The only way to fight Islamic terrorism is to ignore its causes while spending trillions on wars of choice that destabilize an entire region, radicalizing many thousands of young people in the process (and battle-hardening them), and in the end, at least in some cases, result in us leaving with our tail between our legs.
Meanwhile, cancer research is an area ripe for fraud, and we should halt it completely.
Jason still considers himself a libertarian, at least philosophically, but has abandoned the label because it has come to mean, at least in his view, something like the opposite of what it used to. I would not be surprised to learn he's voted against Trump in each of the last 3 elections, though. He was the one who warned about him on these pages in 2012 or thereabouts.
Hanley is more difficult to pin down. He's gone pretty fervently anti-woke, remains (from what I can tell) anti-authoritarian, and the only time I've stumbled upon his Twitter account in the last few years, he was arguing with Marxists about the labor theory of value, which is of course very Hanley of him, but tells us little about his relationship with libertarianism generally. I don't think he's gone Democratic, though.
I wonder to what extent the libertarians who were once frequent commenters or front page authors at this site think they've won. Looking through a few of their social media feeds, I'm thinking the answer is no. In fact, I think they some of them feel so defeated that they believe libertarianism itself to have been fatally compromised.
One of them joked more than a decade ago that the problem with unchecked executive power is that you might end up with Donald Trump as president. Here we are, with Donald Trump as president, and exercising completely unchecked, and seemingly uncheckable (given Congress' fecklessness and the court's impotence) executive power. I can't imagine how any libertarian would feel like that was a victory, even if Musk is, at least ostensibly, using that power to dismantle the federal government piece by piece.
And his videos combined have views in the billions. The three biggest singles from DAMN, his most commercially ambitious album, have over 1.5 billion views (HUMBLE. is over a billion by itself). He has 7 music videos with over 200 million views and 15 total with over 100 (2 more in the 90s, some someday it'll be at least 17). I dunno that Theater Kid Rap gets a billion views for one song, or 200 million for that matter.
I have seen a ton of racism on Facebook and elsewhere in the last ~24 hours, so I have a hard time blaming the people who are like, "White people, right?" If it's not in reference to you -- and I've never seen you say anything racist, so it probably isn't -- no reason to take it personally.
Metallica's time has past, but I could totally have seen them doing a halftime show during the height of their popularity after the Black Album. Probably not any other metal band, though.
The cultural barrier is definitely non-hip hop fans. I was at a Super Bowl party last night that was mostly white, all Xers and geriatric Millennials, save one Boomer (and the children), but almost everyone wanted to watch the game specifically to see the halftime show.
DAMN is at about 4.2 million now; Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City at like 3.8, and was still one of the most 50 or so most consumed albums in the U.S. for over a decade. In the age of streaming, those are pretty much Hootie numbers, especially for hip hop albums. To Pimp a Butterlfy, which I'll say again I consider one of the best albums of the century, was clearly not meant to have wide popular appeal, but still sold 1.5 million or so.
(As the person who wrote those Kendrick posts 12 years ago, basically declaring him the best thing in hop hop since Nas, I may get a little defensive of him, but also, dude is wildly, and widely popular.)
I'm interested in what you think his performance said about the failings of anyone other than Drake (and maybe his own, with the narrative of walking the line of having a message and making the sort of music that gets you a gig at the Super Bowl halftime show).
He definitely had a political message (I don't think it was revolutionary, or in 2025, all that radical, but whatever), but if you came away thinking that message was about people's personal failings, I suspect we interpreted it very differently.
I dunno what to make of the label Theater Kid Rap in reference to one of the most popular and influential rappers on the planet, one whom everyone in hip hop and outside of it (even WAY outside of it, like Taylor Swift) has had do a guest verse, one pretty much recognized by all hip hop fans as the best of his generation, one who wins Grammys (which are effectively awards for popularity) every time he releases music, one whose albums are routinely labeled "Best Album of the Year" by genre and general publications alike, nor am I sure how any of this makes his music "niche."
Try DAMN. It's effectively a pop rap album. Or the big hit from what I consider to be one of the top few albums of the century to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY
This is, at least on one level, a classic West Coast hip hop jam.
Lamar has always vacillated, sometimes in the same album, sometimes even in the same song (seriously, watch the linked video) between, er, art and pop (I don't think these are two mutually exclusive categories, mind you, but he's often trying to say something very obliquely, through metaphor, allegory, and other forms of symbolism (the halftime show was full of visual symbolism on top of, or perhaps underneath, the in your face "Uncle Sam vs Kendrick" theme), while also trying to have a broad appeal, with hooks ("I'm gonna be alright!") that will make the songs more broadly listenable.
Think of him like the artists at the forefront of jazz in the post-bop era, who felt limited by the audiences to whom they had to appeal to make a living. This comparison won't feel so far fetched if you listen tracks from his more jazzy phase, like this (which was a live performance on Colbert Report, though it's hard to find the visuals online anymore):
I only skimmed the Freddie piece, so I don't know if that part is fair, but with the rest, I agree, and what's strange about it is that the economic arguments for immigration never work politically, and are even less likely than usual to work in this moment of populism and nationalism.
I sometimes wonder why people don't use historical arguments, which can be pretty easily couched in the sorts of language that populists and nationalists love. Basically, why not just point out that for much of this country's history, the borders were effectively open, and immigrants, who make up most of our ancestors, came in droves, and helped to build this country into an economic and military powerhouse. Ethical arguments generally have little political force, at least in this country, so it would make little sense to make pro-immigration arguments on those grounds, but one could argue in today's political parlance that immigrants helped to make America great, and in a world of increasing global competition, if we want to make America great again, we are going to need as many people as we can get.
I keep hearing that Kendrick Lamar is for young people, but you can find posts on this very site about him from 2013. Dude is almost 40 and has been around since the Aughts. It ain't age that's creating a cultural barrier here.
I think the biggest issue is the lack of groups to fight through. As I mentioned above, a party of a million non-profits doesn't really help anyone join together, recognize their common interests, and work together. A union, on the other hand, can, as can other groups which have disappeared or atrophied over the last several decades. As a firm believer in dual power, I'm hoping one of the things that comes out of the horribleness of one of the major parties, and utter uselessness of the other, is the formation of the sorts of groups that help build it, and we already see people on the left calling for that, but the non-profit industrial complex, and the liberals whose ideas of politics are so wrapped up in them, will be resistant.
Dunno why you'd be celebrating those people. Solidarity doesn't demand that you work alongside the person holding a gun to your head.
I highly recommend this as a good discussion of the concept: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740355/solidarity-by-leah-hunt-hendrix-and-astra-taylor/
Solidarity is something in very short supply these days. I'm not suggesting that a better description of what you refer to as the "omnicause" is "solidarity." I'm suggesting that we need solidarity.
My own view is that we don't have an "omnicause," we have a greatly fractured cause, a party of a million non-profits, each, as a result of how they get their money and the incentives that creates, focused on their little corner of the political/activist universe. Those of us lying outside the NGO world are left being pulled in a hundred directions less because we've adopted an "omnicause" than because there are so many people to pull us, and no coordination between the pullers. A little coordination, a little cooperation, and suddenly the "omnicause" isn't the perfect as the enemy of the good, but everyone working together to achieve the goals that make up the "omnicause," but without tripping over each other. That doesn't mean we work on everything at once, of course, and there will be disputes and debates and disagreements, but we work those out together.
I find "the omnicause" to be a concept both too ideologically loaded, and too descriptive to be helpful. I wonder if it would be better to talk about solidarity, both as an antidote to division, and means towards finding "Schelling points," or at least, practical steps that people can take.
I have never been much of a Bernie fan, but he was onto something here:
In times of anxiety, upheaval, and crisis, the reactionary retreats into every smaller circles: their race, their tribe, their "community," their family, and the individual, and we see this in both the behavior and rhetoric of American conservatives and their political party, especially in this administration. Solidarity is the opposite of this retreat, and the best way to fight it. It says that in times of crisis, we have to come together, work together, and take care of each other. It opposes any division based on difference or narrow conceptions of identity. It tells us to work across and through difference, while celebrating it.
There are only two types of Vietnam movies you can make: gritty war films that are all about honoring the soldiers and the cause (Green Berets, We Were Soldiers, pretty much anything about MIAs) or gritty war films that are critical of that war and war generally (Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket). Those get tiresome after a while.
We have lost the ability to make anti-war comedies, like M.A.S.H., Good Morning Vietnam), but I think we've kinda lost the ability to laugh about much of anything these days.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
Who gets to decide what's good and what's not good? Elon Musk and his coding epigones? I promise you, risible is not how this strikes me.
"
The only way to fight Islamic terrorism is to ignore its causes while spending trillions on wars of choice that destabilize an entire region, radicalizing many thousands of young people in the process (and battle-hardening them), and in the end, at least in some cases, result in us leaving with our tail between our legs.
Meanwhile, cancer research is an area ripe for fraud, and we should halt it completely.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
Jason still considers himself a libertarian, at least philosophically, but has abandoned the label because it has come to mean, at least in his view, something like the opposite of what it used to. I would not be surprised to learn he's voted against Trump in each of the last 3 elections, though. He was the one who warned about him on these pages in 2012 or thereabouts.
Hanley is more difficult to pin down. He's gone pretty fervently anti-woke, remains (from what I can tell) anti-authoritarian, and the only time I've stumbled upon his Twitter account in the last few years, he was arguing with Marxists about the labor theory of value, which is of course very Hanley of him, but tells us little about his relationship with libertarianism generally. I don't think he's gone Democratic, though.
"
I wonder to what extent the libertarians who were once frequent commenters or front page authors at this site think they've won. Looking through a few of their social media feeds, I'm thinking the answer is no. In fact, I think they some of them feel so defeated that they believe libertarianism itself to have been fatally compromised.
One of them joked more than a decade ago that the problem with unchecked executive power is that you might end up with Donald Trump as president. Here we are, with Donald Trump as president, and exercising completely unchecked, and seemingly uncheckable (given Congress' fecklessness and the court's impotence) executive power. I can't imagine how any libertarian would feel like that was a victory, even if Musk is, at least ostensibly, using that power to dismantle the federal government piece by piece.
"
You can really tell that the libertarians have left the building, and all we're left with is the partisans bickering.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
It's cute, but someday they're gonna realize they can't do anything through the Democratic Party, and then they can actually build something.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
And his videos combined have views in the billions. The three biggest singles from DAMN, his most commercially ambitious album, have over 1.5 billion views (HUMBLE. is over a billion by itself). He has 7 music videos with over 200 million views and 15 total with over 100 (2 more in the 90s, some someday it'll be at least 17). I dunno that Theater Kid Rap gets a billion views for one song, or 200 million for that matter.
"
I have seen a ton of racism on Facebook and elsewhere in the last ~24 hours, so I have a hard time blaming the people who are like, "White people, right?" If it's not in reference to you -- and I've never seen you say anything racist, so it probably isn't -- no reason to take it personally.
"
Metallica's time has past, but I could totally have seen them doing a halftime show during the height of their popularity after the Black Album. Probably not any other metal band, though.
The cultural barrier is definitely non-hip hop fans. I was at a Super Bowl party last night that was mostly white, all Xers and geriatric Millennials, save one Boomer (and the children), but almost everyone wanted to watch the game specifically to see the halftime show.
"
DAMN is at about 4.2 million now; Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City at like 3.8, and was still one of the most 50 or so most consumed albums in the U.S. for over a decade. In the age of streaming, those are pretty much Hootie numbers, especially for hip hop albums. To Pimp a Butterlfy, which I'll say again I consider one of the best albums of the century, was clearly not meant to have wide popular appeal, but still sold 1.5 million or so.
Comparing Kendrick to Hamilton is wild.
"
(As the person who wrote those Kendrick posts 12 years ago, basically declaring him the best thing in hop hop since Nas, I may get a little defensive of him, but also, dude is wildly, and widely popular.)
"
I'm interested in what you think his performance said about the failings of anyone other than Drake (and maybe his own, with the narrative of walking the line of having a message and making the sort of music that gets you a gig at the Super Bowl halftime show).
He definitely had a political message (I don't think it was revolutionary, or in 2025, all that radical, but whatever), but if you came away thinking that message was about people's personal failings, I suspect we interpreted it very differently.
"
I dunno what to make of the label Theater Kid Rap in reference to one of the most popular and influential rappers on the planet, one whom everyone in hip hop and outside of it (even WAY outside of it, like Taylor Swift) has had do a guest verse, one pretty much recognized by all hip hop fans as the best of his generation, one who wins Grammys (which are effectively awards for popularity) every time he releases music, one whose albums are routinely labeled "Best Album of the Year" by genre and general publications alike, nor am I sure how any of this makes his music "niche."
"
Try DAMN. It's effectively a pop rap album. Or the big hit from what I consider to be one of the top few albums of the century to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY
This is, at least on one level, a classic West Coast hip hop jam.
Lamar has always vacillated, sometimes in the same album, sometimes even in the same song (seriously, watch the linked video) between, er, art and pop (I don't think these are two mutually exclusive categories, mind you, but he's often trying to say something very obliquely, through metaphor, allegory, and other forms of symbolism (the halftime show was full of visual symbolism on top of, or perhaps underneath, the in your face "Uncle Sam vs Kendrick" theme), while also trying to have a broad appeal, with hooks ("I'm gonna be alright!") that will make the songs more broadly listenable.
Think of him like the artists at the forefront of jazz in the post-bop era, who felt limited by the audiences to whom they had to appeal to make a living. This comparison won't feel so far fetched if you listen tracks from his more jazzy phase, like this (which was a live performance on Colbert Report, though it's hard to find the visuals online anymore):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM6VCk3iadA
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
I only skimmed the Freddie piece, so I don't know if that part is fair, but with the rest, I agree, and what's strange about it is that the economic arguments for immigration never work politically, and are even less likely than usual to work in this moment of populism and nationalism.
I sometimes wonder why people don't use historical arguments, which can be pretty easily couched in the sorts of language that populists and nationalists love. Basically, why not just point out that for much of this country's history, the borders were effectively open, and immigrants, who make up most of our ancestors, came in droves, and helped to build this country into an economic and military powerhouse. Ethical arguments generally have little political force, at least in this country, so it would make little sense to make pro-immigration arguments on those grounds, but one could argue in today's political parlance that immigrants helped to make America great, and in a world of increasing global competition, if we want to make America great again, we are going to need as many people as we can get.
"
Weird to see conservatives embracing DEI.
"
Ah yes, only admitting people with the right politics can't go wrong either.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
I keep hearing that Kendrick Lamar is for young people, but you can find posts on this very site about him from 2013. Dude is almost 40 and has been around since the Aughts. It ain't age that's creating a cultural barrier here.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
The Justice Department targeting Americans for having political opinions? What could possibly go wrong.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
I think the biggest issue is the lack of groups to fight through. As I mentioned above, a party of a million non-profits doesn't really help anyone join together, recognize their common interests, and work together. A union, on the other hand, can, as can other groups which have disappeared or atrophied over the last several decades. As a firm believer in dual power, I'm hoping one of the things that comes out of the horribleness of one of the major parties, and utter uselessness of the other, is the formation of the sorts of groups that help build it, and we already see people on the left calling for that, but the non-profit industrial complex, and the liberals whose ideas of politics are so wrapped up in them, will be resistant.
"
Dunno why you'd be celebrating those people. Solidarity doesn't demand that you work alongside the person holding a gun to your head.
I highly recommend this as a good discussion of the concept: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740355/solidarity-by-leah-hunt-hendrix-and-astra-taylor/
"
Solidarity is something in very short supply these days. I'm not suggesting that a better description of what you refer to as the "omnicause" is "solidarity." I'm suggesting that we need solidarity.
My own view is that we don't have an "omnicause," we have a greatly fractured cause, a party of a million non-profits, each, as a result of how they get their money and the incentives that creates, focused on their little corner of the political/activist universe. Those of us lying outside the NGO world are left being pulled in a hundred directions less because we've adopted an "omnicause" than because there are so many people to pull us, and no coordination between the pullers. A little coordination, a little cooperation, and suddenly the "omnicause" isn't the perfect as the enemy of the good, but everyone working together to achieve the goals that make up the "omnicause," but without tripping over each other. That doesn't mean we work on everything at once, of course, and there will be disputes and debates and disagreements, but we work those out together.
"
I find "the omnicause" to be a concept both too ideologically loaded, and too descriptive to be helpful. I wonder if it would be better to talk about solidarity, both as an antidote to division, and means towards finding "Schelling points," or at least, practical steps that people can take.
I have never been much of a Bernie fan, but he was onto something here:
https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1234607609472331776
In times of anxiety, upheaval, and crisis, the reactionary retreats into every smaller circles: their race, their tribe, their "community," their family, and the individual, and we see this in both the behavior and rhetoric of American conservatives and their political party, especially in this administration. Solidarity is the opposite of this retreat, and the best way to fight it. It says that in times of crisis, we have to come together, work together, and take care of each other. It opposes any division based on difference or narrow conceptions of identity. It tells us to work across and through difference, while celebrating it.
On “The 97th Oscars’ Best Picture Race: As Wide Open As It Gets”
War films making fun of war films is another genre completely unavailable to us today.
"
There are only two types of Vietnam movies you can make: gritty war films that are all about honoring the soldiers and the cause (Green Berets, We Were Soldiers, pretty much anything about MIAs) or gritty war films that are critical of that war and war generally (Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket). Those get tiresome after a while.
We have lost the ability to make anti-war comedies, like M.A.S.H., Good Morning Vietnam), but I think we've kinda lost the ability to laugh about much of anything these days.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.