Donald Trump keeps doing things that help Vladimir Putin. benrhodes1.substack.com/p/how-putin-...
06.03.2026 17:17
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Donald Trump keeps doing things that help Vladimir Putin. benrhodes1.substack.com/p/how-putin-...
"Imagine, for a moment, being a parent who sent your child to that girls’ school that got bombed in Iran. Can you?" benrhodes1.substack.com/p/on-trump-a...
Talked to Ezra Klein about the war in Iran - how we got here, where we're going, and what I'm worried about. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/o...
"Authoritarian politics and military aggression are a dangerous mix." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...
Trump Wants You to Get Used to This. Don’t. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/o...
"What does it say about the United States that there was far more debate about a diplomatic agreement with Iran than there has been about a potential war with Iran?" benrhodes1.substack.com/p/trump-and-...
This is why people don't trust institutions and elites. If you ignore the views of your own voters over and over and over again people give up on politics.
Democratic leaders have been feckless and wildly out of touch with their own voters who don't want another pointless war in the Middle East.
"Just because people have legitimate grievances against a failed establishment does not mean they are justified in turning to fascism." benrhodes1.substack.com/p/how-people...
"He wasn't extreme. He was early." benrhodes1.substack.com/p/rememberin...
"If we want to find a way out of our mess, we would do well to look back to Jesse Jackson’s words." open.substack.com/pub/benrhode...
"What happens to a conference dedicated to security cooperation when America has become, to many Europeans, a threat?" substack.com/home/post/p-...
"What’s disturbing about Trump is not his occasionally overt racism, particularly directed at the first Black President – it’s that his ascent to the presidency is unthinkable without it." substack.com/home/post/p-...
On McNamara, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Gaza, and finally Trump. "Once you allow yourself to play by a set of rules that’s different from everyone else’s, the rules themselves are made brittle and ultimately break." www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
"MAGA die-hards have deceived themselves for so long that Trump was somehow one of them when he has always been more comfortable with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein than the vast majority of his own voters." benrhodes1.substack.com/p/on-the-eps...
"I was struck by how much the Epstein files resemble an autopsy for what’s gone wrong in the 21st century." open.substack.com/pub/benrhode...
"For Trump, there is just a group of people – some in uniform – who stand when he enters the Situation Room, and a different group of sycophants who will tell him in the Oval Office that whatever decision he made was the right one" substack.com/home/post/p-...
Why Trump is getting more comfortable with war
open.substack.com/pub/benrhode...
"Yes, Americans want a secure border. But most of us are also tired of war, wary of an intrusive militarized government, welcoming of immigrants, and protective of our core freedoms." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...
"The war on terror has become a war against ourselves. That forever war must come to an end. Enough with the military gear. Enough with the mass surveillance. Enough with the constant fear of an ever-shifting Other." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...
"If you are 18 today, Donald Trump has dominated your experience of American political leadership for a decade. What have you absorbed, through cultural osmosis, because of that experience?" benrhodes1.substack.com/p/the-normal...
"If you can’t trust a single word that the Department of Homeland Security says, how can we have any idea what is going on out of sight?" benrhodes1.substack.com/p/the-normal...
Starting a new substack: "We can watch a man get killed by federal agents in Minneapolis and then hear him besmirched as a terrorist or assassin despite what we saw with our own eyes. It makes you feel powerless, which it is intended to do." open.substack.com/pub/benrhode...
19. I hope you’ll pre-order this book, and look forward to sharing more stories and ideas in the months to come: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717294...
18. The title comes from MLK’s speech the night before he died: “All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper.” To close that gap, we must understand our past and tell a different story for the future.
17. JD Vance recently argued that America is not rooted in a creed from the Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal. This book takes that argument seriously, while opposing it: America is the effort to close the gap between who we are and who we say we are.
16. When we lack a shared national identity, we need storytelling that reimagines what binds us together. – that kind of storytelling has too often been missing in the movements in opposition to Trump and what he represents.
15. We are surrounded by forces designed to make us feel like we lack control—an algorithm that shapes what we see, an oligarchy that controls wealth and power, a world untethered from notions of order. The existence of truth itself is contested.
14. It is no coincidence that Trump came to dominate our politics just as our attention spans and experience of a shared reality was shattered by the Internet and social media.