May 13 Links

A few days ago, a friend and I were commiserating on Signal over the wretched state of our country, the United States. The daily deluge of idiocy felt very much to me as a national suicide. I could not think of another empire which had so deliberately engaged in its own death on the historical stage. Neither could my friend.

As it turns out, a few days later, an actual scholar, Timothy Snyder, admitted he couldn't think of one either. His essay, On Superpower Suicide , enumerates a baker's dozen of dimensions the Trump regime has set about destroying American empire.

"Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity."

The essay focuses exclusively on the Executive Branch, given the Trump regime's direct hand in this, but there are eager helpers in the Legislative and Judicial branches. The subtitle of the essay is "And the recovery of justice", but sadly that takes up just one or two paragraphs at the end, primarily punctuating the reality that there can be no going back to the fragile institutions that brought us to this point.

"After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable."

This Week's Links

Current Affairs Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First

Slate How Normie Pundits Paved the Way for the Supreme Court Voting Rights Disaster

Thomas Zimmer Multiracial Democracy is Young and Fragile

The Stranger How Fear Becomes Policy: The Illusion of Safety Has Outpaced the Reality of Neglect

IAI News Baldwin vs. Nietzsche: How to overcome tragedy

Letters from Leo “Would It Matter If I Told You I’m Pope Leo?” — The Bank Teller Who Hung Up on Robert Prevost

Until next week...