Author: A.T.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

I was particularly struck by what two women I admire had to say in the Wall Street Journal.

First, Peggy Noonan: We Should All Give Thanks for Taylor Swift.

Infused with goodwill, a Noonan trademark; and beautifully written (another).

→ If you encounter a paywall, don’t despair!  The Journal seems to be running a Black Friday sale today — a year’s subscription for just $26 — 94% off!

Second, PEN America’s Suzanne Nossel: A Free-Speech Fix for Our Divided Campuses.

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. . . As the conflict continues in the Middle East, college students are alternately emboldened and alarmed, faculty are at loggerheads, donors are irate, and college presidents are embattled. But the crisis presents an opportunity. . . .

. . . Students and faculty alike . . . need to see that free speech is most valuable not as a weapon to wield against ideological opponents but as a tool in the search for common truths. Among top universities, the University of Chicago has taken a lead on these issues, making free-speech awareness a key part of orientation programs for undergraduates and law students and recently launching a new campus center to reinforce those efforts.

But free-speech education must not end there. Today’s students have come of age in the era of social media, where speech too often consists of short, angry ideological salvos. The speech promoted by engagement-driven algorithms is long on outrage and virtue-signaling, short on nuance, balance and basic politeness. . . .

. . . During the short years that students share meals, dorm life and classes with those unlike themselves, they need to be taught how to use the power of speech, how to listen and how to grasp and hold the complexities of a pluralistic society. . . .

Universities also need to reinforce the idea that hateful speech, though protected by the First Amendment, is still contemptible and thwarts reasoned discourse. . . .

Rather than shying away from uncomfortable subjects, professors should encourage students to hear out ideas that may be upsetting and learn how to regulate their own feelings and reactions. . . .

. . . Turning universities into thriving free-speech communities is not a matter of a one-time freshman orientation or, worse, click-thru online training. What is required is a whole-of-university approach, supported by donors and alumni. Presidents and provosts, student affairs offices, residential staff, faculty, administrators and even facilities and security personnel need to understand and embrace the norms and habits of democratic discourse. . . .

They also need to demonstrate the behaviors they seek to inculcate by ensuring that heterodox views are represented in academic departments, hosting debates between speakers who sharply disagree and facilitating meetings where contentious subjects are discussed. In recent days, some campuses and scholars have modeled this approach. The Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies departments at Dartmouth hosted joint events about the Israel-Hamas war, and the deans of the policy schools at Columbia and Princeton—one of them Israeli, the other Palestinian—wrote an essay together on how to keep dialogue going. . . .

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Worth reading in full.

Peggy Noonan concludes her column:

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend to the great and fabled nation that is still, this day, the hope of the world.

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Amen.

Read it here: Trump’s Dire Words Raise New Fears About His Authoritarian Bent.

Except that the Times is (appropriately) understated in its tone, examining the situation calmly and thoughtfully, without exclamation marks or italics or for-God’s-sake-wake-up bold face capital letters.

That, you can get from still-conservative former Florida Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and his brilliant wife, Mika.

Watch or listen, as they bring this crucially important Times piece to life.

The contrast they draw between the Steve Scalise shooting and the Paul Pelosi hammer-bashing I found particularly telling.

But either way, whether you read or watch . . . or both, as I did . . . for God’s sake, Carl —WAKE UP!!!*

*And if you can help, click here.

But first:

A fellow investor wired $50,000 to help fund a private venture and — being appropriately cautious — first wired just $10 to be sure the wire instructions were correct.

“Did you get the $10?” he emailed the company.

“We did, thanks,” they emailed back.

So he sent the other $49,990.

When I reviewed the email chain some weeks later I noticed that the English in the email that accompanied the wire instructions was just a tiny bit off — only a stickler like me might have noticed — and the receiving bank was in . . . Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which bore no relation to the business of the venture.  But my fellow investor was new to this company, and having had his $10 wire confirmed, what was there left to worry about?

Everything, as you’ve doubtless guessed.

Somehow, a Russian or Nigerian — or Louisianian — had hacked into the recipient’s email to the extent that he or she was able not merely to send the bogus wire instructions, to intercept the email asking whether the $10 had been received.

For years, banks have warned people to “verify the wire instructions verbally” to avoid being scammed.  I have generally ignored that advice.

Not anymore!

If you’re wiring to someone new, take the trouble to call and verify the numbers over the phone.  (And be sure you’re calling the actual intended recipient, not a phone number in Baton Rouge set up for the purpose of scamming you.)

And while we’re on the subject of scams, be careful when you buy fine art.

I never have . . . I buy toilet paper by the case when it’s on sale . . . but I was at a fundraiser Sunday night hosted in a home filled with astonishing art . . . including what appeared to be, to even my untrained eye, an Old Master.

“It that . . . a Rembrandt?”  I asked.

“It was a Rembrandt,” the host concurred.

“It was a Rembrandt?  You mean it turned out to be a fake?”

“Yes.  The buyer before me paid $2o million.”

“And then it was discredited?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, wow.”

“And I got it for $17,500.”

Coulda fooled me.

And now, having perhaps saved you $50,000 or even $20 million (how many websites can boast that without charging a subscription fee or serving up footwear ads?) something important:

Jared Kushner, Arab and Israeli officials outline day-after solutions for the first time since the Oct. 7 attacks at Yale’s Middle East Peace Dialogue

Worth reading in full.

And at no cost to us, no less.

Fareed Zakaria lays it out this way:

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Is there anything that can be done to address . . . stalemate on the frontlines and waning support in Western capitals?

Actually, there is a policy that could help on both fronts:

Set up an international and legal process by which Russia’s $300 billion-plus of frozen reserves could be used to aid Ukraine’s reconstruction, which the World Bank estimates would cost more than $400 billion over the next ten years.

In one swoop, that would signal to Putin that Ukraine will not face a funding crisis and that even were Trump to be elected, these funds, administered through some international body, say in Switzerland or Belgium, would continue to flow to Kyiv.

There are challenges to this policy. Russia’s reserves lie in various countries, but European allies hold most of them, and their governments worry that they don’t have the legal authority to divert them. Laurence Tribe, the distinguished legal scholar, and some of his colleagues have written up a definitive case as to why it would be legal and appropriate to go down the path of using Russian reserves for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick, and former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow have argued persuasively that it is good policy.

Tribe’s basic argument is that Russia has engaged in a massive and systemic violation of international law and norms and that it is appropriate, indeed necessary, for there to be some price to pay for this. To reject this logic in favor of one that protects Russia’s “property rights” is perverse since Russia has engaged in brutal, sustained violations of Ukraine’s property rights and has taken the lives of thousands of its civilians as well.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a core violation of any conception of a rules-based international order. It strikes me as right and wise to force it to pay a heavy price. But how that policy is pursued matters. In the past, the United States has tried to enforce its own conception of international rules unilaterally, often generating huge opposition to it. The approach we should take this time is the opposite.

This policy should be rooted in international consensus, law and norms. Legal opinions like Tribe’s should be presented. An international legal organization and process of adjudicating claims should be established and the funds handled through it. Russia’s assets and Ukraine’s reconstruction should serve as a building block for international law and norms that help shore up the rules-based order. As Summers, Zoellick, and Zelikow note, if this case sets the precedent that a country that engages in naked aggression might find that its dollar reserves are in jeopardy, that is not a bad precedent for a world in disarray.

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Indeed, it “would strengthen, not undermine, international law.”

An idea worth spreading far and wide — and implementing ASAP.

That one day in the summer of 1963 — just 8 weeks hence — 100,000 people would march on Washington demanding civil rights for African Americans.

As it turned out — in the face of tremendous opposition from powerful men both white and black — a quarter million turned out.

The man who had that dream was not Martin Luther King, Jr., whose speech that day will rightly and forever be remembered, but Bayard Rustin, whose story this movie so compellingly tells.

“His was a rich, fascinatingly complex history, filled with big personalities and tremendous stakes . . . From the second that Rustin sweeps into the movie, throwing open his arms to King — and, by extension, welcoming the future they will help make — the actor seizes hold of you.  — The New York Times

“Riveting.” — The Wall Street Journal

Do you have Netflix?  If not, Rustin alone is worth signing up for $6.99/month.

Or watch it at a theater near you.

Two on how to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  

“You are never going to find a right way to do the wrong thing.”

And two more . . .

“The only question,” as House Speaker Mike Johnson sees it.

. . . followed by three of commentary.

(The last few seconds, on why church attendance is down: “Young people don’t want to go to a church where preachers worship Donald Trump instead of Jesus Christ!”)

PRKR has more than doubled since November 7 but the upside still strikes me as greater than the downside.  I’m holding mine . . . with money I can truly afford to lose, because, obviously, I may.

But first:

> How the next Republican president could stop most abortions without Congress.

> Mick Mulvaney Changes His Mind.  Trump’s ex-C.O.S. is a supporter no more.

> Journalism professor’s six-word mantra is a blueprint for how news outlets should cover the 2024 race:  “NOT THE ODDS, BUT THE STAKES.”

It’s quick read that segues nicely into this, by the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, no less:

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The Death of the New York Times

Ever since Trump and his Republicans attack on our country and subsequent coup attempt in 2021, I have been calling for The Times and ALL major media companies to establish Democracy Desks in their newsrooms.

. . . If the Republicans are successful in taking down our Democracy and installing an authoritarian regime in Washington, one of the very first things to go will be our freedom of the press, and THEN where will The Times be?

It is ludicrous that their readers aren’t being educated everyday about what the Republicans have in mind and how devastating it would be to the citizens of this country if they ever got back into the White House.

For one thing, it’s fair to posit there would never be another election again — at least not one that would be remotely fair.

Ever since the disaster in November, 2016, just enough Americans have risen up and gotten active stamping out the flames of fascism Republicans have so frantically been fanning.

But we could use a little help.

. . . That would start with knocking it the hell off with these stupid polls that predict nothing, and start dealing with our terrifying realties.

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Which terrifying realities segue (at last) into my question:

Given the Republican front-runner’s admiration for dictators . . . and his increasing use of language like “vermin” and “communists” to describe anyone who opposes him . . . language that comes straight from the book he for years kept by his bed . . .

. . . which side would he have been rooting for in the early days of World War II, before Pearl Harbor?  The Germans?  Or the French, Poles, Czechs, Russians, and British?

It may sound like a stupid question now (except, perhaps, to some of the “very fine people” who marched with torches in Charlottesville); but back then, an awful lot of Americans were rooting for the German dictator. 

Are we sure, had he been alive in 1939, Trump’s sympathies would not have aligned with these patriotic Americans gathered in Madison Square Garden? 

And do we think that today, in 2023, he hopes Putin is defeated in Ukraine? 

That autocracies around the world give way to democracies? 

I have come to doubt it.

→ Hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainians and conscripted Russians have died and millions more had their lives wrecked — for what?  The dreams of a Russian dictator who has such a close bond to Trump that when they meet, Trump sometimes doesn’t allow Americans in the room.

→ The tragedy in Israel and Gaza is top of every mind, heartbreaking in every respect — though not to the religious leadership of Iran and their increasingly close ally the Russian dictator, who are presumably pleased to watch it unfold.

→ Trump’s own push toward dictatorship — now calling those who oppose him “vermin,” straight out of the (only?) book he kept by his bedside while married to Ivana — is at once unbelievable, horrifying, and real.

So can we take a quick break from all that?

Here:

Bill Gates offers reasons to be hopeful on climate.

Western ingenuity may just save the day, or at least mitigate the damage.  It’s exciting to read about.

First off, just what the doctor ordered:

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A way for [Democratic] donors to “maximize their impact” by funneling their money to races that truly matter [rather than] “rage-donate into the abyss.”

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Here‘s the story.  And here’s the app.

Second, two minutes of pointed questions whose strident tone, given her frustration with those who see Israel as the bad actor in this tragedy, is perhaps understandable.

Finally, Hillary on Gaza — well worth watching for a reasoned perspective rooted in decades’ experience.

One of you sent me this open letter from pro-Palestinian Jewish students at Brown.

It “comes from a good place,” for sure but is dead wrong, I think, in calling what Israel is doing “genocide.”

To me, genocide is when you’re trying to kill people — indeed, an entire people — simply because of their ethnicity or religion.

Israel has never wanted to do that and doesn’t want to do it now . . . any more than we wanted to do it when we killed God knows how many German and Japanese civilians in World War II.

There’s so much to criticize about the current Israeli regime; and about the expansion of settlements in years past.

But genocide?  It’s not remotely that, I think.

I loathe Netanyahu.  Even so, I think his appearance on yesterday’s Meet The Press is very much worth watching.

I wish every college student in America would read Noa Tishby’s book — which is deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, as we all should be — Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

And speaking of genocide, this is worth your time as well:  The Truth of Hamas Is in Its Charter.

Biden is spot on in wanting Israel to provide more humanitarian aid (maybe like this?) and do more to minimize civilian casualties.

But I think Hamas has to be defeated, as ISIS largely has been.