Quote of the Month
"If from great nature's or our own abyss Of thought we could but snatch a certainty, Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss— But then 't would spoil much good philosophy. One system eats another up, and this Much as old Saturn ate his progeny; For when his pious consort gave him stones In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones." - Lord Byron, Don Juan, XIV.1
What I’m Reading:
1. Why China is on an economic collision course with the rest of the world
Why you should read it: In Foreign Affairs, the Rhodium Group’s Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright argue that China’s persistent trade surpluses and the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s unwillingness to change course will put Beijing on an economic collision course with the United States, Europe, and much of the rest of the world as it seeks to export its way out of its current economic doldrums..
“China’s economy has barely grown in the past two years. The immediate causes, including a decline in property construction and ham-fisted ‘zero COVID’ policies that tanked private-sector investment, are well known. But the roots of the stagnation are systemic, and firms and analysts inside China, as well as governments and businesses around the world, have waited with anticipation for Beijing to clarify its plans to put the country’s economy on a more stable track. Between 2010 and 2019—not long ago—China’s annual GDP growth averaged 7.7 percent, but today the basic policy reforms necessary to support even three or four percent growth are proving difficult for Beijing to achieve… After over two decades of strong investment-led growth, China now needs consumption-led growth. Further investment will have diminishing returns unless China can consume more at home. Yet over the past two years, the opposite has happened. Unable to sell goods to domestic buyers, Chinese companies are exporting their excess production abroad.”
“The United States, the European Union, Japan, and other advanced and developing countries worry that this trend will continue—that China is preparing to export its way out of the economic slowdown. Beijing has declined to prioritize domestic demand and openly denigrated consumer stimulus proposals, and it has promised to sustain support for the very industries that are driving China’s export growth. These policies will result in larger Chinese trade surpluses and foreign deficits, undercutting competition abroad and threatening to put Western firms out of business and their workers out of jobs… It would be difficult for China to quickly reduce its widening trade surplus, and no one expects the country’s leadership to deliver a fix overnight. But it is alarming that Beijing seems to have made no meaningful effort to right this imbalance. By idly allowing policies to remain as they are, China is setting itself up for confrontation with developed and developing economies alike.”
Why it matters: “If Beijing is unable to acknowledge the real economic harms that these policies seek to avoid, there is no starting point for a discussion with the leaders of advanced economies. G-7 countries will end up formulating solutions among themselves, rather than working with China… With few effective policy options and an unwilling negotiator in Beijing, Western governments in particular will consider increasingly draconian restrictions on Chinese trade. That shock may be what is necessary for China to take structural reforms seriously, for the sake of its own economic health and in the hope of avoiding an irreparable split in global trade.”
2. How Yemen shows ceasefires can backfire
Why you should read it: At the Cipher Brief, Ari Heistein and Nathaniel Rankin draw lessons for the current war in Gaza from the activist-led push for a ceasefire in Yemen and its suboptimal consequences.
“Under intense Western pressure, the [Saudi-led] Arab coalition entered into the Hudaydah Agreement, brokered by the UN. This required the Houthis to withdraw from the port and hand it over to a neutral third-party so that revenues from the port could be used to pay the salaries of government employees, such as teachers, throughout Yemen. In practice, despite the ceremonial ‘withdrawal’ of Houthi forces from Hudaydah port, the Iran-backed regime enjoyed the protection of the agreement without abiding by its commitments. The Houthis maintain absolute control over Hudaydah port and have yet to share any of its revenues to pay for government salaries. Instead of ending the war, the Houthis expanded it, targeting energy and transport infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the UAE with long-range drones and missiles… The foolishness of the peace-at-any-cost approach to the Yemen war was demonstrated in November of last year, when the Houthis began their relentless campaign of attacks on civilian commercial traffic in the Red Sea.”
“The parallels with Hamas in Rafah are clear and ominous. The Rafah border crossing is a major commercial artery. Control of this artery gives Hamas the ability to tax goods coming in and out of Gaza, as well as to block the exit of dissidents and opponents. Hamas is perfectly willing to create a humanitarian catastrophe as it defends its chokehold on Gaza—but allowing it to keep control means submitting to its forever war against the existence of Israel, and its constant efforts to humiliate the West and moderate Arab states. Any agreement with Hamas to facilitate some kind of compromise over the Rafah crossing is likely to turn out like the Hudaydah Agreement, a fig leaf for continued militant control that prioritizes war above all else, and treats humanitarian concerns as an opportunity for profiteering and propaganda.”
Why it matters: “There may of course be circumstances in which a temporary pause in fighting could make sense for humanitarian, political or even military reasons. But the drive for a cease fire cannot be based on a naive hope for compromise or some remote hope that these groups will abandon their stated aims. When facing an enemy whose strategy is permanent war, and whose tactics are to exploit human suffering, then a strategy based on negotiations and goodwill is itself a betrayal of humanitarian principles. Any deal which the Houthis or Hamas are offering is a deal which they see as enhancing their long-term ability to achieve their extremist and dangerous ends. The only way forward is to change the reality on the ground so as to degrade these groups’ military capabilities, and, perhaps more importantly, to prevent them from stealing aid, tightening their stranglehold on the societies under their rule, and otherwise advancing their brutal aims.”
3. How Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s worst prime minister
Why you should read it: Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeiffer details how Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving prime minister, became its worst political leader by refusing to relinquish power and pursuing ideologically-driven policies.
“…Netanyahu, the man who promised, above everything else, to deliver security for Israel’s citizens, presided over the darkest day in his country’s existence. A total breakdown of the Israeli military and intelligence structure allowed Hamas to breach Israel’s border and embark on a rampage of murder, kidnapping, and rape, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostage. The calamities of that day, the failures of leadership leading up to it, and the traumas it caused will haunt Israel for generations. Even leaving completely aside the war he has prosecuted since that day and its yet-unknown end, October 7 means that Netanyahu will always be remembered as Israel’s worst-ever leader.”
“But Benjamin Netanyahu now surpasses these contenders [for Israel’s worse prime minister] by orders of magnitude. He has brought far-right extremists into the mainstream of government and made himself, and the country, beholden to them. His corruption is flamboyant. And he has made terrible security decisions that brought existential danger to the country he pledged to lead and protect. Above all, his selfishness is without parallel: He has put his own interests ahead of Israel’s at every turn… The law didn’t require Netanyahu to resign while fighting the charges against him in court. But doing so had seemed logical to his predecessors under similar circumstances—and to Israel’s lawmakers, who had never envisaged that a prime minister would so brazenly challenge the justice system, which he had a duty to uphold. For Netanyahu, however, remaining in power was an end in itself, one more important than preserving Israel’s most crucial institutions, to say nothing of Israelis’ trust in them.”
Why it matters: “Netanyahu’s ambition has consumed both him and Israel. To regain and remain in office, he has sacrificed his own authority and parceled out power to the most extreme politicians. Since his reelection in 2022, Netanyahu is no longer the center of power but a vacuum, a black hole that has engulfed all of Israel’s political energy. His weakness has given the far right and religious fundamentalists extraordinary control over Israel’s affairs, while other segments of the population are left to pursue the never-ending quest to end his reign.”
4. The eternal recurrence of the Russia dupe
Why you should read it: New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait reviews historian Benn Steil’s new biography of Henry Wallace and finds a number of parallels between the left-wing mystic ex-vice president’s Russophilia and that of Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the rest of the contemporary American right.
“For a certain kind of radical social critic, there is an irresistible urge to look abroad for proof that your vision of a better world is possible. This was the story of Henry Wallace, a one-term vice-president under Franklin Roosevelt and briefly the intellectual and emotional leader of the American left. It is also the story of a contemporary, very different kind of social critic: Tucker Carlson, the right-wing commentator and possible future candidate for high office… Wallace developed a fascination with Soviet communism, both during his time in the Roosevelt administration and after, that has interesting parallels with Carlson’s attachment to Putin-era Russia. While he was not paid or controlled directly by communists, or even a communist himself, Wallace frequently echoed their arguments and excused their crimes; as these excuses made him anathema to his former allies, he drew tighter into the arms of his friends in Moscow.”
“Wallace’s attacks on Truman’s emerging Cold War policy eerily anticipate the arguments made today by Russia defenders like Carlson. Wallace depicted all Soviet actions, however aggressive, as a defensive response to feared or actual threats by the West. He insisted that any steps to contain Russia, even merely aiding its targets, would lead to direct war, that Russia was too strong to be successfully deterred, and that any aid to countries threatened by Russia would bankrupt the United States… Carlson’s position as a right-wing populist critic of the Republican Party bears a somewhat similar trajectory. He has positioned himself as the spokesman for Republicans who believe their party has been led by globalist elites who sold out the common man, for whom Carlson claims to speak.”
Why it matters: “Even the characterological differences between the two men turn out, upon inspection, to be smaller than they may appear. If Carlson were truly motivated by no more than fame and greed, he would have found a way to stay in the Murdoch family’s good graces and retain his lucrative prime-time perch. And if Wallace had been deeply honest, he would have fessed up about matters like his 1930s infatuation with Nicholas Roerich, a Russian émigré mystic whose cult Wallace joined, and his secret 1940s correspondence with Stalin, with whom he choreographed a planned interview designed to position Wallace as a western peace leader… Wallace, at least, eventually drew up the humility to admit the Soviets had duped him. Carlson does not seem to have the character ever to offer such a humbling confession. He seems more the type to dismiss the evidence of his own complicity with evil with his trademark hyena laugh.”
5. Modern America First isolationists in their own words
Why you should read it: Bulwark columnist and Kyiv correspondent Tamar Jacoby dives deep into the cesspool of Trump’s Truth Social platform to suss out just why so many of his acolytes oppose American aid to Ukraine.
“…I spent a few days on Truth Social and other far-right sites. I did no systematic research—just an informal canvas of the MAGA mind. But I’ve come away far more scared than I was before about what might lie ahead for U.S. foreign policy… A second big group concedes the conflict is real but believes Ukrainians are at fault—that they started the war or are somehow so evil that they deserve the death and destruction raining down on their heads. Among this group’s wild and completely unsubstantiated beliefs: that Ukraine is killing Christians and building weapons of mass destruction… A third group of MAGA supporters believes the war is Biden’s personal project—that he started it or is advancing it out of some demonic death wish.”
“Still a fourth group of Trump loyalists, by far the largest group, harks back to an older populist trope—a theory that explains everything and organizes their world—about elites who despise people like them and are prosecuting a war at odds with American interests... Just who fronts for what many MAGA voters call the ‘globalist cabal’ varies from post to post: the U.N., NATO, ‘the Biden Regime, the CIA. It’s a big tent, mostly but not only Democratic. Among the alleged members singled out in the posts I read: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi—but also Mitt Romney, Boris Johnson, and ‘elitist Zelensky’ himself, who is allegedly ‘laughing all the way to the bank as he begs the West for more money.’”
Why it matters: “This would sound familiar to twentieth-century isolationists Charles Lindbergh and Father Coughlin. They and their followers made similarly outrageous claims—about global cabals, evil capitalists, and Jewish bankers—to keep America out of a conflict building in Europe, World War II. But their dystopian fantasies were easier to counter and disprove in a time when most people would listen to a case based on agreed-upon facts… Who or what will be able to slay the isolationist monster that Donald Trump and his allies have created? It could be much harder this time around in an era when so few believe in the idea of truth.”
6. How the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic still shape the nation’s bad mood
Why you should read it: In The Atlantic, psychiatrists George Makari and Richard A. Freidman make the case that lingering unprocessed grief from the COVID-19 pandemic explain the nation’s bad mood and President Biden’s poor approval ratings.
“Four years ago, the country was brought to its knees by a world-historic disaster. COVID-19 hospitalized nearly 7 million Americans and killed more than a million; it’s still killing hundreds each week. It shut down schools and forced people into social isolation. Almost overnight, most of the country was thrown into a state of high anxiety—then, soon enough, grief and mourning. But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured. As clinical psychiatrists, we see the effects of such emotional turmoil every day, and we know that when it’s not properly processed, it can result in a general sense of unhappiness and anger—exactly the negative emotional state that might lead a nation to misperceive its fortunes… When faced with an overwhelming and painful reality like COVID, forgetting can be useful—even, to a degree, healthy. It allows people to temporarily put aside their fear and distress, and focus on the pleasures and demands of everyday life, which restores a sense of control. That way, their losses do not define them, but instead become manageable.”
“We are not suggesting that the entire country has PTSD from COVID. In fact, the majority of people who are exposed to trauma do not go on to exhibit the symptoms of PTSD. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t deeply affected. In our lifetime, COVID posed an unprecedented threat in both its overwhelming scope and severity; it left most Americans unable to protect themselves and, at times, at a loss to comprehend what was happening. That meets the clinical definition of trauma: an overwhelming experience in which you are threatened with serious physical or psychological harm… To come to terms with a traumatic experience, as clinicians know, you need to do more than ignore or simply recall it. Rather, you must rework the disconnected memory into a context, and thereby move it firmly into the past. It helps to have a narrative that makes sense of when, how, and why something transpired. For example, if you were mugged on a dark street and became fearful of the night, your therapist might suggest that you connect your general dread with the specifics of your assault. Then your terror would make sense and be restricted to that limited situation. Afterward, the more you ventured out in the dark, perhaps avoiding the dangerous block where you were jumped, the more you would form new, safe memories that would then serve to mitigate your anxiety.”
Why it matters: “Many people don’t regularly recall the details of the early pandemic—how walking down a crowded street inspired terror, how sirens wailed like clockwork in cities, or how one had to worry about inadvertently killing grandparents when visiting them. But the feelings that that experience ignited are still very much alive. This can make it difficult to rationally assess the state of our lives and our country… In the early days of the pandemic, President Donald Trump mishandled the crisis and peddled misinformation about COVID. But with 2020 a traumatic blur, Trump seems to have become the beneficiary of our collective amnesia, and Biden the repository for lingering emotional discontent. Some of that misattribution could be addressed by returning to the shattering events of the past four years and remembering what Americans went through. This process of recall is emotionally cathartic, and if it’s done right, it can even help to replace distorted memories with more accurate ones.”
7. How private equity is destroying the music industry
Why you should read it: In the New York Times, writer Marc Hogan illustrates how private equity firms have sapped the music industry of any residual creativity and risk-taking in order to milk the back catalogs of established artists.
“Does that song on your phone or on the radio or in the movie theater sound familiar? Private equity — the industry responsible for bankrupting companies, slashing jobs and raising the mortality rates at the nursing homes it acquires — is making money by gobbling up the rights to old hits and pumping them back into our present. The result is a markedly blander music scene, as financiers cannibalize the past at the expense of the future and make it even harder for us to build those new artists whose contributions will enrich our entire culture… Buying up rights to a proven hit, dusting it off and dressing it up as a movie may impress at a shareholder conference, but it does little to add to a sustainable and vibrant music ecosystem. Like farmers struggling to make it through the winter — to think of another industry upended by private equity — we are eating our artistic seed corn. “
“This creative destruction is only further weakening an industry that already offers little economic incentive to make something new. In the 1990s, as the musician and indie label founder Jenny Toomey wrote recently in Fast Company, a band could sell 10,000 copies of an album and bring in about $50,000 in revenue. To earn the same amount in 2024, the band’s whole album would need to rack up a million streams — roughly enough to put each song among Spotify’s top 1 percent of tracks. The music industry’s revenues recently hit a new high, with major labels raking in record earnings, while the streaming platforms’ models mean that the fractions of pennies that trickle through to artists are skewed toward megastars.”
Why it matters: “All music is derivative at some level — outside a courthouse or a boardroom, music has a folk tradition in which everybody borrows ideas from everybody — but it’s hard to argue that already wealthy artists should receive 1990s-level compensation for the type of flagrantly recycled fare that the private equity cohort demands. A music world without, say, a ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ theme park ride or a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ film sequel seems like one where fresher sounds could have a little more room to breathe.”
8. How China instrumentalizes a selective version of history
Why you should read it: Taiwan-based Danish journalist Frederik Kelter writes in Foreign Policy that Beijing’s selective historical memory tells us much more about the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s present-day policy priorities and political claims than anything else.
“In August 2023, Beijing laid out its current territorial claims for the world to see. The new edition of the standard map of China includes lands that are today a part of India and Russia, along with island territories such as Taiwan and comprehensive stretches of the East and South China Seas… China often invokes historical narratives to justify these claims. Beijing, for example, has said that the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which it claims under the name of the Diaoyu Islands, ‘have been an inherent territory of China since ancient times.’ Chinese officials have used the same words to back China’s right to parts of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese government also claims that its sovereignty over the South China Sea is based on its own historic maritime maps… Beijing has embraced a selective irredentism, wielding specific chapters of China’s historical record when they suit existing aims and leaving former Chinese territories be when they don’t. Over time, as Beijing’s interests and power relations have shifted, some of these claims have faded from importance, while new ones have taken their place. Yet for Taiwan, Chinese claims remain unchanged, as the fate of the island state is tied to the very legitimacy of the CCP as well as the vitality of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s political vision.”
“In recent years, the CCP has avoided the inflammatory domestic political chaos of previous decades, and its once-tentative hold over border regions, such as Tibet and the Uyghur region, has been replaced by an iron grip. With this upper hand, the CCP has little incentive to pursue peaceful resolutions to remaining territorial disputes… In this context, the CCP has expanded its irredentist ambitions. After the discovery of potential oil reserves around the Senkaku Islands, and the United States’ return of the islands to Japan in the 1970s, Beijing drew on its historical record to lay claim to the islands, even though it had previously referred to them as part of the Japanese Ryukyu Islands. Similarly, though Beijing and Moscow settled a dispute over Heixiazi Island, located along China’s northeastern border, in 2004, the 2023 map of China depicted the entire island (ceded, along with vast Pacific territories, by the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Empire in 1860) as part of its domain, much to the ire of the Russian Foreign Ministry.”
Why it matters: “Although it may say otherwise, Beijing’s unwillingness to let up on its tenuous territorial maritime claims suggests that China is pursuing long-held ambitions and global aspirations rather than attempting to reverse past losses. So long as the CCP wields its historical record selectively and changeably to serve its aims—and is willing to back its claims up with military action—China’s neighbors will remain at risk.”
9. Not everything you dislike is fascism, Judith Butler
Why you should read it: Writer Katha Politt eviscerates obscurantist literary academic Judith Butler’s latest book on gender in a review for The Atlantic.
“Fascism is a word that Butler admits is not perfect but then goes on to use repeatedly. I’m sure I’ve used it myself as a shorthand when I’m writing quickly, but it’s a bit manipulative. As used by Butler and much of the left, it covers way too many different issues and suggests that if you aren’t on board with the Butlerian worldview on every single one of them, a brown shirt must surely be hanging in your closet. As they define it—‘fascist passions or political trends are those which seek to strip people of the basic rights they require to live’—most societies for most of history have been fascist, including, for long stretches, our own. That definition is so broad and so vague as to be useless. You might even say that ‘fascism’ functions as a kind of phantasm, frightening people into accepting views wholesale without examining them individually. It’s a kind of guilt by association—like comparing critics of your prose to Nixon.”
“Like the gender phantasm, brandishing the word fascism functions much like the stance that trans activists have taken of insisting that their positions are not up for debate. That approach worked pretty well for a while. I can't tell you how many left and liberal people I know who keep quiet about their doubts because they fear being ostracized professionally or socially. Nobody wants to be accused of putting trans people's lives in danger, and, after all, don't we all want, as the slogan goes, to “Be Kind”? This self-imposed silence is a tiny problem compared with what trans people go through. The trouble is that, in the long run, the demand for self-suppression fuels reaction. Polls show declining support for various trans demands for acceptance. People don’t like being forced by social pressure to deny what they think of as the reality of sex and gender.”
Why it matters: “Butler seems to want their opponents to simply cave. It could happen. Maybe 10 or 20 years from now, gender-critical feminism will seem as silly as opposition to same-sex marriage does today—a moral panic over what will be by then perfectly harmless, normal life. Then again, it could go the other way: In 10 or 20 years, the present moment might seem like a parenthesis in the long history of an overwhelmingly sexually dimorphic species. So here’s a thought: What if instead of trying to suppress the questioning of skeptics, we admit we don’t have many answers? What if, instead, we had a conversation? After all, isn’t that what philosophy is all about?”
Odds and Ends
What did ancient Roman wine taste like? Find out…
How the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius dealt with anxiety…
Why Singapore’s prime minister had to reassure his country’s neighbors that the city-state’s exclusive concert deal with Taylor Swift was not a hostile act…
How Bronze Age Britons lived circa 850 BC, according to recent archaeological finds…
Your map for this month’s total solar eclipse…
What I’m Listening To
“Habits,” from Gary Clark Jr.’s new album JPEG RAW.
“Running,” from Norah Jones’ new album Visions.
“Reasons I Drink,” a track from Alanis Morissette 2019 album Such Pretty Forks in the Road.
Image of the Month
