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I’ve long felt that the Soviet Union was good for America. Sputnik provoked innovation in American schools. Shaming by the USSR on the world stage helped accelerate civil rights in the US. Fear of the USSR enforced a sort of patriotic unity of purpose in our politics. Yes, it had unhealthy effects like the Vietnam war and the support of Central and South American dictatorships, but the perceived threat and rivalry seemed to place limits on what was acceptable in domestic politics. I’m reading Thomas Madden’s “The Fall of Republics.” My interest in history has always been moored in the conviction that it can help me better understand the world I live in and where it may be headed. Today, I came across this passage: “It is an irony that the affluence and power that so enriched the Roman people also doomed their republic. Unlike previous mixed governments, the Roman Republic was never conquered by enemies. It succumbed instead to the spoils of its success, the blessings and curses of peac...

And for this change the people will be responsible. On the one hand they will think they have a grievance against those leaders who seem stingy, and on the other hand, they will be puffed up by the flattery of those campaigning for office. Stirred to fury and swayed by passion, the people will no longer consent to obey or even to be the equals of the political class, but will demand the lion’s share of power for themselves. When that happens, the state will change its name to the finest sounding of all, freedom and democracy, but will change its nature to the worst thing of all, mob-rule.   ~Polybius

I’ve seen several online pieces about the paucity of nutrition coursework in medical school. For example, this: “Nearly every week, I recommend a change in diet as a first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol -- the conditions that fill American clinics and account for more death than any other factors. Yet, nearly everything I know about how to prescribe diet appropriately, I learned after medical school, on my own time. My formal training gave me only a few scattered hours on the single most powerful lever I have for preventing and reversing chronic disease.” Look, medical school is expensive and formal instructional hours are a zero-sum game. More formal instruction on nutrition means less instruction about something else. And most of that course content is forgotten shortly after the exam. As a former med school professor, I know that our students got instruction on nutrition under the title of metabolic biochemistry, for example. Verifying ...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got into it with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday in an interview segment that quickly evolved into Kennedy angrily berating Bash and her network for “punishing” people during the Covid-19 pandemic.   “The segment on Sunday comes as measles outbreaks have broken out in several states, with public health officials warning that a unvaccinated communities were supercharging the spread of a disease to historic levels.” Measles is surging. Food poisoning is surging. Screw worm is surging.  Kennedy is panicking.  When you hire clowns, you get a circus. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/rfk-cnn-interview-measles-vaccines-b3026025.html

“ The Trump administration has dropped its case against a former Olympic canoeist charged in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool, acknowledging their allegations against David “Davey” Hearn don’t hold water.   “In a filing Friday afternoon, a supervisor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is headed by Jeanine Pirro, wrote that officials obtained information that undermined “the evidentiary basis for the indictment” against Hearn.”   Lying is as natural as breathing for the Trump Administration.   https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-administration-drops-reflecting-pool-case-blaming-damage-botched-rcna590303

If there is a question to ask, then, it is this: Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project, seen in everything from his deep support for Donald Trump in the United States and Restore Britain in Britain to his decision to construct a massive pollution-generating data center in predominantly Black Memphis, Tenn.   Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.   ~Jamelle Bouie