Life and Times of Ogn Dulk

Why America’s Oligarchs May Regret Their Obedience 100+The Atlantic by Anastasia Edel / Apr 7, 2025 at 6:03 AM When tech billionaires and crypto moguls hailed Donald Trump’s reelection and flocked to his inauguration ceremony and ball, million-dollar donations in hand, some were abandoning previous liberal affiliations and all were now lining up behind an openly authoritarian president. The surface rationale is that megabusiness leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and Marc Andreessen are safeguarding their companies and their shareholders’ interests. The underlying explanation is that America is being reborn as an oligarchy. This new class—with Trump megadonor Elon Musk as its self-appointed tribune—has thrown its support behind a libertarian economic agenda that maximizes private power and minimizes public accountability. Whether the billionaires’ alignment with Trump and Musk is merely pragmatic or sincerely ideological, they stand to gain from the new administra...

early and often There’s Nothing Conservative About Trump 2.0 Portrait of Ed Kilgore By Ed Kilgore, political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015 One of the interpretations often heard about the 2024 elections is that the outcome represented a conservative “correction” for the progressive excesses of the Biden presidency. And indeed, it’s possible to view much of American political history as a left-right oscillation in which one major party’s dominance is countered by a reaction benefiting the other major party. Thus, for example, the Hoover administration’s conservative ineffectiveness against the ravages of the Great Depression led to a New Deal revolution that was mitigated significantly by a bipartisan “conservative coalition” in Congress and eventually the Republican landslide of 1952. But as should be abundantly clear by now, any hopes that Trump 2.0 would represent a mild and conservative “correction” of anything in living memory are hallucinatory. Indeed, it’s as good a ti...

The Economist on Trump’s Mindless Tariffs Trump's tariffs impact economy perception •5KDaring Fireball by John Gruber / Apr 3, 2025 at 1:01 PM The Economist: On economics Mr Trump’s assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America’s trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president’s economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests — and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the g7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers — like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer. And Mr Trump’s grasp of the t...

Why Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About a Third Term The Atlantic by Jonathan Chait / Mar 31, 2025 at 7:24 AM Is this article about Political Science? Donald Trump’s interest in seeking an unconstitutional third term as president, like many of his most dangerous or illegal ideas, began as a joke. Trump would muse on the stump that he deserved an extra term because he was robbed of his first (by Robert Mueller’s investigation) or his second (by imagined vote fraud in 2020) without quite clarifying his intent. But in an interview with NBC News this weekend, and then in remarks on Air Force One, Trump said he was completely serious about at least exploring the notion. “A lot of people want me to do it,” he told NBC, adding, “I’m not joking.” When he was asked if the method he envisioned was to have J. D. Vance run at the top of the ticket, and then pass the baton to Trump, he said, “That’s one.” Later, on Air Force One, reporters asked him if he intended to stay on beyond the end of hi...

Opinion Fareed Zakaria Opinion Fareed Zakaria Don’t fall for this Russian propaganda — even when it comes from the U.S. Russia’s violent aggression in Ukraine — and elsewhere along its periphery — was not provoked. March 28, 2025 at 5:45 a.m. EDTToday at 5:45 a.m. EDT 5 min President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting in Helsinki on July 16, 2018. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, now also the de facto broker of the Russia-Ukraine peace process, recently gave an interview in which he recited many of the Russian government’s talking points — plus, a gushing account of Vladimir Putin’s sterling qualities. Instead of doing a point-by-point rebuttal, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief recap of the history of U.S.-Russia relations. Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, t...

sick 6:08 A.M. The Confessions of Insurance Executives Champagne for record profits. Being ordered to “execute some hostages.” Why four men quit and spoke out. Portrait of Chris Stanton By Chris Stanton, a copy editor at New York who writes about culture and politics. Illustration: Tim Bouckley They call him an opportunist and a vulture who’s capitalizing on a tragedy to promote his dangerous Medicare for All agenda. Over and over, they invoke his name alongside those of left-wingers the likes of Bernie Sanders. For the target of these attacks, Wendell Potter, it’s a familiar playbook — after all, he helped write it. “I guess I should be flattered,” he jokes. Potter is the nation’s most prominent health-care whistleblower, a former Cigna executive who dramatically called out his old employer in front of a Senate committee almost two decades ago. Since the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Potter has also been the go-to expert mainstream media outlets have reli...

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans Trump team accidentally shares war plans •173KThe Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg / Mar 24, 2025 at 10:36 AM The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. The story technically begins shortly after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel, in October 2023. The Houthis—an Iran-backed terrorist organization whose motto is “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”—soon launched attacks on Is...

what we know Updated 8:12 P.M. Tesla Is Burning: All the Terrible News for Elon Musk’s EV Company Portrait of Chas Danner By Chas Danner, staff editor at Intelligencer Elon Musk and Donald Trump stand in front of a Tesla Cybertruck Nothing sells a weird-looking new car like two of the most polarizing people alive. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images For most of its existence, Tesla being synonymous with Elon Musk has been an asset for the company. Though the world’s richest man was often embroiled in weird public scandals, customers and investors largely waved off his behavior and continued to adore Tesla — presuming that the benefits Musk brought were worth the cost. Those days are long gone. First Musk bought a social media network and made it his own vindictive right-wing playground. Then he went “dark MAGA” and spent more money than anyone else to reelect Donald Trump. Then he became Trump’s top advisor, invented a job for himself atop DOGE, and began gleefully swinging a chain...