What Caught My Eye forApril 9 - 22 (#12)

The problem: Substack’s executive leadership have repeatedly proven to be craven opportunists who openly embrace extremist content from the likes of white supremacists and fascists in order to profit off of the engagement. When called out, they pretend they’re just helpless, adorable, and noble defenders of free speech.

…

This was compounded by the fact that Substack wasn’t just inadvertently hosting a lot of terrible people and looking the other way because they loved free speech, they were, at various points, actively seeking out and giving large cash advances to not just big names, but key players in the right wing trolling and asshole economy.

I unsubscribed from every Substack I was subscribed to a long while back and will now not even share Substack links. I’m not going to support a platform that actively promotes and profits from Nazism.

Support the independent journalists who don’t use Substack.

Those who were sentient during the first administration will remember how it felt like we were just existing from one Trump tweet to the next. Often indecipherable posts punctuated every day like an exclamation point with a foghorn attached, cortisol constantly pulsing, mind never knowing who or what he’d go after next. While a great deal of those posts were bluster, his words had real impacts: trans people in the military, as an example, found out via tweet that Trump was claiming they were no longer allowed to serve. The space between the tweets where we lived our lives felt that much more precarious. In this second administration we’ve gone from precarity to mortal peril.

So many days I wake up and dread finding out what fresh new hell awaits.

Trump’s all caps assurance that nuclear weapons wouldn’t be used in Iran only made the threat feel more real, and again he only prompted more questions. We were back in limbo, but had we ever really left? Where was the next conquest? And from where was America back? We’d have to tune into tomorrow’s episode to find out.

An interesting podcast from 404 Media. It was a good discussion about the state of the Internet and also how the Trump administration is using trolling to create an “others” to vilify and attack.

This still scares the living bejeezus out of me. Given Trump’s lack of support to our allies, I also can’t say I’m surprised countries like South Korea, Poland, Persian Gulf states, or others want to build an arsenal.

What else. Oh right. Also, toward the end of last week, Trump announced that the United States would begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz, which the nation of Iran has been blockading ever since the U.S. attacked that country illegally and without provocation at the end of February. For those catching up, Trump has spent the past several weeks desperately attempting to browbeat the rest of the world into opening the strait by force on his behalf, while also continually insisting on his social-media website that the strait is of no consequence and also that the U.S. military could open it at any time. Keen students of history may recall way back in double-aught-one week ago, when Trump threatened to destroy the entire civilization of Iran if it did not open the strait within a few hours. A lesser tactician might observe that responding to a blockade of the strait by blockading the strait is the equivalent of punishing a guy for punching you in the face by also punching yourself in the face. What this analysis fails to apprehend is that in war, you cannot be defeated if, whenever anything happens in the war, you say that it was no big deal and also everybody else’s fault and also good actually and due to your genius.

The IT-lockout episode is emblematic of Patel’s tumultuous tenure as director of the FBI: He is erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence, according to the more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel’s conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and private conversations, they described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.

Damning, but I don’t suppose he was brought on because he was competent for the job.

Still, Patel has his fans. The president has been pleased by Patel’s efforts to purge agents who worked on January 6 cases and other probes into Trump. The president has also indicated that he is relatively unbothered by grumblings about Patel from within the FBI, according to White House and other administration officials.

Of course. Competence and ability be damned if you’re willing to use the force of the federal government go after Trump’s perceived political opponents (for doing their job).

Patel has since sued The Atlantic for defamation, I’m curious what will come in discovery should it get that far.