You see Sean Hannity walking away from Catholicism because he's mad at the Pope for going against Trump? I remember in a 2017 interview onstage at First Baptist Dallas (the kind of megachurch where instead of giving a Sunday sermon, the pastor interviewed a Fox News personality), Hannity said that he thinks the Catholic Church got ecclesiology wrong.
"They did," chuckled the pastor, Robert Jeffress.
"I guess that makes me Baptist," Hannity replied, making the sign of the cross.
Who but an ignorant buffoon could make such a statement in such a way? But, then, think of those who lap it all up and love Hannity's "American Christianity" - our version of the Deutsche Christen .
Well, "ignorant". Hannity was peddling WMD on the sly on his radio show well into 2005/06. Some goober would call. in and say, "I just know in my heart that some day we'll discover them" and Sean would pat him on the head.
Sean Hannity is one I could never listen to, no insight, no humor, no ideas, just rinse and repeat.
The Fox News brand of pseudo- Christianity is repulsive. Lots of divorces going on over there. But I don't lump Hanson in with them- he can be wrong like anyone can, but I think he is very smart and a gentleman, and is the only one of that ilk who has supported much of Trump's policy.
Doesn't the whole AI thing seem like a high tech Tower of Babel? When the time comes, it will fall.
Hannity is just boring and repetitive. Mark Levin on the other hand, I imagine him being red-faced all the time with spittle and foam flying out of his mouth as he vituperates. These guys are on the local AM station I tune into once in a while to get the local news, so I can learn what streets are closing for construction and who just got arrested. If I listen too long, they start to talk.
There probably will be some future surprise related to the supposed world takeover of AI that stops it short. Probably the eventual realization that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) can never be achieved using the techniques and model architecture that produced chatGPT, claude, gemini, etc. And also the realization that the equivalent of Moores law for AI would require levels of power far beyond what any energy technology could produce.
Could also be something grass roots like wide spread eco-terrorism, taking down of data centers. No functioning data centers, no AI. Lots of little groupuscles around Europe, off the radar, that could go active. A foretaste of that was the sabotaging in May 2025 of the powergrid around Cannes and Nice, just in time for the film festival. Or a little further back, movements behind things like the ZAD (Zone a Defendre), occupying land meant for the construction of an airport near Nantes (2018 French government expelled the occupiers). On the old continent, everyone breathlessly obsesses about the slow growth of movements on the right, and completely ignores the radical left. No one is watching them.
I enjoy VDHs books. But he was uncritical about the Iraq war (in which I served and which I support but feel should have been executed very differently). He flipped from uncritically comparing it to WWII to critiquing it as an "endless war", without an explanation for his change.
Sean is such a goober. He got into a shouting match on Fox with a priest over birth control. He kept saying how he’d been to Catholic school. Big deal. He always was a cafeteria Catholic, but on the right.
Maybe he can go to church with Franklin Graham. Graham twists himself into logical pretzels trying to excuse Trump’s Jesus picture. Any day now, I expect him to ask people if they’ve accepted Donald Trump as their personal Lord & Savior. This is disappointing as, after being burned by Watergate, his Dad warned against evangelicals getting into bed with politicians. Apparently his niece & nephew are never Trumpers which would make Thanksgiving dinner a bit awkward. They were unhappy because Franklin claimed Billy was a Trump supporter in 2016, at which point he was 97 years old, blind, in poor health & completely out of public life.
Hannity ditched the Catholic Church years ago. I remember seeing him announce he shared a pastor with Tim Scott and of course he got publicly engaged to twice divorced Ainsley Earhart ( I’m not sure of the name) in a church, a practice I’ve never heard of. The funniest thing about him is he wears the same shirt every night on Fox . Yes I do tend to watch the beginning of his show until either my wife or I scream in horror.
Yes and Laura Ingraham assures you it’s America now and forever- whatever that means and unlike Hannity she is bright and educated . Unfortunately a professional propagandist. The only one I really like is Johnny on Jesse Waters- he’s funny and has some guts , I’m amazed he hasn’t gotten punched out!
I can't say that I watch much Hannity. But, he has a point if he wants to argue that, if the works that procede from faith seem not just wrong but harmful, then some critique is warranted. I am not deeply familar with all of Pope Leo's statements on matters which relate to the political. But surely if he covers for virtually unlimted 3d world migration to Europe that deserves some critical analysis.
That’s not exactly why he left according to the monologue I listened too. Seems it was corruption in the Catholic Church. The whole thing was eye opening to a Catholic. He had F Graham on to back his rant. Not a big Hannity fan, his reasoning questionable ie “there were a lot a wars in the OT…” This reminds me of the popery charges of the Church in the 1700’s and why they were afraid of allegiances to Rome. Don’t think I’ll be watching any Hannity in the future or any other Gix propaganda. I have plenty of time to now read.
You’re getting at something more unsettling than “Hitler 2.0.”
Hitler had to win crowds. Stalin had to crush them. Both depended on human limits—time, fear, imperfect control. AI doesn’t.
When Bill Maher is raising red flags, and builders like Dario Amodei admit they don’t fully understand what they’ve made, that’s not normal progress. That’s a warning from inside the machine room.
And look at where we already are. Palantir sits quietly inside defense, intelligence, and government systems—no drama, just dependency.
As Paul Kingsnorth keeps warning, the real danger isn’t conquest. It’s consent.
Because the system won’t need to seize power. We’ll hand it over—piece by piece—because it works: faster courts, smarter war planning, frictionless lives
Relief first. Then dependence, then no alternative.
That’s not tyranny as we’ve known it. It’s something colder: a world where control is invisible, and opting out feels irrational.
Weimar turned to a man who spoke to fear. We may turn to a system that removes the need to feel anything at all.
And listen to how some in Silicon Valley talk. The ambition isn’t modest. It’s to build something like a mind above all minds—something that knows, predicts, and directs.
They joke about “creating God.” Then add, almost under their breath: “not yet.”That’s not reassurance,That’s a timeline.
No beast rising in a moment—just a system no one can live outside of.
"...the real danger isn’t conquest. It’s consent."
Consent, or possibly "compliance." I see that so much today. Be compliant with this or compliant with that. If you're out of compliance you stand the risk of being sued, fired, taken to court, etc.
But to what are we complaint? Government rules? Management mandates? Just other means of control by larger bodies that limit the agency of the individual.
“Compliance” is exactly it, and it rarely feels like oppression—it feels like process. We just had it happen at a local event: same firehouse, same setup as every year. It used to be one form—this year it was seven. Then we had to cancel a reliable food truck at the last minute because he didn’t meet a new fire suppression requirement on his truck
Nothing dramatic, just more rules, more boxes to check, more ways to be told “no.” That’s the point: control doesn’t always show up as force, it shows up as systems you have to comply with to function at all. That’s the bridge—from rules you follow to systems you can’t step outside of.
Byung-Chul Han talks about this same thing in terms of transparency. When governments and corporations go on and on about transparency as if it's an unalloyed good, the flip side is that it's also about surveillance and control.
I am a surgeon. I have very little “agency”. I can comply with what is requested or quit/retire or try a different institution. Currently few of us have real agency in most things.
Most of this is hot air though. Remember that AI is still massively unprofitable and the big companies operate at a huge loss.
The only way these companies can justify their existence is by claiming outlandish scenarios wherein it makes sense to dump hundred of billions of dollars into them. So keep that in mind whenever people like Amodei talk about the power of their models, they need to drum up the marketability massively. Mythos, for all it's supposed to accomplish, currently costs about $20k per run over a standard security stack, so you're looking at potentially a $100k to$200k price tag to screen some security risks in a given week. That's already hundreds of times the weekly rate for a seasoned cybersecurity analyst. Which goes back to the main point: unless these models are so powerful that they need to be chained to secrecy, fearing their godlike powers, no on in their right mind would pay for them.
I'm much more concerned with people who get conned into this crap. Because that will have very real ramifications on the labor market and society. No I don't think AI will ever have anything nearing a soul or competence to be a leader. But I think that the billions of mouth breathing retards who make up humanity will actually believe a machine has a soul and start worshipping a piece of software
Except for Budapest, you know the European capitals mostly from short visits. So Vienna should be an interesting shift for you for this reason, as it conforms more to the Barbarian-at-the-Wall EU norm. Aside from being closer to Matt (the point of the move), once you finish up your book, you'll be able to spend some time *living* in that more "normal" EU.
Our betters are famously inconsistent, but at least they're consistent in their double standards. Just as democracy is only Our Democracy™, so NGOs are only justified as such if they are our NGOs™.
I sort of question this move but support Rod doing what he believes in. My thinking - Rod can see Matt with two hours on an easy train with internet. Vienna, well, I love Austria, I love Vienna but they are not warm like the Hungarians. (And Rod isn't going to learn German. Probaby one in 10,000 verbal IQ but learning language was not part of what he got or else what he does.) Rod can only spend so many hours in Matt's flat. And that Hungarian finceé, erm.... I know Rod basically stays in his apartment now, but he at least goes to Danube Institute to see the politicos, and the baristas at his coffee shop are friendly, plus he gets lots of visiting intellectuals for nights out that he may not get in Vienna.
However, there is hope for a commuter job in Vienna, that is, coming to Budaptest for Danube Inatitute related things.
Because - - the funding for Danube Institute is independent of the Hungarian Government, as I understand it, and certainly MCC funding is. Orbán is no dummy. Plenty of conservatives will keep their jobs here. Orban may live in a billion dollar castle-estate (he does, owned on paper by his father) but plenty of Orbán's and Hungarian conservative's NGOs have lots of money.
I suspect we’ll see a lot more writing about migrants in Europe as he’ll be encountering it up close rather than writing about the benefits of the lack of migration in Hungary.
Our host announces that Trump's second term "is not going well." Since January 2025, there are at least twenty items on the Trump agenda that I disagree with like his intervention into Canadian politics to his fascination with Greenland and the unwise war in Iran. Yet the border is closed, 400,000 federal bureaucrats have been axed, fraud cases like the Somalis pulled off in Minnesota are being exposed, illegal aliens are being rounded up, graft in the federal government have been dealt with and the 2017 Trump tax cuts have been retained. Trump has some accomplishments and even the situation in Iran has stabilized and the 50,000 point Dow is in reach.
I was in my early twenties in the early stages of the Reagan Administration. A lot of Republicans and Democrats often said that the Reagan presidency "wasn't going well." But that's normal in politics. Reagan's presidency ended up being pretty successful.
I’d say that defunding the fake hospices and other Medicare/Medicaid outlets in CA amounts to a real accomplishment. Dollar totals still being tallied, though there are two buckets of $500M and $250M so far.
For all his flaws, Trump is actually coming to grips with the major challenges afflicting American society in a way far beyond any other Republican would have done, just as Reagan went out to 1) Really challenge the USSR, and 2) Open up the economy. As far as Democrats are concerned, they don't even know our problems are problems; to them, they're just catalysts for more money and power.
Trump 2.0 does have a lot of actual accomplishments that I agree with and this shouldn't be forgotten. However, momentum in many of those things, such as rounding up illegal immigrants, is being lost and is great jeopardy of being routed completely after the midterms.
A great deal of the fault lies with the failure of Republicans in Congress to advance the agenda, perhaps more than it actually lies with Trump. But there's no questioning that our foreign entanglement with the Persians on behalf of the Israelis is putting many of the gains and changes that I was excited for in danger. I don't like that. It pisses me off.
I would also argue that the situation in Iran is only stable for any given particular moment and can be thrown back into chaos at any time. Yesterday morning the situation looked like it was improving. Iran was opening Hormuz, there was a ceasefire rolling out in Lebanon, there were more negotiations being scheduled between the United States and Iran for Sunday, and Trump was telling everybody that Iran was going to let us have the "nuclear dust.*"
I wake up this morning to learn that Iran is closing the Strait again due to "America violations of the ceasefire." Trump has some press conference scheduled for 9AM on a Saturday. The Israelis are still attacking Lebanon even after Trump "forbade" them to do so.
As for corruption, it's starting to look like it's off the charts for this administration when it comes to manipulating the financial markets through announcements about the war. Once again somebody made a huge purchase of oil puts ($870 million) just before the announcements that Iran had agreed to open the Strait drove the price of oil down. This has been happening with regularity for the last six weeks. Somebody with inside access is cleaning up in the financial markets.
Suffice to say, there's a lot rotten with Trump 2.0 and we do ourselves no favors in ignoring it. We do need to acknowledge the good things he delivered on, but there's a lot that's been pushed aside or jeopardized by the war with Iran and corruption should always be called out.
I read something the other day, can't remember who wrote it, but it was from a conservative lamenting that Trump hasn't lifted a finger to advance any of his executive orders through Congress, and into law. Therefore, when a Democrat comes back into the White House, it all goes away. That's on Trump, mostly, but also the GOP Congressional leadership. Trump doesn't seem to care about the messiness of actual governing.
Yes, if I remember correctly Trump has been trying to codify his EO on election integrity in the SAVE act. He's trying hard but the Senate has been useless.
The SAVE Act is too extreme. Here in Florida a version of it has been passed, but it puts the burden of verification wholly on public officials not on the citizens. Most people will not have to lift a finger to be validly registered to vote, existing registrations will be honored and nothing will take effect until next year at the earliest. Arizona is also doing something similar. And really, maybe we should leave this up to the states? Does everything have to have a federal solution?
This congress has been worse than usual for impeding the executive agenda. The establishment GOP is still fighting Trump tooth and nail, just waiting him out.
Of course, Trump has endorsed most of these people for re- election and, in the case of congressional leadership, for the positions they hold and rarely, if ever, speaks against them.
Which is just more proof, if you're inclined to believe it, that it's all a big Uniparty scam on the rubes that everyone, including Trump, is in on. A big MAGA game is talked. Token and half- measures are made early to keep the rubes in line for another election cycle and then abandoned as soon as practical.
Ultimately I find myself asking the following question more often these days: If Trump’s elevation to POTUs really was a long-term psy-op by Them (Freemasons, Jews, Lizard People living inside the hollow Earth, take your pick) to thoroughly discredit populism, Nationalism, and conservatives generally that Trump was himself a part of, how would things look any different than they do right now?
The Uniparty theory is increasingly true. It's just a show the elites put on to distract us while they steal our tax money and do whatever they can to enrich themselves. Their paid politicians are the same. Anyone who tries to change that will find themselves out of a job and not elected.
Actually seems like it's on congress. As the lawmakers, they actually have to take up the process of codeifying the actual laws. If they refuse to do so, then it's on them.
America isn't like a small country run by a corrupt fat gypsy (cough cough, Hungary). We actually have to work through our separation of powers
The Congressional GOP is worse than useless. Half of them are right liberals. The other half is a motley collection of crackpots, grifters, and genuine populists. They can barely agree on which direction the sun sets in, let alone actual legislation. There is no nationalist populist majority, and none is on the horizon any time soon.
Oh, it's worse than that. Iran blights everything. I hate to go all moralistic on you, but an unjust war is like a man, a good provider, who gets the best education for his kids, a fine home and nifty clothes, is well respected in the community, and well liked by his neighbors who comes home every night and rapes his daughter. The other stuff just doesn't count. The whole world sees (as if it already didn't know) that we are being led by the nose by the Israelis. No matter what the particular outcome this is not going away.
The Israelis are throwing every monkey wrench they have into the works to prevent any sort of even temporary peace. That includes assassinating any Iranian of official who tries to negotiate with the US. At this point we should cut off all aid to Israel, withdraw from the Middle East and wave bye-bye.
None of that is on, Jon. It's not going to happen. I wish it could. But we could try exercising our considerable leverage. In 1982 Reagan saw footage of Begin's foray into Lebanon and told him to stop. He did. I understand that Trump did something similar when he saw just what it was the IDF was getting up to in Beiut, but, evidently, we couldn't do that for Gaza, not Biden, not Trump.
Your larger point, that the Israelis will work hard to screw things up, however, is of course the case. I don't know how much longer I can hear Bibi bellow about defending Western Civilization.
I have no idea what the Israelis are going to do but your recommendation to cut all aid and get out of the Middle East is solid regardless. Let the Middle East take care of itself.
Then neither was Iraq (either time) Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, US entry into WW1, etc.
Since J. Reuben Clark drafted the Clark Memorandum back in the 20s (designed to sell the Kellog Briand Acts) every conflict has been sold as "defensive". Even Saddam invading Kuwait was justified as "defensive".
"All wars are bankers' wars" was stated by Gen. Butler. War for profit has been called out since the ancient Greeks.
I hate the US being world hegemon, I think this war is stupid, but a hegemon acts.
Meanwhile, Bibi just clings to power using wars to avoid jail.
I don't know why Cheeto Jesus has settled on this cutesy term for enriched uranium, but I f*cking hate it. He sounds like a retarded child whenever he uses it.
Yes! we're talking about drawing a line in the sand. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, "retarded" is not the preferred nomenclature. Mentally-challenged, please.
This isn't a guy who had to ride a short bus to kindergarten! This is a guy who peed all over my mass deportations and economic recovery by going to war with Iran! What the f*ck are you talking about, Rob?!
(Note to Rod and others who may be confused: we're not actually fighting. We're doing a bit.)
While looking for that quote (couldn't remember the exact verbiage) Copilot, which I think is an AI search thing, gave me this:
~~The term "Chinaman" is considered outdated and offensive; "Asian-American" is the preferred nomenclature.
Historical Context
The term "Chinaman" has been used historically to refer to individuals of Chinese descent. However, it has fallen out of favor due to its association with derogatory stereotypes and its use in contexts that dehumanize or marginalize individuals. Language evolves, and terms that were once commonplace can become inappropriate as societal understanding and sensitivity change.~~
Thanks for the insights, bud. Now shut the f--k up.
I'm not 80 years old and Chief Potato of the United States, engaged in a conflict with shifting justifications in which people are dying and being maimed.
Is he going to start telling us how proud he is of the boom- boom he just made in the Oval Office washroom?
And the Cheeto Jesus thing is more about mocking you and the other orange kool-aid drinkers than it is about him. If you're going to be offended, be offended for the right reason and for yourself, not on Trump's behalf.
The Trump hate is so strong here that the haters cannot or choose not to see the grand geopolitical strategy in play. That’s why I don’t take 90% of the commenters here seriously.
Here is the next thing that will happen in Rod’s posts and in the comments after the Iran conflict has been successfully concluded, this quote courtesy of the great Walter Kirn: “Those who hate the war will also have a problem with the peace. Just watch.” 100% guaranteed to happen here. It’s so easy to predict how the TDS crowd reacts.
Then, after Iran, when we end the regime in Cuba, all the hysterics on this Substack will start up again. It’s so tiresome to read through all the faulty and deranged thinking here.
I’m just waiting for all the newly minted geopolitical geniuses here to comment in totality about the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Luzon Strait. Seems like there’s some new things tying them all together. What could it be?
Seems that Trump is building a chain leading to confrontation with China. Gather up the oil it needs. Destroy the Chinese alliance partners. Rebuild our military might. It would be helpful if NATO even tried a little bit to assist. Maybe Russia next with partnership versus confrontation. Cut off Russian oil to China? We will see.
Ataraxis, I'm inclined to agree with Walter Kirn's take and yours. And I admire your willingness to swim against the *current* current in these comboxes. But all I know for sure is that I'm not smart or wise enough to know if you're right or they are. None of us will know for sure until the bombs stop, the dust settles and Trump is gone from the daily news cycle. The outcome is everything.
I do continue to think Trump did the right thing to bomb Islamist Iran's nuclear and other military resources. Despite his self-centeredness and immaturity, he had the balls to love America, albeit in his own way -- like a greaser of old loved his car: as an extension of his fragile ego and a hedge against his grinding insecurity. He's bombing away, sparing civilians to the extent such is possible. By contrast, his predecessors ducked and ran. All they had to counter the menace of the mullahs were words, worry stones and pallets of cash. That could not have gone on forever. It took a boorish bully like Trump to out-bully those 11th-century fanatics brandishing nuclear-tipped scimitars and other 21st-century armaments.
Alas, as I've said in these comboxes many times, Trump is a pretty good leader but an abjectly awful manager. With that I'm referring to Peter Drucker's maxim that "Leading is doing the right things. Managing is doing things right." Trump does things wrong even when he does the right things.
Maybe a Pres. Vance will evidence and overlap both skill sets at once. We can only hope.
Dave, nice write up! Here’s a hint on Trump. The Trump you see in tweets and public pronouncements is not the real Trump. It’s merely a negotiating persona.
On to his management skills and why he’s absolutely an excellent manager. Ask yourself, “why did a dozen billionaires go to work for Trump if he’s the Trump in the tweets?” Why? Because he’s not. This is the dog that’s not barking.
Thoughts to ponder.
If you were a billionaire, would you leave your mansion and go work for someone, anyone? In government of all places?
We have all worked for bad managers. If you were a billionaire would you go work for someone who’s a poor manager? Or the madman that the left falsely portrays Trump as?
See, the media characterization of Trump is dead wrong, and the billionaires who work for him prove it. Please note that all them are still on the job since Day One. If Trump was the person the media says he is, wouldn’t these billionaires have already left crummy Washington DC, a place I can most assuredly say that none of them want to live in? Wouldn’t they rather be living the good life in one of their mansions?
I’ll give you one more dog that’s not barking on what Trump is really like. He’s run a large and complicated business for decades, yet have you heard of a single disgruntled employee? If there was one, don’t you think the media would have already publicized it? Do you think that the media has tried to find a disgruntled employee? Of course they have, yet they couldn’t find one. Because we never heard about it.
Final thought. Some of my clients were billionaires. I have a friend who’s a billionaire. I can assure you that billionaires do not put up with poor behavior or any friction in life. And 100% they do not want to be taken away or distracted from the businesses they built.
To wit, the cabinet is full of superb and effective people: Scott Bessent, Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, Sean Duffy…all of whom have substantial wealth of their own.
There are others I’d put on the list but of effective, not sure of their net worths though...
Ataraxis, I would only submit that recruiting and retaining good high-level underlings is, I believe, more a leadership duty than a management one. I'm not sure about the lack of disgruntled employees. It's clear he's widely loved by the blue collar people who built his buildings. He speaks their language and likes to go onsite to meet them. He can genuinely relate. But is there any truth to the stories that he stiffed contract companies? And they had to sue to get paid for their work?
To be sure, there's overlap between leadership and management. But I continue to see Trump as a good if not great leader — too soon to tell which — but a lousy manager. He can't get control of his mouth enough to quit fishing for compliments, giving himself praise, counterpunching critics on every side, etc. He displays no modicum of humility, a must-have in a great manager. He's just too emotionally arrested, 79 going on 16. That mindset tends to make him allergic to operational details, for which he seems to have no patience at all. I wish it weren't so, given his leadership prowess, but I've known too many immature adults — and bad managers — to miss those patterns in the President of the U.S.
So reminiscent of the doom sayers last year with the rollout of tariffs. Has anyone here that predicted economic armageddon as a result of tariffs admitted they were wrong?
I realize this is purely a rhetorical question. What is not, though, is what does Rod get from the consistent negativity? Sorry Rod, it is tiresome in the extreme and not supported by “events, dear boy, events"
Yes. sadly. And the relentless negativity is also tiresome. I participate mostly out of a sense of duty, frankly. Probably just blowing into the wind, though. :)
Sorry, but you think that because the stock market is booming that the tariffs thing worked?
I'm not against tariffs per se, but Trump had no plan for them. He just threw them around as his mood changed. Companies can't plan around that. I had hoped we might get some kind of thought-out re-industrializing policy. Guess not.
It is also hurting the economies of the world. Believe it or not, we have elections in much of the world. And the Republicans will get creamed because of the economy.
Derek I think I am about the same age as you. Reagan's rhetoric and optimism were like a breath of fresh air after Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. Younger people who did not live it, do not realize into what doldrums we had descended as a nation post Viet Nam. Carter was not wrong about the national malaise that we were in, unfortunately, he added to and deepened it. He was just THE worst man at the worst possible time for the presidency. Reagan came in and pulled us out of the doldrums. It was nothing short of astonishing. But he was vilified by a hostile press the whole time. Like Trump, it never stopped him. Trump has done amazingly well. I say that because there are whole parts of his agenda that people like Rod bought into and expected, that I did not, and did not care about. So, I am not in the "disappointed" camp; I am in the "I can't believe he has done this much" camp. I put the war with Iran on the plus side of the ledger because after 47 years of enduring a "warm" war" with their violence, he put his foot down. I also consider it a just war for all those reasons that have accumulated over those 47 years of pain. Thus I am in a very different place than many. I do worry for the last two years of his presidency, but Trump seems steeled and ready for whatever is coming. And, we know what is coming if the dems take over Congress. It will be the usual shitification of government show.
How many of those 400,000 "axed" individuals were actually doing their jobs? I happen to know for a fact that the State Department office that could have warned off Vance from presenting The City of God to the former head of the Augustinian order was one of the "axed". I cheerfully donate whatever percentage of my tax dollars it is that goes to an office that prevents uninformed and untempered politicians from making fools out of themselves abroad.
Prince George's County is full of secretaries and meeting planners who did little work. There's a reason why PG County voted 86 % for Harris. Actually, two reasons.
I really don't want to mix it up with you, but shouldn't all those cuts have been the responsibility of the respective Secretaries, and not of tech bros? It's like everything else this administration does. I know all about the border, but what's interesting is that it really wasn't that hard, you know?
In corporations at least HR will work closely with local management to come up a list of layoffs when layoffs are needed. Generally the process will take several weeks or longer.
Not a good thing as this has simply gummed up the works worse than it already is. It's been two months and still no sign of my tax refund, which last year showed up just three weeks after filing. DOGE did the clueless CEO thing, cutting head count, instead the sensible thing that might actually have benefited the economy by cutting through the kudzu of regulations.
Reagan's presidency was mainly successful because Mikhail Gorbachev started the welcome process off standing down the USSR. Domestically Reaganomics juiced up the economy by wholly Keynesian means-- those tax cuts added money, albeit at the expense of debt. The long term bill came later, and has given us the S&L crash, jobless recoveries, the real estate bubble and bust and the degradation of the working class.
Musk did not cut "slackers" Note that DOGE took no time at all with the cuts. They just cut anyone who was in an exposed position. And often enough those were people recently promoted since job security rules do not kick in immediately in new positions. Alas, the people newly promoted tended to be the better workers.
As for the IRS its work is highly seasonable. Three quarters of the years they can sit around making origami flowers. From January through April they are busy as caca. The grinding delays this year are not helping the economy which could really use a shot in the arm that rapid refunds could provide.
The taxes needed to be cut. And indexed. The economy took off by 1983. In 1986, Reagan worked with Democrats Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt and Dan Rostenkowski on tax reform which is the foundation of forty years of a pretty decent economy.
The 1986 tax reform was as close to ideal as we are likely to ever get: cut the rates but broaden the base (by eliminating loopholes). Sadly the politicians started undoing it when the ink was scarcely dry. They love handing out loopholes! If we could somehow reinstitute that tax regime while preserving a very few later reforms (e.g., getting rid of the "marriage penalty) I would be thanking God on bended knee. Having Marvin Millionaire pay the same rate on his dividends and capital gains (and carried interest etc.) as Will Worker pays on his wages would put us in tax nirvana.
The graft in the federal government sadly has not been dealt with. It has simply shifted, and all roads lead to the Trumps and Kushners. This should not be underestimated.
Moreover, Trump doesn't brook rivals but does court sycophants, so the 2028 primaries are going to be nasty. Since Trump has done almost nothing with Congress, the vast majority of his accomplishments, good or ill, have no roots of any kind. Executive orders are easily undone, but the precedents he set in the boundary breaking types will do damage for years to come.
Even in what he did do well, in closing the borders (finally), he kept Noem on far past the point where she was doing serious and obvious damage.
The Panama Canal, Venezuela, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Luzon Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar…………….but the second term “is not going well.”
Reagan certainly did a lot. He dropped the highest income tax bracket from 70% to 28% to supercharge the performance of the wealthy. It only tripled the national debt from 995 billion to 2.6 trillion. Fortunately he raised the prime rate to 21.5% and mortgage rates to 18.4% in order to combat inflation and trigger a recession to bring down inflation rates to 3.2%. Eventually the prime interest rate was at 10% when he left office, completing his economic recovery.
Of course his economic miracle was supported with his job policies. The most significant one was deciding to fire those annoying air traffic controllers when they were trying get better work conditions. He got rid of all 11,000 of them and it only eliminated around 7000 flights and 50% of the airline capacity. It took years to partially clean up the mess, but the point was to show those unions and their workers that the government would not tolerate interference in capitalism and its profits. The escalation in the war on labor became a defining theme of republicans to this day.
Reagan was THE critical turning point in the fight for control of the benefits of the growth in productivity of the workers of the US. It was at that time productivity continued to rise, but the pay of workers stayed flat to this day leading to the “K” shaped economy of today and success of the billionaire class that rules America.
Reagan is truly a hero of pure capitalism and a source of inspiration for the children of the upper class.
Agreed. I was born not too long after he was out of office. I don't hate Reagan personally, but so many things he did in office were not for the better in the long run. Lowering the tax rate further increased the gulf between the haves and have-nots. Amnesty towards foreigners let so many more in. The debt increased, etc.
I remember the Reagan Revolution as well. Paul Voelker was a huge help. Scott Bessant has redefined what it means to be Treasury Secretary. I agree that many things Trump has done in the last 15 months have been helpful. Many were not smart but more like Tourette’s outbursts that go nowhere. He has 33 months to go. If he can win this war with Iran and the IRCG, he will solidify himself as a great President in the history books. Americans need to wake up from their stupor, otherwise we become the EU, without the fun parts and history.
It’s sad to read Rod’s account of Hungary and where things stand right now. It brought something back to mind for me here at home.
Here in New Jersey, a lot of the Hungarians who fled the 1956 revolution came through Camp Kilmer. From there they spread into the neighborhoods—hard-working families building lives from scratch. Later came the Poles and Slovaks, opening small shops, working long hours, raising kids who would do better than they did.
I learned a lot about communism from them—not from books, but from how they talked about it. Not dramatic. Just direct: you don’t want the state having that kind of control over your life.
What’s striking now is how that memory fades. I’ll talk to younger Ukrainians working in local stores and ask what they’ve heard from their families. When the conversation turns to the 1930s—when their grandparents’ generation lived through mass starvation—it often feels distant to them, like something half-remembered rather than fully understood.
That’s the gap. The people who lived it never forget—but the next generation only partly absorbs it, and the one after that treats it like history instead of warning.
Peter Magyar isn't left-wing. The European Union is not the USSR. His election doesn't represent a repudiation of national conservatism, it represents Hungary giving European integration another chance. I bet Hungarians, young and old, are very realistic about what they're doing, and will elect Orban back if the Eurocrats get high on their own complacency again. I wouldn't overextend the argument.
Interesting comment, I’m Hungarian, so when I last visited Budapest 5 years ago, I asked my distant cousin’s SO (electrician by trade) if he was glad to be free. His answer was surprisingly not what I expected. He would choose the old system, ie communist rule over free enterprise. He was a worker in 1956. We tend to think everyone in the West thinks alike.
One thing to note about "The Scaling Era." The 20 or so insiders that Patel interviews aren't all boosters. They range from very positive to very skeptical, and a lot in between. So it's not like you're hearing only one side of the story. Patel himself admits to being optimistic, but only cautiously so. But the one thing they all agree on is that very big changes are on the way. This in itself is not hype, because as Patel says, the amount of money being outlaid does not lend itself to the cynical notion that the industry is merely hyping itself. As he puts it, "The industry as a whole believes its own hype; the vast capital expenditures don't make financial sense unless AI turns out to be of extreme economic significance. Right or wrong, these individuals are betting on AI."
No one bets their life savings on something that they know is a boondoggle, or buys a car that they know is very likely to be a lemon. As Patel says, the idea that these guys are "exaggerating the importance of current and future systems to market their products isn't very helpful in explaining [this] broader context." There is definitely hype involved, but the skeptics who say that it's ALL hype have to explain the vast sums of money invested by people who believe it's likely to cost them their shirts.
True, but even pyramid schemes have to have a certain balance between outlay and potential outcome. At a certain point, they cease making sense when the risk is greater than the potential reward. Point being, even the scientists involved who are skeptics, the ones issuing the warnings, know this. Unless you want to say that that's part of the hype too. But as I said in another comment, admitting that you're building something that you don't really understand is not exactly a strong selling point.
“It’s a billion lines of code and I (therefore) don’t know how it works (but by all means give it access to nuclear codes)” sounds like someone who is either willfully deceptive or someone who achieved his position not by being expert in software but in convincing people he is. In particular, convincing the people with nuclear codes (e.g.).
It all feels a lot like the disastrous global Covid response. Stoke panic, claim expertise, exert power, profit. Shut down economies “because Covid.” Lay off thousands “because AI.” These were and are all *human* policy choices, as is choosing where to install software and what access it is given.
If you claim your software is entirely out of your control -and people believe you- then you have conveniently removed yourself from accountability while you pull whatever levers you want behind the scenes. Or not. Maybe it’s enough to unleash havoc caused by uninformed policy decisions. It’s like opening the gate to a (quite possibly empty) man-eating-lion enclosure and claiming “The gate opened itself! I have no idea how metallurgy works! Watch out for man-eating lions!”
“It’s a billion lines of code and I (therefore) don’t know how it works (but by all means give it access to nuclear codes)”
I don't see where anyone said that or even implied it.
In any case, it's not like panic is being stoked across the board. The boosters are saying similar things except with a more positive spin. My point is that the entire project is very risky regardless of the eventual outcome, even if the risks may be different. Conspiracy theories are not necessary here. And the warnings cannot be true and false at the same time.
Money does flow into baseless things all the time-- and is lost when it all comes crashing down. Cryptocurrencies are a prime example, their only selling point being that money ceases to have a trail once invested so that everyone from drug kingpins to bribe-taking bureaucrats can hide their evil works. Trump 1.0 had the right idea for cryptocurrencies, Alas, he's gotten in on the grift big time now.
Both can be true at once, and I say this as someone who leads AI development at my firm. You can say it's simultaneously a real tech advancement, and also a bubble. The difference depends on how well you manage the expectations
We saw the same problem with the web in the 90s. The internet was genuinely a huge paradigm shift that to this day shapes the market. No one can deny that--HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that the internet was a magic wand to generate money. In the 90s, people seemed to think that was the case, to the point where companies would name themselves "*.com" to prove their worth. Investors would dump money into crappy businesses whose only product was a web page.
That activity precipitated the dot Com crash, and proved that you can definitely have a bubble over a genuine product. AI is much the same--there are countless companies touting AI to boost up their valuation, even though the companies themselves are worthless. Add to the mix where everyone seems to think that AI is robot Jesus and you'll start to get to a mad dash where even smart people will lose their shirt in the ever lasting race to the FOMO
Agreed, but I don't see how that contradicts anything that I've said. The answer to "All of the hype is true!" isn't "None of the hype is true!" That's the mentality I'm trying to argue against.
Though I have to say I'm increasingly sympathetic to the simple, illiterate "blinded by reality" villagers who refused to accept the premise of the math problem about travel times to Fergana and Vuadil.
A younger me would have written them off as rubes incapable of abstract or counterfactual thinking. Given where today's world is going, I've developed a soft spot for folks who reject an obvious lie the moment they see it and won't entertain it even as a thought experiment.
" ‘In the Far North, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North. What color are bears there?’ Every single person who had received any literacy education at all, even the ones Luria described as ‘barely literate,’ could easily answer. But people who hadn’t been exposed to the written word simply refused.
They consistently explained that since they’d never been to Novaya Zemlya, they couldn’t say what kind of bears they had there. "
Are the illiterate really so wrong in questioning the given premise? They know non-white bears exist after all.
While I agree literacy helps with abstract and other thinking, the larger point may not be so much literacy per se but the effect of literacy in shifting the locus of trust. The bear syllogism shows that the illiterate trust only experience or personal witness - it's what they understand. The literate expand their circle of trust to include accounts of those they do not personally know.
Yes, there is a difference between using syllogisms in the search for knowledge and reducing everything to the syllogistic. Can't remember who said it, but generally speaking "we know more than we can tell."
America is like the Weimar Republic, because it's the 2020's now and the Weimar Republic it was the 1920's. Get it? Oh, so we should expect like a Hitler 2.0? No, this time it will be Skynet. Oh. Wait, What?
Rod is trying way to hard to fit America into his Weimar thesis.
America's Roaring 20s are a better fit than Germany's, but then you end up with FDR not Hitler, so it doesn't fit his thesis.
Then comes the AI doomerism. Oh, well, Rod will move on after his book flops. He can't do a Newsom and buy $1.5mil of his own books to make it look successful.
Well I suppose if you are going to write a book with a thesis, it helps to believe in the thesis. By the way you make a good point about the roaring 20s. Let’s see it was a period of change and post war instability . Prohibition helped lead to the growth of organized crime and a growing disrespect for the law . The economy collapsed and we got, not Hitler but FDR . Good call!
"better fit" -- Rod has repeatedly said that the Weimar analogy is not meant to be a cookie-cutter fit. Yet you critics continually attempt to saddle him with that very thing. I get a strong impression that some of you don't even read what he's written, you just skim for ammo.
Rod suddenly switched from his Christian revitalization topic (excellent idea) to his Weimar thesis, and is trying to force a square peg in a round hole. Forcing info into a thesis often distorts a topic so that it is no longer an honest framing of a topic. Rod wanted build up to Nazis and so is straining to make his analogy work.
I think this is a considerable oversimplification, and incorrect to boot.
Google "Weimar America" and you will find numerous essays and articles, some stating that the comparison is valid, some saying that it isn't. This includes pieces written by professional historians and history professors.
This means that although what Rod is writing about isn't a slam dunk, neither is it bosh.
Also note that the only reason Rod was able to pump out the book so quickly was because AI helped him skim books faster.
But late last year he was warning that AI was a Ouija board which contacted demons and that he promised to "stop using it".
Like I understand changing your mind over things frequently, I do much the same. But Rod's MO is to claim "here is this massive thing that no one sees coming but I, Rod, will use my special powers to act as a Cassandra figure and explain it to the masses". Only for him to quietly drop the subject a month later when the big new shiny Apocalyptic* story comes into the news cycle
And there is a huge difference in understanding between using AI to give you the Cliffnotes version of a book, and taking the time to read and consider a book. I read very very fast, so I have begun to read slower, with more intention, to allow me to ponder and consider, instead of racing through.
I have excellent comprehension because I need to retain everything even as I speed read 1,000 pages of medical records prior to a deposition, but it isn't the same.
I took a few classes in my graduate programs on German history and German thought. We spent extensive time reading, studying, and discussing the rise of Hitler for various aspects. It gave me enough understanding, along with my many other studies to accept that I just have a minute amount of knowledge of the topic.
True wisdom requires a ton of intellectual humility.
It sure means something more than a few months of reading, unless one is just writing a polemic to push an agenda, of course.
For an English-speaker, learning to take in German via reading and listening is not very hard. Writing is hard, but can be eased with modern tools. Speaking is the hardest, although speaking at a comprehensible level (but with mistakes and Anglicism) is quite doable.
I'm planning to start classes when I arrive there. I tried with Hungarian, and got nowhere, but that is the experience of many foreigners who try Hungarian. Besides, I've watched all of "Babylon Berlin," and now have to figure out how to make Liv Lisa Fries the next Frau Dreher. ;)
Classes are good. Once basic skills are established, the best training is making yourself speak German with anyone that is fluent. Learning to speak will be rocky and involve lots of mistakes and long periods of speaking "English-like" German, so humility and willingness to adopt the beginner mindset are the key practical virtues that help in the process.
Your biggest challenge in learning German will probably be finding German speakers who want to talk to you in their language. That was my experience anyway. Everyone looked at it as an opportunity to practice their English.
It's certainly far simpler than Hungarian, but still more complicated than need be - three genders, four cases, irregular and separable prefix verbs, random dative prepositions or verbs and five-plus ways to form plurals, though most fit inside about three scenarios. At least the pronunciation is entirely regular. "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" is said exactly as it looks!
There seems to be "two layers" for learning German. Getting to intelligibility is reasonbaly easy (no harder than French, Spanish or Dutch). Getting to native-like language patterns is harder, because Germans have peculiar idioms and forms of expression.
As just one example, German has two common ways of saying that something can be done. The direct "Ich kann das tun", which is very similar to English "I can do it". The other one is the more indirect "Das lässt sich tun", which means "That lets itself be done". Native speakers use both very frequently, whereas it takes a while for learners to get used to the second one.
Another one is the proliferation of little adverbs that are very peculiar to spoken German. For instance "mal", literally meaning "one time", but in practice a kind of a flavor word with a fuzzy meaning (like "y'know" in English). Or how the word "genau" (exactly) is often used as a replacement (or intensifier) of the better known "ja" (yes).
Also false friends like gift (thing to give to your friends) and Gift (German for poison), both deriving from the sense of "something given". Also fast (quickly) and German fast (almost). Or subtler ones, like the dichotomy between the verbs "do" and "make" ("tun" and "machen", which exists in both languages, but English likes "do" better, whereas German likes "machen" better. Or how the past in the German is actually expressed via the perfect (the past forms of German that look like the English past tense are semi-antiquated and now only used in storybooks).
Re: Or how the past in the German is actually expressed via the perfect (the past forms of German that look like the English past tense are semi-antiquated and now only used in storybooks
French is similar: the simple past is used only in literary French. In speaking the perfect is used (though there's also an imperfect for ongoing or repeated past actions).
Hello! Are you really sure that the existence of three genders is overcomplicating? I find it rather refreshing. Now I grant that the masculine and neutral behave with a lot of mutual degeneracy in their inflections, which is a little unfortunate.
You're right to point out the various verb forms as a sticking point. It would be interesting to understand how those came to be, and whether the separable verbs in particular are unique to German or not.
I'm used to three genders in Latin, Greek and the Slavic languages. Their presence in German is not an issue, although I do wish the form of German words gave some hint to their gender. In Russian for example nouns ending in hard consonants are masculine, those ending in -a are (almost) all feminine and those ending in -o,-e, or -ya are neuter. The only ambiguities are nouns ending in soft consonants.
Learning a country’s language expands your experience of it I would think though I expect many Germans speak English. English is a Germanic language with lots of Latin loan words so I think it’d be easier to learn than Hungarian.
I am sadly monolingual. While I worked in the parish office due to large numbers of Hispanic parishioners I understood Spanish pretty well but couldn’t speak it. I discovered understanding a language & speaking it are 2 different skill sets. Now I’ve forgotten most of the Spanish. I’m a standing example of the joke, “what do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? An American”. I’m in awe of people who are multilingual. Our pastor is from Kenya & he speaks his tribal language Meru, Swahili, English, Spanish & some Italian. I don’t know how he keeps them all straight.
I'm learning Polish by a two pronged approach. First is Duolingo where I can actually hear the language. Second is a Polish grammar where I can figure out the rules. It helps immensely that I am proficient in Russian and as a fellow Slavic language Polish shares a lot of vocabulary and quite a lot of grammatical forms with its East Slavic neighbor-- though it also has some complexities all its own.
Across European languages, Hungarian (and Finnish and Estonian) might be the oddest in terms of grammar, but Polish is definitely the oddest in terms of phonology. With a bunch of European languages, I can make a decent stab at a native-like pronounciation of names or words, but in Polish...
Speaking is a very hard skill, since you have to do it fast. There's relatively little time to take a step back and recall words.
On the more positive end, practicing speaking will make the brain recall patterns in the other language faster. Doing this over time, you would notice that the vocabulary you absorbed by reading or listening starts being usable during speech.
German has some annoying features like it's strict and weird word order. The system of case and gender endings for adjectives is a nightmare-- though one you can flub on without generally making yourself incomprehensible.
The word order is somewhat easy to get used to. Case is a bit wonky, but it has pretty close analogues in English (he = nominative, him = accusative/dative, to him = dative, his = genitive). Grammatical gender is a hard one.
There are a few rules, esp for feminine nouns, that make it easier to figure out, but a lot of nouns/genders just have to be put on vocabulary lists and memorized. Something Rod can do while he's out for his daily walk.
I read Rod's excerpts and then went to the full Axios article based on their interview with Dario Amodei. I just went to Gemini after reading the full Axios article with this prompt:
Before we do the rules, (Claude's Constitution) in a recent interview for Axios,
Amodei gave some very dire comments, such as in 5 years 50% of all white collar jobs will be done by Agentic AIs and the unemployment rate will be 20% or higher. This is quite a comment. Who else agrees or disagrees with him. How are we to critique him?
Here is summary of some notables who agree and some who disagree:
"Agreers"
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft
Jim Farley, Ford
Kai-Fu Lee, Venture Capitalist
Kristalina Georgieva, IMF
"Disagreers"
Yann LeCun, Meta Chief Scientist
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
Chris Lehan, OpenAI Policy Chief
How to Critique Amodei's View:
When evaluating Amodei's prediction, researchers and economists suggest looking at these specific gaps:
The "Filtering" Lag: Critics like Jack Clark (Anthropic co-founder) note that even if the technology can do the job, economic "filtering"—the time it takes for slow-moving industries like law and government to actually change their hiring habits—usually takes decades, not years.
(ME: Amodei would argue that this will not be the case with agentic AI. That it will happen in years not decades. I don't think there is any way to know for sure ahead of time.)
Productivity Paradox: Some economists from Northwestern University argue that while AI reduces demand for certain tasks, it lowers costs so much that overall demand for the services increases, leading to more hiring in other areas of the same firm.
(ME: This is interesting. The business model for law firms for over 100 years has been based on billable hours. "Young" lawyers that I know already realize that the model is unsustainable. Why? because tasks that used to take many hours are now done with AI in 15-20 minutes - literally. So there will be a shift to a new way of billing and paralegals will be many fewer in number. Probably the number of lawyers will drop. Over the weekend, an older lawyer in Connecticut told me with his head shaking that there are now 40,000 lawyer in the state, that works out to about 1 lawyer for every 5 citizens. Something had to change. AI will drive that change.)
"Attention Seeking": Critics like Andy Thurai of Cisco argue that AI lab CEOs have a financial incentive to say "extreme things" to instill a sense of urgency (FOMO) in investors and government regulators.
(ME: There is always thiskind of manipulation going on because big money is at play.)
The Transition Period: Even if Amodei is right about the destination, the critique is often about his speed. Most historical shifts (like the Industrial Revolution) happened over 40–50 years, allowing a new generation to train for new roles; Amodei predicts this will happen in five.
(ME: In some areas like the Law it will not take 40-50 years. Similarly in some fields of medicine the transition will be fast. Engineers are already using AI daily. The best engineering programs are serving (teaching) engineering (ME,CE,ChE, EE...) degrees with a big "side" of AI.)
To put all this into perspective, I am leary of such dire predictions. Why? Because I remember when Paul Ehrlich published "Population Bomb". It scared the hell of of me in 1968. I was 12/13 years old when it came out and not very critical, but I read like a fiend. Ehrlich could not have been more wrong, as it turns out. But he made himself over from an academic mediocrity to a media darling. I suspect he improved his standard of living upward considerable by being the journalists' go-to-guy for dire warnings. He never changed.
I am not saying Amodei is in the same category, but I am saying that is good to look for alternative view points when confronted by such a dire forecast. At least that is what I have tried to do since high school, to the extent that I could. AI ironically makes that easier to do than ever.
This is one of the strengths of "The Scaling Era." It does not just give one insider's opinion, it gives 20, and they're not all boosters by any stretch.
Anthropic is still operating at a loss, upwards of 10s of billions in the red per year. They don't even plan to be profitable until 2028, assuming they see massive adoption of Claude.
Keep this in mind whenever you hear something from Amodei. He HAS to sell the idea that his product will prop up the economy in a few years (i.e. when his VC funding runs out). If he doesn't then he's basically trying to sell a product that costs 10x as much as it returns.
(And note I'm a big fan of Claude Code, use it every day for work and pay for the best models. But I still think it's being overhyped because Anthropic is bleeding money)
"Orban was brought down by the same Blob that tried to bring down Donald Trump."
Yes, and The Blob is the thing that needs paying attention to. The various corruptions and foibles of Orban and Trump, while important, are secondary. The fact of the matter is that The Blob would have worked to bring them down regardless; the corruption just makes it easier.
"it’s fine to be corrupt, as long as you are corrupt in the service of neoliberalism and the Blob."
If only Orban would have used his powers for niceness instead of for evil.....
“I still believe the political future is some form of “national conservatism” — that is, decentralized, sovereigntist, anti-migration, culturally conservative, and economically center-left.”
Will that deliver economic prosperity? Will it improve people’s material conditions? National conservatives and nativists often do an evasive two step.
First, they claim immigrants are a fiscal burden, prone to crime, and take good jobs from natives. On that telling, removing them should reduce fiscal strain, eliminate any need for austerity, lower crime, and somehow leave natives with great jobs doing backbreaking farm labor.
So you ask, do you mean all immigrants? Because immigrants are not all the same. Then you realize you are talking to Stephen Miller, and he did not stutter.
Then it becomes clear that, in general, these people do not know much about statistics, economics, or the actual causes of fiscal strain. So they move to step two, which is the familiar line that the economy exists to serve the family, not the family to serve the economy. There is more to life than GDP.
That is true. But GDP still matters a lot, and if it collapsed, people would not be happy with the result.
So I will keep repeating a basic fact that nativists seem unwilling to engage with. The core economic problem in most rich countries is that they have too many old people drawing pensions and not enough young workers to support them. To deal with that, you either impose massive fiscal austerity, quickly expand the working age population through immigration, or use some combination of both.
The nativist position of removing immigrants without reforming old age pensions means more debt and inflation until the bond market imposes austerity for you.
I also wonder how much of this is just conservative virtue signaling. The moment the personal costs become real, many of these people would probably turn into enthusiastic open borders advocates. How popular would this outcome be?
* All the immigrants are gone.
* Old age pensions are sharply cut.
* Public healthcare is gutted.
* Everyone is responsible for supporting their parents and grandparents.
Or you can let immigrants in again. My guess is that a lot of people would become open borders fans very quickly.
You say "not all immigrants are the same" then proceed to argue as if they are.
The more thoughtful people among conservatives know that A) legal immigrants are different than illegal ones, and B) controlling legal immigration in moderate ways is not the same as being "anti-immigration."
I argued that way because I was addressing what nativists actually argue, especially the ones in power. Look at Stephen Miller, his rhetoric, and the policies he supports. Look at how Trump and Vance treated Haitian immigrants, many of whom were here legally under protected status. Does this movement really believe immigrants are good and simply want them to come legally? Obviously not.
Look at the UK. A conservative government legally increased immigration, and restrictionists were furious. They want less immigration, period.
So the “we support legal immigration” line is usually a motte and bailey, if not outright dishonest. Laws can be changed. Countries can allow large scale legal immigration. Nativists hate that too, because their real objection is not illegal immigration. It is immigration itself.
No nativist wins on a political platform “immigrants are great. let’s have more legally.” They say things like haitians kill your pets or stuff like this:
“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best….They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.“
Your descriptions should be less fuzzy then. There are a lot of what might be called "national conservatives" who aren't nativists. For instance, those people who agreed in some sense with what Trump was trying to do, but had major problems with how he was doing it.
We also have the horrible "legacy Americans" stuff: if your ancestors were not here in place by the Civil War you're somehow a second class citizen. No word on whether that legacy is big enough to include the descendants of slaves and Native people (some of latter have been arrested by ICE as illegal aliens"!)
It's not big enough. You might remember an interview retiring Border Patrol official Greg Bovino gave the New York times last month. In it, he talked about having a plan to deport "one hundred million" people. And a few months ago, the Department of Homland Security posted an image of a tropical beach with the line "America After 100 Million Deportations". One hundred million would just about include all of the non-white population. It seems to be a popular idea with the nativist crowd.
Deporting one hundred million peopie is idiotic on a monumental scale. Most of them would be American citizens! There'd be no where to deport them to, unless someone has opened a portal to a parallel US in another time line. What drugs are these people doing ? Or do they have a mind rot virus?
They wouldn't be American citizens if the Trump administration can get rid of birthright citizenship. Do you really think that's really about recent illegal aliens? Once they get rid of birthright citizenship, they feel that they can redefine it in all kinds of ways. Going back generations.
According to the USDA website, approx. 26% of immigrant farm workers are legal immigrants, while 42% are "unauthorized." The remaining 32% of farm workers are U.S. born.
There are some conservative voices who bemoan Social Security for "cutting the intergenerational bond" and relieving children of the obligation to support their parents. Likewise, government welfare (even the most basic) is bad because churches could and should be handling that.
Sandra, those points remind me of the famous John Adams quote about the U.S. Constitution being made only for a moral and religious people and "wholly inadequate to the government of any other." It's all but impossible to see our post-Christian population willingly shouldering the burdens, personal as well as financial, of caring for the elderly and the poor. Wouldn't you say?
I dislike Social Security because it's a Ponzi Scheme. The government takes money from everyone who works to fund it. But there is no way to give everyone the money they have worked for. While they won't say it openly, the system counts on people dying before they can receive all the money they worked for. It's a deeply foolish idea.
For me, neither problem will be resolved until things collapse. Old age pensions and Social Security will be wiped out. I don't expect to get any of the money that I'm supposed to be owed by Social Security. The immigration problem will be handled with violence one way or another.
Peter Magyar seems to be more like Orban than the EU would like. They were allies until 2024. could there have been a clever bargain made by them in the background? It is plausible.
Magyar on immigration said: "Hungary will not accept any pact. In fact, I'm going to reinforce the border fence even more."
He has also on sovereignity said: "Hungary’s history is written by the Hungarian people, not in Moscow, not in Brussels, and not in Washington."
And he had the "nerve to say this about the vision many have for the United States of Europe: "We will have discussions with the European Union, but we are not going there to fight... We don't have to have a European United States... Europeans don't strive for this... They want functioning, strong nation states, and a good and well-functioning EU."
So, ironically, Magyar is saying things, already, that sound very much like they could have been said by Orban. So is Magyar just Orban without the corruption as he suggested in his own campaign that he would be?
Rod (your) going to Vienna makes sense as a father who wants to be near his son, but it may not be necessitated by Peter Magyar's victory over Orban.
If I have to guess, I would say Magyar will stand down on EU aid to Ukraine while not joining in (the country can't afford it). He'll also back down a bit on the anti-GLB stuff (note I left out the "T") but not so much as to outrage his people. On immigration he'll stick to the Fidesz playbook, but will allow some Potemkin pseudo-measures to make it look like he's changing.
I could be wrong, but from what I see, most Hungarians don't care about homosexuality per se (trans is a different thing). They just don't want it taught to their kids, and could do without the constant celebration of it that you see in the West. In fact, it's well known here that no small number of Fidesz elites are gay.
Oh, Magyar's government may shut down the parent institution that funds the think tank where I work. So I'll probably be out of a job. Maybe not, but it's time for me to go anyway.
I don't know about Magyar. He's saying the correct and popular things, but I honestly don't know how much he'll be able to defy Brussels and get away with it. Meaning, how much Brussels will take.
Rod, I saw the other day how you've been smeared with plenty of nonsense on social media since Orban's electoral walloping. Anybody who reads your Substack regularly can see you were not a mindless shill for the regime and were willing to highlight uncomfortable truths about it.
But you have some maddeningly rose-colored glasses when it comes to Orban himself. You say things like "Alas, Orban’s tolerance for corruption made it too easy for them" acting as if Orban lacks agency in this matter and somehow wasn't an active enabler of this corruption.
One upside of leaving Hungary. Soon you will be in a country with a learnable language unlike Hungarian with is one of the most difficult languages in the world. We English speakers are lucky that almost all educated people, worldwide, can speak English.
On a Reddit for people learning Russian someone asked any native Russians present what they found hardest about English. I would have expected the spelling-- but no they all said our complex verbal system is a nightmare to master. Russian has just four tenses (present, future, past, perfect) We have twelve or even sixteen.
Anytime I hear about Louisiana politics, I think of Edwin Edwards saying the only way he would not be re-elected was if he were caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. And when he said his opponent was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch “60 Minutes.”
You see Sean Hannity walking away from Catholicism because he's mad at the Pope for going against Trump? I remember in a 2017 interview onstage at First Baptist Dallas (the kind of megachurch where instead of giving a Sunday sermon, the pastor interviewed a Fox News personality), Hannity said that he thinks the Catholic Church got ecclesiology wrong.
"They did," chuckled the pastor, Robert Jeffress.
"I guess that makes me Baptist," Hannity replied, making the sign of the cross.
Who but an ignorant buffoon could make such a statement in such a way? But, then, think of those who lap it all up and love Hannity's "American Christianity" - our version of the Deutsche Christen .
Well, "ignorant". Hannity was peddling WMD on the sly on his radio show well into 2005/06. Some goober would call. in and say, "I just know in my heart that some day we'll discover them" and Sean would pat him on the head.
What's WMD? I guess I'm ignorant, too.
Weapons of mass destruction. The nukes we went to war to prevent Saddam Hussein from using.
Face palm!
Hannity, Kristol, McCain and Victor Davis Hanson were the last four supporters of the Iraq invasion.
Sean Hannity is one I could never listen to, no insight, no humor, no ideas, just rinse and repeat.
The Fox News brand of pseudo- Christianity is repulsive. Lots of divorces going on over there. But I don't lump Hanson in with them- he can be wrong like anyone can, but I think he is very smart and a gentleman, and is the only one of that ilk who has supported much of Trump's policy.
Doesn't the whole AI thing seem like a high tech Tower of Babel? When the time comes, it will fall.
Hannity is just boring and repetitive. Mark Levin on the other hand, I imagine him being red-faced all the time with spittle and foam flying out of his mouth as he vituperates. These guys are on the local AM station I tune into once in a while to get the local news, so I can learn what streets are closing for construction and who just got arrested. If I listen too long, they start to talk.
There probably will be some future surprise related to the supposed world takeover of AI that stops it short. Probably the eventual realization that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) can never be achieved using the techniques and model architecture that produced chatGPT, claude, gemini, etc. And also the realization that the equivalent of Moores law for AI would require levels of power far beyond what any energy technology could produce.
Could also be something grass roots like wide spread eco-terrorism, taking down of data centers. No functioning data centers, no AI. Lots of little groupuscles around Europe, off the radar, that could go active. A foretaste of that was the sabotaging in May 2025 of the powergrid around Cannes and Nice, just in time for the film festival. Or a little further back, movements behind things like the ZAD (Zone a Defendre), occupying land meant for the construction of an airport near Nantes (2018 French government expelled the occupiers). On the old continent, everyone breathlessly obsesses about the slow growth of movements on the right, and completely ignores the radical left. No one is watching them.
I wouldn’t put VDH in the company of the others.
VDH is an accomplished scholar not a blowhard.
My problem with so much of these is that it smacks of elitist distaste for the plebs..who are vulgar, not “our class dear”.
Hanson stayed committed to Iraq until the end.
I enjoy VDHs books. But he was uncritical about the Iraq war (in which I served and which I support but feel should have been executed very differently). He flipped from uncritically comparing it to WWII to critiquing it as an "endless war", without an explanation for his change.
Sean is such a goober. He got into a shouting match on Fox with a priest over birth control. He kept saying how he’d been to Catholic school. Big deal. He always was a cafeteria Catholic, but on the right.
Maybe he can go to church with Franklin Graham. Graham twists himself into logical pretzels trying to excuse Trump’s Jesus picture. Any day now, I expect him to ask people if they’ve accepted Donald Trump as their personal Lord & Savior. This is disappointing as, after being burned by Watergate, his Dad warned against evangelicals getting into bed with politicians. Apparently his niece & nephew are never Trumpers which would make Thanksgiving dinner a bit awkward. They were unhappy because Franklin claimed Billy was a Trump supporter in 2016, at which point he was 97 years old, blind, in poor health & completely out of public life.
Guardian columnist casts JD Vance as Thomas Cromwell to Trump's Henry VIII::
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/17/pope-leo-jd-vance-donald-trump-catholicism?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Well Vance can fix it all by becoming Orthodox!
Hannity ditched the Catholic Church years ago. I remember seeing him announce he shared a pastor with Tim Scott and of course he got publicly engaged to twice divorced Ainsley Earhart ( I’m not sure of the name) in a church, a practice I’ve never heard of. The funniest thing about him is he wears the same shirt every night on Fox . Yes I do tend to watch the beginning of his show until either my wife or I scream in horror.
Hannity has always been rah-rah. He's the dumbest of the radio blabbermouths.
For years, Hannity had been ending his show with, "Let not your hearts be troubled." He either doesn't know or doesn't care how inappropriate that is.
Yes and Laura Ingraham assures you it’s America now and forever- whatever that means and unlike Hannity she is bright and educated . Unfortunately a professional propagandist. The only one I really like is Johnny on Jesse Waters- he’s funny and has some guts , I’m amazed he hasn’t gotten punched out!
I think Hannity said the institutional corruption including clergy sexual abuse led him to leave the Church.
I can't say that I watch much Hannity. But, he has a point if he wants to argue that, if the works that procede from faith seem not just wrong but harmful, then some critique is warranted. I am not deeply familar with all of Pope Leo's statements on matters which relate to the political. But surely if he covers for virtually unlimted 3d world migration to Europe that deserves some critical analysis.
That’s not exactly why he left according to the monologue I listened too. Seems it was corruption in the Catholic Church. The whole thing was eye opening to a Catholic. He had F Graham on to back his rant. Not a big Hannity fan, his reasoning questionable ie “there were a lot a wars in the OT…” This reminds me of the popery charges of the Church in the 1700’s and why they were afraid of allegiances to Rome. Don’t think I’ll be watching any Hannity in the future or any other Gix propaganda. I have plenty of time to now read.
You’re getting at something more unsettling than “Hitler 2.0.”
Hitler had to win crowds. Stalin had to crush them. Both depended on human limits—time, fear, imperfect control. AI doesn’t.
When Bill Maher is raising red flags, and builders like Dario Amodei admit they don’t fully understand what they’ve made, that’s not normal progress. That’s a warning from inside the machine room.
And look at where we already are. Palantir sits quietly inside defense, intelligence, and government systems—no drama, just dependency.
As Paul Kingsnorth keeps warning, the real danger isn’t conquest. It’s consent.
Because the system won’t need to seize power. We’ll hand it over—piece by piece—because it works: faster courts, smarter war planning, frictionless lives
Relief first. Then dependence, then no alternative.
That’s not tyranny as we’ve known it. It’s something colder: a world where control is invisible, and opting out feels irrational.
Weimar turned to a man who spoke to fear. We may turn to a system that removes the need to feel anything at all.
And listen to how some in Silicon Valley talk. The ambition isn’t modest. It’s to build something like a mind above all minds—something that knows, predicts, and directs.
They joke about “creating God.” Then add, almost under their breath: “not yet.”That’s not reassurance,That’s a timeline.
No beast rising in a moment—just a system no one can live outside of.
"...the real danger isn’t conquest. It’s consent."
Consent, or possibly "compliance." I see that so much today. Be compliant with this or compliant with that. If you're out of compliance you stand the risk of being sued, fired, taken to court, etc.
But to what are we complaint? Government rules? Management mandates? Just other means of control by larger bodies that limit the agency of the individual.
“Compliance” is exactly it, and it rarely feels like oppression—it feels like process. We just had it happen at a local event: same firehouse, same setup as every year. It used to be one form—this year it was seven. Then we had to cancel a reliable food truck at the last minute because he didn’t meet a new fire suppression requirement on his truck
Nothing dramatic, just more rules, more boxes to check, more ways to be told “no.” That’s the point: control doesn’t always show up as force, it shows up as systems you have to comply with to function at all. That’s the bridge—from rules you follow to systems you can’t step outside of.
Byung-Chul Han talks about this same thing in terms of transparency. When governments and corporations go on and on about transparency as if it's an unalloyed good, the flip side is that it's also about surveillance and control.
I am a surgeon. I have very little “agency”. I can comply with what is requested or quit/retire or try a different institution. Currently few of us have real agency in most things.
I am a physician myself. I know the reality of cookie cutter medicine. Semi-retired at this point.
The experts and Bill Maher are raising red flags? Now I know I have nothing to worry about!
"We are making this but we don't really understand what it is" is hardly a strong selling point.
Most of this is hot air though. Remember that AI is still massively unprofitable and the big companies operate at a huge loss.
The only way these companies can justify their existence is by claiming outlandish scenarios wherein it makes sense to dump hundred of billions of dollars into them. So keep that in mind whenever people like Amodei talk about the power of their models, they need to drum up the marketability massively. Mythos, for all it's supposed to accomplish, currently costs about $20k per run over a standard security stack, so you're looking at potentially a $100k to$200k price tag to screen some security risks in a given week. That's already hundreds of times the weekly rate for a seasoned cybersecurity analyst. Which goes back to the main point: unless these models are so powerful that they need to be chained to secrecy, fearing their godlike powers, no on in their right mind would pay for them.
I'm much more concerned with people who get conned into this crap. Because that will have very real ramifications on the labor market and society. No I don't think AI will ever have anything nearing a soul or competence to be a leader. But I think that the billions of mouth breathing retards who make up humanity will actually believe a machine has a soul and start worshipping a piece of software
<<<—just a system no one can live outside of.>>>
We are like that frog sitting in a nice pot of warm water.
The water started getting a little too warm for me about 25 years ago - so I jumped out.
But even outside that pot, I can still feel its warmth radiating out all around me.
I keep resisting but I know in the end there's no escaping the system.
I have two Apple computers on my desk - an older one and a newer one.
The older one works perfectly fine, but I had to buy a newer one just to do my taxes.
The older one has applications that I have been using for years - the newer one doesn't.
If I wanted to use the same applications on the new one, I'd have to pay a monthly fee.
I have no doubt the new one spies on me.
The old one can't because I don't have it connected to the internet.
Google is taking over the universe and won't rest until everyone is a customer.
But they can't have me - I got tired of them harassing me so I got a VPN.
Went to renew my expired Sam's Club membership.
The guy at the desk wanted me to download their app to do business with them.
I told him I didn't have a cell phone. He didn't believe me.
I told him not everyone has a cell phone. They're not our customers, he replied.
I told him to never mind and walked out.
I bought a beautiful new car last year - I really like it - well, kinda sorta.
First disappointment - It doesn't have a CD player.
The SOB's at Toyota want me to pay a monthly subscription to listen to music.
Other disappointments:
The Toyota GPS is a sorry piece a chit- so I use my iPhone for directions.
My iPhone is a sorry piece a chit, too, but slightly better than the Toyota GPS.
I've talked to the Toyota people, the Apple people, my Cellular provider.
None of them could help.
It just may be a system no one can live outside of - and people may think I'm crazy and they're probably right - but I'm trying anyway.
Except for Budapest, you know the European capitals mostly from short visits. So Vienna should be an interesting shift for you for this reason, as it conforms more to the Barbarian-at-the-Wall EU norm. Aside from being closer to Matt (the point of the move), once you finish up your book, you'll be able to spend some time *living* in that more "normal" EU.
Our betters are famously inconsistent, but at least they're consistent in their double standards. Just as democracy is only Our Democracy™, so NGOs are only justified as such if they are our NGOs™.
I sort of question this move but support Rod doing what he believes in. My thinking - Rod can see Matt with two hours on an easy train with internet. Vienna, well, I love Austria, I love Vienna but they are not warm like the Hungarians. (And Rod isn't going to learn German. Probaby one in 10,000 verbal IQ but learning language was not part of what he got or else what he does.) Rod can only spend so many hours in Matt's flat. And that Hungarian finceé, erm.... I know Rod basically stays in his apartment now, but he at least goes to Danube Institute to see the politicos, and the baristas at his coffee shop are friendly, plus he gets lots of visiting intellectuals for nights out that he may not get in Vienna.
However, there is hope for a commuter job in Vienna, that is, coming to Budaptest for Danube Inatitute related things.
Because - - the funding for Danube Institute is independent of the Hungarian Government, as I understand it, and certainly MCC funding is. Orbán is no dummy. Plenty of conservatives will keep their jobs here. Orban may live in a billion dollar castle-estate (he does, owned on paper by his father) but plenty of Orbán's and Hungarian conservative's NGOs have lots of money.
Some interesting details. I’m thinking he might get some new perspectives by living in, rather than just regularly visiting, Vienna.
As for the Danube Institute, hope it stays funded.
I suspect we’ll see a lot more writing about migrants in Europe as he’ll be encountering it up close rather than writing about the benefits of the lack of migration in Hungary.
Our host announces that Trump's second term "is not going well." Since January 2025, there are at least twenty items on the Trump agenda that I disagree with like his intervention into Canadian politics to his fascination with Greenland and the unwise war in Iran. Yet the border is closed, 400,000 federal bureaucrats have been axed, fraud cases like the Somalis pulled off in Minnesota are being exposed, illegal aliens are being rounded up, graft in the federal government have been dealt with and the 2017 Trump tax cuts have been retained. Trump has some accomplishments and even the situation in Iran has stabilized and the 50,000 point Dow is in reach.
I was in my early twenties in the early stages of the Reagan Administration. A lot of Republicans and Democrats often said that the Reagan presidency "wasn't going well." But that's normal in politics. Reagan's presidency ended up being pretty successful.
I’d say that defunding the fake hospices and other Medicare/Medicaid outlets in CA amounts to a real accomplishment. Dollar totals still being tallied, though there are two buckets of $500M and $250M so far.
Re: Mission accomplished. Best statesmen since Cincinnatus.
Cincinnatus was best known for retiring when his time was up. Not for hanging around and haunting Rome like some ornery earthbound ghost.
Why talk like Trump's defense lawyer? What do you get out of this?
I am only writing what I think is true. As a personality, I don't like Trump. But I approve of much of what he has done over the past fourteen months.
Well, we all have to believe something, I suppose.
For all his flaws, Trump is actually coming to grips with the major challenges afflicting American society in a way far beyond any other Republican would have done, just as Reagan went out to 1) Really challenge the USSR, and 2) Open up the economy. As far as Democrats are concerned, they don't even know our problems are problems; to them, they're just catalysts for more money and power.
Trump 2.0 does have a lot of actual accomplishments that I agree with and this shouldn't be forgotten. However, momentum in many of those things, such as rounding up illegal immigrants, is being lost and is great jeopardy of being routed completely after the midterms.
A great deal of the fault lies with the failure of Republicans in Congress to advance the agenda, perhaps more than it actually lies with Trump. But there's no questioning that our foreign entanglement with the Persians on behalf of the Israelis is putting many of the gains and changes that I was excited for in danger. I don't like that. It pisses me off.
I would also argue that the situation in Iran is only stable for any given particular moment and can be thrown back into chaos at any time. Yesterday morning the situation looked like it was improving. Iran was opening Hormuz, there was a ceasefire rolling out in Lebanon, there were more negotiations being scheduled between the United States and Iran for Sunday, and Trump was telling everybody that Iran was going to let us have the "nuclear dust.*"
I wake up this morning to learn that Iran is closing the Strait again due to "America violations of the ceasefire." Trump has some press conference scheduled for 9AM on a Saturday. The Israelis are still attacking Lebanon even after Trump "forbade" them to do so.
As for corruption, it's starting to look like it's off the charts for this administration when it comes to manipulating the financial markets through announcements about the war. Once again somebody made a huge purchase of oil puts ($870 million) just before the announcements that Iran had agreed to open the Strait drove the price of oil down. This has been happening with regularity for the last six weeks. Somebody with inside access is cleaning up in the financial markets.
Suffice to say, there's a lot rotten with Trump 2.0 and we do ourselves no favors in ignoring it. We do need to acknowledge the good things he delivered on, but there's a lot that's been pushed aside or jeopardized by the war with Iran and corruption should always be called out.
I read something the other day, can't remember who wrote it, but it was from a conservative lamenting that Trump hasn't lifted a finger to advance any of his executive orders through Congress, and into law. Therefore, when a Democrat comes back into the White House, it all goes away. That's on Trump, mostly, but also the GOP Congressional leadership. Trump doesn't seem to care about the messiness of actual governing.
They're not a particularly attractive bunch, but Paul, Massie, Luna, and Mace are pretty upfront as to Thune's malfeasance.
No, it is on the do-nothing Congress, who decided long ago that they refuse to do their jobs.
And Biden didn't pass much either. Congress has largely made itself worthless.
Yes, if I remember correctly Trump has been trying to codify his EO on election integrity in the SAVE act. He's trying hard but the Senate has been useless.
The SAVE Act is too extreme. Here in Florida a version of it has been passed, but it puts the burden of verification wholly on public officials not on the citizens. Most people will not have to lift a finger to be validly registered to vote, existing registrations will be honored and nothing will take effect until next year at the earliest. Arizona is also doing something similar. And really, maybe we should leave this up to the states? Does everything have to have a federal solution?
This congress has been worse than usual for impeding the executive agenda. The establishment GOP is still fighting Trump tooth and nail, just waiting him out.
Of course, Trump has endorsed most of these people for re- election and, in the case of congressional leadership, for the positions they hold and rarely, if ever, speaks against them.
Which is just more proof, if you're inclined to believe it, that it's all a big Uniparty scam on the rubes that everyone, including Trump, is in on. A big MAGA game is talked. Token and half- measures are made early to keep the rubes in line for another election cycle and then abandoned as soon as practical.
Ultimately I find myself asking the following question more often these days: If Trump’s elevation to POTUs really was a long-term psy-op by Them (Freemasons, Jews, Lizard People living inside the hollow Earth, take your pick) to thoroughly discredit populism, Nationalism, and conservatives generally that Trump was himself a part of, how would things look any different than they do right now?
The Uniparty theory is increasingly true. It's just a show the elites put on to distract us while they steal our tax money and do whatever they can to enrich themselves. Their paid politicians are the same. Anyone who tries to change that will find themselves out of a job and not elected.
Sorry it is ALL on the useless Republicans. We need a NEW PARTY. PATRIOTS PARTY. AMERICAN PARTY. Something
"That's on trump"
Actually seems like it's on congress. As the lawmakers, they actually have to take up the process of codeifying the actual laws. If they refuse to do so, then it's on them.
America isn't like a small country run by a corrupt fat gypsy (cough cough, Hungary). We actually have to work through our separation of powers
The Congressional GOP is worse than useless. Half of them are right liberals. The other half is a motley collection of crackpots, grifters, and genuine populists. They can barely agree on which direction the sun sets in, let alone actual legislation. There is no nationalist populist majority, and none is on the horizon any time soon.
Oh, it's worse than that. Iran blights everything. I hate to go all moralistic on you, but an unjust war is like a man, a good provider, who gets the best education for his kids, a fine home and nifty clothes, is well respected in the community, and well liked by his neighbors who comes home every night and rapes his daughter. The other stuff just doesn't count. The whole world sees (as if it already didn't know) that we are being led by the nose by the Israelis. No matter what the particular outcome this is not going away.
Bravo! Pure truth-speaking!
The Israelis are throwing every monkey wrench they have into the works to prevent any sort of even temporary peace. That includes assassinating any Iranian of official who tries to negotiate with the US. At this point we should cut off all aid to Israel, withdraw from the Middle East and wave bye-bye.
None of that is on, Jon. It's not going to happen. I wish it could. But we could try exercising our considerable leverage. In 1982 Reagan saw footage of Begin's foray into Lebanon and told him to stop. He did. I understand that Trump did something similar when he saw just what it was the IDF was getting up to in Beiut, but, evidently, we couldn't do that for Gaza, not Biden, not Trump.
Your larger point, that the Israelis will work hard to screw things up, however, is of course the case. I don't know how much longer I can hear Bibi bellow about defending Western Civilization.
Another day in which Jon and I agree. Clearly it is the correct course of action.
I have no idea what the Israelis are going to do but your recommendation to cut all aid and get out of the Middle East is solid regardless. Let the Middle East take care of itself.
It's time to be done with Israel.
Bibi's War is the greatest negative for Trump 2.0 and Rod was cheerleading it initially.
I don't support it, think it was unnecessary, a bad idea, but "unjust" is pure BS.
It may be just for the Israelis, but it isn't for us.
Then neither was Iraq (either time) Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, US entry into WW1, etc.
Since J. Reuben Clark drafted the Clark Memorandum back in the 20s (designed to sell the Kellog Briand Acts) every conflict has been sold as "defensive". Even Saddam invading Kuwait was justified as "defensive".
"All wars are bankers' wars" was stated by Gen. Butler. War for profit has been called out since the ancient Greeks.
I hate the US being world hegemon, I think this war is stupid, but a hegemon acts.
Meanwhile, Bibi just clings to power using wars to avoid jail.
As to your first paragraph's list, check and double-check.
Get ready, Cuba is next!
*Nuclear dust
I don't know why Cheeto Jesus has settled on this cutesy term for enriched uranium, but I f*cking hate it. He sounds like a retarded child whenever he uses it.
It's like Bush's "nuke-YOU-lur".
Yes! we're talking about drawing a line in the sand. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, "retarded" is not the preferred nomenclature. Mentally-challenged, please.
This isn't a guy who had to ride a short bus to kindergarten! This is a guy who peed all over my mass deportations and economic recovery by going to war with Iran! What the f*ck are you talking about, Rob?!
(Note to Rod and others who may be confused: we're not actually fighting. We're doing a bit.)
Pretty sure Rod gets it....
While looking for that quote (couldn't remember the exact verbiage) Copilot, which I think is an AI search thing, gave me this:
~~The term "Chinaman" is considered outdated and offensive; "Asian-American" is the preferred nomenclature.
Historical Context
The term "Chinaman" has been used historically to refer to individuals of Chinese descent. However, it has fallen out of favor due to its association with derogatory stereotypes and its use in contexts that dehumanize or marginalize individuals. Language evolves, and terms that were once commonplace can become inappropriate as societal understanding and sensitivity change.~~
Thanks for the insights, bud. Now shut the f--k up.
Re: The term "Chinaman" is considered outdated and offensive; "Asian-American" is the preferred nomenclature.
Why are "Frenchman" and "Englishman" still Ok? And"Asian American" takes in a lot of territory populated by people who are not close ethnic kin.
There's never been much logic in all this PC nonsense.
Different rules referring to whites and nonwhites. For the Leftists, the first is the devil and the second are victims who are above criticism.
Reddit guy who refers to Trump as Cheeto Jesus thinks the term Nuclear Dust sounds retarded.
I'm not 80 years old and Chief Potato of the United States, engaged in a conflict with shifting justifications in which people are dying and being maimed.
Is he going to start telling us how proud he is of the boom- boom he just made in the Oval Office washroom?
And the Cheeto Jesus thing is more about mocking you and the other orange kool-aid drinkers than it is about him. If you're going to be offended, be offended for the right reason and for yourself, not on Trump's behalf.
Closing the strait is in our interest and devastating for Iran.
The Trump hate is so strong here that the haters cannot or choose not to see the grand geopolitical strategy in play. That’s why I don’t take 90% of the commenters here seriously.
Here is the next thing that will happen in Rod’s posts and in the comments after the Iran conflict has been successfully concluded, this quote courtesy of the great Walter Kirn: “Those who hate the war will also have a problem with the peace. Just watch.” 100% guaranteed to happen here. It’s so easy to predict how the TDS crowd reacts.
Then, after Iran, when we end the regime in Cuba, all the hysterics on this Substack will start up again. It’s so tiresome to read through all the faulty and deranged thinking here.
Why not just rename it the Strait of Trump and call it a day?
Nah, I like the Zoroastrian roots of the name.
I’m just waiting for all the newly minted geopolitical geniuses here to comment in totality about the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Luzon Strait. Seems like there’s some new things tying them all together. What could it be?
All I hear on this Substack is crickets.
Seems that Trump is building a chain leading to confrontation with China. Gather up the oil it needs. Destroy the Chinese alliance partners. Rebuild our military might. It would be helpful if NATO even tried a little bit to assist. Maybe Russia next with partnership versus confrontation. Cut off Russian oil to China? We will see.
Ataraxis, I'm inclined to agree with Walter Kirn's take and yours. And I admire your willingness to swim against the *current* current in these comboxes. But all I know for sure is that I'm not smart or wise enough to know if you're right or they are. None of us will know for sure until the bombs stop, the dust settles and Trump is gone from the daily news cycle. The outcome is everything.
I do continue to think Trump did the right thing to bomb Islamist Iran's nuclear and other military resources. Despite his self-centeredness and immaturity, he had the balls to love America, albeit in his own way -- like a greaser of old loved his car: as an extension of his fragile ego and a hedge against his grinding insecurity. He's bombing away, sparing civilians to the extent such is possible. By contrast, his predecessors ducked and ran. All they had to counter the menace of the mullahs were words, worry stones and pallets of cash. That could not have gone on forever. It took a boorish bully like Trump to out-bully those 11th-century fanatics brandishing nuclear-tipped scimitars and other 21st-century armaments.
Alas, as I've said in these comboxes many times, Trump is a pretty good leader but an abjectly awful manager. With that I'm referring to Peter Drucker's maxim that "Leading is doing the right things. Managing is doing things right." Trump does things wrong even when he does the right things.
Maybe a Pres. Vance will evidence and overlap both skill sets at once. We can only hope.
Dave, nice write up! Here’s a hint on Trump. The Trump you see in tweets and public pronouncements is not the real Trump. It’s merely a negotiating persona.
On to his management skills and why he’s absolutely an excellent manager. Ask yourself, “why did a dozen billionaires go to work for Trump if he’s the Trump in the tweets?” Why? Because he’s not. This is the dog that’s not barking.
Thoughts to ponder.
If you were a billionaire, would you leave your mansion and go work for someone, anyone? In government of all places?
We have all worked for bad managers. If you were a billionaire would you go work for someone who’s a poor manager? Or the madman that the left falsely portrays Trump as?
See, the media characterization of Trump is dead wrong, and the billionaires who work for him prove it. Please note that all them are still on the job since Day One. If Trump was the person the media says he is, wouldn’t these billionaires have already left crummy Washington DC, a place I can most assuredly say that none of them want to live in? Wouldn’t they rather be living the good life in one of their mansions?
I’ll give you one more dog that’s not barking on what Trump is really like. He’s run a large and complicated business for decades, yet have you heard of a single disgruntled employee? If there was one, don’t you think the media would have already publicized it? Do you think that the media has tried to find a disgruntled employee? Of course they have, yet they couldn’t find one. Because we never heard about it.
Final thought. Some of my clients were billionaires. I have a friend who’s a billionaire. I can assure you that billionaires do not put up with poor behavior or any friction in life. And 100% they do not want to be taken away or distracted from the businesses they built.
Have a good day!
To wit, the cabinet is full of superb and effective people: Scott Bessent, Chris Wright, Doug Burgum, Sean Duffy…all of whom have substantial wealth of their own.
There are others I’d put on the list but of effective, not sure of their net worths though...
Ataraxis, I would only submit that recruiting and retaining good high-level underlings is, I believe, more a leadership duty than a management one. I'm not sure about the lack of disgruntled employees. It's clear he's widely loved by the blue collar people who built his buildings. He speaks their language and likes to go onsite to meet them. He can genuinely relate. But is there any truth to the stories that he stiffed contract companies? And they had to sue to get paid for their work?
To be sure, there's overlap between leadership and management. But I continue to see Trump as a good if not great leader — too soon to tell which — but a lousy manager. He can't get control of his mouth enough to quit fishing for compliments, giving himself praise, counterpunching critics on every side, etc. He displays no modicum of humility, a must-have in a great manager. He's just too emotionally arrested, 79 going on 16. That mindset tends to make him allergic to operational details, for which he seems to have no patience at all. I wish it weren't so, given his leadership prowess, but I've known too many immature adults — and bad managers — to miss those patterns in the President of the U.S.
So reminiscent of the doom sayers last year with the rollout of tariffs. Has anyone here that predicted economic armageddon as a result of tariffs admitted they were wrong?
I realize this is purely a rhetorical question. What is not, though, is what does Rod get from the consistent negativity? Sorry Rod, it is tiresome in the extreme and not supported by “events, dear boy, events"
Rod just mentioned “crazy tariffs” yesterday LOL! Now the market is on a record breaking run and…………crickets.
If someone is consistently bad in their forecasts, doesn’t it behoove them to explore why and then seek better sources that got the forecast correct?
This Iran thing has already made me jettison some sources who got it wrong and never corrected themselves.
It appears that many people here cannot consider two opposing thoughts in their head at the same time.
Yes. sadly. And the relentless negativity is also tiresome. I participate mostly out of a sense of duty, frankly. Probably just blowing into the wind, though. :)
Sorry, but you think that because the stock market is booming that the tariffs thing worked?
I'm not against tariffs per se, but Trump had no plan for them. He just threw them around as his mood changed. Companies can't plan around that. I had hoped we might get some kind of thought-out re-industrializing policy. Guess not.
No, this is damaging our economy, and damaging the rest of the world too. See: Shooting oneself in the foot; cutting off nose to spite face.
In the larger picture this isn't our war.;
It is also hurting the economies of the world. Believe it or not, we have elections in much of the world. And the Republicans will get creamed because of the economy.
Derek I think I am about the same age as you. Reagan's rhetoric and optimism were like a breath of fresh air after Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. Younger people who did not live it, do not realize into what doldrums we had descended as a nation post Viet Nam. Carter was not wrong about the national malaise that we were in, unfortunately, he added to and deepened it. He was just THE worst man at the worst possible time for the presidency. Reagan came in and pulled us out of the doldrums. It was nothing short of astonishing. But he was vilified by a hostile press the whole time. Like Trump, it never stopped him. Trump has done amazingly well. I say that because there are whole parts of his agenda that people like Rod bought into and expected, that I did not, and did not care about. So, I am not in the "disappointed" camp; I am in the "I can't believe he has done this much" camp. I put the war with Iran on the plus side of the ledger because after 47 years of enduring a "warm" war" with their violence, he put his foot down. I also consider it a just war for all those reasons that have accumulated over those 47 years of pain. Thus I am in a very different place than many. I do worry for the last two years of his presidency, but Trump seems steeled and ready for whatever is coming. And, we know what is coming if the dems take over Congress. It will be the usual shitification of government show.
How many of those 400,000 "axed" individuals were actually doing their jobs? I happen to know for a fact that the State Department office that could have warned off Vance from presenting The City of God to the former head of the Augustinian order was one of the "axed". I cheerfully donate whatever percentage of my tax dollars it is that goes to an office that prevents uninformed and untempered politicians from making fools out of themselves abroad.
I hadn't t heard about that City of God gift. Haha...sometimes Clown World really delivers!
Prince George's County is full of secretaries and meeting planners who did little work. There's a reason why PG County voted 86 % for Harris. Actually, two reasons.
I really don't want to mix it up with you, but shouldn't all those cuts have been the responsibility of the respective Secretaries, and not of tech bros? It's like everything else this administration does. I know all about the border, but what's interesting is that it really wasn't that hard, you know?
In corporations at least HR will work closely with local management to come up a list of layoffs when layoffs are needed. Generally the process will take several weeks or longer.
Re: 400,000 federal bureaucrats have been axed,
Not a good thing as this has simply gummed up the works worse than it already is. It's been two months and still no sign of my tax refund, which last year showed up just three weeks after filing. DOGE did the clueless CEO thing, cutting head count, instead the sensible thing that might actually have benefited the economy by cutting through the kudzu of regulations.
Reagan's presidency was mainly successful because Mikhail Gorbachev started the welcome process off standing down the USSR. Domestically Reaganomics juiced up the economy by wholly Keynesian means-- those tax cuts added money, albeit at the expense of debt. The long term bill came later, and has given us the S&L crash, jobless recoveries, the real estate bubble and bust and the degradation of the working class.
My wife worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the 90s. It was full of slackers.
Musk did not cut "slackers" Note that DOGE took no time at all with the cuts. They just cut anyone who was in an exposed position. And often enough those were people recently promoted since job security rules do not kick in immediately in new positions. Alas, the people newly promoted tended to be the better workers.
As for the IRS its work is highly seasonable. Three quarters of the years they can sit around making origami flowers. From January through April they are busy as caca. The grinding delays this year are not helping the economy which could really use a shot in the arm that rapid refunds could provide.
I interned there in my college years. It was full of slackers then and that was several decades ago…
Then again, it is the government where the few carry the rest.
The taxes needed to be cut. And indexed. The economy took off by 1983. In 1986, Reagan worked with Democrats Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt and Dan Rostenkowski on tax reform which is the foundation of forty years of a pretty decent economy.
The 1986 tax reform was as close to ideal as we are likely to ever get: cut the rates but broaden the base (by eliminating loopholes). Sadly the politicians started undoing it when the ink was scarcely dry. They love handing out loopholes! If we could somehow reinstitute that tax regime while preserving a very few later reforms (e.g., getting rid of the "marriage penalty) I would be thanking God on bended knee. Having Marvin Millionaire pay the same rate on his dividends and capital gains (and carried interest etc.) as Will Worker pays on his wages would put us in tax nirvana.
I agree, but it won't happen. The rich won't allow themselves to be taxed at the same rate as us peasants.
They pay for the tax laws they wish for.
That’s when Democrats acted like Americans, instead of like Mao ZeDong.
Derek, it's not wise to channel Pam Bondi.
The graft in the federal government sadly has not been dealt with. It has simply shifted, and all roads lead to the Trumps and Kushners. This should not be underestimated.
Moreover, Trump doesn't brook rivals but does court sycophants, so the 2028 primaries are going to be nasty. Since Trump has done almost nothing with Congress, the vast majority of his accomplishments, good or ill, have no roots of any kind. Executive orders are easily undone, but the precedents he set in the boundary breaking types will do damage for years to come.
Even in what he did do well, in closing the borders (finally), he kept Noem on far past the point where she was doing serious and obvious damage.
The Panama Canal, Venezuela, the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Luzon Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar…………….but the second term “is not going well.”
All of the positives listed could have been accomplished professionally, without drama, and without him having to be a Giant Douche.
Reagan certainly did a lot. He dropped the highest income tax bracket from 70% to 28% to supercharge the performance of the wealthy. It only tripled the national debt from 995 billion to 2.6 trillion. Fortunately he raised the prime rate to 21.5% and mortgage rates to 18.4% in order to combat inflation and trigger a recession to bring down inflation rates to 3.2%. Eventually the prime interest rate was at 10% when he left office, completing his economic recovery.
Of course his economic miracle was supported with his job policies. The most significant one was deciding to fire those annoying air traffic controllers when they were trying get better work conditions. He got rid of all 11,000 of them and it only eliminated around 7000 flights and 50% of the airline capacity. It took years to partially clean up the mess, but the point was to show those unions and their workers that the government would not tolerate interference in capitalism and its profits. The escalation in the war on labor became a defining theme of republicans to this day.
Reagan was THE critical turning point in the fight for control of the benefits of the growth in productivity of the workers of the US. It was at that time productivity continued to rise, but the pay of workers stayed flat to this day leading to the “K” shaped economy of today and success of the billionaire class that rules America.
Reagan is truly a hero of pure capitalism and a source of inspiration for the children of the upper class.
Agreed. I was born not too long after he was out of office. I don't hate Reagan personally, but so many things he did in office were not for the better in the long run. Lowering the tax rate further increased the gulf between the haves and have-nots. Amnesty towards foreigners let so many more in. The debt increased, etc.
I remember the Reagan Revolution as well. Paul Voelker was a huge help. Scott Bessant has redefined what it means to be Treasury Secretary. I agree that many things Trump has done in the last 15 months have been helpful. Many were not smart but more like Tourette’s outbursts that go nowhere. He has 33 months to go. If he can win this war with Iran and the IRCG, he will solidify himself as a great President in the history books. Americans need to wake up from their stupor, otherwise we become the EU, without the fun parts and history.
It’s sad to read Rod’s account of Hungary and where things stand right now. It brought something back to mind for me here at home.
Here in New Jersey, a lot of the Hungarians who fled the 1956 revolution came through Camp Kilmer. From there they spread into the neighborhoods—hard-working families building lives from scratch. Later came the Poles and Slovaks, opening small shops, working long hours, raising kids who would do better than they did.
I learned a lot about communism from them—not from books, but from how they talked about it. Not dramatic. Just direct: you don’t want the state having that kind of control over your life.
What’s striking now is how that memory fades. I’ll talk to younger Ukrainians working in local stores and ask what they’ve heard from their families. When the conversation turns to the 1930s—when their grandparents’ generation lived through mass starvation—it often feels distant to them, like something half-remembered rather than fully understood.
That’s the gap. The people who lived it never forget—but the next generation only partly absorbs it, and the one after that treats it like history instead of warning.
History doesn’t have to repeat.
But it can when the people who remember are gone.
Peter Magyar isn't left-wing. The European Union is not the USSR. His election doesn't represent a repudiation of national conservatism, it represents Hungary giving European integration another chance. I bet Hungarians, young and old, are very realistic about what they're doing, and will elect Orban back if the Eurocrats get high on their own complacency again. I wouldn't overextend the argument.
EU technocrats. USSR apparatchiks. Both unelected. There *are* similarities.
Interesting comment, I’m Hungarian, so when I last visited Budapest 5 years ago, I asked my distant cousin’s SO (electrician by trade) if he was glad to be free. His answer was surprisingly not what I expected. He would choose the old system, ie communist rule over free enterprise. He was a worker in 1956. We tend to think everyone in the West thinks alike.
One thing to note about "The Scaling Era." The 20 or so insiders that Patel interviews aren't all boosters. They range from very positive to very skeptical, and a lot in between. So it's not like you're hearing only one side of the story. Patel himself admits to being optimistic, but only cautiously so. But the one thing they all agree on is that very big changes are on the way. This in itself is not hype, because as Patel says, the amount of money being outlaid does not lend itself to the cynical notion that the industry is merely hyping itself. As he puts it, "The industry as a whole believes its own hype; the vast capital expenditures don't make financial sense unless AI turns out to be of extreme economic significance. Right or wrong, these individuals are betting on AI."
No one bets their life savings on something that they know is a boondoggle, or buys a car that they know is very likely to be a lemon. As Patel says, the idea that these guys are "exaggerating the importance of current and future systems to market their products isn't very helpful in explaining [this] broader context." There is definitely hype involved, but the skeptics who say that it's ALL hype have to explain the vast sums of money invested by people who believe it's likely to cost them their shirts.
They might put their own money into a pyramid scheme though.
True, but even pyramid schemes have to have a certain balance between outlay and potential outcome. At a certain point, they cease making sense when the risk is greater than the potential reward. Point being, even the scientists involved who are skeptics, the ones issuing the warnings, know this. Unless you want to say that that's part of the hype too. But as I said in another comment, admitting that you're building something that you don't really understand is not exactly a strong selling point.
“It’s a billion lines of code and I (therefore) don’t know how it works (but by all means give it access to nuclear codes)” sounds like someone who is either willfully deceptive or someone who achieved his position not by being expert in software but in convincing people he is. In particular, convincing the people with nuclear codes (e.g.).
It all feels a lot like the disastrous global Covid response. Stoke panic, claim expertise, exert power, profit. Shut down economies “because Covid.” Lay off thousands “because AI.” These were and are all *human* policy choices, as is choosing where to install software and what access it is given.
If you claim your software is entirely out of your control -and people believe you- then you have conveniently removed yourself from accountability while you pull whatever levers you want behind the scenes. Or not. Maybe it’s enough to unleash havoc caused by uninformed policy decisions. It’s like opening the gate to a (quite possibly empty) man-eating-lion enclosure and claiming “The gate opened itself! I have no idea how metallurgy works! Watch out for man-eating lions!”
“It’s a billion lines of code and I (therefore) don’t know how it works (but by all means give it access to nuclear codes)”
I don't see where anyone said that or even implied it.
In any case, it's not like panic is being stoked across the board. The boosters are saying similar things except with a more positive spin. My point is that the entire project is very risky regardless of the eventual outcome, even if the risks may be different. Conspiracy theories are not necessary here. And the warnings cannot be true and false at the same time.
Money does flow into baseless things all the time-- and is lost when it all comes crashing down. Cryptocurrencies are a prime example, their only selling point being that money ceases to have a trail once invested so that everyone from drug kingpins to bribe-taking bureaucrats can hide their evil works. Trump 1.0 had the right idea for cryptocurrencies, Alas, he's gotten in on the grift big time now.
Both can be true at once, and I say this as someone who leads AI development at my firm. You can say it's simultaneously a real tech advancement, and also a bubble. The difference depends on how well you manage the expectations
We saw the same problem with the web in the 90s. The internet was genuinely a huge paradigm shift that to this day shapes the market. No one can deny that--HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that the internet was a magic wand to generate money. In the 90s, people seemed to think that was the case, to the point where companies would name themselves "*.com" to prove their worth. Investors would dump money into crappy businesses whose only product was a web page.
That activity precipitated the dot Com crash, and proved that you can definitely have a bubble over a genuine product. AI is much the same--there are countless companies touting AI to boost up their valuation, even though the companies themselves are worthless. Add to the mix where everyone seems to think that AI is robot Jesus and you'll start to get to a mad dash where even smart people will lose their shirt in the ever lasting race to the FOMO
Agreed, but I don't see how that contradicts anything that I've said. The answer to "All of the hype is true!" isn't "None of the hype is true!" That's the mentality I'm trying to argue against.
Very sobering piece on how the digital world has changed the whole idea of "reading."
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/reading-is-magic
That was a very good article. Thanks, Rob.
Though I have to say I'm increasingly sympathetic to the simple, illiterate "blinded by reality" villagers who refused to accept the premise of the math problem about travel times to Fergana and Vuadil.
A younger me would have written them off as rubes incapable of abstract or counterfactual thinking. Given where today's world is going, I've developed a soft spot for folks who reject an obvious lie the moment they see it and won't entertain it even as a thought experiment.
Same here!
This part stuck with me as well:
" ‘In the Far North, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North. What color are bears there?’ Every single person who had received any literacy education at all, even the ones Luria described as ‘barely literate,’ could easily answer. But people who hadn’t been exposed to the written word simply refused.
They consistently explained that since they’d never been to Novaya Zemlya, they couldn’t say what kind of bears they had there. "
Are the illiterate really so wrong in questioning the given premise? They know non-white bears exist after all.
While I agree literacy helps with abstract and other thinking, the larger point may not be so much literacy per se but the effect of literacy in shifting the locus of trust. The bear syllogism shows that the illiterate trust only experience or personal witness - it's what they understand. The literate expand their circle of trust to include accounts of those they do not personally know.
Yes, there is a difference between using syllogisms in the search for knowledge and reducing everything to the syllogistic. Can't remember who said it, but generally speaking "we know more than we can tell."
America is like the Weimar Republic, because it's the 2020's now and the Weimar Republic it was the 1920's. Get it? Oh, so we should expect like a Hitler 2.0? No, this time it will be Skynet. Oh. Wait, What?
Rod is trying way to hard to fit America into his Weimar thesis.
America's Roaring 20s are a better fit than Germany's, but then you end up with FDR not Hitler, so it doesn't fit his thesis.
Then comes the AI doomerism. Oh, well, Rod will move on after his book flops. He can't do a Newsom and buy $1.5mil of his own books to make it look successful.
Well I suppose if you are going to write a book with a thesis, it helps to believe in the thesis. By the way you make a good point about the roaring 20s. Let’s see it was a period of change and post war instability . Prohibition helped lead to the growth of organized crime and a growing disrespect for the law . The economy collapsed and we got, not Hitler but FDR . Good call!
"better fit" -- Rod has repeatedly said that the Weimar analogy is not meant to be a cookie-cutter fit. Yet you critics continually attempt to saddle him with that very thing. I get a strong impression that some of you don't even read what he's written, you just skim for ammo.
Rod suddenly switched from his Christian revitalization topic (excellent idea) to his Weimar thesis, and is trying to force a square peg in a round hole. Forcing info into a thesis often distorts a topic so that it is no longer an honest framing of a topic. Rod wanted build up to Nazis and so is straining to make his analogy work.
"Forcing info into a thesis often distorts a topic so that it is no longer an honest framing of a topic."
The irony of a guy who enthusiastically touts Tucker Carlson making this critique is pretty fantastic!
I think this is a considerable oversimplification, and incorrect to boot.
Google "Weimar America" and you will find numerous essays and articles, some stating that the comparison is valid, some saying that it isn't. This includes pieces written by professional historians and history professors.
This means that although what Rod is writing about isn't a slam dunk, neither is it bosh.
Also note that the only reason Rod was able to pump out the book so quickly was because AI helped him skim books faster.
But late last year he was warning that AI was a Ouija board which contacted demons and that he promised to "stop using it".
Like I understand changing your mind over things frequently, I do much the same. But Rod's MO is to claim "here is this massive thing that no one sees coming but I, Rod, will use my special powers to act as a Cassandra figure and explain it to the masses". Only for him to quietly drop the subject a month later when the big new shiny Apocalyptic* story comes into the news cycle
*note by Apocalyptic, I mean "unveiling" 😏
And there is a huge difference in understanding between using AI to give you the Cliffnotes version of a book, and taking the time to read and consider a book. I read very very fast, so I have begun to read slower, with more intention, to allow me to ponder and consider, instead of racing through.
I have excellent comprehension because I need to retain everything even as I speed read 1,000 pages of medical records prior to a deposition, but it isn't the same.
I took a few classes in my graduate programs on German history and German thought. We spent extensive time reading, studying, and discussing the rise of Hitler for various aspects. It gave me enough understanding, along with my many other studies to accept that I just have a minute amount of knowledge of the topic.
True wisdom requires a ton of intellectual humility.
It sure means something more than a few months of reading, unless one is just writing a polemic to push an agenda, of course.
Looking forward to your insights on Austria. You broaden my view of the world.
I'm hoping Rod learns German.
For an English-speaker, learning to take in German via reading and listening is not very hard. Writing is hard, but can be eased with modern tools. Speaking is the hardest, although speaking at a comprehensible level (but with mistakes and Anglicism) is quite doable.
I'm planning to start classes when I arrive there. I tried with Hungarian, and got nowhere, but that is the experience of many foreigners who try Hungarian. Besides, I've watched all of "Babylon Berlin," and now have to figure out how to make Liv Lisa Fries the next Frau Dreher. ;)
Classes are good. Once basic skills are established, the best training is making yourself speak German with anyone that is fluent. Learning to speak will be rocky and involve lots of mistakes and long periods of speaking "English-like" German, so humility and willingness to adopt the beginner mindset are the key practical virtues that help in the process.
That's the only way to really learn a language, they say.
Your biggest challenge in learning German will probably be finding German speakers who want to talk to you in their language. That was my experience anyway. Everyone looked at it as an opportunity to practice their English.
It's certainly far simpler than Hungarian, but still more complicated than need be - three genders, four cases, irregular and separable prefix verbs, random dative prepositions or verbs and five-plus ways to form plurals, though most fit inside about three scenarios. At least the pronunciation is entirely regular. "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" is said exactly as it looks!
There seems to be "two layers" for learning German. Getting to intelligibility is reasonbaly easy (no harder than French, Spanish or Dutch). Getting to native-like language patterns is harder, because Germans have peculiar idioms and forms of expression.
As just one example, German has two common ways of saying that something can be done. The direct "Ich kann das tun", which is very similar to English "I can do it". The other one is the more indirect "Das lässt sich tun", which means "That lets itself be done". Native speakers use both very frequently, whereas it takes a while for learners to get used to the second one.
Another one is the proliferation of little adverbs that are very peculiar to spoken German. For instance "mal", literally meaning "one time", but in practice a kind of a flavor word with a fuzzy meaning (like "y'know" in English). Or how the word "genau" (exactly) is often used as a replacement (or intensifier) of the better known "ja" (yes).
Also false friends like gift (thing to give to your friends) and Gift (German for poison), both deriving from the sense of "something given". Also fast (quickly) and German fast (almost). Or subtler ones, like the dichotomy between the verbs "do" and "make" ("tun" and "machen", which exists in both languages, but English likes "do" better, whereas German likes "machen" better. Or how the past in the German is actually expressed via the perfect (the past forms of German that look like the English past tense are semi-antiquated and now only used in storybooks).
Re: Or how the past in the German is actually expressed via the perfect (the past forms of German that look like the English past tense are semi-antiquated and now only used in storybooks
French is similar: the simple past is used only in literary French. In speaking the perfect is used (though there's also an imperfect for ongoing or repeated past actions).
Not to forget "doch"....
Dana
Hello! Are you really sure that the existence of three genders is overcomplicating? I find it rather refreshing. Now I grant that the masculine and neutral behave with a lot of mutual degeneracy in their inflections, which is a little unfortunate.
You're right to point out the various verb forms as a sticking point. It would be interesting to understand how those came to be, and whether the separable verbs in particular are unique to German or not.
I'm used to three genders in Latin, Greek and the Slavic languages. Their presence in German is not an issue, although I do wish the form of German words gave some hint to their gender. In Russian for example nouns ending in hard consonants are masculine, those ending in -a are (almost) all feminine and those ending in -o,-e, or -ya are neuter. The only ambiguities are nouns ending in soft consonants.
Oh, the Slavic languages, too. Interesting.
Learning a country’s language expands your experience of it I would think though I expect many Germans speak English. English is a Germanic language with lots of Latin loan words so I think it’d be easier to learn than Hungarian.
I am sadly monolingual. While I worked in the parish office due to large numbers of Hispanic parishioners I understood Spanish pretty well but couldn’t speak it. I discovered understanding a language & speaking it are 2 different skill sets. Now I’ve forgotten most of the Spanish. I’m a standing example of the joke, “what do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? An American”. I’m in awe of people who are multilingual. Our pastor is from Kenya & he speaks his tribal language Meru, Swahili, English, Spanish & some Italian. I don’t know how he keeps them all straight.
I'm learning Polish by a two pronged approach. First is Duolingo where I can actually hear the language. Second is a Polish grammar where I can figure out the rules. It helps immensely that I am proficient in Russian and as a fellow Slavic language Polish shares a lot of vocabulary and quite a lot of grammatical forms with its East Slavic neighbor-- though it also has some complexities all its own.
Across European languages, Hungarian (and Finnish and Estonian) might be the oddest in terms of grammar, but Polish is definitely the oddest in terms of phonology. With a bunch of European languages, I can make a decent stab at a native-like pronounciation of names or words, but in Polish...
Re: Across European languages, Hungarian (and Finnish and Estonian) might be the oddest in terms of grammar,
Well there is Basque which even the Devil gave up on.
Polish and its neighbors Czech and Slovak are hyper-palatized (Russian and other Slavic language are just simply palatized).
Speaking is a very hard skill, since you have to do it fast. There's relatively little time to take a step back and recall words.
On the more positive end, practicing speaking will make the brain recall patterns in the other language faster. Doing this over time, you would notice that the vocabulary you absorbed by reading or listening starts being usable during speech.
German has some annoying features like it's strict and weird word order. The system of case and gender endings for adjectives is a nightmare-- though one you can flub on without generally making yourself incomprehensible.
The word order is somewhat easy to get used to. Case is a bit wonky, but it has pretty close analogues in English (he = nominative, him = accusative/dative, to him = dative, his = genitive). Grammatical gender is a hard one.
Re: Grammatical gender is a hard one.
Especially because unlike Spanish, Italian or Russian the form of the word gives little clue as to its gender.
There are a few rules, esp for feminine nouns, that make it easier to figure out, but a lot of nouns/genders just have to be put on vocabulary lists and memorized. Something Rod can do while he's out for his daily walk.
Dana
A good idea, and there will probably be a few words that are distinct to Viennese or Austrian dialects.
Sounds like we're collectively assembling a language-learning plan for Rod.
That, and I also like being a nerd about languages 🤓
There's a great deal of room and opportunity for language-nerding. :) One of the more fascinating fields.
I read Rod's excerpts and then went to the full Axios article based on their interview with Dario Amodei. I just went to Gemini after reading the full Axios article with this prompt:
Before we do the rules, (Claude's Constitution) in a recent interview for Axios,
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Amodei gave some very dire comments, such as in 5 years 50% of all white collar jobs will be done by Agentic AIs and the unemployment rate will be 20% or higher. This is quite a comment. Who else agrees or disagrees with him. How are we to critique him?
Here is summary of some notables who agree and some who disagree:
"Agreers"
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft
Jim Farley, Ford
Kai-Fu Lee, Venture Capitalist
Kristalina Georgieva, IMF
"Disagreers"
Yann LeCun, Meta Chief Scientist
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
Chris Lehan, OpenAI Policy Chief
How to Critique Amodei's View:
When evaluating Amodei's prediction, researchers and economists suggest looking at these specific gaps:
The "Filtering" Lag: Critics like Jack Clark (Anthropic co-founder) note that even if the technology can do the job, economic "filtering"—the time it takes for slow-moving industries like law and government to actually change their hiring habits—usually takes decades, not years.
(ME: Amodei would argue that this will not be the case with agentic AI. That it will happen in years not decades. I don't think there is any way to know for sure ahead of time.)
Productivity Paradox: Some economists from Northwestern University argue that while AI reduces demand for certain tasks, it lowers costs so much that overall demand for the services increases, leading to more hiring in other areas of the same firm.
(ME: This is interesting. The business model for law firms for over 100 years has been based on billable hours. "Young" lawyers that I know already realize that the model is unsustainable. Why? because tasks that used to take many hours are now done with AI in 15-20 minutes - literally. So there will be a shift to a new way of billing and paralegals will be many fewer in number. Probably the number of lawyers will drop. Over the weekend, an older lawyer in Connecticut told me with his head shaking that there are now 40,000 lawyer in the state, that works out to about 1 lawyer for every 5 citizens. Something had to change. AI will drive that change.)
"Attention Seeking": Critics like Andy Thurai of Cisco argue that AI lab CEOs have a financial incentive to say "extreme things" to instill a sense of urgency (FOMO) in investors and government regulators.
(ME: There is always thiskind of manipulation going on because big money is at play.)
The Transition Period: Even if Amodei is right about the destination, the critique is often about his speed. Most historical shifts (like the Industrial Revolution) happened over 40–50 years, allowing a new generation to train for new roles; Amodei predicts this will happen in five.
(ME: In some areas like the Law it will not take 40-50 years. Similarly in some fields of medicine the transition will be fast. Engineers are already using AI daily. The best engineering programs are serving (teaching) engineering (ME,CE,ChE, EE...) degrees with a big "side" of AI.)
To put all this into perspective, I am leary of such dire predictions. Why? Because I remember when Paul Ehrlich published "Population Bomb". It scared the hell of of me in 1968. I was 12/13 years old when it came out and not very critical, but I read like a fiend. Ehrlich could not have been more wrong, as it turns out. But he made himself over from an academic mediocrity to a media darling. I suspect he improved his standard of living upward considerable by being the journalists' go-to-guy for dire warnings. He never changed.
I am not saying Amodei is in the same category, but I am saying that is good to look for alternative view points when confronted by such a dire forecast. At least that is what I have tried to do since high school, to the extent that I could. AI ironically makes that easier to do than ever.
This is one of the strengths of "The Scaling Era." It does not just give one insider's opinion, it gives 20, and they're not all boosters by any stretch.
Anthropic is still operating at a loss, upwards of 10s of billions in the red per year. They don't even plan to be profitable until 2028, assuming they see massive adoption of Claude.
Keep this in mind whenever you hear something from Amodei. He HAS to sell the idea that his product will prop up the economy in a few years (i.e. when his VC funding runs out). If he doesn't then he's basically trying to sell a product that costs 10x as much as it returns.
(And note I'm a big fan of Claude Code, use it every day for work and pay for the best models. But I still think it's being overhyped because Anthropic is bleeding money)
"Orban was brought down by the same Blob that tried to bring down Donald Trump."
Yes, and The Blob is the thing that needs paying attention to. The various corruptions and foibles of Orban and Trump, while important, are secondary. The fact of the matter is that The Blob would have worked to bring them down regardless; the corruption just makes it easier.
"it’s fine to be corrupt, as long as you are corrupt in the service of neoliberalism and the Blob."
If only Orban would have used his powers for niceness instead of for evil.....
Corruption erodes the legitimacy of any regime, spreading cynicism like mold growing after a flood.
I hope our host visits the hometown of Franz Jagerstatter at St. Radegund, Austria while he's in Vienna.
I want to! Already on my bucket list.
"In Solitary Witness" by Gordon Zahn is a book about Jagerstatter that is worth reading.
“I still believe the political future is some form of “national conservatism” — that is, decentralized, sovereigntist, anti-migration, culturally conservative, and economically center-left.”
Will that deliver economic prosperity? Will it improve people’s material conditions? National conservatives and nativists often do an evasive two step.
First, they claim immigrants are a fiscal burden, prone to crime, and take good jobs from natives. On that telling, removing them should reduce fiscal strain, eliminate any need for austerity, lower crime, and somehow leave natives with great jobs doing backbreaking farm labor.
So you ask, do you mean all immigrants? Because immigrants are not all the same. Then you realize you are talking to Stephen Miller, and he did not stutter.
Then it becomes clear that, in general, these people do not know much about statistics, economics, or the actual causes of fiscal strain. So they move to step two, which is the familiar line that the economy exists to serve the family, not the family to serve the economy. There is more to life than GDP.
That is true. But GDP still matters a lot, and if it collapsed, people would not be happy with the result.
So I will keep repeating a basic fact that nativists seem unwilling to engage with. The core economic problem in most rich countries is that they have too many old people drawing pensions and not enough young workers to support them. To deal with that, you either impose massive fiscal austerity, quickly expand the working age population through immigration, or use some combination of both.
The nativist position of removing immigrants without reforming old age pensions means more debt and inflation until the bond market imposes austerity for you.
I also wonder how much of this is just conservative virtue signaling. The moment the personal costs become real, many of these people would probably turn into enthusiastic open borders advocates. How popular would this outcome be?
* All the immigrants are gone.
* Old age pensions are sharply cut.
* Public healthcare is gutted.
* Everyone is responsible for supporting their parents and grandparents.
Or you can let immigrants in again. My guess is that a lot of people would become open borders fans very quickly.
also this https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-lot-of-arguments-against-immigration?r=7wimw&utm_medium=ios
You say "not all immigrants are the same" then proceed to argue as if they are.
The more thoughtful people among conservatives know that A) legal immigrants are different than illegal ones, and B) controlling legal immigration in moderate ways is not the same as being "anti-immigration."
Do you?
I argued that way because I was addressing what nativists actually argue, especially the ones in power. Look at Stephen Miller, his rhetoric, and the policies he supports. Look at how Trump and Vance treated Haitian immigrants, many of whom were here legally under protected status. Does this movement really believe immigrants are good and simply want them to come legally? Obviously not.
Look at the UK. A conservative government legally increased immigration, and restrictionists were furious. They want less immigration, period.
So the “we support legal immigration” line is usually a motte and bailey, if not outright dishonest. Laws can be changed. Countries can allow large scale legal immigration. Nativists hate that too, because their real objection is not illegal immigration. It is immigration itself.
No nativist wins on a political platform “immigrants are great. let’s have more legally.” They say things like haitians kill your pets or stuff like this:
“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best….They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.“
Your descriptions should be less fuzzy then. There are a lot of what might be called "national conservatives" who aren't nativists. For instance, those people who agreed in some sense with what Trump was trying to do, but had major problems with how he was doing it.
We also have the horrible "legacy Americans" stuff: if your ancestors were not here in place by the Civil War you're somehow a second class citizen. No word on whether that legacy is big enough to include the descendants of slaves and Native people (some of latter have been arrested by ICE as illegal aliens"!)
It's not big enough. You might remember an interview retiring Border Patrol official Greg Bovino gave the New York times last month. In it, he talked about having a plan to deport "one hundred million" people. And a few months ago, the Department of Homland Security posted an image of a tropical beach with the line "America After 100 Million Deportations". One hundred million would just about include all of the non-white population. It seems to be a popular idea with the nativist crowd.
Deporting one hundred million peopie is idiotic on a monumental scale. Most of them would be American citizens! There'd be no where to deport them to, unless someone has opened a portal to a parallel US in another time line. What drugs are these people doing ? Or do they have a mind rot virus?
They wouldn't be American citizens if the Trump administration can get rid of birthright citizenship. Do you really think that's really about recent illegal aliens? Once they get rid of birthright citizenship, they feel that they can redefine it in all kinds of ways. Going back generations.
How many legal immigrants work on farms?
According to the USDA website, approx. 26% of immigrant farm workers are legal immigrants, while 42% are "unauthorized." The remaining 32% of farm workers are U.S. born.
For what we have given migrants in the last 15 years, we could have funded Medicare for decades, and that isn't counting the massive fraud.
Most don't work, and the ones that do are lowering wages, while costing far above what is paid in.
There are some conservative voices who bemoan Social Security for "cutting the intergenerational bond" and relieving children of the obligation to support their parents. Likewise, government welfare (even the most basic) is bad because churches could and should be handling that.
Sandra, those points remind me of the famous John Adams quote about the U.S. Constitution being made only for a moral and religious people and "wholly inadequate to the government of any other." It's all but impossible to see our post-Christian population willingly shouldering the burdens, personal as well as financial, of caring for the elderly and the poor. Wouldn't you say?
I dislike Social Security because it's a Ponzi Scheme. The government takes money from everyone who works to fund it. But there is no way to give everyone the money they have worked for. While they won't say it openly, the system counts on people dying before they can receive all the money they worked for. It's a deeply foolish idea.
For me, neither problem will be resolved until things collapse. Old age pensions and Social Security will be wiped out. I don't expect to get any of the money that I'm supposed to be owed by Social Security. The immigration problem will be handled with violence one way or another.
Peter Magyar seems to be more like Orban than the EU would like. They were allies until 2024. could there have been a clever bargain made by them in the background? It is plausible.
Magyar on immigration said: "Hungary will not accept any pact. In fact, I'm going to reinforce the border fence even more."
He has also on sovereignity said: "Hungary’s history is written by the Hungarian people, not in Moscow, not in Brussels, and not in Washington."
And he had the "nerve to say this about the vision many have for the United States of Europe: "We will have discussions with the European Union, but we are not going there to fight... We don't have to have a European United States... Europeans don't strive for this... They want functioning, strong nation states, and a good and well-functioning EU."
So, ironically, Magyar is saying things, already, that sound very much like they could have been said by Orban. So is Magyar just Orban without the corruption as he suggested in his own campaign that he would be?
Rod (your) going to Vienna makes sense as a father who wants to be near his son, but it may not be necessitated by Peter Magyar's victory over Orban.
An interesting take on Peter Magyar and the EU:
https://x.com/elorwelliano/status/2045196083832439023?s=20
If I have to guess, I would say Magyar will stand down on EU aid to Ukraine while not joining in (the country can't afford it). He'll also back down a bit on the anti-GLB stuff (note I left out the "T") but not so much as to outrage his people. On immigration he'll stick to the Fidesz playbook, but will allow some Potemkin pseudo-measures to make it look like he's changing.
I could be wrong, but from what I see, most Hungarians don't care about homosexuality per se (trans is a different thing). They just don't want it taught to their kids, and could do without the constant celebration of it that you see in the West. In fact, it's well known here that no small number of Fidesz elites are gay.
Oh, Magyar's government may shut down the parent institution that funds the think tank where I work. So I'll probably be out of a job. Maybe not, but it's time for me to go anyway.
I don't know about Magyar. He's saying the correct and popular things, but I honestly don't know how much he'll be able to defy Brussels and get away with it. Meaning, how much Brussels will take.
Rod, I saw the other day how you've been smeared with plenty of nonsense on social media since Orban's electoral walloping. Anybody who reads your Substack regularly can see you were not a mindless shill for the regime and were willing to highlight uncomfortable truths about it.
But you have some maddeningly rose-colored glasses when it comes to Orban himself. You say things like "Alas, Orban’s tolerance for corruption made it too easy for them" acting as if Orban lacks agency in this matter and somehow wasn't an active enabler of this corruption.
One upside of leaving Hungary. Soon you will be in a country with a learnable language unlike Hungarian with is one of the most difficult languages in the world. We English speakers are lucky that almost all educated people, worldwide, can speak English.
On a Reddit for people learning Russian someone asked any native Russians present what they found hardest about English. I would have expected the spelling-- but no they all said our complex verbal system is a nightmare to master. Russian has just four tenses (present, future, past, perfect) We have twelve or even sixteen.
Anytime I hear about Louisiana politics, I think of Edwin Edwards saying the only way he would not be re-elected was if he were caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. And when he said his opponent was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch “60 Minutes.”
I once heard a preacher say that he came from a place so far back in the woods that they didn't get the Saturday night movie until Monday morning.