Did COVID or politics kill movie going?

Again, I find myself in the mood to kind of ignore the rapidly evolving disaster that is the Trump administration, and note (as I usually do each year) that it's Oscar time today.  I will go over my poor mood regarding the state of cinema again, instead.

It seems to me that the world is having trouble getting over the apparent fatal blow that Covid and/or the polarisation of American politics has caused to interest in attending the cinema.  Or is it that I'm just getting older and getting lazier to going out?  (I don't think it's the latter.)

As I said to my daughter a few months ago, the problem with cinema feels a bit like we're waiting for a new trend that simply isn't turning up.   In the depressing 70's, you had dark social realism as a thing;  by the end of it, though, you had the science fiction/adventure blockbuster era kicking off, which took us through the 80's.  I'm not sure, without checking, what the 90's brought us - off the top of my head, we had the best 'serious Spielberg' era (with Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan, and then in the 2000's his excellent adult oriented science fiction);  but overall, I think it was a decent decade with a decent mix of themes.

In the 2000's, I was mostly becoming a father and not going out much, but towards the end was enjoying a lot of kids animation.   And then in the 2010's was the peak of the Marvel superhero movies, which I only half followed, but the best were pretty decent.

Now, Marvel and superheros feels well and truly dead, with efforts to revive it spluttering badly.  DC superhero movies never appealed that much.  And there is a well defined backlash to Disney's culture warring efforts (heavy emphasis on female protagonists and diverse sexuality), which I reluctantly agree is kinda deserved. 

One thing I continually feel puzzled about is how Hollywood used to be capable to making mature movies on current US political and cultural issues - yet at the time US politics is most intensely deserving of scrutiny, it seems the political polarisation has killed off interest in doing it.  I suspect it may be because there feels like there is no "middle" to appeal to anymore, and if you make a movie slanted to the Left or Right, the polarisation means social media campaigns can kill off a movie's box office so easily.

It's all a pity.

 

The state of US politics

Some light hearted content (while we wait for the shooting to start)

I've been busy, and sorry about the madness

By way of explanation as to slow posting:

*  Work had been very busy and distracting for quite a few months now, and it's not going to get much better for another month.

*  American politics has gone over an edge which makes it feel there's no point in talking about how bad it is - it's just too obvious and leaving (I think) a lot of people like me feeling kind of speechless at the spectacle.

* I have an idea or two for longer posts I want to write about some "big picture" stuff about the state of the world, but am having trouble finding the time to get some older books I want to reference off my bookcase, where they hide, somewhere...

Anyway, I also apologise for being a bit slow to delete the mad anti-Semitic comments made by Graeme Bird in recent posts.   (Tim, I'm surprised you had to ask who it was!)

Is there some sort of competition underway as to how badly people can act regarding Gaza?

 I mean, seriously:

*   Hamas thinks looking like militaristic terrorists while they hand over emaciated hostages, just after they have just suffered a massive and inevitable defeat, is a good look??     

*   Trump thinks that talking about America "owning" Gaza is not like running up and throwing petrol on the fire??    

*  Netanyahu thinks - what?   That further grinding the strip into concrete dust will force the countries adamant that they aren't going to upend their own regimes by taking in a million or two Gazans to change their minds??   And that expanding into the West Bank helps encourage Jordan into co-operating with the closure of Gaza?   

I mean, seriously, listen to Trump being an idiot:

King Abdullah II of Jordan on Tuesday rebuffed President Trump’s proposal for his country to absorb Palestinians living in Gaza, saying that he remained opposed to a plan Mr. Trump has laid out to clear the territory so the United States can seize control of it.

During a “constructive” meeting with the U.S. president at the White House, King Abdullah said, he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the unified Arab position,” he stated in a post on social media after the meeting. “Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”

His statement came hours after Mr. Trump insisted the United States had the authority to “take” Gaza, part of an effort to pressure the leader of Jordan and other Arab nations to embrace a forced removal, which has drawn widespread condemnation.

“We will have Gaza,” said Mr. Trump, as he sat next to Mr. Abdullah and the Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan. “It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.”

Who knew a constitutional crisis would be so easy?

All it takes is for the executive to think it doesn't have to obey the courts, and for a craven Congress to shrug its shoulders. 

I wonder at what point someone in the military feels they have to intervene, because it's kinda starting to look like that is what it would take.

Or does it only need something to get to the Supreme Court and for it to say "executive, no, you can't ignore the courts, if you want constitutional government"?

The trouble with that is, if it is a majority statement, with a few of the corrupt MAGA supporters not joining in, Trump and Vance would likely say its an illegitimate, political, decision.

As for the matter of the ease of constitutional crisis, I guess some Australian readers would say "well, the sacking of Whitlam was easy too."   Which is true.   But compared to the possible problems of how to deal with a rogue President in the US, our system at least democratically resolved it quickly and neatly.

Update:  When even the Wall Street Journal is putting out videos asking if the country is in a constitutional crisis, you know it is getting pretty serious...

 

Only the best (outright racist) people

So, as this Reuters story tells us, of Elon Musk's kiddie team of "DOGE" pretend department of cost cutters and ideology enforcers:

*    one had a X account re-post Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate content;

*   one was sacked for leaking a company's proprietary information;

*   one resigned after outright racist content was posted on his X account.

The last example has had more detail supplied in other media, such as this BBC story:

The account connected to Mr Elez - first reported by the Wall Street Journal - posted a variety of inflammatory comments that were verified by the BBC as authentic.

"Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool," read one post from the pseudonymous account in July.

Another post, in September, said: "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

"Normalize Indian hate," another post that month said.

All of the posts have since been deleted.

JD Vance, with Indian wife, has said people shouldn't be mean to him.  And Elon deals with it by having a X poll of his MAGA app:

On Friday, President Donald Trump, when asked about Mr Elez's resignation from Doge and Vance's support for the employee, said he didn't know about "that particular thing", but agreed with the vice-president on the matter.

Writing on X, Vance said that while he disagreed "with some of Elez's posts... I don't think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid's life".

Earlier in the day, Musk posted a poll on X inviting users to say whether the staff member should be brought back.

At least 78% voted in favour of his return out of hundreds of thousands who participated, according to results displayed underneath.

What an appalling bunch of people.  

Some useful commentary on Gaza and Trump

From the New York Times:

For decades, the question of whether and how Palestinians might build a state in their homeland has been at the center of Middle East politics — not only for the Palestinians, but for Arabs around the region, many of whom regard the Palestinian cause almost as their own.

Forcing Palestinians out of their remaining territory, Arabs say, would doom Palestinian statehood and destabilize the entire region in the process.

So it was a nightmare for the Palestinians’ closest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan — and a dream for Israel’s far-right-dominated government — when President Trump proposed moving everyone out of the Gaza Strip and onto their soil, an idea he repeated in a White House news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday.

Egypt and Jordan have responded with categorical “nos” — even if their reasons aren’t all borne out of pure concern for the Palestinian plight: Cairo dreads what Palestinian refugees in Sinai would mean for Egypt’s security. Militants could launch attacks at Israel from Egyptian soil, inviting Israeli retaliation, or be recruited into the local insurgency in Sinai that Egypt has battled for years. Jordan’s king has to reckon with a population that is more than half Palestinian, so to accept more such refugees could further raise tensions.

That refusal has been backed up by political independents and opposition figures in Egypt, along with mouthpieces for the country’s authoritarian government, underscoring how the Palestinian issue can unify even the bitterest political opponents there.

Khaled el-Balshy, the editor of one of the few remaining Egyptian media outlets that are not pro-government and the head of the national journalists’ union, issued a statement on Wednesday calling Mr. Trump’s proposal “a clear violation of human rights and international laws.”

Moustafa Bakry, a loudly pro-government member of Parliament, suggested, without giving specifics, that Egypt could repel the displacement with force. “Egypt can move forward with other measures, because the Egyptian military can never allow this,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

But Mr. Trump has shown little regard for the two countries’ concerns, their sovereignty or the idea of Palestinian statehood.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said of Egypt and Jordan during an earlier meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”....

Egypt has cooperated closely with Israel on security in its restive Sinai Peninsula, which borders both Gaza and Israel. But while Egypt and Jordan are on speaking terms, and sometimes more, with Israel, their populations have never stopped seeing Israel as an enemy, especially after its most recent assault on Gaza.

Analysts say the incentives of keeping U.S. aid, which makes up a limited portion of each country’s budget, are minor compared to their fears of alienating their populations by appearing complicit in what many see as ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Though the rulers of both countries frequently brook little dissent, often using repression to silence internal criticism, analysts say they cannot afford to ignore public opinion.

“It’s no joke going up against Trump, particularly for Egypt and Jordan,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. But since “this would really be a bridge way too far for much of public opinion,” he added, “there is no other option for an Arab leader. I don’t see what else they could do.”

 There is more at the link - although I am not sure if it is open or paywalled....

 Update:   Hey, even the extremely pro-Trump site Hot Air agrees with the New York Times - 

Sorry, But Trump Is Wrong on Resettling Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt

 Update 2:  The laughable spin of the Wall Street Journal:

The reaction to Mr. Trump’s flyer was predictably hyperbolic. Some called it “ethnic cleansing,” as if the U.S. military would round up two million Gazans against their will. Others criticized Mr. Trump for U.S. imperialism, contrary to his campaign theme of deriding foreign interventions. For those reasons and more, his Gaza daydream is fanciful.

But note that Mr. Trump expressed admirable sympathy for the Palestinians and their plight. The Gaza strip “has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it,” he said Tuesday at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Who could disagree with that?

Some sympathy:  "You lost, now you have to move to another country."

In which I find something useful via Helen Dale

As I have long said, I am no fan at all of Helen Dale and her writings, but occasionally, very occasionally, I will drop into Twitter X and see what she is commenting on.

This time, she linked to an article she wrote about another writer's book about the indigenous academia world of "settler-colonialism", a phrase of no obvious meaning (much like a mantra simply made to repeat in front of other academics)  which I have seen used endlessly on the Twitter accounts of the likes of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan - the indigenous/Irish academic who is, for my money, a hot favourite for any award there may be for the worst waste of money on academic research funding in Australia (see the list at the end of the article linked).      

I'm still not sure who claims credit for the term - Dale claims a lot of Australian academia helped it spread, but she's light on details.  Nonetheless, this part of Dale's article about it seems to me to explain it well:

This replacement of history with myth leads Kirsch to argue the ideology is a “political theology,” that is, a secularised religious concept expressed civically. A form of original sin where the everlasting process of colonisation means never-ending exploitation, racism, misogyny, and genocide, it suggests only the Noble Savage that is the Native can redeem us.

In one of the field’s most influential papers, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Eve Tuck of SUNY New Paltz and K. Wayne Yang of UC San Diego write that “relinquishing settler futurity” is necessary if we are to imagine “the Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone.”

And here’s me thinking futurity referred to a competitive equestrian event for younger horses.

As Kirsch says, “The goal is not to change this or that public policy but to engender a permanent disaffection, a sense that the social order ought not to exist.”...

Much of On Settler-Colonialism turns on Kirsch’s argument that because it requires policies that can never be implemented (“deport 97 per cent of the US population!”), it’s merely depressing and stupid. “America should not exist” is never analysed with a view to doing anything apart from making the place miserable with itself. 

Yes:  this is exactly what it has been like to watch indigenous rights street protest in Australia for the last couple of decades - as silly as watching 1960's communists trying to muster support for abolishing capitalism, and simply designed, so it seems, to perpetuate grievance without any sensible work as to how to actually improve things.

I will add to this later...

A good idea

Yeah, I didn't realise that was a meme from the movie, which I haven't seen for many decades.

I've no doubt mentioned before, though, that I'm pretty sure Paulin Kael called it "an anti-exploitation exploitation movie" and that phrase has stuck in my mind...

Column on tariff threats states the obvious

Of course, the Republican Party is now only comprised of the dumb and conspiracy addled, cynical, and dishonest (and the people in each of those categories are all in for culture wars too), so of course they will claim Trump is the smart tactician in his current tariff threat rounds which have been put on hold.

An article in the New York Times states the obvious about why it is not a good long term strategy:

“I don’t want to use names, but tariffs are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything else you want,” Mr. Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office. “When you’re the pot of gold, the tariffs are very good, they’re very powerful and they’re going to make our country very rich again.”

The president is right that the American economy is a powerful weapon, and that a trade war would hit other countries harder. Canada and Mexico in particular are deeply dependent on trade with the United States. They send more than 80 percent of their exports to the United States, and could be crippled by a prolonged fight.

But many economists say the strategy will cost the United States, too. They estimate that as strong as the American economy is, trade wars will weaken it by raising prices, stalling investment, slowing growth and dragging down exports. Many farmers and businesses who would see their costs go up and export markets evaporate have protested the risk.

Even if the president ultimately does not follow through on tariffs, the uncertainty his policies are creating could discourage businesses from investing in new factories and hiring workers until they have a clearer picture of how trade will unfold.

Emily Blanchard, an economics professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, argued that the tariff threats would eat away at U.S. economic leverage. She said that Mr. Trump was “undermining the trust that provides the foundation of U.S. strength” by throwing around the country’s weight in global markets.

If companies and investors expect the United States to deploy tariffs regularly, they will hedge against future disruptions by reducing their reliance on American markets, she said. “Trade policy is an economic weapon that becomes less powerful every time it is used,” she said....

Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator and vice president at the Asia Society, said Mr. Trump was correct that trade wars would be more painful for Canada and Mexico. “There is no doubt that our partners will be more severely impacted than the United States, with over three-fourths of their exports destined for our market,” she said.....

Beyond the effects on companies, trade experts said there could be longer-term damage to U.S. interests. That is because the tariff threats would eat away at international confidence that the United States will abide by trade rules and norms that govern when governments deploy tariffs and why.

Edward Alden, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the United States had nurtured a system of international rules and predictability for decades. With Trump’s decision to move ahead with tariffs over the weekend in a “random, incomprehensible fashion, he said, “that era has come to an end.”

“The United States is now signaling that tariffs are an all-purpose club to be used for whatever policy goal the president wishes,” he said. “That formula will create enormous, in many ways unprecedented, uncertainty not just in North America but in the entire global economy.”

Hence, just as Australia was a victim of Chinese reprisal tariffs due to their not liking Scott Morrison's comments on COVID, Trump now thinks he can use tariffs for simply anything he doesn't like.

This is such a bad example to be setting, just as implicit sabre rattling over the Panama Canal is a bad example to both Russia and China.

 

 

 

Watch out, Darwin

With all the threats being made by Trump over the Panama Canal, let's remember that it's all about Chinese companies operating not the canal itself, but port facilities near it:

Two of the five ports adjacent to the canal, Balboa and Cristóbal, which sit on the Pacific and Atlantic sides respectively, have been operated by a subsidiary of Hutchison Port Holdings since 1997.

The company is a subsidiary of the publicly listed CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing.

It has port operations in 24 countries, including the UK.

Although it is not state-owned by China, says Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, there have been concerns in Washington over how much control Beijing would be able to exert over the company.

A wealth of potentially useful strategic information on ships passing through the waterway flows through these ports.

"There is an increasing geopolitical tension of economic nature between the US and China," Mr Berg says. "That kind of information regarding cargo would be very useful in the event of a supply chain war."

CK Hutchison did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

The bids to operate those ports faced almost no competition, according to Andrew Thomas, a professor at the University of Akron who has written a book on the canal. "The US at the time didn't really care about these ports and Hutchison faced no objection," he says.

Chinese companies, both private and state-owned, have also strengthened their presence in Panama through billions of dollars in investments, including a cruise terminal and a bridge to be built over the canal.

This "package of Chinese activities", as described by Mr Thomas, might have prompted Trump's assertion that the canal is "owned" by China, but operation of those ports does not equate to ownership, he stresses.

Beijing has repeatedly said that China's ties with Latin America are characterised by "equality, mutual benefit, innovation, openness and benefits for the people".

And this all put me in mind of Darwin and its port being leased to a Chinese company.

Wikipedia summaries the latest in its controversy as follows:

In August 2019, a proposal was launched by Federal Labor MP Nick Champion to re-nationalise the port, thereby ending Chinese control.^[17]

A 2021 review of the leasing arrangements found there were no national security grounds to overturn the lease.^[18] In October 2023, the federal government announced it will not cancel Landbridge's lease after another review.^[18] The announcement brought to an end to an eight-year saga regarding Chinese control of the port.^[18]

 So given that Trump is an idiot, who would be surprised if he next tries telling the Australian government it has to end that lease, or else tariffs will be imposed?

 

Maybe a "reply all" issue...

As we can all agree the Trump administration is going about as appallingly as expected (I knew, before he did his press conference, that he would try to bring in DEI as a reason for a plane crash, with no evidence whatsoever), I am instead avoiding posting about him as he is too awful to contemplate.

Instead, this story is half amusing:

A local health district in New South Wales has apologised after an administrator accidentally sent an email to junior doctors calling them a “workforce of clinical marshmellows [sic]”.

The email, seen by Guardian Australia, was sent by a medical administration manager at a hospital who appears to be complaining about a doctor’s response to a rostering issue.

The misfired message starts: “Seriously!

“I wonder if any of them realise that they are a doctor and that this is what happens. Oh that’s right … I forgot. Life style [sic] before career,” the message continued.

“God help us in the future. We are going to have a workforce of clinical marshmellows!”

The union representing doctors, the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation (Asmof), called the message “tone-deaf” and “unacceptable”, particularly “when NSW is facing a healthcare workforce crisis”.

A spokesperson for the relevant local health district said: “Junior medical officers (JMOs) work hard and are a vital part of our health service, and we sincerely apologise for the hurt and frustration caused by a recent email that was circulated.

“We are committed to fostering a workplace where junior medical officers feel valued and respected. The email did not reflect this commitment or our values, and we have written to the relevant JMOs to apologise. The matter is being addressed appropriately,” they said.

When you read stories like this, it makes you wonder whether the issue is still the conservatism within the older members of a profession that leads to the attitude that because they coped with some ridiculous and dangerously long work hours when an intern, the youngsters should be able to cope with the same - or else they are too soft to be a good doctor.  That's a very bad attitude.

Well, if you're going to give it away...

I noted recently that I cancelled my Washington Post subscription, in an attempt to punish Bezos for sucking up to Trump, including by a noticeable increase in "well, maybe Trump isn't all that bad" columns in the paper.

I knew that this would likely prompt "please come back, at a discount price!" offers, but I wasn't quite prepared for how low they would eventually go.

This low:   99 cents (Australian) a month for a year, then increasing to $9 a month.  Cancel anytime.

Well, significantly decreasing the amount of money I'm paying to next to nothing might be punishment enough for now.  I re-subscribed...

Seems like I should try the same exercise at the NYT now!

Less than a life time away is no time at all

As I have grown older, I keep having the odd combination of thinking that World War 2 now seems a long time ago; but also that anything that happened less than 100 years in the past is not so far away from now, really. *

I'm sure it's a result of the combination of formerly knowing many people, including my parents, who were in the war but have passed away quite a few years ago, while also feeling that anything that has happened within a life span that I might achieve isn't that far in the past.   

Anyway, this is just by way of preamble that I was a little surprised to realise that today is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and later this year it will be same anniversary of the end of the war.   (I had this thought about the end of the war last year, and now here it is, upon us.)   

 It adds some..complexity?...to the feelings about the situation in Israel/Gaza now, too. 

*  And in the bigger picture - my "meta" take on the current unsettled state of the world is that it's due to the revolution in self understanding that came with Darwinian evolution, Einstein and the realisation of the incredible age and size of the universe all happening only a "short" time ago - barely 150 years - which is not enough time for cultures to come to grips with it.

More "let's welcome our new Chinese overlords"

I'm referring, only partly ironically, to all of the tech world turmoil that the Chinese AI company DeepSeek has caused in the last week.   This Newsweek article summarises it well, I think.  

It does strike me as a little odd that tech stocks should tumble on the basis of unverified claims regarding the cost and type of chips used to create it - but I guess the dramatically lower cost to high end users factor alone might convince analysts that there really must be something to it.  (It might also be seen as a good excuse to put a correction into an overheated bubble, perhaps?)

Also: I still don't really understand how you make a heap of money from releasing an open source product this way.

But anyway, on the weekend, I downloaded the app (on Android) and in my limited use so far - yes I'm really impressed.

I have mentioned more than once that the most useful AI product I have found is Perplexity, because it gives links to its sources of information, making it easy to check that it isn't "hallucinating" part of its answer.   

Well, DeepSeek works in a very similar way, with links provided, and also this (kind of odd, but interesting) feature where it explains the "reasoning" used to give the actual answer prior to composing the answer.

I strongly recommend people trying it.

The tech bros' new clothes

Good to see this explained succinctly:

Camping with the King

This has long been noted by normal people as a peculiar thing about the Republicans concern with masculinity:

Yes, the Trump act is full of camp, which some even deploy as reason not to be concerned about his strongly autocratic desires:

The worst is yet to come

Well, it does indeed feel like that Decemberists song "Everything is Awful", with the Trump inauguration and the somewhat distressing feeling that we are living in one of the Batman movies, as far as the weirdo cast of characters is concerned.  

A billion or so words have been spilt online already about it, but here are my various thoughts:

a.    if anything, far too few words have been spoken as to how incredibly dangerous it is for any world leader to be believe they are on a divine mission:

 “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom, and indeed to take my life,” he said, referencing a July 13 assassination attempt in which a bullet grazed his ear. “But I felt then and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Maybe it's because no one intelligent thinks he's a sincere believer in God, and this is just his usual narcissism spun to appeal to his Christofascist base?    But this is the entire problem with him as a politician - we're supposed to just live with the fact that something he says might be meant to be taken seriously, or might be completely unrelated to what will actually happen.    It's absurd, and it's absurdly dangerous if he is sitting in charge of a nuclear arsenal.

b.   Elon and the salute:   my theory, for what it's worth, is that he was high on ketamine (or something else), especially when you see the head movements in this video:

 

And yes, I reckon it was a Nazi salute done as a troll by a man off his face. Hilarious, Elon.

The inevitable falling out with Trump can't come soon enough.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Musk isn't approaching some sort of personal crash and burn - drug overdoes, car accident while under the influence, being shot by a former lover.  Would not be surprised in the slighest.

c.    The Pardons:   Biden's for Milley and Fauci and the J6 committee were well deserved, and if there a serious non MAGA republican left in the country, they ought to be thanking him for saving the Republicans from embarrassing themselves by wasting months on go no-where investigations, and suffering electorally for it.

The pardons of Biden's family - I'm not aware of specific threats to investigate or prosecute them, but if any had been said, it's fine as far as I'm concerned.

I understand that Democrat concern that it gives Trump carte blanche to do the same, and to encourage his administration (and family) to do absolutely anything under cover of a last minute pardon.   But such an authoritarian way of operating is not to go unnoticed, and Trump already has shown he hasn't a skerrick of interest in law and order if he thinks it's done him wrong (see all Jan 6 criminals pardoned, as well as crypto drug boy Ulbricht.)    In short - Trump didn't need the example of Biden to pardon actual criminals.  And if any of those released go on a revenge killing against any informant - it will be on Trump's head.

 

The "vibes" presidency

I think this Ezra Klein opinion piece in the New York Times (gift linked):

Trump Barely Won the Popular Vote. Why Doesn’t It Feel That Way?

is quite fair and accurate.   Let me extract some bits:

In 2024, Donald Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 points. Trump and Democrats alike treated this result as an overwhelming repudiation of the left and a broad mandate for the MAGA movement. But by any historical measure, it was a squeaker.

In 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 points; in 2016, Hillary Clinton won it by 2.1 points; in 2012, Barack Obama won it by 3.9 points; in 2008, Obama won it by 7.2 points; and in 2004, George W. Bush won it by 2.4 points. You have to go back to the 2000 election to find a margin smaller than Trump’s.

Down-ballot, Republicans’ 2024 performance was, if anything, less impressive. In the House, the Republicans’ five-seat lead is the smallest since the Great Depression; in the Senate, Republicans lost half of 2024’s competitive Senate races, including in four states Trump won; among the 11 governor’s races, not a single one led to a change in partisan control. If you handed an alien these election results, they would not read like a tectonic shift.

And yet, they’ve felt like one. Trump’s cultural victory has lapped his political victory. The election was close, but the vibes have been a rout. This is partially because he’s surrounded by some of America’s most influential futurists. Silicon Valley and crypto culture’s embrace of Trump has changed his cultural meaning more than Democrats have recognized. In 2016, Trump felt like an emissary of the past; in 2025, he’s being greeted as a harbinger of the future.

In July of 2024, Tyler Cowen, the economist and cultural commentator, wrote a blog post that proved to be among the election’s most prescient. It was titled “The change in vibes — why did they happen?” Cowen’s argument was that mass culture was moving in a Trumpian direction. Among the tributaries flowing into the general shift: the Trumpist right’s deeper embrace of social media, the backlash to the “feminization” of society, exhaustion with the politics of wokeness, an era of negativity that Trump captured but Democrats resisted, a pervasive sense of disorder at the border and abroad and the breakup between Democrats and “Big Tech.”

I was skeptical of Cowen’s post when I first read it, as it described a shift much larger than anything I saw reflected in the polls. I may have been right about the polls. But Cowen was right about the culture.

Klein then examines each of the things Cowen discussed.   I'll skip the social media talk, and go to the bit about corporations wanting to move Right:

The second factor is the corporate desire to shift right. Over the 2020s, corporations shifted left, driven by disgust with Trump, pressure from their work forces and perceived pressure from their customers. This was reflected in the endless corporate pronouncements over this-or-that social issue, the many green pledges, the construction of vast D.E.I. infrastructures and a general aesthetic of concerned listening on behalf of executives. Whatever mix of sincerity and opportunism motivated these changes, it curdled into resentment in recent years.

You can hear this in the interview Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and Netscape co-founder who has emerged as a major Trump adviser, did with my colleague Ross Douthat. “Companies are basically being hijacked to engines of social change, social revolution,” he said. “The employee base is going feral. There were cases in the Trump era where multiple companies I know felt like they were hours away from full-blown violent riots on their own campuses by their own employees.” The biggest vibe shift Cowen misses in his list is the anger C.E.O.s — particularly tech C.E.O.s — came to feel toward their own workers and their desire to take back control.

Trump’s election acted as the pivot point for this trend, giving corporate leaders cover to do what they’d long wanted to do anyway. “The election has empowered some top executives to start speaking out in favor of conservative policies, from tax cuts to traditional gender roles,” The Financial Times reported. Announcement after announcement from major corporations pulling out of climate change compacts or dismantling D.E.I. systems have been a vibes multiplier, creating the sense of a major shift happening at all levels of American society.

I like his take on the feckless Zuckerberg:

I interviewed Zuckerberg in 2018, as he was still processing the backlash from the 2016 elections. He told me Meta had failed “on preventing things like misinformation, Russian interference.” He worried over “a big rise of isolationism and nationalism.” What made him confident in the future was that, among millennials, “the plurality identifies as a citizen of the world.”

Now Zuckerberg is going on Joe Rogan’s show, chain dangling from his neck, to say that the fact-checking Meta was doing was like “something out of ‘1984,’ ” that companies like his own became too hostile to “masculine energy” and that what makes him optimistic about Donald Trump is “I think he just wants America to win.”

And this paragraph near the end is, I think, exactly right:

Perhaps the cultural momentum of Trumpism will give Trump’s presidency added force. But it is at least as likely that it lures Trump and his team into overreach. It is always dangerous to experience a narrow victory as an overwhelming mandate. Voters — angry about the cost of living and disappointed by Biden — still barely handed Trump the White House. There is little in the election results to suggest the public wants a sharp rightward lurch. But Trump and his team are jacked into the online vibes-machine and they want to meet the moment they sense. I doubt there would have been ideological modesty in any Trump administration, but I am particularly skeptical we will see it in this one.

Re: David Lynch

David Lynch has passed away.   It's hard to dislike an eccentric artist who manages to get eccentric movies made in Hollywood; and certainly I did enjoy Twin Peaks a lot, at least until it became clear it had that common problem of a mystery series that seemed to have been set up before knowing how it would be resolved.  (Well, I assume this is what happened.  But I never looked into it.)

That said, I think that his films are a tad overrated by critics, for my tastes.   But I would always watch him in interviews, and he seemed a nice enough guy in real life.  

Bullet bitten

I cancelled my Washington Post subscription, even though in the process they offered another year at $4 a month, which is incredibly cheap.

I just can't see another way a message can be sent to its owner's interference with the paper's content.   

I had been saying I was probably more inclined to cancel the New York Times - but Bezos's games with the paper and direct sucking up to Trump (and reported turmoil within the staff) just didn't leave a choice.

I'm sure my action will now result in regret and realignment by Bezos, and then I can resubscribe - hahahaha.     I live in hope.

PS:  what tipped me over the edge was a column this morning praising Trump for getting the apparent peace deal in Gaza through - claiming that his "mad man" approach to foreign affairs works and maybe we need more of it!  At the time of posting, there are only 4 comments, but I'm expecting it will attract many, many more criticisms by the end of the day.

Musk truly disgusts me

 

Update:   This is Sam Harris talking, apparently:

Good physics content

I pretty much took the day off work yesterday, due to a lingering cold that seems to have caught me on the flight back from Singapore (thanks, woman directly behind me who had to most awful sounding cough intermittently - I suspect you as the source), then got into a social media semi-argument with someone who had read Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe book a decade or more ago and didn't really know about the "string wars" in physics in the 2000's and was reluctant to accept that Greene still promotes a too optimistic view of string theory's prospects.     

Anyway, this led to me watching a lot of YouTube physics content, and reminded me that I had never watched enough of the channel Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.   It's really, really good.   

Some of the content on The Institute of Art and Ideas YouTube page is very good on physics, too.  (It reminded me that Roger Penrose thinks string theory is both "ugly" - contrary to claims by Greene that it's beautiful- and a complete waste of time.)  

To suggest just one video I liked watching yesterday from those channels - I thought that Jacob Barande's  summary of how quantum physics developed was well worth listening to:

 

I don't yet understand his take on the "reality" of the wavefunction, etc, for which I have to watch his full interview which goes for 2 1/4 hours! I do think, though, that this issue of the way to understand the fundamentals is a really important topic.

As noted on social media recently...

Naomi is an extraordinary nut.  Zuck is pathetic.

Is there no room for common sense here?

The Washington Post has an article with the headline "Why Los Angeles was unprepared for this fire".

I have a problem starting right there - the headline seems to assume that because the fire happened, LA was ipso facto "unprepared" for it.   

Here's an early paragraph:

Experts said several key factors — including urban sprawl, a resistance to clearing vegetation around homes, and a water system that’s not designed to combat multiple major blazes at once — left L.A. exposed to disaster. As climate change fuels record heat, leaving the hillsides primed for wildfires to grow swiftly into massive conflagrations, these factors led to catastrophe.

So "urban sprawl" - that happened many decades ago - is partly to blame?   Well, I suppose humans learning to walk upright and build houses out of combustible material has a bit to do with it too, but seems not that much point in talking about it.   

Sure, you can complain about the design of new subdivisions, I suppose:

Zeke Lunder, a wildfire mapping expert in Chico, California, and director of an online outlet devoted to information about fires called the Lookout, said the location and design of the Palisades neighborhood, tucked between Topanga State Park and the Pacific Ocean, made it especially vulnerable to fire — and almost impossible to protect.

I think that there are likely realistic limitations though, when trying to deal with this.  Far better, I would assume, to require the new homes built to replace the old ones to have vastly improved resistance to catching alight from airborne embers - although even then, I suspect it may be difficult to make it foolproof as well as having a house attractive to the eye.

My biggest bugbear is one we saw in a different context in the Australian bushfires - the issue of clearing around houses.   We saw this brought up by Right Wingers here who would complain that people were not allowed (for Greenie environmental reasons) to clear around their houses enough to protect them.  In California, the WAPO article has people arguing this:

Before a home is threatened, experts say one of the few steps homeowners can take to make their property more fire-resistant is clearing it of grass and shrubs, removing fuel. In California, people living in risky areas are required to maintain a buffer around their homes — a five-foot perimeter free of vegetation known as “defensible space.”

But in practice, the rules haven’t been followed uniformly. Many homeowners are reluctant to remove wooden fences, replant their gardens and trim the lower limbs on pine trees. Aerial images of the Palisades neighborhood taken before the fire show homes surrounded by greenery, a common sight in wealthy areas where residents put a premium on privacy.

California’s five-foot rule “has been very controversial,” said Ken Pimlott, a former Cal Fire chief and firefighter for 30 years. “People are very upset about ‘What do I do about my fence, my plants I like,’” he said.

Oh come on!   As with the biggest bushfire outbreaks in Australia in recent decades - when fires are spreading due to extremely high winds pushing embers kilometers ahead of the firefront, surely a 5 foot clearance of vegetation around a house is going to have very limited effect when you look at the big picture.

You always get cases in these types of fires of one house burning to the ground, and for some reason a neighbouring house might luck out and survive relatively unscathed.   While in theory I would prefer not to have (say) a very combustible pine tree within a metre of house, I think it's fanciful in the extreme to think every house having a 5 foot clearance would make a significant difference to the total number of houses catching alight from embers falling from the skies in truly disastrous wind conditions.   It's just common sense, I reckon.

A better article about the claims and counterclaims about the fires is to be found at PBS.   

I really feel sick reading the bad faith political attacks that the Right makes when natural disasters happen.

Update:  yes, this guy makes the common sense statements that I have been longing to see in the media

Clearly, an idiot

Trump's rambling, grievance full, press conference is getting much attention.   This was big of him:

Asked on Tuesday whether he would rule out “military or economic coercion” to get control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, Trump declined.

“No, I can’t assure you on either of those two,” he told reporters.

Trump did rule out military force to annex Canada, one of the United States’ largest trading partners.

That was from the Washington Post, which said this about its general tone:

The news conference marked the latest vivid display of Trump’s penchant for rambling tangents, insults, false statements and hyperbole.

The New York Times noted that he once again, absurdly, raised his long standing grievance against water efficient showers:

He waxed on about a favorite complaint during his first term: Shower heads and sink faucets that don’t deliver water, a symbol of a regulatory state gone mad. “It goes drip, drip, drip,” he said. “People just take longer showers, or run their dishwasher again,” and “they end up using more water.”

And this was their general take:

There was a lot of déjà vu in Tuesday’s news conference, recalling scenes from his first presidency. The conspiracy theories, the made-up facts, the burning grievances — all despite the fact that he has pulled off one of the most remarkable political comebacks in history. The vague references to “people” whom he never names. The flat declaration that American national security was threatened now, without defining how the strategic environment has changed in a way that could prompt him to violate the sovereignty of independent nations.

Of course, the media outlets of Murdoch and the Right will do their best to "sanewash" this.   Here's the New York Post:

Trump threatened 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico shortly after winning the Nov. 5 election, citing illegal immigration and illicit fentanyl imports. 

Some observers speculated that he was making the threat as a bargaining tactic, and the leaders of both countries quickly pledged to work with the incoming commander in chief.

Trump also has jokingly suggested that Canada become the 51st state, while more seriously pressing for the US to acquire Greenland from Denmark and suggesting the US may need to reassert control of the Panama Canal Zone — topics he also revisited in his remarks.

The president-elect clarified at one point that the US would only use “economic force” to annex Canada before speaking rapturously about the potential benefits of a North American union.

“Canada and the US, that would really be something,” Trump said. “You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.”

Elsewhere in his comments, the incoming president complained that America’s neighbor to the north “is subsidized to the tune of about $200 billion a year, plus other things. They don’t essentially have a military. They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine, but they got to pay for that.”

Even worse:

Greener pastures Why does Donald Trump want Greenland? It’s not as crazy as you may think

The United States considered making a bid for the North Atlantic island in 1867, when it also purchased Alaska from Russia.

 Uh, all it will take to stop it is for Putin to ring and say "Donald, we don't want a platform for ICBMs so close to Mother Russia.  Just leave it alone, and let me have the bits of Ukraine I already have."  And Trump will go "Sure, I hadn't thought of it that way."

Update:

 

Hey, I'm back

Happy New Year, folks.

Guess which city I ended up in for New Year's Eve?   Details will follow in an update... 

Update:  So, I'm still busy, and caught a cold on the plane on the way back.  Anyway, here I was, with a few hundred thousand friends, at the countdown for NYE:

 

Yeah, I managed to reach the city state it's hard to keep me away from, Singapore, for a short break.   

New things done this time:

*  ate fresh durian at a street side stall (and it's better than I expected - will eat again.)

*  ate fresh jackfruit (pieces bought at a supermarket).  Yes, intensely sweet and fruity, like putting a couple of packets of Juicy Fruit gum in your mouth at the same time.   But gets less sweet towards the centre.   Pretty delicious, but leftovers will make your hotel bar fridge smell very fruity when you open it again.

*  ate at the vegetarian cafe in the basement of Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple.  I knew it was there, just hadn't gone down to it before.   Has a decent variety of food which is tasty and cheap, a large sitting area, and is pretty popular with women and men at lunch time.  (Somehow, I expected more women, but plenty of men there too.)

* made it to the Singapore Botanical Gardens.  Yes, been there half a dozen times, and had never made it to these gardens before.   As expected, they are huge and gorgeously tropical.  The orchid garden is probably the highlight for everyone, and now it features an airconditioned section that is a relief to hang around in after hours outdoors.   Very beautiful, and will upload some photos later.

* spotted some otters, but in the water off Gardens by the Bay.   Hench, the only proof I have is photos of an otter nose that would pop up every minute or so - the photo is like one of a small Loch Ness monster.   But there were two noses, and the swirl they made gave me confidence it was otters I was watching.  Unfortunately, though, did not witness them coming ashore.  Next time!

*  visited Mustafa Centre, the shambolically organised department store in Little India that is open 24 hours.   Some interesting and dubious electronics and other stuff to look at, but don't expect any sense at all from the layout, or to have guides as to where anything is.   

*  made it to the little Jade Emperor temple (only recently built) that is besides the oldest Chinese temple in Singapore,  the Thian Hock Keng Temple.   (Again, somehow I had never managed to walk down this street on previous visits.)   More about these temples in a later post, but just a note that the entry requirements to the (not open anyway) Jade Emperor's temple were really tough!