Staff writer at @TheAtlantic. Curmudgeon. Cat guy. Democracy enthusiast, defender of experts. Legacy blue check who'd have paid more for a better Twitter.
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Feb 19 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
This is exactly right. Money doesn't buy respect. It's why Trump spent his life looking at Manhattan with that nose-pressed-to-the-glass feeling; no matter how much money he made, he was a vulgar boor who wasn't welcome there. Short 🧵before I go on vacation this week.
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I didn't just come to this conclusion about Trump (or Carlson or anyone else) off the cuff; it's part of what I wrote about in my last book. So much of American politics among elites on the right is driven by a frustrated ambition, a sense of being denied respect. /2
Dec 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Reading Tim Alberta's wrenching piece about the idolatry of American evangelicals. Read it, and realize that C.S. Lewis (as always) saw it coming and warned us. /1
"Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. "
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Dec 15, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Here, @jimgeraghty makes a some unwarranted assumptions. You'd think after the "no coup in 2020" pieces, we wouldn't be doing this again, but to his credit, he offers a reasoned (if wrong) argument. /1
A Reality Check on the Trump-as-Dictator Prophecies nationalreview.com/the-morning-jo…
Jim writes:
"if our existing checks and balances under the Constitution aren’t strong enough to stop abuses of power by Trump . . . why would you think that they’re strong enough to stop abuses of power by Joe Biden or anyone else?"
This is a really odd non-sequitur.
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Dec 14, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I didn't go into it in my piece today on Ukraine, but I also hope we can finally junk the Powell Doctrine. It's a misleading wish list of ideal conditions that has entranced strategists and military planners for years./1
Actually, it's the Weinberger-Powell doctrine, and it's not a doctrine. It's a list of reasons never to use force unless you can win instantly against a weak enemy and achieve a totally clear objective in a popular war. /2
I know it's obvious that Trump changes positions on a dime and how it's mystifying that his cult doesn't care, but picking all this apart is a fool's errand.
They stick with him because he channels their diffuse anger about their lives at other Americans. But it's worse now:
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After 2016, Trump voters thought they'd really made their point, pushed back change in America, and gained respect by electing a POTUS.
All that blew up in their faces: They found out they're not a majority, and worse, the disdain of their fellow citizens only intensified. /2
Nov 10, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
For years I've watched college kids latch on to one cause after another. Later, they grow up and rethink some of those causes.
This is different: Many are making a decision to become vicious antisemites, as if this is something you can later dismiss as youthful enthusiasm. /1
I knew kids who protested, say, nuclear power 40+ years ago who now, in late middle age, probably agreed with leaders like Obama that maybe nuke plants are okay. So you can walk back your fun stories of getting maced at Seabrook and say, "yeah, maybe I was wrong."
Not this. /2
Nov 4, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
A short thread on "The Day After," which I used to teach as part of my Cold War pop culture class.
ABC-TV should have listened more to director Nicholas Meyer, who did as much with it as you could do on American TV at the time and created a landmark national moment. /1
Some of the best moments in the "The Day After" are before the attack. Bibi Besch losing her shit trying to make the beds while her husband (a stoic John Cullum in a great turn) is trying to drag her downstairs to the bunker left a mark on me. /2
Oct 27, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Perfectly legit q, and happy to answer it. Can do a long bibliography (including my own stuff), but instead, I'll just summarize.
Here we go. /1
Of course the Soviets were pissed about NATO nukes around them, but that's not what Cuba was about. Cuba had more to do with internal Soviet politics. Khr was trying to reduce the size of the Soviet military; it was eating money K wanted to make good on other promises. /2
Oct 17, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I have some advice. I know these are stressful political times, but if you're going to be serious about politics and the threats to democracy, please stop posting about "envelopes of money," and "kompromat" and "payments from Russia" and all that. It's silly and a distraction. /1
Yes, there are corrupt people in politics who take bars of gold and hide them in a closet. But 99.9 percent of terrible political decisions are based on getting reelected. It's that simple. It's not mind control or blackmail or wads of cash. It's about staying in DC. /2
Sep 30, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Have to disagree with my friend @KoriSchake here. If Trump were still in office, I might agree more. But Milley saying *nothing* would have looked like being squeamish in the face of a direct threat to the Constitution. He didn't name names. He didn't have to. /1
I've been pretty resolute about respecting the office, right down to referring to Trump properly as "the President" while he was in the Oval. But Milley is not required to pretend that nothing happened since 2018. I think he handled it right while in his last hours in uniform. /2
Sep 26, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I was looking something up in @bterris's book (which you should read), and I recalled the chapters about Matt Schlapp in there. And I wonder if, in their hearts, all of the people who got on Team Trump - including Trump - wish they could go back to 2016 and lose. /1
They could win again, of course. But nothing will be the same - and Trump will likely not bring them back in. He'll choose new cronies. Trump himself will be in a cold sweat every day (as he is now). Republicans will be chained to a sociopath (as they are now). /2
Sep 25, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Anyone who knows me - and the people who had the bad luck to work with me - knows I am a fount of criticism about the U.S. war colleges. But the article going around about how our generals are being corrupted by war colleges is just crapola. Let me clear up two things quickly. /1
My qualifications to say all this? Over 30 years, in various roles, with the Naval War College, including as a department chair in Strategy and Policy, and a course director in National Security Affairs. /2
Sep 1, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I wrote a whole book on why democracies become illiberal, but something about America after Trump's indictment really strikes me. Yes, MAGA world is about resentment and ignorance and displaced anger and all that. But it's also a time that seems to me incredibly...juvenile.
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Trump hawking t-shirts with his mug shot is like some hair band selling posters of their guy getting busted for drugs or waggling his junk onstage or something. It's beyond unserious. It's child-like, the political version of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. And yet it'll sell. /2
Aug 4, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
A reminder that calling former presidents "Mr. President" is not only discretionary, but it's actually (by old school etiquette) incorrect. It can be done as a mark of respect, but it's not required by any protocol. /1
Some titles - governor, ambassador, certain military ranks, and yes, "professor" - are lifetime titles. "President" is not; a president is the "presiding officer" while he presides, which is why Senate Presidents are "mr/madam president" only while they hold the gavel. /2
Jul 13, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Each time I see a story like this, it's a reminder that there is no actual Russian strategic goal in this war: The idea of "defeating" Ukraine and capturing it whole went down the tubes over a year ago. All that's left for Russia is fighting over map squares. /1
This leaves Russian forces not knowing what to do even if they *could* win on the ground in various areas (which they're not.) As we teach at US war colleges: operational victories do not automatically translate to strategic success, esp if you have no idea what your goals are./2
Jul 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
An important line from the @DavidAFrench piece today: "About half of self-identified evangelicals now attend church monthly or less often. They have religious zeal, but they lack religious community. So they find their band of brothers and sisters in the Trump movement." /1
But think about that: It suggests how shallow the roots are of a particular kind of religious belief that is less a belief system than an expression of social identity. (If your replacement for Christian worship is a Trump rally, maybe church-going wasn't about Christ.) /2
Jun 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I was thinking about this today while, of all things, hearing John Denver.
Bear with me.
I was listening to "Country Roads" and thinking of the great diversity of America. I was on my way to a beach in RI, but I've seen the beauty of WV.
All of it is America.
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When I would travel in the old USSR, or even in the new Russia, if you ran into anyone from the United States, it was like family.
Boston? Wheeling? Jackson? Didn't matter. It was like encountering long-lost cousins.
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Jun 9, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Sigh.
So, a short thread on pardoning Nixon.
It was the right thing to do.
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Trump has been up to his eyeballs in crimey stuff since he was a young man. He's seen people do time. He's been around the mob. He is not deterrable; he is a sociopath and he doesn't see himself as subject to the rules by which others live. So, Nixon's pardon means nothing. /2
May 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm going to go all Emily Post here and say that some titles are lifetime titles as a matter of protocol and respect, rather than right granted by the government. (I say this as a holder of one of them.) But "president", as Ms Post would note, is not one of them. /1
Not so long ago, America had one "president as a time" and only the holder of the title used it, as is proper for a "presiding" officer. It's why the Senate president is only president on the podium. Calling all former presidents "president" is a mistake. /2
Apr 23, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
For all of you who think Musk is some agent of Saudi investors or other nefarious actors who you think want to destroy Twitter, consider this: They're probably wincing right now. States with agendas want a strong and authoritative Twitter, not a joke site. Bear with me. /1
If your goal is to spread your agenda, you want the venue to be respected, full of dependable sources, so that your influence operations can be one more among those sources. If you're putting out bullshit, you want it on the same rack as the NYT and WaPo, not tabloids. /2
Apr 16, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Since I hate to leave a debate without granting at least some points to my critics - seriously - let me now tell what I *do* worry about when it comes to American fascism.
Because I am not Pollyanna on this stuff. And I worry more than you might think. /1
The things I look from a US fascist movement: 1. Organized campaigns of violence against democratic institutions, including courts, legislatures, and the press. (One jacquerie on J6 isn't it, but it was a *severe* test.) Armed ppl in legislative chambers has happened. Red flag./2
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