This is some of the best writing I have seen on substack in a long time, so many quotable lines:
And this is what staring into the abyss looks like in practice. Not some abstract philosophical crisis, but the concrete collapse of the frameworks that make legal reasoning possible.
when appointment statutes become “technical” obstacles rather than constitutional constraints
the inevitable unfolding of corruption that cannot permit competence
the law as an obstacle to be gamed rather than a framework constraining power. Once you make that move, you’ve abandoned the rule of law entirely
destroying frameworks requires stupidity—not because the people involved lack intelligence, but because intelligent defense of the indefensible is impossible
The framework cannot cohere. So stupidity becomes the only option. Not chosen stupidity, but necessary stupidity—the epistemic collapse that corruption requires.
constitutional surrender dressed as principle
The difference wasn’t intelligence or analytical sophistication. It was willingness to take seriously what was being said explicitly.
Their framework assumed everyone operates within frameworks
sophistication that cannot recognize monsters when they tell you what they are isn’t sophistication at all
Eisenhower hated war. The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, the general who planned D-Day, who wrote two speeches for that day—one for success, one for failure—who bore the weight of sending tens of thousands of young men to storm beaches where German panzer divisions waited, who carried those deaths with him for the rest of his life. He hated war.
acting like an asshole to everyone all the time, eventually it’s going to bubble up in terms of consumer preferences (quoting Galloway)
the petulant ignorance of someone who’s never borne responsibility for anything larger
The world is watching. Not with fear of American strength but with pity for American decline. They’re building alternatives to American brands, American payment systems, American technology, American alliances. They’re diversifying away from dollar dependence. They’re creating parallel institutions. And they’re doing it faster
completely incompatible understandings of what strength is for
nihilism dressed in camouflage
the replacement of virtue with violence, principle with power, strength with brutality
corruption has destroyed the conditions making thought possible
What remains is strategic silence, tribal defense without legal argument, linguistic manipulation where words mean whatever power declares them to mean, institutional cover for abandoning constitutional constraints, fracture into camps that cannot speak to each other because they no longer share even basic frameworks for evaluating whether something can be defended
This is how constitutional republics die. Not through formal coup or dramatic collapse but through making it dangerous to invoke constitutional protections
The center holds not because it is strong but because we choose to hold it.
And two plus two still equals four.
The circus continues. The wire still holds. And we continue with it, conscious beings choosing meaning against meaninglessness, law against will, truth against power, humanity against the abyss.
Because the alternative is unthinkable. And we are not done thinking yet.
"Not with fear of American strength but with pity for American decline" This is a line that hit home. An uncle and an aunt emigrated after WWII from Germany to the US and as children we always looked in admiration over the pond. The uncle in America was sth to brag about in school. Now I live in the US. Things have changed for sure.
I confess, I only could get through half of Mike's commentary. I probably have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but the commentary just is too long for my neuronal pathways.
What I see from the lens of perspective is plain and simple. We praise and make reference to the US Constitution but we are too fucking stupid a nation to realize that over time and contextual changes, some of what the Founding Fathers wrote in 1787 needs CORRECTION.
We clearly cannot have a "Supreme" Court that is corrupt and is obviously biased, nor can we have appointments to SCOTUS that can be delayed by the immoral behavior of one party or the other. We should not have a lifetime appointment for anything other than the survival and care of Earth. What if Biden or Trump were Supreme Court justices?
Mike presents the Comey Conundrum, and yet we forget that it was Comey's stupidity in releasing pre-National election, the bad news about Hilary's private email server. That might have cost Hilary the election (whether you found her unsatisfactory, or not). And we forget that Trump also had the help of Putin regarding the email leak, and that did not alarm everyone. So we have Trump winning the 2016 presidency based on factors that should have been challenged or clearly prevented.
We have the Bondi appointment as attorney general of the US. Clearly she is a grotesque exaggeration of prior AG appointments by Trump: Barr, Sessions. Obviously, both of these were not AGs independent of Trump, but Bondi is flagrant. She is a caricature of the crooked lawyer, and god knows I have met more than my share.
Aside: have others noticed that Trump female appointees seem to have a lot in common. Most are blond and some like Leavitt are incredibly stupid. Most are very attractive, and even commentators on Fox News are more often good-looking than homely. It reminds me of the saying: "Beauty is skin deep, but ugly is all the way to the bone." I find Bondi and Leavitt to be hideous women. Sorry for my abrasive honesty. Halligan is attractive, but not blond, but certainly seems inept. Trump has filled our government with some of the stupidest people in charge of the world's most powerful "corporation." And we are the stockholders, and the majority of our fellow stockholders clearly were as stupid as Trump's appointees.
If, by some miracle, Trump does not ask for a coup and use US Military VS Citizens, and the Democrats take control of both houses and presidency, they had better enact FAR more secure restraints to prevent a future lunatic a la Trump from Trampling Democracy. What we have now is a bullshit government run by a cast of characters that are unbelievable in their behavior and obvious in their greed and passivity to Trump. If this is not the best shit show in the history of any government then tell me what is.
Mike: "... we can still choose to say what is true, defend what is real ..."
Fairly impassioned and quite credible indictment of Trump’s many failings.
Though one might wonder why your talents weren't equally exercised by Kamala -- she's for they/them -- Harris' "2+2=5" insistence that "trans women are women", at some fairly large group of Democrats trying to put transwomen -- AKA, male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached and sexless eunuchs if they don't -- into women's sports, prisons, toilets, change rooms, military formations, and uniforms.
DIAG: On November 17th, 130 Congressional Democrats (nine senators and 121 representatives) filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down state laws that protect the female category in sport.
Thank you for your ability to write about the insanity. The current government reveals that people with the loudest voices and biggest bank accounts are not the best people to be in government. This is why we all need to vote.
Another looong post. I appreciate that you're knowledgeable about National Review, Federalist, Wall Street Journal, Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Truth Social, and X. I can't do that part. I greatly appreciate your analysis of Eisenhower's values and vision. My father would agree.
I'm perplexed by your pattern of writing very clear paragraphs and then haranguing paragraphs.
There are certain white men through modern history who, though embedded in a culture that separated men from women in countless hierarchical ways, represent a kind of sober intelligence that might even be called "feminist." I'm thinking of their deliberate rejection of the kind of macho-masculinity that is the badge of Hegseth and all those ridiculous men around him. I may be taken to task for pinning the label 'feminist' on General Dwight Eisenhower and Justice Robert Jackson. But please read this in context. All those old school Republicans who I have spent my life campaigning against--well, they have much to teach us about the present moment. When Eisenhower was president, the top bracket tax was 91%. The world has shifted.
Lionel Hutz is a better lawyer than all the lawyers that trump hires also when this moment is over alot people especially Pamela Blondie is gonna lose her Bar card
As Rick Wilson says ETTD especially that last part
Well written.
Thanks.
This is quite an astute analysis of where we sit. We better get off our asses and walk the wire with each other. It is necessary.
This is some of the best writing I have seen on substack in a long time, so many quotable lines:
And this is what staring into the abyss looks like in practice. Not some abstract philosophical crisis, but the concrete collapse of the frameworks that make legal reasoning possible.
when appointment statutes become “technical” obstacles rather than constitutional constraints
the inevitable unfolding of corruption that cannot permit competence
the law as an obstacle to be gamed rather than a framework constraining power. Once you make that move, you’ve abandoned the rule of law entirely
destroying frameworks requires stupidity—not because the people involved lack intelligence, but because intelligent defense of the indefensible is impossible
The framework cannot cohere. So stupidity becomes the only option. Not chosen stupidity, but necessary stupidity—the epistemic collapse that corruption requires.
constitutional surrender dressed as principle
The difference wasn’t intelligence or analytical sophistication. It was willingness to take seriously what was being said explicitly.
Their framework assumed everyone operates within frameworks
sophistication that cannot recognize monsters when they tell you what they are isn’t sophistication at all
Eisenhower hated war. The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, the general who planned D-Day, who wrote two speeches for that day—one for success, one for failure—who bore the weight of sending tens of thousands of young men to storm beaches where German panzer divisions waited, who carried those deaths with him for the rest of his life. He hated war.
acting like an asshole to everyone all the time, eventually it’s going to bubble up in terms of consumer preferences (quoting Galloway)
the petulant ignorance of someone who’s never borne responsibility for anything larger
The world is watching. Not with fear of American strength but with pity for American decline. They’re building alternatives to American brands, American payment systems, American technology, American alliances. They’re diversifying away from dollar dependence. They’re creating parallel institutions. And they’re doing it faster
completely incompatible understandings of what strength is for
nihilism dressed in camouflage
the replacement of virtue with violence, principle with power, strength with brutality
corruption has destroyed the conditions making thought possible
What remains is strategic silence, tribal defense without legal argument, linguistic manipulation where words mean whatever power declares them to mean, institutional cover for abandoning constitutional constraints, fracture into camps that cannot speak to each other because they no longer share even basic frameworks for evaluating whether something can be defended
This is how constitutional republics die. Not through formal coup or dramatic collapse but through making it dangerous to invoke constitutional protections
The center holds not because it is strong but because we choose to hold it.
And two plus two still equals four.
The circus continues. The wire still holds. And we continue with it, conscious beings choosing meaning against meaninglessness, law against will, truth against power, humanity against the abyss.
Because the alternative is unthinkable. And we are not done thinking yet.
Very kind words. Thank you.
"Not with fear of American strength but with pity for American decline" This is a line that hit home. An uncle and an aunt emigrated after WWII from Germany to the US and as children we always looked in admiration over the pond. The uncle in America was sth to brag about in school. Now I live in the US. Things have changed for sure.
I confess, I only could get through half of Mike's commentary. I probably have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but the commentary just is too long for my neuronal pathways.
What I see from the lens of perspective is plain and simple. We praise and make reference to the US Constitution but we are too fucking stupid a nation to realize that over time and contextual changes, some of what the Founding Fathers wrote in 1787 needs CORRECTION.
We clearly cannot have a "Supreme" Court that is corrupt and is obviously biased, nor can we have appointments to SCOTUS that can be delayed by the immoral behavior of one party or the other. We should not have a lifetime appointment for anything other than the survival and care of Earth. What if Biden or Trump were Supreme Court justices?
Mike presents the Comey Conundrum, and yet we forget that it was Comey's stupidity in releasing pre-National election, the bad news about Hilary's private email server. That might have cost Hilary the election (whether you found her unsatisfactory, or not). And we forget that Trump also had the help of Putin regarding the email leak, and that did not alarm everyone. So we have Trump winning the 2016 presidency based on factors that should have been challenged or clearly prevented.
We have the Bondi appointment as attorney general of the US. Clearly she is a grotesque exaggeration of prior AG appointments by Trump: Barr, Sessions. Obviously, both of these were not AGs independent of Trump, but Bondi is flagrant. She is a caricature of the crooked lawyer, and god knows I have met more than my share.
Aside: have others noticed that Trump female appointees seem to have a lot in common. Most are blond and some like Leavitt are incredibly stupid. Most are very attractive, and even commentators on Fox News are more often good-looking than homely. It reminds me of the saying: "Beauty is skin deep, but ugly is all the way to the bone." I find Bondi and Leavitt to be hideous women. Sorry for my abrasive honesty. Halligan is attractive, but not blond, but certainly seems inept. Trump has filled our government with some of the stupidest people in charge of the world's most powerful "corporation." And we are the stockholders, and the majority of our fellow stockholders clearly were as stupid as Trump's appointees.
If, by some miracle, Trump does not ask for a coup and use US Military VS Citizens, and the Democrats take control of both houses and presidency, they had better enact FAR more secure restraints to prevent a future lunatic a la Trump from Trampling Democracy. What we have now is a bullshit government run by a cast of characters that are unbelievable in their behavior and obvious in their greed and passivity to Trump. If this is not the best shit show in the history of any government then tell me what is.
Wow Mike! This is a superb analysis of what went wrong.
Mike: "... we can still choose to say what is true, defend what is real ..."
Fairly impassioned and quite credible indictment of Trump’s many failings.
Though one might wonder why your talents weren't equally exercised by Kamala -- she's for they/them -- Harris' "2+2=5" insistence that "trans women are women", at some fairly large group of Democrats trying to put transwomen -- AKA, male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached and sexless eunuchs if they don't -- into women's sports, prisons, toilets, change rooms, military formations, and uniforms.
DIAG: On November 17th, 130 Congressional Democrats (nine senators and 121 representatives) filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down state laws that protect the female category in sport.
https://diagdemocrats.substack.com/p/call-to-action-for-democrats-let?utm_medium=reader2&triedRedirect=true
Thank you for your ability to write about the insanity. The current government reveals that people with the loudest voices and biggest bank accounts are not the best people to be in government. This is why we all need to vote.
Another looong post. I appreciate that you're knowledgeable about National Review, Federalist, Wall Street Journal, Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Truth Social, and X. I can't do that part. I greatly appreciate your analysis of Eisenhower's values and vision. My father would agree.
I'm perplexed by your pattern of writing very clear paragraphs and then haranguing paragraphs.
My style isn't for everyone.
There are certain white men through modern history who, though embedded in a culture that separated men from women in countless hierarchical ways, represent a kind of sober intelligence that might even be called "feminist." I'm thinking of their deliberate rejection of the kind of macho-masculinity that is the badge of Hegseth and all those ridiculous men around him. I may be taken to task for pinning the label 'feminist' on General Dwight Eisenhower and Justice Robert Jackson. But please read this in context. All those old school Republicans who I have spent my life campaigning against--well, they have much to teach us about the present moment. When Eisenhower was president, the top bracket tax was 91%. The world has shifted.
Lionel Hutz is a better lawyer than all the lawyers that trump hires also when this moment is over alot people especially Pamela Blondie is gonna lose her Bar card
As Rick Wilson says ETTD especially that last part