https://apnews.com/article/india-pakistan-missiles-air-bases-1de0ca13c13899f0bd3530b4808d45ad

«India and Pakistan on Saturday agreed to a ceasefire following U.S.-led talks to end the most serious military confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades.»

Ok, this sort of thing bugs me. “Nuclear-armed rivals” in Every. Single. News story. As if to say, “brown-skinned people who talk funny and sometimes wear towels on their heads and eat weird food and maybe can’t control their tempers and OH MY GAWD have nukes!!!1!1!”

Meanwhile, we have a president who wants to nuke hurricanes and wonders why we have nukes if we can’t use them. And there’s another guy considered to be white, in another part of the world, who constantly talks about using nukes in his attempt to outright conquer another sovereign nation.

And it’s not just our current man-child. It’s the assumption that somehow only the white people are capable of cool-headed, clear thinking and responsible stewardship of so much destructive power.

And, yes, there’s the Chinese, but somehow, in the context of nukes, the evil, corrupt Chinese government becomes the anciently wise thousand-year Chinese culture because orientalism, baby.

It just occurred to me: this thing we’re seeing in the US right now is a riot. I don’t think it’s a takeover. I think it’s a bunch of people who are unhappy. They’re not trying to build something better; they’re only interested in destruction. They are voicing their unhappiness (and their joy in destruction) the same way rioters do.

If I’m right, then the response is the response to rioters: a show of overwhelming force and arrests of leaders and worst perpetrators.

Not sure how we do “overwhelming force” since they control many means of violence right now. Massive nonviolent resistance and voting, I think. That’s tough. Especially the voting.

Also, and maybe more importantly, sometimes riots go on for days, night after night. (“Night” because the reasonable people go to bed. Only when they have checked out do the extremists start doing damage.)

And the reason they go on for days, in spite of shows of force and arrests, is that the conditions for the riots still exist. They’ve been building for weeks, months, years (years and decades, in the case of politics-modelled-by-riots), so, in a sense, it’s too late once the riots have started.

The China shock, specifically, and globalization, more generally. Job loss and change.

We can’t dismiss racism, but I wonder (and now I’m thinking super-grand) if racism is just the shock (spread over generations) of meeting people different from us.

I probably can’t reduce it that far, though; it’s kind of absurd. There’s also plain competition over resources and our desire for war. Well… the desire for war on the part of our hot-headed young men and those demagogues and enablers who use that desire.

I’m thinking of northern Ireland – everybody looking the same and talking the same and picking a fairly abstract reason to murder each other over. And “fairly abstract reason” when violent young men are concerned is really just “excuse”.

So, anyway. It’s just a riot. Now what? 🤷‍♂️

Welp… Top news of the hour.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/arts/francis-fukuyama-history-liberalism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E08.Ad04.dae-IhO2z2oy&smid=url-share (gift)

Been seeing some recent chatter about Target but it looks to me like Target’s been having trouble for a while. (XRT and XLP are retail-sector funds, and seem like a reasonable comparison to me, based on stupid googling.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/opinion/voters-democratic-party.html?ref=dispatch.the-citizens.com

«Conflict drives attention. Attention drives reach. Reach drives votes. Call out the corruption, the hypocrisy, the fraud. Take big, countervailing stands. Make it visceral. Make it personal. Make it fun — the kind of thing people want to be a part of. We are just coming off a campaign cycle in which failing to do this cost us: On our worst issue, inflation, Democrats from the White House on down never convincingly named a villain. Republicans and then voters happily made the villain us.

The fight shows we care. It shows that maybe, just maybe, we might even deliver on what we say. If we can’t show people we believe in something enough to fight for it, we shouldn’t be surprised when they stop believing in us. It’s the authenticity, stupid.»

Reading comments on the piece in the WSJ about Australia I just posted (generally a mistake, I know), and I run across this:

«Let’s hope the Democrats seize on this and pick Crazy Bernie and or AOC as their next candidates.»

https://www.openweb.com/share/2wakhkshxuOW6kk6zwvXgwU7PQA

I can’t tilt at every windmill across that landscape (I kind of expected WSJ subscribers to be a little more clear-thinking but maybe it’s a matter of commenters vs. non-commenters), but I do actually have a thought, which is this:

If AOC, who I generally support, much to my surprise, wants to gain a little more heft as a real presidential possibility, she’ll work on an economic plan and make some boring economic pronouncements.

Maybe lower corporate and income taxes, raise taxes on the wealthy (consumption! mortgages on 2nd homes!), strengthen the IRS, encourage the half of America that doesn’t invest to invest, start talking about a value-added tax, etc., etc. See Planet Money’s 6-point economic plan. (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate).

«“Ordinarily, security concerns in political discourse are about China, Russia, cybersecurity, illegal immigration,” said Justin Bassi, executive director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-funded think tank. “Here the security discussion has been, can we trust our most significant security ally?”»

https://www.wsj.com/world/first-canada-now-australia-the-trump-factor-boosts-another-world-leader-in-a-close-election-bef1c5a1

If anybody wants a gift link, I can share one. I think that was the punchiest (concluding) paragraph.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/nx-s1-5384790/trump-orders-end-to-federal-funding-for-npr-and-pbs

«On social media platforms, Trump recently blasted the two national public broadcasting networks, posting in all caps: [BLAH BLAH BLAH]»

Ya know… I would stop using “blasted” and just say, “the President posted, in all caps, …”