Reflections on the Decline of Civil Discourse

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part I: The Problem of Dialogical Illiberalism

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part II: The Barbarians at the Gates

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part III: When the Barbarians Are at the Gates; Fascism, Bullshit, and the Paradox of Tolerance

I found much of the above to be pretty insightful, and at times, a bit uncomfortable reading.

A Photographic Tour of 19th Century Colonial Hong Kong

Peace for our time

So; Donald Trump has invited a brutal dictator and indicted war criminal to the United States in order to negotiate the surrender of another country's territory to Russia. What could possibly go wrong?

A Trip Across America (mid 1930s)

Vigil for the Transfiguration

A quick admin note

It's been forever since I did a review of the sidebar links. And sure enough, there were a lot of blogs and websites that have gone dark. It pained me to do it, but with very few exceptions, any blogs or sites that have not posted anything new in the last three years, were removed.

What Really Happened to the USS Maine?

America's Slide Into Authoritarianism is Accelerating

Office of Special Counsel launches investigation into ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith

Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official

Texas moves to make elections meaningless

Pam Bondi ousts ethics watchdog amid DOJ purge

Trump's authoritarian streak

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump's tariffs are the greatest act of economic and political self-harm in modern American History

Donald Trump has succeeded in forcing America’s democratic allies to their knees. His country must henceforth live with the invidious consequences of what he has done. 

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal,” to borrow a line from Henry Kissinger.

Vladimir Putin has strung Trump along for six months without paying a price. China has turned the tables, forcing the White House to hand over Nvidia H20 chips in exchange for rare earth magnets that Trump should have thought about before launching his trade war. Didn’t the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, say China was playing with a “pair of twos”?

Trump’s full viciousness is reserved for Canada, a Five-Eye and core NATO loyalist, so dependable that America can leave its entire northern border undefended. It is punished with 35pc tariffs, hit harder because it dares to differ on the Middle East, though the effects will ricochet straight back into the US economy.

US-aligned Taiwan gets 20pc and a landing ban in New York for the country’s president as Trump curries favour with Xi Jinping. The Swiss get 39pc for failing to jump smartly to attention.

Brazil is outraged by 50pc tariffs explicitly intended to subvert the Brazilian judiciary and rule of law. Years of diplomatic effort to lure India into the Western camp are squandered by petulant 25pc tariffs plucked out of thin air and a burst of hectoring posts of Truth Social.

There is hardly a better way to keep the unnatural but menacing “BRICS” confederacy alive as the epicentre of a new global power structure dominated by China. Trump is achieving the near impossible. He makes the predatory communist dictatorship of China look almost attractive.

And if I sound angry, it is because I am. Nobody will forget this disgraceful abuse of American power.

The average US tariff rate will settle near 20pc. This is comparable in nominal terms to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 but tariffs were already high before that infamous bill and the US was then a closed economy. Imports were just 5pc of GDP. They are 16.4pc today and include critical components that keep the productive machine going.

“We’re looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley,” said Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate for trade theory.

Euphoric markets are wishing away the reckless demolition of a global trade system built, led, and painstakingly nurtured by the US for 80 years. “People just keep wanting to believe that Trump is making sense, that he isn’t as ignorant and irresponsible as he seems. But he is,” said Prof Krugman.

US economic growth slowed to 1.1pc in the first half of the year. You have to combine the two quarters because tariff “front-running” distorted the GDP data. The relevant metric is that real final sales are the weakest since 2022.

“We estimate that real personal consumption has now stagnated on net for six months, which rarely happens outside of recession,” said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs.

If you think America is booming right now, you are looking a) in the rear view mirror, and b) at the wrong data. The next year will see a drip-drip of accumulating damage as stagflation hits with the textbook delay.

Trump’s tariffs are a tax on the US consumer. Maury Obstveld, ex-chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says the pass-through from the Trump 1.0 episode was total.

“Not only did the prices of tariffed goods rise, they rose by the full amount of the tariffs. American households and businesses bore the entire burden; none was shifted to foreign exporters,” he said.

The well-informed are watching the US bureau of labor’s monthly index of pre-tariff prices for imports. This rose in June. It is the smoking gun that tells us who is really paying the tab. The Yale Budget Lab says consumers will face price rises of 40pc for shoes and 38pc for clothes.

Read the rest here.

This needs to be read in its entirety. 

Trump Administration to Allow Proselytizing in Federal Work Place

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - Federal employees may discuss and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace, the Trump administration said on Monday, citing religious freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Agency employees may seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views" in the office, wrote Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. government's human resources agency.

Supervisors can attempt to recruit their employees to their religion, so long as the efforts aren’t “harassing in nature,” according to Kupor's statement. Agencies can't discipline their employees for declining to talk to their coworkers about their religious views.

The statement represents the latest effort of the six-month-old Republican Trump administration to expand the role of religion in the federal workplace.

Read the rest here.

Imperial Japan's last veterans are speaking out

As the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, only a few veterans of Japan’s brutal war remain. Some are talking.

Read the rest here.

A quiet mutiny is brewing in the Israeli Army

...Immense pressure has been building on Israel over the dire humanitarian conditions inside the strip, with aid agencies warning of mass malnutrition and widespread hunger. France on Thursday said it would move to recognise Palestine as a state. On Sunday, the IDF said it was introducing a ‘tactical pause’ in fighting in some areas of Gaza.

Mr Feiner’s opinion on the futility of the conflict appears to be shared by a rising number of serving and retired senior officers who are turning against Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.

Gen Assaf Orion, the former head of strategic planning at the IDF, said while there were clear strategic goals in the Israel campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there was no longer any clear military imperative for the continuation of military operations in Gaza.

He told The Telegraph: “In Gaza, I suspect that the strategic train of ends, ways and means was kidnapped by ulterior motives.

“I think the main reason for a prolonged war in Gaza is political expediency.”

Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, was even blunter.

He said: “By now it has long been clear to most Israelis that the main reason the Gaza campaign lingers on is because of Netanyahu’s political, personal and judicial interests, and he needs the war to go on in order to sustain and even enhance his grip on power.”

Many believe Mr Netanyahu fears his government will collapse if the war ended as ultra-nationalist parties in his coalition would abandon him.

“That’s the main reason. It has nothing to do with Hamas and everything to do with Netanyahu.”

If even some of the spate of leaks from Israel’s security cabinet are to be believed, the scepticism is not confined to retired generals.

Read the rest here.

And now for something a little lighter

With Obama in His Sights; Trump's Revenge Agenda Gains Momentum

This is what Washington thought retribution would look like.

When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to “lock up” or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.

Displaying a willingness to weaponize the federal government in ways that were as novel as they were audacious, he took on a wide variety of individuals and institutions — from law firms and universities to journalists and federal bureaucrats — that he felt had crossed him, failed to fall in line or embodied ideological values that he rejected.

But on Tuesday Mr. Trump reverted to earlier form, resurfacing — in a remarkably unfiltered and aggressive rant — his grievances against Mr. Obama, prominent figures in past administrations and others he associated with what he considers a long campaign of persecution dating back to the 2016 election.

Seeking to change the topic at a time when he is under bipartisan political pressure over his unwillingness to do more to release investigative files into Jeffrey Epstein, he said the time had come for his predecessors to face criminal charges.

“I let her off the hook, and I’m very happy I did, but it’s time to start after what they did to me,” Mr. Trump said of Hillary Clinton, adding: “Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly.”

“He’s guilty,” he added. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

But if his enemies list was familiar, his capacity to pursue retribution appears to be expanding.

Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to “get the I.R.S.” on those who crossed him.

Read the rest here.

The Final Tally on Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper released its final prediction Monday for how President Donald Trump’s signature legislative achievement will grow the national debt and affect U.S. households.

Over the next decade, the megabill Trump signed on July 4 would increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion and cause 10 million people to lose health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts. While the newly enacted legislation would save more than $1 trillion by cutting federal spending on health care — with the majority coming from Medicaid — CBO predicts that the package’s costs will far outweigh its savings.

The bulk of the red ink from the package comes from the GOP’s permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. The analysis finds that the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, enacted policies that would decrease the incoming federal cash flow from taxes by a total of $4.5 trillion. That sum includes the cost of tax cuts Republicans added during Senate floor debate of the package.

Read the rest here.

Foreign investors buy nearly 100 billion in euro zone debt

LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - Euro zone debt saw nearly 100 billion euros ($116 billion) of buying from outside the bloc in May, Citi said citing European Central Bank data, the latest sign that euro assets are benefitting from a shift away from U.S. markets.

The 97 billion euros of net inflows into euro zone debt with maturities longer than one year was the largest on a monthly basis since at least 2014, Citi said, pointing to portfolio flow data from the ECB.

Read the rest here.

The New York Mayoral Election

Ok, we have five guys running. One of the contenders Jim Walden, has no chance of winning, but could collect maybe five percentage points worth of votes. Mamdani has a lock on the progressive vote, but it's unclear what percentage that will translate to in the general election. Then you have Cuomo and Adams, both of whom have tarnished reputations but who are likely to split the bulk of the moderate Democratic vote. And tempting as it might be to overlook them, around 1 in 5 New Yorkers are actually registered Republicans. Their candidate, Curtis Sliwa, actually got ~27% of the vote in the 2021 election. 

Right now, I don't see Cuomo or Adams winning. The former is deeply unpopular and seen as just plain creepy. Adams is tainted by credible allegations of corruption. My guess is that it will come down to how many New Yorkers are prepared to roll the dice on an avowed socialist as mayor of a city that is also the beating heart of global capitalism. And we also need to consider the Jewish vote, which typically breaks heavily Democratic. I just can't see Mamdani carrying anywhere near a majority of the Jewish vote with his pro-Palestine record. In a normal election I'd say Curtis Sliwa's odds of being elected mayor of New York City were slightly worse than winning the Powerball. But in a five way race, if he holds that 27%, he's got an outside shot. In last year's election Donald Trump actually got 30% of the vote in New York City. If Sliwa gets the Trump voters, he goes from long shot to credible candidate. If he can pick up another 5-10% from disaffected Democrats and independents, we could... maybe... just possibly see one of the biggest election upsets in the city's history.