This week was a nice long break, I took off Wednesday. There are a few weeks until the next one, since pretty much everyone takes off Christmas to New Years, it makes no sense to work.
I wrote a little thing about free reading, reading without direction. Reading for play.
I am still working my way through my big Emerson book.
I am just about finished with Say It Well. It is the speech version of On Writing Well, the titles are even similar. Both reference Elements of Style. Good writing and good speeches are hard, they share a similarity. I don't write as much as I want to, but those three books help give me fundamentals to work with.
I have been reading a bit more of the news lately. The WSJ has some good youtube videos on the incoming Trump administration policies and how they might play out. Most of the questions are around if Trump will become the tariff man or not. There are some folks who are "long tariffs", say there will be short, if not medium, term pain for the economy. Even if true, I don't think people can even handle short term pain right now, so I don't understand the whole tariff stuff. Occam's razor would say that we should just stick with the simplest explanation, that Trump is just offering a simple story as a response for his simple diagnosis of economic issues.
I read this essay in Compact, Globalism Against Democracy by Wolfgang Streeck. Streeck was written about in the Times Op-ed column due to his new book. The opening paragraph is something I have been workshopping myself in terms of where we are at in our "political economy".
With the advent of neoliberal globalism, democracy as a means for egalitarian political intervention in the economy fell into disrepute. Elites on both sides of the Atlantic led the way on this. They saw democracy as technocratically “under-complex” in the face of the “heightened complexity” of the world; prone to overburdening the state and the economy; and politically corrupt owing to its unwillingness to teach citizens “the laws of economics.”
The DNC is dying because of the discount-democratic backlash that is populism. Democrats looked at their big tent and thought they were going to win, but Americans want democracy, not neoliberal elite unity, not technocracy. America suffered from bad leadership. The world got complex, and we failed to bring Americans along. Jobs disappeared, opportunity is no longer abundant, the world got more complex, and things got more expensive. It's the economy, stupid.
It is amazing how long the neoliberal or post-war, Cold War era politics persisted. Heck, most the leaders were born and raised during the beginning.
I feel overwhelmingly optimistic and hopeful still. Trump, Musk, Kennedy, etc., are going to realize governing is hard, that technocracy wasn't purely bad, but just a system that is dead, but a system that worked to some degree. I don't believe they will realize any lasting change, and the populist reaction will die out, especially when Trump's charisma is not there to guide it whenever his brain goes or body goes.
Saw a good quote from Bloom from Scholem's Ten Unhistorical Aphorism on the Kabbalah
Authentic tradition remains hidden; only the decaying tradition changes upon a subject and only in decay does its greatness become visible.
There is not much use in being right in politics. Politics is still rooted in, ideally persuasion at first, but also force, and a lot of contingency. But it was obvious that a lot of the left was correct and has been correct about Israel for a long time. I don't think it is wise to be anti-Israel in terms of anti-Israel as a state. Two wrongs don't make a right, it is what it is now. But recent reporting by the Times on Israeli army use of human shields feels like the straw that should have broken the camel's back. The era of just war is over. Peace requires that war be fought in a certain way, not everything goes.. This article also came out before the ICC arrest warrants. Not only does using human shields violate international law, but also Israel's own law. It all just feels bad that we are being hypocritical in our values with some countries, commitment to human rights and international law, and supporting them so much with money. I get that "sometimes your allies do stuff you don't like" is part of the real world, but there has to be limits. Values matter. Refusing to send weapons anymore is the closest thing short of regime change.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall counsel.
Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world—so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it, for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements (I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy)—I repeat it therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. — Washington's Farewell Adress
We have temporary alliances with many in the region, and Israel is the least cooperate. That is all to say, at least Netanyahu and his supporters. A lot of citizens still support him. Maybe we do not abandon Israel. Sometimes friends need tough love.