The gall to treat the 2024 election like it was a binding referendum on American culture, a lasting βvibe shiftβ to which others must accommodate, then within a year proclaim the cultural change over, as if a bystander, not an active contributor manufacturing vibe shifts by overdetermining results.
US seized another tanker carrying Venezuelan oil, this one not already on the sanctions list for Russian oligarchs and Iran.
Panamanian flagged and belongs to a legal, China-based oil trader.
Unclear what US will do with the cargo, but this looks like at least a partial blockade, an act of war.
This is pretty basic, but βyou won your Congressional district by a smaller margin than the presidential candidate won itβ is not a rebuttal to βhereβs a bunch of facts that show why your argument about the politics of climate policy is wrong.β
To rebut it, you have to address it, such as with data.
My seven-year-old has been able to identify pictures of an elephant for years. Even knows what noise they make. And he hasnβt prided himself on that ability in a while.
What if β and stick with me here for a sec β there have always been some young white men in America who are right-wing, and the reason is because they agree with right-wing stances, and therefore we don't need a novel "look what you made me do" explanation for why some today were "forced" into it.
The thing about Ross Douthat is, if he were right that 2010s and 2020s America is a country where white Christian men are discriminated against and repressed, then Douthat would be in jail, or at least out of work, rather than a well-paid regular columnist at the country's most prominent newspaper.
The Non-Education of Ross Dout...
This piece on Cassandras and anti-alarmists by @polphilpod.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy is well done, and I bet some Bluesky users will see themselves in.
The Americans Who Saw All This...
"Look what They took from You" politics, based on an imagined fantasy of the past, is really unhealthy for a country.
US and Venezuela both reportedly jamming GPS signals in the Caribbean now.
Escalating series of measures short of war can work only if there's a concrete, actionable demand. If you do X, we'll back off, stop doing Y, and won't start doing Z.
But there's no concrete US demand on Venezuela. At all.