Your dumpster fire du jour (this time, it's classified!)

by liberal japonicus

I thought that this deserved a separate thread. I'm sure everyone knows, but just to put it out there, a circus sideshow where National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz convened a Signal chat consisting of the three main Cabinet secretaries (in the UK, they refer to the Great Offices of State but for the US, the three main dipshits would probably suffice), Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard and invited the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to follow along. There are too many takes, so here's a thread for your best ones. First,here's the Goldberg piece, which is a gift link from an LGM post by Robert Farley, so I don't know if it still works. He also posted this link to John Ganz' article, which I found enlightening, particularly this:

Anybody who has worked in any organization can recognize that Hegseth is not taken particularly seriously. He responds eagerly and enthusiastically, but a little too eagerly and enthusiastically. He’s trying to seem to be a part of the team, in the middle of a process that has essentially taken place without him: “Agree.” Well, that’s all you can do Pete. He’s clearly the least respected member of the chat. Hegseth is a “central casting” hire: he’s a cheerleader meant to go on TV, he’s not a policy guy.

To me, this explains a lot. Petey wants to play with the big boys, so he makes sure he sends all the deets to everyone, and he doesn't just kiss Vance's ass, he swoons over that. 'yuk, yuk, you tell em, JD!'

Another observation that popped up was concerning the source, Jeffrey Goldberg. This Current Affairs article deems the Atlantic 'the worst magazine in America' and links to this piece about Goldberg that is really stomach turning. He's popped up in a bunch of interviews, and you can see he is struggling to strike the right notes, but after emphasizing how sensitive the information is, he ends up posting the info. I don't really know what he should do, but it is a bit of karma to see someone who has waved the flag at every opportunity be the one who has to figure out what to do with this information. It would be high-larious if he gets prosecuted for revealing classified info.

Anyway, feel free to post your links to other takes.

Comments

[Pro Bono]

Goldberg waited for the White House to assert that there was no classified information on the chat, before he published anything detailed.

It would be very funny for there to be a trial in which Goldberg swore he believed what the White House said, while the prosecution argued that it was an obvious lie, but I'm not hopeful.

[novakant]

Goldberg is a nasty piece of work, some other Atlantic writers like Applebaum, Kaplan, Frum are merely deluded ex-neocons who have been mostly wrong for a long time.

I prefer the New Yorker.

[GftNC]

Yup, he posted the info (apart from the identity of a serving CIA officer) when all the participants kept lying about it, and quite right too. It looks like the first thing which is cutting through on the incredible incompetence of the Trump administration. It was excellent to see Gabbard today having to explain why yesterday she denied the contents. Also, interesting to read those links despising and insulting Goldberg, when the news showed Hegseth et al doing the same. This isn't the first time that one sees the far(ther) left and the far right converging.

On links, I have cancelled sub to WaPo, but reinstated Atlantic and New Yorker. I will post gift links, but if anyone wants a particular one just post a comment to that effect.

[bobbyp]

GftNC,

With all due respect.....Goldberg's shameless plumping for Bush's invasion of Iraq was, and remains, simply unforgivable. This has nothing to do with "horseshoe theories", ideologically based or othewise.

In this respect, he deserves a heaping helping of contempt, and the fact that I am a raging foaming at the mouth lefty should have no bearing on this judgement unless you believe Bush's invasion was a great and wise policy.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/road-to-iraq/selling-the-war/FE4D11BAC3E8EBB065BEA9C5DFF65BA0

[liberal japonicus]

This isn't the first time that one sees the far(ther) left and the far right converging.

I'm reminded of when McKT posted a encomium to a Freddy de Boer piece. However, there is a difference-the (far) right (what does that mean anymore? How does a circle defining the far right include the Secretary of Defense and the US National Security Advisor?) only does it as a cudgle or a fist sized rock that happens to be at hand.

[GftNC]

bobbyp: I absolutely don't believe it was a great and wise policy, although to my now-shame I did support the Afghanistan portion on the grounds that a) Mullah Omar was protecting Bin Laden after 9/11, and the laws of war permitted it on that ground, but mostly because b) I thought it would help the women of Afghanistan. How naive I was. But I was full-throatedly against the Iraq development from the start.

On the left/right convergence, I've been seeing it for some time. On Brexit for example, not only Corbyn (in ill-concealed secret) but also a member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party of my acquaintance were in favour, and the only other Brexiteers I knew personally were right-wingers (e.g. current non-Jewish supporters of Netanyahu). So you don't have to "believe Bush's invasion was a great and wise policy" to see this convergence. And there have been examples other than Brexit which I cannot recall at the moment, but which have been pointed out to me by horror-struck lefties of my acquaintance. Oh yes, isn't opposing aid to Ukraine another one?

lj, your question of how a circle defining the far right can include the SecDef and NSA is a good one, which is why I said far(ther) right. But actually, it's getting harder and harder to talk about left and right these days. And in the case of Ubu's nominees their political opinions (if they even exist) are obviously immaterial compared to their loyalty to the Dear Leader.

[GftNC]

Oh, and by the way, FWIW, in my opinion Jeffrey Goldberg could be the devil himself and I would still applaud his actions on revealing the existence of this Signal group, and then releasing the actual messages when the group all denied it and called it lies.

[russell]

The question nobody on the text chain asked:

"Wait... who's JG?"

It's true, they aren't very bright people, and things are getting out of hand.

[Cheez Whiz]

Well, here's a sort of compendium of the argument against Jeffry Goldberg being a hero of the revolution:
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/atlantic-article-journalistic-malpractice-20240068.php
I don't quite buy the "the boys of the press would have hung on as long as they could" argument, and Goldberg's sins don't seem all that unusual for a major media guy. Plus, sticking your neck out with this administration is an invitation to get on the Trump Enemies List.

[Donald]

Goldberg is nasty, but whether he is good or bad isn’t relevant to the story. He is, of course, bad, but in this case he just happened to be there. And so we know what a clown show this pack of war criminals is.

And speaking of that, the thing which is relevant that is being ignored is near the end of the transcript, where Walz says they hit the building where the Houthi man has a girlfriend and the building collapsed. So was that a civilian house or worse, an apartment building? It sounds like it. It also sounds like an Israeli practice ( you can probably Google “ where’s daddy Gaza and find some articles) where they would target even low ranking Hamas people, the equivalent of foot soldiers, at ther homes, willingly killing 10 or 20 to get one. For a high ranking Hamas figure they would kill hundreds.

We are bombing Yemen and killing civilians. Whether we killed a lot of them here is something someone should investigate.

[Donald]

On Freddy DeBoer, I read his free stuff. Sometimes he is obnoxious, sometimes he is on target. The horseshoe theory applied to him is I think wrong.. He is just a jerk sometimes. ( I mean apart from the psychotic episode years ago.).

Now someone like Taibbi—I would defend him a couple of years ago, and I think I did so here, but his subscriber base was a mixture of lefties who still liked him ( like me) and a lot more very Trump and rightwing kooky types and I got sick of them and left. I think he panders to them. He is upset by Trump’s threat to free speech but was saying just a year ago he focused on mainly on the left because they had all the power. I don’t think he really believed that. Now he is saying that even the Trump people don’t believe in free speech. Yeah, what a shock.

[liberal japonicus]

Had to look up the horseshoe theory, didn't realize it had that name. While it is true that at a certain point, the far left and far right converge, it misses out on the fact that the right generally has the levers of institutional power, so when it morphs to a far right, you end up with what you are seeing now.

As far as being obnoxious versus being on-target, that's not a small category. DeBoer has apologized for things he's written, but he seems to go back to the same well, time after time. I can understand, he seems to have been pickled in higher education politics, and that take no prisoners style of argumentation is often highly valued, but it transfers very poorly.

At any rate, I don't think anyone is born evil, though, after reading about the series Adolescence, it seems that the period of grace is getting a lot shorter.

This reminds me of a video or an article about Hegseth's path which I wish I could find. The piece didn't have a high opinion of him, but it suggested that he wasn't always like this, he's morphed into the anti woke warrior. More's the pity.

[nous]

I don't see the Goldberg commentary as a case of far left and far right converging, so much as it is an indication that Goldberg must be condemned by the administration's flunkies because he is a threat to their propaganda narrative. The left is merely pointing out, as they have for a long time, that Goldberg's ethos, and that of his magazine, is suspect, even if in this case he has stumbled into a situation that might do some damage to The Truskan Regime.

It doesn't indicate any linkage or agreement, it just marks the fact that Goldberg is at the center of a very public moment, and that many groups find him reprehensible for their own reasons.

As for Goldberg's decision to publish the transcript, I think it serves the public interest to do so, and I hope that it puts a wind up The Truskan Regime's backside.

In normal times there would be vast political fallout. In these times I don't know that the controversy will be anything more than just another turd in a flooded zone.

[GftNC]

I might be wrong, but I think I was the one who originally posted that Freddy de Boer piece (having no idea of his history) because I thought what he said in it interesting. Only to be met with a wave of FdB derision based on his other opinions. And this is something I think is rather damaging to public discourse, including here. One might despise or distrust someone because of their other attitudes, but it does not necessarily invalidate every single one of their opinions, particularly if well and persuasively argued.

As for the horseshoe theory, as I understand it left and right don't have to agree for the same reason, they just have to agree on something, in this case that JG is a villain, but I could be wrong. However, I myself do not assume people are villains just because I disagree (even very dramatically) with some of their opinions. People are complicated. In any case, as I've said, in this case I think JG behaved impeccably, and I'm glad of it - it looks as if it's the first thing to land any kind of blow on Truskistan (h/t nous).

[bobbyp]

So what is this horseshoe theory? The wikki offers some insight:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=The%20horseshoe%20theory%20does%20not,the%20theory%20under%20certain%20conditions.

Yes, there are occassions, on some particular political issues, where left and right appear to converge, but to claim some kind of deep insight about basic ideologies from this fact strikes me as erroneous.

For example, take a current case. The tankie left's opposition to Ukraine stems from their blind attribution of all evil in the world to US foreign policy. The right supports Russia as they share a contempt for democracy. Same policy, much different rationales.

[Hartmut]

One point of the horseshoe is that the extreme ends show significantly higher leaning towards using violence means to achieve their goals. And the goals can get into the background and violence become the main thing.
Also both ends have authoritarian tendencies and those can become the central thing (as violence above) with the original purpose becoming secondary.

[novakant]

For the record: I for one am not converging with anyone, especially not using mediocre metaphors.

[Marty]

I would just add that, like many situations like this, JG only had one defense from the cascade of bile that was coming his way, both from the right and the people who agreed with Vance first comments: posting the thread moved the conversation from him to them, where it belonged. Facts widely dessiminated are powerful things.

The right could do no more than try to nonchalant the whole thing, which played poorly.

[liberal japonicus]

GftNC, I was thinking of this McT moment

https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2023/04/an-arc-described-with-mathematical-precision-the-well-worn-path-of-tucker.html?cid=6a00d834515c2369e202b751a3519c200c#comment-6a00d834515c2369e202b751a3519c200c

In case that link doesn't work, it was:
Tabbi routinely and effectively takes down the Progressive Left's pronounced authoritarian, anti-constitutional craving for silencing disagreement. He juxtaposes the left of the past with the left of the here and now. It's not a pretty picture. Content moderation, USG, sensitivity readers re-writing history and literature, word police and so on. He, Freddie DeBoer and others 'of the left' remember their roots and aren't cowed into the now mandatory thought conformity. Below is an example of Tabbi's current work. This is why the current Progressive Establishment can't stand him.

https://www.racket.news/p/america-the-single-opinion-cult?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1042&post_id=117376638&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Posted by: McKinneyTexas | April 29, 2023 at 09:45 AM

A long discussion about Taibbi and others follows. In terms of the current problems, it is interesting that the discussion about Taibbi was connected with his connection to the twitter files and thus to Musk. Hindsight is 20/20, but looking at where Musk has ended up, being skeptical of Taibbi seems prescient.

[wj]

Good people sometimes do bad things. And bad people sometimes do good things.

I think it is counterproductive to focus, as some here and elsewhere do, on their history while giving minimal or no attention to the current specific. Note that the good person should know better? Sure. Note that the bad person's good behavior is an anomaly? OK. But that should be a note, not the focus of the comment.

In this case, nothing wrong with noting that you think Goldberg's history is terrible. But, having done that, acknowledge that he got it right this time. And then get on with the real issue: what his action revealed.

[wj]

As for the OP, I wish I could say I'm surprised. Either by the substance of the Signal posts or by the massive incompetence displayed by the participants.** Both in the Signal chat itself (on multiple fronts) and in their testimony before Congress.

Calling it a dumpster fire is giving it too high a mark. Dumpster fires are contained. It doesn't (usually) spread beyond the one dumpster. One fire does not reliably predict a bunch of future ones. This one is already doing both. As I say, not particularly surprising.

** With, I should note, the exception of Goldberg. In this instance, I think his actions have been spot on.

[nous]

Again, though, my sense is that whatever stick Goldberg is taking from the left in this moment is more of a footnote to this situation - not text, nor even subtext ; a note that any approval of his actions should be taken as contextual, rather than as blanket endorsement.

In this I’d say he’s being treated more like Greenwald than like Assange.

[GftNC]

lj - thank you for that! As usual I went down the rabbit hole again, and was interested to see that I was talking about Elon Musk's mental instability two years ago. The incident I was talking about concerning FdB might have been before that, or after that, but it doesn't matter a bit.

For the record: I for one am not converging with anyone, especially not using mediocre metaphors.

LOL

And, what Marty said @11.25.

[GftNC]

Ah, here for anybody interested is an article in today's Grauniad about Jeffrey Goldberg, his history and what both Truskistan and the left think of him...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/who-is-jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-signal-chat-leak

[russell]

While it is true that at a certain point, the far left and far right converge, it misses out on the fact that the right generally has the levers of institutional power

Today's far right.
Today's far left.

Notably, today's far left is looking for a new home because their long-time place of residence in Central Square in Cambridge MA is being gentrified and they can't afford the rent anymore.

[Donald]

What I dislike about horseshoe “ theory” is that it glosses over the fact that the center often converges with the right on the issues the far left cares about. A dead Palestinian child is just as dead under a Biden supplied bomb as a Trumpian one. Or go back to 1859 or so. John Brown is the far left terrorist. Someone like Stephen Douglas is the centrist. The firebrand secessionist types soon to get their way a year or so later were the far right. Not much of a horseshoe on the issue, though maybe on the violence. The center and the right are closer on slavery. They were the realists of their day, until they weren’t. Horseshoe talk is just how centrists paint themselves as always right. That is natural. Every part of the spectrum does this. But one shouldn’t take it too seriously.

On Taibbi. I liked his criticisms of some of the cancel culture on the left, but acting like the right wasn’t a threat was pure sellout on his part and with Trump in power he is now acting like it is a huge shock how they are acting. I suppose it is something that he is willing to criticize them, And he and his sidekick Kirn started to irritate me on other things— for instance, mocking the concern over the smoke that covered much of the US in the summer of 23. He just started pandering more and more to his new base, the Trumpian subscribers who pay his salary or that is what I suspected.

Btw, my spellcheck is getting more and more ludicrous. I had to rewrite at least ten highly imaginative “corrections” of what I intended to write, two of them in this sentence.

[Donald]

I finally read the Current Affairs piece that LJ linked. Meant to read it earlier and forgot.

And it said all that I would want to say and more. So I retract my lack of criticism of Goldberg in this case. He was there and he should have stayed and listened for more. Be careful about releasing anything that might actually be harmful, but we probably will never see again a firsthand opportunity to watch US officials planning and then gloating about an air strike which seems to have been aimed at a cvilian building.

How many of the reported civilian dead were in that building?

[bobbyp]

I for one have no problems with what JG did in this specific instance...good on him (cf wj abv). But I was a bit taken aback when left critique of his past writings was brought up to substantiate a "horseshoe theory" of political ideology. Further, I would remind folks that the so-called "center" has been known to take up violence in order to pursue political objectives as well.

There are many things for which we can critique politicians of just about any stripe. I only take pains to point out that a supposed "horseshoe theory" is not a particularly deep insight.

[Donald]

I am not especially bothered by JG in this case. He isn’t the villain obviously. But it would have been nice to have a reporter who would have stick around longer if possible. Though maybe at a certain point he could be prosecuted once he knew what was going on.I don’t know the law.

[russell]

Tabbi routinely and effectively takes down the Progressive Left's pronounced authoritarian, anti-constitutional craving for silencing disagreement. He juxtaposes the left of the past with the left of the here and now.

Sort of an aside, but - it seems like McK has weirdly fond memories of the "left of the past". Or at least thinks Tabibi does.

As I remember it, the "left of the past" notably blew themselves up on West 11th St back in 1970. A couple of generations before that, we had the anarchist bombings of the turn of the 20th C and at least one Presidential assassination. And, for a couple of decades real, live, card-carrying members of the Communist party were not uncommon.

The left of today seems kind of tame in comparison.

[Pro Bono]

It seems to me unhelpful to speak of left or right in the context of kleptocrats like Trump and Putin. I doubt Trump has any theory whatever about how wealth should be apportioned, beyond seeking to grab as much as possible for himself.

Well, they have an interest in making the rich richer. But only so that the rich can and will pay more tribute to them.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"The left of today seems kind of tame in comparison."

Maybe that's because the "ultra-radical-left" wasn't getting its adherents enough influence, so they decamped to the "ultra-radical-right".

There are examples. All deplorable.

[GftNC]

It seems to me unhelpful to speak of left or right in the context of kleptocrats like Trump and Putin.

I think this is true. But obviously it is different for the Federalist Society/Project 2025 crowd, not to mention many of Trump's hangers-on and appointees.

[nous]

The left of today seems kind of tame in comparison.

Isomorphic evolution. The WTF? Right, having frothed itself into stiff peaks, is currently creating the conditions under which their opposition will have no choice but to radicalize as well.

We'll be back to the Black Panther and Weather Underground days any day now.

[GftNC]

Sorry to lower (or raise?) the tone, but for any THGTTG fans out there, I have just watched the documentary on Douglas Adams. I knew he had a sudden heart attack while working out, but I didn't know it happened fast while he was reaching for his towel. If you know, you know. He was the hoopiest of froods.

[wj]

"The left of today seems kind of tame in comparison."

Maybe that's because the "ultra-radical-left" wasn't getting its adherents enough influence, so they decamped to the "ultra-radical-right".

I wonder why this appears (in my admittedly personal experience, no deeper data) to be very much a one-way phenomena. That is, I observe a bunch of far left => far right cases. But far right => far left cases seem to be really thin on the ground. I suppose it may just be that I've had more exposure to people starting on the far left.

Anybody have experience otherwise? Or possible explanations?

[nous]

Anybody have experience otherwise? Or possible explanations?

One thing that may be a factor in this is the reaction in academia to the Gulf War/Bush Era. All of the more radical voices in the environmental movements and decolonial movements found themselves on the disciplinary outs as the Global War on Terror rhetoric got univeristy administrations running scared. That lost a lot of the more radical scholars their access to a generation of young activists.

Meanwhile, social media became a vast recruitment zone for the disafected, and all of the grounds were toxic right wing and/or misogynistic hellholes.

[bobbyp]

"Anybody have experience otherwise? Or possible explanations?"

Not in my experience. The fall from unrequited social idealism to thinly veiled fascism posing as grubby realism is due mostly to gravity and the unconscious ability to survive one's 20's and aquire some modicum of financial assets.

[russell]

Or possible explanations?

There's no money in being on the far left.

;)

[liberal japonicus]

A couple of generations before that, we had the anarchist bombings of the turn of the 20th C and at least one Presidential assassination.

At the risk of focussing too much on history rather than the here and now, but terming them 'anarchist bombings' suggests that there was a well organized conspiracy rather than the efforts of individuals (and possibly agents provocateurs).

Nonetheless, the anarchists’ thirst for dramatic signs of a coming proletarian revolt and of vindication against their enemies now combined with the authorities’ and the public’s fears of a vast anarchist conspiracy to create the mirage of a powerful terrorist movement. In the context of these fears, governments and police tended to overreact, which in turn added more fuel to the anarchist desires for revenge. Chain reactions of repression and revenge swept through nations and across the world, with anarchist violence seemingly beyond the capacity of any police force to prevent or control. It was in this dreary quandary that much of Europe remained until the turn of the century.

From The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism An International History, 1878–1934

Welcome to the future, not so much different from the past.

[wj]

One thing that may be a factor in this is the reaction in academia to the Gulf War/Bush Era. All of the more radical voices in the environmental movements and decolonial movements found themselves on the disciplinary outs as the Global War on Terror rhetoric got university administrations running scared. That lost a lot of the more radical scholars their access to a generation of young activists.

Plausible for this generation. But I've been seeing the same pattern since the '60s. So a more general explanation seems desirable.

[novakant]

The US is in the middle of an authoritarian takeover but the normalisation is in full swing ... at the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/27/donald-trump-moving-fast-breaking-things-better-us

What's next? Homestories about Trump and Melania?

[liberal japonicus]

Jenkins has the virtue of consistency. Jenkins from 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/president-trump-obama-republican

[novakant]

Regarding the authoritarian takeover:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75720q9d7lo

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/27/us/rumeysa-ozturk-detained-what-we-know/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/us/yunseo-chung-columbia-lawsuit-trump-ice

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjy1jmvvwzo

[novakant]

Here's a good summary about free speech and freedom of the press restrictionsm by the Trump admin:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/will-trumps-gulf-of-america-power-trip-break-the-white-house-press-corps

lj, I think that Jenkins is sharing the same misconception as Brexit voters: there are legitimate grievances that lead to the overwhelming desire for change, no matter who implements it or what it actually consists of. People really want a strongman who just gets things done, whatever these things might acutally be and they don't care about the collateral damage.

It's just a tad surprising that someone of Jenkins' calibre would share these sentiments.

[GftNC]

I was astonished by that Jenkins piece too, even though in it he hedges himself with plenty of Trump criticism. But I see he has been a steadfast opponent of aid to Ukraine, and has called the whole thing "a border dispute", and a result of legitimate fears of Nato expansion (another theory I have heard from both left and right), so there's that. Also, perhaps unfairly, I look at his age; the only (properly clever) R I know well, who to my surprise voted for Trump twice, told me some years ago she thought she might be getting Alzheimers, which if true might explain it.

[CaseyL]

wj - "Rebellious youth" has been a cliche for longer than recorded history. Reflexive anti-authority may be a normative part of forging one's own identity. I think the issue is where that reflexive anti-authoritarianism goes, how it's channeled, and by whom.

Another factor may be how sheltered or not the person was up to the moment they realized the world isn't what they thought it was. That is, how much they know about the wider world.

That, too, is a cliche. "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm, After They've Seen Paree?"

But there is a reason predatory groups and individuals cluster around places where young people are plentiful. They count on the reflexive anti-authority, the disaffection - and the confusion of being exposed to a wider universe for possibly the first time.

[russell]

terming them 'anarchist bombings' suggests that there was a well organized conspiracy rather than the efforts of individuals

Not sure if they qualify as *well* organized, but there were the Galleanisti way back in the day. Something short of a coherent and disciplined gang, but also something more than individual randos.

Long story short, I think the available political spectrum here in the US runs from reactionary authoritarian fascists (on the right) to polite and well-meaning liberals (on the left). Which is to say, there is a quite extreme right, but virtually no left by any realistic definition.

At the national level, the "left" is basically AOC and Bernie. Whose "left" credentials call for extending Medicare and raising the marginal tax rates for the upper brackets. And maybe Warren, who calls for regulating abusive business and financial practices.

These are centrist technocratic positions. They are not the positions of a meaningful "left".

Whether all of that is good or bad depends on where you sit, I guess, but it is what it is.

Meanwhile, my wife and I have discussions about whether it's a good idea for me to show up at our local car-brand-named-after-a-famous-Serbian-American-inventor demonstration. A bit more than half of our income is Social Security at this point, we're therefore vulnerable. Not nearly as vulnerable as folks who aren't natural born citizens, to say nothing of folks who are merely green card holders or even undocumented. But still vulnerable. As are most of us, in one way or another.

Is that concern overblown? I don't think so. It's a whole new world out there. New rules, and a new risk evaluation calculus.

"You aren't going to like what comes after America" - Leonard Cohen

[Hartmut]

In the past about any major party had a youth organisation that often presented itself as anti-establishment. It provided a sense of community and order (but not the one known from home or school) and a sense of purpose.
They also tended to be on the outer flank of the party (more leftist on the Left, more far right on the Right) with members later usually drifting towards the center of the party or jumping ship altogether (e.g. going from social democrat to communist).
These days this seems to be more a thing of parties on the fringe who seek to recruit not just for the party but the whole movement (overlap to cults). The youth organisations of moderate parties seem to have atrophied.
From what I get the College Republicans are a special case that trains future white collar sociopaths with a special emphasis on de-ethification and Klingon promotion.

[GftNC]

Is that concern overblown? I don't think so. It's a whole new world out there.

I'd love to say it's overblown, but I no longer think so either. Unbelievable to think that it has come to this, and a mere two and a half months in. Thoughts and prayers, if you know what I mean.

[russell]

OK, so now Elon says the DOGE kids are gonna re-write the Social Security system. In a couple of months.

I'm sure they are a very clever bunch of lads but (should they actually try this) it's not likely to go well. In a nutshell, re-writing an operationally essential legacy code base from a clean sheet of paper is the absolute, top-of-the-list, guaranteed way to fail. Let good old Joel Spolsky explain why. It's how a number of successful companies have gone sideways, including at least one that I worked at.

Of course, the Spolsky article was written... 25 years ago? And of course, everything is different now, right? The tech illuminati are in charge now, what could go wrong?

It's the stupidest fucking decision you can make about a complicated legacy system. Time for me to start looking for a job, because they are going to fuck it up.

On the bright side, it may simplify my calculus about whether and what to get involved in. Don't need to worry about losing money that ain't gonna come anyway.

Somehow this country has stumbled into a vortex of stupid. It's beyond mind-boggling.

[wj]

"Rebellious youth" has been a cliche for longer than recorded history. Reflexive anti-authority may be a normative part of forging one's own identity. I think the issue is where that reflexive anti-authoritarianism goes, how it's channeled, and by whom.

"Rebellious youth" may (deservedly) be a cliche. But the question remains: Why do some grow up and move towards the center? While others jump to the opposite extreme, without ever setting foot in the center.

[wj]

re-writing an operationally essential legacy code base from a clean sheet of paper is the absolute, top-of-the-list, guaranteed way to fail.

It is, hypothetically (because I don't know of a case in the real world), possible to rewrite a system from the ground up. If you are have

a really solid group of experienced and capable system designers and coders (they don't),

are willing to invest several years in the effort (they aren't), and

then to run the two in parallel thru at least a couple of cycles (read years), to make sure most of the bugs have been found. (They absolutely are not.)

So, while it theoretically is doable, russell is right that it ain't happening here.

I just hope somebody among the old guard makes backup copies of both the code and the databases. And (no doubt illegally) stores them where the DOGE children won't find them. That way, when (not if) the brave new world implodes, there will be a path to at least start the recovery.

[CharlesWT]

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization." —Georges Clemenceau
:)

[Donald]

“ But the question remains: Why do some grow up and move towards the center?”

That’s funny. The center isn’t always correct, you know.

The one way in which I might agree with you would be on the subject of violence— radicals on the left are sometimes violent and glorify or engage in terrorism and then sometimes that type might easily switch to the opposite extreme and endorse police violence or death squads. If you mean that sort of thing, then I am a centrist with you. And I think it might even be natural for an extreme lefty of the violent stripe to become an extreme righty of the violence glorifying stripe.

And there is also the occasional Christopher Hitchens, who basically daydreamed of living in the 30’s and fighting fascism, but had to settle for lining up with Bush neocons in the fight against “ Islamofascism”. He also got to leave the far left ghetto and get published in mainstream places like the Atlantic. I think he was sincere, but fundamentally a bit childish.

[wj]

The center isn’t always correct, you know.

You will note that I didn't say to the center, but toward the center. For a reason.

[liberal japonicus]

A couple of anecdotes about kids these days.

With the weak yen, Japan has experienced a flood of tourists, with a huge number being Korean and Chinese as well as from South East Asian countries. 30% of those are people with family
https://statistics.jnto.go.jp/en/graph/#graph--accompanying--travelers--on--visit--to--japan
Unfortunately, it doesn't break it down beyond that, but my impression is that a lot of these families are parents with kids, and a good chunk of that are families with teenage kids and maybe as many are parents with children in the 20's it seems

When I was a teenager, the _last_ thing I wanted to do was go on a trip with my folks. I was out of the nest in my 20's and I enjoyed having my parents visit me (first in Europe then repeated visits to Japan) where I could tell them what they had to do, which is a pattern I saw with a lot of other folks in my position. I have observed (and was guilty of) that flipped power dynamic where I could be the explainer and this was pretty common for most of the Westerners I knew in that situation.

On the other hand, these Asian families are coming here as a group, and they seem to retain the same power relationships that they had back at home and it seems to me that the kids don't really chafe at it. They happily travel along with the parents.

The Japanese term for filial piety is oyakoko （親孝行) and Japanese like to moan how it is disappearing.

Couple of articles if folks want to dive in
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41600771

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-6612.1996.tb00203.x

I think that the moaning about the disappearance of filial piety is
bBecause Japan is ahead of other Asian countries in terms of an aging population, a lot of the questions about filial piety (as pointed out in the second paper) are related to taking care of older parents, and dealing with issues when you are 50, 60 or even older. Those kind of issues seem a lot more weighty than 'my folks aren't very cool, so I want to do my own thing this summer'. And what's more, almost all my students tell me they are going on vacation with their families and it sounds like they have the same kind of easy acceptance of it as I see with the touristic families here.

I say all this because I wonder if the discussion of rebellious youth, while certainly there, doesn't have the same edges and pointy bits that it has in the West.

A second anecdote, a little more personal. I've got two daughters and the first one grew up during the age of VHS, so her media diet for English was Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, and Disney [animated movies]. The second daughter arrived at the same time we got cable, and the package had Cartoon Network and Disney [TV programs like Hannah Montana]. While correlation is not causation, the first one had much better written language skills, which I attributed to the whole sound-symbol correspondences taught in Sesame Street. The second one was much better at spoken fluency, because she ate up all those programs. She also seemed to pull in the underlying message of a lot of those tweener dramas, which revolved around teenagers getting in conflict with their parents to be resolved at the end of the episode. And this seemed to affect the parent child relationship. Part of it is down to personality differences, but I can't help but think that something subliminal is happening.

I realize I'm getting perilously close to Jordan Peterson et al territory, proposing some simple cause that somehow accounts for incredibly complex social trends, but I do find it striking, when talking about rebellion and age, what I see.

I'm at an age where 'listen to your parents' sounds like really good advice, but seeing this article (which I assume is taking its info from this WIRED article and then doing the math)
that says the average age of these 6 members of DOGE is 25
(for a contrary view, see this) it starts to go beyond advice and more like forwarning.

[Marty]

"re-writing an operationally essential legacy code base from a clean sheet of paper is the absolute, top-of-the-list, guaranteed way to fail."

Aside from this I have found at least one instance where I'm confident that DOGE kids probably got it right. One of the agency has spent a fortune buying and trying to implement Oracles inherently flawed HR management software for purposes that, I only can glean from a few snippets on DEI usage, even if it worked it would not support. They cancelled it on the throwing good money after bad excuse and I nodded my head agreeing they were probably right

People don't rewrite 50 year old COBOL systems because they can't duplicate the functionality we built in for any cost that would create any positive ROI. Despite all the tools and code gen and arrogance of today's techies, we had to make it work, be reasonably efficient and upgradeable without rewriting it.

More than one of the systems I designed in the late eighties/early nineties is still a backbone system at some bank or another today. CICS got upgraded but the backend still process hundreds of millions of dollars in trades a year.

There only hope is to develop points systems for specific functions where operations don't overlap until they've reduced the risk of replacement to a reasonable level. Then it will only suck for about 5years.

Yes, the old guy view.

[russell]

They cancelled it on the throwing good money after bad excuse and I nodded my head agreeing they were probably right

And in it's place now is... what?

Your suggestion for incremental improvements, and wj's thoughts about how to make a replacement effort work, are both sensible and right on.

Unfortunately, DOGE will not do any of the things either of you have suggested. I'm tempted to say something like "their hammer is AI and the world is a nail", but I think even that's too generous.

They're arrogant inexperienced young guys in thrall to a bizarrely weird and more than equally arrogant guy they see as their ubermensch hero and leader. They don't care if they break things because they do not consider that the things they break are worthy of being preserved. They don't care if they do harm to people because as far as they are concerned the people they harm are normie loser parasites and deserve no better.

Among the many things I will never get my head around is how we have all been reduced to standing around and watching it happen. Much to my amazement, we do not appear to have the institutional or procedural means to kick these punks the hell out.

The rule of law is only relevant if the means exist to enforce it.

I don't really know where things go from here. We've been in some weird and regrettable places in our history, but these are uncharted waters.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

My opinion, which I posted elsewhere on the intertoobes, is that we would have avoided this DOG-E impending disaster by having the SSA code not written in COBOL, but in APL.

THEN, the DOG-E Boyz would be unable to comprehend it, even lacking the keys on their gamer-keyboards to edit anything.

Everyone will say: APL is impossible to understand, why use it? To which I reply: who amongst us has not had a 50x50 matrix of complex numbers that we needed to invert with a single keystroke? QED

[wj]

They don't care if they do harm to people because as far as they are concerned the people they harm are normie loser parasites and deserve no better.

I think perhaps a better description is that they view the world like a computer game. They consider most other people (outside their immediate social circle) like "non-player characters". Not really real, and no big deal what happens to them.

[russell]

I think perhaps a better description is that they view the world like a computer game.

I'm gonna stick with my original take.

That said, what both of our points of view have in common is that the DOGE kids don't really see other people as deserving of their consideration or concern.

[Marty]

I blame their parents.

[Michael Cain]

Among the many things I will never get my head around is how we have all been reduced to standing around and watching it happen. Much to my amazement, we do not appear to have the institutional or procedural means to kick these punks the hell out.

Historically speaking, all strong president systems eventually fail into some sort of authoritarian arrangement. The US has been the sole long-term exception to this. Details vary. Sometimes it's a coup of one sort or another. Perhaps the president seizes control, or perhaps the military pushes the president aside and takes control. The legislature reaching a point where it doesn't function well seems to be a contributory thing.

[Michael Cain]

To which I reply: who amongst us has not had a 50x50 matrix of complex numbers that we needed to invert with a single keystroke?

At least on any sane keyboard, APL's unary matrix inversion operator ("domino") is a three keystroke combination. Ask me why I know :^)

[GftNC]

More on the academic brain drain, and how the academics are protecting themselves:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/when-the-physicists-need-burner-phones-thats-when-you-know-americas-changed

[Michael Cain]

Here's what I think about the chances that DOGE can convert the Social Security code base from COBOL on mainframes to something more modern. If they can actually do that, why are they wasting their time at DOGE? There are banks and insurance companies that will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in total to convert their systems.

[wj]

If they were able to do it, there'd be some new billionaires.

But the private sector doesn't tend to suffer fools gladly.

[Marty]

The problem with replacement in general is there is usually not a minimum viable product that can go live. So an iterative approach isn't acceptable because these systems support too many constituencies.

Millions of dollars is what they would lose daily on any extended failure, the risk is incredibly high. So where they can they modify an off the shelf system that satisfies the minimum requirements of the most constituencies, then fail due to all the normal development risks.

It's a quandary.

[russell]

I blame their parents.

Don't know if this was meant humorously, but it did make me laugh.

LOL

[Marty]

LOL it was

[wj]

Who else would be responsible for raising them to be decent human beings? As the twig is bent....

[GftNC]

For anybody interested, who doesn't have a sub, guest link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/opinion/aoc-bernie-sanders-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.704.xkMZ.XJCNPNM3UpKF&smid=url-share

[Donald]

Maybe 13 or more civilians died in the Signalgate air strike.

https://truthout.org/articles/democrat-leaked-messages-show-waltz-admitting-to-war-crime-in-yemen-strike/

Jamelle Bouie at the NYT mentioned that civilians were killed and said it was a possible war crime. Not that those matter in the US, but it is part of our degradation as a country to have people gloating over the collapse of a civilian building.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

It really is a shameful comment on humanity that "war crimes" get less punishment (on average) than a typical parking ticket.

[Hartmut]

And the police can legally use several tools that the military is banned from using by (among others) the Hague Conventions because they are considered inhumane.

[GftNC]

Excellent, I would have thought unanswerable piece by Timothy Snyder on the Vance/Trump Greenland antics:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/31/trump-greenland-us-morally-wrong-strategy-disastrous

[russell]

Synder is among the US academics and scientists who are getting the hell out of Dodge. He's leaving Yale for U. Toronto.

It's a pretty long way from where we started back in January to "world's shittiest country", but it looks like we're doing our best to head there as fast as we can.

:(

[Michael Cain]

I don't believe people in other countries are thinking the new "brain drain" thing through. It is unlikely that Canada, for example, will create hundreds of new funded faculty slots at their universities. If they hire hundreds of USians who are fleeing, some number of Canadian scholars are going to not get positions. OTOH, if they are going to create hundreds of new slots, why now and not sooner?

I was never more than a quasi-academic. I would be interested to have nous et al tear that thought apart.

[nous]

Michael Cain - a lot of that academic brain drain is going to hinge upon grants and funding sources. Anyone who has prominent research with international funding and a diverse team of researchers is going to seek a new home where that research is not threatened. Canadian universities who were already partnered will look to take over the research to preserve what's already been done, and any IP generated will be theirs rather than belonging to the US university at which the project used to be housed.

Anything that doesn't have IP will mostly hinge on institutional prestige. They will hire people who will burnish the reputation of the university and postpone non-essential faculty recruitment to make room in the budget.

But none of this is likely to involve new hires. It will all be established scholars or established researchers under existing grants.

We have been looking at the possibility of emigrating, but that would likely involve a move to a small institution that needs teachers with experience teaching English Language Learners and is having a hard time with the job search due to being located outside of a major metro area. That's the sort of jobs that might be available to US academics who are early career or non-tenured faculty.

[russell]

Can't really speak for Canada, and Snyder's deal was probably in the works before Trump's inauguration. Although knowing Snyder's areas of interest I would not be surprised if he saw this mess coming and wanted to avoid it.

All of that said, even if Canada isn't recruiting US talent, then Europe surely is.

[liberal japonicus]

I've been thinking about this a lot and I don't think it will happen either. The obvious parallel, before WWII, where the US took in academics, particularly Jewish academics, which arguably, 'made' the US education system the envy of everyone else, had some particular features that aren't replicated here. I'll just list them as points, more detail if anyone wants

-economics The US was untapped, so ramping up the education system was definitely in the cards
-language The place where that might want to expand would be China, but language is going to be a problem. Plus the US was 'neutral', but going to China is specifically taking a stance opposed to the US government. The previous brain drain had a much longer run up.
-start up notions Think of Nolan's Oppenheimer and the foregrounding of the Institute of Advanced Study, which was really just a place to land academics fleeing fascism. (more on that below)
-imperialism/altruism The previous brain drain had the US willingly accept that it needed somehow catch up, which tempered the notion that it was altruistic. The current situation would require a lot more emphasis on altruism and an acceptance of a hierarchy. I'm not so sure that obtains anymore.
-comparative costs. There's an old joke about a university president reviewing the budget and calls in a faculty member.

"Why does your department need so much money?" the president complains. "Look at the math department! All they need is paper, pencils, and a wastebasket. And the philosophy department doesn't even need the wastebasket!"

But beyond the opportunity to retell an old joke, I imagine countries want people who are doing things with material sciences, not with subjects that just require thinking. Nous' point about IP plugs into this, in the 30's, who was worried about the IP of Einstein's field equations?

-ethos The brain drain plugged into a conception of the country that the US had at the time that invoked Ellis Island and all that. Canada is the only country is a comparable ethos, it is hard to imagine other countries having it.

There are some other things, but it would be quite funny if China set up its own "Institute of Advanced Study" and started putting out a call to academics. It's not going to happen, but it is fun to imagine.

Interestingly enough, googling Institute of Advanced Studies got this
https://ias.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/
Which has a similar vibe. However, Japan has its own issues of economics and student population, so it would be hard to imagine some sort of mass exodus here.

[wj]

The place where that might want to expand would be China, but language is going to be a problem. Plus the US was 'neutral', but going to China is specifically taking a stance opposed to the US government.

Yes, but.

There are a bunch of important American academics who happen to have started life in China. They might prefer the pre-Trump US. But now? Going back to China might well look attractive. (Assuming Trump doesn't helpfully deport them.) And no language problem.

Otherwise, much of the brain drain we are looking at is to places like the EU. They're about as neutral when it comes to Trump's America as the US (under FDR) was to Hitler's Germany. Which is to say, officially neutral, perhaps. But looking to become the 21st century's the Arsenal of Democracy.

[liberal japonicus]

Well, chatgpt tells me that 7% of the tenured faculty are Asian or Pacific-Islander, but that includes Japanese and Korean, so I'm guessing it can't be more than 2%, which doesn't seem like a lot.

[nous]

lj- that's only tenured folks, though. Those are the Primary Investigators on the grants. There are a whole lot of internationals that are post-docs or associated researchers that are working on soft money for the grants rather than being faculty. If the grant goes, then the PI goes wherever they can keep the work going, a lot of the others working the grant will just follow the PI to safer destinations for them, and the local researchers will try to find another gig.

Tenured faculty are a fraction of the drain.

One way in which I am thinking about all this, though, is not so much in terms of brain drain - it's wondering who becomes New Constantinople now that US-as-Rome is falling here in the early part of the New Migration Era. Someplace else will need to become the center of all that knowledge industry.

It's not going to be American corporations. They outsourced their R&D to academia half a century ago and let government take over all the overhead. They can't afford to bring that all back in-house. They're cooked.

[nous]

...and with that thought, I guess it's time to finally sit down and watch Foundation on Apple+ TV.

[liberal japonicus]

That's an interesting point. When we think of the pre WWII brain drain, we think in terms of individuals. They certainly had networks of people that they brought with them, but it seems more that they became teachers and mentors.

A by the way book Rec, Battle in the Mind Fields by John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks is an interesting book.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo28509221.html
The most interesting thing for me was how they organize the intellectual influences in these schema that are multi colored and look like flowcharts. Worth a look.

[wj]

chatgpt tells me that 7% of the tenured faculty are Asian or Pacific-Islander, but that includes Japanese and Korean, so I'm guessing it can't be more than 2%, which doesn't seem like a lot.

In addition to the point that nous made, it might be worth having ChatGPT look just at STEM faculty. No offense intended to other fields. But as a first cut, those folks, and their research, are the ones who are likely to have the biggest impact on the economy going forward.

[CaseyL]

I'm perpetually curious why we don't hear more about the Global South as a region that might take advantage of the US collapse to build up its own academic (and other) institutions.

I'm not sure why that is. I mean, I am aware their history of being ruled and then colonized by the most repressive regimes of the time did shape how their societies evolved. (The Spanish were awful, but so were the Aztec, Incan, and Mayan empires.)

But I'm curious why it seems to stay that way. is it because those regions are not magnets for refugees? Refugees consistently have an invigorating effect on the areas where they settle, bringing with them new ideas and attitudes.

The global south has generally been a source of refugees, not a magnet for them. It would be interesting if that changed over the next generation or two.

[GftNC]

We've talked about various forms of partition/secession before. Someone just sent me this, with the comment "problem solved"

https://www.reddit.com/r/millenials/comments/1gnxolr/problem_solved/?rdt=32881

[russell]

"problem solved"

LOL. And an extra ROFL for them leaving New Hampshire out of it. And good that they got New York in there, Fairfield County in Connecticut will never leave without NYC.

But yeah, the northeast in general, and New England in particular, are in a lot of ways closer culturally and socially to Canada than they are to much of the US.

Along those lines, there are also these folks, who seem to be generally unclear on how to go about things but I guess you work with what you got.

In terms of dollars and cents, in Massachusetts, specifically, we're sending the feds about $4,000 more in federal taxes than we get back, per capita. Which I'm generally fine with, until folks from... other places ... complain about how "their tax dollars" are being spent.

What tax dollars you talking about, Willis? I think those are *my* tax dollars getting spent on *you*.

WHERE'S MY THANK YOU?!?! :)

The overwhelming majority of states in the US get more money from the feds than they send in. And yes, military bases and federal infrastructure, I get it. But you all are still getting the money.

A handful send more than they give. In absolute numbers, California is overwhelmingly the biggest net contributor, with Massachusetts a distant second with about 1/5th the population. Per capita, Massachusetts wins hands down.

So yeah, could be a good deal for Canada. All or nearly all of the net generators of tax revenue would become new Canadian provinces. Although California might do perfectly well going it alone, as a country of its own.

If there was a sensible way to make it happen without people getting shot over it, I'd personally be more than open to it. Every place has its own unique set of problems, I'm sure Canada has theirs. New England as a separate country would surely have its own. But at least I wouldn't be horrified by my own country on a daily basis.

[CaseyL]

GftNC and russell - I like that map!

One tiny problem which may have its own solution: the eastern half of Washington and Oregon are MAGA country, and would not want to join Canada.

Happily, neither of those regions wants to stay part of their big bad Blue state. Eastern Oregon has expressed a fervent desire to become part of Idaho, and I imagine Eastern Washington could be persuaded likewise.

So let's run the border down the middle of Washington and Oregon. To the east, they stay in the US. To the west, they join Canada.

"Problem solved" indeed!

[hairshirthedonist]

One tiny problem which may have its own solution: the eastern half of Washington and Oregon are MAGA country, and would not want to join Canada.

I'm not terribly sure about Western New York, either. Manhattan, it is not.

[wj]

Not sure Illinois would want to remain if the rest of us leave. Colorado, and probably New Mexico would want out as well.

[Michael Cain]

Someone just sent me this, with the comment "problem solved"

This is Mike-bait, right?

[nous]

CaseyL I'm perpetually curious why we don't hear more about the Global South as a region that might take advantage of the US collapse to build up its own academic (and other) institutions.

Part of it is the Matthew Effect. Global North becoming industrialized first made it harder for everyone else to build up that level of development. The other part is, I believe, clearer when looking at this map of Climate Change Impact risk:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/gallery/metofficegovuk/images/research/climate/climate-impacts/climate-impact-projection-maps/multiple_impacts.png

When you look at the land distribution around the equator it's pretty clear that the South has more of its land mass in the tropics and equatorial zones, and not much in more temperate zones.

The deck is heavily stacked in favor of the North.

[GftNC]

Alex Massie on Donald Trump and the Unmaking of American Greatness:

https://open.substack.com/pub/alexmassie/p/donald-trump-and-the-unmaking-of?r=w2vx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

[GftNC]

This is Mike-bait, right?

That was just a bonus..

[Michael Cain]

Lots of people with an interest in space travel wonder how badly Musk is going to use his position to screw with NASA in terms of cornering the markets in space services. Eric Berger at Ars Technica has a fascinating interview with the two astronauts who flew the Boeing Starliner capsule to the International Space Center last year. Things were much dicier than has been reported before. NASA had to choose between aborting the mission prior to docking, or waiving one or more of the ISS approach safety rules.

Last night SpaceX launched four civilians into polar orbit. This is first time a crewed capsule has done that.