I think a lot of people are actually canceling their wapo subs. It’s not like the usual round of claims. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater than people realize and go beyond the near term hit on subs. A big slice of America is living in a climate of ….
2/ bewilderment. It’s basically Blue America or the more politicized part of Blue America and it’s tied to the role of billionaires in public life, Trumps role in our public life. The recent revelations about Elon Musk have confirmed the way that he now exists way outside …
3/ even the most limited sort of public accountability. This isn’t new info. But Musk has raised it to the level of a kind of performance art. You can’t not see it. Just as you can’t not see the fact that Trump is running around the country acting like a degenerate fascist madman …
4/ and the country may be about to send him back to the White House. In this climate of bewilderment there is both an intense desire or demand to find the people or institutions which follow the set of rules that govern how these people think American society is supposed to …
5/ operate. And in the frenzied intensity of these final days of the 2024 election there’s a spiraling impatience spilling into rejection of those that don’t. It’s been suggested to me that Bezos’s decision may be based on more than just fear. I don’t know if that’s true.
6/ But whether it is or not, Bezos’s decision here has the whiff of decisions or deals made off stage, out of public view. A lot of the country is convinced that a second Trump presidency will push America into the kind of elective autocracy that we see in country’s like …
7/ Russia, Turkey, India. That brings with it all the expected curtailments of press and other civic freedoms. But here we seem to see billionaires who own press operations on the side maybe deciding it’s easier to pull up stakes in advance, get out of the way of the freight …
8/ train, lay down in advance before Trump has even won the election. Again, out of view, off stage, a surrender in advance without even the formalities. We talk a lot about the crisis of public trust in America. But when we do we’re generally talking about Red or …
9/ Disaffected America. Lack of trust in the press, in elections, in scientific or expert authority, etc. But there is this other crisis of trust in institutions and people that’s the province of Blue America. And Bezos with this one decision has stepped right into it.
10/ Probably without even realizing it. Frankly, I’M surprised at the intensity of the reaction. But seeing it it makes sense. It’s a whose side are you on moment, sides which transcend partisan politics. And Bezos has rung a bell I’m not sure he can unring.
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Couple thoughts on this. I was generically I guess in favor of congestion pricing but I was kind of skeptical it wld make a huge difference. I live in the congestion zone and while I don’t commute I drive in and out of the city fairly regularly so I knew I’d pay some money for it. It’s actually made a pretty big difference.
2/ Just the obvious thing. There’s a lot less traffic. Much more visible difference than I would have expected. And at least the initial stats I saw showed a lot less people getting run over. A separate issue is about ….
3/ Gov Hochul herself. She’s an unpopular and mostly accidental governor, despite having won the seat herself now. I think that unpopularity is mostly deserved. But I suspect we’ll now see that a lot of fairly unpopular pols from free states will be able to turn that around …
It's also worth picking apart the false premises in that declaration I just flagged. The American people didn't vote for what Elon Musk is doing. A majority of them didn't even vote for Donald Trump. To the extent we have good public opinion data most of the executive orders ...
2/ are unpopular. The limited public opinion data we have says that Musk's wilding spree through the federal government is equally unpopular. Trump legitimately won the presidency - sad as that is. That gives him the rightful authority to act with the powers of the ...
3/ presidency. It doesn't give him the right or the power to break the law or operate outside the constitution. Anyone who can't understand this simple point is hostile to the constitution. Trump and the GOP Congress can abolish depts, they can change the civil service ...
Very interesting and very welcome. I come to this choice w more direct experience than usual & also, arguably, some bias. I've known Ben Wikler for more than two decades. When I first met him he was producer for Al Franken's radio show on Air America. I think he was a year ...
2/ or two out of college. So I knew him as a kid basically before he became Ben Wikler. But I know all sorts of people who I like who want to do this or that job and I wish them all well because I like them but often I don't really have any idea whether they'd be particularly ...
3/ good at the job. Or maybe they don't seem well suited for the job but that doesn't mean I don't still like them. I think Ben is really well-suited to this position and especially now. I say that because we've seen how he's done the job in Wisconsin. Being a party chair isnt ..
Obviously this is who Trump is and this is what Trumpism is. But there's part of this that isn't widely enough known, tho it's well-known to a lot of reporters. And that is among GOP operatives and staffers under 30 or so the majority, maybe the great majority had their ...
2/ political awakenings on sites like 4chan, 8chan, various far-right, incel and incel adjacent online communities. It crops up in various ways if you know where to look. It's why DeSantis had those weird frankly homoerotic campaign vids during the primaries.
3/ They're all awash in this world of casual racism, ironic provocation, not just misogyny but a weird emotionally-stunted kind of misogyny that to normal people isn't just often either offensive or weird but even kind of inexplicable because it's a very weird ...
This is something I’ve written about from a few vantage points over recent years. Going to try to put a longer piece together on it. This trend is real. And it’s not surprising. Some of it of course is the experience of seeing Trump twice over perform his polls. But the …
2/ reality going back a couple decades now is that Dems always think they’re going to lose and Republicans always think they’re going to win. That’s the consistent through line in all races even though of course the actual outcomes vary. It’s the flip side of partisan …
3/ sorting generating one deeply authoritarian party. That’s not just Trump and not just ideology. There’s some very good political science work on the fact that authoritian minded voters used to be fairly even spread across both parties. Then starting in the 90s that …
Completely fascinated by this technology. Partly because I work with wood a lot. But the real thing is the potential climate implications. The short version is that it transforms wood into a substance substantially stronger than steel … inventwood.com/mettlewood
2/ and dramatically lighter than steel. Its inventors believe it could replace about 80% of steel and concrete used in construction. That’s a big deal because construction materials and especially concrete make up about something like 11% of all carbon emissions.
3/ Concrete is a hugely carbon intensive production process, largely because of the heating involved. This is “embodied carbon” which you hear a lot about if you’re involved in the somewhat niche world of green construction. In any case, the engineering process is quite …