As usual, the best quotes are either apocryphal or misattributed. Lenin, for example, probably did not say: "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”.
But we get the point, don’t we?
This week the zone will be flooded with commentary that will try to put Trump 2.0’s first 100 Days into some historical context. It may be hard to hear Trump described as “The Most Consequential President of this Century,” but it’s not wrong. This presidency has tested us and will leave us changed in ways we can’t fully predict now. But it hardly seems hyperbole to see his presidency — and the response to it — as a hinge of the American experiment.
Happy Sunday.
Your daily reminder that you are not the crazy ones. To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Today’s ‘To the Contrary” Podcast is Part 2 of my conversation with Adam Kinzinger. On Friday, we talked about the arrest of a Milwaukee judge. You can find that here:
Early yesterday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent three U.S. citizens aged 2, 4, and 7 from Louisiana, including one with Stage 4 cancer, to Honduras when they deported their mothers. The three are children of two different mothers who were arrested while checking in with the government as part of their routine process for immigration proceedings. The women and their children were not permitted to speak to family or lawyers before being flown to Honduras. The cancer patient was sent out of the country without medication or consultation with doctors although, according to Charisma Madarang and Lorena O'Neil of Rolling Stone, ICE agents were told of the child’s medical needs.
The government says the mothers opted to take their U.S. citizen children to Honduras with them. But as Emmanuel Felton and Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post noted, because ICE refused to let the women talk to their lawyers, there is only the agents’ word for how events transpired.
ICE also deported Heidy Sánchez, a Cuban-born mother of a one-year-old who is still breastfeeding, leaving the child in the U.S. with her father, who is a U.S. citizen. Like the women flown to Honduras, Sánchez was detained when she showed up at a scheduled check-in with ICE.
In March, ICE agents sent four U.S. citizens, including a 10-year-old with brain cancer, to Mexico when they deported their undocumented parents.
As he nears the end of his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump is facing growing opposition to his ambitious and controversial agenda, with his approval rating in decline, majority opposition to major initiatives, and perceptions that his administration is seeking to avoid complying with federal court orders, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The poll shows that 39 percent of adult Americans approve of the way Trump is handling his job, compared with 55 percent who disapprove, including 44 percent who disapprove strongly. In February, those numbers were 45 percent positive and 53 percent negative.
While 50 percent of voters already think Mr. Trump has made the economy worse, compared with 21 percent who think he has made it better, only 32 percent of voters say he’s responsible for the biggest challenges facing the U.S. economy. If Mr. Trump’s tariffs single-handedly drag the economy into recession, as many economists expect, there appears to be room for his ratings to slip further.
Let’s be clear: the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World believes that Trump’s tariffs will single-handedly drag the economy into recession. Indeed, based on the dramatic drop in cargo shipments coming from China, the closest analogy to current moment is February 2020:
Daily data for container traffic from China to the US is collapsing….
The consequence will be empty shelves in US stores in a few weeks and Covid-like shortages for consumers and for firms using Chinese products as intermediate goods.In addition, we will soon begin to see higher inflation because there are a significant number of product categories where China is the main provider of certain goods into the US market.
In May, we will begin to see significant layoffs in trucking, logistics, and retail—particularly in small businesses such as your independent toy store, your independent hardware store, and your independent men’s clothing store. With 9 million people working in trucking-related jobs and 16 million people working in the retail sector, the downside risks to the economy are significant.
His Saturday note was equally downbeat: “For companies, new orders are falling, capex plans are declining, inventories were rising before tariffs took effect, and firms are revising down earnings expectations. For households, consumer confidence is at record-low levels, consumers were front-loading purchases before tariffs began, and tourism is slowing, in particular international travel.”
The habit of ideological thinking literally reshapes the brain. I suppose the analogy is that if you don’t exercise your muscles, they become stiff. The brain is an organ. A habit of thinking a certain way can become ingrained.
As our brains become accustomed to ideological thinking, we sink in deeper. Zmigrod compares the process of being drawn into an ideology to a spiral. We spiral in. As we grow accustomed to the fear and the rigid thinking, the brain spirals tighter and tighter into ideology making it harder to get out.
“The spiral reflects the interaction between a person’s dispositions and their ideological environment.” (p. 201.)
Zmigrod compares on-line political communities to life in a “tightly controlled propagandist state.” (p. 222.) Because posts that arouse strong passion like anger, disgust, fear, or rage get the most engagement, algorithms constantly pummel a person with whatever posts arouse their emotions. All of this can cause a person’s stress levels to become so elevated that even flexible thinkers can be pulled into the spiral. The social nature of on-line communities can accelerate the spiral. On-line groups offer a social network and a place to belong. Group Think is a thing. Cable news shows, both left-leaning and right-leaning which peddle outrage, do the same thing.
Flexible thinkers can spiral in. Rigid thinkers can be drawn out. Polarization occurs when too many people slip into ideological thinking.
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Sunday dogs
This is us taking a ramble in the woods this morning.
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