Left Jabs

E very day, we learn a little more about the way the Trump junta operates. We might sum it up with the phrase “Shoot first, ask questions later,” but this is not entirely accurate. They do indeed shoot first, mostly with executive orders that are breathtaking in their over-reach, malicious intent, and criminal shortsightedness. But they don’t so much ask questions later, as they send stupid lawyers into court to defend stupefyingly illegal behavior. They tend to fail, but even in failure, the confusion they create works wonders for them. On what must be several dozen fronts since January, MAGA operatives looking to subvert the government have done so, first by launching whatever harebrained scheme they’ve come up with, then by watching for the fallout. The fallout could be in the form of a court ruling, or howls of protest from the victims, or even from Democrats calling them out. But the point is that they depend on that first launch to shake things up, to flo...

  I n a week when Israel attacked Iran, Trump invaded Los Angeles, four million Americans took to the streets, and a Minnesota legislator was assassinated, the news from the arcane world of digital advertising probably didn’t make it to your list of big concerns. By the time I’m done, it probably still won’t. But in this miasma of Trumpish distractions, it’s often hard to figure out what we’re being distracted from . It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole, and last week, we got the first inkling of yet another mole that will require whacking. Warning: This will take a while to explain, and might cause mild-to-severe boredom. Proceed at your own risk: As we’ve seen, the Trump gang has recently extorted large corporate law firms into defending its pet causes, an ongoing story still developing. Now, apparently, they are trying to do something similar with large advertising agencies. The immediate focus is on the approval, or not, of a major merger between two of...

I t seems like years, but it’s only a few months since the February 28 mugging of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, surely a low point in Western history, though we’ve seen lower since. The sneak attack by Trump and Vance has, of course, disappeared down the memory hole already. Nobody wants to remember their historic betrayal, not just of Ukraine, but of American values writ large. Nobody wants to remember how they ambushed Zelensky right out in public, on live television, so we could all be ashamed of our country at once. The video isn’t really worth a second look. Honestly, I never looked the first time — it was the kind of thing I’d rather read about than see, and what I’d read was bad enough. But in light of new information, I went back and watched it anyway. A horrifyingly juvenile display of playground bullying by purportedly grown men, my overall take was mortification that I live in a country that could give these two swine the keys to the men’s r...

  F or my next trick, I’d like to indulge in a linguistic conceit of sorts. I’d like to use the current political nightmare to speculate about a matter of grammar, of all things, that has long intrigued me: Namely, why do so many languages codify the conditional mood — also known as the conditional tense — in their grammar? Why do we use ‘should,’ ‘could,’ and especially ‘would,’ in so much of our speech? Why do we hedge our conversations this way? Why is it more acceptable to say “I would like a cup of coffee” than “Give me a cup of coffee.” Why is one deferential and the other pushy? Why has history passed down this polite form to multiple language groups, in such a similar way? Why is it bad form to use “I want” in a non-confrontational situation? And why does the MAGA crowd insist on such bad form? I have a speculative answer to these questions, but first let me cavalierly divide the world into two groups of people: Decents and Deplorables . Goods ...

  One of the many chilling ironies of the war on abortion is that the states most insistent on women having babies, no matter what, are also the ones with the least to offer those babies once they’ve had the bad luck to be born there. And it’s important to understand that these states are getting increasingly insistent on women having babies, no matter what. Goaded and guided by abortion abolitionists in legislatures, law firms, and courtrooms, Republican governments are, one way or another, actively blocking off any avenue that doesn’t lead to a woman of any age getting pregnant, giving birth, then getting pregnant again. Rinse and repeat. If the woman dies in the process, she’s easily replaced. The idea seems to be that women are a sort of production line, whose purpose is to generate usable babies. The way they get pregnant is irrelevant to the discussion. If they were impregnated by, say, an uncle, or a rapist, or a clergyman, the laws of these states ca...

  I feel a little silly using italics to introduce italics, but I need to repeat myself this week, so I had to find a piece that seemed worthy of a retrospective look. I found this one, from five days after the election, and while I wrote it quite recently, it feels like several years ago. I am most struck by how angry I sound, which is the part I like best. If you’d rather not relive that time, I can hardly blame you — I went there only reluctantly myself. Nonetheless I do feel it’s worth another read, even if just for the opening quote from a really good writer — a Canadian journalist who was going through the same holy-shit moment we all were. Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies. The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and seri...