"Not the Freedom to Do Anything You Damn Well Pleased"

"'It's a very malleable phrase,' said Patrick Henry Jolly, a fifth great grandson of Henry. 'It's something that can be applied to many different circumstances. But I think it's important that people understand the original context.'"

Ben Finley at the Associated Press notes the semiquincentennial of Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech.

"De-Brahminizing a Profoundly Brahmin Left Party"

"In short, Democrats need a class traitor—a politician who's not afraid to ask Democrats who the social justice they prize so highly is really for. Is it really for the poor and working class who have the short end of the stick in our society or is it to make Democrats feel righteous and onside with Team Progressive? Are Democrats' social justice commitments and priorities what the poor and working class actually want? Does the language Democrats speak on these issues even make sense to them?"

Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot gives more advice to Democrats.

A Consumer of Lies

"The result, says one longtime Trump watcher, is that 'he's more sheltered from outside information than he ever has been before'. Like Saddam Hussein in his bunker as US forces approach the palace, he is being told that tariffs made the US rich in the 19th century and will do so again, that Elon Musk is popular and that the people are grateful to their leader, even when the economy is nosediving. Inside the info-bubble, any contrary voice can be dismissed, even if it requires acrobatics to do it."

Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian describes Donald Trump as "high on his own supply of fake news."

Trump U

Various writers discuss Donald Trump's attacks on higher education:

Jonathan V. Last does so at The Bulwark.

As Owen Jones does at The Guardian.

As Jonathan Chait, Edith Olmsted, Jonathan W. Gray, and Felipe De La Hoz do at The New Republic.

Trump Is for Billionaires; Bernie Is for You

Various writers discuss Bernie Sanders's responses to Donald Trump:

Aaron Regunberg does so at The New Republic.

As Zak Cheney-Rice does at New York.

As Zeeshan Aleem does at MSNBC.

As Alexander Bolton does at The Hill.

"Scientific and Public Health Success Has Provoked an Anti-Intellectual and Antisocial Backlash"

"Americans have become more individualistic, more conspiracy-minded, and less committed to collective social effort. This new social Darwinism helped elect Donald Trump—and now it's being put into practice by RFK Jr. and Elon Musk."

Jeet Heer at The Nation looks at America five years after the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

"The Conduit for Everything"

"Hamilton also dished out news, gossip and tips from across Britain, encouraging DJs to send in lists of their biggest records that he compiled into the first ever UK dance chart: in an era when, as Cook puts it, DJs 'very rarely played outside their own local catchment area', it was as if he was trying to singlehandedly forge a country-wide dance scene. 'I mean, it's impossible for kids with the internet to believe, but there were all these little scenes going on in different places, and unless you went to visit a mate for a weekend, you'd never know what was going on in the next town, there was no cross-pollination between different cities–if you lived in Brighton, you would have no idea what the Wild Bunch were playing in Bristol,' says Cook."

Alexis Petridis at The Guardian discusses the life of British music journalist and DJ James Hamilton "the 'eccentric aristo' who catalysed British club culture."

"The Task of Our Generation Is to Defeat the Totalitarianisms of the 21st Century"

"Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service."

The Atlantic runs a transcipt of the March 4, 2025, speech by French senator Claude Malhuret.

"America Has Amused Itself to Death"

"Rule by performers doesn't need to impose an autocrat's lies on the people; people do it to themselves through their entertainments. In 1984, George Orwell described doublethink as the kind of intellectual gymnastics demanded by a totalitarian society: 'To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.' Reality television and the WWE demand similar distortion-effect gymnastics; their audiences willingly suspend their disbelief and gladly accept events they know are artificial as real. The audiences come to political debate already prepared for the blurring of illusion and reality."

Stephen Marche at The Atlantic calls Donald Trump's government a "histriocracy."

February 2025 Acquisitions

Books:
Selina Alko and Sean Qualls, The Case for Loving, 2015.

Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, Ms. Tree Vol. 6: Fallen Tree, 2024.

Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, Daredevil: Born Again, 2025.

Eldo Yoshimizu and Benoist Simmat, Gamma Draconis, 2021.

Cody Ziglar and Justin Mason, Spider-Punk: Arms Race, 2024.

The Economics Book, 2024.

Movies:
The Day of the Locust, 1975.

Music:
Brand New Heavies, Shibuya 357, .

Jerry Butler, The Best of Jerry Butler, 1987.

Dave Clark Five, The Hits, .

Marianne Faithful, 20th Century Masters, .

Kendrick Lamar, GNX, 2025.

Psychedelic Furs, Beautiful Chaos: Greatest Hits Live, 2001.

Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, King & Queen, .

Jules Shear, Horse of a Different Color, .

The Smiths, The World Won't Listen, .

Vangelis, Blade Runner, .

The Who, Quadrophenia, .

"A Concept Highly Malleable in Meaning"

"As the firewall between the far right and the moderate right has eroded in recent years, many of these ideas have seeped into the mainstream. Racialised ideas of belonging and identity have become accepted even by many of those formally opposed to racism."

Kenan Malik at The Guardian discusses ideas of race and ethnicity.

Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic argues that "the DEI debate is defined by Americans talking past one another."

"Focused on Protecting Blue-Collar Communities from the Depredations of Free-Market Capitalism"

"A post-industrial cleavage both cultural and economic was never just about the case for and against leaving the European Union. At its most basic, the blue-collar leave vote expressed a desire for rupture with a globalised capitalism that had undermined the power and agency of the western working class. It also reflected a latent perception that compassionate 'one world' social liberalism coexisted happily with a callous economic version; one that had stripped people and places of dignity, status and self-esteem."

Julian Coman at The Guardian calls for British politics to turn toward Blue Labour.

"No Longer the Vessel Into Which People Can Pour Their Discontent with the Status Quo"

"Many voters were desperate for a straightforward alternative to what they saw as the stale establishmentarian liberalism of the Biden-Harris administration. So they projected its opposite, as they understood it, onto their only other viable option—and Trump, ever attuned to the needs of his audience, was more than happy to humor their hopes. But in actuality, the 2024 election was not a traditional binary choice between two coherently opposed political alternatives, the electoral equivalent of the Yankees versus the Red Sox. It was the Yankees versus a flaming tennis ball launched into orbit by a Tesla rocket—a choice not between two teams but between completely different sports. Many voters who thought they knew the rules to the game and would turn out the winners are now discovering that they didn't and won't."

Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic discusses "[t]he Trump Backers Who Have Buyer's Remorse."

Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg at The Nation give advice regarding "How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch."

At Newsweek, Ross Rosenfeld writes that "Trump Is Creating a Deep State."

David Brooks at The New York Times asserts that Trump "campaigns as a populist, but once he has power, he is the betrayer of populism."

And Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic argues that "[a] president who maintains that the law means whatever he wants it to mean is a constitutional crisis."

"WWWCS?"

"The 'what-would-the-working-class-say' test can tell you a lot about whether Democrats are on track with their approach. If the test indicates that Democrats are advocating or saying something that is likely unpopular, off-putting and/or just lacks salience with working-class people, that policy or rhetoric is probably on the wrong track. Conversely, if the test indicates that working-class people are likely to view what Democrats are advocating/saying as desirable, in tune with their values and actually important to their everyday lives, that is a very good sign."

Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot gives advice to Democrats.

"Punk Really Needs You to Understand He Hates Hippies in a Jello Biafra Sort of Way, Not a Ronald Reagan Sort of Way"

"'Hating things that right-wingers famously detest is typically tough to maneuver. For instance, a left-leaning person always has to say he hates Bud Light in a craft IPA drinker sort of way and not in the Kid Rock sense, even though neither option is ideal. Democrats also need to reiterate that they don't approve of the NFL because of CTE, not due to Colin Kaepernick. Somehow, Republicans ruined the concept of hate for everyone.'"

From The Hard Times.

"Those Words Feel Even More True Today"

"Fukuyama's pining for past ideological struggles suggests that the Last Man would eventually get bored with technocracy, consumerism, and the stultifying constraints of middle management—and seek new monsters to fight. America's flirtation with an authoritarian leader who promises he alone will fix the nation's problems and restore the country's past glory is a manifestation of this phenomenon. The greatest challenges to liberal democracy would not come from new ideological competitors but rather from complacency. 'Democracies survive and succeed only because people are willing to fight for the rule of law, human rights, and political accountability,' Fukuyama wrote in 2014."

Michael A. Cohen at The New Republic revisits Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?"

"The Power of the Story and Who Gets to Control It"

"David Blight, an American-history professor at Yale, has argued that January 6 is a novel twist on the 'Lost Cause'—the Confederate narrative of noble sacrifice that fueled successful white resistance to multiracial democracy in the years after the Civil War. The original Lost Cause strengthened into a racist political force over decades. When I reached out to Blight to discuss the comparison, he seemed unnerved by how quickly the memory of January 6 had shifted toward revisionism. 'We're in an unusual moment where evidence doesn’t seem to make any difference,' he told me. 'It's in that world that January 6 is being processed as a historical marker.'"

Quinta Jurecic at The Atlantic calls January 6 revisionism as "the politics of forgetting."

"A Combination of the Rich and the Ignorant"

"This combination is the embodiment of Hamilton's warning in 'Federalist No. 71' that the people are continually beset by 'the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it.' A demagogue with contempt for the Constitution, colluding with many of the wealthiest Americans on the promise that their wealth will be translated into political power and favors is just the sort of alliance that the Founders warned would corrupt popular government: that 'the people,' in Madison’s phrase, 'would be misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men.'"

At The Atlantic, George Thomas writes that today "the country is witnessing these three fears come together: a demagogue who unites the self-interested rich with the politically ignorant."

And Alexis Coe at Slate revists pertinent sentences cut from the final draft of George Washington's Farewell Address.

"If the Forces of Science and Health Are to Stage a Comeback, It's Important to Understand Why Those Forces Have Gone into Eclipse"

"We live in an impersonal universe, indifferent to our hopes and wishes, subject to extreme randomness. We don't like this at all. We crave satisfying explanations. We want to believe that somebody is in control, even if it's somebody we don't like. At least that way, we can blame bad events on bad people. This is the eternal appeal of conspiracy theories. How did this happen? Somebody must have done it—but who? And why?"

David Frum at The Atlantic explains "Why the Covid Deniers Won."

And he adds that "[t]o rename the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America' is to reconceptualize the United States not as a sending point, but as a receiving point; no longer a country that stamps itself upon history, but a country upon which history is stamped."