Left Jabs

Given the recent fire hose of news, I’ve decided to be a little more short-winded this week, weighing in briefly on not one, but three subjects, none of which is Ukraine. Yes, I still believe Putin is enjoying an elaborate bluff, but I’m resisting the urge to write anything today that might make me look silly tomorrow. So let’s instead start with the rumblings of impatience about Merrick Garland’s DOJ, which are as persistent as they are misguided.   Patience Isn’t My Thing, Either I get it. We’d all love to have seen our favorite villains in prison by now. And who can blame us for assuming no news is bad news? But when it comes to the Department of Justice, we should never mistake silence for inaction. And I think we might just be missing what this silence is telling us. Consider that there hasn’t been a single significant leak from Garland’s department. Not one. All those prosecutors, all those investigators, all those people in the field — and no leaks...

Any capable writer would have looked at the words “legitimate political discourse” and said “Uh Ronna? Can we talk privately?” Of course, the writer might’ve been less than capable. Or ignored altogether. Neither would come as a shock. But let’s assume there was a real copywriter on the job. You wouldn’t want to go to market without one, especially when you’re a political clown like Ronna McDaniel, and what you’re trying to market is conspiracy and sedition. Still, you can see how it happens. They’re in this meeting of the Resolutions Committee of the Republican National Committee. Ronna is RNC chair, so we guess she’s driving the effort. The purpose of the meeting is to write a censure resolution. They’re there to cobble together some sort of logic, no matter how tortured, that can justify the censure of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Everyone on the Zoom call knows this is nuts. They all know it puts things on record that have no business being there. Yet someone — and I wo...

It’s cute that people think Putin needs a pretext to go to war. Did you see last week’s story about the staged atrocity shot on video, with Russian actors playing vicious Ukrainians? There was no big strategy behind it. It was just Putin having fun. Nothing to see here. It was just as silly when Hitler pulled the same thing in 1939. He dressed a few of his thugs in Polish army uniforms, who then raided a German radio station near the Polish border. Impersonating Poles, they started broadcasting bad things about Germany, a provocation that the German high command declared — almost as if they’d rehearsed it — too bellicose to ignore. They brought in a few prisoners from Dachau and shot them, just to make the scene look convincing, and the next day Germany invaded Poland with several tank divisions that, just by coincidence, were right there at the border when the “incident” occurred. So before we get too crazed about Putin ginning up the bloodlust of his citizenry, let’s acknowl...

War is no longer just about bullets and bombs. There are new, more subtle, less bloody ways to wage it. Vladimir Putin has a full arsenal of sophisticated weapons, not all of which go bang. He also has a lot of great reasons to not use them. Which doesn’t mean he won’t. His Ukraine gambit is fraught with risk, and nobody knows where he’s going with it. He might not know himself. But in terms of the evolution of warfare, both his strengths and his vulnerabilities are remarkable. With that in mind, let’s divide twenty-first-century weaponry into four categories — military, propaganda, cyber, and economic — and discuss amongst ourselves. Military Putin knows it’s harder to get out of hot wars than into them — Russia had its own Afghanistan quagmire to learn from. And hot wars are rarely popular. Recent polls show three out of four Russian citizens already detest him. Does he think soldiers coming home in body bags will improve that? The old shock-and-awe-type war has been show...

We teach our children about fairness at an early age. We consider it a duty. Fairness is, after all, a key part of our social contract. We enshrine it in our constitution and embed it in our laws. Not that we’re naïve — we understand the limits of fairness. We know about bullies, about casual cruelty, about people who put their thumbs on life’s scales. But while we freely acknowledge the weaknesses in the social contract, we nonetheless live by it, more or less, all our lives. Which is why we’re so sickened to see that contract routinely breached by an endless parade of bad actors doing deep institutional damage, and getting away with it. As much as we love the stories of bullies getting their comeuppance, the sad truth is that they rarely do. They revel in their unfairness. They invert reality. They smugly proclaim that up is down, then punish us for dissent. They make us the villain, and they hold our sense of fairness in abject contempt — a weakness to be exploited. The Repu...

I have heard now from several of my readers — and on multiple occasions — that my writing is, shall we say, less than uplifting. The word “depressing” has come up. For this, I don’t so much apologize as empathize. What I’ve been writing about depresses me as well. The times we live in have gotten far more interesting than I ever thought they would. There’s a lot to be scared of, but there’s a lot to write about too. Because while I never really thought my country would reach the point where a fascist coup could be a realistic threat, I’ve had a certain morbid fascination with the idea, probably since high school. Now that it’s happening in plain sight, topics that are interesting but depressing are a target-rich environment for me. Consider, for example, the poll numbers showing that people have grown “disappointed” with the Democrats. That Biden’s performance — and by extension, that of all Democrats — is somehow not living up to its initial promise. That they should be “doing m...

By now it’s pretty clear that Republicans are out to steal your lunch money. If they take back the House, it will be two years of committee hearings for Hunter Biden and two more years of festering stasis for the rest of us. So we need ideas, fast. I am one of many who believe at least part of the answer lies in the business world. Corporate America needs to step up. Large corporations have significant financial leverage over Republicans at every level — federal, state, local — and we need them to use that leverage to get us out of this mess, not just for our sakes, but for their own as well. It is inexcusable that hundreds of mega-companies continue to contribute to the campaigns of Republican congressmen who openly denied the 2020 election results. These companies continue, in other words, to finance treason. This is appalling on any number of levels, but let’s start with whether they’re getting their money’s worth. The Republican agenda they underwrite is so corrupt, so co...