Nothing Matters: A Rule and a Prediction

04 Saturday Apr 2026

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That is my simple, if unsatisfying, rule of thumb about the Trump era (and populist politics generally).

To be precise: (Virtually) nothing (Trump does, and nothing that happens during Trump’s term) matters (in terms of his long-term popularity).

This is also true (maybe even more so) in the other country whose populist politics I follow closely, that of Netanyahu’s Israel.

There are moments when Trump’s popularity takes a hit, but inevitably, the scandals and disasters of yesterday are forgotten and his support resumes more or less its previous trend. The only real long-term loss of popularity is the initial drop, in the first year or so, from the initial highs right after the election– something that every president in the last two decades has experienced. This is the more general perspective behind my previous post “No One Will Remember This.”

Mostly I am responding here to the following type of post or article, suggesting that a particular issue is hurting Trump’s popularity:

Source

Naturally the most obvious current example is the Iran war, which according to nearly all polls is deeply unpopular and getting more so. Nate Silver‘s aggregate of polls suggests a net approval of -18.1%, which is a very wide gap.

And it’s true that Trump’s disapproval has been climbing steadily for a year, as per this RealClearPolitics average:

Source: RealClearPolitics

So why am I skeptical?

Well, first, note that we’ve been here before. Trump got similarly bad (in fact, toward the end of his first year, worse) polls in the first year of his first term, yet the numbers stabilized, and of course he went on to win the 2024 election handily.

Source: RealClearPolitics

And a sharp loss of support in the first year to year and a half is not unique to Trump. Here is Biden at the same point in time, and notice how by around mid-year, Biden reached -20% net approval.

Source: RealClearPolitics

And while Obama seems to be an exception, given that he was still about breaking even in terms of approval at this point in his first term, it still represented a catastrophic fall from his starting point:

Source: RealClearPolitics

In other words, it’s not that Obama fell any less than Trump and Biden– he just started far more popular.

So Trump’s drop in popularity (in both the first 1.5 years of his first term and the first 14 months of his second term) seems to me to reflect not any consequences of his actions and policies but just a natural downward pull that happens to presidents when the highs of their campaign’s success meets the cold realities of governing.

***

Trump’s second term, by any measure, should be seen as a flaming wreck at this point. On many of these issues, there’s no need to rely on anyone outside the administration to reach this conclusion, in fact: the president and people in his admini stration keep commenting on their own failures.

His signature economic policy was (and is) tariffs. Trump himself said that if the Supreme Court ruled against his administration on the tariffs, “WE’RE SCREWED” and the United States would find it almost impossible to pay for the consequences. The Supreme Court, of course, did rule against the tariffs. His budget was also deeply unpopular.

One of his most enthusiastically trumpeted policies in his first year was Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). I have so much to say about this– how a promise to cut $2 trillion became a purported claim to have saved $200 billion which in fact will almost certainly end up being a massive cost to taxpayers while leading to the death of tens of thousands of people or more– but let’s stick to what Musk and the administration think of their own effort. DOGE ceased to exist eight months before its charter expired and Musk himself said he wouldn’t do it again if he could rewind to the start of last year.

As noted above the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, one of his key domestic policies, was also sharply unpopular, and the killings of Reneé Good and Alex Pretti drew criticisms from within his own party. The fact that Kristi Noem left her job as DHS Secretary a mere month after the end of the operation in Minneapolis is a telling sign.

And of course there is the Iran war, which as noted is deeply unpopular, and specifically runs counter to the “America First” and “anti-neoconservative” ideology that is held most deeply by some of his most loyal supporters. By Trump’s own admission, Iran’s response surprised his administration, which seems at a loss when faced with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the sharp rise in oil and gas prices. The downing of two US jets in the war and the ensuing scramble to rescue crew members only emphasizes how much worse this could get. All this while Trump just said he initially predicted the war would be over in three days.

There was of course the longest government shutdown in government history, the clamor for Greenland (which was claimed to be absolutely essential to US interests and then conveniently forgotten once nothing came of it). And there was the massively unpopular pardoning of January 6th rioters (83% opposition per one poll!), the eye-watering personal enrichment, and much more.

Oh and have we mentioned that Trump’s handling of the Epstein investigations is at -34% approval, according to one poll?

***

These are massive failures and unpopular policies for a first year in office– indeed, it is in my view a longer and heavier list than most presidents oversee in a full administration.

But I don’t think any of this will end up mattering in the long term. Just as the spike of disapproval at the end of his first term due to the events of January 6 became essentially irrelevant by the time he ran in 2024, so each of these episodes seems to disappear into the background with each new episode, and his support goes back roughly to where it was before.

There’s a sense in which it won’t matter to Trump himself– he won’t be running for re-election. But it matters toward understanding Trump as a phenomenon of populist politics.

My predictions are utterly useless as a reliable predictor of the future. But I’m writing a prediction here as a test of this hypothesis that “nothing matters.”

If I am right that nothing matters, then by this time next year, in two years, and at the end of his term, his approval rating will have stabilized at a rate slightly better (for him) than the current rate, and will not be significantly worse than Biden’s approval ratings at similar junctures or the approval ratings of Trump’s first term. I would guess that the numbers would stabilize at around a net negative of 10%, which was roughly where Trump was for most of his first term. The prediction stems from the belief that he is currently suffering from a temporary burst of unpopularity due to the Iran war (he was at -11% as the war began), and that rather than steadily losing support due to the accumulation of scandals and failures, he will return to hovering around his “natural” popularity levels, with the occasional temporary spike in either direction due to a particularly popular or unpopular moment.

Note that this doesn’t necessarily translate into down-ballot races, so Republicans may well get a drubbing in the midterms. But if the “nothing matters” thesis is correct, Trump himself will maintain his popularity until the end of his term, and will have a similar status as he has now (divisive but dominant in the GOP) come the 2028 elections.

A depressing situation, but one which we need to recognize.

About Those ‘Violent Passages from the Qur’an’ You Just Posted…

28 Saturday Mar 2026

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I’ve seen lists like this bounce around every so often, and an influencer with 342,000 followers just posted this on Facebook, so I figured it’s as good a time as any to disprove this nonsense. While this is an “easy target” as it were, sometimes something within you just tells you that this is the fight to pick today. Poking through falsehoods also has a certain fun quality to it, I won’t deny.

[Only after writing the post did I look up the source of this image, though obviously they took the quotes from somewhere else. This is from some guy or guys named “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children,” clearly a great authority on Islam and the Qur’an, who seem to have gotten kicked off most social media platforms, but whose YouTube channel showcases such insightful videos on “HOW TO QUICK ASSEMBLE YOUR AR15 PATTON RIFLE” and the like. But I’ve seen lists like this before, so hopefully this will be a useful reference regardless.]

This can also serve as a reference for anyone who is told that the Qur’an is full of calls to kill Jews or something. Needless to say, whoever wrote up this collection (which is similar to others I’ve seen) scraped the bottom of the barrel for them. So you can tell people that if this is the worst these guys could find…

I’m going to start with the simplest and most accessible approach possible– showing you translations of the original passage, and sometimes the passages immediately before or after, and that’s it. In other words, it’s what you can see for yourself if you google or look things up, without a trace of knowledge of Islam or Arabic or anything. As you’ll see, almost all the above claims collapse at even this most preliminary of glances.

All quotes below are from this Qur’an reader, and specifically the translation of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, one of the most common English translations of the Qur’an. I will be trying to stick to as close a translation of the Arabic text itself, such that hopefully the translation choice shouldn’t matter, but where the translation inserts something important I’ll note it.

  • Qur’an 2:191 starts with the words “Kill them wherever you come across them.” The word “unbelievers” is a fabrication. And who are “them” here? Well, take the full quote including 2:190 and 2:192 (emphases mine):
    • “190. Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.
    • 191. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. 
    • 192. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.”

  • Qur’an 3:28 and 3:85 are filler. Sure, any religion other than Islam is not acceptable. You have a problem with religions saying that other religions are not acceptable? An alternative translation (which you can see at the same link) has “allies” instead of “friends,” but even if it were the latter– exhorting people not to be friends with people of other religions is hardly a terrifying passage. 3:28 reads “believers” and “unbelievers.” 3:85 is saying that those from religions other than Islam won’t make it into the hereafter.

  • What they do with Qur’an 5:33 here is a work of art. “If they criticize Islam”? Did you forget the part about…
    • “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land.”
    • To be clear: I’m no fan of the war ethics in the Qur’an, if read at surface level. Or those in the Bible, if read at surface level (see below). But this is as bald-faced a fabrication as it gets.

  • Qur’an 8:12: The words “taken out of context” are used far too often these days, but…
    • “Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.””
    • If you translate “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbeliever” to “terrorize those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an,” and turn a command to the angels to a command to people, well, you might as well just copy-paste some lines from Osama Bin-Laden, slap a “13:5” on and be done with it. And if you look a couple passages before and a couple after, you’ll see that the context is one of battle again.

  • Qur’an 8:60: I really have to emphasize, this isn’t a matter of differing translations or interpretations. Here is the passage:
    • “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies.”
    • Translating “The enemies” to “the infidels” and “prepare steeds of war to strike terror into your enemies’ hearts” to “terrorize them”… that’s just making stuff up.
    • And what is the very next passage?
    • 8:61: “But if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace, and trust in Allah: for He is One that heareth and knoweth (all things).”

  • Qur’an 8:65: I’m going to again call “The unbelievers are stupid” as filler, if every religion called other religions stupid and that’s it I think we’d be in a better world. But in this case, it’s…well…
    • “O Prophet! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding.”
    • Do note that this is coming right after the previous passage– it’s obvious that the “Unbelievers” here are those facing Muhammad’s armies in battle. And again: “if the enemy incline towards peace, do thou (also) incline towards peace” is 4 lines earlier.

  • Qur’an 9:5: See below for more, but it is worth pointing out what immediately follows this quoted passage:
    • “5. But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. 
    • 6. If one amongst the Pagans ask thee for asylum, grant it to him, so that he may hear the word of Allah; and then escort him to where he can be secure. That is because they are men without knowledge.”

  • Qur’an 9:30: Here you might guess that the key will be the word “perverts.” After all, the shock value of including this line is that “pervert” in modern contexts more or less invariably means “sexual pervert.” But “perverse” can just mean, per the Merriam-Webster definition, “turned away from what is right or good,” which is if anything a pretty mild and sensible thing to say about someone from a different religion. So you can give a pretty good guess what the issue is without even looking. But would you be correct? No! Because this one is just straight-out fabricated, bearing no relation to the actual text:
    • “The Jews call ‘Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!“
    • Now: there’s a really eyebrow-raising assertion here, which is the reference to Jews claiming that the biblical character Ezra (“‘Uzair” in the Qur’an) is the son of God. There is a fascinating debate about what is going on here, because claiming that Ezra is the son of God is not a common belief among Jews, to say the least. But…hopefully you can tell that any translation as “perverts” is pure, unadulterated imagination.

  • Qur’an 9:123. The original passage is:
    • “O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.”
    • This is just about the only passage quoted that does not obviously mistranslate, except that “neighborhood” here clearly means “close to you” (or, in the translation I used, “who gird you about”) rather than a neighborhood in the modern urban sense. But see below on the general exhortations to fight unbelievers.

  • Qur’an 22:19: Again, you should be able to sense by now what the real passage says. Is it Muslims who are exhorted to punish unbelievers with these hellish instruments? Or…
    • “These two antagonists dispute with each other about their Lord: But those who deny (their Lord),- for them will be cut out a garment of Fire: over their heads will be poured out boiling water.”
    • I’m not a fan of hell. I like my religion hell-less. To hell with hell, I might even say. But this is a description of hell, and if you have a problem with that, take it up with Dante.

  • Qur’an 47:4: As far as I can tell “Do not hanker for peace” is pulled out of thin air. Not a trace in the original, no clue where it’s coming from. Now, here’s the quote in the translation I’ve been using, but do note it includes interpolations not in the text itself:
    • “Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah,- He will never let their deeds be lost.”
    • The words “(in fight)” is an interpretation, not in the original text.

Now, if we’re being entirely above-board, two passages here– and only two, 9:123 and 47:4– have anything like a call to violence that is not explicitly linked to those waging war against Muslims or where it is immediately clarified that those who ask for asylum or don’t attack should be spared. In the case of 47:4, the interpretation that this is a matter of battle is accepted enough that the two translations I read insert the words “in fight” or “in battle” into the sentence; it’s also reasonably clear from context, given that this is immediately followed by an exhortation to either ransom or let free prisoners of war. A passage reading essentially “in battle, aim for the neck” is rather different from “behead the nearest unbeliever.”

So from that list, what we’re left with is how you understand 9:123’s “fight the unbelievers near you.” As you’ve seen, very often when the Qur’an talks about “fighting the Unbelievers,” it is referring to actual wars and battles that happened in Muhammad’s time. The Qur’an rarely discusses the details of these battles, so it is “left to the reader” to fill in the blanks. Moreover, as I discussed in another post, the Qur’an is anything but straightforward: it doesn’t tell a continuous story nor give a coherent list of commandments, but rather weaves different stories, exhortations and laws in ways that are absolutely inscrutable when taken on their own (much moreso than the Bible). A passage can refer to a battle that Muhammad fought without once naming which battle it was or saying anything else about it. All this is to say that the meaning of a single passage reading “fight the unbelievers near you” is not at all straightforward, and reams and reams of texts will try to explain what context the passage is trying to refer to.

And if we’re being entirely above-board, we’d also obviously include the many passages in the Qur’an that are frequently held up as exhortations to tolerance or peace, in addition to those above. I’ll just bring up three of the most famous:

  • Qur’an 2:256, immediately following a passage known as “the climax of the Qur’an”:
    • Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.
  • Qur’an 109, “The Disbelievers,” (Al-Kafirun, which is frequently used in the sense of “infidels”) in its entirety:
    • 1.Say: O ye that reject Faith! 
    • 2.I worship not that which ye worship, 
    • 3.Nor will ye worship that which I worship. 
    • 4.And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship, 
    • 5.Nor will ye worship that which I worship. 
    • 6.To you be your Way, and to me mine.
    • Note: the word “Way” at the end is the Arabic word for “religion,” so one common translation of the passage is “To you your religion, and to me mine.”
  • And my personal favorite, Qur’an 29:46, and here I’m using the other translation in the link, Saheeh international, just because I find it clearer:
    • And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them, and say, “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you. And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him.”
    • “People of the Scripture” here are the people of the book, i.e. Jews and Christians.
    • And to add an explanation from one of the attached interpretations, Ma’arif al-Qur’an, because this is the way I was taught the verse (by my very Jewish teacher): “It means that if one has to get involved in a discussion or debate with the people of the book, he should present his arguments in an affable manner. For instance, it is prudent to answer an impudent remark with politeness, the rage with mildness, and uncivilized tumult with dignified speech.”

So am I saying the Qur’an is in fact a text that promotes tolerance, or that Islam is a “religion of peace”?

No.

Because that’s not how religions work.

Orthodox Jews, of all people, know this. The Bible is full of passages that, if taken at face value, are horrific– well beyond anything in the Qur’an. Just to give one example, Deuteronomy 13:7-10 commands that you should stone to death even family members who try to convince you to worship other gods. Meanwhile, the Bible’s war ethics– again, if taken at face value– are awful as well. Deuteronomy 13:13-16 tells us to put to death the residents of any city that has turned to other gods. And of course there is the classic scene in The West Wing, where the president– portrayed as a devout Catholic throughout the show– makes a similar point:

Such passages in the Bible are absolutely legion. So is Judaism a violent religion?

No, because you cannot understand a religion by merely reading its “holy text,” and a religion is not a single monolith that is either “of peace” or “of war.”

In Judaism, there is a massive corpus dedicated to interpreting and expanding on the Bible, to the extent that it is considered an “oral Bible” in its own right. And that oral tradition has been debated and evolved over millennia, and different groups have interpreted the same texts in completely different ways. The libraries of Islamic texts, oral traditions and legal texts and everything in between, are no less expansive. Like the hadith forbidding the killing of women and children, for example.

Not always for the best, to be clear; there are hadiths where Jews are not portrayed in the most sympathetic ways. And interpretations of the Qur’an aren’t all in a more tolerant direction. The opening passage of the Qur’an ends with an exhortation to follow “the straight path; The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have earned [Your] anger or of those who are astray.” This seems innocent enough, but the most common interpretation of “those who are astray” are the Christians and “those who have earned Your anger” are the Jews. Some Islamic exegesis argues that more tolerant passages were superseded by more militant ones.

If you want a good and accessible portrayal of what the back and forth between those interpreting a verse in a more violent direction versus a more benign one looks like, check out the Wikipedia page on the “Sword verse,” i.e. verse 9:5 above.

But none of this will tell you much of anything about how people who adhere to these religions actually behave in the real world. Think for a moment of all the incalculable violence done throughout history in the name of Christianity, and then ask how much of that fits a simple reading of the New Testament (or the Old one for that matter). Christian behavior– toward other faiths, toward other Christian denominations, toward Jews, toward war ethics– changed radically over time, even though the “holy texts” did not. Conversely, consider how different Muslims in different countries and societies today are on those same issues (and see my post If Saudi Arabia Is the Solution, Islam Is Not the Problem for more on this), whereas all hold by the same basic Qur’anic text.

As I like to say, a constant cannot explain a variable, so the constant text of the Qur’an cannot explain the massive variation through time and space that is Muslim attitudes toward violence and other religions. So if you asked me whether on balance the Qur’an’s passages lean more toward atrocities or more toward peace, I’d say probably it leans more toward peace (see above). But that’s fundamentally the wrong question if you want to ask a question about how the world itself works.

How not to Wage a War in 7 Easy Steps

21 Saturday Mar 2026

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  1. When your adversary deploys their key weapon, act shocked and panicked

    I’m no military expert, but it seemed from the first moments of the war that Iran’s main strategy is to cause an increase in the price of oil and gas, hoping that the economic pain on the US and Western countries will put time on the regime’s side. The two main means at the Islamic Republic’s disposal are attacking oil- and gas-producing infrastructure in just about every country in the region and blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

    Trump, in response: “They (Iran) weren’t supposed to go after all ​these other countries in the Middle East,” he said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

    When asked whether ⁠nobody had briefed him about that risk that Iran would strike back at the Gulf states: “Nobody, nobody, no, no, no. The greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit.”

  2. You may need help from allies. Threaten to attack them before the war

    Trump administration, January 2026: President and his team discussing using military force to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, a NATO member, a move that would collapse the alliance.

    Trump, March 2026: fumes that “[NATO] didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran” and “don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz.”

  3. Your intelligence agencies are your most valuable asset. Make sure to convey there is a total breakdown in communication with them

    Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence– the top advisor to the president on all intelligence matters– spoke at a hearing to the US Senate on Thursday. Among some of the insights from the hearing:

    Did Iran try to rebuild its nuclear program since June of last year? Trump said yes, Gabbard said no.
    Did Iran pose an “imminent nuclear threat” when the current war was launched? Trump said yes, Gabbard indicated there was only an “intention to rebuild.”
    Were Iran’s attacks on its neighbors a total surprise? Trump said yes (see above), Gabbard refused to say.
    Was Trump briefed on the possibility that Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz? Gabbard refused to say (which is astonishing.)

    Of course, Gabbard was seemingly appointed to her job for opposing a war with Iran, yielding rather eyebrow-raising flashbacks like this one:



  4. Give every indication that you are after the country’s oil

    You are more likely to get public and international support if the world (including your own citizens) believe your motives are aligned with theirs.

    Trump in 2016 on the Iraq War: We should “take the oil.”
    Trump in 2026, after invading Venezuela: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars (…) and start making money for the country.” Keeps the regime in power as long as the US gets a cut of the oil.
    Trump in 2026: Launches a war of regime change on a country with a painful history of foreign-led regime change influenced by oil politics. When you then write “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” even if you add that stopping Iran from having nuclear weapons is the most important thing, let’s just say some might be skeptical.

  5. Keep saying you’ll be done soon, but vacillate

    The more you signal that the war is ending soon, while also signalling that you’re unsure and it depends on your own feeling, the more incentive you give to the other side to escalate and raise the price of the war now. This way you make clear to your adversary that time is on their side.

    March 9: Trump says “I think the war is very complete, pretty much” and the war will be over “very soon.” But also, the war will end when the president feels it “in his bones.”

    March 20: Considering “winding down” the war.

  6. Learn the lessons of the Iraq War: Be overconfident about the length of the war, declare victory early, and what Americans really want is a regime change war in the Middle East justified by the threat of weapons of mass destruction

    Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq war, February 7, 2003: “It is not knowable how long [a war in Iraq] would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”

    Donald Trump on Iran war, March 1, 2026: “It’s always been a four week process… It’s a big country. It’ll take four weeks — or less.”

    George W. Bush in his famous “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the Iraq War began: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed … because the regime [of Saddam Hussein] is no more.”

    Donald Trump on March 11, the 12th day of the war with Iran, and with impressive self-awareness: “You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won.”

  7. You will need public support to keep the war going. Make sure your ticket is elected on a platform running against the war

    If “America First” ever meant anything (and that remains an open question), it was a repudiation of the Iraq War Republican Party. I’ve seen many Trump supporters write that the reason they supported Trump was because Kamala Harris would start a war with Iran.

    As JD Vance put it in October 2024: “Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”

War Is Hell. That Is a Responsibility, Not an Excuse

14 Saturday Mar 2026

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By Mehr News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=185287372

On February 28th, the first day of the war between the US, Israel and Iran, an explosion occurred in a girls’ school in Minab, Iran.

Over 165 people, mostly children, were reportedly killed in the blast.

President of the United States Donald Trump initially stated, with a confidence matched only by the total lack of any evidence, “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran…We think it was done by Iran – because they are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, interjected to say “We’re certainly investigating,” underlining that Trump’s statement was unrelated to any actually conclusion by US agencies.

This, on its own, is a travesty, although a predictable one at this point.

That Trump lies frequently and brazenly is something we’ve known from well before he was president.

That his statement was treated as business as usual by the administration is yet another testament of the deep moral stain that pervades the administration. Trump’s statement was at least as baseless, and in as horrific an event, as Hamas’ claim that the Al-Ahli hospital strike originated with an Israeli missile. Those who expressed moral outrage at media outlets who so much as reported on Hamas’ claim in that case should be doubly outraged that such a statement came, with no caveats, from the President of the United States.

And indeed as it turns out, multiple independent investigations and reportedly the US military’s own assessment have concluded that a US strike was likely what killed those girls, teachers and civilians.

***

Iran’s health ministry reports that over 1,200 civilians have been killed in the two weeks since the war began on Febrary 28th.

Let’s take that number, for a moment, as a given. Of course one can’t trust official numbers from a ruthless dictatorship, but the sheer intensity of the war so far and the fact that 165 civilians were apparently killed in a single attack makes this number if anything sound quite low. Either way, the precise number is less important than the principle I want to lay out here.

This would make the human cost on Iranians, just in terms of number of civilians killed, on the same level as the horror inflicted on Israelis on October 7th, 2023.

Let me be explain that piece by piece just to be as clear as possible.

I’m referring here specifically to the human cost, not to the malice (or lack thereof) of those involved in the fighting. A family that loses a child in a just war is dealt an excruciating blow just as a family attacked in a villainous attack. It’s not that the distinction is immaterial, but I want to convey something about the sheer toll here, putting aside questions of right and wrong for a moment.

(And of course I’m not talking about the pain “per capita,” which is a measure of how much the overall population has felt the blows, not how much human pain has been felt).

Anyone who knows what Israelis (and those who care about them) have gone through on and since October 7th knows what an unspeakable level of pain that involves. That is the level of pain on Iranian civilians, at a minimum, we are talking about when we talk about the current war.

***

“War is hell.”

You hear that all the time, almost always– bizarrely– from those justifying military operations.

It’s a favorite of Pete Hegseth’s, as in this comment in a press briefing about the war with Iran: “As the President warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be. A grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured, the absolute best of America.”

This is the same Pete Hegseth who took pride in rebranding himself the “Secretary of War” (rather than “Secretary of Defense”) and calling his department “Department of War,” in order to “sharpen the Department’s focus on our own national interest and our adversaries’ focus on our willingness and availability to wage war to secure what is ours.”

In other words: Pete Hegseth wants to emphasize to the world that he is the Secretary of Hell, atop a Department of Hell.

And war, undoubtedly, is hell. We see the fires of explosions and buildings ripped apart, and perhaps for some that signals “strength and resolve,” but those fires often leave charred corpses, wrecked families, rows of body bags and overflowing morgues.

That “War is hell” is used to justify war is such a strange twist of language. It is precisely because war is hell that war should always be the very last of last resorts, only if it can avert even deeper hells, and should be ended as soon as humanly possible.

There is no question whatsoever that the strike on the girls’ school was unintentional. I don’t know anyone who thinks that the US military had any interest in killing 165 innocent students and teachers.

But the fact that such awful mistakes always occur in war is a responsibility of those waging it, a cost that must be kept in mind when embarking on any kind of military operation. When the governments of the United States and Israel decided to attack Iran on February 28th, that decision inevitably entailed tragedies like this. And that is something that needs to be taken into account.

This doesn’t even need to be said when the countries’ own citizens and soldiers are involved. There is no question whatsoever that when Americans and Israelis consider whether these attacks on Iran were the right decision, they will take into account the soldiers and civilians that they can expect to lose in the war. Obviously these will be unintentional deaths from the American and Israeli perspective, but it would be absurd to imagine ignoring them on that account.

One cannot imagine an American president being told that a military operation is expected to lead to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, and him responding “That’s not my business, war is hell.”

Yet somehow “war is hell” ends up meaning something like “That’s not my business.”

War can still be justified. And yes, that includes knowing that mistakes, crimes and atrocities will follow. The United States involvement in World War II could still by justified, because all those awful things could still be dwarfed in comparison to the atrocities that would ensue if Nazi Germany prevailed. But that calculus absolutely must be made seriously.

Do you trust that the US and Israeli leaders who embarked on this war considered the 165 children, teachers and civilians killed in the first day of fighting, and perhaps thousands more to be killed by the war’s end, when making their hellish military decisions?

War is hell. Do you think those conducting it actually appreciate that?

Tucker Carlson, Media Entrepreneur

07 Saturday Mar 2026

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That Mehdi Hasan is not a fan of Tucker Carlson is a bit of an understatement. Hasan has said “I loathe much of what he stands for and says.” They are about as far apart on the political spectrum as two pundits can be. Hasan is opposed to just about everything Trump stands for; Carlson has said “I’ll always love [Trump] no matter what he says about me.”

Yet here he is, glowingly sharing Carlson’s interview with Mike Huckabee, in which Carlson went well beyond attacking the policies of Israel’s government into (e.g.) questioning whether today’s Jews are actually descended from the biblical Israelites.[1] And he’s not alone. A Facebook friend, as opposed to Trump and Carlson as you can get, shared Carlson’s interview with Huckabee– and then two other videos of Carlson dealing with Israel.

This is a testament to the success of Tucker Carlson’s business model, especially after being fired from Fox in April 2023: do what no one else on the American “right” is willing to do.[2]

As I’ve noted before, I consider it clear that Carlson is not a “true believer” a la Marjorie Taylor Greene, but rather an opportunist; he doesn’t believe in much of what he says. At the very least we know that this was the case as of 2021, when he texted “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights” and “I hate him passionately.” All this while being one of Trump’s great cheerleaders on air.

Carlson’s choices since launching his show in the summer of 2023 shows how eagerly he has smashed previous taboos in “right-wing” circles. If you had to summarize the Republican orthodoxy on foreign policy, even under Trump, you would have to touch upon three pillars: against Putin’s Russia, pro-Israel, against Iran (and painting Islam more generally as a global threat). Carlson conducted an extremely gracious interview with Vladimir Putin in February 2024; two months later he accused Israel of genocide in Gaza in another interview, and has become one of Israel’s most vicious critics, with a helping of quite explicit antisemitism; and he gave a similarly friendly interview to Iran’s president and became one of the most vocal critics of a potential (now actual) war with Iran on the American “right.” To top it all off, he crossed the reddest red line of them all by giving a rather friendly interview to a neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes.

Oh, and have I mentioned Carlson talking up the Maduro regime, including calling it one of the most socially conservative regimes in the Americas?

In other words, if you took the typical Republican foreign policy priority, even in the Trump era, and flipped it 180 degrees, you’d arrive roughly where Tucker Carlson is. And it’s worth noting that this puts Carlson at odds with Trump himself, which is a rare move on Carlson’s part, though he tends to avoid attacking Trump personally.

Perhaps Carlson is just such a true-believing isolationist that he wants to talk up any regime the United States might consider intervening against (Khamenei’s Iran, Putin’s Russia, Maduro’s Venezuela) and criticizing any regime it might consider supporting (Netanyahu’s Israel and Zelenskyy’s Ukraine). And it is true that Carlson renounced his previous support for the Iraq War back in 2004, which is much earlier than most “right-wing” pundits. But isolationism alone doesn’t explain his interview with Fuentes or his attacks on Chabad and kabbalah Judaism, nor does it explain his fawning interviews with Putin and the president of Iran. One can be against interventions against Russia and Iran without having any positive feelings for those leaders. And Carlson is hardly consistent; whereas he regularly criticizes Israel for allegedly targeting Christians, this doesn’t much factor into his position toward Putin, who is of course singularly responsible for the greatest slaughter of Christians in our time. Combined with Carlson’s previous lying about his feelings toward Trump as recently as 2021, and his opportunism on other issues like RFK Jr.’s health misinformation, this suggests something more cynical is at play.

I think it’s clear that Carlson saw the contradiction between Trump’s “America First” ideology and the Republican foreign policy orthodoxy, especially as it relates to Israel. There is a significant segment of the Trump electorate for whom the Iraq War is the ultimate failing of US foreign policy, and who want to see minimal involvement in any foreign conflict. So there is great demand among many Trump voters for any reasons for not supporting Israel or Ukraine, reasons that they won’t hear from most “right-wing” pundits and politicians. American support for Israel rests on a number of premises, and Carlson has gone after them quite methodically, as the conversation with Huckabee (and the previous one with Ted Cruz) shows. Theological arguments are easy enough to undermine, given the amount of interpretation that goes into translating a biblical text to modern-day foreign policy. The idea that Israel is a uniquely valuable ally in the Middle East has been undermined by the growing influence and power of the Gulf States, alongside lessening appetite for US military action in the Middle East. Of course the idea that the US should support allies based on “shared values” is anathema to America First politics.

Unmet demand is an entrepreneurial opportunity, and Carlson has pounced on it. He has methodically attacked each of these pillars, mixing seemingly logical arguments with outrageous conspiracy theories and antisemitism. This has gained him clicks not only from the America First faithful but, as mentioned, from some otherwise liberal or progressive voices who are thrilled to see a radical “right-wing” voice echo some of their own criticisms of Israel and US interventionism. That, plus people like me who listen in just to understand what the newest Tucker Carlson provocation is.

(I once was privy to a conversation between a doctor and a friend of hers who was falling for anti-vaccination junk. The friend was praising a video by an anti-vaccination activist, and said she planned to buy the activist’s upcoming book. The doctor replied that she, too, would buy the book, just to show the friend how mistaken it was. I pointed out that the activist had just turned a YouTube video into two book purchases from both a supporter and a critic, and cautioned them to consider that they were being played by a pretty obvious business model. As I wrote elsewhere, anti-vaccination activists are also very often media entrepreneurs.)

A good sign of unmet demand is that once a product is introduced, it spreads quickly and spawns imitators. A bellwether for this is Megyn Kelly, also formerly of Fox News, who has historically expressed pretty typical Fox News type views, later becoming a dependable pro-Trump voice. Google “Megyn Kelly Israel” through 2024 and you’ll see typical Republican pro-Israel views. But tune in to her recent conversation with Tucker Carlson or her interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene six months ago and you’ll hear the same ground being tread on most of these issues, not long after Carlson showed how much traction one could get by breaking those taboos.

Pro-Israel (and anti-Putin) supporters of Trump, such as Ben “I will walk over broken glass to vote for him” Shapiro, have long counted on their ideological ideas winning out against America First isolationism. During December’s Turning Point USA conference, it became clear that Shapiro was very much in the minority among major “right-wing” pundits, and Vice President Vance himself sounds much more like Carlson than like Shapiro. It is worth paying attention to the direction the market forces are pulling in.

***

[1] It was, to put it mildly, a bizarre interview, and Huckabee did an astonishingly bad job at explaining even elementary facts about Israel and Jews. If anyone has any idea why he agreed to this interview, which seems to have had only a downside and no upside for him and the issues he cares about, please enlighten me.

[2] As usual, because I don’t want to attach more significance to the ideologically incoherent terms “right” and “left” than is necessary, but they are useful in terms of people’s self-identification, I put quotation marks around the term.

America’s Frozen Political Map

26 Thursday Feb 2026

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Here are six maps representing the US Presidential elections from 2004 to 2024 (I excluded 2000 to make it nice and symmetric with the next few series, but it shows a similar trend). All maps in the post from Wikipedia’s entries (e.g. here for 2024).

I just want to draw your attention to one aspect of these maps: the rigidity of the electorate. By my count, out of fifty states (plus DC), 38 voted for the same party over this twenty year period (putting aside faithless electors and states that split their electoral votes). Moreover, even among the handful of states that did vote for different parties, those changes tended to stick; Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico turned blue in 2008 and never looked back, for example. Adding the 2000 election would add just one state to the list (New Hampshire, which voted for Bush in 2000 and Democrats thereafter).

This is especially striking when you consider that these years saw two of the most extraordinary presidential campaigns in US history. In 2008 Barack Obama was of course the first Black presidential candidate in history, running in the shadow of the worst economic crisis in nearly a century, and was seen by both supporters and detractors as representing a break from the past. Trump in 2016, meanwhile, ran not only as different from typical Republicans but in many ways as a repudiation of George W Bush’s GOP, yet nearly all the States Trump won had voted for Bush.

Now consider the maps for the elections from 1976 to 1996:

Seventeen states switched from the Democrats to the Republicans just in the four years between 1976 and 1980, more than in all the 24 years between 2000 and 2024. Twenty-two (!) switched from Bush Sr. in 1988 to Clinton in 1992. And of course the 1996 map looks insane relative to the situation from 2000 onwards. A Democrat winning Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia?[1] Really?

It is commonly replied that Clinton was able to take these states because he was governor of Arkansas himself, but consider what that would sound like in today’s terms. Would we expect Larry Hogan to have a shot at carrying Maryland if he were to run for president? Would Andy Beshear win Kentucky? Of course, when the former First Lady of Arkansas ran for president in 2016, she got beaten 61%-34% in that state.

Just to make sure you don’t think I’m being selective, here are the elections from 1952-1972:

Just imagine living through the eight years between 1964 and 1972. Just about everyone outside the Deep South, Massachusetts and Washington DC lived in states that switched from blue to red– and almost the exact opposite happened from 1956 to 1964.

Now, there is a little sleight of hand here. The states don’t represent the same people from one election cycle to the next; some die, some turn 18, some leave the state and some enter. Yet it is undeniable that on a state-by-state level, the situation since 2000 has stayed mostly frozen, with only a handful of “battleground” states changing parties.

I’ve always said I was less puzzled by the fact that Trump won Pennsylvania than that Trump won Kansas. By this I mean that it makes perfect sense that such a radically different politician like Trump would attract different voters from Bush or Romney, so it’s not hard for me to see that he might draw voters who previously voted Democrat. But for exactly the same reason, he should have lost some of the voters who voted for Bush– the pro-immigration Republicans, the more interventionist Republicans, those who favor free trade and so forth. These all used to be core Republican values, so one might expect a significant exodus from the Republican heartland away from Trump in 2016 and after. This did happen on the margins with so-called “Never Trumpers,” but these were clearly few and far between.

Instead what happened is that Trump inherited a system where the vast majority of voters voted based on the party they voted for last time, no matter who the candidate is. A small number of swing voters decided the election in 2016, 2020 and 2024; the 2016 election was decided by just 80,000 votes, and the 2020 election by just 43,000.

I feel this says a lot about our politics today, and it is instructive to see that the trend starts not in 2016 with Trump but in 2000. Trump didn’t cause the initial partisan “freezing,” he just benefited from (and probably exacerbated) it.

***

[1] The 1992 and 1996 elections were exceptional in the candidacy of Ross Perot, who took 19% and 8% of the popular vote, respectively, and may have swayed the election. However, it’s not clear that his votes came disproportionately from Republican voters. Besides, the fact that a third party candidate was able to garner such massive support, whereas nothing remotely similar has happened since then despite the massive disruption in the Republican Party, is itself something to consider.

The Problem with “Fascism”

21 Saturday Feb 2026

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[Disclaimer: I am not an expert on fascism or political history, these are just my thoughts about appeals made to a general audience]

Michael Lipkin, my good friend whom I have never met, and I agree on almost everything of importance in US and Israeli politics. So to avoid creating a little two-person echo chamber, I’m seizing on this opportunity to underline one area where we disagree.

In a recent blog post, Michael approvingly cites the article “Yes, it’s Fascism” by author and journalist Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic, arguing the term should be applied to Trump:

I wasn’t a big fan of the last essay of Rauch’s that I read, “The Constitution of Knowledge” from 2018, and I think he misses the mark again here. This is just one example of a much wider problem of these kinds of “definition wars.”

Rauch’s accusation of “Fascism” is an extreme case, not merely because fascism has no agreed-upon definition, but because its sole use in the public sphere is based on a logical fallacy, as I’ll try to show.

First, when we call a movement or a figure fascist, what do we mean?

Most obviously, if fascism had a generally agreed-upon definition, even a vague one, we could be referring to that. So for example, the word “totalitarian” has a meaning– an authoritarian regime that tries to control all aspects of a person’s life, private as well as public. This definition doesn’t have clear boundaries, but at least it has some fundamental meaning that one can discuss.

There is no such equivalent for fascism. Wikipedia brings up a nice quote of historian Ian Krenshaw that trying to define fascism “is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.” In that Wikipedia link you can see a long list of definitions of fascism, and as you can see, they are not only inconsistent but often contradictory (and many, many elements in many of the definitions clearly don’t apply to Trump). Pretty much the only commonalities are that fascism is authoritarian, that it is affiliated with the right (whatever that means), and that it is nationalist (itself a hard-to-define concept). George Orwell famously wrote “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable'”; he wrote that in 1946, and you’d think that if fascism ever meant anything, it would have been then. Rauch himself writes:

The term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition.

So if we can’t agree on even a vague definition, how do we determine who is and isn’t fascist?

Well, we could look at the people and movements who used the term to describe themselves, and ask ourselves what those have in common. We do this with the term “Right-wing,” for example; it’s not really a coherent ideology, as right-wing parties vary radically over time and space, but at least in theory we can ask what they all have in common that causes them to self-define with that term.

Ideally, you’d have a reasonably large group of self-described fascist regimes such that you could examine what essential factors set them apart. But we don’t.

The one major movement and regime that is indisputably fascist is that of Benito Mussolini. He didn’t invent the term (which derived from the Latin fasces, an axe projecting from a bundle of rods, a symbol from Ancient Rome that had been used previously in political contexts), but his use of the term fascism to describe his movement made it the fountainhead of that political term.

As far as I can tell, no other major regime ever called itself fascist.

The two other regimes commonly called fascist, those of Germany’s Hitler and Spain’s Franco, didn’t call themselves that, though Hitler was by all accounts heavily influenced by Mussolini. There were a few politicians who did call themselves fascists, such as the Oswald Mosley‘s infamous British Union of Fascists, but these rarely if ever took power.

So what does Rauch do?

First, he does assume certain historical regimes are fascist, contrary (as far as I can tell) to academic researchers who are divided on the subejct. Thus he writes “Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s,” yet you can see many disagreements about the term “fascist” applying to Spain and Japan.

Then, because fascism doesn’t have any kind of definition of its own, Rauch takes a grab-bag of elements– e.g. glorification of violence, politicized law enforcement and undermining elections– which he considers characteristic of fascist regimes, and suggests parallels in the Trump administration. Some of these parallels are a bit of a stretch, as when he quotes Stephen Miller (by any measure an odious figure) as saying “We live in a world that is governed by power” and notes “Those words…could have come from the lips of any fascist dictator.” Or calling Trump’s attempts to annul birthright citizenship as “blood and soil nationalism” (relatively few countries in the world have birthright citizenship). Other elements apply easily to administrations we do not generally consider fascist– it is not hard to think of other US presidents who engaged in territorial and military aggression, attacked news media, and politicized police enforcement. One can call all these presidents fascists, but that would severely dilute the weight we generally associate with the term.

Rauch freely admits that many characteristics of fascist regimes are absent in Trump’s administration:

One can object that there are elements of classical European fascism that are not found in Trumpism (mass rallies and public rituals, for example)…The exercise of comparing fascism’s various forms is not precise. If historians object that Trump is not a copy of Mussolini or Hitler or Franco, the reply is yes—but so what? Trump is building something new on old principles. He is showing us in real time what 21st-century American fascism looks like.

The answer to “So what?” is that this undermines the entire exercise.

There are lots of similarities between Trump’s regime and Mussolini’s. Both tried to undermine elections, and both had six letters in their first name. There are also differences: Trump was successfully removed from power in a democratic election, whereas Mussolini was executed by partisans. Moreover, Trump was born in Queens, New York, whereas Mussolini was born in a small town in Italy. It may seem facetious to describe things this way– obviously these factors are not of equal weight– but I’m trying to underline that without a discussion of what the fundamental traits of fascism are, which Rauch never discusses, these parallels are entirely arbitrary. Perhaps most crucially, while Trump obviously wants dictatorial powers and has moved in ways legal and illegal to expand his powers, courts and other institutions have prevented him from exercising power on the level of Mussolini or Hitler. Is fascism defined by attempting to gain absolute power, or actually exercising it? We usually don’t call a leader a “dictator” if he consistently pushes against limits on his power but doesn’t succeed. To claim that fascistic authoritarianism is about intent or attempt rather than success is something that needs to be substantiated.

How can you differentiate between “building something new on old principles” and “building something new that does not fit the old label”? You can’t, not without discussing what the fundamental principles are and what the disposable ones are.

This brings us to the fundamental fallacy of Rauch’s approach.

Absent a clear definition, the only function of the “fascist” claim is to project back from Mussolini et al. onto Trump, to evoke the evils of those regimes when considering Trump’s. But this is a fallacy: if A is like B in certain aspects, that does not make A like B in all aspects or in the most central aspects. This is exactly the kind of misguided thinking that tarnishes all politicians who call themselves “socialist” (e.g. Bernie Sanders) with every evil of Stalin. Rauch may want to imply that the parallels he sees between Trump and Mussolini indicate that evils akin to the Mussolini regime may be just around the corner under Trump, unless he is stopped. But this just doesn’t follow, since it could easily be argued that the differences between the regimes– for example, the fact that the courts have yet been able to limit Trump’s power– are precisely what prevent a darker future.

The sad thing is that, like many “definition wars,” the “fascist” discussion puts criticism of Trump on the shakiest ground possible. It negates your most powerful advantages– the demonstrable evils of the regime– and moves the debate to bloodless discussions about the porous boundaries around definitions and how this or that academic characterized Franco’s Spain. It’s like planning an archery competition where you have a masterfully crafted bow and your opponent has a the crudest weapon imaginable, and deciding to conduct it in a foggy swamp with zero visibility and unsure footing. And it gives the other side opportunities to note how many of these characteristics may apply to Biden, Obama or Clinton, and because the choice of elements is arbitrary, trying to claim that some elements are more central than others is a slippery task. The claim of fascism is less than the sum of its parts; Rauch and co. would get much farther keeping the focus on those bad elements themselves rather than putting them in a blender and claiming that the resulting coloration and texture sort of remind one of fascism.

Two Astonishing Presidential Admissions

14 Saturday Feb 2026

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For this post, resisting my usual tendency toward verbosity, I’m just going to present two public statements by Donald Trump about his own presidency, which I think mostly speak for themselves, though they didn’t seem to get much attention.

Exhibit A, January 12th:

Just to clarify, this is the President of the United States indicating that if the Supreme Court rules against his signature economic policy, which he clearly thinks is a serious possibility, it would bankrupt the country (“impossible to pay”) such that ‘WE’RE SCREWED.’

I really don’t know that anything needs to be added to this post to comprehend the utter failure and sheer insanity of this policy, even before the court rules (of course tariffs are an awful policy even if the court rules them constitutional, but that is a longer post).

Exhibit B, January 29th:

In the full quote, Trump said that for wealthy people who own homes, “We’re going to keep them wealthy, we’re going to keep those prices up, we’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home…I want to protect the people who, for the first time in their lives, feel good about themselves, that they’re wealthy people….There’s so much talk about ‘We’re going to drive housing prices down,’ I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes.”

Again, just to parse this: This is the president stating in the clearest possible terms that his interest is protecting the wealthy over the less wealthy who, in his eyes, clearly “didn’t work very hard.” For this reason he wants housing prices to increase further, specifically to put housing out of reach to less wealthy people.

I’m not saying that there’s anything here that wasn’t known before.

But the fact that supporters can continue arguing that tariffs were a good policy idea and that Trump cares about working-class Americans when statements like these are floating around, to the extent that these statements barely made an impact, tells you a lot about our present political moment.

Light in the Time of Nipah

03 Tuesday Feb 2026

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If you walk around my apartment, you may come across a picture frame, given to me as a gift by a dear friend, with the picture of a young woman.

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Look closely and you may notice some odd things about it.

The picture is too small. It looks faded, the edges aren’t quite straight. The woman is not a family member or a friend; in fact I’ve never met her or spoke to her.

If you were to open the back of the picture frame, what would fall out is not a photo, but a folded-up article from The Economist, from June 2nd, 2018, about Lini Puthussery.

Lini Puthussery, who in my mind is filed away under the name “The nurse who did everything right.”

As a daily-wage nurse, she worked flexible hours. That suited her, because she had her two small boys, five-year-old Rithul and two-year-old Sidharth, to look after. Her husband, Sajeesh, had been away for five years, working as an accountant for a small firm in Bahrain. He returned a few times a year, and they spoke every day on the phone. Many Keralans worked in the Gulf. It was more lucrative than staying at home, and meant in Lini’s case that they could afford their one-storey brick house, with a small terraced garden, looking over open pasture. They took proud pictures of themselves outside it.

Millions of South Asians work in Gulf countries, enduring difficult conditions and distance from their families so they can send money home, that their families may live better lives. So much so that, per wikipedia, there are about three times as many Indians working in the United Arab Emirates as there are citizens of the country.

So many people, so many immigrants in particular, sacrifice their own lives and wellbeing for their children and their families. And so many dear souls, including so many doctors and nurses and health professionals, put their own lives at risk to care for strangers.

The article describes how much Lini loved her work as a nurse, how much she cared for her patients, including one who came in one day with a mysterious illness. Eventually the culprit was discovered to be the Nipah virus, which is fatal in 70% of cases.

For the virus to spread between humans, contact had to be intensive and direct. That was exactly what Lini, with her tireless nursing, had provided. On May 16th she felt feverish, but insisted to Sajeesh that she would go to work because “lots of patients are there”, as always. When she grew worse, she checked herself into a hospital in Kozhikode and asked to be quarantined. Sajeesh flew back from Bahrain to find her barely conscious. She left him a note, partly in Malayalam and partly in English, which he folded away inside the cover of his phone.

“Sajeeshetta, am almost on the way. I don’t think I will be able to see you again. Sorry. Please take good care of our children. Poor Kunju [Sidharth], please take him to the Gulf with you. Don’t stay single like our father. Plz. With lots of love, Umma”

The obituary in The Economist, a single page at the very end of the issue, was titled “Lini Puthussery died of the Nipah virus on May 21st. The conscientious nurse from Kerala, in India, was 28.” I would like to believe, despite never having read it and with only limited familiarity with the author, that in the Book of Life, her story is written in volumes upon volumes, in letters of brilliant light.

***

I have five gift articles for the month, posting them all here so up to five people can read the original article, should they so wish:

Link, link, link, link, link

When I write that obituaries in The Economist are gems of humanity, and some of the best writing I read, these are the stories I am talking about.

Antisemitism and US Politics: Ilhan Omar vs. Donald Trump

02 Monday Feb 2026

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Sadly, the topic of antisemitism in US politics today is such a many-tentacled beast that to tackle it seriously would take many thousands or tens of thousands of words. The impetus for this post is a speech given by political philosopher Yoram Hazony on the topic of antisemitism in the Republican Party. Rather than try to write a massive post touching upon all these issues, I’m going to try to take the claims it raises in bite-sized pieces, before looking at the bigger picture.

Hazony’s speech is dedicated to antisemitism in the Republican Party, and he gets the other party out of the way with a comment near the beginning:

Since October 2023, Democrats have largely made their peace with the anti-Jewish hatred of the neo-Marxists and Muslim Brotherhood supporters in their party. In fact, the influence of anti-Semites on the American left has become so blatant and so ubiquitous that most of my American Jewish friends have concluded Jews have no future in the Democratic party of Zohran Mamdani and Ilhan Omar. And if the Republicans were to go down this same road, it’s not clear what would be left of Jewish life in America.

Since 2019, I’ve seen how the idea that the Democratic Party is antisemitic to the core has taken root and become, in many circles, a presumption, something that we’ve all learned long ago and don’t really need to substantiate anymore. There are two strands of this claim that come up pretty much any time you dig deeper. The first is to quote Democrats criticizing policies by the Israeli government. The second is two or three comments by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. This post will be about the latter.

In this post, I will make a very simple argument.

If Ilhan Omar is an antisemite, then so is Donald Trump, based on their respective comments.

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This argument-by-analogy isn’t an attempt at “whataboutism.” It’s simply that determining what is prejudiced and what isn’t depends on where you set the bar. Some people will come out and blame the problems of the world on “organized Jewry,” but barring that, there isn’t an objective answer to the question of whether a particular statement is prejudiced.

What you can say, however, is to say that if you posit a standard such that statement A is bigoted, then statement B falls by the same standard. So if A is bigoted, B is also bigoted.

And that’s what we have in this case.

Here are the two main statements[1] by Ilhan Omar that immediately made her one of the bywords for antisemitism in American politics for the last half decade:

Translation: In response to GOP leader Kevin McCarthy threatening Omar with punishment for statements she made about Israel, she accused him of being influenced by campaign money (“Benjamins“) from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Let’s take a moment to parse why these comments were and are perceived by many to be antisemitic. There are a couple of steps that you need to take to get from point A to point B here, but the core assumption is that associating a predominantly Jewish organization, AIPAC, with using money to influence politicians, is antisemitic because it evokes the antisemitic trope of Jews controlling governments with money.

This is something of a stretch, because of course AIPAC’s purpose is to influence American politics, in part by funding and supporting candidates seen as “pro-Israel” and leading to the defeat of “candidates who would have undermined the US-Israel relationship,” as the homepage of the AIPAC PAC advertises [2]:

So to claim that Omar’s tweets were antisemitic, you have to have a very low bar for that term– which is legitimate, but needs to be acknowledged. It indicates such a sensitivity to the antisemitic trope of Jews controlling governments with money (which obviously exists) that any suggestion that a predominantly Jewish organization (like AIPAC) is influencing politics through money is inherently antisemitic, even when that is essentially the raison d’être of the organization.

Ok.

Now let me take you back to December 3, 2015. Then presidential candidate Donald Trump is speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, who advertise themselves as “the unique bridge between the Jewish community and Republican decision-makers.”

Put aside that the repeatedly referred to the audience of wealthy Jewish donors as “negotiators.” Here is the relevant segment (at 00:17:12 here)

I know why you’re not going to support me and you know you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money. Isn’t it crazy? […] [Jeb Bush] raised $125 million, which means he’s controlled totally, totally controlled by the people that gave him the money. That’s why you don’t want to give me money, okay? But that’s okay. You want to control your own politician. That’s fine.”

There is simply no way to consider Omar’s tweets antisemitic and not to see these comments as much more blatantly antisemitic. Trump explicitly tells the people in front of him that they want to control politicians via campaign contributions, and that they won’t support him if they can’t do that. This is the Republican Jewish Coalition– not a predominantly Jewish organization whose mission is to strengthen America’s ties with Israel, but a group solely dedicated to Jewish causes and with “Jewish” right there in the name.

That was in 2016. Since then, it’s as if Trump has made an effort to repeat every allegedly antisemitic trope that Democrats have been accused of. In an interview in 2021 he said Israel used to have “absolute power over Congress” (a claim he repeated last September, attributing it to “the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen”), and for good measure he mentioned the “Jewish people that run the New York Times.” In 2019 he claimed Jewish Americans have been “very disloyal to Israel,” presupposing the dual-loyalty trope that Omar was (incorrectly) accused of invoking.

There’s a lot to say about how these incidents reflect on their respective parties. Omar’s statements drew immediate and powerful rebuke from leaders in her own party, and she apologized, whereas much more egregious statements by Trump and his fellow Republicans were ignored or even defended. But I’ll leave that to another post.

My personal preference is to have a very high bar for accusations of bigotry, whether anti-Black or anti-Jewish. So while some of Trump’s comments have a hint of antisemitism (“negotiators” and all that), I think it is a mild and petty sort of flavor of antisemitism, not one that I think is especially concerning. His politics absolutely empower antisemites, which is a separate topic, but not because he shares the views of the people he’s empowering.

But if you want to place a very low bar for antisemitism, such that Omar is clearly an antisemite, then so is Trump, by any measure.

***

[1] There are two additional statements that are sometimes cited, the 2012 tweet about how Israel “hypnotized the world” and the comment in 2019 about people pushing “for allegiance to a foreign country.” The latter is an obvious misrepresentation– it is clear from her comments that she was saying that people were pushing her toward allegiance with Israel, so the accusation that this represented a stereotype of Jewish “dual loyalty” is nonsense. The “hypnosis” tweet is more borderline– she’s obviously (and explicitly) anti-Israel, but linking it to “the myth of Jewish hypnosis” a la Bari Weiss’ op-ed in the New York Times was a bit of a stretch. In any case I think it’s clear that Trump’s comments on Israel controlling Congress, which he uttered as a sitting president and with no apology or backtracking, is more significant by orders of magnitude.

[2] Technically the AIPAC PAC started in 2021, so it did not exist when Omar tweeted her tweets, but I think it’s clear to all that this was a change in methods rather than a fundamental change in the nature of the organization.

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