Tingitana

We need more voices.

“. . . the Republican president [George W. Bush] chose forty-nine-year-old Bernard B. Kerik—a man who as a toddler, was abandoned by his prostitute mother (who was probably later killed by her pimp), dropped out of high school, declared bankruptcy, ran a jail in New Jersey, supervised the security of Saudi royal hospitals, worked as an undercover detective, and eventually rose to New York City police commissioner, a post he held during the terrorist attacks of 9/11—to run the newly created Department of Homeland Security. Kerik eventually withdrew his nomination after it turned out that he had hired an illegal immigrant nanny and engaged in other illegal activities. After a decade of legal wrangling, he was finally sent to prison in 2010. Still, the fact that he had been chosen or this powerful post attests to the opportunities available to average Americans."

Another example of Steve Bannon's explanation of the Trump Revolution and why it matters to America. I think of Bannon, ironically, as the Lenin of the MAGA movement. There is no one in America--or the world--who comes close to his command of global geopolitics, combined with a complete understanding of the capitalist world order. He may very well be the last of a species of leaders who can still articulate a political vision based on a vast knowledge of history and economics.

Video courtesy of UCLA

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly confrmed Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, introduces himself and his views to his colleagues. Let us hope that this great American succeeds in his noble mission.

This is a must-watch interview. Except for someone like Henry Kessinger, there are a few people who can match Jeffrey Sachs's knowledge of the contemporary world and the people who have shaped it.

One of the most powerful expressions of the MAGA or populist nationalist revolutioin under way in the United States right now.

A historic moment in American history.

"At the same time, wealth inequality has grown to an alarming level. The top 1 percent of our families now have more wealth than the middle 60 percent."

At least, the French have the critical acumen to appreciate the emergence of Trump, his Second Coming, and his partnership with history's most creative and wealthiest man. I recently asked the historian Robert Allison who would Thomas Jefferson have voted for in the last 2024 presidential election? I leave that same question to the readers of this post. I spent the last eight years walking on eggshells trying to convince my colleagues that we live in revolutionary times. The right/left, conservative/progressive binaries have preempted any attempt at a lucid analysis of the Trump phenomenon.

Photos courtesy Warner Bros & Orion-Nova Productions

Sanders never succeeded in leading Democrats or his nation, but his Republican alter ego Trump managed to win the presidency twice and has transformed the stuffy Republican Party of corporate bosses into a populist party of the people.

How the media reacted to Donald Trump's victory in 2024.

The French spent the early hours of November 6, 2024 ( "la nuit americaine," they called it) trying to understand the Trump phenomenon and his impending return to the presidency.

I couldn’t resist rushing to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a movie fable about the collapse of New Rome and the emergence of a new world designed by Cesar Catilina, a Nobel prize laureate, a latter-day Robert Moses, or should we say, the American version of the Saudi prince MBS who is in the process of creating Neom, a city that resembles the utopian one planned by Cesar. Heavy references to Rome (Coppola is of Italian ancestry, of course), Nietzschean characters with vast powers to change the world, and a tsunami of social desperation make this a quintessentially American fable as if emerging from the imagination of inebriated partygoer trying to impress his audience (this is surely a male fantasy). Occasional captions try to guide the lost viewer in a fast-moving plot, but the final one that closes the film—“I pledge allegiance/To our human family/And to all the species/That we protect/One earth, indivisible/With long life, education, and justice/For all”—proves that New Rome’s culture and values (though sentimentally tweaked) are here to stay for the foreseeable future.