15: Trump

Loyal to God and Trump, Mike Pence Defends His Record In “So Help Me God,” the former vice president looks back on his career with one eye on where it might be headed. .

Michelle Obama Has Some Advice In her new book, “The Light We Carry,” the former first lady shares coping strategies for surviving stress and uncertainty.......... It’s not easy being Michelle Obama. Fabulous, yes. Easy, no. ....... “I’m not a leaper or a flier, but a deliberate, rung by rung ladder climber” ...... that tower of cool and confidence Barack Obama. For this crew, self-assurance seems like a birthright. ..... I want to hear from Michelle Obama, who doesn’t always like the way she looks, who felt like an outsider after becoming the ultimate insider; the one who easily becomes lonely; the striver who has spent a lifetime dogged by the question: Am I good enough? The person who sweats. ....... and the bickering and resentments that led the Obamas to seek couples counseling when they had young children. ....... In a chapter on friendship, Obama writes about the importance of having a “kitchen table” of girlfriends. ....... The fact that she loves “lowbrow TV” and counts the hilarious but racy Ali Wong among her favorite comedians says the world about who Obama is when she gets together with those friends. ....... After

“Becoming” became one of the best-selling memoirs of all time

......... In a chapter aptly titled “The Power of Small,” for example, she tells us about how, when the world seems overwhelming, little victories can see us through. (For Obama, it was knitting: “Shaken by the enormity of everything that was happening, I needed my hands to introduce me to what was good, simple and accomplishable.” She taught herself using YouTube.) ......... advice from the writer Toni Morrison: “When a kid walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s, does your face light up? That’s what they’re looking for.” ........ a young Black girl from the South Side of Chicago who went to Princeton after being told by a high school guidance counselor that she wasn’t “Princeton material” — a remark that lives rent-free in her head to this day — and who became our first Black first lady ............ “an arsenal of phrases” — such as “affirmative action,” “scholarship kid,” “gender quota” and “diversity hire” — can be turned into “weapons of disdain.” ........ she begged her mother to come and live in the White House to help her out and give her daughters a sense of normalcy ........ I’ve decided that the sweaters she knits are missing stitches, and one arm is longer than the other. In other words, like a sweater I would knit. ........ “My goal was always to do serious work in a joyful way, to show people what’s possible if we keep choosing to go high” .

Trump Is Weak, but the G.O.P. Is Weaker .

I don’t know more than anyone else who follows the news.

........ Trump holds what I consider reprehensible policy views or even the fact that he engaged in several acts, including an attempt to overturn a national election, that can reasonably be described as seditious. ........ Trump, however, comes across as 76 going on a very bratty 14. ........ He veers, sometimes in consecutive sentences, between cringeworthy boasting (what kind of person describes himself as a stable genius?) and whining, between bombast and self-pity....... His only major domestic policy initiatives were a failed attempt to repeal Obamacare and a standard-issue G.O.P. tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. ........ “It’s Infrastructure Week!” became a running joke. ........ President Biden didn’t get everything he wanted on domestic policy, but he did get a major infrastructure bill and, in the Inflation Reduction Act, both unprecedented spending to fight climate change and a significant strengthening of health care. ........ Overseas, Biden assembled and held together a coalition in support of Ukraine that has enabled the invaded nation to resist Russia’s attack — a huge foreign-policy success reminiscent of America’s pre-Pearl Harbor role as the “arsenal of democracy.” And Biden’s China policy, centering on export restrictions designed to undermine China’s technological ambitions, is vastly more aggressive than anything Trump did, even if it hasn’t gotten nearly as much media attention. ........ these days, perhaps because celebrity culture infects everything, business leaders are taken seriously even when they seem unable to refrain from flamboyant displays of ego and insecurity. (Cough. Elon Musk. Cough.) ......... Fox News, the main source of political information for much of the G.O.P. base, gave Trump the kind of hagiographic coverage you’d expect from state media in a dictatorship. ......... And Republican politicians, many of whom knew Trump for what he was, spent years praising him in language reminiscent of Politburo members praising the party chairman.

An Ode to Stacey Abrams She built the huge voter registration and turnout machine that helped Joe Biden carry Georgia in 2020, and helped the state elect its first Jewish and Black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, giving Democrats control of the Senate. ....... Georgia is a state transformed. Liberal Georgians have tasted power, and there is no turning back from it. ....... I simply couldn’t find enthusiastic Abrams voters in my everyday interactions. I live in midtown Atlanta, but I also wasn’t seeing many yard signs or window placards. I wasn’t seeing many TV ads. ....... She was clearly the better candidate. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues. And she had a message that should have energized liberals. ........ she just couldn’t get enough traction. Her message lacked momentum. ........ just months before the election Kemp rolled out a program of cash payments of $350 to low-income Georgians. It wasn’t exactly money for votes, but money to mitigate anger. Kemp paid for placidity........... She is relatively young, incredibly smart and a brilliant tactician. She has a future that only she can write.

Trump Is the Chief Obstacle to a Republican Revival A disappointing election has rattled conservatives. The nation’s most influential Republican, Donald Trump, is implicated in the unsatisfying result. But a dazzling performance in one state has presented the party with an opportunity to think again about renewal — and to embrace a popular alternative to Mr. Trump’s abrasive style and divisive leadership. ....... the party must still move beyond Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump will have a say in that, too: He may not allow the Republican Party to disenthrall itself from him without a costly fight. ........ Since his takeover of the party in 2016, Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. has lost the House, the White House and the Senate. ....... Mr. Trump sees no interest but his own. He is the chief obstacle to a Republican revival. ........ In 1998, one silver lining for Republicans was Mr. Bush, who won re-election for governor by nearly 40 points. In 2022, foremost among a cohort of Republican leaders is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who won a second term by 20 points. ........ Mr. DeSantis combines competent administration and conservative principles with a Trump-like pugilism and grass-roots suspicion of liberal elites and expert opinion. ......... Republicans have taken the popular vote in a presidential election just once in 34 years.

If You Want to Understand How Dangerous Elon Musk Is, Look Outside America Supporters of the conservative opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and their right-wing religious allies felt that they had long been ignored by the mainstream press. Now they had the chance to grab the mic. ....... And grab it they did. By 2014, when the B.J.P. first won national elections, driven in no small part by its innovative use of social media to tap into middle-class discontent with the status quo, Indian Twitter was well on its way to becoming one of the world’s most vitriolic online spaces, filled with ad hominem attacks and incitements to violence. And having used social media so adroitly to win power, the new government realized that controlling platforms like Twitter would be crucial to suppressing dissent. ........ Into this stew steps Elon Musk. ....... But the real threat in much of the world is not the policies of social media companies, but of governments. ....... Nowhere is that clearer than in India, where before Musk’s acquisition Twitter had been fighting a legal battle to protect its users from government censorship. The real question now is if Musk’s commitment to “free speech” extends beyond conservatives in America and to the billions of people in the Global South who rely on the internet for open communication. ....... while much of the focus has been on countries like China, which overtly restricts access to huge swaths of the internet, the real war over the future of internet freedom is being waged in what she called “swing states,” big, fragile democracies like India. ......... in capitals like Abuja, Jakarta, Ankara, Brasília and New Delhi. ....... other governments are passing laws just to increase their power over speech online and to force companies to be an extension of state surveillance ....... For example: requiring companies to house their servers locally rather than abroad, which can make them more vulnerable to government surveillance. ........ His lawyers argued that Twitter had engaged in “risky litigation against the Indian government,” and put one of the largest markets in jeopardy. ........ India’s government had demanded that Twitter block tweets and accounts from a variety of journalists, activists and politicians. ......... Independent journalism is increasingly under threat in India. Much of the mainstream press has been neutered by a mix of intimidation and conflicts of interests created by the sprawling conglomerates and powerful families that control much of Indian media. ........... one of Musk’s other companies, SpaceX, would seek government permission to offer its Starlink satellite internet service there. ......... the world needs a digital public square ....... creating one involves balancing free speech against abuse, misinformation and government overreach

The Emperor of Chaos Has No Clothes Republicans are blaming Donald Trump for anointing wacky candidates and then using campaign rallies to promote his upcoming presidential announcement. Republican lawmakers privately say those self-indulgent rallies cost them Senate and House seats because many normal Republicans and independents have had their fill of Trump and his crazy train. .........

Trump has been poison for his party.

..... It’s so bad, the Murdoch empire has turned on its former fair-haired boy. ....... The New York Post ridiculed him on the cover as “Trumpty Dumpty,” with a gratuitous shot about how he not only had a great fall, but couldn’t build a wall. ........ Trump responded by calling the paper “the no longer great New York Post,” and he blamed his failure to complete the wall on former Speaker Paul Ryan, a Fox Corp. board member, and “Broken Old Crow” Mitch McConnell, saying they didn’t get him enough money from Congress. ......... In his Truth Social posts, he tried to paint the election results as better than they were, sneering that candidates who shunned his support, like Joe O’Dea in Colorado, went down big and had a “Death Wish.” ........ saying he would never have won last year without Trump giving “a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically.” ....... warning him not to think about getting in the presidential race. ........ After DeSantis had a crushing victory in the once swingy Sunshine State, declaring it the place “woke goes to die,” Trump’s puerile jealousy exploded. He posted that he had rescued DeSantis when he was “politically dead.” ......... “And now Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games!” said Trump, angry that DeSantis wouldn’t rule out running for president in 2024. ......... Republicans refused to convict Trump on impeachment charges and ban him from running for public office. Now they’re living with the consequences. ...... “If blackmailing Ukraine, inciting a riot, trying to overturn the election, hoarding classified documents, using overtly racist language for seven years .

Jyotish app haroo.

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) November 14, 2022

Did seem a little Dr Evil tbh haha

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2022

News: May 27

As U.N. Rights Chief Visits China, Some Fear She’ll Become Part of the Spin Michelle Bachelet’s tour includes Xinjiang, where China has been accused of genocide. The terms of her visit are unclear, and critics say Beijing is using her for propaganda.

The Stupefying Tally of American Gun Violence

Uvalde Had Prepared for School Shootings. It Did Not Stop the Rampage.
Nothing Is Going to Stop the N.R.A.’s Gun Orgy in Texas
The Buffalo Shooting Was Not a Random Act of Violence

Why Are Bikes So Much Fun? Because They’re Not Cars.
The G.O.P. War on Civil Virtue It’s hard to say which of the Republican responses to the latest mass shooting was most reprehensible. The reliably awful Senator Ted Cruz attracted considerable attention by insisting that the answer is to put armed guards in schools, never mind that Uvalde’s school system has its own police force and officers seem to have been on the scene soon after the shooter arrived. ......... But if you ask me, the worst and also most chilling response came from Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas. What we need to do, declared Patrick, is “harden these targets so no one can get in, ever, except maybe through one entrance.” That restriction would have interesting consequences in the event of a fire. But in any case, think about Patrick’s language: In a nation that’s supposedly at peace, we should treat schools as “targets” that need to be “hardened.” What would that do to public education, which has for many generations been one of the defining experiences of growing up in America? Don’t worry, says a writer for The Federalist: Families can keep their kids safe by resorting to home-schooling. ............. if you take the proposals by Cruz, Patrick and others literally, they amount to a call for turning the land of the free into a giant armed camp. There are around 130,000 K-12 schools in America; there are close to 40,000 supermarkets; there are many other venues that might offer prey for mass killers. So protecting all these public spaces Republican-style would require creating a heavily armed, effectively military domestic defense force — heavily armed because it would face attackers with body armor and semiautomatic weapons — that would be at least as big as the Marine Corps. ..........

Mass shootings are very rare outside the United States.

.......... imagine the reaction if a prominent liberal politician were to declare that the reason the United States has a severe social problem that doesn’t exist elsewhere is that Americans are bad people. ......... I personally don’t believe that Americans, as individuals, are worse than anyone else. ........ what has always struck me when returning from trips abroad is that Americans are (or were) on average exceptionally nice and pleasant to interact with. ......... What distinguishes us is that it’s so easy for people who aren’t nice to arm themselves to the teeth. ......... They’re barely even trying to make sense. Instead, they’re just making noise to drown out rational discussion until the latest atrocity fades from the news cycle. The truth is that conservatives consider mass shootings, and for that matter America’s astonishingly high overall rate of gun deaths, as an acceptable price for pursuing their ideology. a broad assault on the very idea of civic duty — on the idea that people should follow certain rules, accept some restrictions on their behavior, to protect the lives of their fellow citizens. ......... When you hear talk of home-schooling, remember that the United States basically invented universal public education. Environmental protection used to be a nonpartisan issue: The Clean Air Act of 1970 passed the Senate without a single nay. And Hollywood mythology aside, most towns in the Old West had stricter limits on the carrying of firearms than Gov. Greg Abbott’s Texas. ........ the very people who shout most about “freedom” are doing their best to turn America into a “Hunger Games”-type dystopian nightmare, with checkpoints everywhere, loomed over by men with guns.

It’s Not Looking Too Good for Government of the People, by the People and for the People The antislavery politicians of the 1840s and 1850s did not speak with a single voice. Some opposed slavery for moral and religious reasons and hoped to wipe its terrible mark from the body politic of the United States. Some opposed slavery but denied that the federal government had any right to interfere with the institution in the 15 states where it persisted. They were committed to “free soil” in the West more than abolition in the South. Still others weren’t concerned with slavery per se as much as they were fiercely opposed to Black migration from the South. They opposed slavery, and supported colonization, because it was the way to ensure that the United States would remain a “white man’s democracy.” ......... gave the slaveholding oligarchs of the South a virtual lock on much of the federal government, including the Supreme Court. “Between Washington’s election and Lincoln’s,” Richards points out, “nineteen of the thirty-four Supreme Court appointees were slaveholders.” ......... I am thinking of this in the context of guns, gun violence and the successful movement, thus far, to make the United States an armed society. .......... the capture of America’s political institutions by an unrepresentative minority whose outright refusal to compromise is pushing the entire system to a breaking point. ........ Large majorities of Americans favor universal background checks, bans on “assault-style” weapons, bans on high-capacity magazines and “red flag” laws that would prevent people who might harm themselves or others from purchasing guns. ............ by using the filibuster, a small number of Republican senators representing an even smaller faction of voters can kill legislation supported by most voters and most members of Congress. ......... a country so saturated in guns that there’s no real hope of going back to the status quo ante. ........ If the Supreme Court rules as expected in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, it will strike down a law that requires a license for carrying a concealed firearm. ........ Whether or not the public wants a world of ubiquitous firearms, the conservative majority on the court — which Americans have never voted for and which would not exist without the counter-majoritarian institutions that gave Donald Trump the White House and the Republican Party a Senate majority — seems ready to impose one. ............ To say that it is possible for a narrow faction of ideologues to weaponize the counter-majoritarian features of our system against the “republican principle” is, basically, to describe the current state of our democracy. It is, in other words, to state the crisis.

@ChahalNonProfit thanks for the follow -- keep up the good work

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 27, 2022

@paulkrugman a voice of reason in a country going off the rails https://t.co/luSmybF3bk

— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) May 27, 2022

Why Californians Love California The state’s population might be dropping slightly, but more Americans choose to live in California than anywhere else.

The Southern Baptist Moral Meltdown moral behavior doesn’t start with having the right beliefs. Moral behavior starts with an act — the act of seeing the full humanity of other people. Moral behavior is not about having the right intellectual concepts in your head. It’s about seeing other people with the eyes of the heart, seeing them in their full experience, suffering with their full suffering, walking with them on their path. Morality starts with the quality of attention we cast upon another. .......... In 2007 a woman named Christa Brown had the courage to testify before Southern Baptist officials that her youth pastor had repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was 16. She reported that one official turned his back, literally refusing to look at her, refusing to see her. That is the sort of dehumanization that creates indifference that enables rape, abuse and all the other horrific dehumanizing acts down the road. ......... Character is not measured by a person’s beliefs but by the ability to see the full humanity of others. It is not automatic. It’s a skill acquired slowly. It’s about being able to focus on what’s going on in your own mind and simultaneously focus on what’s going on in another mind. It’s about learning how to minutely observe, absorb and resonate with other people’s emotions. ......... It comes about through years of shared experiences, decades of other-centered attention, engagement with the kind of literature that educates you in what can go on in other people’s heads. It’s spiritual training to get out of your own egotistic self-referential thinking and into the habit of asking what’s this moment like for that other person. .......... it’s very easy to get people to dehumanize each other. You divide people into in-groups and out-groups. You spread a tacit ideology that says women are less important than men or Black people are less important than white people. You use euphemistic language so that horrific acts can be abstracted into sanitized jargon. ......... You bureaucratize: You create a system of nonresponsibility in which rules and procedures matter, not people. When you read the report on the Southern Baptists you realize, once again, how much horror can be done by dutiful functionaries who focus on minimizing legal liabilities but not honoring human beings.

America May Be Broken Beyond Repair why access to these weapons is, for the right, a matter of existential importance ........ “The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting,” said Masters. “It’s about protecting your family and your country. What’s the first thing the Taliban did when Joe Biden handed them Afghanistan? They took away people’s guns.” Guns, in this worldview, are a guarantor against government overreach. And government overreach includes attempts to regulate guns. ......... It will be impossible to do anything about guns in this country, at least at a national level, as long as Democrats depend on the cooperation of a party that holds in reserve the possibility of insurrection. The slaughter of children in Texas has done little to alter this dynamic. ......... Victims of our increasingly frequent mass shootings are collateral damage in a cold civil war, though some Democrats refuse to acknowledge it, let alone fight it. ........ Fine’s words echoed Donald Trump’s during the 2016 election, when he said that “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop a President Hillary Clinton from appointing Supreme Court justices. What was once a barely concealed insinuation of violence has morphed, especially after Jan. 6, into an even more forthright menace. ......... dozens of members of the Oath Keepers militia were arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, but that hasn’t stopped the organization from “evolving into a force within the Republican Party.” .......... the more America is besieged by senseless violence, the more the paramilitary wing of the American right is strengthened. ........ a vision of a society — if you can call it that — where every family is a fortress. ........

Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children. Many conservatives consider this a price worth paying for their version of freedom.

.......... The filibuster renders the Senate largely impotent. Trump, a president who lost the popular vote, was able to appoint Supreme Court justices who are poised to help overturn a New York state law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons. It’s increasingly hard to see a path to small-d democratic reform. ........... America is too sick, too broken. It is perhaps beyond repair. ......... two chapters imagining scenarios for how the dissolution of the country might happen. One involved a mass shooting at a school in California, to which the state’s people reacted “with white-hot rage.” French envisioned furious state politicians defying the Second Amendment, leading to a nullification crisis and blue-state secession. ........ The nightmare is that we simply stumble on, helpless as things keep getting worse.

I have news for the embarrassment that claims to be our President — try to take our guns and you’ll learn why the Second Amendment was written in the first place.

— Rep. Randy Fine (@VoteRandyFine) May 25, 2022

How Does It End? Fissures Emerge Over What Constitutes Victory in Ukraine In the past few days alone there has been an Italian proposal for a cease-fire, a vow from Ukraine’s leadership to push Russia back to the borders that existed before the invasion was launched on Feb. 24, and renewed discussion by administration officials about a “strategic defeat” for President Vladimir V. Putin — one that would assure that he is incapable of mounting a similar attack again. ........... After three months of remarkable unity in response to the Russian invasion — resulting in a flow of lethal weapons into Ukrainian hands and a broad array of financial sanctions that almost no one expected, least of all Mr. Putin ......... At a moment when the U.S. refers to Russia as a pariah state that needs to be cut off from the world economy, others, largely in Europe, are warning of the dangers of isolating and humiliating Mr. Putin. ........ The administration now sees a chance to punish Russian aggression, weaken Mr. Putin, shore up NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance and send a message to China, too. Along the way, it wants to prove that aggression is not rewarded with territorial gains. .......... “I get the sense that instead of the year 2022, Mr. Kissinger has 1938 on his calendar.’’ ......... Zelensky has at various moments voiced contradictory views on what it would take to end the war, even offering to commit his country to “neutrality” rather than aspiring to join NATO. ............ In the end, American officials say, the hard choices will have to be made by Mr. Zelensky and his government. But they are acutely aware that if Mr. Putin gets his land bridge to Crimea, or sanctions are partially lifted, Mr. Biden will be accused by Republican critics — and perhaps some Democrats — of essentially rewarding Mr. Putin for his effort to redraw the map of Europe by force. .......... Three months ago, Mr. Putin’s own strategic objective was to take all of Ukraine — a task he thought he could accomplish in mere days. When that failed in spectacular fashion, he retreated to Plan B, withdrawing his forces to Ukraine’s east and south. It then became clear that he could not take key cities like Kharkiv and Odesa. Now the battle has come down to the Donbas, the bleak, industrial heartland of Ukraine, a relatively small area where he has already made gains, including the brutal takeover of Mariupol and a land bridge to Crimea. His greatest leverage is his naval blockade of the ports Ukraine needs to export wheat and other farm products, a linchpin of the Ukrainian economy and a major source of food for the world. ........... on April 25, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, speaking with a bluntness that took his colleagues by surprise, acknowledged that Washington wanted more than a Russian retreat. It wanted its military permanently damaged. .......... over time administration officials have gradually shifted in tone, talking more openly and optimistically about

the possibility of Ukrainian victory in the Donbas

. ........... Ukraine must emerge as a vibrant, democratic state — exactly what Mr. Putin was seeking to crush. ......... Hungary, which has supported five earlier sanctions packages, has balked at an embargo on Russian oil, on which it depends. And the Europeans are not even trying, at least for now, to cut off their imports of Russian gas. ......... Leaders in central and eastern Europe, with its long experience of Soviet domination, have strong views about defeating Russia — even rejecting the idea of speaking to Mr. Putin. Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, speak of him as a war criminal, as Mr. Biden did. ........ But France, Italy and Germany, the biggest and richest countries of the bloc, are anxious about a long war or one that ends frozen in a stalemate, and nervous of the possible damage to their own economies. ........... Those countries also think of Russia as an inescapable neighbor that cannot be isolated forever. Following his re-election, Emmanuel Macron of France began hedging his bets, declaring that a future peace in Eastern Europe must not include an unnecessary humiliation of Russia, and could include territorial concessions to Moscow. .......... the war will have to end with a diplomatic solution, not a sweeping military victory. ........... While Ukraine did remarkably well in the first phase of the war, Donbas is very different. To go on the offensive normally requires a manpower advantage of 3 to 1, weaponry aside, which Ukraine does not now possess. ......... “The Biden Administration’s comfort zone is not a bad place to be — that it’s up to the Ukrainians to decide,” Mr. Fried said. “I agree, because there’s no way a detailed conversation now on what is a just settlement will do any good, because it comes down to what territories Ukraine should surrender.”

Biden Says We’ve Got Taiwan’s Back. But Do We? one of the most explicit U.S. defense guarantees for Taiwan in decades ........ I have been involved in dozens of war games and tabletop exercises to see how a conflict would turn out. Simply put, the United States is outgunned. At the very least, a confrontation with China would be an enormous drain on the U.S. military without any assured outcome that America could repel all of China’s forces. ........ China has the world’s largest navy and the United States could throw far fewer ships into a Taiwan conflict. China’s missile force is also thought to be capable of targeting ships at sea to neutralize the main U.S. tool of power projection, aircraft carriers. ......... If China’s leaders decide they need to recover Taiwan and are convinced that the United States would respond, they may see no other option but a pre-emptive strike on U.S. forces in the region. Chinese missiles could take out key American bases in Japan, and U.S. aircraft carriers could face Chinese “carrier killer” missiles. In this scenario, superior U.S. training and experience would matter little. .......... China could disrupt networks like the United States Transportation Command, which moves American assets around and is considered vulnerable to cyberattacks. China may also have the ability to damage satellites and disrupt communications, navigation, targeting, intelligence-gathering, or command and control. Operating from home turf, China could use more-secure systems like fiber-optic cables for its own networks. ........... A 2018 congressionally mandated assessment warned that America could face a “decisive military defeat” in a war over Taiwan, citing China’s increasingly advanced capabilities and myriad U.S. logistical difficulties. ......... guaranteed U.S. intervention in a conflict over Taiwan would cost Beijing too much, even if it took the island. ......... China’s military is bigger and more formidable than Russia’s, and its economy far larger, more resilient and globally integrated. Rallying support for economic sanctions against Beijing during a conflict — China is the biggest trading partner of many countries — would be more challenging than isolating Russia. ........ shrewd diplomacy. Mr. Biden needs to stand firm against Chinese intimidation of Taiwan, while working to ease Beijing’s anxieties by demonstrating a stronger U.S. commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue. ........ Twenty years ago, China’s poorly trained army and largely obsolete naval and air forces had no chance. But that was then.

What Taiwan Really Wants

It’s Still Covid’s World. We’re Just Living In It.
America Kills Our Enemies in Our Name. And Then Keeps It Secret.
In 1791, enslaved Haitians did the seemingly impossible. They ousted their French masters and founded a nation.
Republican Governors Lose Their Dread of Trump
Hindi Novel Wins International Booker Prize for the First Time “Tomb of Sand,” written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, won despite getting little previous attention from reviewers.
Live Updates: Russia Advances in Ukraine’s East as Civilian Toll Rises Russian forces seized Lyman, the second small city to fall this week, and moved closer to encircling Sievierodonetsk. A new report by legal and rights experts cited a “genocidal pattern” by Russia.

New York Times: February 2

Enormous Winter Storm Sweeps Across U.S. Heavy snow was falling across much of the Midwest as forecasters warned of the possibility of freezing rain and ice.
Over a Million Flee as Afghanistan’s Economy Collapses Thousands of Afghans are trying to sneak into Iran and Pakistan each day, as incomes have dried up and life-threatening hunger has become widespread.
The Lessons of Brooklyn Tech
So, You Think the Republican Party No Longer Represents the People
One Day in the ‘Parallel Universe’ of a London I.C.U. Britain’s government may have lifted coronavirus restrictions, but hospital workers say the return to a normal rhythm of work is still a long way off. “You know, in Wave 1, we were heroes,” said Ms. Jenkins, the leader of the nursing team. “By Wave 2, we were the enemy. And that’s hard.”

Clues to the Next Variant Are All Around Us But there are places to look that may help scientists find new variants even faster: sewage and the air. People can shed the coronavirus in their feces and their exhaled breath. As a result, the virus can be spotted before people have been tested or developed symptoms.

What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump “Call it ‘soft fascism’ ” ....... a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state. One of the most disconcerting parts of observing Hungarian soft fascism up close is that it’s easy to imagine the model being exported. While the Orban regime grew out of Hungary’s unique history and political culture, its playbook for subtle repression could in theory be run in any democratic country whose leaders have had enough of the political opposition......... “Orban consolidated power through tactics that were procedurally legal but, in substance, undercut the rule of law. He stacked the courts with partisans and pressured, captured or shut down independent media.” ....... “Orban’s open assault on academic freedom — including banning gender studies and evicting the Central European University from Hungary — finds analogies in current right-wing efforts in Republican-controlled states to ban the teaching of critical race theory and target liberal and left-wing academics.” .....

Hungary is becoming what Denmark is for the left: part real-life model, part idealized dreamscape.

........ Trump will push the United States in a broadly similar direction: toward neopatrimonial governance. During his first term, Trump treated the presidency as his own personal property — something that was his to use to punish enemies, reward loyalists and enhance his family’s wealth. If he wins in 2024, we’re likely to see this on steroids ......... The U.S. is a large federation with a lot of capacity for private violence, a major international footprint and a multitrillion-dollar economy. Hungary is a minor player in a confederation dominated by democratic regimes............. Orban’s appeal to the right flank of the Republican Party, in Cooley’s view, lies in an ideology — which rests on redefining the meaning of “the West” away from liberal principles and toward ethnonational ideals and conservative values — and his strategy for consolidating power is to close or take over media, stack the courts, divide and stigmatize the opposition, reject commitments to constraining liberal ideals and institutions and publicly target the most vulnerable groups in society — e.g., refugees............

Orban has described Hungary under his rule as an “illiberal democracy.”

........ would be fueled by increased moral panic about white America’s decline ....... there is an active plan to reshape the political system so that elections are not winnable by Democrats, and the state be run without the foundation of a democracy......... The use of citizens as informants to enforce intrusions of this sort is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with democratic norms — reminiscent of East Germany, where the Stasi made use of an estimated 189,000 citizen informers. ...... A critical issue for Senate Republicans and a second Trump administration would be whether to eliminate the filibuster to prevent Democratic senators from blocking their wilder legislative plans. ...... The politics of a populist Republican administration will aim at undermining American democracy and changing the level playing field in favor of a party-penetrated state apparatus.

In Responses to Russia, U.S. Stands Firm on Who Can Join NATO In responses to Moscow’s security demands, the U.S. and NATO rejected a demand that Ukraine never join the alliance but offered more transparency on missile deployments in Eastern Europe. the Biden administration proposes a reciprocal “transparency mechanism” under which Russia could verify the absence of offensive missiles at the sites in Romania and Poland, while the United States would do the same at two missile-launching bases of its choice in Russian territory; one would likely include Kaliningrad, the slice of Russia bordering two Eastern European NATO members, Lithuania and Poland....... The flurry of diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis is proceeding along two broad tracks, one between Russia and the United States and NATO that included the exchange of published demands and written replies, the other a preparation for a summit of the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

"I Don't Want To Be A Mother To A Man"

What It’s Like to Be a Black Student at an Elite Boarding School We spoke with Kendra James, the author of “Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School.” When James first arrived as a freshman, she was determined to make friends with white students — but nothing really worked out. She was the girl who was all but ignored by her white roommate. She was the girl who never got a “crush can,” a school tradition, from an admirer. It didn’t matter that her father also went to Taft, James couldn’t seem to fit in........ At some point in my senior year, the boys in one of the dorms decided to start peeing in bottles and dumping it out the dorm windows. I just remember one day, during English class, we all ran over to the window, because I think one of the bottles had landed on someone, or very close to someone, on the sidewalk. ......... I just would never send my child away to a place that I cannot get to within 15 to 20 minutes. ....... How can a white adult be in loco parentis to a Black child if that white adult does not have the tools, or the instincts, that are often necessary when it comes to being the parent of a Black child in America? That just stays with me. That’s simply something that you can’t change.

How It Feels to Be an Asian Student in an Elite Public School Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and other schools across the country are under pressure to end entrance exams. Students have complicated feelings about that.......... Brooklyn Technical High School — Bengali and Tibetan, Egyptian and Chinese, Sinhalese and Russian, Dominican and Puerto Rican, West Indian and African American. ....... Fully 63 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s students are classified as economically disadvantaged. Census data shows that Asians have the lowest median income in the city and that a majority speak a language other than English at home. ........ Brooklyn Tech, which sits in the haute brownstone neighborhood of Fort Greene, is regarded as a diamond in the city’s educational crown, along with the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School. ....... Nearly all balked, however, at describing it as segregated, not least because the descriptor “Asian” encompasses disparate ethnicities, cultures, languages and skin colors. ...... Those who champion specialized high schools point to alumni who became top scientists, among them 14 Nobel Prize laureates. With few exceptions these were the children of working-class and immigrant families. The best students, they argue, should press as far ahead as brains and curiosity might take them. .......

There is a Dong and a Doogan, a Goyer and a Huynh, a Subah and a Wai.

............ “I became aware of internalized shame at not being white and wealthy,” she said. “I learned kids did not sit at home in summer: They went to ‘camp.’” ....... She got in and the local Bengali newspaper ran her photograph and those of other Bengali teenagers who gained admittance to specialized high schools. “Family honor is tied to it,” she said. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” ........ There were Bengalis and Pakistanis and Indians, the Brown Squad. There was a Latino Squad, a Russian Squad, a Black Squad, similar in their yearnings. She stayed up past midnight doing homework, one advanced course piled atop another. ............ He applied to the highly competitive Mark Twain Middle School and scored in the 97th percentile. The test cutoff was the 98th percentile. ..... “Bring grades or class rank into it if you need to; we should strive for a world where we don’t need Brooklyn Tech,” said Ayaan Ali, a senior whose parents emigrated from Pakistan. “But abolishing the test is like putting a Band-Aid over a gunshot wound.”

‘A Beginner’s Guide to America’ Review: Welcome to a New World Newcomers encounter pleasing surprises, troubling flaws—and, not least, the suspicions of previous newcomers. ........

Immigrants to America quickly learn that you don’t bargain when shopping. If a fishmonger prices something at $7.50 a pound, you don’t offer to buy it for $4.50, telling him that a fish that’s been dead longer than your grandfather (God rest his soul) can’t be worth what he asks.

A fixed price, says Roya Hakakian, can be depressing to immigrants for whom haggling was once “the most satisfying aspect of any shopping experience.” And yet, with its immense and disarming cultural genius, America offers the recent arrival something in lieu of the pleasure (now lost) of being able to beat a vendor down: the right to return a purchased product.