Project 2025
Did you know that there’s a Project 2025 website? And a thirty-chapter agenda?
Jim’s question
Any kings in the United States?
HCR on Donald J. Trump v. United States
She cites Roberts, Alito, and Kavanaugh as having said that no one is above the law.
Of presidents and kings
Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent.
On Tyranny, summarized
n his newsletter, Timothy Snyder offers a summary of his 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Timothy Snyder, from “9 Theses”
As the Kremlin has made clear, “denazification” means “deukrainization,” which is nothing other than the aspiration to genocide.
Two presidents
In The New York Times, Mikhail Zygar describes Vladimir Putin’s world. As I read, I kept thinking of another president.
“The Other Mr. President”
From This American Life, a compilation of old and new stories about Vladimir Putin.
Mary Miller stands alone
The Chicago Tribune reports that Mary Miller (our household’s representative in Congress) is the only member of the Illinois congressional delegation not to denounce Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“A great piece of land”
Not a culture, not a history, just “a great piece of land,” with a lot of people on it, and a good price — just “two dollars” in sanctions. It’s the same mentality that let the defeated former president see Greenland as something to buy (or trade Puerto Rico for), and the same mentality that lets him see women as parts to be grabbed at will.
A cartoon from Ukraine
“This is not a ‘meme’, but our and your reality right now.”
Orange Crate Art: “Proto-neofascist”
Vanity Fair reports that James Mattis has told people that Donald Trump* is a “proto-neofascist.”
Things fall apart
“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”
War on books
Authoritarians, at least most of them, take note of books.