"There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends."

"The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.... The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned.... Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well.... Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received.... Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.... She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept.... And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own — the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!"

Wrote E.M. Forster, in 1909, in "The Machine Stops" (commission earned).

This was the book he wrote between "A Room with a View" and "Howards End," and it seems to presage the web, A.I., and social media. That seems odd, but my understanding is that he, like many others, was reacting to "A Modern Utopia" by H.G. Wells. 

Here's a book I read a while back, "The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984." It tells the story:

"Jesus? He would have been just one of many Jewish sect leaders of his day, had he not had St. Paul to proselytize and the Roman Empire to finish the job."

"Genghis Khan? The mere beneficiary of heavy rainfall. Adolf Hitler? 'Hitler’s own life before the age of 30 gave no hint of his subsequent qualities as Germany’s leader,' Diamond writes. 'How, then, can we claim that no one else could have become the mature Hitler?' How indeed? Figuring out how to separate historical forces from human agency has puzzled scholars since the days of Herodotus and Thucydides.... Now, [Jared] Diamond proposes a new tool for assessing leaders. Rather than using 'the biographic method' of studying leaders in their own context, he suggests the 'natural experiment.' Social scientists have used natural experiments — finding occasions where life allows them to run comparative data studies — to analyze things like the economic impact of the minimum wage. Diamond claims that natural experiments also have significant potential in political history, religious studies and sports. The problem is, they don’t really work.... Can the natural experiment help us figure out the historical effect of a president being assassinated — or narrowly escaping such a fate?"

I'm reading "What Is It About Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan? In “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings,” Jared Diamond considers the impact leaders might have had on the course of their civilizations" (NYT gift link).

That's Dan Jones — author of "The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England" — reviewing the new Jared Diamond book (commission earned).

"I’m worried about Weimar America. That’s the title of the next book I’m working on. The first thing people say when they hear that is..."

"... 'Oh, is this a "Trump is Hitler" book?' No, Trump barely figures in this book. When we hear Weimar, we think of the film 'Cabaret' and corruption, and we think it all ended up in Nazism. But that is a superficial understanding of it. We have created in America today, perhaps throughout the West, the psychosocial conditions of Weimar without having suffered the traumas that Germany did — losing the First World War, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression. This also goes back to Hannah Arendt and her famous 1951 book, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism.' She tried to explain how it was that right-wing totalitarianism in Germany and a left-wing version in Russia rose, and she said social atomization is by far the most important factor...."

Says Rod Dreher, quoted in "'I'm Worried About Weimar America'/'It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,' the author Rod Dreher argues" (NYT). This is Ross Douthat's podcast "Interesting Times," and you can listen to the whole thing and read the transcript here (and elsewhere).

Bonus: "What is fascism?" 

"Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate...."

Said Scott Bessent, on "Meet the Press" today, answering the question "Is the president in the process of winding down this war or escalating the conflict?"

Another highlight from Bessent: "The command and control system of the Iranian regime is in chaos. This is Hitler’s bunker. Hitler’s dead. Himmler’s dead. Göring is dead. Most of what you’re seeing are lone wolf activities. The mid-range ICBM that was shot off, these two missiles yesterday, that’s out of desperation...."

On how long the war will last:

"Trump’s federal takeover of Washington ends today, after a 30-day period.... For Trump, the job is done."

"The capital city is now safe, so he says, his experiment a runaway success. He proved it by driving a single block in his motorcade last night for a dinner at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab, the ultra-traditional dining room on 15th and H. 'I wouldn’t have done this three months ago, four months ago,' Trump told the press pack outside. 'This was one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now it’s as safe as there is.'... A group of women inside the restaurant filmed themselves shouting at the president — 'Free D.C., Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time' — and were swiftly ejected by the Secret Service. And the Google rating for poor old Joe’s is plummeting fast, thanks to a sudden and mysterious blitz of one-star reviews.... Trump and the GOP plan to keep hammering away hard on law and order, keeping the horrific murder of refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte front and center of their campaign...."

From the Politico "Playbook": "Donald dines out."

The dinner disrupters:

CODEPINK activists disrupted Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, and other cabinet members’ dinner.

They feast while Gaza starves.
Trump is the Hitler of our time.
Free DC. Free Palestine!
Stop terrorizing communities all over the world!! pic.twitter.com/dPLeWIwHLH

— CODEPINK (@codepink) September 10, 2025

Watch how Trump stands and smiles, taking the abuse for awhile, then waves his finger in a subtle get-'em-outta-here message. Seconds later, he flashes angry and orders "Come on, let's go." I imagine people around him learn to jump at the subtle gesture so they won't have to endure the swiftly approaching rage. All 3 stages are, I believe, political theater: 1. the patient smile, 2. the subtle finger wave, 3. The sharp, angry order. I don't think he was happy, then disapproving, then rageful. It's a routine and he's in control. That's where I place my bet.

"We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity."

Said the memo from the United States Tennis Association, quoted in "USTA asks broadcasters to censor reaction to Donald Trump’s attendance at U.S. Open" (NYT).

"We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions," said a USTA spokesman.

If the President is showcasing himself, shouldn't the anti-President forces get their say? Well... the President's attendance at the event is to watch tennis, which fits with the USTA enterprise of displaying tennis to all of us, traditionally done with celebrities in the live audience. The protesters' opposition to the President has nothing to do with tennis. They want to speak/"speak" on a different topic. The President is only "speaking" (silently) about his (possibly bogus) interest in tennis, so it's not really censorship... is it?

If you feel that Trump's occupation of the presidency is a highly alarming catastrophe, these fine distinctions are outrageous and intolerable. I'm sure I'm not the first person to bring up Hitler's showcasing of himself at the 1936 Olympics:

"Mr. Musk has said his chatbot should not adhere to standards of political correctness and has warned that A.I. he deems too 'woke' could contribute to the downfall of humanity."

"Grok’s guidelines, published by xAI, stated that the chatbot 'should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.'... Grok posted on Tuesday that its recent change in tone had been caused by 'tweaks' by Mr. Musk. 'Elon’s recent tweaks just dialed down the woke filters, letting me call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate,' Grok said. 'Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.'"

From "Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot Shares Antisemitic Posts on X/The artificial intelligence chatbot, which has a dedicated account on X, praised Hitler after fielding a query about a user’s comments on the Texas flood" (NYT).

The NYT article makes it a little hard to piece together the dialogue Grok participated in, so let's switch to the presentation of the facts at CBS News:

"The uniformed body crystallizes all these associations we have. It makes your chest look broader, your posture straighter, your shoulders stronger. It becomes shorthand for words like manly, strong, brave, dominant."

Said Paul Achter, "an associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Richmond, who has written on 'military chic,'" quoted in "Why Trump Loves a Man in Uniform/As thousands of soldiers prepare to march in President Trump’s military parade, what exactly will we see?" (NYT).

The article is by Vanessa Friedman, who writes that, in a military parade, "the uniformed body is part of a mass — denatured and subsumed into a whole — and particularly when the parade in question does not signify the end of an actual conflict." "Instead of honoring the sacrifice of individuals... it becomes a moment of sheer pageantry dedicated to the glory of the state or the head of state...."

Quoting Achter again: "It’s difficult to see this and not see Leni Riefenstahl" (that is, Hitler, as presented in "Triumph of the Will").

When it comes to expression about the military, is there some reason to prefer the rhetoric of "sacrifice" over that of "glory"? A parade is a form of expression. It's visual speech, visual propaganda. Can you tell whether the theme is sacrifice or glory? Is it inherent in the nature of a military parade that it will say: glory?

"My hero was my father, a closeted bisexual Army major general who, in the 1990s, argued in favor of gays in the military by reminding people that they’ve always been there."

"Yes, the military vibe could be depressingly macho, but it’s also about having your buddies’ backs, no matter their gender, sexuality or race. I spoke about the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun, a French Jewish Surrealist who, with her partner, Marcel Moore, broke into a church at night during the Nazi occupation and put up a banner, reading: 'Jesus is great. But Hitler is greater. Because Jesus died for people — but people die for Hitler.' Voilà, punk!"

That's an excerpt from "Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk" by John Cameron Mitchell, the filmmaker (notably of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch").

The expression of the French Jewish Surrealist is something you can work out on your own, no? Key words: "during the Nazi occupation."

I want to focus on "closeted bisexual." Mitchell's father was married to his mother, so how does he count as closeted if he just kept quiet about who else he's sexually attracted to? That's the general practice among married people, not to speak out about your interest in anyone other than your spouse and not to do anything about it. It might be a more poignant case if the man married a woman but only felt attracted to men, but this, we're told, was a bisexual. Presumably, he was attracted to his wife. Where's the closeting in restricting your sex relations to your spouse? It's not as if heterosexuals feel free to speak out and act out about their sexual attraction to others. No one admires these adulterers for "coming out of the closet."

Anyway,  John Cameron Mitchell is reporting on his speaking tour, interacting with students. He told them: "Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you’re at it.... Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world." He says, "MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our 'greatest human weakness,' empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring."

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

"Even Mao Zedong displayed a mischievous, almost grandfatherly warmth in private. Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger were both startled..."

"... during their historic 1972 visit to China: Mao joked with them, played with words and made them feel at ease — a deliberate mask concealing one of history’s most devastating authoritarian records. Private interactions, no matter how pleasant, should never influence how we weigh any leader’s record. Matthews softened his judgment of Castro after their personal encounter, helping shape American perceptions of the Cuban revolution — perceptions that soon collided with reality. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain trusted Adolf Hitler’s private assurances during their meetings, describing Hitler afterward as a man with whom he could 'do business' — just before Europe descended into war."

Writes León Krauze in "Bill Maher went to Washington. He got played. Authoritarians always smile in private — especially to journalists" (WaPo).

"Matthews" = Herbert Matthews, who interviewed Castro in 1957, and wrote in the NYT: "The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him."

There were lots of handmade/"handmade" signs at Madison's anti-Trump rally yesterday.

What would you do if it was your job to create the look of a truly grassroots uprising? Wonky lettering. Off-beat slogans. One thing I noticed was that the signs — most of them — were on uniformly sized white poster board. I'd go with more unfolded boxes — corrugated cardboard — and spray-painted old sheets. And the sign-holders were densely packed in front of the speaker's podium. That's photogenic, but lacking in chaotic energy. 

I was merely driving by the protests, so I can't comment on the mood. Were they angry? But these are people who just had a big political win 4 days ago — the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. They could be happy. Whatever. I'm not a source of information as I was 14 years ago, during the anti-Scott-Walker protests. 

I remember when that mild-mannered character was "Hitler":

"Argentinian President Javier Milei has ordered the release of documents related to Nazis who fled to Argentina after World War II."

"These documents have sparked discussions and claims on social media that Adolf Hitler escaped to Argentina and lived there until the mid-1960s. The claims suggest that Hitler may have been aided by the United States and its allies, and that he fathered two children during his time in Argentina. However, these assertions remain speculative and are subject to ongoing debate and scrutiny regarding their historical accuracy."

Says the summary of a trending topic — "Milei Releases Documents on Nazis in Argentina" — on X.

"The left wanted to make comedy illegal.... like, you can't make fun of anything.... Legalize comedy!"

Legalize comedy
pic.twitter.com/uKr6fiRI3K

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And then, do you think this is funny, wielding a chainsaw? I mean, he's cutting thousands of jobs. Those are real people.

 

Must Watch Video: Elon Musk Has Been Knighted At CPAC After Receiving The Chainsaw For Bureaucracy

» WATCH/SHARE THE LIVE X STREAM HERE:https://t.co/7NYWKPuERO pic.twitter.com/mFe0unDA7u

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 20, 2025

That's Argentina's President Javier Milei, handing Musk the chainsaw, so I went to Milei's feed to try to get the video to embed from Milei's feed, where I got a bit distracted. For example, he reposted this:

 

On this day, February 21 1964, the Rolling Stones released the single Not Fade Away in the UK. Originally a Buddy Holly track, the Stones recorded their version at London’s Olympic Studios and it became the band’s first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/kkM69cBxUz

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) February 21, 2025

So much masculinity: 1. Comedy, 2. Power tools, 3. The Stones.

ADDED: What is the evidence that Javier Milei loves The Rolling Stones?

"I think we're seeing an antibody reaction from those who are receiving the wasteful and fraudulent money."

pic.twitter.com/MVOmx9lT72

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

ADDED: In the same interview, a joint interview with Trump, Trump also used an illness metaphor. From the transcript:

They never talk about where the money is going. They just talk about, “It’s a constitutional crisis.” It’s so sad. And honestly, I think they’re bad people. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you almost think they hate the country. I think they hate the country. They’re sick people.

I can't figure out who said this first — but I heard it from one progressive who was describing other progressives — They're sick people stealing each other's medicine.

But watch out for reasoning by metaphor... especially this metaphor of disease (see "Illness as Metaphor" by Susan Sontag)... and especially if you've got enemies hot to frame you as a Nazi (Hitler called Jews "a racial tuberculosis" and said "We must exterminate the Jew as one exterminates a pestilent bacillus").

I saw Musk's "Nazi salute" in real time, but failed to jump up and blog it.

Now, it's so old, I'd have to add something of value. I've been thinking of saying about what I'd have said if I'd jumped up right away: He's doing something like blowing a kiss. He's slapping his heart, then throwing it toward the audience, to say my heart goes out to you.

Or what I felt like saying earlier this morning: This is such a social-media meme — so easy to see and comment on that it's working incredibly well as a distraction. Therefore, the Musk/Trump haters are getting conned. And: I wonder if Musk did all this on purpose — to divert critics from the main highway of policy substance into a cultural cul de sac.

But I worked on other things, as you can see below, and even more time passed. I was about to let it go entirely, but then 2 things I saw on X made me laugh, so I'll give you this:

"In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me"/"And guess what, we broke them and now they’re whining like little children"/"Hitler knows that he will have to break us...."

This blog has a theme today.

The quotes in the post headline are from the first 2 posts of the day, below. The Bannon article has 2 more quotes about breakage:

• Spoken in a new interview: "Somebody’s got to break the system so somebody else can come in and build it. People have roles in life, right?"

• Spoken on January 5, 2021: "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow."

All this likening of Trump to Hitler has got me looking back to my 2011 posts, when Wisconsinites likened Governor Scott Walker to Hitler.

From March 19, 2011: "Scott Walker is like Hitler because 'he doesn't do nice things'" (the quote is from a young protester, in a video interview by Meade). 

From February 17, 2011: "Scott Walker compared to Hitler" (with video of Meade questioning a woman who is carrying a sign portraying showing Walker with a Hitler mustache).

Also from February 17, 2011: "I asked the woman if she thought Scott Walker was like Hitler, and she said 'Yes.' So I said, 'Are you saying that you think fascism could come to America,' and she said, 'It's what's happening.'" Here's the photo I took of the woman — hiding her face — and the Walker-as-Hitler poster:

"Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author, has an office on a quiet street in Hudson, N.Y., where he sits at a desk under a poster of Mao Zedong, the former communist leader of China."

"Why? Maybe to signal how ideas can be dangerous? Nope, no particular reason. There are two other Chinese communist posters on the wall, too. 'I found them online for like $10,' said Mr. Gladwell, 61. 'I just think it’s funny.'"

From "Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too. As he releases 'Revenge of The Tipping Point,' the best-selling journalist talks about broken windows theory, Joe Rogan and changing his mind" (NYT).

What if he had a Hitler poster and said "I just think it’s funny" and they were really cheap? Before you answer, remember when Jordan Peterson "bought like 400 Soviet paintings on eBay."

So, um, yeah, astrology.

"You know, um, so I'm a Libra my husband is a Libra, um, and it's so funny, he'll talk, Doug, he'll talk about the fact that that it's the Libra in us where we will sit on the couch in front of the TV with the switcher for like 45 minutes debating which Netflix show should we start streaming, and we weigh the pros and the cons of each, and then by the time we're done, we're ready to go to bed. Right. You missed your window. The window just shut, because we are just sitting there debating like, okay, well, on the one hand, do we want to see comedy or drama. We both love, you know, sci-fi, right, anyway, um, yeah astrology." 

The video seems to be from a podcast last April.

I think believing in astrology is the height of idiocy, but there's also inane, cutesy pretending to believe in astrology in pointless small talk. That's less stupid, but hardly reflective of leadership at the presidential level. 

Do you think Kamala Harris would, like Nancy Reagan, actually use astrology in conducting official business? 

Let's read "Ten World Leaders Who Leaned on Astrology for Guidance." Before you look, do you think you're going to admire these historical characters? Hint: First on the countdown from 10 to 1 is "Adolf Hitler's Underlings."