Blossoming
Our crab-apple tree has exploded into colour. Local bee-keepers are delighted.
Quote of the Day
”A lot of people look at the movies and are amazed that so many bad movies get made. But when you work in Hollywood, you are amazed that any good movies are made.”
- Seth Rogen, on Morning Joe
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Smetana | Má Vlast, JB1:112 – 2. Vltava
I still remember being swept away by this when I first heard it in a Dutch friend’s house in 1977.
Long Read of the Day
The authoritarian takeover attempt is here
There’s an eerie, resigned passivity in the air in the US. Is it because Trump’s continuing circus act (tariffs, etc) is monopolising people’s attention and preventing them from seeing the way the groundwork for authoritarian rule is being steadily laid? How much evidence do US citizens need before they realise that what they’re witnessing is a coup d’etat?
It’s not as though the evidence isn’t available if you’re paying attention. Latest piece I’ve seen is Noah Smith’s grim analysis.
First, there’s the obvious: Trump is going around arresting innocent people, and sending them to foreign torture-dungeons, apparently for the rest of their lives. Bloomberg reports that about 90% of these deportees had no criminal records in the U.S., and most have not been charged with any crime:
Some were arrested simply because they had (non-gang) tattoos. Others didn’t even have any tattoos, and were arrested for no apparent reason.
It’s not clear why the Trump administration is doing this. Perhaps it’s to scare immigrants into leaving the country by making an example of a few. Perhaps it’s to simply assert power, or to test the boundaries of what they can get away with. Maybe they’ve really convinced themselves that all of the people they arrested are gang members. Who knows. But what’s clear is that this is brutal and lawless behavior — the kind of arbitrary arrest and punishment that’s common in authoritarian regimes.
The second thing that should scare you is the lawlessness. The Trump administration insists it didn’t defy the Supreme Court, arguing that simply removing any barriers to Abrego Garcia’s return means that they’re complying with the court order to “facilitate” that return. Trump’s people have also argued that the courts have no right to interfere in the executive branch’s conduct of foreign policy. And on top of that, they’ve declared that their deal with Bukele is classified.
In practice, the administration is arguing that as soon as they arrest someone and ship them overseas, U.S. courts have no right to order their return — ever. That means that Trump could grab you, or me, or anyone else off the street and put us on a plane to El Salvador, and then argue that no U.S. court has the right to order us back, because once we’re on foreign soil it’s the domain of foreign policy. If so, it means that due process and the rule of law in America are effectively dead; the President can simply do anything to anyone, for any reason…
Smith is no hysteric, but a pretty cool observer. If people are not alarmed by what’s going on, then they’re not paying attention.
So many books, so little time
Screenshot
Struck by the parallels between the way in which tech companies started cosying up to Trump before his election, and how German industrialists began to warm to Hitler in 1932-3, I started looking for research into that period, and came on David De Jong’s book. I’ve just ordered it.
My commonplace booklet
Not much work was done on Sunday in Chateau Naughton (aka Chaos Manor). The reason? It was the final of the US Masters and Rory McIlroy started out with a comfortable lead which he then spent the round losing and regaining until he finally — in a sudden death playoff against his friend Justin Rose — won, to become one of the elite few who have ever achieved a grand slam of the four major golf tournaments — the US and British Opens, the PGA championship and the Masters.
To say that it was a rollercoaster ride is the understatement of the century, and most of us who followed it — not to mention the normally urbane, detached media commentators — felt that we had been put through a wringer by a sadist.
My friend and schoolmate Ivan Morris, who became a much better golfer than I ever was (and a perceptive observer of the sport), wrote to me on Monday morning when it was all over.
How does a simple stick and ball game subject such intensive adversity on a golf player that every known raw emotion in the human repertoire is tested to the point where he either succumbs or rises up to slay the monster?
I’m resigned to never in my lifetime seeing anything like it again.
Me too.
Linkblog
“For Trump, everything is a shakedown, the way it was for Vito Genovese, who is Trump’s model of governance. Every crisis, foreign or domestic, is assessed for its financial opportunity, and crises are manufactured for this purpose. He doesn’t have a worldview but a cognitive handicap, the incurable myopia of infinite self-interest. Money is his country; and more money is his diplomacy, a kind of one-man imperialism. (America will withdraw from the world, but not from the world’s money.) The sole objective that comes even close to money is revenge, which is the only thing that Trump will pursue even without the prospect of remuneration.”
- Leon Wieseltier via Tina Brown’s splendid blog.
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