WaPo Goes X

In the latest Bezos bulldozer to the Washington Post's credibility, the Amazon.com owner has announced a new party line for the editorial page. Henceforth, he wrote, the editorial page would be dedicated to two views: "personal liberties and free markets." "[V]iewpoints opposing those pillars" will not be published. Bezos argued that while once upon a time it might have been "a service" for a newspaper "to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views[, t]oday, the internet does that job." The decision led to the resignation of the Post's opinion editor and another wave of discontent amongst the paper's rank-and-file.


My initial thought was to wonder exactly which viewpoints opposed to "personal liberties" and "free markets" Bezos thought the WaPo had been publishing. My second thought was to ponder which views contrary to "personal liberty" would actually no longer be published. Vaccine mandates, I assume. I certainly doubt opposition to trans healthcare, or impinging on a woman's right to choose an abortion, will take on verboten status. As for "free markets" -- kleptocratic suckling to government strongmen for fear of legal retaliation: free market, or no? We'll find out soon enough!

Bezos' move is obviously about effectuating another rightwing shift in the paper (the New York Times noted that Bezos' duo echoed the informal motto of the notoriously extreme Wall Street Journal editorial page: "Free Markets, Free People"). The newsroom remains unaffected for now (the Post's own article on Bezos' decision is a good read), but we'll see how long that lasts.

It gives Bezos far too much credit to compare this decision with his other attacks on the Post's independence, but let's go through the motions, because it does demonstrate that there are no actual principles -- journalistic or otherwise -- in play here. Bezos' indefensible defense of his presidential non-endorsement decree was predicated on the idea that the narrowing force of a presidential endorsement would necessarily suggest journalistic bias and damage the paper's credibility -- a demand for wider viewpoints, not narrower ones. The Post's Scholastic Kids Choice-esque new motto, "riveting storytelling for all of America" tries to sound a similar theme: the Post needs to speak to a wider audience by presenting a wider range of views; it cannot remain cloistered as the mouthpiece of a particular bubble. Juxtapose that against his newfound contempt for a "broad-based opinion section", and the contradiction is obvious -- but "contradiction" again assumes there was a principle in play in the first place. There wasn't -- that was obvious before, and it's more obvious now.

As a business move, there's zero chance that any part of Bezos' demolition derby will redound to the Post's benefit. But I don't think he cares, because he's realized that the Post offers him something far more valuable than a business. It offers him a mouthpiece.

The footsteps Bezos is following here are those of Elon Musk and X. As a business, Musk has of course run X into the ground. But if you're a rich as Musk or Bezos is, that loss is a rounding error. What Musk has gained, of course, has been a megaphone to promote and amplify whatever views and ideologies that appeal to his fancies -- in his case, a cavalcade of conspiracy theories and white supremacist MAGA garbage. Even for our most rapacious capitalists, not every investment has to be monetary -- spending money to bend the arc of the entire world's political discourse surely can be viewed as money well spent (and of course, under the right conditions even an objectively cratering business can still gain value if it is seen as a gateway to the autocrats).

So too, it seems, for Bezos and the Washington Post. Are these moves going to gain back the subscribers he lost? Doubtful. It probably will accelerate departures. But the Post's name still has value, and now it gets to be Bezos' own personal Pravda. Whatever that costs, Bezos is clearly willing to pay it.

Betar Expulsion as Trump Impeachment

The other day, I wrote about the new(-ish) far-right organization operating in Jewish spaces, Betar. Betar has distinguished itself for its open endorsement of hate and violence directed both at Palestinians (its response to reports of Israel killing children in Gaza was to say "Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!") as well as Jews it views as insufficiently fundamentalist in our Zionism, which in their case means virtually all of us.

Since them, they've gotten into a spat with the ADL after the latter added them to its database of extremism. And then a competing slate in the World Zionist Congress elections, Kol Israel, moved to have Betar expelled from the American Zionist Movement, citing both electoral blackmail tactics and Betar's "abhorrent" calls "for genocide and the murder of Palestinian babies." Betar, through its coalition partner ZOA (there's a team-up everyone could see coming), has warned of filing retaliatory complaints against Kol Israel.

On the one hand, it's always good to see groups stand up to racist thugs like Betar. On the other hand, this feels eerily reminiscent of how the political establishment treated the rise of Donald Trump. 

After years of ignoring, excusing, coddling, and enabling him, January 6 happened and for an instant it seemed like folks woke up and sanity might be restored. But the reality was it was already too late -- the supposedly unthinkable extremism that Donald Trump represented had become normalized through those years of excuse and neglect. Even in the most incredible moment -- the immediate wake of an outright insurrection against the United States -- the effort to rein him in fizzled out, and he would soon reestablish himself as at the center of a conservative movement that at one point would have viewed as the most outrageous slander the charge that it would harbor the likes of Donald Trump. They failed to stop him when they could, and found themselves isolated and alone when they (briefly) roused themselves to try.

That pattern seems apt here. Efforts to kick out ZOA from the Conference went nowhere. A similar initiative at the Boston JCRC, one where it was admitted ZOA "elevated White supremacism", only ended up yielding the eventual departure of the left-wing group the Workers Circle (that group also left the Conference). In Isarel, years of enabling and nurturing the neo-Kahanists have made them into the dominant force in Bibi's coalition -- a cadre that is not just ("just") contained to secondary parties like Jewish Power but is running riot through Likud itself. In the diaspora, too, Kahanism is being ever-more normalized as something other than a violent mob of racist thugs. Everyone who thought this was just posturing, or political jockeying, or unsavory alliance-making, but who was sure that if and when the time came they could pump the brakes has been proven to be a fool. There are no brakes. As I wrote in my first post on Betar:

[L]eaders of social groups that simultaneously play footsie with the sort of extreme rhetoric while assuaging themselves that of course their actual politics are humanitarian and egalitarian, they're just revving up a crowd or exaggerating for effect, will quickly learn that much of their base isn't in on the bit. They're in it for the hate, and when someone offers that hate better, they won't listen to your attempts to rein things back in.

So as happy as I am to see groups try to stand up to Betar and ZOA, I am dubious about their likelihood of success. The most likely outcome for Betar and ZOA is exactly what they've enjoyed for years by the mainstream Jewish institutions: averting their eyes, kicking the can down the road, hoping the problem solves itself -- and with each passing moment, what once was unthinkable becomes undislodgeable.

Maybe eventually, someone will learn a lesson. But I doubt it will be this day.

How To Expand the NCAA Tournament

It's not breaking news, but apparently the NCAA is considering expanding its college basketball tournament to 72 or 76 teams (from the current 68).

As a certified curmudgeon, I've opposed every tournament expansion since it was at 64 teams. The basic problem is obvious: the expansions are all soulless cash grabs, and the beneficiaries are inevitably the ninth best team in the Big Ten with a barely over-500 record who'll get trounced in one round, two if lucky. Who cares?

The nominal reasons for this expansion (again, skipping past the real one, which remains "cash grab") are (a) that there are more schools in Division I than ever before, and (b) that the small number of "play-in" matches means that most fans don't view the games as "real" parts of the tournament. Expanding the number of play-ins so it more closely approximates a full tournament round means more attention to all of them.

The first reason doesn't move me. The second actually does carry some weight for me, since my absolute favorite sports weekend of the year is the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament when it's just an endless stream of do-or-die basketball and a more robust play-in round might approximate that. But again, I just don't have any real interest in seeing a few more mediocre Power Five conference teams get trotted in as sacrifices.

So here's my proposal: expand the tournament, but all the new at-large bids have to go to conferences who don't have any non-automatic qualifiers.

After all, isn't that why we watch the tournament? It's for random schools from nowhere-ville coming out of the 14 seed slot to knock off Kansas. Give me more opportunities for that! Right now, there are a bunch of conferences whose only representation is the auto-qualifier, and in some of those cases the auto-qualifier is not the best team in the conference (looking at you, 1997 Fairfield). I don't have a problem with that -- it's awesome when an objectively terrible team has a miracle run in their conference tournament to gain the auto-qualifier. But the point is I'd absolutely prefer the actual best team in that conference to get a chance to dance over some big-name school that's already proven they can't hack it.

So sure -- expand the tournament. But this time use the opportunity to spread the wealth. Down with the mediocre big names; up with the obscure mid-majors!

The Irrelevant Innumeracy of the Swarmed GOP Town Halls

Surely by now you've seen the stories about GOP congressmen, in deep red districts, being absolutely swarmed by angry constituents furious that they're not standing up to Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the buzzsaw attack on hardworking federal employees.

My thesis about this will be twofold. First, there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye. And second, it doesn't matter that there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye, and we should all behave like they're exactly what they appear to be.

Start with the first. The excitement over these protests relates to the sense that anger and outrage over Trump has expanded beyond the blue bubbles and is penetrating even dark red terrain. But the mistake here is something I alluded to in my How To Tokenize with Proportions post. A congressional district where a Republican won by, say, a 66-33 margin is by any measure a dark-red district. But it also is a district where one in three voters voted Democrat. One in three is a lot of people! In a congressional district of 750,000, it's 250,000 people! It is not hard to fill a high school auditorium, particularly if that 250,000 is feeling especially angry and activated.

It's an issue of framing, if you're generous, or innumeracy, if you're not: 33% doesn't feel very common, 1 in 3 feels very common. Politically speaking, the former is closer to accurate, which is why congressional districts where one sees 66/33 margins aren't typically treated as competitive.

But what innumeracy taketh away, innumeracy also giveth. The fact is that most people see a crowd of angry constituents filling an auditorium in a deep-red district and don't start doing math about how easy or hard it is to fill up the space given the baseline number of Democrats around. They just see the crowd. Politics is often a game of perception and of momentum -- people see others in their community and in their spaces expressing anger and fear and frustration, and it validates their own nascent feelings of anger, fear, and frustration. It makes them feel like they're not alone. It encourages them that these sentiments are common in their community, and that they're not weird or outcasts or loners if they feel them too. All of that starts to build a narrative conducive to resistance. And even if it doesn't mean the deepest-red congressional districts will flip blue in 2026, it gets that permission structure going that will make life very difficult for Republicans in more vulnerable seats.

So keep swarming. Keep yelling. Keep sharing those vids. Build up that narrative that people everywhere are mad as hell, and they're ready to fight. In politics, image becomes reality before you know it.

Ailing

An inevitable event every new parent dreads is the first time their baby gets sick. But a less remarked on, but almost as frightening prospect is the first time you, the parent, gets sick while caring for a baby.

This past week, my keratoconus has been acting up. Looking back on my chart notes from the last time this happens, it appears I have corneal hydrops, which starts manifesting as dry eyes and quickly progresses into significant eye irritation, light sensitivity, and extreme tearing (the other day tears literally started jetting from my eyes when I woke up). In my case, these symptoms also come alongside sinus symptoms on my left side -- so my left nostril is running and I have pain in my left orbital socket and along the teeth the upper left part of my jaw.

Being "sick" (I'll address the quotation marks in a moment) is never fun, but it is far less fun when you have an infant in your care. When it's just you and/or your fellow adult companion, you can kind of slough off your responsibilities temporarily until you're feeling better. No reasonable person will hold it against you if you push back a deadline or skip out on making dinner. In most cases, your loved ones will be able to shuffle some of their responsibilities around to help you. You get taken care of.

But an infant is, of course, quite needy, and it can't press pause on its needs to accommodate yours. If I need to tap out of my evening care shift, my wife has to take it, and then she isn't getting the sleep she needs. If we need to go to the doctor's and I'm not up to driving, then she has to drive, which means he has to come and she has to be up to driving, which, again, is harder when she's getting even less sleep than normal because I'm out of commission. The normal feeling of bodily vulnerability is accentuated because one also feels a little more trapped than usual. There's an extra layer of emotional unpleasantness that is a poor complement to the physical unpleasantness.

The saving grace right now is that I don't have an infection or anything else that could be transmitted to my baby. So at least I don't have to worry about that.

But in classic me-form, that got me thinking about linguistics. How do I generically (but not too generically) describe my condition? Stipulate that "not feeling well" is the umbrella generic term covering all health related reasons why one might, well, not feel well. Under that umbrella, there are some more specific terms.

For example, saying I'm "sick" feels wrong because sickness, to me, refers to an infection. If I told people I was "sick", they'd immediately assume I had some sort of bug. Perhaps more broadly it can include being made unwell by any foreign substance (hence why food poisoning or, for that matter, regular poisoning still to me qualifies one as being "sick"), but it still wouldn't fit what's happening here.

Likewise, Jill suggested "injured". But that for me suggests some discrete moment of trauma that I endured. If I got hit in the eye with a baseball and it felt like this, then I'd be injured. A flare-up of a chronic condition, not triggered by anything particular I'm aware of, doesn't seem to fit.

So -- if your chronic condition does develop a novel complication that makes one feel especially unwell, what are you. Not sick, not injured. "Ailing" also works, but feels too Victorian. Is that the best we can do?

How Can I Be Antisemitic? I Know a Guy Named "Schwartz"!

A candidate for the Michigan Democratic Party Chairmanship, Al "BJ" Williams, is in hot water after saying that the Democratic Party is "not the Jewish party."

“This is not the Jewish party, this is the Democratic Party,” Williams told the group, according to the Detroit News. “There are more voices than just Zionists in this party. There are more voices than just Jewish Americans within this party. There are more voices than just those anti-Arab American voices within this party.”

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a chorus of condemnations from Michigan Democrats (Jewish and not). Reportedly, both of the organizations which hosted the event Williams made his remark at, the People's Coalition and Arab American Democratic Caucus, have endorsed Williams' main rival, former state senator Curtis Hertel. As one leader of the People's Coalition, Rima Mohammad, put it, "If that’s what Al thinks we want to hear as Palestinians, he is completely wrong."

Williams is, unsurprisingly, in damage control mode, insisting that his remarks were (say it with me now) "taken out of context." The right context is Williams' belief that "no single group should dominate the party’s identity," which, um, isn't really better.

But speaking of better, here's Williams' other big play to prove he isn't an antisemite: he knows a guy named Schwartz! Who's (probably) Jewish!

[E]arlier this week on Instagram, his campaign attempted to counter what they called “false claims of being an anti-Semite” by trumpeting an endorsement from a man named Michael Schwartz, who the Williams campaign identified only as an “attorney.” In a video accompanying the post, Schwartz — who never explicitly identifies himself as Jewish — called the antisemitism allegations "baloney."

Remember when Roy Moore tried to refute antisemitism allegation by telling us his attorney was a Jew, and people spent weeks trying to figure out who was Moore's Jewish buddy, and then it turned out the guy was Messianic? Definitely giving off some of those vibes (though I'll harbor a guess that this Schwartz is at least actually Jewish).

Hertel, in addition to the aforementioned endorsements from the Arab American Democratic Caucus and People's Coalition, also boasts the support of (among others) Michigan's incumbent Governor, Lieutenant Governor, both Senators, and the party's Black, Jewish, Bangladeshi American, Yemeni, and Veterans caucuses.

People Hate Mourning Jews

It is hard for me to see a picture of Kfir Bibas and not see my baby.

The news that Kfir Bibas and his family were murdered by Hamas is, of course, wrenching. And for me, at least, it intersected with two of my greatest fears. Of course, there is the fear of harm befalling my son or another a loved one. But there is also the more specific worry, which I've discussed before, of having a loved one die "politically" -- that is, in a context where their death inevitably becomes part of a broader political dispute. It is both unavoidable and unspeakably cruel that Kfir Bibas' death is part of politics now -- the politics of Hamas' depravity, the politics of the horrors of the Israel/Gaza War, the politics of the future of Israel and Palestine where, God willing, nobody will have to experience what the Bibas family has endured.

And it is not just the Bibas family, but the entire Jewish world, who is mourning Kfir's death. And, because we are Jews, that means that some people -- sometimes other Jews -- will tell us we are mourning Kfir wrong.

One way we might be "wrong" is if we have the temerity to focus, for even a short spell, just on the Bibas family. Don't we know others have suffered too? Are you saying that Jewish lives matter more? How tribal, how cloistered, how gauche, to not use this moment to make a statement about the universal value of all human life.

But another way we might be "wrong" is if we do mourn Kfir Bibas by reference to the universal value of all human life -- and in particular, of both Israeli and Palestinian life.

The New Jewish Narrative's statement mourning the deaths of Oded Lifschitz and Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri Bibas spoke in this register. It described the Bibas family as "distinct symbols of the human cost of this conflict," and averred that their "tragic deaths are a painful reminder of the unspeakable loss that this war has wrought." They juxtaposed Ariel and Kfir alongside Hind Rajab and infants in Al-Nasr Hospital. They concluded by renewing their commitment to "a future where children on both sides of the fence grow up safe, free from the horrors of war."

I am not the Bibas family, and I do not purport to speak for them. I can only speak for my own grief, and for me this was a message that spoke to my grief. But I've seen other Jews who were aghast by this statement, who were furious that NJN would use such universalist tones rather than concentrate solely and exclusively on the Bibas children.

Their complaint styles itself as one objecting to "All Lives Mattering", but notice that this isn't quite right. The NJN did not, anywhere in its statement, reproach those who decided this week to speak specifically and distinctively about the Bibases. They did not say that there was something improper or tribal or provincial about having that focus, or that Jews have some unique obligation to transcend their Jewishness and speak solely in universalist tones. They just chose, as an expression of their own Jewish voice, that they would make this universal connection. For them, the way to mourn Jewishly is to draw out this more expansive desire that Jewish children and Palestinian children be free from the horrors of war. If that is "All Lives Mattering", then any project of political solidarity and fellowship is, and I can hardly imagine a more short-sighted and self-destructive commitment than that.

When choosing that framing is presented not as a choice at all but as an implacable obligation, there is a problem. But when choosing that framing is presented as an impermissible option that betrays Jewish peoplehood, there is a problem as well. That Jews (or anyone else) are not obligated to always frame their suffering in universal tones does not mean that Jews should be forbidden from electing, of our own volition, to draw out those connections. The latter move is just as stifling as the former.

When I see a picture of Kfir Bibas, I see my baby, whom I love and cherish and would be shattered if he came into any danger or peril. And I know that every baby has parents who feel the exact same way, who would be shattered in the same way -- and how could I wish such a horrible fate upon any parent? When I imagine how horrible it would be for me, I imagine how horrible it would be for them, and my instinct is to think on ways to avert the horrors for us. If, God forbid, something did happen to my family, I hope nobody would begrudge me for concentrating specifically on my family. But I also hope that if I chose to rededicate myself to trying to prevent similar tragedies from befalling other families and other communities not mine, that that choice would not be begrudged either.

Falling on the Reputational Grenade, Part II

The other day, I had the thought that, sometime in the next four years, we will likely see the first legal filing by a government lawyer that will include some AI-hallucinated citations. Leaving aside that this is already happening with private firms (including sizeable ones) and so it only seems a matter of time, we also are entering the realm of overconfident and underqualified tech bros ransacking their way through Washington. AI-generated legal briefs are exactly the sort of "optimization" I can imagine Musk and his DOGE youth pushing out onto the bureaucracy, with predictably farcical results.

Generally, courts have responded rather mercilessly to lawyers who've submitted AI-generated hallucinated cases. Their reputations are ruined, and the underlying case is permanently discredited. And that thought got me thinking -- what would happen if an enterprising government lawyer decided to sabotage their own case by deliberately inserting AI-hallucinations into it?

Imagine the birthright citizenship case -- already viewed as a legal non-starter, with the usual conservative guns-for-hire flailing about trying and failing to whip up an even halfway plausible mechanism for circumventing the constitution's clear text and history. In court, the DOJ files a brief citing some late 19th century caselaw that seems to endorse a narrower view of the citizenship clause than currently prevails ... but it turns out that the citations are all made up.

Such a move would detonate the Department's credibility. As a form of internal sabotage, it would be devastatingly effective -- but (in here's the rub) only if the public didn't know it was sabotage. If the ruse was revealed, the plan doesn't work (having one's own attorney deliberately sabotage your case is not the sort of thing held against the client). But if the public remains unaware, the attorney who made the "mistake" would have committed career suicide twice over -- first, in putting his name on a defense of whatever neo-fascist Trump policy is before the court, and then second being a public laughingstock by "defending" it via inept use of generative AI.

During the first Trump administration, I wrote about actors who were knowingly wrecking their reputation by working in the Oval Office on the (probably correct) theory that if they didn't do it, someone worse would. They knew that history would view them as a villain, and accepted that judgment in order to avert greater evil. The above example is a perhaps even more extreme case -- a sort of reputational suicide bomber. The attorney would sabotage some great evil, but at the cost of everyone for all time thinking of him as Trump's most incompetent lickspittle.

We saw recently a longtime DOJ attorney, Ed Sullivan, agree to file a motion to dismiss the Eric Adams indictment, reportedly to avert a complete and total purge of the Public Integrity Unit by one of Trump's cronies. The order to dismiss the Adams case had already led to widespread resignations over what was transparent quid-pro-quo corruption -- trading non-prosecution in exchange for Adams' cooperation in enforcing Trumpist immigration policies. Sullivan reportedly agreed to fall on the grenade so as to spare his colleagues; this has in turn generated a roaring debate over whether Sullivan was right to do so or should have forced Trump's lackey to fully reenact the Saturday Night Massacre. I don't here make any judgment on which side of that debate got things right. But we're going to see more difficult questions as those on the inside consider how to resist abuse and forestall catastrophe. And while we like to imagine that the "right" choice at least comes with the perk of being viewed heroically, the more interesting choices may be ones where it is precisely one's reputation that must be sacrificed in order to truly avert the greatest evil.

Cry, the Beloved Infant

My baby is one month old today.

At one month, he doesn't do much. One month is too young to crawl or sit up or babble. He doesn't even make many facial expressions yet. Crying is really his main move.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've been reflecting on baby cries of late. And I don't think we give them enough credit. In particular, a baby's cry is a profound expression of trust. A baby cries based on an innate, unshakeable trust that if they communicate they are in distress, someone will try to help them.

That's hardly something to take for granted. We could imagine instead the logic of "if I communicate I am in distress, a predator will know I'm vulnerable." Or "why bother communicating I am in distress, nobody cares." But babies operate on the firm belief that when they are truly in need, others will care for them.

We could take a bit of inspiration from that. All around us and all over the world, there are people in need of help. And too often, their sincere, agonized, plaintive cries for help are ignored -- a truly awful sensation. Of course, none of us (well, maybe not none of us) can help everyone. But most of us can do more. We can try to be a little better than we were yesterday. We can respond to the cries of others, and vindicate the first, most basic trust we are born with.

They're The Same Picture

The JTA has an interesting profile on a "new" right-wing Zionist organization, Betar ("new" in quotes because it claims to be a resurrection of a much older Zionist outfit active before Israel's founding). Betar has distinguished itself by its "confrontational" approach -- meaning that it engages in acts of vandalism and violence, and openly calls for things like ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the expansion of Israel's borders well beyond the West Bank and Gaza and into modern Jordan, Egypt, and Syria.

Critical readers will spot a lot of commonalties between Betar and the more hardline elements of the pro-Palestinian movement. Most obviously, Betar uses almost identical rhetorical maximalism -- compare "We don't want two states, we want all of it" heard at pro-Palestinian protests with Betar's recent statement "We don’t want peace. We don’t want co-existence" -- and simply asks listeners to "choose a side". Pick your preferred ethnic cleanser and cleansee.

But there are some other commonalities. Perhaps the most important one to flag is that Betar hates "moderate" Jews as much if not more than it hates Palestinians, and its definition of "moderate" includes many Jews whom external observers would view as hardliners. Consider Betar's confrontational relationship with Columbia professor Shai Davidai, who has organized aggressive (to say the least) counterprotests aimed at pro-Palestinian activism on campus and had to deal with a Betar element crashing his event:

Despite their tiny size, the Betar contingent immediately worried Davidai. Most of them were young men, he recalled; several covered their faces; one had a flag of the Jewish Defense League, an extremist group that the United States has designated as a terrorist organization. “All they did was scream ‘F— Gaza,’ ‘Gaza is ours,’ ‘Here’s a beeper for you,’ ‘Deport them all,’ ‘ICE, ICE, ICE,’” he said. “Just violent rhetoric.”

Davidai is no stranger to provocation: Last fall, Columbia barred him from campus after months of his vocal criticisms of the university’s handling of antisemitism. Yet he views Betar as a serious obstacle to the movement he was trying to build, not least because they were adapting the same tactics as the pro-Palestinian side: expressing support for a terror group and hiding their faces as they did so.

“I think it’s hypocritical to spend 16 months blaming all protesters who are in this Free Palestine movement for not policing their own protesters, but then let hatred and violence take root in yours,” Davidai said. “I said, ‘Look, you’re doing exactly what we’re telling them not to do….’  At some point I asked them, ‘Go do your thing, but don’t be associated with us.’ They refused.”

After the rally, Betar and its followers began targeting him online. On Instagram he blasted them for only joining counter-protests, while never showing up to rallies for Israeli hostages. The rhetoric has only escalated from there, as Betar has mobilized its followers against him, in public and private. “You will be disrupted at all future speeches,” Torossian messaged Davidai on WhatsApp, according to communications shared with JTA. “You are a radical.”

Davidai has also urged his followers against supporting any further killings or mass expulsions in Gaza, a stark contrast to Betar’s own stated views. Yet in the comments, many of Davidai’s own followers have begun taking Betar’s side, accusing him of naively trying to make peace with the enemy.

There are some lessons to be learned here. One lesson is that there will always be someone more aggressive, confrontational, and hardline than you, and those actors will prove almost impossible to police. Moreover, they (in many ways correctly) view more "moderate" elements of their own community as their most important and salient competition and will ruthlessly try to attack and suppress those they deem "traitors" or "appeasers" in order to accumulate more power to themselves as the "authentic" voice of "true resistance" (this certainly characterizes how the BDS movement has been going after Standing Together, for instance). And finally, leaders of social groups that simultaneously play footsie with the sort of extreme rhetoric while assuaging themselves that of course their actual politics are humanitarian and egalitarian, they're just revving up a crowd or exaggerating for effect, will quickly learn that much of their base isn't in on the bit. They're in it for the hate, and when someone offers that hate better, they won't listen to your attempts to rein things back in.

There's also a very important lesson not to learn here. For some people, it is important to hear about groups like Betar so to disabuse any notions that calls for ethnic cleansing and political violence are only something "they" (the other side) does, whereas "our" movement is purely one of peace and coexistence. That illusion is dangerous and must be dispelled. But for others, the main function of groups like Betar is to give people a permission structure for their own counter-maximalism, because "this is what they're really like". If they're out there saying "Gaza is ours", what choice do we have but to fling them into the sea? If they're out there saying "Israel must be rooted out and destroyed", what choice do we have but to "transfer" them out of Gaza? There are a lot of people who just love the Betars or the Within Our Lifetimes of the world, and are constantly searching for examples of the genre. It's not because they agree with them. It's because their existence gives license to be as extreme and uncompromising and hateful as you want, because have you seen what they want?

The only way out of that trap is to recognize that it's the same picture. These organizations may have different preferred winners and losers, but they're fundamentally on the same side -- trying to convince you that the only choice there is to make is choosing your preferred extremism. And that is a false choice. As important as it is to name and shame these sorts of extremists, if you're main motivation in doing so is to validate your preconceived notion that this sort of extremism is the actual true authentic core of an entire people or culture, then you are not shaming anyone -- you are joining them.

The true enemy, as always, is anyone who rejects the equal dignity and democratic equality of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Anyone who rejects that there are two authentic nations whose homeland is in this territory. Anyone who rejects that there are two communities have legitimate claims to democratic self-determination. Anyone who rejects those premises is fundamentally on the same side, and the wrong side, no matter what flag they fly.

Happy Birthday To Me!

It's already been a very eventful year -- and, for me at least, not even primarily for horrible death-of-democracy related reasons!

That said, I have this terrible worry that we're going to be coming up on a "day of infamy" -- a stock market crash, or a decision to bomb Canada, or a mass arrest of dissident politicians. And I just really hope it isn't today, of all days, because I don't want my birthday being a date spoken in grim and somber tones for the rest of my life (sorry 9/11 babies).

How Many Robert Indianas Are Lost Per Year?

This is Robert Indiana's screenprint "Autumn", from the "Four Seasons of Hope (Gold)" portfolio. Executed in 2012, it was produced in an edition of 82. There were also some printer's proofs and hors commerce proofs set aside, so let's say that a total 100 of these prints were created.

Robert Indiana is a prominent artist and he has an active secondary market. A copy of this piece, for instance, is up for auction next week with an estimate of $3,000 - $5,000. That's far from jaw-dropping by art world standards, but it's definitely something worth keeping around if it's in your house.

So here's my question: of the circa 100 copies of this print that were created, how many do we think are "lost" per year? Or put differently, how many copies of this print still are, functionally speaking, "in existence" in the art world?

By lost, I mean to include things like:

• The work being damaged beyond reasonable repair.
• The work being thrown away or otherwise disposed of.
• The work being in a location where it is forgotten about, or its owner not knowing what it is, such that it is unlikely that it would ever reemerge into the art world.

The last category does not include circumstances where the work is in someone's private collection and they have no interest in selling it (but they know what they have), but does include situations where someone just puts it in a box in their garage and forgets about it because they don't realize it is a prominent work by a prominent artist.

Presumably, all editioned art (or all art by a given artist, if we consider their entire career production as a whole) has an attrition rate. Once the edition is produced (or the artist dies), no more is created. Meanwhile, as life goes on and entropy takes its course, work progressively gets lost. Pieces in museum collections are, relatively speaking, safe from becoming "lost". But pieces in private hands are a different story -- it gets gifted to someone who doesn't realize the work is important, or someone dies and the print is tossed while the house is being cleaned up, or it is ruined a natural disaster. Stuff happens, in short, and so practically speaking that 100 figure is going to progressively tick down as time passes.

But I'm curious what people think the rate is. When one sees an editioned work by a prominent artist, how many of those works have disappeared?

Maybe 2012 is too recent for much of this particular edition to have been lost. Robert Indiana was very well-established by then; one would imagine most people who obtained his work would be people who knew what they were getting. The proportion of "lost" pieces for earlier works may be higher -- in part simply because of the passage of time, but in part because earlier in his career his work was more likely to end up in the hands of people who didn't really think of it as an artifact to be preserved.

My parents have a couple of great limited edition prints by some of the most famous artists from the mid-20th century, and last year I did a little project where I tried to "account for" as many copies of those pieces as possible -- looking at auction records, museum collections, gallery inventories, and so on. Even for the most prominent work with the smallest edition size (28 with 7 asides), I was only able to find info on less than half; for most of the works the number was far less. That doesn't mean those unaccounted for prints are "lost" as I defined it above -- I suspect many are in private hands with owners who know full well what they are* -- but it was still interesting to witness how much of even the most famous artwork in the world is, in practical terms, missing.

Anyway, no deep thought here, just a musing of the day.

* For example, my research would not have revealed anything about my parents' ownership of these prints, but for the fact that I obviously knew what they had.

Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Believe Them

 

The above conversation captures two different accounts of why people voted for Trump. In one corner, there are those who voted for him because "he'll do what he says" (unlike, presumably, other more feckless politicians who make big promises but never keep them). In the opposite corner, there are those who voted for him because he won't do what he says -- it's all bluster and trolling and hyperbole to trigger oversensitive woke libs, but in reality he's just playing a transactional game and will be reasonable.

Emma Briant flags these two accounts with the observation that it's interesting how Trump has been able to effectively activate both camps even though they have seemingly opposite priors. I'll suggest, though, that paradoxically these two opinions about Trump are not as far apart as they seem, and can -- albeit with a very healthy dose of self-delusion -- coexist in the same voter.

Start with the premise that Trump "tells it like it is." Obviously, this seems absurd to anyone who spends a half minute listening to Trump -- he's a grade-A bullshitter whose open lies can be spotted a mile away. But for a certain type of observer -- the self-styled cynic who prides himself on knowing that every politician is some type of liar or fraud -- Trump's very brazenness loops back around into a form of trustworthiness. At least he isn't trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The lies are so obvious that they don't even count anymore. But they're deemed to be in service of some greater agenda, an agenda which the listener is confident Trump very much believes in.

Once one adopts that approach, one can absolutely simultaneously believe that Trump obviously won't do what he says he'll do and that he alone will do what he says he'll do. Simply put, if one doesn't like something he says or if some ramble taken "literally" is acknowledged to go too far, then it is one of those obvious lies that can be discounted -- the listener patting himself on the back for his sophistication in not taken the clearly absurd seriously. And everything one does like is slotted into that greater agenda that is presumed to represent a substrata of absolute, passionate commitment -- the core promises that the listener does want to believe in, desperately, and so is willing to project onto Trump with reckless abandon.

Others have categorized Trump as a classic scam artist, and we see that here too -- the trick is convincing his followers that they're in on the con, as opposed to the marks. Seeing the lies doesn't drive them away from Trump, it makes them feel like they're insiders. Believing they've spotted the ruse, they become more confident that the underlying play is whatever they're being sold.

I've said before and I'll say again: it's no accident that Arendt identified this sort of cynical outlook as a harbinger of totalitarianism, because it leads to worse than believing lies -- it leads to an indifference towards truth. There's no falsifying this outlook, since it can equally and happily accommodate belief and disbelief in equal measure.

Can One Man Really Stop the Senate?

As Donald Trump's disastrous march through America's legal institutions continues unabated, progressives are desperately looking for something -- anything -- that can stem the tide. One possibility folks have seized upon is Senate obstructionism. The line goes that even a single Senator can do a ton of things to throw sand in the gears -- objecting to unanimous consent, slowing down hearings, delaying votes -- that can extract real costs on the MAGA agenda and provide Democrats with some negotiating leverage. So far, no Senator has taken this approach, and that in turn is a source of considerable frustration to progressive partisans who feel that Democrats have been rolling over without a fight.

But for me, the fact that no Senator has done this raises a different question: If this strategy was so effective, wouldn't someone have done it by now?

There are 47 Democratic (or Democratic-aligned) Senators in Congress right now. And as a collective, I absolutely believe there are plenty of plausible explanations for why they're hesitant to adopt the defiant, resistant pose so many of us are thirsting for. If you told me that (too) many still harbor a gut desire for "bipartisanship" and "working across party lines", I'd believe you. If you told me that (too) many remain attached to Senate norms of civility and comity, I'd believe you. If you told me that Chuck Schumer has attempted to unify the caucus around a strategy that, for whatever reason, doesn't include maximal obstructionism, I'd believe you.

But if it's really true that just one Senator has in his or her power the ability to grind Congress' gears to a halt, is it really possible that not one of the forty-seven would try it? There wouldn't be a single defector?

Do you really think Bernie Sanders is afraid to rattle cages? Do you really believe that Adam Schiff has in the past few weeks become enamored by venerable Senate traditions? Do you really imagine that Tammy Baldwin is inclined to cower before any and all Chuck Schumer diktats (do you really believe Chuck Schumer is that good at keeping his entire caucus in absolute ramrod lockstep)?

It just doesn't seem plausible to me. Someone would have defected by now. In fact, even if this strategy was considerably less effective than it's cracked up to be, or even if you think Senate Democrats are all fat cat posers who don't actually care about resisting Trump at all, you'd still think someone would have tried it simply to be a clout-chaser. The fact that nobody has done it suggests that either it is a lot less effective than people think, or there are a lot more (and more serious) hidden costs to it than people recognize.

I won't claim to be an expert on Senate procedure, and reading about the various machinations around blue slips and unanimous consent and holds makes my head spin. So it's entirely possible I'm missing something here. But whatever I'm missing has to explain not why "Senate Democrats", collectively, aren't adopting an obstructionist strategy; it has to explain why every single individual Senate Democrat has so far refrained from using their power as a one-Senator army to bring things to a halt. And I just don't see what that explanation is, aside from this alleged silver bullet not actually being one.

It's "Historical Significance", Not "Contemporary Significance"

A South Carolina rabbi's speech at a Holocaust memorial ceremony was deleted from rebroadcast by the state's "Council on the Holocaust". The rabbi took aim at such actions as book bans, anti-immigrant and refugee policies, and anti-LGBTQ policies, and noted the parallels to the run-up to the Holocaust. This, the Council decreed, was far too "political" for an event commemorating the Holocaust, which of course was not enacted by "political" actors but rather was, I don't know, some sort of meteor strike? Who can really say.

The Council's remit is to "instruct their students about the facts and historical significance of the Holocaust." Apparently there's a strong emphasis on the historical in that mission statement.

I'd say that witnessing "anti-woke" politics take aim at Holocaust education was predictable, but that would suggest that this is some sort of new evolution and it definitely isn't.

Nothing Else Like It

In one sense, what we're going through in America is highly reminiscent of other countries which have recently gone through authoritarian regresses. Hungary, India, Israel, the Philippines, and Brazil, to name a few, all have seen liberal democratic institutions decay in the face of far-right populist demagogues.

I've found this weirdly comforting -- not because what's happened in those countries hasn't been awful, but because somehow knowing this sort of thing doesn't stand outside history is reassuring. It's not the end of time, it is a thing happening in time.

Yet even this reassurance is, I fear, somewhat misleading. Because while it may be true that Hungary, India, Israel, etc. have gone through this before; and even true that (some of) these countries have or will come out the other side, what we have not ever seen is a global hegemon going through this sort of regression. Without understating the havoc that a recklessly authoritarian India or Israel can wreak on a local or even regional scale, they're unlikely to take down the entire international order with them. An out-of-control America could tank the global economy, could cause anarchic chaos to break out all over the planet, could set off a literal World War III. There's literally been nothing like it.

And domestically, with the possible exception of the Redemption-era South, we haven't in American history seen as rapid an authoritarian rollback of democratic equality and rule of law as what the Trump administration has inaugurated in its first week(!) in office. Every aspect of our constitutional order feels like it under attack, all at once, and nobody really knows how to respond.

This uncertainty, unfortunately, is sometimes paired with a strangely confident certainty that purports to know exactly how to respond -- which is to say, "something not what we're doing now."

At one level, I understand where this frustration is coming from -- "what we're doing now" can't be the right response, because it's not stopping things that need to be stopped. At another level, it really does elide the brute reality that nobody knows exactly what the most effective response is to Trump's blitzkrieg fascism. For example, I saw a report that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was taking the stance that Democrats should ignore Trump's "flood the zone" tactics and focus, laser-like, on the economic damage he was wreaking. I also saw many panning this tactic as leaving many critical issues unaddressed while missing opportunities to make hay out of massively unpopular oversteps that weren't clearly economic. I certainly see the weight of this critique, but I also understand the other side -- that trying to cover everything will inevitably result in an unfocused, chaotic response that lacks a clear narrative and just reinforces a "Dems in disarray" sensibility. How do I resolve that tension? I'm not sure -- and to be blunt, I think most people are unsure too.

My best proposal is this: the important thing is to keep fighting. The where or when or how is far less important than that it happens at all. This means I do agree wholeheartedly with the stance that Democrats' job is to be the opposition party and not give any free inches to Republican policies. But beyond that, I'm not sure the best use of our energy is engaging in internal sniping regarding who is prioritizing what messaging or narrative point best.

Is that a possible line to hold? I don't know. Is it even the best line to hold? I don't know! We're in new territory here. There's been nothing else like it.

Constitutional History

My baby's bris was yesterday. The Rabbi came -- the first time we met him, in fact (we joined the synagogue in December) -- and asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, teaching constitutional law. "Are they going to move you to the history department?", he quipped.

Ha ha ha [sob].

For many, many, many reasons, I'm glad I'm not teaching this semester. But for a while now, I've been reflecting on how I teach constitutional law, and in particular how I triage the limited time I have each term. New law keeps being made and the length of a semester stays the same, so there's always a question of what to drop in order to make room for new material.

In my classes, I actually teach a fair amount of constitutional law "history" -- that is, going through doctrinal periods whose prevailing law is no longer valid (alongside, of course, the "current" doctrine" as well). For example, I devote substantial attention to the Lochner era of substantive due process and the pre-New Deal federalism/commerce clause cases. More recently, I've kept teaching Roe and Casey even after Dobbs, and Gratz/Grutter after SFFA. I teach the new cases too, of course, but I do think it is important to trace where we came from, and I don't shirk on allocating time to that project. 

At one level, these cases are the easiest to prune for space. They aren't good law anymore; one does not need to know them in order to know what "constitutional law" is today. And I suspect there will soon be even more venerable old cases whose holdings are going to be overturned or superseded in the coming years, to be replaced by new upstart doctrines.

But as we prepare to enter what in all likelihood will be a very grim period in our constitutional jurisprudence, I increasingly believe that teaching the history is more important than ever -- simply because it demonstrates that the law does not have to be this way. There is nothing inexorable about the choices that will be made, they are not simply the way the constitution is. Keeping alive the flame of alternative possibilities -- legal regimes that once prevailed and could prevail again -- is going to matter, and it is a way of not surrendering to the totalitarian darkness that is attempting to consume us.

This, after all, is one thing that conservatives did very well with their "constitution in exile", and I have no shame in following their example. And while the arc may be long and the path may bend, ultimately, mir veln zey iberlebn -- "we will outlive them."

What Will Go Wrong Hardest, Fastest?

It's hard to keep track of the firehose of sewage the Trump administration has already started pumping out in its first few days. From civil rights to cybersecurity, the administration has been taking a wrecking ball to the American governmental project, with consequences that will likely reverberate for years, if not decades.

But I don't want to wait that long. I'm curious: which of Trump's endeavors are likely to blow up hardest, fastest, in a way that is noticeable to the broader public?

For example, take the cancellation of scheduled funding meetings at the National Institute of Health. This is a terrible thing, that will needlessly obstruct critical medical research. But while it's certainly noticeable to the doctors and scientists on the inside, the public impact of it won't be felt for a long time. It's not like there's a cancer cure that was scheduled to come out tomorrow that now is being shelved.

Ditto Pete Hegseth likely getting confirmed as Secretary of Defense. It is very bad that an alcoholic sexual predator is overseeing America's military, but we're not going to lose Buffalo to a Canadian invasion in the short-term. The fallout -- in terms of military readiness, efficiency, professionalism, and so on -- will occur over a longer timescale.

By contrast, the myriad governmental hiring freezes Trump has announced do seem to be breaking out of containment, insofar as they are kneecapping many people who in many cases were all set to move long distances to start a new job, only to have it abruptly pulled out from under them. I'm already seeing a few "leopards ate my face" posts by Trump supporters who are sure that Trump couldn't possibly have meant to do exactly what he said he was going to do.

Tariffs are another good candidate for something that will immediately, dramatically, and noticeably impact American pocketbooks -- especially if they set off another bout of inflation.

But maybe there's something else that will explode harder, faster, and stronger than I anticipate. I would say I can't wait to find out, but I suspect my preferences will have little to say on the matter.

Does the ADL Care That Republicans Admire Hitler?

Shortly before the election, I posted about the alarming fact that (a) Trump seems to admire Hitler and (b) Republicans don't seem to care that Trump admires Hitler. In the course of that post, I asked rhetorically what the ADL's response to this news was going to be, observing that the actual answer appeared to be covering their eyes with a "lalala" see-no-evil approach. This was of a kind with the new direction Jonathan Greenblatt had taken the organization, which was steadfast and resolute in never, ever, giving offense or more than the most mealy-mouthed critique to the American right no matter how open their antisemitism became.

Fast forward a few months and some increasingly pathetic acts of ADL supplication, and we reach inauguration day, where Acting President Elon Musk appears to have given a Nazi stiff-arm salute (the Nazis sure think so). 

Is the ADL on the case? Only if dismissing the case counts!

On what possible basis is there to extend any sort of "grace" or "benefit of the doubt" to Elon Musk of all people? He's basically a modern-day Henry Ford (oops, bad comparison)! He's been one the leading figures injecting extreme-right antisemitism back into mainstream discourse! There are few people -- even including Donald Trump -- who have been more open than Elon Musk about wanting to resurrect the reputations and the political influence of the modern-day Nazi movement. Extending "grace" to Elon Musk should be like extending "grace" to, I don't know, the Alternative for Germany party.

But of course, none of that matters. The ADL has, over the past few months, made it abundantly clear that it views the American far-right as its friend, and so will extend infinite grace to them no matter how obvious their antisemitism becomes. It's disgusting. It's despicable. It is a grotesque abdication of the ADL's core mission. And the worst part it is, it's no longer even surprising.

I spent today taking care of my newborn, doing my best to keep him fed, warm, and safe. My only thought on the inauguration I wanted to have was that it was a shameful, shameful day. Which it was -- but it didn't occur to me that the ADL would add to that shame. 

Maybe it should have.

What a shameful, shameful display.

New Frontiers of Darkness

The Washington Post has unveiled its new slogan to supplement (in practice, supplant) the old "Democracy Dies in Darkness": "Riveting Storytelling for All of America."

I can't tell you how much I hate this.

First of all, even out of context, it sounds both comically corporate and unbearably patronizing. "Riveting storytelling for all of America" sounds like how to market the Scholastic Book Fairs for emerging readers, not one of America's papers of record.

But of course, we must take this slogan in context. And the context is the Post spending the last few months humiliating itself and dynamiting its journalistic credibility by repeated acts of groveling towards the MAGA movement.

And I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but this slogan really encapsulates the media's self-delusion that it is part of the liberal family. Again, recall my thesis here: the media thinks its main audience is liberals, and so it sees its job as to challenge liberals with "alternative perspectives" or "competing views" (as opposed to just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may). One implication of this is that conservatives are a growth audience (because of course the Post in its prior manifestation couldn't be speaking to them) -- this is what "for all of America" means. We're no longer speaking just to the latte-sipping coastal elites, but to all of America. And lest you think I'm projecting, they're being quite explicit that this is what they mean:

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has made comments in line with the new mission statement in conversations with Post journalists in recent years, according to two people familiar with those discussions. Mr. Bezos has expressed hopes that The Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives, the people said.

Now nominally, recognizing that conservatives are part of the audience could mean that the Post starts committing to telling them things they don't want to hear. For example, they could be informed, in no uncertain terms, how Trump's tariffs will crush working families with spiraling grocery bills. Or they could be told, in clear-eyed fashion, of how Trump's inner circle is proposing increasingly fascistic and lawless abuses of government power. Or they could be shown, without varnish or spin, how the Republican Party has begun to view sexual assault and rape as virtues in its political leaders -- not even a secret to be ashamed of, but as an affirmative basis for support and promotion.

But of course, we all know that is not what Bezos and his cronies have in mind. "Riveting storytelling" suggests that what they want is sensation and soothing -- to reaffirm their (new) readers' priors, never to challenge them with something as dirty and discomforting as the truth. Conservatives can't tolerate hearing that Donald Trump was a grotesquely unsuitable choice for the presidency, and so the Post (even in its editorial endorsements) won't aggravate them. The Post knows that many if not most of Trump's cabinet picks fail the most basic (by the Post's own lights!) criteria of qualification for office in a democratic society -- respecting the outcomes of a democratic process -- and so the Post will just pretend it doesn't matter.

The Scholastic Book Fair analogy is more than snark, for this is of a piece with the broader trend of infantilizing the American right. Conservatives, once again, are being treated as children, and spoiled children as that -- whatever junk keeps their attention, that's what will be provided. 

A once great newspaper, reduced to an entertaining diversion for spoiled, coddled brats. Maybe the slogan isn't so bad after all.