Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Sinéad O'Connor
[ed. I didn't know she died, in 2023. How could I have missed it. This song from her stunning album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got came out just around the time my own marriage was breaking up. It still resonates.]
Right and Left
No great American novel has ever emerged from the nation’s capital, Christopher Hitchens once observed. London had Dickens—Paris, Zola and Flaubert. And Washington, D.C.? A city cut out for genre fiction: dutiful historical reconstruction, or else cheap political thrillers, sold at airports with raised gold lettering. Evidently, the town’s bureaucratic processes and brutalist office architecture just cannot deliver an exhilarating prose style. Nor can the self-serious men and women, with their big egos and small ambitions, attract literary sympathies.
If literature is no place to turn, perhaps there exists some great work of art? It was 2025, and I had to escape a May Day protest on the Mall (grown men in FUCK TRUMP wifebeaters, a crimson Handmaid’s Tale girl zapped back from a fascist-lite era). So far 2025 had been no 1963, 1982 or even 2017. CSPAN-watching geriatrics waving cardboard signs on bridges felt at times like the only symbolic act fending off the wacko, dark-web authoritarianism radiating from Pennsylvania Avenue. When May Day turned to more “mayday, mayday!,” rather than going to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to drown myself, I ended up in front of a painting in the American Wing of the nearby National Gallery.
Right and Left (1909) by Winslow Homer might be altogether disqualified from Great Washington Painting. For one, the work is not set on the banks of the Potomac but off the shore of Prouts Neck, Maine. Surely the craggy presidential faces in the Portrait Gallery or Gordon Parks’s solemn American Gothic (1942) would make for more obvious contenders. But the painting’s perfect, suggestive title, paired with the melancholic mood of the hunting scene, relaxed all critical judgment that afternoon, as I reached for something, anything, to explain a strange city in strange times.
Over gray waters, a pair of goldeneye ducks are tossed mid-flight like clown juggling pins. Distant waves carry the sportsman who has just fired on them. As if rendered by a Persian miniaturist, the diminutive scale of the shooter makes clear human motives are entirely incidental to the painting. The real drama, and damage, is in the foreground—the freakish, jack-o’-lantern yellow eye of the bird on the left, the terrible head-first plummet on the right. Both birds’ bodies are a cohesion of awkward, unnatural angles. The animals are alive and dead. The waves crest and fall. There is nothing romantic about the state of suspension: the setting sun, low and feeble, is a single orange stroke Homer has made over the indefinite horizon, like a pencil scratch on a doorframe marking the growth of a child.
In late January of last year, a quiet panic began rippling through the capital when the little figure skaters’ plane went down in the Potomac. This was around the time the government was purging tens of thousands of jobs that do things like keep planes in the sky. Countless entries follow in the region’s diary of a bad year. Authorities abducted a local Maryland man from an IKEA parking lot, to then erroneously deport him to a Salvadoran mega-prison. Gold-chained tech barons snapped up mansions in Massachusetts Avenue Heights as the welcome mat was laid out in the White House. A gunman mowed down embassy sweethearts in the streets; seventy-ton M1 Abrams tanks squeaked through a militarized birthday carnival. The clangor of dissent played out on pots and pans as the National Guard rolled into town. M4 semiautomatic rifles circled two-year-olds’ birthday parties in Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park. Meanwhile, immigration authorities began quietly patrolling the District alongside the police, making more than triple the number of arrests in a month than in the first half of the year. Come fall, the president spent the longest government shutdown in U.S. history gussying up the White House, with such understated measures as razing a wing. The year rounded out with two shot National Guard members and a hydra-headed call for five hundred more on the ground: Christmases lost protecting deserted streets in camo and Santa hats.
In a city being pulverized and remade seemingly daily, where even as recent of history as the Black Lives Matter plaza is jackhammered to oblivion, the sense of dread and unknown can bully one into a state of mental submission, or else frantic, desperate attempts to make sense of the nonsense—“rational delirium,” I underline in a hip novel I can’t finish. One of these disposable origami thoughts comes to me in the museum. It is futile surely as any other attempt to say something intelligent about such deeply stupid times. But there it is: like Homer’s bewildering birds, the targets in Washington have also been two. They have also been twinned. In this city, maybe no one has been thumped harder than undocumented workers from Central and South America, on the one hand, and federal public servants, on the other. Their red-alert existential terror—though quite incomparable in kind—might even be held within a single frame. Both perform types of labor deeply distasteful, or perhaps incomprehensible, to the administration: manual labor and public-serving work.
What I mean to say is, hardworking bricklayers and line cooks are being criminalized as hardened gangsters. Dedicated civil servants, meanwhile, are roasted as do-nothings, forced to correspond with HR black holes and polygraph machines. D.C. flags may have sold out across the city in protest of the paramilitary takeover, but Trump’s nostalgia for tough-on-crime 1970s New York increasingly feels like the sideshow. The real story of this past year, the story that will have the longer historical afterlife, is a quieter one. It is one of draining the intrinsic value from labor yoked to repetitive, inglorious and truly vital tasks: the maintenance of the civic home, on the one hand, and the literal home, on the other. (If you want to call these real, productive forms of labor feminized versus a masculine world of bullshit finance capital or big tech, I, for one, won’t object.)
In this bleak picture of 2025 Washington, both civil servants and undocumented workers were said to be living off ill-gotten gains. Both were targeted at the places of their work. Both, like the pair of mid-flight sea birds, found themselves in kinds of godless existential suspense. And both, I would argue in a more grandiose mood, if I could summon it, were subject to an elitist attack on the American work ethic. A work ethic that arrived in the rugged hills of New England with… the Puritans!
Leaving the museum, I retraced the perimeter of the protest on the National Mall, where it turned out I might have misunderstood the Calvinist commitments of the Handmaid girl whose outdated display had driven me away. Now sitting cross-legged, ringed by the roots of an American elm and the rim of her red dress, eyes closed, bodice pooling around her waist: She was topless? Stamp-sized leaves overlaid her nipples and inked across her chest in lipstick were the words “Non Violent Vibes.” (Two words, not one.)
The Puritans had their maypoles of Merry Mount and were, in reality, a band of certified neurotics (Max Weber’s description was always too somber). But even at this lefty protest, the Protestant work ethic—its seriousness, self-discipline, prudishness—appeared to be in somewhat dramatic retreat.
I supposed. Who the hell knew what was going on anymore. I was pregnant and needed to go home and lie down. [...]
In every other respect, the people of this city speak in a direct manner, so rarely a note of the ironical or bohemian. Washington can feel like inhabiting a LinkedIn hologram: transactional, oppressively chipper, neutered. At the tasteful, wood-paneled bistro, a young woman in athleisure sits alone reading Gung Ho! Increase Productivity, Profits, and Your Own Prosperity over a shrimp salad and pale coffee. (The endearing maître d’ who used to inhale drags of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. behind the counter seems to have evacuated his post.) Steel yourself: the first question out of a new acquaintance’s month really might be “What d’you do?”...
Laments are often operatic, duly so, but from people whose professional life and manner are the definition of restraint. A physician running miraculous clinical trials described to me a Looney Tunes world this past winter: a futile Road Runner-Coyote chase sequence, until the latest cuts made by the DOGE kid stuffed in the utility closet inevitably get reversed. Another fed worker is witnessing his unit transform into a “tabloid operation,” he says, “a craven institution stewarding the demise of the nation.” He continues: “What do you do stuck in a job with career-preservationists in charge who bend 93 different ways a day?”...
An elder nanny sidles up at the library to tell me about more ICE sightings. Arrests of nannies at Turtle Park, now Macomb. “They called the parents to come get the child,” she says of yet another raid I cannot confirm. When I ask her where she is hearing these reports—that I think they really might in fact be false—she just points to her phone, to the WhatsApp-group rumor mills, like it is an investigative report published by the Washington Post. It doesn’t matter that she is a citizen, she says. “They don’t care who you are, what your status is. And they go right to us,” she says, pointing to her skin and pursing her lips. Other nannies in the area are forgoing Venmo or check payments. Cash only. “Soviet practices=best practices in this climate!” a Russian-American mom texts me.
No one can even pretend anymore that Americans will take over all these jobs, particularly in the realm of construction or farming, giving the lie to an “American-made” future. An artist acquaintance has been photographing housing construction sites to imagine what it would look like for the power tools and saws to go silent in an industry where undocumented workers constitute more than 20 percent of the workforce. In a film she is making, she interviews a worker who says in Portuguese: “That guy that makes the hole, that breaks things, gets on the roof, lays down brick—they [Americans] don’t want to do that.” He adds, lightly: “So that is why they have us.” I hear of another young woman’s Bolsonarista father in São Paulo finally turning on the Bolsonaro of the North: “Who will do the work?”
The tariffs on trade suppose we want our goods “American-made,” returning the old glory back to the American working-class and blue-collar jobs. But by treating undocumented laborers in the appalling manner we are, it sends the message, rather loudly, that the work done by these individuals does not confer one ounce of dignity or worth. In fact, it disqualifies one from living even a quiet life on the margins. Who wants to be the understudy to the guy who worked so hard he was rewarded with being disappeared to a country he doesn’t even come from?
Another South American living near Rock Creek Park tells me he woke up recently in the middle of the night to the cry of a rabbit shrieking, pursued by a fox, an owl, some kind of predator. It was the most chilling sound he had ever heard. “I feel like that,” he says, “like a chased animal.”
by Noelle Bodick, The Point | Read more:
If literature is no place to turn, perhaps there exists some great work of art? It was 2025, and I had to escape a May Day protest on the Mall (grown men in FUCK TRUMP wifebeaters, a crimson Handmaid’s Tale girl zapped back from a fascist-lite era). So far 2025 had been no 1963, 1982 or even 2017. CSPAN-watching geriatrics waving cardboard signs on bridges felt at times like the only symbolic act fending off the wacko, dark-web authoritarianism radiating from Pennsylvania Avenue. When May Day turned to more “mayday, mayday!,” rather than going to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to drown myself, I ended up in front of a painting in the American Wing of the nearby National Gallery.
Over gray waters, a pair of goldeneye ducks are tossed mid-flight like clown juggling pins. Distant waves carry the sportsman who has just fired on them. As if rendered by a Persian miniaturist, the diminutive scale of the shooter makes clear human motives are entirely incidental to the painting. The real drama, and damage, is in the foreground—the freakish, jack-o’-lantern yellow eye of the bird on the left, the terrible head-first plummet on the right. Both birds’ bodies are a cohesion of awkward, unnatural angles. The animals are alive and dead. The waves crest and fall. There is nothing romantic about the state of suspension: the setting sun, low and feeble, is a single orange stroke Homer has made over the indefinite horizon, like a pencil scratch on a doorframe marking the growth of a child.
In late January of last year, a quiet panic began rippling through the capital when the little figure skaters’ plane went down in the Potomac. This was around the time the government was purging tens of thousands of jobs that do things like keep planes in the sky. Countless entries follow in the region’s diary of a bad year. Authorities abducted a local Maryland man from an IKEA parking lot, to then erroneously deport him to a Salvadoran mega-prison. Gold-chained tech barons snapped up mansions in Massachusetts Avenue Heights as the welcome mat was laid out in the White House. A gunman mowed down embassy sweethearts in the streets; seventy-ton M1 Abrams tanks squeaked through a militarized birthday carnival. The clangor of dissent played out on pots and pans as the National Guard rolled into town. M4 semiautomatic rifles circled two-year-olds’ birthday parties in Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park. Meanwhile, immigration authorities began quietly patrolling the District alongside the police, making more than triple the number of arrests in a month than in the first half of the year. Come fall, the president spent the longest government shutdown in U.S. history gussying up the White House, with such understated measures as razing a wing. The year rounded out with two shot National Guard members and a hydra-headed call for five hundred more on the ground: Christmases lost protecting deserted streets in camo and Santa hats.
In a city being pulverized and remade seemingly daily, where even as recent of history as the Black Lives Matter plaza is jackhammered to oblivion, the sense of dread and unknown can bully one into a state of mental submission, or else frantic, desperate attempts to make sense of the nonsense—“rational delirium,” I underline in a hip novel I can’t finish. One of these disposable origami thoughts comes to me in the museum. It is futile surely as any other attempt to say something intelligent about such deeply stupid times. But there it is: like Homer’s bewildering birds, the targets in Washington have also been two. They have also been twinned. In this city, maybe no one has been thumped harder than undocumented workers from Central and South America, on the one hand, and federal public servants, on the other. Their red-alert existential terror—though quite incomparable in kind—might even be held within a single frame. Both perform types of labor deeply distasteful, or perhaps incomprehensible, to the administration: manual labor and public-serving work.
What I mean to say is, hardworking bricklayers and line cooks are being criminalized as hardened gangsters. Dedicated civil servants, meanwhile, are roasted as do-nothings, forced to correspond with HR black holes and polygraph machines. D.C. flags may have sold out across the city in protest of the paramilitary takeover, but Trump’s nostalgia for tough-on-crime 1970s New York increasingly feels like the sideshow. The real story of this past year, the story that will have the longer historical afterlife, is a quieter one. It is one of draining the intrinsic value from labor yoked to repetitive, inglorious and truly vital tasks: the maintenance of the civic home, on the one hand, and the literal home, on the other. (If you want to call these real, productive forms of labor feminized versus a masculine world of bullshit finance capital or big tech, I, for one, won’t object.)
In this bleak picture of 2025 Washington, both civil servants and undocumented workers were said to be living off ill-gotten gains. Both were targeted at the places of their work. Both, like the pair of mid-flight sea birds, found themselves in kinds of godless existential suspense. And both, I would argue in a more grandiose mood, if I could summon it, were subject to an elitist attack on the American work ethic. A work ethic that arrived in the rugged hills of New England with… the Puritans!
Leaving the museum, I retraced the perimeter of the protest on the National Mall, where it turned out I might have misunderstood the Calvinist commitments of the Handmaid girl whose outdated display had driven me away. Now sitting cross-legged, ringed by the roots of an American elm and the rim of her red dress, eyes closed, bodice pooling around her waist: She was topless? Stamp-sized leaves overlaid her nipples and inked across her chest in lipstick were the words “Non Violent Vibes.” (Two words, not one.)
The Puritans had their maypoles of Merry Mount and were, in reality, a band of certified neurotics (Max Weber’s description was always too somber). But even at this lefty protest, the Protestant work ethic—its seriousness, self-discipline, prudishness—appeared to be in somewhat dramatic retreat.
I supposed. Who the hell knew what was going on anymore. I was pregnant and needed to go home and lie down. [...]
●
Around Washington, the flat, SSRI-pilled Zoomers wear shirts that read like floating signifiers or non sequiturs. A girl brandishes SOLD OUT across her sweatshirt in Capitol Hill. (She sold out? Her shirt is sold out?) MAIN CHARACTER traipses toward the zoo in Northwest. (Surely the pandas are the protagonists?) LET’S GO FOR A WALK crosses Penn Quarter, alone, as if the invitation has gone declined. I haven’t seen a slogan fit for the moment of deep unease in a city in which 20 percent of the workforce is federal, tens of thousands have left or been fired since February, and where the unemployment rate has been leading the nation for months. Why not say what we mean? CANNED, FURLOUGHED or PROBATIONARY. DAMNED. SAVED.In every other respect, the people of this city speak in a direct manner, so rarely a note of the ironical or bohemian. Washington can feel like inhabiting a LinkedIn hologram: transactional, oppressively chipper, neutered. At the tasteful, wood-paneled bistro, a young woman in athleisure sits alone reading Gung Ho! Increase Productivity, Profits, and Your Own Prosperity over a shrimp salad and pale coffee. (The endearing maître d’ who used to inhale drags of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. behind the counter seems to have evacuated his post.) Steel yourself: the first question out of a new acquaintance’s month really might be “What d’you do?”...
Laments are often operatic, duly so, but from people whose professional life and manner are the definition of restraint. A physician running miraculous clinical trials described to me a Looney Tunes world this past winter: a futile Road Runner-Coyote chase sequence, until the latest cuts made by the DOGE kid stuffed in the utility closet inevitably get reversed. Another fed worker is witnessing his unit transform into a “tabloid operation,” he says, “a craven institution stewarding the demise of the nation.” He continues: “What do you do stuck in a job with career-preservationists in charge who bend 93 different ways a day?”...
An elder nanny sidles up at the library to tell me about more ICE sightings. Arrests of nannies at Turtle Park, now Macomb. “They called the parents to come get the child,” she says of yet another raid I cannot confirm. When I ask her where she is hearing these reports—that I think they really might in fact be false—she just points to her phone, to the WhatsApp-group rumor mills, like it is an investigative report published by the Washington Post. It doesn’t matter that she is a citizen, she says. “They don’t care who you are, what your status is. And they go right to us,” she says, pointing to her skin and pursing her lips. Other nannies in the area are forgoing Venmo or check payments. Cash only. “Soviet practices=best practices in this climate!” a Russian-American mom texts me.
No one can even pretend anymore that Americans will take over all these jobs, particularly in the realm of construction or farming, giving the lie to an “American-made” future. An artist acquaintance has been photographing housing construction sites to imagine what it would look like for the power tools and saws to go silent in an industry where undocumented workers constitute more than 20 percent of the workforce. In a film she is making, she interviews a worker who says in Portuguese: “That guy that makes the hole, that breaks things, gets on the roof, lays down brick—they [Americans] don’t want to do that.” He adds, lightly: “So that is why they have us.” I hear of another young woman’s Bolsonarista father in São Paulo finally turning on the Bolsonaro of the North: “Who will do the work?”
The tariffs on trade suppose we want our goods “American-made,” returning the old glory back to the American working-class and blue-collar jobs. But by treating undocumented laborers in the appalling manner we are, it sends the message, rather loudly, that the work done by these individuals does not confer one ounce of dignity or worth. In fact, it disqualifies one from living even a quiet life on the margins. Who wants to be the understudy to the guy who worked so hard he was rewarded with being disappeared to a country he doesn’t even come from?
Another South American living near Rock Creek Park tells me he woke up recently in the middle of the night to the cry of a rabbit shrieking, pursued by a fox, an owl, some kind of predator. It was the most chilling sound he had ever heard. “I feel like that,” he says, “like a chased animal.”
Image: Winslow Homer, Right and Left
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Aesthetics As a Housing Barrier?
Will Americans want more housing if it looks prettier?
Patrick Collison’s YIMBY credentials are unimpeachable. He is a major backer of California YIMBY, the organization that has passed a stunning array of pro-housing bills in one of the most anti-development states in the nation. So it was interesting to see him claim that the movement has made a big mistake — or even been downright dishonest — by ignoring the aesthetics of apartment buildings:
For reference, here’s Sejong City in Korea, whose residential districts do indeed look rather bland and oppressive:
Some urbanists agreed, calling for regulatory reform that would allow American apartment buildings to look like the famous Haussmann buildings in Paris (depicted at the top of this post). So did some conservatives, which is unsurprising; intellectual conservatism has always called for a return to classical architecture and a rejection of modern styles. In fact, the idea that ugly building styles are a key reason that Americans disapprove of housing construction has been around quite a while, and it even has a name — “QIMBY”, meaning “quality in my back yard”.
I think that’s a good thing. Eliminating onerous building codes and regulations will kill two birds with one stone, making it easier to build housing even as it also makes it possible to build more of the European-style ornamentation that commentators always call for. And allowing American developers to experiment with ornamentation and alternative styles will help break up the sameness of an urban landscape dominated by endless forests of boxy 5-over-1 buildings.
But that said, I highly doubt that this — or any stylistic change — would move the needle on public acceptance of new apartment buildings.
First of all, I’m skeptical that regular Americans actually like the kinds of building styles that intellectuals often yearn for. If you plunk down old-looking European-style buildings in the middle of Houston or Seattle, people tend to ridicule them as cheesy and inauthentic. The typical insult is “pastiche”, a derogatory term for a style that jumbles and mixes old European styles (even though, as Samuel Hughes points out, mixing and matching older ideas is exactly how classic European building styles were created in the first place).
Many local design standards explicitly discourage old-style buildings. For example, Los Angeles’ planning department, in its design guide for Echo Park, writes: “Do not imitate historic architectural styles; a modern interpretation may be appropriate if architectural features are borrowed and replicated to a simpler form.”
Nor is it just old European-looking buildings that leave many Americans cold. Pietrzak and Mendelberg (2025) find that although people tend to dislike tall buildings, traditional brick facades fail to move the needle on support for housing. Alex Armlovich points out that when New York City came out with new limestone skyscrapers, only three were permitted. And Brooklyn Tower, a recently built art deco style skyscraper in Brooklyn, has drawn tons of criticism for its style.
And Elmendorf cautions that no one has yet managed to find a specific architectural style that Americans like enough to move the needle on their support for new housing: [...]
Texas builds them anyway, for much the same reason that the Koreans built Sejong City — they’re cheap and efficient, and the state needs them to support its rapid population growth.1 You do see a little experimentation with slightly more European-style apartments in a few places, but overall it’s just boxy and functional. The fundamental driver of housing abundance in Texas isn’t architectural beauty; it’s a culture and politics that values and seeks out economic growth.
Nor is ornamental architecture necessarily what makes people love a city. Traditionalists may sigh over old European styles, and urbanists may salivate over the superilles of Barcelona, but the city that has captured the hearts of Americans in recent years is Tokyo. Downtown Tokyo is a forest of electric lights, strung up along the sides of stubby concrete mid-rises called zakkyo buildings. There’s nary a fancy cornice to be found; instead, the beauty comes from the bright cheery emblems of commerce:
Tokyo’s residential neighborhoods have even less ornamentation. They often feature flat brown or white or tan facades, hanging power lines, and bare asphalt streets with no setbacks or lawns or even trees:
And yet these are absolutely enchanting places to live. Why? Not because of the architecture, but because of the design of the city itself. The small curving streets make perfect walking paths, undisturbed by zooming traffic. Mixed-use zoning gives the neighborhood a communal, lived-in feel. Plentiful public transit makes it easy and stress-free to get around, while Japan’s peerless public safety makes it fun to hang out on the street or in a park at any hour.
Americans who go to Japan have definitely noticed this:
It’s no coincidence, I think, that Japan is one of the best countries when it comes to building plenty of housing. Yes, most of its apartment buildings look like crap when evaluated in isolation on their pure architectural merits. But the urban system made up by those buildings is a wonderful place to live, and so Japanese people have few qualms about building up that system. And Americans go there and love it.
And if America built a bunch of Haussmann buildings instead of boxy 5-over-1s, it would probably only marginally improve the feel of the country’s cities. [...]
If you want American cities to look and feel so nice that Americans are willing to build housing in them, I think you have to do a lot more than give the buildings fancy facades. You have to do the hard work of putting in train lines, making side streets safe for pedestrians, rezoning for mixed use, and — perhaps most important — policing cities in order to ensure robust public safety. [prescriptions follow:]
[ed. I imagine people might feel differently if Japan's commercial ornamentation districts were exported to America and composed mostly of Taco Bell, McDonald's, and other corporate fast food signage. In fact, we already have that, and it sucks.]
For reference, here’s Sejong City in Korea, whose residential districts do indeed look rather bland and oppressive:
Some urbanists agreed, calling for regulatory reform that would allow American apartment buildings to look like the famous Haussmann buildings in Paris (depicted at the top of this post). So did some conservatives, which is unsurprising; intellectual conservatism has always called for a return to classical architecture and a rejection of modern styles. In fact, the idea that ugly building styles are a key reason that Americans disapprove of housing construction has been around quite a while, and it even has a name — “QIMBY”, meaning “quality in my back yard”.
Chris Elmendorf protested Patrick’s framing, arguing that YIMBYs have been active in pushing for reforms that would allow more beautiful buildings to be built in America: [...]
YIMBYs have been pushing for single-stair reforms that would allow more "Paris-like" buildings…The municipal design standards & reviews that YIMBY laws allow developers to bypass did not improve designs. Per [Arthur] Stamps's studies (the only relevant empirical evidence of which I'm aware), they made things worse…[T]he problem of housing aesthetics deserves more attention -- and is receiving more attention -- but it's not like YIMBYs broke something that was working.Elmendorf also pointed out that California YIMBY itself recently came out with a plan to encourage the building of more beautiful multifamily housing. The plan reads like exactly the kind of thing that Patrick might like: [...]
If California wants more European-feeling mid-rise development with courtyards, better daylight, shade, and balconies, it has to keep modernizing the [building] code…Too many building, electrical, and fire rules (in California and across the U.S.) [forbid] the buildings people actually like: bright cross-ventilated homes, true courtyard buildings, and mixed-use ground floors. All these requirements – egress, stairs, corridor, and elevator – often make projects bulkier and require much bigger lots, limiting where we can build new housing…[T]he web of building code regulations denies light, proportion, street connections, courtyards, greenspace – everything that makes buildings feel humane…Passing single-stair reforms and elevator reforms makes smaller mid-rise buildings possible, which fit on smaller lots, can be nestled into existing buildings, add variety to the streetscape, and reduce the pressure for larger, monotonous developments.So at least one prominent YIMBY organization — the one that Patrick supports — is already answering the call to focus on building aesthetics. Others are likely to follow.
I think that’s a good thing. Eliminating onerous building codes and regulations will kill two birds with one stone, making it easier to build housing even as it also makes it possible to build more of the European-style ornamentation that commentators always call for. And allowing American developers to experiment with ornamentation and alternative styles will help break up the sameness of an urban landscape dominated by endless forests of boxy 5-over-1 buildings.
But that said, I highly doubt that this — or any stylistic change — would move the needle on public acceptance of new apartment buildings.
First of all, I’m skeptical that regular Americans actually like the kinds of building styles that intellectuals often yearn for. If you plunk down old-looking European-style buildings in the middle of Houston or Seattle, people tend to ridicule them as cheesy and inauthentic. The typical insult is “pastiche”, a derogatory term for a style that jumbles and mixes old European styles (even though, as Samuel Hughes points out, mixing and matching older ideas is exactly how classic European building styles were created in the first place).
Many local design standards explicitly discourage old-style buildings. For example, Los Angeles’ planning department, in its design guide for Echo Park, writes: “Do not imitate historic architectural styles; a modern interpretation may be appropriate if architectural features are borrowed and replicated to a simpler form.”
Nor is it just old European-looking buildings that leave many Americans cold. Pietrzak and Mendelberg (2025) find that although people tend to dislike tall buildings, traditional brick facades fail to move the needle on support for housing. Alex Armlovich points out that when New York City came out with new limestone skyscrapers, only three were permitted. And Brooklyn Tower, a recently built art deco style skyscraper in Brooklyn, has drawn tons of criticism for its style.
And Elmendorf cautions that no one has yet managed to find a specific architectural style that Americans like enough to move the needle on their support for new housing: [...]
All this suggests that while some American intellectuals may pine for the cornices and mascarons of Haussmannian Paris, most Americans just think that style — and any old style — looks cheesy when it’s transplanted to an American context. This may be because Americans consciously think of their culture as a young one, more suited to modern styles than traditional ones. Or it may be because America’s artistic culture has always focused on critique and fault-finding. But whatever it is, it suggests that allowing — or even forcing — cities to build ornamented buildings will not garner a wave of popular support for new development.
Conversely, the places that do build a lot of housing tend not to build it in old, ornate European styles. Texas, which is one of the best states when it comes to building new housing, mostly constructs single-family homes with lawns. When it does build apartment buildings, they tend to look like this:
Conversely, the places that do build a lot of housing tend not to build it in old, ornate European styles. Texas, which is one of the best states when it comes to building new housing, mostly constructs single-family homes with lawns. When it does build apartment buildings, they tend to look like this:
Texas builds them anyway, for much the same reason that the Koreans built Sejong City — they’re cheap and efficient, and the state needs them to support its rapid population growth.1 You do see a little experimentation with slightly more European-style apartments in a few places, but overall it’s just boxy and functional. The fundamental driver of housing abundance in Texas isn’t architectural beauty; it’s a culture and politics that values and seeks out economic growth.
Nor is ornamental architecture necessarily what makes people love a city. Traditionalists may sigh over old European styles, and urbanists may salivate over the superilles of Barcelona, but the city that has captured the hearts of Americans in recent years is Tokyo. Downtown Tokyo is a forest of electric lights, strung up along the sides of stubby concrete mid-rises called zakkyo buildings. There’s nary a fancy cornice to be found; instead, the beauty comes from the bright cheery emblems of commerce:
Tokyo’s residential neighborhoods have even less ornamentation. They often feature flat brown or white or tan facades, hanging power lines, and bare asphalt streets with no setbacks or lawns or even trees:
And yet these are absolutely enchanting places to live. Why? Not because of the architecture, but because of the design of the city itself. The small curving streets make perfect walking paths, undisturbed by zooming traffic. Mixed-use zoning gives the neighborhood a communal, lived-in feel. Plentiful public transit makes it easy and stress-free to get around, while Japan’s peerless public safety makes it fun to hang out on the street or in a park at any hour.
Americans who go to Japan have definitely noticed this:
It’s no coincidence, I think, that Japan is one of the best countries when it comes to building plenty of housing. Yes, most of its apartment buildings look like crap when evaluated in isolation on their pure architectural merits. But the urban system made up by those buildings is a wonderful place to live, and so Japanese people have few qualms about building up that system. And Americans go there and love it.
And if America built a bunch of Haussmann buildings instead of boxy 5-over-1s, it would probably only marginally improve the feel of the country’s cities. [...]
If you want American cities to look and feel so nice that Americans are willing to build housing in them, I think you have to do a lot more than give the buildings fancy facades. You have to do the hard work of putting in train lines, making side streets safe for pedestrians, rezoning for mixed use, and — perhaps most important — policing cities in order to ensure robust public safety. [prescriptions follow:]
by Noah Smith, Noahpinion | Read more:
Images: Wyatt Simpson on Unsplash/X/Minseong Kim via Wikimedia Commons/ Kevin Doran on Unsplash/ Kentin via Wikimedia Commons/Karan Singh on Unsplash
Actors and Scribes; Words and Deeds
[ed. With all the propaganda, misdirection, and outright lies we've heard lately about our war with Iran (or non-war, per Congressional republicans); the upcoming mid-term elections; progress and effects of AI; immigration and deportation policies; the economy; future job security, etc. etc. it seems useful to consider on a basic level how all this information is being transmitted and received. After all, there's a gigantic media apparatus designed specifically for this purpose - to optimize engagement in one form or another. So, while some people might do their best to tune it all out (which would be a mistake, and probably hopeless), others sift through the noise for some semblance of truth, or to hear what they want to hear. This essay helps define some cognitive ground rules.]
***
There's "telling the truth," and then there's a more specific thing that's more obviously distinct from even Actors who are trying to make honest reports: keeping precisely accurate formal accounts...
Summary
Everyone agrees that words have meaning; they convey information from the speaker to the listener or reader. That's all they do. So when I used the phrase “words have meanings” to describe one side of a divide between people who use language to report facts, and people who use language to enact roles, was I strawmanning the other side?
I say no. Many common uses of language, including some perfectly legitimate ones, are not well-described by "words have meanings." For instance, people who try to use promises like magic spells to bind their future behavior don't seem to consider the possibility that others might treat their promises as a factual representation of what the future will be like.
Some uses of language do not simply describe objects or events in the world, but are enactive, designed to evoke particular feelings or cause particular actions. Even when speech can only be understood as a description of part of a model of the world, the context in which a sentence is uttered often implies an active intent, so if we only consider the direct meaning of the text, we will miss the most important thing about the sentence.
Some apparent uses of language’s denotative features may in fact be purely enactive. This is possible because humans initially learn language mimetically, and try to copy usage before understanding what it’s for. Primarily denotative language users are likely to assume that structural inconsistencies in speech are errors, when they’re often simply signs that the speech is primarily intended to be enactive.
Enactive language
Some uses of words are enactive: ways to build or reveal momentum. Others denote the position of things on your world-map.
In the denotative framing, words largely denote concepts that refer to specific classes of objects, events, or attributes in the world, and should be parsed as such. The meaning of a sentence is mainly decomposable into the meanings of its parts and their relations to each other. Words have distinct meanings that can be composed together in structures to communicate complex and nonobvious messages, or just uses and connotations. When you speak in this mode, it’s to describe models - relationships between concepts, which refer to classes of objects in the world.
In the enactive mode, the function of speech is to produce some action or disposition in your listener, who may be yourself. Ideas are primarily associative, reminding you of the perceptions with which the speech-act is associated. When I wrote about admonitions as performance-enhancing speech, I gave the example of someone being encouraged by their workout buddies:
Military drills are also often about disintermediating between a command and action. Soldiers learn that when you receive an order, you just do the thing. This can lead to much more decisive and coordinated action in otherwise confusing situations – a familiar stimulus can lead to a regular response.
When someone gives you driving directions by telling you what you'll observe, and what to do once you make that observation, they're trying to encode a series of observation-action linkages in you.
This sort of linkage can happen to nonverbal animals too. Operant conditioning of animals gets around most animals' difficulty understanding spoken instructions, by associating a standardized reward indicator with the desired action. Often, if you want to train a comparatively complex action like pigeons playing pong, you'll need to train them one step at a time, gradually chaining the steps together, initially rewarding much simpler behaviors that will eventually compose into the desired complex behavior.
Some uses of words are enactive: ways to build or reveal momentum. Others denote the position of things on your world-map.
In the denotative framing, words largely denote concepts that refer to specific classes of objects, events, or attributes in the world, and should be parsed as such. The meaning of a sentence is mainly decomposable into the meanings of its parts and their relations to each other. Words have distinct meanings that can be composed together in structures to communicate complex and nonobvious messages, or just uses and connotations. When you speak in this mode, it’s to describe models - relationships between concepts, which refer to classes of objects in the world.
In the enactive mode, the function of speech is to produce some action or disposition in your listener, who may be yourself. Ideas are primarily associative, reminding you of the perceptions with which the speech-act is associated. When I wrote about admonitions as performance-enhancing speech, I gave the example of someone being encouraged by their workout buddies:
Recently, at the gym, I overheard some group of exercise buddies admonishing their buddy on some machine to keep going with each rep. My first thought was, “why are they tormenting their friend? Why can’t they just leave him alone? Exercise is hard enough without trying to parse social interactions at the same time.”In the same post, I quoted Wittgenstein’s thought experiment of a language where words are only ever used as commands, with a corresponding action, never to refer to an object. Wittgenstein gives the example of a language used for nothing but military orders, and then elaborates on a hypothetical language used strictly for work orders. For instance, a foreman might use the utterance “Slab!” to direct a worker to fetch a slab of rock. I summarized the situation thus:
And then I realized - they’re doing it because, for them, it works. It's easier for them to do the workout if someone is telling them, “Keep going! Push it! One more!”
When I hear “slab”, my mind interprets this by imagining the object. A native speaker of Wittgenstein’s command language, when hearing the utterance “Slab!”, might - merely as the act of interpreting the word - feel a sense of readiness to go fetch a stone slab.Wittgenstein’s listener might think of the slab itself, but only as a secondary operation in the process of executing the command. Likewise, I might, after thinking of the object, then infer that someone wants me to do something with the slab. But that requires an additional operation: modeling the speaker as an agent and using Gricean implicature to infer their intentions. The word has different cognitive content or implications for me, than for the speaker of Wittgenstein’s command language.
Military drills are also often about disintermediating between a command and action. Soldiers learn that when you receive an order, you just do the thing. This can lead to much more decisive and coordinated action in otherwise confusing situations – a familiar stimulus can lead to a regular response.
When someone gives you driving directions by telling you what you'll observe, and what to do once you make that observation, they're trying to encode a series of observation-action linkages in you.
This sort of linkage can happen to nonverbal animals too. Operant conditioning of animals gets around most animals' difficulty understanding spoken instructions, by associating a standardized reward indicator with the desired action. Often, if you want to train a comparatively complex action like pigeons playing pong, you'll need to train them one step at a time, gradually chaining the steps together, initially rewarding much simpler behaviors that will eventually compose into the desired complex behavior.
Crucially, the communication is never about the composition itself, just the components to be composed. Indeed, it’s not about anything, from the perspective of the animal being trained. This is similar to an old-fashioned army reliant on drill, in which, during battle, soldiers are told the next action they are to take, not told about overall structure of their strategy. They are told to, not told about.
Indeterminacy of translation
It’s conceivable that having what appears to be a language in common does not protect against such differences in interpretation. Quine also points to indeterminacy of translation and thus of explicable meaning with his "gavagai" example. As Wikipedia summarizes it:
Indeterminacy of reference refers to the interpretation of words or phrases in isolation, and Quine's thesis is that no unique interpretation is possible, because a 'radical interpreter' has no way of telling which of many possible meanings the speaker has in mind. Quine uses the example of the word "gavagai" uttered by a native speaker of the unknown language Arunta upon seeing a rabbit. A speaker of English could do what seems natural and translate this as "Lo, a rabbit." But other translations would be compatible with all the evidence he has: "Lo, food"; "Let's go hunting"; "There will be a storm tonight" (these natives may be superstitious); "Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage"; "Lo, an undetached rabbit-part." Some of these might become less likely – that is, become more unwieldy hypotheses – in the light of subsequent observation. Other translations can be ruled out only by querying the natives: An affirmative answer to "Is this the same gavagai as that earlier one?" rules out some possible translations. But these questions can only be asked once the linguist has mastered much of the natives' grammar and abstract vocabulary; that in turn can only be done on the basis of hypotheses derived from simpler, observation-connected bits of language; and those sentences, on their own, admit of multiple interpretations.Everyone begins life as a tiny immigrant who does not know the local language, and has to make such inferences, or something like them. Thus, many of the difficulties in nailing down exactly what a word is doing in a foreign language have analogues in nailing down exactly what a word is doing for another speaker of one’s own language.
Mimesis, association, and structure
Not only do we all begin life as immigrants, but as immigrants with no native language to which we can analogize our adopted tongue. We learn language through mimesis. For small children, language is perhaps more like Wittgenstein's command language than my reference-language. It's a commonplace observation that children learn the utterance "No!" as an expression of will. In The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing, Eva Brann provides a charming example:
Children acquire some words, some two-word phrases, and then no. […] They say excited no to everything and guilelessly contradict their naysaying in the action: "Do you want some of my jelly sandwich?" "No." Gets on my lap and takes it away from me. […] It is a documented observation that the particle no occurs very early in children's speech, sometimes in the second year, quite a while before sentences are negated by not.First we learn language as an assertion of will, a way to command. Then, later, we learn how to use it to describe structural features of world-models. I strongly suspect that this involves some new, not entirely mimetic cognitive machinery kicking in, something qualitatively different: we start to think in terms of pointer-referent and concept-referent relations. In terms of logical structures, where "no" is not simply an assertion of negative affect, but inverts the meaning of whatever follows. Only after this do recursive clauses, conditionals, and negation of negation make any sense at all.
As long as we agree on something like rules of assembly for sentences, mimesis might mask a huge difference in how we think about things. It's instructive to look at how the current President of the United States uses language. He's talking to people who aren't bothering to track the structure of sentences. This makes him sound more "conversational" and, crucially, allows him to emphasize whichever words or phrases he wants, without burying them in a potentially hard-to-parse structure. As Katy Waldman of Slate says:
For some of us, Trump’s language is incendiary garbage. It’s not just that the ideas he wants to communicate are awful but that they come out as Saturnine gibberish or lewd smearing or racist gobbledygook. The man has never met a clause he couldn’t embellish forever and then promptly forget about. He uses adjectives as cudgels. You and I view his word casserole as not just incoherent but representative of the evil at his heart.Of course, Waldman is being condescending and wrong here. This is not word salad, it's high context communication. But high context communication isn't what you use when you are thinking you might persuade someone who doesn't already agree with you, it's just a more efficient exercise in flag-waving. The reason why we don't see a complex structure here is because Trump is not trying to communicate this sort of novel content that structural language is required for. He's just saying "what everyone was already thinking."
But it works. […]
Why? What’s the secret to Trump’s accidental brilliance? A few theories: simple component parts, weaponized unintelligibility, dark innuendo, and power signifiers.
[…] Trump tends to place the most viscerally resonant words at the end of his statements, allowing them to vibrate in our ears. For instance, unfurling his national security vision like a nativist pennant, Trump said: But, Jimmy, the problem – I mean, look, I’m for it. But look, we have people coming into the country* that are looking to do tremendous harm…. Look what happened in Paris. Look what happened in California, with, you know, 14 people dead. Other people are going to die, they’re badly injured, *we have a real problem.
Ironically, because Trump relies so heavily on footnotes, false starts, and flights of association, and because his digressions rarely hook back up with the main thought, the emotional terms take on added power. They become rays of clarity in an incoherent verbal miasma. Think about that: If Trump were a more traditionally talented orator, if he just made more sense, the surface meaning of his phrases would likely overshadow the buried connotations of each individual word. As is, to listen to Trump fit language together is to swim in an eddy of confusion punctuated by sharp stabs of dread. Which happens to be exactly the sensation he wants to evoke in order to make us nervous enough to vote for him.
But while Waldman picked a poor example, she's not wholly wrong. In some cases, the President of the United States seems to be impressionistically alluding to arguments or events his audience has already heard of – but his effective rhetorical use of insulting epithets like “Little Marco,” “Lying Ted Cruz,” and “Crooked Hillary,” fit very clearly into this schema. Instead of asking us to absorb facts about his opponents, incorporate them into coherent world-models, and then follow his argument for how we should judge them for their conduct, he used the simple expedient of putting a name next to a descriptor, repeatedly, to cause us to associate the connotations of those words. We weren't asked to think about anything. These were simply command words, designed to act directly on our feelings about the people he insulted.
We weren't asked to take his statements as factually accurate. It's enough that they're authentic.
This was persuasive to enough voters to make him President of the United States. This is not a straw man. This is real life. This is the world we live in.
You might object that the President of the United States is an unfair example, and that most people of any importance should be expected to be better and clearer thinkers than the leader of the free world. So, let's consider the case of some middling undergraduates taking an economics course.
by Ben Hoffman, Compass Rose | Read more:
Monday, April 13, 2026
Why Your Job’s Complexity Level May Affect Your Risk of Dementia
Getting an education is important for a lot of reasons, but there might be one reason you haven’t heard — it could lower your risk of dementia later in life. Decades of research have supported this claim, with one study showing that each additional year of formal education lowers the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia by 7 percent.
Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that the jobs we hold throughout our lives may matter just as much or more than years of education. Having a job that involves high levels of decision-making or creativity, rather than repetitive or manual tasks, could help keep the mind sharp and active.
“Many studies suggest that, if people are working in complex jobs during their lifetime, they have a lower likelihood of developing dementia in later life,” said Jinshil Hyun, assistant professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Roles like managers, teachers, lawyers and doctors are considered high complexity jobs, while clerical, transportation and assembly line work have lower complexity. The findings are consistent with the idea that taking part in mentally stimulating activities throughout the lifespan can help preserve late-life brain health and boost cognitive reserve — the brain’s ability to cope with age- or disease-related changes.
But don’t worry if your job doesn’t meet the criteria — there are other things that you can do to improve your cognitive reserve, such as reading, socializing and volunteering.
Why work might be linked to dementia risk
“We spend most of our day in work, at least eight hours a day. So that’s like, a third of our time engaged in work, sometimes more,” said Naaheed Mukadam, professor of psychiatry at University College London. “That’s a large part of what our brain is engaged in and therefore will have a large contributory effect on cognitive reserve development.”
In a recent study, Mukadam and her colleagues investigated which factors could be influencing education’s protective effect against dementia. Their analysis included 384,284 participants and took note of health behaviors like drinking, smoking and exercise; medical conditions like hypertension and diabetes; occupational complexity; and income. The results uncovered that occupational complexity is actually the biggest reason more education tends to lower your risk of dementia, accounting for more than 70 percent of that link.
“We found that occupational complexity explained the biggest proportion of that relationship between education and dementia,” she said. “People who have more education tend to get into better paid, more complex jobs. Then, the benefits for their physical and cognitive health compound in that way.”
Multiple studies have found that those with higher income have a lower risk of dementia, and the researchers speculate that job complexity likely plays a major role in that relationship as well.
Similarly, Hyun and her colleagues found in a 2021 study that occupational complexity is predictive of later-life dementia, independent of education. They looked at the effects on dementia-free survival time, or how many years a person lived before being diagnosed with dementia, in 10,195 participants from six countries. As expected, high school graduates had a 26 percent increase in dementia-free survival time compared to people who only completed middle school or less.
After controlling for education, high occupational complexity, compared to low occupational complexity, was associated with a 19 percent increase in dementia-free survival time. Hyun speculates that the greater mental stimulation of a complex job builds cognitive reserve, which helps people resist cognitive decline and stay mentally sharp for longer, even in the presence of harmful plaques seen in Alzheimer’s-affected brains.
“The cognitive reserve hypothesis suggests that, if people are doing cognitively enriching activities, then their brain has a more efficient network,” Hyun said.
by Meeri Kim, The Washington Post/Seattle Times | Read more:[ed. Or just develop a life long love of learning. Eric Hoffer would be a good example (longshoreman/philosopher). What'll happen when more people offload their thinking to an AI assistant?]
Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that the jobs we hold throughout our lives may matter just as much or more than years of education. Having a job that involves high levels of decision-making or creativity, rather than repetitive or manual tasks, could help keep the mind sharp and active.
Roles like managers, teachers, lawyers and doctors are considered high complexity jobs, while clerical, transportation and assembly line work have lower complexity. The findings are consistent with the idea that taking part in mentally stimulating activities throughout the lifespan can help preserve late-life brain health and boost cognitive reserve — the brain’s ability to cope with age- or disease-related changes.
But don’t worry if your job doesn’t meet the criteria — there are other things that you can do to improve your cognitive reserve, such as reading, socializing and volunteering.
Why work might be linked to dementia risk
“We spend most of our day in work, at least eight hours a day. So that’s like, a third of our time engaged in work, sometimes more,” said Naaheed Mukadam, professor of psychiatry at University College London. “That’s a large part of what our brain is engaged in and therefore will have a large contributory effect on cognitive reserve development.”
In a recent study, Mukadam and her colleagues investigated which factors could be influencing education’s protective effect against dementia. Their analysis included 384,284 participants and took note of health behaviors like drinking, smoking and exercise; medical conditions like hypertension and diabetes; occupational complexity; and income. The results uncovered that occupational complexity is actually the biggest reason more education tends to lower your risk of dementia, accounting for more than 70 percent of that link.
“We found that occupational complexity explained the biggest proportion of that relationship between education and dementia,” she said. “People who have more education tend to get into better paid, more complex jobs. Then, the benefits for their physical and cognitive health compound in that way.”
Multiple studies have found that those with higher income have a lower risk of dementia, and the researchers speculate that job complexity likely plays a major role in that relationship as well.
Similarly, Hyun and her colleagues found in a 2021 study that occupational complexity is predictive of later-life dementia, independent of education. They looked at the effects on dementia-free survival time, or how many years a person lived before being diagnosed with dementia, in 10,195 participants from six countries. As expected, high school graduates had a 26 percent increase in dementia-free survival time compared to people who only completed middle school or less.
After controlling for education, high occupational complexity, compared to low occupational complexity, was associated with a 19 percent increase in dementia-free survival time. Hyun speculates that the greater mental stimulation of a complex job builds cognitive reserve, which helps people resist cognitive decline and stay mentally sharp for longer, even in the presence of harmful plaques seen in Alzheimer’s-affected brains.
“The cognitive reserve hypothesis suggests that, if people are doing cognitively enriching activities, then their brain has a more efficient network,” Hyun said.
by Meeri Kim, The Washington Post/Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: iStock
Arby’s Reclassifies Their Food As Entertainment
via: The Onion
'Get Them All'
Why are WA farmers blindsided by an ICE crackdown?
It looks like farmers are starting to have some buyer’s remorse.
“ICE raids rattle Washington farmers who backed Trump’s immigration promises,” read one headline.
“A Republican farmer relies on immigrant work. He sees his party erasing it,” read another.
Randy Kraght is one such farmer. He runs a berry farm in Ferndale, in far northwest Washington, close to the Canadian border. Recently he emerged on a radio show in Bellingham, called “The Farming Show,” to tell how immigration agents had nabbed two of his longtime workers and sent them to the Tacoma detention facility.
“They’re my two main guys, unfortunately,” he said on KGMI on March 28. “Really good guys. Squeaky clean. Don’t drink. Not even a traffic ticket, none of that stuff.
“That’s why I didn’t worry too much about it, this whole crackdown thing,” he added. “All of a sudden you come to find out you’re wrong.”
Kraght said he had believed rhetoric from the Trump administration that it was targeting criminals, not workers. He said as a right-winger himself who backed Donald Trump — in 2020 he also gave $500 to the Loren Culp for governor campaign — that he’s “ended up really disappointed.”
What should those of us who are not farmers make of stories like this?
The crowd on social media was not sympathetic.
“You voted for this,” said one. “Haul your butt out there and work the fields yourself.”
“You just thought Trump would hurt other people,” said another.
“What did you think ‘mass deportation’ meant?” asked a third.
That last one was my reaction as well. At the GOP convention in 2024 the delegates waved “Mass Deportation Now!” signs. Trump pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Rally crowds chanted “send them home, send them home.”
It couldn’t have been clearer, could it?
Trump also talked of deporting up to 20 million people, which is thought to be more than 100% of all the people in the country illegally. It’s true Trump has also emphasized removing “the worst of the worst.” But he has canceled past directives that ordered ICE to focus its enforcement on criminals.
“He wanted mass deportation, rather than targeted deportation,” summed up the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
The director of a local farming advocacy group told me he thinks it’s unfair to say farmers should have known better.
“I don’t think farmers are simply cherry-picking what they want to hear,” said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming in Whatcom County. “They have been told repeatedly that the workers on their farms who have been with them for years are not the targets.
“While Trump may have promoted one narrative at times during his campaign, what farmers and Americans more broadly have been told over and over and over again this past year and a half is something very different.”
A Tri-City Herald editorial decrying recent arrests on farms in Central Washington made a similar case.
“On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said that immigration enforcement would primarily target undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes,” the paper wrote. “In practice, ICE has cast a wide net, capturing anyone who lacks the right papers and even some who have them.”
That’s not what I heard. On the campaign trail, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He put that in writing. He wasn’t talking just about people with criminal records. Being in the country illegally isn’t a crime by itself anyway; it’s a civil violation, like a traffic ticket.
A year before the 2024 election, in November 2023, the media outlined what Trump planned to do. “Sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 immigration plans,” The New York Times reported.
Did people not hear this — are we all in information silos? Did they not expect it to happen?
Or did they rationalize it, as the commenter up above said, as something that would only happen to others. You’d think farmers who employ undocumented immigrants would be less prone to this empathy deficit, if for no other reason than immigration is central to their business interests.
Or maybe this is one of those instances where some people take Trump literally, while others process the gist.
Recently the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and discussed this exact issue.
“I see there’s a lot of language out there that President Trump’s backing off on mass deportation,” Homan said. “No, he’s not … The Biden administration, he told ICE you can’t arrest an illegal alien unless he’s convicted of a serious offense. President Trump says, ‘Get all. Get them all.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”
There’s not much wiggle room in “get them all.”
Immigration arrests in Washington state are up 73% through the first 14 months of Trump’s term. Less than half had any criminal record or charge. Some were following green card or asylum rules and got detained anyway. A national analysis this past week found that arrests of people without criminal records is up eightfold.
[ed. At least annual farm subsidies will help some. But workers will lose an entire season's pay.]
It looks like farmers are starting to have some buyer’s remorse.
“ICE raids rattle Washington farmers who backed Trump’s immigration promises,” read one headline.
“A Republican farmer relies on immigrant work. He sees his party erasing it,” read another.
“They’re my two main guys, unfortunately,” he said on KGMI on March 28. “Really good guys. Squeaky clean. Don’t drink. Not even a traffic ticket, none of that stuff.
“That’s why I didn’t worry too much about it, this whole crackdown thing,” he added. “All of a sudden you come to find out you’re wrong.”
Kraght said he had believed rhetoric from the Trump administration that it was targeting criminals, not workers. He said as a right-winger himself who backed Donald Trump — in 2020 he also gave $500 to the Loren Culp for governor campaign — that he’s “ended up really disappointed.”
What should those of us who are not farmers make of stories like this?
The crowd on social media was not sympathetic.
“You voted for this,” said one. “Haul your butt out there and work the fields yourself.”
“You just thought Trump would hurt other people,” said another.
“What did you think ‘mass deportation’ meant?” asked a third.
That last one was my reaction as well. At the GOP convention in 2024 the delegates waved “Mass Deportation Now!” signs. Trump pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Rally crowds chanted “send them home, send them home.”
It couldn’t have been clearer, could it?
Trump also talked of deporting up to 20 million people, which is thought to be more than 100% of all the people in the country illegally. It’s true Trump has also emphasized removing “the worst of the worst.” But he has canceled past directives that ordered ICE to focus its enforcement on criminals.
“He wanted mass deportation, rather than targeted deportation,” summed up the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
The director of a local farming advocacy group told me he thinks it’s unfair to say farmers should have known better.
“I don’t think farmers are simply cherry-picking what they want to hear,” said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming in Whatcom County. “They have been told repeatedly that the workers on their farms who have been with them for years are not the targets.
“While Trump may have promoted one narrative at times during his campaign, what farmers and Americans more broadly have been told over and over and over again this past year and a half is something very different.”
A Tri-City Herald editorial decrying recent arrests on farms in Central Washington made a similar case.
“On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said that immigration enforcement would primarily target undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes,” the paper wrote. “In practice, ICE has cast a wide net, capturing anyone who lacks the right papers and even some who have them.”
That’s not what I heard. On the campaign trail, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He put that in writing. He wasn’t talking just about people with criminal records. Being in the country illegally isn’t a crime by itself anyway; it’s a civil violation, like a traffic ticket.
A year before the 2024 election, in November 2023, the media outlined what Trump planned to do. “Sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 immigration plans,” The New York Times reported.
Did people not hear this — are we all in information silos? Did they not expect it to happen?
Or did they rationalize it, as the commenter up above said, as something that would only happen to others. You’d think farmers who employ undocumented immigrants would be less prone to this empathy deficit, if for no other reason than immigration is central to their business interests.
Or maybe this is one of those instances where some people take Trump literally, while others process the gist.
Recently the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference and discussed this exact issue.
“I see there’s a lot of language out there that President Trump’s backing off on mass deportation,” Homan said. “No, he’s not … The Biden administration, he told ICE you can’t arrest an illegal alien unless he’s convicted of a serious offense. President Trump says, ‘Get all. Get them all.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”
There’s not much wiggle room in “get them all.”
Immigration arrests in Washington state are up 73% through the first 14 months of Trump’s term. Less than half had any criminal record or charge. Some were following green card or asylum rules and got detained anyway. A national analysis this past week found that arrests of people without criminal records is up eightfold.
It seems completely predictable that any mass deportation scheme will increasingly snatch up the “squeaky clean,” as farmer Kraght described his workers.
The second-guessing of this farmer, and others who suddenly are speaking out, is human nature.
Some empathy is called for as well.
Farming is in a tough spot right now, with tariffs and energy prices soaring. Tindall of Save Family Farming said adding immigration raids on top of all that, without any effort at reform of the system with permits or legal pathways, is threatening the farm system and potentially the food supply. As well as the due process rights of migrant workers and their families — something “farm owners have become deeply concerned about.”
Farm country is Trump country. It can’t be comfortable for this group, or this farmer, to cross that red line. Farmer Kraght didn’t have to tell his story or acknowledge being wrong. Or to suggest some of his workers were undocumented, a reality farmers sometimes gloss over.
Political change comes in many ways, from small gatherings in living rooms to mass street protests. This is one of the ways, when one by one, the scales begin to fall from people’s eyes.
The second-guessing of this farmer, and others who suddenly are speaking out, is human nature.
Some empathy is called for as well.
Farming is in a tough spot right now, with tariffs and energy prices soaring. Tindall of Save Family Farming said adding immigration raids on top of all that, without any effort at reform of the system with permits or legal pathways, is threatening the farm system and potentially the food supply. As well as the due process rights of migrant workers and their families — something “farm owners have become deeply concerned about.”
Farm country is Trump country. It can’t be comfortable for this group, or this farmer, to cross that red line. Farmer Kraght didn’t have to tell his story or acknowledge being wrong. Or to suggest some of his workers were undocumented, a reality farmers sometimes gloss over.
Political change comes in many ways, from small gatherings in living rooms to mass street protests. This is one of the ways, when one by one, the scales begin to fall from people’s eyes.
by Danny Westneat, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Matt Rourke / The Associated Press
Tragedy and the Common Man
In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy-or tragedy above us. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, that the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied.
I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.
More simply, when the question of tragedy in art is not at issue, we never hesitate to attribute to the well-placed and the exalted the very same mental processes as the lowly. And finally, if the exaltation of tragic action were truly a property of the high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it.
As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.
In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing - and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.
But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us - from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment-comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy. [...]
The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.
Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.
The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions.
Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible.
And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution.
The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.
There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.
For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.
The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.
Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.
It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time - the heart and spirit of the average man.
I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.
As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.
In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing - and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category.
But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us - from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment-comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy. [...]
The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.
Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.
The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions.
Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible.
And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution.
The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.
There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.
For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.
The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.
Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.
It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time - the heart and spirit of the average man.
by Arthur Miller, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane in “Death of a Salesman”. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times[ed. See also: A Cold, Perfect ‘Death of a Salesman’ for Our Time (NY Times).]
Iran War: Negotiations Fail; US Provokes with Destroyer Entry into Strait, Possible Next Kinetic Moves
The US/Iran talks failed, predictably but perhaps faster than expected. Recall that a pause misleadingly called a ceasefire was set for two week to allow for settlement of disagreements and an end to the conflict. The session ended with JD Vance claiming that the US had made its “final and best offer.” There was no indication from either the US or Iran side that further discussion was in the works.
The two sides had a ginormous chasm between their positions. Iran had not reason to either trust the US or make large concessions. The badly-enbubbled US leadership seems to believe one or both of two things. First, that the US has won and/or is winning, so (in a variant of “the Russians are running out of weapons”) if they can keep pressure on, Iran will soon fall into a heap. Second, that the continuation of the conflict will benefit key interest groups aligned with the Administration, such as fossil fuel players, defense contractors, and Silicon Valley. The latter view is as nutty as the first. As the wags say, the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. They eventually kill economic activity and lead to low oil prices. The futures market expects that, with longer-dated contracts trading more in line with old normal prices.
We’ll turn first to the recaps and hot takes on what happened, and then look at why failure was predictable and what happens next.
The talks lasted 21 hours. Recall Iran had set a one-day limit. Iran in a show of seriousness sent a massive team, including technical, military, security and banking experts. This was likely intended to stand in contrast to the lightweights America dispatched.
In another valuable exchange, Alastair Crooke tells Chris Hedges that the Iranians view the ceasefire as what they would call a hudna (which seems even more provisional) and offers some key high-level observations. [video]
From a mildly cleaned-up machine transcript starting at 9:25:
The two sides had a ginormous chasm between their positions. Iran had not reason to either trust the US or make large concessions. The badly-enbubbled US leadership seems to believe one or both of two things. First, that the US has won and/or is winning, so (in a variant of “the Russians are running out of weapons”) if they can keep pressure on, Iran will soon fall into a heap. Second, that the continuation of the conflict will benefit key interest groups aligned with the Administration, such as fossil fuel players, defense contractors, and Silicon Valley. The latter view is as nutty as the first. As the wags say, the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. They eventually kill economic activity and lead to low oil prices. The futures market expects that, with longer-dated contracts trading more in line with old normal prices.
The talks lasted 21 hours. Recall Iran had set a one-day limit. Iran in a show of seriousness sent a massive team, including technical, military, security and banking experts. This was likely intended to stand in contrast to the lightweights America dispatched.
"We are disappointed with how US behaved. Netanyahu's call to Vance during the meeting shifted the focus from US-Iran negotiations to Israel's interests. The U.S. tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war. We came here with good faith, the press conference by Vance before he left Pakistan was unnecessary, we are committed & prepared to safeguard our nation's interest and sovereignty"- Iran FM Seyed Abbas Araghchi
First, the US position is that Iran would not accept its terms, strongly implying that the US did not intend to negotiate. Vance depicts the main sticking points as Iran refusing to commit never to build a nuclear weapon. That is code for no enrichment, even for medical purposes, a position Iran has consistently rejected.
Second, you may have noticed that Vance by implication saying Iran had to negotiate from the US position amounted to a disagreement over process, or what in Vietnam War negotiations was called the shape of the table. Iran had repeatedly maintained that it had preconditions for negotiation, such as the return of all of its frozen assets, an end to hostilities on all Middle East fronts, and acceptance of its sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Vance framing indicates that the US puts its fingers in its ears and said, “Nyah nyah nyah” to Iran’s procedural requirements.
You’ll see in the Aljazeera segment a bizarre amount of cope about how the negotiations might restart later. IMHO this is impossible absent big and undeniable changes in facts on the ground, and/or regime change in Israel or the US.
Iran quickly made clear why the interaction went nowhere. The Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman cited an atmosphere of mistrust…
The Speaker of the Parliament, MB Ghalibaf, similarly said, “…the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.””
It looks as if, true to form, the Trump Team was unable to contain its bad impulses. It engaged in a show of macho by sending two destroyers to the Strait of Hormuz while the talks were underway. More on this soon, but the US predictably tried making noise about the vessels getting through the Strait of Hormuz, when this was in fact a bad-faith action. Iran would not shoot as the ship as it normally would absent the pow-wow. Instead, parties in Iran contacted their negotiators. They informed the US side that if the destroyer did not exit in 30 minutes, it would be attacked. It beat a retreat.
Larry Johnson provides additional intel in Trump Refuses Exit Ramp, War with Iran will Continue:
Second, you may have noticed that Vance by implication saying Iran had to negotiate from the US position amounted to a disagreement over process, or what in Vietnam War negotiations was called the shape of the table. Iran had repeatedly maintained that it had preconditions for negotiation, such as the return of all of its frozen assets, an end to hostilities on all Middle East fronts, and acceptance of its sovereign control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Vance framing indicates that the US puts its fingers in its ears and said, “Nyah nyah nyah” to Iran’s procedural requirements.
You’ll see in the Aljazeera segment a bizarre amount of cope about how the negotiations might restart later. IMHO this is impossible absent big and undeniable changes in facts on the ground, and/or regime change in Israel or the US.
Iran quickly made clear why the interaction went nowhere. The Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman cited an atmosphere of mistrust…
The Speaker of the Parliament, MB Ghalibaf, similarly said, “…the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.””
It looks as if, true to form, the Trump Team was unable to contain its bad impulses. It engaged in a show of macho by sending two destroyers to the Strait of Hormuz while the talks were underway. More on this soon, but the US predictably tried making noise about the vessels getting through the Strait of Hormuz, when this was in fact a bad-faith action. Iran would not shoot as the ship as it normally would absent the pow-wow. Instead, parties in Iran contacted their negotiators. They informed the US side that if the destroyer did not exit in 30 minutes, it would be attacked. It beat a retreat.
Larry Johnson provides additional intel in Trump Refuses Exit Ramp, War with Iran will Continue:
As I expected, the negotiation between the US and Iran failed to reach an agreement. Although JD Vance headed the US team, he was never in control… I have heard from someone who was directly involved with this circus in Islamabad that Israeli agents — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — made certain that JD Vance would not follow his instincts and accept the deal that Iran had laid on the table. Israel’s role in sabotaging the US delegation was evident in Vance’s statement announcing the failure of the negotiations, when he falsely accused Iran of refusing to give up its alleged quest for a nuclear weapon. This is just a rehashed piece of Zionist propaganda.
There were three Iranian conditions that the US refused to accept: Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, an end to Israel’s attack on Lebanon and Hezbollah, unfreezing of Iran’s assets and retaining sovereignty over its supply of enriched uranium. I have said repeatedly this past week during various interviews on the subject that Iran’s position on these issues was non-negotiable.
Here is the statement just released by the Iranian government:
The American enemy, which is vile, wicked and dishonest — attempted to achieve on the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war.
Among these demands are handing over enriched uranium and opening the Strait of Hormuz without confirmed Iranian sovereignty over it.
Iran has decided to reject these terms and continue the sacred defense of its fatherland by any means necessary, military or diplomatic.’
Reports from the Iranian side suggest an additional layer of spin via the focus on the “nuclear weapsons” issue, that of the US refusal to pressure Israel to halt attacks on Lebanon was a big no-go for them...
It was also clear, via the provocation as the talks were on of the US trying to send a destroyer through the Strait of Hormuz. The US propagandists make much of the claim that it “got through”. This sort of dick-wagging in fact reveals the weakness of the US position, that it is desperate to score what it can present as wins to hide its fundamental defeat.
Patrick Henningsen, in a discussion before the talks broke down, describes why he was confident they would fail.... [video]
There’s a lot of important insight here, so I urge you to listen to the entire segment. Henningsen says the Iranians did not seem to think an agreement was possible but nevertheless treated the process seriously to show they were a “normative power”. He describes Trump’s terrible track record as a negotiator and that he, Witkoff and Kushner seem unable to conduct themselves in a way that fosters productive long-term relationships. And aside from the posture of the Trump Team, Israel stood ready to sabotage any deal. Henningsen aligns with Alastair Crooke in seeing the US and Israel as trying to stoke civil war in Lebanon.
Nima cites a CNN report that China has been arming Iran. Henningsen believes China like Russia has been preparing for the worst.
Max Blumenthal, in a discussion with Glenn Diesen, effectively dashes any hope of what Joe Kent described as the only hope for an early-ish end of the Iran war, that of the US cutting Israel loose. Blumenthal describes long form the deep ties between Trump and the Zionists, going back to his father Fred Trump. Blumenthal lists many figures in Trump’s inner circle, some of whom may not be familiar to readers, as well as his family’s investment in a network of Zionist influencers. [video]
Patrick Henningsen, in a discussion before the talks broke down, describes why he was confident they would fail.... [video]
There’s a lot of important insight here, so I urge you to listen to the entire segment. Henningsen says the Iranians did not seem to think an agreement was possible but nevertheless treated the process seriously to show they were a “normative power”. He describes Trump’s terrible track record as a negotiator and that he, Witkoff and Kushner seem unable to conduct themselves in a way that fosters productive long-term relationships. And aside from the posture of the Trump Team, Israel stood ready to sabotage any deal. Henningsen aligns with Alastair Crooke in seeing the US and Israel as trying to stoke civil war in Lebanon.
Nima cites a CNN report that China has been arming Iran. Henningsen believes China like Russia has been preparing for the worst.
Max Blumenthal, in a discussion with Glenn Diesen, effectively dashes any hope of what Joe Kent described as the only hope for an early-ish end of the Iran war, that of the US cutting Israel loose. Blumenthal describes long form the deep ties between Trump and the Zionists, going back to his father Fred Trump. Blumenthal lists many figures in Trump’s inner circle, some of whom may not be familiar to readers, as well as his family’s investment in a network of Zionist influencers. [video]
In another valuable exchange, Alastair Crooke tells Chris Hedges that the Iranians view the ceasefire as what they would call a hudna (which seems even more provisional) and offers some key high-level observations. [video]
From a mildly cleaned-up machine transcript starting at 9:25:
Crooke: I mean in a nutshell the objectives of Iran are to blow blow up the existing paradigm. That is a revolutionary objective, to blow it up completely, in order that they can escape if you like from the cage in which they’ve been held for 48 years of surrounded by US military forces, besieged by tariffs, by restrictions, UN resolutions, political isolation, economic, cultural if you like boycott. So this is what they are trying to break out from break out. It’s not the same cage that the Hamas and the Palestinians are in in Gaza, which is a literal fence and drones and monitoring of it. But Iran is intent on breaking the paradigm and the key to breaking that paradigm of course is the Hormuz and their control over the Hormuz which is um the uh centerpiece of their strategic objectives.And at 12:20:
Crooke: Iran doesn’t have air dominance but instead of which they have created missile dominance overthe airspace um of the whole region and including Israel Um the damage to their missile capabilities has been grossly overstated by the old tactic of just counting, this goes back to Vietnam, counting air strikes. And one of the things that has been most notable in this period is before the war, Iran bought from China a huge number of decoys, decoy planes, decoy missiles. And one of the things um not only are they very effective in their appearance, but I didn’t know until recently is they have a heat source in them. So they are hot. And so of course that shows up on the American sensors and the Israeli sensors as a real target, a real plane, a real missile um when it’s really only a decoy.Crooke also describes how the underground missiles operate, the Iranian demand that GCC states expel major US corporations like Microsoft if they are to have a relationship with Iran, and Israel’s objectives in Lebanon.
by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
Image: X
Masters 2026: Unforgettable Moments Walking a Harrowing Back Nine with Rory McIlroy
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy raised his arms in the air. And so did I. The defending champion Masters defended reclaimed his green jacket and did it in dramatic fashion on the back nine Sunday. Attending the tournament for the first time in 10 years, I knew I had to get out and watch it and I’m glad I did.
Having walked every hole of the back nine with McIlroy as he posted his one-under 71 for a one-shot victory over Scottie Scheffler, here are five observations about the back-to-back champ
How Rory’s walk has changed
When a 21-year-old McIlroy built a four-shot lead after 54 holes at the 2011 Masters, he bounced around Augusta National. Long, curly, dark hair coming out from under his Jumeriah-sponsored cap, his walk was quick, youthful and energetic. Fast forward 15 years and the man and that walk have evolved.
Weekend rounds at Augusta are slow. As I arrived at the ninth green Sunday, in front of the Augusta National clubhouse, it was 4:35 p.m. Just a few feet to my left, on the 18th green, McIlroy would go on to win the tournament at 6:55 p.m. It took the final group nearly 2 1/2 hours to play the back nine, on perhaps the hottest day in Augusta, Ga.,, this year.
I was struck by just how slow Rory’s walk was. Down to the green on 10, back to the tee on 13, across the bridge on 15, he wasn’t bouncing. He was pacing himself. Literally. He spoke throughout the 2025 Masters about how he and Bob Rotella, a famous golf psychologist, had worked on a mindset of “staying in a bubble”, focusing on himself and controlling what he could control.
A year later, it was more of the same.
On the 13th hole, McIlroy slowed to a stop. Standing in the fairway for about three or four minutes. Not as his ball in the fairway, back near the tee. Just him and Harry Diamond, his caddie, waiting. I was confused. I could see two balls near where I was standing but begin wondering if Cameron Young had hit a provisional ball. I asked a couple of fans if they had seen what happened. They were as confused as I was.
“I don't know what had happened,” McIlroy said after the round, “but Cam was pulled in behind the hedges by a couple of referees to talk about something that may or may not have happened on the course.”
It’s unclear what went on with Young in that moment, but it is clear how Rory handled it.
“I thought, instead of me getting up there and waiting at my ball forever, I'd just hang back until Cam came back out. I don't really like that second shot anyway, so I don't need to be up there looking at it for too long. So I just tried to hang back … you know, just so I could get to the ball and go through my normal routine and not be waiting up there for what I would feel like is forever.”
He paced himself. All day, but especially on the back nine. And was clear to all down at Amen Corner. [...]
The shot that may define 2026 Rory
As I arrived at Amen Corner, I positioned myself to the right of the 12th tee. With a good view of the 11th green, I watched as McIlroy made a crucial par putt from six feet to remain one shot ahead. He walked onto the 12th tee with with his caddie to a standing applause. Many patrons removed their hats, holding them in the air and cheering as the leader arrived on their stage. Young then followed, to a similar, albeit less exuberant, ovation.
The wind wasn’t strong but it was as strong as it had been all day. The flag on the 11th hole was barely moving but the 12th flag, 155 yards away, was dancing back and forth. Diamond, stood next to Rory, signalled an 11 o’clock wind direction. They had a brief conversation and pulled 9-iron. Then the wind gusted. Rory backed off and Harry stepped forward. Not towards his boss but further down the tee, attempting to get a better feel for what the wind was doing and throwing grass in the air at the end of the tee box. The information was relied to McIlroy and he settled into his routine. Not rushed, but brisk.
We watched as he hit a sawed-off fade with his 9-iron, the same shot he had practiced late on Saturday night on the range. Often you’ll hear a player talk to their ball when it’s in the air, especially on par 3s, but Rory said nothing. Dozens of patrons shouted, nearly everyone of them in admiration as the ball flew towards the bunker, fading ever so slightly towards the right pin position. It landed, both with a thud and a huge cheer from the crowd, and released out to seven feet.
It will be the shot that many will say won him the green jacket. What is undeniable is that it won the closest-to-the-pin contest there on Sunday. No one, none of the other 53 players who teed it up in the final round, hit it closer.
There is no prize for that. But he’ll settle for another green jacket.
The sneeze that could have changed it all
After McIlroy rolled in his putt for birdie on 12, I moved about 100 yards towards the 13th hole, taking a spot just past the trees that line the right side of the fairway. McIlroy’s ball, amazingly having missed that tee shot well right in the opening three rounds, landed just a few feet away, barely on the fairway. He was two shots clear of the field and now in the “go zone” on the par five.
Every hole is lined with fans that place their seats early in the morning with the plan to return to those seats when the leaders come through. I stood probably three rows back from those chairs, always looking for relatively short fans to stand behind. I’m 6-foot-3 and height is an advantage in these situations.
McIlroy arrived at his ball, surveyed the shot with his caddy, and pulled an 8-iron out of his bag. A good swing here and the Northern Irishman would have one arm in the green jacket. Waggle. Look. Waggle. Look. Achoo. The teenage kid in front of me sneezed. McIlroy heard and backed off his shot, resetting with his caddy and going back through his routine.
Luckily, for all involved, McIlroy avoided the same watery fate that bestowed him here 12 months ago. His ball landed on the green and released just over the back.
“I’m so f****** glad he didn’t go in the water” said the kid. His dad appeared to agree.
Having walked every hole of the back nine with McIlroy as he posted his one-under 71 for a one-shot victory over Scottie Scheffler, here are five observations about the back-to-back champ
How Rory’s walk has changed
Weekend rounds at Augusta are slow. As I arrived at the ninth green Sunday, in front of the Augusta National clubhouse, it was 4:35 p.m. Just a few feet to my left, on the 18th green, McIlroy would go on to win the tournament at 6:55 p.m. It took the final group nearly 2 1/2 hours to play the back nine, on perhaps the hottest day in Augusta, Ga.,, this year.
I was struck by just how slow Rory’s walk was. Down to the green on 10, back to the tee on 13, across the bridge on 15, he wasn’t bouncing. He was pacing himself. Literally. He spoke throughout the 2025 Masters about how he and Bob Rotella, a famous golf psychologist, had worked on a mindset of “staying in a bubble”, focusing on himself and controlling what he could control.
A year later, it was more of the same.
On the 13th hole, McIlroy slowed to a stop. Standing in the fairway for about three or four minutes. Not as his ball in the fairway, back near the tee. Just him and Harry Diamond, his caddie, waiting. I was confused. I could see two balls near where I was standing but begin wondering if Cameron Young had hit a provisional ball. I asked a couple of fans if they had seen what happened. They were as confused as I was.
“I don't know what had happened,” McIlroy said after the round, “but Cam was pulled in behind the hedges by a couple of referees to talk about something that may or may not have happened on the course.”
It’s unclear what went on with Young in that moment, but it is clear how Rory handled it.
“I thought, instead of me getting up there and waiting at my ball forever, I'd just hang back until Cam came back out. I don't really like that second shot anyway, so I don't need to be up there looking at it for too long. So I just tried to hang back … you know, just so I could get to the ball and go through my normal routine and not be waiting up there for what I would feel like is forever.”
He paced himself. All day, but especially on the back nine. And was clear to all down at Amen Corner. [...]
The shot that may define 2026 Rory
As I arrived at Amen Corner, I positioned myself to the right of the 12th tee. With a good view of the 11th green, I watched as McIlroy made a crucial par putt from six feet to remain one shot ahead. He walked onto the 12th tee with with his caddie to a standing applause. Many patrons removed their hats, holding them in the air and cheering as the leader arrived on their stage. Young then followed, to a similar, albeit less exuberant, ovation.
The wind wasn’t strong but it was as strong as it had been all day. The flag on the 11th hole was barely moving but the 12th flag, 155 yards away, was dancing back and forth. Diamond, stood next to Rory, signalled an 11 o’clock wind direction. They had a brief conversation and pulled 9-iron. Then the wind gusted. Rory backed off and Harry stepped forward. Not towards his boss but further down the tee, attempting to get a better feel for what the wind was doing and throwing grass in the air at the end of the tee box. The information was relied to McIlroy and he settled into his routine. Not rushed, but brisk.
We watched as he hit a sawed-off fade with his 9-iron, the same shot he had practiced late on Saturday night on the range. Often you’ll hear a player talk to their ball when it’s in the air, especially on par 3s, but Rory said nothing. Dozens of patrons shouted, nearly everyone of them in admiration as the ball flew towards the bunker, fading ever so slightly towards the right pin position. It landed, both with a thud and a huge cheer from the crowd, and released out to seven feet.
It will be the shot that many will say won him the green jacket. What is undeniable is that it won the closest-to-the-pin contest there on Sunday. No one, none of the other 53 players who teed it up in the final round, hit it closer.
There is no prize for that. But he’ll settle for another green jacket.
The sneeze that could have changed it all
After McIlroy rolled in his putt for birdie on 12, I moved about 100 yards towards the 13th hole, taking a spot just past the trees that line the right side of the fairway. McIlroy’s ball, amazingly having missed that tee shot well right in the opening three rounds, landed just a few feet away, barely on the fairway. He was two shots clear of the field and now in the “go zone” on the par five.
Every hole is lined with fans that place their seats early in the morning with the plan to return to those seats when the leaders come through. I stood probably three rows back from those chairs, always looking for relatively short fans to stand behind. I’m 6-foot-3 and height is an advantage in these situations.
McIlroy arrived at his ball, surveyed the shot with his caddy, and pulled an 8-iron out of his bag. A good swing here and the Northern Irishman would have one arm in the green jacket. Waggle. Look. Waggle. Look. Achoo. The teenage kid in front of me sneezed. McIlroy heard and backed off his shot, resetting with his caddy and going back through his routine.
Luckily, for all involved, McIlroy avoided the same watery fate that bestowed him here 12 months ago. His ball landed on the green and released just over the back.
“I’m so f****** glad he didn’t go in the water” said the kid. His dad appeared to agree.
by Jamie Kennedy, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: J.D. Cuban
[ed. A real nail-biter. In the end he had every golfer's dream - a two-inch putt to win the Masters. Yay, Rory! The years have added a lot of grit to his game. See also: In the post-Tiger Woods era, Rory McIlroy is the lion golf needs (The Athletic). Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have what golf doesn't need: Sergio Garcia damages Masters tee box with his driver.]
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