[new draft post] Balance as a norm https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/24/balance-as-a-norm/index.html

“The atrophy of Congress has left a gaping wound at the heart of our Constitutional order. The net effect has been the breakdown of our system of checks and balances and a combination of institutional gridlock and institutional unpredictability.” @sjshancoxli https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-present-crisis-and-the-end-of-the-long-90s/

@light @ryanlcooper there’s nothing wrong with "people should eat healthy and exercise to fight off disease".

there’s a lot wrong with discouraging effective and defunding promising medical interventions on the pretext that if people eat right and exercise they won’t need them.

RFK jr, in his pre-Trump antivax advocacy and his current destruction of research and public health programs, is clearly, at least in my view, engaged in the latter project.

@light @ryanlcooper No. No one is convicting him of a crime. His approach to disease is just reminiscent of the attitude, you’ll survive if you’re fit, if you deserve to. Medical interference is to be disdained.

If you, viewing the totality of his interventions, have a more flattering view of him, you are welcome to it.

@light @ryanlcooper eugenics is applying Darwinism prescriptively to “improve” the human race.

one way a eugenicist might do that is encourage selection via the stressor of infectious disease — refrain from applying “artificial” remedies, let the fittest, due to natural strength and immunity or behavioral excellence in health maintenance, survive.

“all that will really have happened is a confirmation that you can’t trust anything this administration says, including its threats.” @pkrugman https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/cronyism-capitulation-and-chaos

anyone else in JVM land find sonatype behaving weirdly this afternoon? atm https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/mchange/c3p0/ still doesn't show an 0.11.0 release from almost three hours ago. but oddly, as of a few minutes ago, https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/mchange/c3p0/0.11.0/c3p0-0.11.0.pom is served, even though the apparent directory index won't show or serve its parent directory.

@light @digby ( i have some sympathy for the complaint. but i have no sympathy for choosing or accepting or apologizing for or tolerating the "remedy". ) https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/09/authority-minimization/index.html

"Standing alone, Trump’s executive orders represent a serious threat to the First Amendment. But the orders are backed by agency enforcement powers that drastically expand the danger... What we have seen in the early days of Trump 2.0 is an unprecedented government-wide and society-wide broadside against fundamental First Amendment commitments. And there is no indication that the Trump administration’s campaign is going to end any time soon." https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-amendment-news/executive-watch-breadth-and-depth-trump ht @light

There are good reasons to consider industrial policy that some might deride as “protectionist”.

There are no good reasons for Trump’s combination of chaotic tariffs and smothering government, which can’t possibly deliver good industrial policy.

cf @jwmason https://jwmason.org/slackwire/at-barrons-trumps-tariffs-dont-offer-an-alternative-to-free-trade/

#economics

“Donald Trump could not care less about ‘promoting freedom and combatting tyranny.’ In fact, he’s more interested in the opposite: promoting tyranny and combatting freedom.” @digby https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/23/soft-power-is-dead/

// from a depressing piece on the state of the state department

@admitsWrongIfProven the contemporary Catholic church is a hierarchy, but not an autocracy. it is incapable of coercing even its adherents, let alone the rest of us.

yes, it’s the identity of the new hierarch that will send a signal.

it's weird how the catholic church now has a moment when it has to decide whether it wants to accommodate or pointedly resist a global trend toward authoritarianism.

“Beneath his facade of talking about healthy living and wellness, Kennedy is actually a eugenicist. He insists that viruses and bacteria only kill people who don’t eat healthy and exercise by his lights—essentially rejecting the germ theory of disease.” @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/health/2025-04-23-trump-administration-objectively-pro-cancer/

remember when we were a confident, generous, hopeful country?

under bukele it is starting to seem like "el salvador" was ironically named.

so, we are living under a fascist administration, but at least this is legal.

@light institutions. like our bicameral legislature. our independent courts. and yes, our executive agencies, by putting up more or less resistance to sharp turns based on their judgment and experience of the domain. of course, with consensus or persistence, the public can impose any signal above all of these.

"since JFK and especially since Carter/Reagan, the US has been losing its ability to tax the rich. It has increasingly chosen to tax the rest of the world, moving industry, in particular, to other countries. Those countries made what the US needed, and sold it to them in US dollars" @ianwelsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-proximate-cause-of-revolutions-is-inability-to-tax-the-us-is-losing-that/