Is this an in inescapable cycle? This seems to be the trend in the US.
Warmongers always look to earlier warmongers for justification. As if childish behavior justifies lifelong childish behavior.
NY Times, guest essay by Stewart Patrick, who “directs the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”, 19 Apr 2026: The Warmongers Are Getting History All Wrong
Members of the Trump administration have been channeling their inner Thucydides, paraphrasing the Greek historian’s aphorisms about the pitiless realities of power in a world of self-interested nations.
In January, President Trump called the unilateral military intervention that ended in the kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro an example of the “iron laws that have always determined global power.” Challenged about the U.S. operation, the White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller mocked Jake Tapper on CNN for his naïveté about “international niceties” like the United Nations Charter. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
This is about Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War”. (There was a similar item noted back on Feb. 13th.) As usual Trump’s take is simplistic.
The most famous vignette in Thucydides’ “History” is the Melian Dialogue. In it, an Athenian delegation delivers an ultimatum to the island of Melos: Submit to the superior power of Athens and become a tributary state in its war against Sparta, or face destruction. The Melians plead to remain neutral but are rebuffed. “You know as well as we do,” the Athenians explain, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Melos is vanquished, its adult men put to death and its women and children sold into slavery.
What the administration ignores is the lesson that came from that kind of behavior.
What made war inevitable, in other words, was not merely the presence of rival great powers, but the fact that one of those powers was abusing the rules of the system that had enabled its rise to greatness in the first place.
Which is exactly what the US is doing, tearing down the international structure that brought the US to prominence after WWII. Ending:
Leaders, at the end of the day, require followers. Mr. Trump may insist, as he has in the Iran conflict, that “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” But if the United States stays on this course, it will find itself bereft of allies and friends, a lonely superpower in a lawless international system it has helped to create. It is not too late to reverse course — and that starts with a closer reading of Thucydides.
The US is doomed.
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While you’re at it, cut the seat belts out of your cars! You know how many people drive thousands of miles a year and never have a crash?
The Atlantic, Alexandra Petri, 22 Apr 2026: Hegseth to the Troops: We Are Bringing Back the Flu!, subtitled “Grab your cough drops. We’re going to battle.”
(This is a parody.)
WAR-FIGHTERS! As a step to making sure we are ready for warfare at all times, we have decided to ELIMINATE THE MANDATORY FLU SHOT! Nothing says “we are ready for war” like “we all have the flu.”
Get your hot-water bottles! Get your ibuprofen! Not Tylenol, though! It knows what it did. Because we are bringing FLU to the war-fighters! Are you ready to have a RUNNY NOSE and an ITCHY THROAT? Are you ready to get REALLY SERIOUSLY DEHYDRATED AND NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION? Hoo-RAH!
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Washington Post, yesterday: Annual flu vaccine no longer required for U.S. military, Hegseth says, subtitled “The move alarmed some public health experts and legislators, who warned that it would weaken troop readiness.”
The military will no longer require U.S. troops to receive the annual flu vaccine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday, rolling back what he described as an “overly broad” mandate that had been in place for seven decades.
“We’re seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our war-fighting capabilities,” Hegseth said in a video posted to his social media channels. “In this case, this includes the universal flu vaccine and the mandate behind it.”
Hegseth said that under a new policy, soldiers would be able to take the vaccine if they believed it was in their best interest, billing it as an effort to “restore freedom and strength to our joint force.”
“But we will not force you, because your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable,” he said.
And, this is the problem with faith. The conviction of things that are not true, and dangerous to others.
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Gaslighting.
JMG, 21 Apr 2026: Hegseth: Soldiers Can Now Refuse “Absurd” Flu Vaccine
“Under the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy and the freedom to express their religious convictions.
“Even when those decisions posed no threat to our military readiness, you know what I’m talking about, what happened: COVID-19 and the vaccine. No more. That era of betrayal is over.”
It was not a disastrous administration; only people who do not acknowledge actual data and facts thinks so. And prioritizing religious convictions will lead to ruin.
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So of course, the vaccine denialists suppress data they don’t like.
Washington Post, today: CDC won’t publish report showing covid shots cut likelihood of hospital visits, subtitled “The report, which had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, had been delayed. It now won’t be published at all, people familiar with the decision told The Post.”
A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter.
The move, which has not been previously reported, has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because it conflicts with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda has received pointed questioning from lawmakers during budget hearings that began last week and conclude Wednesday.
This is the way backward. Aspire to live the way people lived thousands of years ago, who knew nothing compared to what we know now. Succumb to religious superstition. Venerate the past, and the most primitive social roles. Live as other animals do; reproduction and expansion of the tribe are the priorities.
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Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla, 21 Apr 2026: Sen. Josh Hawley Calls For A ‘Christian Economy’ To Restore ‘Biblical Masculinity’
“Biblical masculinity”?? Read the story, and he’s merely harking back to the 1950s, when a man could have a single job and support a wife and children and own a house. A fantasy. And anything else is “communism.” He’s a dangerous simpleton.
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Headlines:
NY Times, Thomas B. Edsall, 21 Apr 2026: ‘Easily the Worst President in U.S. History’
Thought: why is it that MAGA Trump fans don’t realize that Trump is so widely reviled by many in the US and around the world? Because they’re insular and self-centered, I think. (And, whisper, there really are a lot of stupid people out there, in every population.)
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Washington Post, yesterday: Trump steps up a campaign against teaching English to immigrant kids, subtitled “The administration plans to dissolve the office that supports English instruction.”
First: yet again they’re tearing down institution people smarter than them have built. Second: MAGA thinks immigrants cannot assimilate into American culture, or would undermine it, despite the long history of America as a “melting pot” that has welcomed immigrants who have merged American culture into something unique. MAGA are simply racists, who want to *assure* that immigrants cannot assimilate.
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Trump and MAGA are deluding themselves, and deliberately lying, thus:
Paul Krugman, yesterday: The Vindication of Bidenomics, subtitled “Are we finally ready to acknowledge its successes?”
The graph shows what people now think. Krugman, who’s been writing about the economy for years and years, shows what the economy has actually been doing, with many more charts.
The question of why Americans are so negative about the economy is important, and I will have much more to say about that question in future posts. First, however, it will be necessary to dispel some widespread misperceptions — misperceptions that were especially acute during the Biden years. So today I’ll talk about what actually happened to ordinary Americans under Biden.
Let me address three issues in particular: Purchasing power, inequality, and the labor market.
With lotsa graphs.
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A book review.
NY Times, Bruce Cummings, 14 Apr 2026: What North Korea’s Cult of Personality Owes Christianity, subtitled: “A new history by Jonathan Cheng argues that an influx of missionaries in the late 19th century profoundly shaped the ruling Kim family dynasty.”
The reviewer has reservations about the book’s thesis, yet concludes:
American readers will find some themes of this book familiar: blind faith in a leader, no matter what he does; fantasies masquerading as state policies; sycophantic top officials trying to out-loyal one another; journalists who sound like employees of the regime; a leader slapping his name on everything.
Do MAGA folks understand the role in history they’re playing? I’m sure they don’t.
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Why are these people doing this? What is their motivation?
Futurism, Victor Tangermann, 13 Apr 2026: Moon Denialists Are So Pathetic That They’re Using AI to Fake Artemis Footage, subtitled “This is just sad.”
For many decades, conspiracy theorists have attempted to argue that NASA’s missions to the lunar surface were somehow faked — and the space agency’s latest trip around the Moon and back is no different.
Except this time, the widespread proliferation of AI slop is supercharging the trend, with denialists pointing to faked, AI-generated footage as “proof” of their claims with no apparent sense of irony.
On the one hand, I can understand the moon-landing skeptics and flat-earth believers as people who simply cannot conceive of things outside their immediate, intuitive experience. The Earth is flat, the sky is a dome over it, and so on; heavy things drop faster than lighter things, and so on. Their experiences are extensions of infantile experience, as a young child learns to understand the world. Yet it only understands the world within its immediate experience. Many people even as adults cannot get over these intuitions.
And yet, why are these people so insistent about validating their intuitions by using AI to fake images?? Doesn’t this completely undermine their thesis that real evidence would validate their beliefs, if only that evidence could be shown? Certainly they’ve had plenty of time.
There’s something deeper, psychologically, going on here. It’s not about evidence — the denialists don’t care about the many things which would not challenge human vanity. I’ll think about it.
In short, the situation is painful to witness: people so convinced of a false reality that they’re willing to fake evidence to support it.
