Why Do We Do This?
By which I mean: politics.
“Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.” — Charles Krauthammer
A confession: Every once in a while I need to go back to Krauthammer’s apologia for writing about politics, especially on those days when I find it exhausting and mind-melting to wade into the idiocracy of our times.
I’m at the age now when every twinge or ache makes me think: is this the thing that’s going to kill me? So why am I devoting so much of my time to writing about the stupid, the inane, and the futile? How many years do I have to squander on Donald F’ing Trump?
And I think: I should be listening to music, learning a new language, spending more time with the grandchildren and the dogs. I could be re-watching the entire five seasons of “The Wire,” or finally get around to “The Sopranos” and “Succession”. I could finally read all those fat 19th century English novels I have lying around. And the Russian ones. I could take a course in art history.
Instead of wading through what Saul Bellow called “the packaged opinions” of the cosplaying YouTube stars, I could be writing bad novels, or maybe poetry — and not giving a shit whether anyone else liked it.
Instead of scrolling through the argle-bargle of mind-numbing cliches that pass for political debate, I could be spending more time identifying the gorgeous explosion of birds outside my windows. There are indigo buntings, grosbeaks, cardinals, orioles, blue birds, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, flickers, goldfinches, and turkeys, out there — while I am in my office wading through the day’s droppings from the hacks that we charitably pretend are “strategists,” and “pollsters.”
And I wonder: Is all of this (waves hands) just a chronicle of wasted time about things that make us dumber and that we can’t change? Should we really be wasting our time taking up arms against a sea of troubles when nothing matters; when nothing seems to break through?
Why do we do this?
This is what brings me back to Charles Krauthammer.
A man of Renaissance sensibilities, Krauthammer could have written about literally anything, but he chose to write about politics, because he knew that was the one thing we had to get right.
“In the end,” he wrote, “all the beautiful, elegant things in life, the things that I care about, the things that matter, depend on getting the politics right. Because in those societies where they get it wrong, everything else is destroyed, everything else is leveled.” Krauthammer was echoing John Adams who wrote: "I must study politics and war, so that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."
But Krauthammer had the added benefit of our own grim history.
“You can have the most advanced and efflorescent cultures,” he wrote. “Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933.”
“This is no abstraction. We see it in North Korea, whose deranged Stalinist politics has created a land of stunning desolation and ugliness, both spiritual and material. We saw it in China's Cultural Revolution, a sustained act of national self-immolation, designed to dethrone, debase and destroy the highest achievements of five millennia of Chinese culture. We saw it in Taliban Afghanistan…”
“The entire 20th Century with its mass political enthusiasms is a lesson in the supreme power of politics to produce ever-expanding circles of ruin. World War One not only killed more people than any previous war. The psychological shock of Europe's senseless self inflicted devastation forever changed western sensibilities, practically overthrowing the classical arts, virtues, and modes of thought. The Russian Revolution and its imitators (Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian) tried to atomize society so thoroughly — to war against the mediating structures that stand between the individual and the state — that the most basic bonds of family, faith, fellowship and conscience came to near dissolution.
“Of course, the greatest demonstration of the finality of politics is the Holocaust, which in less than a decade destroyed a millennium-old civilization, sweeping away not only 6 million souls but the institutions, the culture, the very tongue of the now vanished world of European Jewry.”
Exit take: I really miss the guy. But he keeps me going.
Happy Wednesday.
If you think the fight for sanity, democracy, and the rule of law is worth it, please consider supporting us. Because we can’t do this without you.
Programming note: The other night I mentioned that I was doing a podcast with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their new book, ‘‘Original Sin.” Yesterday, Tapper cancelled our scheduled interview, citing a scheduling conflict. While Thompson was still available, I wanted to talk to them both, so we are hoping to reschedule.
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Back to the Idiocracy
ICYMI: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem struggles to define habeas corpus at Senate hearing
To the surprise of absolutely no one, it turns out that ICE Barbie knows neither Latin, nor the basics of the Constitution. But, this is what you get when you choose someone whose qualification consists of her willingness to shoot puppies in the face.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., asked Noem about the constitutional protection after noting that White House adviser Stephen Miller told reporters earlier this month the administration was "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus, the right to challenge an arrest or imprisonment.
"I want to clarify your position," Hassan asked. "What is habeas corpus?"
"Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to," Noem responded before she was cut off by Hassan.
"That's incorrect," the senator said.
"Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason," Hassan said, calling it a "foundational right."
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Cash for seditionists: Ashli Babbitt's family to receive $5 million in settlement with Trump administration: Sources - ABC News
The Trump administration is set to pay out nearly $5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter fatally shot during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News on Monday.
Suffice it to say that none of the police officers attacked by Babbit and her confederates will receive this sort of largesse from the taxpayers.
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Our classy president: 'I'll Shove It Up Their Ass': Trump Rails Against Opponents
“And then they rigged the election, and then I said, ‘You know what I’ll do? I’ll run again and I’ll shove it up their ass.'”
As the board members laughed and applauded, Trump went on…
Nota bene
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Maine legislators to temporarily restore the voting power of a state lawmaker after she had been censured for a social media post that criticized transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports.
The order was unsigned and did not provide the court’s reasoning, as is typical in such emergency applications. No vote count was listed, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted she would have denied the application, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent.
The court order provided no further explanation on next steps, but the legislator, State Representative Laurel Libby, had asked in her application to immediately be allowed to participate in the current legislative session, which ends in June.
Lawmakers had censured Ms. Libby, a Republican from Auburn, in February after she wrote a Facebook post criticizing the participation of a transgender athlete who had won a high school pole-vaulting competition. Ms. Libby included the name and photos of the student in the post, which went viral.
The formal reprimand of Ms. Libby prevented her from voting or speaking on the House floor until she apologized for the post.
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Democrats' shrinking coalition
On Monday night, Democratic data firm Catalist released its “What Happened” report detailing shifts and trends in the electorate that impacted the 2024 election. It’s always a comprehensive and highly anticipated read for election nerds and staffers who seek more certainty about what happened in the last election.
This year’s version of the report is a sobering analysis that contains very little good news for Democrats. The most shocking findings relate to Democrats’ shrinking coalition, as the party’s lock on voters of color and younger audiences seems to be slowly fading from its highs in the early Obama era:
Voters under the age of 30 dropped from 61% Democratic support in 2020 to 55% in 2024. These drops were larger than drops for any other generation or age group
Voters of color continue to support Democrats, but support has dropped successively over the past three presidential elections. Latino voter support for Democrats dropped by 9 points from 2020, and dropped by 3 points among Black voters. Support among young Black men dropped from 85% to 75% and support among young Latino men dropped from 63% to 47%.
Male voters supported the Democratic presidential candidate by the lowest margin in recent memory - just 42%, with a overall gender gap of 13%. The gender gap, or the difference between male and female support, was widest among Gen Z.
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Donald Trump Gets Mad at Bruce Springsteen - by Bob Bauer
There is no chance, then, that the Trump government could, as a matter of law, successfully prosecute Springsteen for this form of support for Kamala Harris. And that is before getting to the due process and First Amendment defenses, such as those successfully raised by the law firms targeted by Trump executive orders, in a defense against a clearcut act of political retaliation.
The case nonetheless illustrates in ways that may not be immediately obvious how Trump could, if he chose to act on a threat of this nature, exact real costs of harassment and investigation through a sham legal claim. Regardless of the merits of the claim, those who are targeted in this fashion have a “legal problem” that may require—for however long and at whatever expense—engaging lawyers. Trump has set this administration up for particular success in making and following up on these threats to investigate through his sweeping claims of presidential authority, the concrete institutional and norm-busting changes he has made in federal law enforcement, and his choices of personnel for key positions in the federal law enforcement bureaucracy.
Special Bonus Wednesday dogs
From my daughter’s canine-centric Substack: Eli & Auggie go to Europe - A Dog A Day.
I'm angry that so many years of my life have been spent hearing his voice, reading his nonsensical garbage, railing against the loss of so many traditions and values we took for granted. He has lived too long rent-free inside my head. I'm in the last quarter of my life (if I'm lucky) so I work hard to also bring peace and beauty and acceptance into each new day. It ain't easy.
"I’m at the age now when every twinge or ache makes me think: is this the thing that’s going to kill me?"
Jeez Charlie. I'm 71. I thought it was just me....