1. I think this post is Yglesias' response to critics who bring up his support of Iraq war. The implicit argument here is "sure, I supported the Iraq war, but most people did." The deception here is one of omission. Yglesias specifically supported the war out of crackpot neo-con belief it would allow Israel to have greater leverage over the Palestinians (as they said at time "the road to Jerusalem is through Baghdad"). That is not why most USA citizens in 2003 supported war, which would out of misguided deference to elite in moment of nationalist panic & anger.
2. Further, Yglesias' support of Iraq war is inextricable from his general xenophobia and belief that non-American life is not a matter of concern (a view that continues to undergrid his analysis of Israel/Palestine). This photo is, as they say, a tell.

https://x.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1959017479541596379

1. This is right but I'd go father. Yglesias is quite literally the grandson of Stalinists. He is here, in a fascinating display of atavism, replicating the classic apparatchik logic "it is right to be wrong and wrong to be right."

https://twitter.com/oelayat/status/1950415497188852128

2. Stalinists (like the grandparents of Matt Yglesias) had a political problem in the 1930s and 1940s: how to defend a regime responsible for the Ukrainian famine, the purges, and the gulag?

1. Worth revisiting the debate between @ezraklein and Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel/Palestine because there's a specific factual point that Klein got very wrong which he should apologize for. Klein insisted that unlike Hamas, Netanyahu was not "specifically targeting killing civilians." 2. TNC responded to Klein with a very eloquent "hm" which I think was a polite way of saying "what are you talking about?" Klein's statement was absurd on the face of it since both in current Gaza onslaught in last seven decades, Israeli government's have killed many many civilians, at a rate that is truly startling.

1. Stan Lee -- father of the Marvel universe or one of the biggest cultural frauds of recent history? A terrific piece that helps advance a longstanding question about Stan Lee's alleged authorship (or non-authorship) of 1960s Marvel comics. This deeply researched article -- which also serves as a profile of a fascinating writer -- has found some evidence that is major addition to this debate. Let me unfold a tale. 2. Stan Lee presented himself as the creator of the Marvel universe, the visionary who came up with the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Black Panther etc. And that's the way he was usually presented in the press & by Marvel/Disney hype machine. It was always nonsense.

1. So I have a few thoughts on Elon Musk, ketamine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, opium, Hitler's meth habit, William F. Buckley and the most pathetic acid trip in history, W. H. Auden, cocaine, Aldous Huxley, the CIA, and Silicon Valley, as well as other related matters. 2. Thanks to some excellent reporting from the Wall Street Journal & The New York Times -- as well as the evidence of our own eyes -- we know Musk is an epic consumer of Ketamine (enough to damage his bladder) and also partakes of LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, mushrooms & who knows what else.

1. Wall Street keeps hoping Trump will change his mind, realize Tariff Wars are stupid, and pull back. That's why so many fell for that stupid Walter Bloomberg tweet this morning & market had a brief rebound. But change-of-heart not happening. Trump is in YOLO mode. Only path forward is congress. 2. 2. Thinking Trump will change his mind isn't unreasonable: in 1st term he was reined in by moderate GOP. But reality is Trump is in 2nd term, most likely can't run again, this is his last shot to achieve goals: YOLO. And he's had stupid trade deficit fixation since 1980s.

1. Politically, the key thing to understand is tariff crisis is above all else a constitutional crisis. Under USA constitution, power of tariffs belongs to congress, not president. 2. Now, congress has a right to delegate its tariff power to president, which it has done over last few decades. This parallels the shifting of war making power from congress to president and was also done on so-called national security grounds.

1. Trump's goal of taking over Gaza (after Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed) is evil and deranged. It's also not going to happen, along with many other similarly crackpot, criminal goals: annexing Canada, Greenland, Panama Canal etc. These absurd goals are evidence of imperial decline 2. Feature of all of Trump's recent trade wars is that he uses hyperbolic threats (annexing Canada, 25% tariffs etc), then reaches an agreement whereby other country concedes little or nothing. Pattern has been seen in Canada, Mexico, Panama, Colombia. Declare war, do nothing, declare victory,

1. One reason why Wall Street has been down only slightly is that they are quite rightly assessing Trump's trade wars as mostly bluster. Trump wants some headlines showing he's fighting foreign foes and its been easy for target nations to diffuse situation with a few symbolic (even non-existent) concessions: Colombia, Panama, Mexico. 2. A few symbolic concessions on both sides & quick de-escalation. Again, Trump wants headlines saying he's strong, nothing more.

https://x.com/zackbeauchamp/status/1886438696242823321

1. The idea of USA annexing Canada, Greenland & the Panama Canal might seem like a typical Trump brain fart, but it has deep roots in the far right. MAGA Manifest destiny owes much to Pat Buchanan, Peter Brimelow & the strange figure of Lee Craig Schoonmaker (a gay rights pioneer turned hate-monger) 2. Trump's America First foreign policy isn't a quirk of his weird personality (altho his thuggish/trollish expression of it is). "America First" is real tradition going back to McKinley, Hoover, Lindbergh & Taft. Miscalled "isolationism" is policy of European disengagement & hemispheric dominance

1. "What a minute," yo might ask, "Isn't Milei a self-proclaimed libertarian, even an anarcho-capitalist who who wants to abolish the state? How can he be using police power to repress free speech & protests?" Well, the history of anarcho-capitalism has the answers.

https://twitter.com/davidrkadler/status/1735666098127733129

2. The term anarcho-capitalism was coined by Murray Rothbard, this elfin looking guy, tweaking an earlier formulation by his friend Karl Hess (a Goldwater speechwriter turned anti-war activist). Rothbard was a pioneer in coopting language of anarchy for authoritarianism

1. Fun fact: New Criticism was an outgrowth of a group called The Fugitives or Southern Agrarians. Their governing ideology was a celebration of hierarchical & traditional societies like the pre-Civil War south & pre-industrial Europe. Guess what they thought of Blacks & Jews?

https://twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1719907385572274627

2. This is a complicated story but the New Critics were Southern white reactionaries who idealized pre-industrial life & Christian hegemony, whitewashed slavery, and embraced formalism in criticism as a way of exalting an idealized order untouched by historical change.

I've literally been reading racists right-wingers (notably Samuel Francis and Pat Buchanan) since Yglesias was in kindergarten. It's a big part of the work I do. Yet I somehow manage to avoid praising them as interesting parts of the discourse even as analyze their work. The key thing here is that Yglesias thinks of the revanchist & racist right as part of his universe of discourse, people who are wrong on some stuff but worth engaging with. By contrast, for him left & left-liberals beyond the pale.

1. Oppenheimer, Barbie and the contradictions of German-Jewish whiteness: Notes for an essay. (Jack Kirby will make a cameo here). 2. What's the real thread unifying the Barbenheimer phenomenon besides the coincidence of an opening date. I'd say both films are about the fraught experience of the children of immigrants in putatively melting pot society.

1. While researching Young Americans for Freedom I came across what is, I think I can say this confidently, the worst music every sung by humans: the ersatz folk songs belted out by young rightwingers in 1960s in a desperate attempt to copy the folk revival.

2. This music is evidence of the strong anxiety created by the rise of the counterculture & New Left, which the right felt had to matched by an counter-attack. Janet Greene, for example, was often touted as the right's answer to Joan Baez.

1. The obvious reason why this strategy of "progressive policy" denuded of class solidarity wont work is that the rich have intense class solidarity, which is why liberal rich are always outgunned in numbers & intensity by right-wing rich. For every Soros there are 100 Kochs.

https://twitter.com/DanteAtkins/status/1678802712790458368

2. You often hear this in liberal & even left-liberal circles: "why can't liberal billionaires fund X" (X being a left counterpart to Fox News or The Federalist Society or ALEC. The answer is there are very few liberal billionaires & they are generally committed to status quo.

1. What if ... Jack Kirby created Norman Podhoretz? Is it possible that the greatest of all comic book artists had, in the early 1940s, a visionary insight into the future career of the godfather of neo-conservatism? A strange but true tale of upward-mobility & class betrayal. 2. The best thing Norman Podhoretz ever wrote in his first memoir "Making It" (1967) on his tortured relationship with his highschool teacher, given the Kafka-esque name Mrs. K: a snob who wanted to transform this "filthy little slum child" (Podhoretz) into a gentleman

1. Strong Know Your Enemy podcast notes the massive right & far right lean of masculine self-help lit (Peterson, Hawley, Mansfield, Rogan, Tate etc) & asks what is liberal/left response? One answer is in popular culture: Springsteen, Spielberg etc dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your… 2. One way to look at careers of figures like Springsteen, Spielberg or even Fred Rogers is that they are trying to answer & model questions: "how does one be a good man? A good son, brother, father, etc.?"

1. In terms of the fascism debate: this guy was a fellow at a think tank that was very influential during Trump era (Claremont) & now runs his own think tank. So it's hard to deny this sort of aspirational fascism is a real thing on the USA right.

https://twitter.com/Byzness/status/1660851914429411328

2. Of course, aspirational fascism doesn't necessarily translate into being able to actually execute fascism. I take the point of the critics of the fascism thesis that there is no modern mass party in 1920s/1930s sense.

1. The late Jeffrey Epstein was many things, one of which was that he was a Harvard man. Despite being a college drop out, once he had money he was easily able to get both a position (visiting fellow, dept.of psychology) and cronies at Harvard. 2. Because of recent Wall Street Journal reporting, Epstein's multiple ties to Harvard will be revisited. The university itself tried to bury the issue in a 2020 report that was an exercise in self-exoneration.

What's interesting about that text is Carlson is more candid about his goonish racism & authoritarianism, and more troubled by where it is leading, than his defenders in the post-left like Glenn Greenwald.

https://twitter.com/carolynryan/status/1653576074171760642

One the one hand, this is a pretty terrifying glimpse of someone who is descending into fascist nihilism. On the other hand, it's much more honest account of the impulses behind Carlson's politics than the apologetics of Greenwald, Lee Fang, etc.