Folks, I wasn't letting Obama or anyone else off the hook. The whole point is that everyone is on the hook (including voters who let this happen too). Here are the numbers for the last day in office of each president since Reagan. RR $2.7 Trillion GHWB $4.2 BC $5.7 GWB $10.6 BO $19.9 DJT $27.7 JB $36.2

The liberation caucus of the DSA is literally Maoist. Not figuratively or comparatively Maoist. But openly, unapologetically, and unequivocally Maoist. I'm not an expert on Maoism, but I've read things. And I've never read that the Maoist agenda stopped at "Medicare for All."

My problem, well my chief problem, with the common good talk on the New Right is that it is shot through with question-begging. They assume that once you know what the common good is this awareness grants the constitutional authority, the policy skill, the economic and personnel resources and the political mandate to impose it. The knowledge problem just evaporates once they get the gnostic insight into what the common good is. (By the way, I think defining the common good is a hard but not impossible task at a high level abstraction and basically an impossible task at the ground level). A vast amount of common good talk strikes me more as an attempt to seize more and more power for a right wing faction that has utterly lost any intellectual humility and policy skepticism. That’s why most of the common good talk is simply the right wing version of the left’s “social justice” rhetoric. “How dare anyone oppose the common good/social justice!?”

FWIW, if a business did anything like this to Ilhan Omar or pretty much anyone else who codes as pro-Palestinian, it would be reported and opined about as a sign of the terrifying rise of Islamophobia by all the respectable journalistic outlets. etc.

When you listen to Trump talk about Taiwan (or many other topics) it’s the stuff he doesn’t say that is more revealing. Asked about Taiwan he blathers on about how big and strong China is, how tiny Taiwan is, about tariffs and dumb American presidents who didn’t use them. What doesn’t he talk about? Alliances, obligations, democracy, values, honor, etc. Keep in mind, if you don’t care whether Trump throws Taiwan under the bus, that wouldn’t be the only betrayal involved. We’d be screwing Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia too. I’m not saying we should get into a shooting war over Taiwan. I am saying Trump shouldn’t betray our allies, our values, and our national security and national honor just because he’s got a man crush on Xi.