Enjoying the view from Limbo
The following is an account of a new interview of Donald Trump’s chief “negotiator” with Vladimir Putin, Steve Witkoff, conducted by the perfect interviewer for putting Witkoff at his ease in expressing his true thoughts about his assignment, namely Tucker Carlson, who has been the American media’s number one apologist for the Kremlin since the weeks before Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine. “What...
America Descending / Death by Education / Ideas and Reflections
by Daren Jonescu · Published November 23, 2025
Here is the final paragraph of Allan Bloom’s indispensable essay on the fate of the American mind: This is the American moment in world history, the one for which we shall forever be judged. Just as in politics the responsibility for the fate of freedom in the world has devolved upon our regime, so the fate of philosophy in the world has devolved...
Is there a level of cowardice lower than Donald Trump? After a few weeks of off-and-on posturing about “getting tough with Russia,” Trump has boldly reasserted what was never really in doubt, namely that Vladimir Putin owns him and always has, and that Trump will happily go down in history as the man who served as Putin’s battering ram into the gates of...
The trouble with followers.– The weakminded types who are quickest to join a crowd for fear of being left alone outside also tend to be the quickest to run for the door for fear of being left alone inside. Seeing how it feels.– Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was one of the loudest MAGA cheerleaders while Donald Trump was lying and rabble-rousing to foment...
For months, Donald Trump’s presidential path has been determined, both overtly and implicity, by his glaringly obvious desperation to quell the public appetite for transparency about “the Epstein files,” a grotesque treasure trove of documents which, as we already know, includes so many references or allusions to Trump’s long-term friendly relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and so many indications of his...
Coding the future.– Elon Musk asserts with enthusiasm that in ten years there will no longer be jobs for humans — where by humans he means, in general, humans not at the very top of the digitized food chain, and in particular humans other than himself. Avarice being a native illness of the soul, it is not surprising that those most severely infected...
A tyrant is not a man who desires bad things. (No one desires bad things.) A tyrant is a man who is ignorant enough to have no idea what a good thing is or where to find one; who was raised poorly enough never to have learned the difference between wishing something could be so and believing one has every right to force...
Enduring fame is either an emblem of vulgar vanity or an indication of past virtue. In either case, vanity or virtue, the remnant is generic, in that it can in no way reveal what is personal or individual in the doer, but rather, if anything, obscures it even more completely than the mists of time can obscure the person who remains “unaccomplished” and...
Liberty's Labors Lost / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 18, 2025 · Last modified October 28, 2025
In Trump Fantasy Land, America’s aspirational (thus far) dictator and Nobel Peace Prize earner has just brokered perpetual peace in the Middle East. In reality, of course, which never looks very much like Trump’s imagination, a hostage exchange has taken place, though at the point when there were very few Israeli hostages who had not already been killed; and a temporary ceasefire agreement...
What men will believe if it supports the rhetorical interests of their tribe. What they will overlook if it undercuts their self-identifying faith in their tribe. And how often the tribesmen will employ the former with the greatest force of absurdity as a psychological bulwark against having to confront themselves with the most disturbing evidence of the latter. Glenn Beck recently hosted a...
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