1. For years, I’ve been complaining about the US bullying of smaller nations. This tweet thread by Jeff Stein documents the fact that US bullying has increased dramatically over the past decade.
2. By some measures, Texas is far and away the most environmentally conscious state. Another link suggests that Texas produces more electricity from renewable energy than New York produces in total. How is that possible? It has nothing to do with their attitudes, which are far less environmentally conscious than those in places like New York and California. Instead it seems due to the fact that free markets are good for the environment, and Texas has much freer markets than California.
3. Here’s Richard Hanania:
Ezra Klein talks about how he has no idea what a left-wing version of Jordan Peterson would look like, given that liberals don’t really have a positive vision of masculinity. Conservatism is less conflicted on this issue, but its version of masculinity has no place for stoicism in the Trump era. I find few things to be more unmasculine than exaggerating the problems and challenges one faces. Right-wing spaces are nonetheless filled with individuals referring to themselves as “kulaks,” “dissidents,” or “heretics.” In a way, Trump is the perfect leader for this movement, in that he has all the vices of masculinity and few of the virtues. MAGA populism looks at what happened to Alexei Navalny and says that this only reminds us that the real victim is Trump, and I wonder how much their aggressive callousness towards the victims of Putin reflects the shame of individuals play acting as freedom fighters getting angry when confronted by the real thing.
BTW, here’s what Scott Alexander says about Hanania:
Hanania is terrible at being right-wing. He’s pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-euthanasia, pro-vaccine, pro-globalism, pro-Ukraine, atheist, and supports the recent guilty verdict on Trump.
4. And from the same post, Alexander describes Yglesias:
Nietzsche wrote in the 1890s. There were still real nobles and emperors walking around; communists had not yet started calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Sure, his world was probably some sort of weak compromise between master and slave morality, but it was different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was forged through dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel take on master morality and socialism’s novel take on slave morality. I think of Yglesias – who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us – as one of its most self-conscious proponents.
Alexander has recently been on a roll.
5. Alexander also linked to an excellent post by Freddie DeBoer:
Perhaps you feel like Alice Munro pulled the wool over your eyes. You’re in good company. Many seem to be taken aback by the fact that a writer whose work spoke to them so deeply was one who could live with this kind of darkness. That attitude, I’m afraid, demonstrates an inability to understand that every artist is first and fundamentally a liar, in fiction or non. That was Munro’s great skill, and that is why you feel betrayed. A writer for The Indian Express says, “I will always question her motivations behind writing what she wrote and wonder if she actually felt this deeply or just knew how to lie with great finesse.”
But that’s the thing about great artists, darling; for them, there’s no difference.
That last line is perfect.
6. It looks like Vance is also a fan of Viktor Orban. Why am I not surprised? Trump should go with his original intention and replace Vance with Doug Burgum.
7. This interview from 2021 is exactly why you don’t want to nominate an intellectual for VP. They say really stupid stuff. Start at the 11:30 mark. Inconvenient?
8. Trump refuses to say that Vance is ready to step in as president if needed, despite being asked directly. Here’s Jim Geraghty at the National Review:
And he’s shameless about throwing his own running mate under the bus when he’s the one who picked him:
Harris Faulkner: When you look at J. D. Vance, is he ready on Day One?
Trump: Does he what?
Faulkner: Ready on Day One? If he has to be?
Trump: I’ve always had great respect for him, uh, and for the other candidates too, but I will say this. And I think this is well documented. Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion as to who, like you’re having it on the Democrat side, who it’s gonna be. And then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential pick. Virtually never. Has it mattered? Maybe Lyndon Johnson mattered for different reasons than what we’re talking about. Not for vote reasons, but for political reasons, other political reasons. But uh historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference. You’re voting for the president and you can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way. And I think J. D. is, I think that all of them would have been, but, but you’re not voting that way, you/re voting for the president, you’re voting for me.
This is a yes-or-no question, and Trump did not answer “yes.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump now agrees with me—it was a horrible choice. And I agree with Vance that Trump is a reprehensible person. Both Trump and Vance have very sensible views of their running mate.
9. This is one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read, but also the most depressing. Not for the faint of heart. A good rebuttal to all of the misinformation attacking Canada’s right to die policy. (Also see this comment.)
10. Here’s National Review:
It seems that many of Vance’s economic views come from his ruminations on kitchen appliances. He has said that an old refrigerator he used to have proved that “economics is fake” because it could keep lettuce fresh for longer than newer fridges. Now he says, in his stump speech, that “We believe that a million cheap, knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single American manufacturing job.”
Maybe I spoke too soon when I said that Vance was smart. (Yes, I know, there are lots of things that are so silly they could only be said by an intellectual.)
11. James Carville says don’t call them weirdos, call them creeps. After all, there’s nothing wrong with being a weirdo (I’m one myself.)