You know things are going well in geopolitics when world leaders keep acting like beefing internet personalities, tweeting out screenshots of each other’s texts.
First it was Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who shared Trump’s insane weekend text whining that he had not been given the Nobel Peace Prize, disputing Denmark’s territorial claim to Greenland, and vowing to get “Complete and Total Control” of the island.
Now, Trump himself is getting in on the act. Overnight, he posted on Truth Social text messages from French President Emanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. In his texts, Macron tried to hit Trump with a compliment sandwich: “My friend, We are totally in line on Syria[.] We can do great things on Iran[.] I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland[.] Let us try to build great things.” Rutte, on the other hand, soldiered on with his flatter-Trump-at-all-costs approach: “Mr. President, dear Donald - what you accomplished today in Syria is incredible. I will use my media engagements in Davos to highlight your work there, in Gaza, and in Ukraine. I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.” Happy Tuesday.
Davos vs. Democracy
by William Kristol
As you may have heard, the global great and good have convened for their annual get-together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Donald Trump will fly off to join them tonight.
The town of Davos was once best known as the location of a famous sanatorium, which provides the setting for Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain. I will admit—but only here in the cone of silence of Morning Shots!—that I’ve never actually read that magnum opus. But I gather that in that apparently impressive work we see tormented intellectuals engaged in deep discussions on the meaning of it all, as the outbreak of World War I looms.
For the last half century, by contrast, what we’ve seen in Davos is complacent elites gathered together ostensibly to listen to platitudinous panel discussions. The real purpose of the conference is of course for the big wigs to mix and mingle and reassure each other of their great stature and historic importance.
That’s progress, I suppose. And a world in which the word “Davos” brings to mind a boring conference center rather than a fraught sanatorium is progress. The stable world of modern Davos has been much preferable to that of the first half of the twentieth century. If some of the price we pay for global peace and prosperity is an annual spectacle of self-important oligarchs complacently congratulating each other—well, so be it.
Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that was the price we paid.
Judging from this year’s conference program, our elites seem determined to pretend we’re still in a world of business as usual.
But it’s obvious we’re not. The madness that characterized Thomas Mann’s world has returned. The relatively benign order that was constructed after the two world wars, at home and abroad, is under threat.
And so the world has changed, but the blinkered and complacent elites haven’t. Their failure to come to grips with the impending new world disorder is no longer relatively harmless. It’s part of the problem. Reports from Davos suggest that when President Trump lands there tomorrow morning, he’ll be greeted with flattery and obsequiousness at worst, or perhaps techniques of evasion and indirection at best. Davos won’t feature straight talk and honesty. I suspect that if one follows only the events at Davos over the next couple of days, one will see almost no one willing to acknowledge reality, no one willing to step up and vigorously defend the liberal world order abroad and liberal democracy at home.
But fortunately Davos isn’t the real world. The conference organizers can boast, as CNBC put it, of the attendance of “‘close to 3,000 cross-sector leaders,’ plus a ‘record’ 400 political leaders, 850 top company bosses and 100 tech pioneers.” But the takeaway from Davos, I believe, will be a demonstration of the refusal of the great majority of those assembled there to come to grips with the moment.
Which means it’s up to the rest of us non-Davosians to rise to the occasion. Polls suggest increasing numbers of Americans are willing to do so. Ordinary citizens in the streets of Minneapolis have a better grasp of what the moment requires than elites hobnobbing in the Alps.
At the end of The Magic Mountain, we learn—or so I’m told!—of the outbreak of World War l and the end of the old order. If things go on as they are, we are heading toward a comparable collapse of the post-World War II order. This too would be followed with a true parade of horribles. Our salvation from such a fate won’t be found in Davos. It will be found, if it is to be found, in ourselves.
The Blame-Renee-Good-First Crowd
by Cathy Young
The hardcore MAGA crowd continues to insist, despite thorough analysis to the contrary, that Renee Good was a “domestic terrorist” because she “hit” or “drove into” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross before he shot her. But perhaps more perniciously, some “moderate” Trumpists and anti-anti-Trump “centrists” have adopted a more sophisticated deflection, arguing that while Good’s death was tragic, her death was ultimately the result of her own progressive delusions. It’s victim-blaming in the guise of concern trolling.
Erick Erickson’s initial response to the shooting referred to Good as an “AWFUL,” for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal. ” He now allows that her killing “was a tragedy,” but thinks Good was led astray by the idea that “protecting illegal aliens,” even criminal ones, is a righteous cause. He also points to the agonized scream of Rebecca Good, Renee’s widow, immediately after the shooting as evidence that both women saw their anti-ICE activism as “virtue-signaling” and “a game.” Yet Rebecca Good’s cry of “Why did you have real bullets?”1 is a perfectly logical question, and DHS has still not provided a good reason why agent Ross had his weapon out, loaded, and was ready to use lethal force against unarmed protesters.
Rebecca Good’s outcry was also highlighted by Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield. “The notion that ICE agents would have anything but real bullets in their guns may seem astonishing,” wrote Rosenfield, who saw this as a stark symbol of the tendency of anti-ICE activists, especially suburban women, to think of their protests as a role-playing game or a party. In fairness, Rosenfield does name ICE’s alternately thuggish and clownish tactics as part of the problem, though the bulk of her criticism is directed at the progressive local authorities—and progressive activists like Renee Good, who, in Rosenfeld’s view, don’t realize that ICE agents aren’t like your friendly neighborhood cop and are so far in La-La Land that they’re shocked when law enforcement officers use real bullets.
Rosenfeld misses a few things. ICE agents do use nonlethal ammunition, including rubber bullets and pepper balls—primarily against protesters. Given that the Goods were involved with “ICE watch,” it’s very likely that they had heard about these incidents. So Rebecca Good’s cry of despair was not evidence of being out of touch with reality—or of believing that encounters with ICE were guaranteed to be harmless. Rubber bullets have caused injuries, and there was coverage of such injuries at the protesters in Los Angeles last summer.
It’s very likely that the Goods knew they could be arrested—or pepper-sprayed, or manhandled—and were taking that risk to disrupt immigration raids that Americans increasingly see as abusive. (And no, they weren’t doing it for sex offenders or “Somali fraudsters”; statistics show that the majority of people targeted in the recent ICE crackdown are not criminals, and some of the potential deportees in Minneapolis haven’t even violated immigration law.)
Were the two women reckless? Of course it’s a bad idea to drive away when angry law enforcement officers are yelling at you to get out of the car, or to tell someone else to drive away in that situation. But the concern trolls are saying that Americans engaged in a peaceful protest—involving nothing more disorderly than honking a horn for about three minutes and hampering (but not fully blocking) the movement of cars—should realistically fear for their lives. Keep that in mind the next time the same people complain about impingements on “free speech.”
AROUND THE BULWARK
When a Text Message Shatters International Trust… A message sent to the Norwegian prime minister on Sunday could threaten decades of progress in building up the NATO alliance, writes MARK HERTLING.
A Brave and Interesting Film About Repression… SONNY BUNCH joins THE MONA CHAREN SHOW to discuss It Was Just an Accident, a film from dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi.
Trump Is Humiliating Us… BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER on the Flagship Pod to discuss how Trump is humiliating America constantly, and they remember the hope and optimism that pushed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for a better America.
Quick Hits
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE CITIZENS DRAGGED FROM THEIR HOMES: As ICE’s jaw-dropping rampage through Minneapolis continues, more and more horror stories are emerging every day—and the administration’s apparent lies about them keep piling up, too. Yesterday, photos and video went viral of ICE agents escorting an old man out of his house; he was pictured wearing only shorts, sandals, and a blanket draped across his shoulders as they guided him into the sub-zero Minnesota weather.
Incredibly, the full story was even worse than the pictures made it look. The man, ChongLy Thao, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. His family told reporters that officials had broken down his door and entered his home without a warrant. And they denied the Department of Homeland Security’s post-hoc justification for the arrest: that DHS had been seeking two convicted sex offenders who lived at the same address, and that Thao, in the words of DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, “matched the description of the targets.” “He does not live with, nor has he ever lived with, the individuals DHS claims were targets of this operation,” Thao’s family said in a statement. “The only individuals residing at the home are Mr. Thao, his adult son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. The family does not know the individuals referenced in DHS’s statement.”
Did Thao indeed resemble the sex offenders DHS was supposedly looking for? Well, here’s him:
And here’s them:
Truly, the spitting image! The Bulwark asked McLaughlin this morning on what basis DHS had assessed Lue Moua and Kongmeng Vang would be present at Thoa’s address. “Our initial statement is accurate,” McLaughlin replied. You be the judge.
CHAOS AT CHURCH: When ICE comes to your neighborhood, roughing people up and demanding to see their papers, some protests are more helpful than others. We can’t recommend, for instance, heading out to the street corner with a loaded rifle and a vague plan to “protect my people.” And we also wouldn’t recommend doing what a local Black Lives Matter group did yesterday: bursting into a church, whose assistant pastor they believed to be an ICE agent, to stage a mid-service protest.
Footage from the protest was livestreamed online, both by the BLM group itself and by former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was seemingly embedded with the protesters. The Trump administration quickly seized on the disruption, announcing it would press criminal charges against anyone involved. “Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said on right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s podcast. Meanwhile, President Trump called for Lemon to be sentenced to forty years in prison.
Disrupting a church service for a protest is stupid, possibly illegal, and the sort of thing that threatens to turn normies off your cause. But the White House is so drunk on vengeance that it can’t even let a story that might be good for it breathe before mixing in a large dose of its own authoritarianism.
Cheap Shots
Erickson misquoted her as yelling “You used real bullets?” but the actual quote is easy enough to hear on the video.
"If things go on as they are, we are heading toward a comparable collapse of the post-World War II order. This too would be followed with a true parade of horribles. Our salvation from such a fate won’t be found in Davos. It will be found, if it is to be found, in ourselves."
What can anyone at Davos say or do to prevent the impending catastrophe? Let's be real: there is no way the US or the world can endure three more years of this. Furthermore, after three years of this, there will be nothing left to prevent it continuing beyond three years; all institutions and resistance will be pulverized, elections if held will be a sham, and the only thing remaining will be an authoritarian and a government under his total control.
Europe needs to recognize what time it is? I think they know. Republicans in Congress need to recognize what time it is. Do 20 Republican Senators and a few Republicans in the House want to continue as a democracy? Because if not, and it's almost certain they do not, the post WWII order, is dead, NATO is dead, and American democracy is dead. The only way out of this now is Trump's removal.
We're only one year in, folks. Three more years of this and Hell will be unleashed.
This morning Erick son of Erick has been saying that the media will pay more attention to Trump and Greenland instead of protestors at a church in Minnesota. No shit, Erick. Yes, the President and his note are more important than one protest.