Politics

Elon Musk has set up a third party and pledged to contest next year’s midterms. But to find a third party that has performed well in a midterm election, we must journey far into the annals of American history. Minnesota and Wisconsin-based parties managed a handful of House representatives and a senator or two in 1934, but these were states-first campaigns that were anchored in a geographical power-base – something Musk does not have. We can discount the movements linked to Ross Perot in the 1990s and George Wallace in 1968, who both ran for president but did not have a viable wider party slate at their own elections or ensuing midterms.

Anyone who has perambulated through the groves of academe has encountered dumb smart people. They are clever, intellectually nimble, but they lack what Aristotle called φρόνησις and what the rest of us call “street smarts” or “practical wisdom.” In academia, dumb smart people often appear to be merely quaint or eccentric. In the realm of politics, they appear first as an exciting novelty, then as a destructive if naive force, cynically manipulated by the very people they hoped to replace.  In 1992, the billionaire Ross Perot epitomized the dumb smart political actor when he ran as an Independent candidate against George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He pretended to provide an alternative to both Bush and Clinton. In reality, Perot guaranteed Clinton’s victory.

When Donald Trump called on Iran’s Ayatollah to “surrender” during Israel’s recent war the word struck many as jarring – almost antiquated. No major global leader has used that language publicly since the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945.But Trump’s invocation, intentional or not and soon abandoned by his call for a “ceasefire,” points to a deeper issue: Are the rules that governed mid-20th century warfare still relevant in the 21st century? Why has “surrender” disappeared from the language of modern warfare? And what, exactly, do today’s ever-growing humanitarian laws offer nation-states forced to operate under them, in a world that looks nothing like the one left smoldering in 1945?

Washington, DC What’s the best way to celebrate America’s birthday? For President Trump, it was a swift round of golf at his course in Sterling, Virginia, followed by a victory lap to sign his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” on the South Lawn of the White House. Two B-2 bombers, flanked by F-22 Raptors flew over the White House as the US Marine band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Military men in short-sleeved shirts – their wives in flowery sundresses – were dotted on white chairs around gingham-clad tables. It was a quintessentially American affair. “That is some sight,” said Trump, of what he described as a “big, beautiful plane,” after he walked up to the shaded podium on the South Portico with his First Lady.

When Zohran Mamdani applied to Columbia University in 2009, he checked both the “Asian” and “Black or African American” boxes on his admissions form. He wasn’t lying – technically. Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani said he was trying to express his complex heritage. But in a recent interview with The New York Times, he admitted something telling: he doesn’t consider himself black.That admission, buried beneath the usual progressive buzzwords about “nuance” and “complexity,” should be a wake-up call for anyone still defending race-based admissions in elite education. Mamdani didn’t cheat the system. He played by its rules. And that’s exactly the problem.

California is catching the deregulation bug. The state legislature has apparently realized that people need houses too, and sometimes the endangered insects have got to go. On Monday, Gavin Newsom signed a bill streamlining permitting for building projects mired in environmental review.  About time, says Cockburn. Consider for a moment the California High-Speed Rail, a project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, which has yet to emerge from environmental clearance despite starting in 1996. The budget has multiplied, in the meantime, from $30 billion to $100 billion. The segment just from San Francisco to San Jose, where the train would use pre-existing Caltrain rail, almost limped across the permitting finish line in 2021.