- Andrew O’Hehir on how few people understand the differences between socialism, capitalism, and all those other isms, as even MAGA embraces socialist ideas;
- Mark Joseph Stern on the origin of originalist ideas about the US Constitution;
- Jamelle Boudie on how Trump is living in a fantasy land;
- Two items about Trump’s underwhelming “Patriot Games.”
Some of us are more closely aligned with reality than others.
Another in a series about how few people know what these various terms actually mean.
Salon, Andrew O’Hehir, today: Even MAGA loves socialism now, subtitled “Everyone’s done with capitalism — except mainstream Democrats, late to the party as usual”
As you may have noticed, many members of the American media and political classes are currently rending their garments in terror and despair at the perceived threat of “socialism.” It’s not at all clear what that word means in 2026, in this context or any other.
It only helps a little to observe that whatever “socialism” is supposed to refer to these days, it doesn’t have much to do with an economic or political system where the state or the working class control the means of production. I’m sure we could find people out there who advocate that. Hell, I might be among them, if it were a remotely realistic possibility. But none of those people are prominent in the current (and long overdue!) internal power struggle within the Democratic Party and the American left writ large.
Come to think of it, you know who really wants state control of the economy, if only in an incoherent, ass-backward, “Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” kind of way? Donald Trump, that’s who. For all his extended excoriations of Democrats as woke America-hating Marxist radical traitors, Trump has meddled more extensively and more directly in the economy than any Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This has been apparent for some time. It’s Trump who wants to pick winners and take interest in big corporations.
… It’s going too far to call Trump a socialist. But his fantastical DIY presidency has consigned conventional right-wing ideology about the sacredness of free-market capitalism to the proverbial dustbin. …
Almost everything about Trump’s management of the economy during his second term, and pretty much everything else, has been disastrous. But even if we assume that the epic personal and institutional graft of his presidency will not survive his departure, he has created a haphazard regime that’s so deeply enmeshed in fossil fuels, Big Tech and AI, rare earths, pharmaceuticals, shipbuilding, semiconductors and the weapons industries that no one will be able to disentangle it anytime soon.
All of this is much too subtle for MAGA to notice, or care about.
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Originalism seems to be the go-to for conservatives who want to restrict any present understanding of reality to what the founders thought, often in defense of racism. Never mind that the meanings of words have changed, that the context of society has changed, ideas of who is a citizen have changed, and so on. The only way they can do this is by cherry-picking, by being wildly inconsistent about their legal philosophy. That’s my take, so far.
Slate, Mark Joseph Stern, today: Dear (Juris)Prudence: Who Cooks Up the Supreme Court’s BS Originalist Ideas, Anyway?
Posed as a Q&A to the writer. Who discusses the most recent example.
We saw a concerted effort for years by fringe academics and also politicians to try to create a theory of why the 14th Amendment doesn’t mean what it says in its very first sentence in the citizenship clause. They laundered those views, often through the media, which was far too credulous in repeating them; got a broader array of academics, especially those eager to make a name for themselves, to embrace it and tout it; and then they ended up getting four votes on the Supreme Court.
AdvertisementI think that was a scandal. I think it was catastrophic—incredibly concerning that constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship is now one vote away from possible annihilation. But that was a really good example of the originalism industrial complex, or the law-review industrial complex, churning out some nonsense that the Supreme Court came one vote away from embracing as a constitutional theory.
And,
[Clarence Thomas is] a terrible originalist, and he just cherry-picks whatever history happens to fit his preconceived notion of what the Constitution should say.
Back to the original question. The essay ends,
So where the nonsense comes from, again, is everywhere. But I do think that we should be clear, it’s not a mystery. There’s not a lot of ambiguity. We watched this happen before our very eyes, and I think one of the biggest incentives now that this is so out in the open is that these younger scholars, people like Ilan Wurman, who kind of led the charge against birthright citizenship within the legal academy, they know they can make a name for themselves.
Again, they know that they can burnish their reputation, maybe get an appointment at a better law school, right? Maybe they can get tenure by embracing and touting these ideas and getting a citation from a Supreme Court justice, maybe even a majority opinion. That is a very perverse incentive, but it absolutely exists, and until the Supreme Court swings back toward the center, I don’t see us escaping from it anytime soon.
Just as in big business, there are plenty of motivations to be selfish.
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Earlier pieces, more briefly.
- NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, yesterday: Trump Is in a Fantasy Land of His Own Making [gift link]
- As is MAGA.
Trump, according to Haberman and Swan, has not simply junked this process in its entirety — he has set up his White House to affirm his frequently arbitrary instincts above all other considerations. He has insulated himself from opposing views and made internal dissent verboten. At no point does Trump receive neutral information; just about everything is tailored to his whims, impulses and mercurial disposition. The result is that he is isolated from reality to the extent that he is practically living in a fairy tale.
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We haven’t heard much about these “Patriot Games,” that Hunger Games-style competition between two athletes from every state. That Trump set up. That’s apparently already happened. I wonder why.
The Atlantic, Matt Viser, 13 Aug 2026: Hunger Games, MAGA Style, subtitled “A gym-class-style competition might be the oddest 250th celebration yet.”
The Atlantic, Alexandra Petri, 13 Aug 2026: Are the Patriot Games Great? No. Are They Fun to Watch? Also no.
Viser:
The semiquincentennial events that President Trump has personally directed have been a celebration of his very particular version of America. The bloody UFC fight on the White House lawn was followed by the sparsely attended Great American State Fair and a world-record-breaking July 4 fireworks show held alongside a dangerous lightning storm. Next weekend will bring a high-speed car race through the museum-lined streets of Washington. But of all of these festivities, the Patriot Games in Ohio this week might have been the oddest.
Petri:
How to describe President Trump’s Freedom 250 Patriot Games? The contest, which took place earlier this week, brought students ages 14 to 17 together from across America to answer the question: What if your high-school gym teacher walked headfirst into a pole and was then asked to throw an Olympics with a budget of exactly $6 and three weeks’ notice?
This sounds about right.
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