it’s not, Gene Robinson It’s a good reminder: During World War II, the country was still recovering from the Great Depression and bitterly fighting over the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to run for a third term as president prompted cries of “whatever rage and apocalypticism you’ll hear in 2024,” Jean writes. The America First movement (sound familiar?) vociferously opposed U.S. entry into the war.
And D-Day itself was riven by America’s social divisions: look at the all-black 320th Air Defense Artillery Battalion.
Only fighting abroad has brought the country together at home. Next time, Jean writes, we will simply chafe at our differences, for “it is inconceivable that a world war will again be the furnace that brings the nation together.”
One of the essentials to avoiding a global war is to avoid one in the Taiwan Strait, where China has become increasingly creative and ambitious in its efforts to impose a “one country, two systems” model on Taiwan similar to the one it adopted with Hong Kong.
Kevin RuddAustralian ambassador to the United States Mr. Rudd has described these efforts as a “grey area” between peace and war, while China is openly preparing for war. Mr. Rudd has outlined a broad “total deterrence equation” that the world must solve to maintain peace in the region.
It also marks another anniversary: Sunday marked five years since one million Hong Kongers peacefully took to the streets to protest against a proposed bill that would allow the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China. Keith Richburg He watched the protests from one of the city’s footbridges, and his description of the protests is moving, even beautiful.
Protesters won a halt to the Hong Kong National Security Law, but at a great cost, Keith writes from Hong Kong: “These demonstrations, and the more violent protests that followed, sparked a remaking of Hong Kong in China’s authoritarian image and the enactment of a draconian national security law.”
Five years on, Keith is filled with questions of “what if?” Would Hong Kong have been saved from its current suffering? Five years on, are we asking the same questions about Taiwan, and about America?
from David von Drehle’s In a column about the giant’s newly reported annual loss — its first of the 21st century, but certainly not its last — David writes that the economic crisis is both Vladimir Putin’s fault and evidence of his “catastrophic stupidity.”
Gazprom was Russia’s “one economic light,” David said, and no leader who knows full well that Russia is (in Sen. John McCain’s famous words) a “gas station disguised as a state” would allow Gazprom’s aggression to spread and snuff it out.
David predicts the pain that awaits the Russian people, analyzes what it means that even Russian insiders are admitting this failure in the Western media, and concludes with suggestions for what President Biden should do with this opportunity. Hint: The world needs natural gas right now, and the United States has it.
Chaser: With orders to take steps to make money, Catherine Rampell Republicans, they write, are pursuing tax policies that are nearly the opposite of what voters want and are seeking to defund the IRS again.
While Biden was effusively singing praises on the beaches of Normandy, former President Donald Trump was in Phoenix calling the United States a “failed nation.”
You can’t blame him. Dana Milbank “Lofty ideals are foreign to Trump, who serves a cause bigger than himself,” he wrote. Remember when, as president, he refused to visit the American military cemetery in France because he thought it was full of “idiots” and “losers”?
Unfortunately, Dana writes, his perspective has narrowed since then, and “his message has only grown more vulgar.” The rest of Dana’s column is a nauseating chronicle of the revenge and blame that Trump and his supporters have promised this week.
- The university was committed to progressive politics. Jason Wyrick But Israel is now urging them to reconsider.
- of Editorial Committee It offers a better way to fix the border than President Biden’s executive order.
- The Biden administration is the most progressive administration in American history. George Will (He doesn’t mean this as a compliment.)
It’s goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s… “goodbye.”
Plus! A Fri-ku! from reader Leonora O.
Power is not justice
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