The Daily Parker

As I mentioned yesterday, the OAFPOTUS has illegally destroyed the East Wing of the White House, including the portico and everything right up to the original east entrance. This is part of his plan to build a ridiculous and unnecessary ballroom, funded by big-tech billionaires. The Post's architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, cannot hold back his revulsion:

The leader as builder is an ancient idea, older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than the great public monuments of Rome, older than Emperor Constantine’s clumsy effort to eradicate memories of his predecessors by repurposing and rebranding their works as his own.

But there are subtle differences between the images of authoritarians and elected leaders, in body language and other details. Is the leader acting as a quality-control agent, asking questions, studying details? Or surveying his domain in miniature? Is he simply toying with the world?

Trump made speedy demolition his priority, and speedy construction of the new ballroom is essential to his symbolic purpose, to offer a stark contrast to the dysfunction of Congress and, by extension, the torpid rhythms of democratic self-governance. He is the master builder, the developer who can cut through red tape. That image, whether deserved or not, is why many people voted for him. But to shred precedent is simply to set new precedents. And the precedent he is setting is that history doesn’t matter; laws, procedures and customs are irrelevant; and there is no role for collaboration, transparency and review in the construction of new buildings. Buildings are gifts to the people from leaders who are infallible, not the organic expression of civic values and ideals.

Krugman posits that a lack of good taste is a feature, not a bug, of the OAFPOTUS's style:

Why, you might ask, at a moment of national crisis am I writing about Trump’s bad taste?

[B]ecause tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand. Yes, Trump has terrible taste and probably would even if he didn’t have power and, thanks to that power, wealth. But the grotesqueness of his White House renovations is structural as well as personal. For the excess and ugliness serve a political purpose: to humiliate and intimidate. The tawdry grandiosity serves not only to glorify Trump’s fragile ego, but also to send the message that resistance is futile.

So is it any surprise that Trump is turning the White House into Mar-a-Lago North?

So the ballroom is a sign, not just of Trump’s personal vulgarity, but of the collapse of small-r republican norms. Trump is turning the people’s house into a palace fit for a despot partly because that’s his taste, but also to show everyone that he can. L’etat, c’est moi.

I now find myself frequently thinking of how the Roman Republic degenerated into a dictatorship. For, in essence, Roman emperors were dictators, regardless of the fancy trimmings.

What happened? Modern historians of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire mostly agree upon one explanation for the Republic’s collapse – namely that the enormous loot from Rome’s conquests created a class of incredibly wealthy oligarchs who were too wealthy and powerful to be constrained by republican norms, institutions and laws.

Meanwhile, a man is suing the administration for being unlawfully detained by members of the Ohio National Guard, who he followed and videoed while playing the "Imperial March" from Star Wars. It's funny, but it also underscores how the military simply do not know how to enforce domestic law, nor should they be used that way. Fun times, fun times.

The OAFPOTUS today destroyed the East Wing of the White House, which he does not own. This reminded long-time observers of the time in 1980 when he destroyed historic frescoes that he promised not to destroy with the grace and maturity of a toddler. He has changed quite a bit since then, but unfortunately only through age-related dementia and probably myriad other cognitive problems we'll find out about 20 years from now.

The constant firehose of awful things coming from him and his droogs also now includes his demand that the Department of Justice compensate him $230 million for the affront of being prosecuted for the awful things he did before. (Thanks, Merrick Garland.)

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to misinterpret why Democratic voters tell pollsters they don't like the Democratic party, since Republicans only understand blind fealty to their totem while we actually want to govern competently. Criticizing one's leaders, you see, helps get better leadership. It doesn't mean that Democrats will stay home next November, or that we'll vote for MAGA fanatics because we don't like that our nominee hedged on trans extremism. Oh, no. We will not.

At least the Sun-Times had something good to say about life today. Apparently there's a stretch of Grand Avenue west of Halsted that has some of the best pizza in the world. The tavern-style pie from Pizz'Amici they showed at the top of the article made me want to leave my office and head over there. Maybe this weekend...

Naturally, the press had a lot to say about the largest protest in my lifetime (I was born after the Earth Day 1970 demonstration):

• As many as 250,000 people turned out for the downtown Chicago event, which included a procession that carried a 23-meter replica of the US Constitution, and resulted in zero arrests or reports of violence. (The video of the procession leaving Grant Park is epic.)
• David Graham of The Atlantic explains why the protests got under the OAFPOTUS's skin: "Trump’s movement depends on the impression that it’s unstoppable and victorious. ... Huge protests that demonstrate he is not invincible endanger his political success: They offer people who voted for Trump reluctantly or who have had second thoughts a feeling of camaraderie and hope, and give them a way to feel okay ditching him. ... Trump and his allies seem to grasp what Saturday revealed: The protests are popular, and the president is not."
• Brian Fife sees a paradox in the protests: "One could find this inspiring, so many disparate causes united under one banner. But for those of us who want to see tangible reform in the United States, the lack of clear messaging or policy recommendations—especially during a protest intended to inspire action—was disorienting."
• Josh Marshall disagrees, lauding "the subtle genius of 'No Kings'," saying the name itself is "a deceptively resonant name and slogan with the deepest possible roots in American history. This brings with it a critical inclusivity, which grows out of the name itself and the lack of those specific and lengthy sets of demands that often characterize and ultimately fracture such movements. ... The jagged and total nature of the onslaught against the American Republic creates a clarity: We all know what we’re talking about. You don’t need to explain. The imperfect but orderly and generally lawful old way versus this. And when you say “No Kings,” you’re saying I don’t want this. I don’t accept presidential despotism. I’m here ready to show my face and say publicly that I will never accept it."
• Brian Beutler has "22 thoughts on No Kings DC," of which: "I do not think it’s a coincidence that, as anticipation grew, and the GOP panicked and smeared, universities rejected Trump’s extortionate higher-education “compact,” and the Chamber of Commerce finally decided to sue Trump, etc. The days of proactive capitulation seem to be ending."

I looked for mainstream Republican reactions to the event but only heard crickets. The OAFPOTUS's own response, which I will not dignify with a link, would be grounds for invoking the 25th Amendment in any normal era.

Meanwhile, the vandalism continues:

• Workers have begun demolishing the east side of the White House East Wing as the OAFPOTUS continues to wreak historical violence on the Executive Mansion without Congressional—i.e., the owner's—approval.
• Writing in Harvard Magazine, Lincoln Caplan examines the damage that US Chief Justice John Roberts has done to the Constitution, tracing his legal career from Harvard Law through his clerkship under US Chief Justice William Rehnquist, another hard-right ideologue who, unlike Roberts, didn't have the votes to become his generation's Roger Taney.
• Jeff Maurer suggests that Democrats simply change the conversation about immigration and not apologize for our past policy misses: "I think that Democrats can craft a positive, forward-looking message on immigration that starts a new conversation without dwelling on the past. It would tell a story that happens to be true, which is nifty, because I prefer political narratives that aren’t a towering skyscraper of bullshit whenever possible. The narrative goes like this: 'America is rich, safe, and vibrant because we’ve always attracted the smartest, hardest-working people from around the world. We need an immigration system that attracts the best and the brightest for years to come.'"
• North Carolina, already one of the most-Gerrymandered states in the union, has passed a new congressional map they believe will give them a 10th Republican US House seat, with only three Democratic-majority districts in Raleigh, Durham, and Charlotte. (They've even managed to get Asheville to turn pink, based on 2024 election results.)
• Adam Kinzinger suggests encouraging Russia to end its war in Ukraine through the simple expedient of giving $2 billion of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine each day the war goes on.
• Julia Ioffe reviews the life of Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, Vladimir Putin's ex-wife.
• Molly White explains the October 10th crypto meltdown that destroyed $19 billion of Bitcoin holdings in just a few seconds.

And hey, I even read some non-political news in the past 24 hours:

• The Nielsen-Norman Group digs into the usability of Google's new AI Mode feature, which most people don't seem to know about.
• New Republic's Timothy Noah wonders if the propensity of failsons to piss away their inherited fortunes (like the OAFPOTUS before he began the biggest grift of all time) could help solve the wealth-distribution problem in the world.
• Whatever happened to the decommissioned Staten Island ferryboat that entertainers Colin Jost and Pete Davidson bought? Not much.
• Speaking of New York, Block Club Chicago compares Chicago's Bloomingdale Trail with Manhattan's High Line.

Finally, it warms my heart to read that Gen Z workers have the same attitude toward workplace "emergencies" that Gen X workers have always had. (Boomers and Millennials, WTF is wrong with y'all?)

I'll be in tonight's Ear Taxi Festival performance at Harris Theater in Millennium Park, singing Damien Geter's African American Requiem. I'm really enjoying the piece. Even though our call time (1:30pm) makes it impossible to participate in the No Kings demonstration happening just 400 meters away from the concert venue, I think the chorus are doing their parts as Geter's message is relevant to the day.

If you're in Chicago, come for the demonstration and stay for the concert!

If you're not in Chicago, find a No Kings demonstration near your house and help break the Earth Day 1970 record for largest demonstration in US history.

I jotted down two notes earlier this week about things I heard that made me think. They come from two journalists who I've followed for a while, both of whom have reasoned and careful takes on events in their home countries.

The first came from New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who posted a video on Monday discussing Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought, about whom Politico ran a depressing article just this morning. Bouie says Vought believes that "if you can get rid of the 'woke elites,' you can return the country to way it should, a place of patriarchal order." He goes on to observe that Vought and people sharing his world-view simply have no theory of mind for their opponents. They think tolerance and liberalism are an illegitimate, top-down imposition of ideology from the "woke elites" instead of the bottom-up, grassroots world view that has developed over the last century. That's because they themselves think only in hierarchies and in either-or terms and have no entry into more nuanced thinking.

I've said similar things. Part of what drives people to a hierarchical world-view is a fear of the unknown and a fear of losing power. Ultimately, though, top-down thinking is unsustainable. Narrowness begets narrowness. Just think about how the OAFPOTUS draws from a smaller and smaller pool of potential henchmen because he destroys everyone who works with him. One of the most enjoyable novels I've read on this topic is Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I would recommend every parent read to their children (as Rushdie intended).

The second "makes you go 'hmmm'" moment I had came from another short video, from Times of Israel political correspondent Haviv Rettig Gur. He says (again, paraphrasing): Everyone from the Mehdi Hasans to the activists are upset the war is over. Because the argument wasn't that the Israelis were going overboard, it's that they were trying to annihilate the Palestinians as a people. And the cease-fire plan—what Israelis have been demanding from their government and from Hamas—is that the hostages get returned. Israel agreeing to the cease-fire removes genocide from the table, and shows that this was all just propaganda. "Genocide is an argument to intention, not to how many have died." It's weird watching people be so traumatized by the war being over. Hamas is the only one breaking the deal, by not releasing all the bodies. Greta Thunburg posted a photo of Evyatar David, and when she found out he was an Israeli hostage, she just deleted it. "It wasn't about hostages, and it wasn't about torture, and it wasn't about starvation," he says. "Because if it's the wrong person facing torture and starvation, then she has nothing to say."

The Gazan people and the Israeli people were literally dancing in the streets when the ceasefire was announced. Where were the "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators elsewhere? Not to mention, with so many people protesting Israel's behavior, where are the crowds protesting Sudan's? Or China's against the Uyghurs?

The Kansas Young Republicans organization has been disbanded after several of their members were caught sending texts praising Hitler and advocating for gassing their adversaries:

Kansas Young Republicans chair Alex Dwyer and vice chair William Hendrix were among the members of the leaked Telegram group chat, titled “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM.” Dwyer is a University of Kansas alumnus and founder of KU’s Turning Point USA chapter. Leaders from Young Republicans chapters in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont were part of the chat.

Messages from additional members included references to Black people as “monkeys” and “the watermelon people,” as well as violent language like raping enemies, encouraging suicide and putting people in gas chambers.

After Vice President JD Vance blew it off as "boys being boys," former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) smacks him right in the hypocrisy:

Let’s be clear: these “boys” are not boys. The Young Republicans’ age range is 18 to 40. These are adults—grown men and women with jobs, influence, and in many cases, aspirations for public office. They can vote, serve, lead, and shape the culture of a political party that already has a dangerous authoritarian streak. So when their private conversations are filled with “I love Hitler” posts and racist filth, it’s not just youthful stupidity—it’s a window into the moral vacuum that the GOP has cultivated. These are the foot soldiers of a movement that worships power and cruelty, not character or compassion.

Republicans love to talk about personal accountability. They campaign on it. They brand themselves as the party of discipline, faith, and self-control. But when their own people are caught crossing every imaginable line, the rules suddenly vanish. It’s never their fault. They’re always the victims—of “media bias,” of “cancel culture,” of “the left.” We’ve heard it all before. They cry foul when they face the very accountability they demand for everyone else. The party that tells poor Americans to “take responsibility” can’t even hold its own members accountable for praising Hitler.

This isn’t about policing speech. It’s about protecting the moral boundaries that hold a nation together. There’s a long, ugly history of movements that began by laughing at hate—and ended by enacting it. Every fascist ideology in history began as a joke to someone. Every genocide started with dehumanization disguised as humor. The minute you tolerate people in your ranks laughing about mass murder, you’ve already taken a step down that road. You’ve already lost something essential.

In order to continue their campaign of stealing everything that isn't nailed down in the US, the Republican Party needs these jokers because they don't have anyone else. It's shameful, but it's the GOP. George Wallace would be so proud!

But today? 10/10 would recommend!

Ah, ha ha. Ha.

Everything else today has a proportion of funny to not-funny that we should work on a bit more:

• The administration served up two full helpings of corruption today: indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James as payback for prosecuting the OAFPOTUS, and finalizing a $20 billion gift to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's friends under the guise of propping up the Argentine Peso.
• US District Judge April Perry (NDIL) has blocked the National Guard from entering Chicago pending new arguments on the 24th.
• Julia Ioffe reports on what the troops sent to Portland, Ore., think of being sent there; Jeff Maurer reports on the twerking inflatable dinosaurs taunting ICE there.
• Paul Krugman patiently explains that, in fact, everything economists predicted about the OAFPOTUS's tariffs has happened, even though what non-economists claimed they predicted didn't: "The point is that corporations are very good at finding ways to avoid paying taxes, especially when the rules are complicated and the tax collectors don’t have enough resources to track down their clever strategies."
• Why is billionaire and scary dude Peter Thiel warning about the Antichrist? Seems, you know, unhinged. In fact, he sounds a lot like Charlotte Iserbyt. What is it with these people?
• Quico Toro has lived in Japan for a year, which gave him an unhappy view of Amtrak. (Though, frankly, living in any other OECD country except Canada would do that.)
• The Cubs beat the Milwaukee Brewers yesterday, so the two teams go on to a final, fifth game tomorrow at Miller Park.

Finally, Loyola University Chicago's Sister Jean has died at 106. She was the official team chaplain of the Loyola Ramblers men's basketball team, and well-loved throughout the University.

In the news today:

• Brian Beutler reminds history buffs that in "the median experience of tyranny" life doesn't change much right away.
• Paul Krugman mines the data to understand why gold prices have soared in the last couple of months. But, he argues, "holding gold isn’t an alternative to holding currency. It is, instead, an alternative to holding bonds, which pay interest."
• Jeff Maurer reminds the smitten that, no matter how well-intentioned, activists are just "dumb assholes like you and me:" "[T]he actions of some progressive groups become less baffling when you imagine that their goal isn’t to advance for their cause, but rather to appear to advance their cause while keeping their job and improving their social standing."

Finally, the Post examines the age-old question, why is there always one side of town no one wants to live in, and why is it always downwind of the 19th- and 20th-century factories?

(Update: I've chased down some of Layne's sources and I am not convinced that they entirely support her conclusions about what has caused the degradation of Americans' reading skills. The Daily Parker is ever-evolving.)

ProPublica reported this morning that the OAFPOTUS has stocked the Department of Education with Christian nationalists who want to end public schooling and redirect our taxes to private interests. OK, maybe they're not all Christian nationalists; maybe some of them are just grifters hoping to steal some of the $878 billion in annual US education spending.

Author Hilary Layne argues that the idealogues on the far left have done at least as much damage to US education in the past 30 years as the idealogues on the far right. In her most recent (52-minute!) video essay, Layne takes us through the scholarship on one side and the writings of the critical literacy (cf. critical thinking) theorists on the other to explain why a recent study found only 5% of a group of English Literature majors at two prestigious state universities "had a detailed, literal understanding of the first paragraphs of Dickens' Bleak House:"

As Layne points out, these kids will go on to teach English to other kids, in a cycle that has already produced a generation of writers who can't write.

I've had my own dealings with children unable to read, including one extremely negative interaction with a 26-year-old holding degrees—including a JD—from two of the most prestigious (and left-leaning) public universities in the US. This person admitted at one point that she doesn't read books, which she clarified to mean she literally doesn't read books. In one particular conversation she could not comprehend that her feelings about a point I was making were exactly the same as mine, even as I was making a rhetorical point that she agreed with. This young lawyer got so flummoxed by the nuance of it that, even when written down, it was incomprehensible to her. She's a lawyer, FFS, with what should be an impressive pedigree, and yet has the level of analytical skills that we Gen-X folks were expected to move beyond in 10th grade.

I singled this example out because I found this combination of facts especially egregious. Sadly, I have met too many under-30s with similar deficiencies that I was really looking for any hypothesis that could tie it all together. Layne's video suggests one hypothesis, which I hope to discuss with a couple of teachers I know (including a contemporary of mine who teaches high school English) to see if Layne's on point or not.

I also recognize that older generations have bemoaned falling standards of education for millennia. It might take 30 seconds of Googling to find a quote from Aristotle that no doubt supports the universality of this phenomenon. I really have come to think that the late 1970s and early 1980s were a high point in American education, though: reading through phonics, math through the metric system, physical fitness through daily gym class. Since the Reagan Administration elevated business and Christian nationalism over classical liberalism, though, things seem to have slipped a bit.

The two biggest news stories of the past 24 hours are the government shutting down because Congress couldn't pass a spending bill by the end of fiscal year last night, and the pathetic attempted-fascist assembly of the United States' general and flag officers in Virginia yesterday.

We'll take the dumber one first:

• Jennifer Rubin shakes her head in sadness, but not surprise.
• Matthew Yglesias has 17 thoughts about the shutdown, and Brian Beutler has 20, but how many thoughts does Rabbi Eliezer have?

And then there's failed Minnesota National Guard major (and current Defense Secretary) Pete Hegseth's demonstration of why he never got promoted to lieutenant colonel:

• Glenn Kessler calls out the most prominent and stinky piles of bullshit in the OAFPOTUS's speech to the assembly.
• Tom Nichols shudders, "the commander in chief is not okay."
• Karen Tumulty suggests that Hegseth wanting to return the military to 1990 may not have been the best message to send *cough*Tailhook*cough*.
• Paul Krugman points out that most members of the military—other than Hegseth, obviously—are more valued for their brains than their biceps.
• Alexandra Petri wonders if the meeting could have been an email.

In other news:

• Conservationist and chimpanzee specialist Dr Jane Goodall has died at age 91.
• Nikole Hannah-Jones has a considered and sober reflection on Charlie Kirk's legacy.
• Anne Branigin marvels at how "cancel culture came for everyone."
• The secret to getting better sleep may be as simple as going to bed at the same time every night.

Finally, the forecast for Friday has us at 29°C (85°F) by late afternoon, exactly when we would hit the treeless McRory Trail north of Lake Forest. We have altered our planned route to use the tree-lined Sheridan Road from near the Lake Forest Metra station up to Lake Bluff Brewing, but it will still be wicked hot. It got that hot the day I attempted a marathon walk in 2022, but you'll recall I only got to Evanston before throwing in the towel. In 2023, it hit 29°C, and we did all right—but we moved the walk to mid-October last year and had much better weather.

We'll see how we do. It might just come down to how much sleep I get this week.