Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A month for insurrection

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We begin today with Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva taking to the pages of The Washington Post on the one year anniversary of the coup attempt by supporters of former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro.

The coup attempt was the culmination of a long process promoted by extremist political leaders to discredit democracy for their own benefit. The Brazilian electoral system, internationally recognized for its integrity, was questioned by those who were elected using that same system. Without evidence, they complained about Brazil’s electronic ballot box, just as election deniers in the United States complained about mail-in voting. The objective of these false complaints was to disqualify democracy to perpetuate power in an autocratic way.


But Brazilian democracy prevailed — and emerged stronger. [...]

Since my return to the presidency after 12 years, the unity of the country and reconstruction of successful public policies have been goals of my administration. Government that improves lives is the best answer we have to extremists who attack democracy. [...]

Inequality serves as fertile ground for extremism and political polarization. When democracy fails to provide for the well-being of the people, extremists seek to discredit the political process and promote disbelief in institutions.


The erosion of democracy is exacerbated by the fact that people’s news sources and social interactions are mediated by digital applications that were designed for profit, not democratic coexistence. The Big Tech business model, which prioritizes engagement and attention-seeking, promotes inflammatory content and strengthens extremist discourse, favoring antidemocratic forces that operate in internationally coordinated networks.

The autocratic playbook has some variations but it’s basically the same the world over.

One big difference between Brazil and the United States (at least to this point): Bolsonaro cannot appear on any ballot in Brazil for eight years.


Paul Krugman of The New York Times thinks that the conspiracy-minded Trump and his MAGA allies will, at some point, go after the Fed.

...rate cuts will have political implications. They will be good for Biden, although not exactly for the reasons you might think.

I don’t know what the unemployment rate or the rate of economic growth will be in November, but because monetary policy works with a lag, what the Fed does in the next few months won’t have much effect on these numbers.

Biden, however, is already presiding over a very good economy by normal standards, with solid job growth and plunging inflation. What he needs is for more Americans to accept the good news. And Fed rate cuts will help him with that. They will signal to the public that inflation really is under control; they will lead, other things being equal, to higher stock prices and lower mortgage rates.

So we can expect howls from Trump and his allies that politics, not economics, is driving the coming rate cuts — even though Trump himself appointed Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chair.

Why do we know this will happen? Partly because paranoia is MAGAworld’s normal condition: It sees sinister conspiracies everywhere.

Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to write about what’s going in American higher education outside of the Ivy League and comparable institutions, this time at Louisiana State University.

The true meaning of Claudine Gay’s ouster can be seen in a story that’s gotten zero coverage in the New York Times or the rest of the mainstream media. At Louisiana State University, whose undergraduate enrollment of just under 29,000 is exactly four times that of Harvard, the looming arrival of a new right-wing GOP governor across town in Baton Rouge has sparked a quiet but significant effort to dismantle diversity efforts and kill anti-racism education in a state that was a cornerstone of first slavery and then Jim Crow segregation.

LSU scrubs diversity statement from website, renames inclusion office. @ByPiperHutch reports videos from speaker series on racism have also been pulled. https://t.co/JJ9QH38ECx #LSU #lalege #lagov

— Louisiana Illuminator (@IlluminatorLA) January 5, 2024

The Louisiana Illuminator reports that ahead of governor-elect Jeff Landry’s inauguration, LSU has already scrubbed a diversity statement from the university website, renamed its office dedicated to bolstering racial equity on campus to remove the word “Inclusion” and replace it with “Engagement,” and — in the most Orwellian move — deleted all links to a campus lecture series that was called “Racism: Dismantling the System,” tossing all of it down the memory hole.

Trust me, Harvard is going to be just fine, but the true goal of a bomb-throwers like Chris Rufo or the amorally ambitious Rep. Elise Stefanik is preventing what right wingers see as the rot of diversity, and real learning about American democracy on campuses like LSU or West Virginia University or Youngstown State. These schools educate far more students than the Ivy League (just 0.4% of all collegians) and are the potential growth engines for a thriving, multiracial middle class.

I was surfing various broadsheets and online magazines from across the pond and came across this early November 2023 article by former British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall for the Byline Times saying that “the West” should not turn the Israeli-Hamas war into another front in Western culture wars.

All people with even a modicum of awareness of the horror of the Holocaust should be able to comprehend why Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel on 7 October reawaken memories of the absolute worst experience in Jewish history. It should not be hard to understand why Jewish people feel the need for a homeland of their own.

Even if many, or most, of the participants in mass protests in support of Palestinians, are motivated by nothing more than a genuine desire for peace, it still should not be hard to understand why many Jews feel scared and threatened, when they see some marchers shouting loaded slogans like “From the River to the Sea”. It should not be hard to understand why Israelis feel outraged when their actions in Gaza are condemned by prominent figures like Jeremy Corbyn, or at the United Nations, without mentioning the 7 October attacks.

On the other hand, all those with a modicum of knowledge about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be able to comprehend why Palestinians feel so frustrated, hopeless and angry. Palestinians in the West Bank are caught in a vice between the Israeli occupation of their territory, the never-ending seizure of their lands by settlers, and the ineffectual, corrupt leadership of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. In Gaza, where there have been no elections since 2006, Palestinians are trapped in a noose between Israel and Egypt, and the brutal rule of Hamas.

If you can empathise with the citizens of Belarus, and not blame them for their suffering under President Lukashenko’s authoritarian rule, or with the citizens of Myanmar for their suffering under Myanmar’s military junta, you should also be able to empathise with the citizens of Gaza, rather than blaming them for having to live under the stranglehold of Hamas.

I’ll only say that rarely is there an analysis of the Israeli/Hamas war that captures most of the revulsion and empathy that I feel for both sides of the conflict.

Frank Sobchak writes for War On the Rocks on some ideas for “the day after” in Gaza taking into account America’s experience in Iraq.

What comes next will be especially challenging, and Israel should steel itself for a long, hard slog. Politicians will claim that reconstruction can be done quickly and inexpensively, but America lost far more soldiers in the years after major combat operations ended in Iraq than in the short time it took to achieve regime change. Occupying Gaza unilaterally, which is what it seems that Israel will have to do at least for some time since it has closed off other viable alternatives, will require more than 80,000 soldiers if it is done correctly, based on a 2010 planning estimate from the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Israel should aim to minimize the phase where it goes it alone in Gaza because finding legitimate local partners and foreign allies is critical. It is also easier said than done and in Iraq the United States struggled with both challenges extensively. Many allies deployed forces for only a short span of the conflict, and some, due to national caveats that prohibited them from certain operations such as leaving secure areas, proved to be more of a burden than an advantage. In terms of creating acceptable domestic security forces and a viable political system, America failed at both, but in doing so learned many lessons. Like deradicalization, building capable military and police forces are exceptionally challenging multi-generational tasks, and Israel does not have units specifically organized and trained to conduct security force assistance, which makes the task more difficult. To have the best chance of success, a cadre of professional advisors is necessary, ideally inside the Israel Defense Forces, which would require the formation of new units during wartime, itself a complex task.

Rebuilding Gazan politics will be equally long and complicated. Although there is an incentive to select expatriates for leadership roles to bring in new blood, that worked exceptionally poorly in Iraq and should not be repeated in Gaza. Individuals who have not lived in Gaza or the West Bank will have neither the legitimacy nor the understanding of local politics to govern, especially in the myriad of crises that Gaza is likely to experience. While this means that members of the Palestinian Authority will likely have to take up most of the civil posts, there might have to be some posts filled with former employees of the Hamas government. In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to restrict former Baath party members from government positions based on the assumption that de-Baathification should create a “clean state” like de-Nazification in World War II. That order proved catastrophic, as the United States tried to stand up civil functionality with few technocrats able to serve in key positions. It was also not historically accurate, as the allies made the stomach-churning decision to employ some former Nazis.

Tom Gordon of Prospect recognizes the dawn of the AI election in 2024.

Like moths, politicians flutter towards the bright light of attention, and attention is now found online. According to Ofcom research, for those under the age of 44 the internet eclipses TV as the leading source of news. Advertisers now spend most of their budgets digitally, and during the 2019 general election campaign the spending of the political parties mirrored this.

On one level, digital media has fragmented attention. There are fewer and fewer “water cooler” moments, when the nation comes together to discuss a common media event. These have been replaced by millions of unique interactions across different platforms, as users delve ever deeper into algorithmically curated worlds. But this belies the underlying concentration of activity, and hence power, in the hands of half a dozen US (and one Chinese) platforms: Google (which owns YouTube), Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft and now TikTok. [...]
The new wave of tools perform a different role. At the heart of generative AI’s functionality is the ability to make a strong argument, something usually considered a politician’s core skill. Generative AI enables fast, cheap and infinitely scalable content production. These are magic words for campaign managers, who have relatively small budgets and mere weeks to reach millions of voters (many of whom tune out from broad-brush methods of political communication).

AFP Fact Check provides an example of the types of AI “deep fakes” that will have to look forward to.

Text overlaid on the video reads: "December 29 US social media video: Interview with Rob Wittman, vice chairman of the United States House Committee on Armed Services, publicly campaigning for the DPP."

Wittman appears to say in the video: "Hsiao promoted US-Taiwan relations, and she has rich diplomatic experience and outstanding leadership skills. If Lai and Hsiao became president, the United States would accelerate all arms sales to Taiwan, send US military personnel with combat experience to assist Taiwan's training, and invite Taiwan's army to train in the United States, to strengthen self-defence capabilities." [...]

Wittman has led a delegation that visited Taiwan from August 31 to September 2, 2023, as vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees funding for the US military, AFP reported.

He met with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen there and said any unprovoked attack on Taiwan would result in a "resolute reaction" from Washington. [...]

US President Joe Biden's administration approved direct military aid to Taiwan for the first time under a financing programme for foreign governments in August 2023.

However, the video is not genuine footage of the congressman making the remarks.

Joshua Yaffa of The New Yorker warns us that Ukraine is running out of time to get the help that it needs.

“Ukraine’s military options were limited not only by what the West would provide but also by political choices,” Michael Kofman, an expert in the Russian and Ukrainian militaries at the Carnegie Endowment, said. For example, the Zelensky administration made Bakhmut a politically symbolic battle, keeping Ukrainian units fighting there throughout the spring and summer, which meant that many of the country’s most capable and battle-hardened troops were unable to take part in operations elsewhere. Ukraine settled on a strategy for an offensive waged on three axes at once, hoping to exhaust Russian reserve units. But the result was to further spread out forces and artillery. Offensive operations in the south, the most important front, were conducted by more inexperienced troops, fresh from training. When the initial assault failed, Ukraine switched to attacks by smaller units, which preserved lives and equipment, but did not lead to a larger breakthrough. “Ukraine didn’t have any easy options,” Kofman said. “But the three-pronged offensive did not deliver.”

Whatever the causes, the failure of the offensive created a number of problems for Ukraine. Russian forces may hold certain advantages, especially in terms of matériel, at the start of the year, Kofman said, but none of them look particularly decisive on their own. More important are unity, patience, and determination among those Western states supporting Ukraine’s war effort. “When your ability to continue fighting is so dependent on outside support, you also depend on the expectations and belief—or not—those same outside powers have in your path to victory,” Kofman told me.

The danger for Ukraine is that Western pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mykola Bielieskov, a defense analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, in Kyiv, said, “Skeptics in the West were provided with a very powerful argument: where is the guarantee that if we provide another sixty billion”—the amount that President Joe Biden is asking Congress to approve—“the result will be any different?”

Mateo Sancho Cardiel writes for El País in English profiling a collector and keeper of Black culture in Harlem.

As a child, Michael Henry Adams used to watch films like Gone with the Wind (1939) and Saratoga Trunk (1945) and feel drawn to the sumptuous mansions of the American South. Yet, as an African-American child, he was also aware that his race made it difficult for him to be the owner in that kind of context. He then shifted his focus to the houses built at the end of the 19th century in Newport, Rhode Island, which he also found fantastic. However, he soon learned that the place had been the second most important port of entry for slaves in the United States. Turning his attention towards England, he was fascinated by the houses of the Harewood dynasty — but it turned out that their fortunes came from the plantations in Jamaica. Any way he looked at it, it seemed difficult for him to be a lover of interior design without betraying his own people. His father had already warned him, when he told him that he wanted to be an artist at the age of 14: that was only for white people. His mother, a little more in favor of him pursuing his passions, told him that the people who were into decorating were “a little bit funny.”

He was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1956, but he left as soon as he was able, headed for the New York of the 1980s. There, in Harlem, he found an aesthetic splendor that did not stain his hands with blood. They were the echoes of the neighborhood’s so-called Renaissance, the golden age of African-American culture that lasted from 1910 to the mid-1930s, the era of the Cotton Club, of the poet Claude McKay, of the intellectual leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois. Luxurious halls, terracotta facades, engraved cornices. A legacy threatened by Reagan’s neoliberalism and the first winds of gentrification. Adams had found his life’s mission: to defend, preserve and write about some of his community’s historic places. To become a sort of archaeologist of an architecture that is too recent, too unknown, and which faced economic and institutional intentions of being buried. [...]

He is also a great host who welcomes us into his home with exquisite breakfast crockery and a three-tier tray with raspberries and pastries. As he pours a cup of coffee from the corner deli into a porcelain pitcher, he confesses that of the hundreds of pieces that clutter his living room, none has cost more than $35; some pieces were even rescued from the trash. Of course, his story is also told on his walls: there is a life-size photograph of his father when he used to play basketball, a photo of Martin Luther King taken by his grandfather and some drawings that he made himself. A home as humble as it is sumptuous that captivates him to the point that his doctor worries because he never goes outside. “He tells me that I have chronic depression, but I don’t think it’s bad that I don’t feel like leaving this place.” He inhabits one of those buildings that he fought unsuccessfully to turn into a protected space, at 41 Convent Street. Its first African-American resident was the actor Fredrick O’Neal, founder of the American Negro Theater in 1940, and its peculiar vaulted lobby connects three triplet buildings built in 1926, almost 100 years ago.

Finally today, you 2023 College Football National Champions are the Michigan Wolverines, who defeated the Washington Huskies last night 34-13 to claim its first national championship in 26 years.

BLAKE CORUM MIchigan with their third rushing TD of the game! #NationalChampionship pic.twitter.com/qDBNwkxhPI

— ESPN (@espn) January 9, 2024

Have the best possible day everyone!