Sunday Cutdown LXVI (23 March 2025)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) With Trump signaling concessions, Putin plays waiting game
GUARDIAN: So bold are Putin’s ceasefire demands, it’s hard to believe he is entirely serious
NBC NEWS: Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower
WAPO: If peace comes, Putin could face the ire of his most hard-line backers
And I thought Aaron Rodgers was holding out unduly.
Yet another signal from Trump 2.0 that says, Vlad, she’s all yours!
The Administration is reportedly considering removing the US Military from its long-held (as in, the ENTIRE COLD WAR THROUGH TODAY) post as military commander of NATO (SACEUR, or Supreme Allied Commander Europe).
Yeah, that one … you know, the title Eisenhower first held in 1951 and the one modeled after his late-WWII positions as “supreme commander” of allied forces in North Africa, on D-Day, and in Western Europe before he became Military Governor over what later became West Germany.
So … some serious history there.
We can argue about … Isn’t it time? And that’s a decent historical argument. But, floating that change amidst tough negotiations with Putin over the biggest land war in Europe since WWII?
That sort of sweetening the pot smacks of desperation for a deal — again, like Aaron Rodgers, and desperate rarely impresses the counterparty.
So, no surprise, Putin ain’t budging at all, either indicating that he’s not serious or that he realizes that Trump is truly unserious. Either way, the holdout makes sense.
Why make an offer when the seller keeps lowering his price?
Or, to put another way: Why concede anything when Trump is so clearly putting the squeeze solely on Zelensky, who had no choice but to cave last week?
Putin continues to be the foreign leader most rewarded by Trump’s return to power, but, as the third piece points out, Vlad has already based much of his political legitimacy at home on the absolute necessity of this conflict (not unlike Netanyahu in Israel) — hence, there may be nothing Trump can offer that will stay his hand amidst all our preemptive surrendering on Ukraine’s behalf.
2) Fortunately, it’s not yet illegal to report climate change news
NYT: Earth’s 10 Hottest Years on Record Are the Last 10
We have arrived — way ahead of schedule — at the Threatened Land:
A report from the World Meteorological Organization confirms that 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial era.
Trump’s return to power the same year is just the irony of ironies: drill baby drill for the world’s largest producer of both oil and gas, because nothing succeeds like excess.
3) A generation divided against itself cannot stand
WAPO: A divided Gen Z is crying for mercy
As the parent of four Zs, I can attest to this: the pandemic cleaved this generation in half due to the disparity in extreme experiences.
Covid-19 upended all of our lives, shattered norms and altered the course of history. It also bifurcated Generation Z.
On one side, there are those, like me, who graduated from high school and were already beginning adulthood before covid. On the other side, there are those whose formative years were defined by lockdowns, virtual learning and isolation. I call these subgroups Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0.
My COVID breakdown was one Z in college, one in HS, one in Junior High, and one in Grade School, so we had all the bases covered.
I can tell you that all of them felt a bit cheated by history in terms of social experiences they should have had but did not — the older they were, the worse it seemed.
The breakdown as described here:
The older Zoomers still maintain some of that 2016-era perspective, even if they frequently sound exhausted, in my experience, by many of the same issues facing the broader electorate: inflation, the sky-high cost of rent, and the job market. It would not surprise me if some of their older progressive tendencies reasserted themselves, especially if Trump struggles on the economy.
Whereas:
Gen Z 2.0 grew up in turmoil, in a world where everything seemed broken — K-12 education, social interactions, the economy, traditional institutions. They felt the emotional toll as government mismanagement kept them in lockdown and away from their friends. They missed such milestones as prom, big football games and graduation, and they were confined to their homes when they should have been having a normal childhood. They didn’t have outlets to flirt or spaces to cultivate as their own with their peers. Authority, once seen as a guiding force, began to look arbitrary, even incompetent, as adults fumbled without a clear path forward.
How this worked out politically in the 2024 vote, per this analysis:
Gen Z’s swing toward Trump in 2024 was not solely political. It was a cry for mercy, signaling that the world as young people know it is not working.
What I’ve seen with my four: the further down you go in age, the more modest are their expectations for life, while, the further up you go, the more bitter they are about feeling “cheated.” I don’t sense any trust in any institutions, and I don’t blame them. All they seem certain about is that uncertainty will plague their lives.
Having raised two Millennials prior, I have to say, raising Zs has been infinitely harder. There seems to be so few things the latter can count on in this world — save for political incompetence and ever worse social manners.
I don’t envy the road ahead for either generation, and that is depressing because I honestly believe this need not be so. The Boomers have just been a godawful generation for political leadership, and Gen X — to date — has disappointed virtually to the same unbearable degree.
Thus, while I sympathize greatly with the Millennials and Zs, I suspect that history will ask far more of them than they presently imagine.
4) The externalities (unintended costs) of Trump 2.0 will only accumulate
NYT: Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally
So much of what has passed as “conservatism” in America across my life has really been about whacking public spending and letting somebody else — downstream geographically or generationally — pay the price. We are all going to get a big-time education on that score with Trump 2.0.
Seriously, if I were a Millennial or Z, I would be doom-spending like crazy.
The sheer cruelty of denying preemptive care …
The whole system of finding, diagnosing and treating tuberculosis — which kills more people worldwide than any other infectious disease — has collapsed in dozens of countries across Africa and Asia since President Trump ordered the aid freeze on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
How this constitutes a “savings” is beyond me. It’s like your nerd buddy figured out how to turn off all the warning lights on your car’s dashboard, declaring that he’s saved you so much money, man!
Musk and his Tech Bros aren’t stupid — anything but. They know what they’re doing and they just don’t care.
Recall Elon’s bold take on the 20th century’s greatest butchers of human life:
"Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did."
Seems like Musk and DOGE will rack up some pretty impressive numbers when all is cut and done — peace crimes of the highest order.
Compassion is almost non-existent in American politics today.
5) The longest fuse
WAPO: What happens when so much national security expertise is tossed aside?
I subsisted on government support through six years of grad school designed to turn me into a Sovietologist. That was after four years of undergrad learning Russian and American Foreign Policy at a public university (Wisconsin) where I was able to pay my own tuition working 2-3 shifts a week as a cook in a restaurant.
When I started my quest in 1980, I knew it would be a solid decade before I found work — and even then I’d be in a sort of residency, learning the ropes. Honestly, I didn’t come into my own until I had put in a solid two decades of effort building up my skillset.
The irony of the Soviet collapse just weeks before I was awarded by PhD was … challenging, but also supremely liberating: now that I had my union card, I could freely pick my field of concentration.
Point of all this: I was groomed by the system across the 1980s and 1990s to be ready for whatever came next, which turned out to be 9/11 and the Global War on Terror.
Right now I wouldn’t and don’t advise anyone to pursue the sort of career I had — our current and willful bout of self-destruction being the primary reason, with our polarized, lopsided political system (POTUS supreme, Congress MIA, Courts toying with Christian sharia) being reason #2.
The standing of public service has taken such a nosedive from the brief rally-round-the-flag heights triggered by 9/11 that I can scarcely imagine it declining any further (not that DOGE and MAGA aren’t making their own supreme efforts).
But, of course, it was we “experts” who caused all the damage, so now it’s the turn of the nihilists to correct things.
What can go wrong with this sort of Year Zero thinking? This erasing of history?
I mean, besides everything?
6) An economic poll conducted six months into the future
REUTERS: US stock market loses $4 trillion in value as Trump plows ahead on tariffs
The performance of US stock markets has long been described as a bet/guesstimate on America’s economic health six months from now. Thus, the direction of the markets reflect where investors think America will be half a year from today (up or down).
As Republican presidents go hand-in-hand with recessions, this was to be expected. It’s just that this once is so self-inflicted — a Recession of Choice — as to feel like self-sabotage. It’s hard to imagine a Manchurian Candidate who could perform better — from Asia’s (and particularly Russia’s) perspective.
We live in amazing times.
America now seeks doom … as the answer!
Pre-millennialists welcome doomsday to hasten the savior's return, while post-millennialists seek heaven on earth to earn the same.
America is listing to the pre-millennialist side right now, and has been for a while.
When I was doing the Y2K work in the late 1990s, I was warned by experts on religious fanaticism that the Second Millennium’s dawning would trigger two-to-three decades of pre-millennialist fervor — a mind virus of the most potent sort, as history has demonstrated time and again.
Those experts were SOOOO right.
7) The turning/tipping point
LE MONDE: Turkey, once an 'awkward' partner, has become essential for a weakened European Union
The EU is open only to European countries, or so it says. But it has run out of European countries to integrate, having bumped up against the natural-born children of the Russian Empire.
The only way forward is through, and through for Europe is southward toward Islam, making Turkey … what it has always been — the great bridge.
For decades now this has been my argument: the EU needs to cross that Rubicon.
Now, with America seeking a conscious uncoupling from Europe, the time has come:
Only a quarter of a century ago, Ankara was an enthusiastic candidate for EU membership. After years of estrangement from Brussels, and increasingly visible diplomatic tensions with Paris and Berlin, it now represents a country with multiple and complex diplomatic facets. Considered by its peers as "awkward" at best, and "disruptive" and "unreliable" at worst, Turkey is now a crucial, even indispensable, member of NATO, especially for a Europe more weakened than ever by Washington's changing stance.
The old excuses no longer hold water: either Europe collaborates with the Islamic Middle East or it is bedeviled by the same.
Western Europe was smart enough to preemptively integrate Eastern Europe when Russia was down at Cold War’s end; now it faces another great opportunity to do the same with the entirety of the Med rim.
Time is wasting.
Europe needs to build itself up militarily, and Turkey has the defense industry and forces to accelerate that process. But Ankara will need to be suitably incentivized.
As Lenin used to say, кто кого? (who gets whom?).
8) Chicken Lotta
NYT: Kennedy’s Alarming Prescription for Bird Flu on Poultry Farms
Try this gem on for size:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.
Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.
It has a nice Medieval Barber feeling to it:
The good news: RFK Jr has no authority over US farms.
The simplest reason why this is monumentally stupid: say we let five million birds get the flu. That’s five million chances for the virus to mutate.
If farmers were instead to let the virus make its way across the farm, “these infections would cause very painful deaths in nearly 100 percent of the chickens and turkeys,” said Dr. David Swayne, a poultry veterinarian who worked at the U.S.D.A. for nearly 30 years.
The result would be “inhumane, resulting in an unacceptable animal welfare crisis,” he added. (Methods to cull birds can also be cruel but at least are generally faster.)
Farmers who cull infected flocks must also clean the premises and pass audits before restocking. They are often eager to resolve the crisis quickly. Simply stepping back would have serious financial consequences.
The strategy “means longer quarantine, more downtime, more lost revenue and increased expenses,” said a U.S.D.A. scientist who was not authorized to speak to the media.
Kennedy is proving to be just as big of a screwball as promised.
Sigh!
9) Iran is SOOOOO pre-approved by US for a beatdown by Israel
ABC: Trump Says Houthis in Yemen Will Be ‘Annihilated,’ as U.S. Keeps Up Strikes
Trump is setting Iran up by making such a big public deal over the Houthis: as in, Israel’s got its gripes, America’s got its gripes … will no one rid me of this turbulent ayatollah?
What Israel and the US want is to shut Iran down as an active meddler in the region, but that’s not enough of a sale for a green light.
Iran “defying” Trump on the nuclear negotiations AND attacking world shipping through its proxies … that’ll do pig, that’ll do.
This is the war on the table, waiting to be served. Trump just wants Ukraine settled beforehand, but it’s not necessary.
10) This is the war the US Military fights
WAPO: Trump team makes plans for military to hold migrants at border
Show Elon the China plan (or not), fine. That’s about cutting programs of record.
Tee up all the permission slips for Israel’s strike on Iran.
But where US troops will actually be deployed will be in our own hemisphere.
We have long spoken of China as being a superpower that acts and thinks like a mere great power — chip on its shoulder and all.
I am beginning to think that such analysis now applies better to the US: obsessing over borders, “lost lands” (our “unfair” border with Canada, Panama Canal), and infiltration by those seeking to “overthrow our government/way of life,” ideological purges across the government and military …
These are all the myopic obsessions of a paranoid mid-sized authoritarian regime.
It is truly weird to see a superpower embrace its own strategic downsizing.
I mean, the rationales one must offer … are truly incredible.
11) It never rains in southern California, But girl, don't they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours!
AP: Study shows rain-soaking atmospheric rivers are getting bigger, wetter and more frequent
They just moved up the meeting!
Scientists have long predicted that as climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas makes the air warmer, it holds more moisture, which means bigger, nastier atmospheric rivers are coming in the future. This week’s study shows that a more moist future is already here.
The future arriving early — truly a theme of today’s world.
Atmospheric rivers are like the Earth vomiting — typically south to north.
These "rivers in the sky" form when warm, moist air from tropical regions is carried by strong winds, often associated with the jet stream, towards higher latitudes. As they encounter mountain ranges or other barriers, the air is forced upward, cools, and condenses, leading to heavy rainfall or snowfall.
Our weather becomes more north-south. See for yourselves!
12) Plenty to go around
The amount of pain Trump is layering on the US is profound:
Federal spending cuts hurt across the board, truly targeting typically solid growth centers that are anchored by a major university (think Madison WI, Columbus OH, etc.)
The Trump Administration is willing to listen to GOP politicians seeking tariff carve-outs for their constituents while telling the Dems to go fish, targeting Blue States for extra pain.
But then the outside world specifically targets Republican districts with their tariffs.
So, no matter where you turn, it’s pain, pain, pain — all self-inflicted and pre-owned publicly by the White House.
The monumental nature of Trump’s bet is kind of stunning but still evinces the Big Bang logic:
We regrade everything and maybe it works out great (big V Victory)
And, if it doesn’t, then we’ve at least savaged the Federal Government (small v victory).
Either way, Trump claims victory over the Deep State — a McCarthy-ite fantasy that Joe would have instinctively approved.
