Origins of Our Time

Above is a picture of future Vice President JD Vance with Rod Dreher, a strange and sad and grimlyfascinating right-wing blogger. The Stalin-esque void between them represents Rod’s divorce: My ex-wife prefers privacy, understandably, and she certainly wouldn’t want to be linked any more with me. So I blanked her out to honor her privacy concerns. I had an oyster photo up to make a joke about my love for Paris oysters, but a couple of you felt I was making fun of her.

The DNC’s 2024 autopsy is 200 pages long. Here's what’s not in there. “The draft report, which is disorganized and leaves empty entire sections…offers only vague or limited conclusions about the party’s failings.” - NYT Whitewashing Genocide Origins of Our Time is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The military budget is now a trillion-dollar affair. But the failure of U.S. power to dispense quickly with Iran has left the people who run the New York Times surprised, disappointed, and disoriented. The solution? According to the NYT editorial board, we need a more lethal military.

Everyone says AI is getting better and better. I continue to find it highly unreliable for basic tasks ranging from “put this in alphabetical order” to “what is the median income in X county.” But I have to admit that the chatbots have gotten much better at writing AI versions of what Adorno might say about AI. On AI, Gaza, and the Mechanization of Destruction In Gaza, the apparatus of war has fused with the machinery of computation.

Maybe one of you can explain this to me: Perplexed? The article goes on to explain: This was never supposed to happen…Few thought the Strait of Hormuz would ever be allowed to choke. The world is too dependent on the enormous amount of oil, gas and fertilizer that is exported through the waterway….At around 35 miles wide, maybe it was actually too small to fail — or just small enough that it could. TBTF does not mean that things which are really important cannot fail.

Here’s something “fun” from the Epstein files: a pseudo “contract” drawn up by one of the young women in Epstein’s orbits. The woman’s name is redacted (she calls herself “The Apprentice”), but it appears from the files that she was from Russia and that she sought Epstein’s assistance in pursuing a law degree in the US. They seem to have made their initial contact through a French multinational law firm. If it needs to be said, nota bene that this document was obviously created as an in-joke.

“A fine institution that can continue without him” Yesterday, Bard College announced the launch of an independent investigation into the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and longtime Bard president Leon Botstein. One might think long-term friendship with a pedophile is enough to disqualify someone from governing a college (i.e. a small town populated by 18-21 year olds) but some number of Bard trustees appear loyal to their president.

In May 1970, the American war against Southeast Asia came home, leading to the Kent State massacre immortalized in Neil Young’s “Ohio.” The next year the song was covered by the Isley Brothers on their album, Givin’ It Back.

Here is a piece of classical music inspired by, or dedicated to, the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber. The composer is Bohuslav Jan Martinů, (1890-1959), who left Czechoslovakia in 1941 and never made it back. He spent much of the war in Queens, where residents were warned: If you are strolling late some night in Jamaica Estates and you should meet a tall, slim man with grey eyes, sandy-grey hair and a shy smile — don’t stop to talk with him for he wants to be alone.

“The newly released White House National Security Strategy raises again the question whether Americans are turning isolationist.” - Karl Rove, WSJ, Dec 10, 2025 “Will the isolationists or the interventionists win out?” - NYT, Dec 30, 2025 “President Trump announced that U.S. forces had carried out ‘a large scale strike against Venezuela’ and were flying President Nicolás Maduro and his wife out of the country.” - NYT, “just now” Stop Saying "Isolationist" At one point in Joseph Heller’s Good...