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All the President’s Mouthpieces
ONCE UPON A TIME, THE PEOPLE TASKED with speaking for the president of the United States were not just excellent communicators but also known for their good sense, composure, diplomacy, truthfulness (for the most part, at least), and tact. Think of the late Bill Moyers, who served as press secretary under President Lynd…
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Saturday! A year ago, I was able to move back to Ohio, and that’s thanks, in part, to you. I’ve met a bunch more Bulwark readers in the Queen City in my year here and I look forward to meeting more!
Congrats to Tom Hamilton… On making it to Cooperstown. The Guardians may have a long road ahead this season, but at least we’ve kept Steven Kwan!
Speaking of baseball… Have you ever seen two teams score 8 runs in an inning?! (The Reds lost.)
Woof. Check out the new “Rose Garden” at the White House. It looks awful.
DOGE-pilled… Luke Farritor could have been an artist, or a builder, or someone dedicated to seeing a great historical mystery through. Instead he wound up at the Department of Government Efficiency, slashing, dismantling, undoing. (Bloomberg)
The bizarre genius… Of concrete ships. Phil Edwards explains.
This week’s comment section prompt: Which institutions have surprised you most in the Trump era—either by earning your unexpected respect or by collapsing in ways you didn’t anticipate?
Remember the rule: We’re looking for 2/3 in kind, necessary, and true.
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Most surprising -- The Bureau of Labor Statistics. After the next hurricane, I expect that the National Weather Service will fire the guy who reads the wind gauge.
I am responding to the prompt: but take note-- the prompt itself makes it difficult to follow the '2/3 kind rule'
As a long time academic and then academic administrator at several 'top tier' universities, I have been appalled by the gutlessness, the unwillingness to stand on principle (if not now, when), the lack of sophisticated response, the inability to coordinate efforts behind common goals, values and responsibilities to the body politic of university Presidents/Chancellors. Of course this should not be surprising since Presidents/Chancellors are beholden to their Boards who themselves are moved to support the institutions though rarely, if ever, at the expense of their companies. Similar remarks are in order for 'news' media.
A liberal democracy depends not on voting (as a way of expressing individual preferences) but as John Ferejohn and I argued a few decades ago voting as a way of giving voice to informed judgment. Among the institutions most important to informed judgment that underlies the values of democratic self-governance include a vibrant press and thoughtful as well as thought provoking system of higher education.
Without much of a fight, let alone a unified effort, both institutions have shown themselves unable to respond to a malignant attack of disinformation (which has gone on for years now) whose sole purpose is not to get individuals to believe false claims, but to have them become deeply skeptical of the very notion of epistemic authority, the value of which depends on trust (the destruction of which is essential to the disinformation project). At the same time, they have succumbed to a 'bullying, threatening and coercive' government that is committed to replacing political authority with raw power.
The net effect of the combination of destroying institutions of epistemic and political authority is a populace reliant on a single power as the source of information and the author of actions taken in the name of us all, while marking those who exercise independent critical judgment as 'enemies' of the people. With so much so obviously at stake, the cowardice of those who lead these institutions is striking, in effect rendering them accessories before and during the fact of the likely end of grandest of all political experiments in modern times.