed – without presenting evidence of a causal link – their children had experienced serious side-effects from the MMR vaccine in the 1990s.

“There was also an element of ‘negativity’ in spurring people to get vaccinated. People decided they should have the vaccine so they could tell other people that they were not a threat. It was a social courtesy, and to protect themselves, of course.”

Iwata has been critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic, but praised its approach to inoculations. “The Covid vaccination programme has been a great success,” he said. “I have never seen something implemented this pragmatically in the history of vaccinations in Japan.”

“Japanese bureaucrats are quite hesitant when it comes to advocating vaccines, however, particularly after the government lost lawsuits regarding side effects from the MMR vaccine,” he said.

Initially, however, even government politicians and health experts were cautious about encouraging people to have the Covid jab. The turning point came in the summer, as Tokyo was preparing to host the 2020 Olympics in defiance of public opinion.

The shift in attitudes is not limited to the Covid-19 vaccine. A panel on Friday said the health ministry should resume actively recommending the HPV vaccine – which is universally recognised as safe and effective – to teenage girls. Japan withdrew the recommendation – but kept the vaccine available free of charge – in 2013 after sensationalist media reports of alleged severe side-effects.

Although no causal link between the vaccine and side-effects was established, the rate of HPV inoculation fell from 70% in 2013 to less than 1%.

Sakikawa, who said she and almost all of her initially vaccine-hesitant friends were now fully jabbed, acknowledged that peer pressure had influenced their decision.

“There was definitely a feeling that we should have the vaccine, since everyone else seemed to be having it, and we promised we would meet up once we were double jabbed. Now it’s easier to go out and meet friends and do the all the things we couldn’t do before.”

The speech might have been rambling and emotional but its motivation was clear. And it immediately created a quandary for many West-blamers and Putin-understanders. How would you square your belief in national sovereignty and the effective declaration by the Russian president that Ukraine shouldn’t have any?

On the left Russia stood as a flawed bulwark against imperialism, on the right against the supranational machinations of the New World Order (the EU, Nato, the UN, whatever).

I don’t call these western apologists for Putin traitors, or fifth columnists, or paid agents of Russia. They’re none of those things. I note that as of today, courtesy of Putin, these people all look foolish.

But if the Moscow autocrat follows through the logic of his own words, then things may get very difficult for us all. A price will be paid, economically certainly and possibly in something more precious.

It will be Putin’s doing but there will be an increasing number of voices raised blaming our own governments and institutions. Voices that must be heard but must be countered.

[Science fiction’s influence]…leaves us facing a future we were all warned about, courtesy of dystopian novels mistaken for instruction manuals…[T]he billionaires behind the steering wheel have mistaken cautionary tales and entertainments for a road map, and we’re trapped in the passenger seat.

t even then it would be hard to argue exogeneity, since censorship is a response to society’s values as well as a potential cause of them.

Stross is alleging that the billionaires are getting Gernsback and Campbell’s intentions exactly right. His problem is simply that Gernsback and Campbell were kind of right-wing, at least by modern standards, and he’s worried that their sci-fi acted as propaganda for right-wing ideas.

The question of whether literature has a political effect is an empirical one — and it’s a very difficult empirical one. It’s extremely hard to test the hypothesis that literature exerts a diffuse influence on the values and preconceptions of the citizenry

I think Stross really doesn’t come up with any credible examples of billionaires mistaking cautionary tales for road maps. Instead, most of his article focuses on a very different critique — the idea that sci-fi authors inculcate rich technologists with bad values and bad visions of what the future ought to look like:

I agree that the internet and cell phones have had an ambiguous overall impact on human welfare. If modern technology does have a Torment Nexus, it’s the mobile-social nexus that keeps us riveted to highly artificial, attenuated parasocial interactions for every waking hour of our day. But these technologies are still very young, and it remains to be seen whether the ways in which we use them will get better or worse over time.

There are very few technologies — if any — whose impact we can project into the far future at the moment of their inception. So unless you think our species should just refuse to create any new technology at all, you have to accept that each one is going to be a bit of a gamble.

As for weapons of war, those are clearly bad in terms of their direct effects on the people on the receiving end. But it’s possible that more powerful weapons — such as the atomic bomb — serve to deter more deaths than they cause

yes, AI is risky, but the need to manage and limit risk is a far cry from the litany of negative assumptions and extrapolations that often gets flung in the technology’s directio

I think the main problem with Harper’s argument is simply techno-pessimism. So far, technology’s effects on humanity have been mostly good, lifting us up from the muck of desperate poverty and enabling the creation of a healthier, more peaceful, more humane world. Any serious discussion of the effects of innovation on society must acknowledge that. We might have hit an inflection point where it all goes downhill from here, and future technologies become the Torment Nexuses that we’ve successfully avoided in the past. But it’s very premature to assume we’ve hit that point.

I understand that the 2020s are an exhausted age, in which we’re still reeling from the social ructions of the 2010s. I understand that in such a weary and fearful condition, it’s natural to want to slow the march of technological progress as a proxy for slowing the headlong rush of social progress

And I also understand how easy it is to get negatively polarized against billionaires, and any technologies that billionaires invent, and any literature that billionaires like to read.

But at a time when we’re creating vaccines against cancer and abundant clean energy and any number of other life-improving and productivity-boosting marvels, it’s a little strange to think that technology is ruining the world

The dystopian elements of modern life are mostly just prosaic, old things — political demagogues, sclerotic industries, social divisions, monopoly power, environmental damage, school bullies, crime, opiates, and so on