What a great sentence: “Generally speaking, truth breaks through the barrier of bullshit, and reasserts its big beautiful head, in the end.” That’s like something I’d expect to find in a salty/spicy second or third draft of a Dickens novel.
I fear your larger point too. Everything comes to an end: wars, dictatorships, plagues, and even democracies perhaps. I guess the question is what wreckage we are left with after the current regime has faded into a memory and no one you know knows anyone they know who had ever been a supporter.
I guess my comment was a bit more pessimistic unfortunately. I meant in the sense that in West Germany in the late 1940s and early 1950s amid the rubble and privation there was supposedly nary a Nazi to be found and everyone you met claimed they were secretly part of the White Rose resistance. All the Nazis and their sympathizers were still there, undermining recovery and progress, but they wouldn’t accept accountability for their actions and beliefs.
I wrote to Timothy Snyder some months ago, suggesting he tends to see the world through the lens of the countries he has studied (Eastern Europe) and so has a grim metallic Orwellian view of what is coming in Trump 2.0. Since fate and my Guatemalan spouse consorted to keep me in the Western Hemisphere for most of my final two decades in the foreign service, I saw Trump as a combination of Peron, Chavez, and even Evo Morales (PT Barnum too). Not so much grim metallic authoritarianism as populist political charisma of a transparently poisonous kind, deepening dysfunction as institutions were further eroded and became rotten, and pervasive in your face corruption would characterize the MAGA resurgence. (Speaking of which, the MAGA resurgence feels to me like a strain of powerful bacteria that withstood a regime of heavy antibiotics stopped too soon, so has come surging back with strength and resistance it didn't have before. Unkillable now?) Of course, Snyder, with his tens of thousands of subscribers, never wrote back, and now I'm not sure he's wrong.
Just imagine, when you've got tens of thousands of subscribers, he'll be writing to you ... :-)
The image about the infection, where the antibiotics were stopped too soon and where the infection is now back with a vengeance, works, it's a good analogy.
I can remember - or at least I think I remember - a related discussion during history class. We were young then, full of conviction that we would have been one of the good guys, we would have been part of the resistance. I can't remember the details of that discussion, just that I took away the conviction that people are people: A small number of them are heroes, a small number are passionate supporters of the regime and the vast majority are trying to keep their head down. Maybe engage in some open acts of support, maybe in some small acts of resistance but generally they're trying to go with the flow. I took away that most of us are people like that. Not active enablers but not also active resistance.
(I also took away that I'd be likely in that group, too.)
I think you're right. And honest too. (I'd probably be hiding right behind you.). If you see the belated responses among Democrats here to Biden's cover-up, you see that exact thing. Many people knew about it all along, and simply went along with the consensus, not wanting to rock the boat. Of course the Biden team really deserves tarring and feathering for this massive systematic deception of the American people (and possibly the world). One wonders if the Republican Party will have the opportunity for a similar reckoning down the line...
This reminds me of a BTL conversation as part of a newspaper article I had with a lady who lives in Strassbourg. We got talking about the pictures of the ladies, who had their heads shaved after the defeat in France. You will know the pictures, you will know of the ladies, who might not have been actively collaborated but who might just have been a bit friendly with some German soldiers. Maybe to get something extra for their children. An extra coupon or something.
I can remember us talking, that the people who were so eager in shaving the ladies' heads were probably or possibly doing that to deflect from their own actions in accommodating the occupying force. And I can remember writing that I didn't think that I'd have had courage in that situation but that I hoped that I'd have had the kindness, the basic humanity, to hand the ladies a scarf or a coat.
Wonderful insight. I remember in graduate school how proud of myself I was to come up with my grandiose “Mortgage Theory of History” to explain how authoritarians perpetuate their regimes: the border guards and secret police and army officers tell themselves, “I’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to feed,” so they keep their head down and do what they are told. My advisor was a kind man so all he said was, “that’s just life, young man.”
I have been disappointed at my daily micro failures to live up to my beliefs that we are in an existential crisis for our democracy. I’ve already started sanding down the edges in my conversations with acquaintances, not being sure of where they stand. I tell myself it is important to keep lines of communication open and blah blah, but it is not that and I know it.
I signed an open letter of former national security officials warning about TFG’s threat to the Constitution, so I’m sure I will not be hired in the near term for a State Department program that allows former diplomats to work part-time, but other than that I’ve not really done much of anything that matches my concern with my actions or puts my comfortable life at risk. Even down to my unwillingness to use my real name in this forum. My dad was a Holocaust survivor and that is always in the back of my head that I don’t want to stick out too much. So I would have been hiding behind both of you. Without a doubt. :-)
And I’m trying my best not to sound shrill but am having a seriously hard time. (I lose a subscriber or two for each three or four I gain, I’m guessing for that reason). What are we supposed to say and do in response to this madness?
It amused me way more than it should have during my Foreign Service career to say to reporters when I was tasked with briefing them on background on something or other but I wasn’t going to be drawn into a controversial area, “You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment…” I never knew if they got the reference but once or twice one of them laughed.
I wouldn't go so far. I haven't seen the full series of the the American House of Cards, just a few episodes but they were good. Slick. (Also, I liked Robin something)
Re the British one, part of it was the TIME when it was broadcast, had that been a few years later, the programme would have had much less of an impact.
Great weaving together of a number of strands, thank you.
Re the performative ignorance displayed in congress by Kristi Noem (and a few of her cabinet colleagues) I wonder whether you had come across this article?
I had not seen this article. Thanks for sending. I admit I thought at first that she must be pretending (or even performing) but, after thinking again, I thought it couldn't be possible. That's altogether too much thinking. But it's true that Sarah Palin was a true pioneer in the sheer hutzpah of parading one's ignorance. Has it reached a point where the puppets in the president's orbit actually have to pretend to be stupid? (Pete Hegseth still takes the cake in my view, a real bimbo's bimbo.) If I don't quite believe it, I hope it's not for reasons of a failing imagination. But I fear it might be.
I fear we will be reading about dozens of these kinds of stories, which is what happens when due process is abandoned. And to think that immigrants in whatever category commit fewer crimes per capita than those native born. I remember the Mexican-American writer Richard Rodriguez (a log cabin republican) telling the news hour a generation ago how he would change the US immigration system. Allow people to stay in the USA for up to 3 generations but then send them away. Because by that time they had become lazy and complacent, and we needed to make room for the restless, enterprising, and hard-working immigrants who really wanted to be here. I borrowed from that idea in a piece I published about a year ago in American Purpose, but was excoriated by at least one critic for being insensitive to Americans who don’t have it as good as I do. Something to it. BTW, Richard Rodriguez used to call immigration from Latin America “la reconquista”. Love that phrase.
Neo-Orwellian is the perfect description of what we are experiencing. 1984 has been recapitulated in project 2025 and is playing out before our eyes. You so succinctly captured the truly astounding instances of the our now evolving but very real totalitarian reality—and all of this in the scope of one week! It is amazing too how ignorance based on conspiratorial talking points is baldly and boldly put on display and used to justify horrendous acts—all in deference to the cult of the leader. Thank you for continuing to point this out. Unfortunately, this kind of discourse countering ignorant and repressive thinking is necessary on a daily basis.
I’ve been accused of being shrill, but fear that the facts on the ground are forcing my hand. I really want to be balanced and to call it as I see it. Whataboutism feels inaccurate in this context, and wrong. Thanks for weighing in.
What a great sentence: “Generally speaking, truth breaks through the barrier of bullshit, and reasserts its big beautiful head, in the end.” That’s like something I’d expect to find in a salty/spicy second or third draft of a Dickens novel.
I fear your larger point too. Everything comes to an end: wars, dictatorships, plagues, and even democracies perhaps. I guess the question is what wreckage we are left with after the current regime has faded into a memory and no one you know knows anyone they know who had ever been a supporter.
I sure the fuck hope it’s true, too. 😳
I guess my comment was a bit more pessimistic unfortunately. I meant in the sense that in West Germany in the late 1940s and early 1950s amid the rubble and privation there was supposedly nary a Nazi to be found and everyone you met claimed they were secretly part of the White Rose resistance. All the Nazis and their sympathizers were still there, undermining recovery and progress, but they wouldn’t accept accountability for their actions and beliefs.
I wrote to Timothy Snyder some months ago, suggesting he tends to see the world through the lens of the countries he has studied (Eastern Europe) and so has a grim metallic Orwellian view of what is coming in Trump 2.0. Since fate and my Guatemalan spouse consorted to keep me in the Western Hemisphere for most of my final two decades in the foreign service, I saw Trump as a combination of Peron, Chavez, and even Evo Morales (PT Barnum too). Not so much grim metallic authoritarianism as populist political charisma of a transparently poisonous kind, deepening dysfunction as institutions were further eroded and became rotten, and pervasive in your face corruption would characterize the MAGA resurgence. (Speaking of which, the MAGA resurgence feels to me like a strain of powerful bacteria that withstood a regime of heavy antibiotics stopped too soon, so has come surging back with strength and resistance it didn't have before. Unkillable now?) Of course, Snyder, with his tens of thousands of subscribers, never wrote back, and now I'm not sure he's wrong.
Just imagine, when you've got tens of thousands of subscribers, he'll be writing to you ... :-)
The image about the infection, where the antibiotics were stopped too soon and where the infection is now back with a vengeance, works, it's a good analogy.
I can remember - or at least I think I remember - a related discussion during history class. We were young then, full of conviction that we would have been one of the good guys, we would have been part of the resistance. I can't remember the details of that discussion, just that I took away the conviction that people are people: A small number of them are heroes, a small number are passionate supporters of the regime and the vast majority are trying to keep their head down. Maybe engage in some open acts of support, maybe in some small acts of resistance but generally they're trying to go with the flow. I took away that most of us are people like that. Not active enablers but not also active resistance.
(I also took away that I'd be likely in that group, too.)
I think you're right. And honest too. (I'd probably be hiding right behind you.). If you see the belated responses among Democrats here to Biden's cover-up, you see that exact thing. Many people knew about it all along, and simply went along with the consensus, not wanting to rock the boat. Of course the Biden team really deserves tarring and feathering for this massive systematic deception of the American people (and possibly the world). One wonders if the Republican Party will have the opportunity for a similar reckoning down the line...
This reminds me of a BTL conversation as part of a newspaper article I had with a lady who lives in Strassbourg. We got talking about the pictures of the ladies, who had their heads shaved after the defeat in France. You will know the pictures, you will know of the ladies, who might not have been actively collaborated but who might just have been a bit friendly with some German soldiers. Maybe to get something extra for their children. An extra coupon or something.
I can remember us talking, that the people who were so eager in shaving the ladies' heads were probably or possibly doing that to deflect from their own actions in accommodating the occupying force. And I can remember writing that I didn't think that I'd have had courage in that situation but that I hoped that I'd have had the kindness, the basic humanity, to hand the ladies a scarf or a coat.
Wonderful insight. I remember in graduate school how proud of myself I was to come up with my grandiose “Mortgage Theory of History” to explain how authoritarians perpetuate their regimes: the border guards and secret police and army officers tell themselves, “I’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to feed,” so they keep their head down and do what they are told. My advisor was a kind man so all he said was, “that’s just life, young man.”
I have been disappointed at my daily micro failures to live up to my beliefs that we are in an existential crisis for our democracy. I’ve already started sanding down the edges in my conversations with acquaintances, not being sure of where they stand. I tell myself it is important to keep lines of communication open and blah blah, but it is not that and I know it.
I signed an open letter of former national security officials warning about TFG’s threat to the Constitution, so I’m sure I will not be hired in the near term for a State Department program that allows former diplomats to work part-time, but other than that I’ve not really done much of anything that matches my concern with my actions or puts my comfortable life at risk. Even down to my unwillingness to use my real name in this forum. My dad was a Holocaust survivor and that is always in the back of my head that I don’t want to stick out too much. So I would have been hiding behind both of you. Without a doubt. :-)
And I’m trying my best not to sound shrill but am having a seriously hard time. (I lose a subscriber or two for each three or four I gain, I’m guessing for that reason). What are we supposed to say and do in response to this madness?
That's nice of you guys, real nice, saying that my arse is so big that the both of you could hide behind it!
I thought we were friends .... :-(
:-)
Love your moniker, Francis Urquhart!
It amused me way more than it should have during my Foreign Service career to say to reporters when I was tasked with briefing them on background on something or other but I wasn’t going to be drawn into a controversial area, “You might think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment…” I never knew if they got the reference but once or twice one of them laughed.
https://images.app.goo.gl/rSLFh3MJq8RhuXi97
The British show was better than the American one, just like The Office.
I wouldn't go so far. I haven't seen the full series of the the American House of Cards, just a few episodes but they were good. Slick. (Also, I liked Robin something)
Re the British one, part of it was the TIME when it was broadcast, had that been a few years later, the programme would have had much less of an impact.
The British House of Cards was really a thing of beauty!
Great weaving together of a number of strands, thank you.
Re the performative ignorance displayed in congress by Kristi Noem (and a few of her cabinet colleagues) I wonder whether you had come across this article?
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/23/kristi-noems-proud-maga-bimbo-act-builds-on-the-legacy-of-sarah-palin/
I had not seen this article. Thanks for sending. I admit I thought at first that she must be pretending (or even performing) but, after thinking again, I thought it couldn't be possible. That's altogether too much thinking. But it's true that Sarah Palin was a true pioneer in the sheer hutzpah of parading one's ignorance. Has it reached a point where the puppets in the president's orbit actually have to pretend to be stupid? (Pete Hegseth still takes the cake in my view, a real bimbo's bimbo.) If I don't quite believe it, I hope it's not for reasons of a failing imagination. But I fear it might be.
Can I draw your attention to a different article I've just read?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-164429076
I thought it'd be of interest to you.
I fear we will be reading about dozens of these kinds of stories, which is what happens when due process is abandoned. And to think that immigrants in whatever category commit fewer crimes per capita than those native born. I remember the Mexican-American writer Richard Rodriguez (a log cabin republican) telling the news hour a generation ago how he would change the US immigration system. Allow people to stay in the USA for up to 3 generations but then send them away. Because by that time they had become lazy and complacent, and we needed to make room for the restless, enterprising, and hard-working immigrants who really wanted to be here. I borrowed from that idea in a piece I published about a year ago in American Purpose, but was excoriated by at least one critic for being insensitive to Americans who don’t have it as good as I do. Something to it. BTW, Richard Rodriguez used to call immigration from Latin America “la reconquista”. Love that phrase.
Neo-Orwellian is the perfect description of what we are experiencing. 1984 has been recapitulated in project 2025 and is playing out before our eyes. You so succinctly captured the truly astounding instances of the our now evolving but very real totalitarian reality—and all of this in the scope of one week! It is amazing too how ignorance based on conspiratorial talking points is baldly and boldly put on display and used to justify horrendous acts—all in deference to the cult of the leader. Thank you for continuing to point this out. Unfortunately, this kind of discourse countering ignorant and repressive thinking is necessary on a daily basis.
I’ve been accused of being shrill, but fear that the facts on the ground are forcing my hand. I really want to be balanced and to call it as I see it. Whataboutism feels inaccurate in this context, and wrong. Thanks for weighing in.