Donald Lindeman

Washington Crossing the Delaware, in Manhattan, (E. Leutze, 1851)

@Granitepolitics @maxseddon @joni_askola But in Putin’s possible doom too? Were Putin to go down, this would undermine every assumption Trump has made about him. Trump would only be left with Xi, and the petit yet potent (in Trump’s mad mind), Kim Jong-Un

@Donald_Lindeman @maxseddon @joni_askola Yes, this is exactly the sort of strongman autocrat Trump wants to idealize and imitate.

NEW: Russia has sharply tightened security around Putin as fears rise of an assassination attempt involving drones, sources say. He’s often in underground bunkers micromanaging the Ukraine invasion and has grown more detached from civilian affairs. ft.com/content/fe70c8…

@maxseddon @joni_askola All sounds rather fraught reg Putin right now. The curtain pulled back, momentarily, on opaque Russian politics. Is this really the sort of strongman autocrat Trump wants to idealize and imitate?

Staff in Putin’s immediate circle, including cooks, photographers and bodyguards, have been barred from taking public transport and using mobile phones or internet-enabled devices around him. Surveillance systems have been installed in their homes.

@lionel_trolling It’s hard to take Tucker Carlson seriously, though he’s trying to sound serious here. ‘I couldn’t have said that because I don’t know what it means,’ belongs in the annals of creative sophistry

Oh my god he still denies it he's fucking insane

@emeriticus But Tucker Carlson is not a hologram that talks. He’s a real person who, like the rest of us, should be held accountable for what he says

You will not find a better snapshot of Tucker Carlson's dishonesty and moral depravity than this. You can quote his own words back to him, and he will look you in the eye and say, "I never said that." It's part duplicity, part attempting to credibility face with MAGA, which is why Tucker is also back to claiming that Trump has no agency but is instead a victim of manipulation. In other words, "I did not lie to my audience; Trump has been led astray. You can always trust me." Whether Tucker runs for president or endorses JD Vance in 2028, he is a singularly malignant force in the public discussion, someone who has absolutely no compunction about lying to your face while telling you that lies are the worst thing imaginable.

@greggnunziata Counterfactuals enter into how we talk about history, but not in the arbitrary and ill-informed way Trump shows here. Moreover, he’s being nonsensical in his statement about Lee and Gettysburg. Trump’s approach to history is morally simplistic and reductionist

Take a listen and choose whether you wish to focus on the moral obtuseness or the historic illiteracy.

@JonahDispatch But the “Antichrist” is a myth, an opportunist and culturally destructive myth, that’s been indefinitely postponed since our Declaration of Independence and US Constitution here in America. It may as well be a Pagan idea, not to mention the fantasy of otherwise idle billionaires

I think the Comey prosecution is pure nonsense on the merits and a clear abuse of power in intent. But I'm just wondering if it's dawned on anyone that Tucker floating the idea that Trump is the Antichrist probably puts Trump in more danger than Comey saying "hey look at these shells."You have an absolute right to call Trump the Antichrist, of course. But I keep hearing defenders of the Comey prosecution try to spin up scenarios where 8647 in cockleshells will activate deranged assassins -- and that was Comey's intent. That's absurd. Again, this is not my circus, not my clowns, but suggesting Trump is the Antichrist strikes me as far more triggering. Would love to hear JD Vance asked about this.

@JonahDispatch Did they use some kind of stick-um before that?

On this day in 1840 the first self adhesive postage stamp — the Penny Black — was released in the UK. Celebrate responsibly.

@RyanHaecker It’s not the premonition of a halo somehow made visible? (But who would want that?)

For newcomers, David Bentley Hart and Jordan Daniel Wood are working from the same office. DB Hart can bi-locate as both his older and his younger self, and multiply appear in the persona of Jordan Daniel Wood. As you can see on the top left of his screen, he also possesses a floating signifier of the Ring of Power.

@curiouswavefn But did the physicist Freeman Dyson have the education and erudition that would allow him to judge what Ludwig Wittgenstein did, accomplished, or was this but a prejudice on his part?

Ludwig Wittgenstein died #OTD 1951. Freeman Dyson: “I decided that he was a charlatan using outrageous behavior to attract attention. I hated him for his rudeness. Fifty years later, walking through a churchyard on the outskirts of Cambridge on a sunny morning in winter, I came by chance upon his tombstone, a massive block of stone lightly covered with fresh snow. On the stone was written the single word, "WITTGENSTEIN." To my surprise, I found that the old hatred was gone, replaced by a deeper understanding. He was at peace, and I was at peace too, in the white silence. He was no longer an ill-tempered charlatan. He was a tortured soul, the last survivor of a family with a tragic history, living a lonely life among strangers, trying until the end to express the inexpressible.”

@tcboyle So sorry to hear! Condolences

The dog, final portrait.

@aservais1 @ArtReview_ Yikes. Navel-gazing has become violence too—there’s nowhere else to go

‘The Critics Respond’ (2024) – A Comic Strip by Walter Scott. Via @ArtReview_ artreview.com/the-critics-re…

@thedailybeast So it’s evident that Jesse Watters isn’t just cosplaying the role of the American rube

A Trumpy Fox News host had to be escorted away from Queen Camilla after breaching protocol with a joke before a grand state dinner at the White House. thedailybeast.com/fox-host-escor…

@DouthatNYT @dilanesper But so far as the preponderant cohort of palaces and castles end up becoming ornate and highly crafted museums open to the public, they are unwitting donations over time from the hoarding ruling classes to the greater populace

@dilanesper They are not the exact same thing because they are not used by the public, their beauty is a private elite consumption good.

The point about stationary banditry connects to my critiques of organized religion. Essentially, for centuries, religious corporations claimed to care about the poor while getting wealthy by confiscating the poor's surplus.

@judyshel Nonsense. Powell is defending the Federal Reserve’s independence, and protecting himself from Trump’s reckless lawfare. The churlish and destructive person in this dangerous situation has always been Donald Trump, who has no grasp of what monetary policy is or should be

A very churlish move by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

@AshleyRParker @michaelscherer But it’s all in Trump’s head. A president who refuses to stand up to Putin, who threatens to bring the West to the edge of capitulation and ruin will never be great

IS DONALD TRUMP A SECRET HEGEL SCHOLAR?! Probably not! But he has begun likening himself to the German philosopher’s “Great Men” trifecta—Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon. W the (also immortal) @michaelscherer: theatlantic.com/politics/2026/…

@RyanHaecker Really. In their buildings they make a point of being utterly contrary and weird—to the rest of us this is their way of saying ‘Caveat emptor!’

Mormon architecture is Gothic Futurism Fitting, for America's sci-fi Christianity

@PhillipsPOBrien Trump is making a category mistake here, since there’s no evidence that he’s ever been a ‘nice guy.’

The thing is, in his own mind, this is how Trump sees himself.

@TerribleMaps Actually, it’s the map of the dried-up prehistoric riverbed known to Neanderthals as ‘Waters of the Dragon’

99% of Americans can’t name this country

@JoyceCarolOates Trump’s decorative sensibility appears to suffer from horror vacui. At some point his obsession with anything gold could make the Oval Office uninhabitable. What would a blank wall show him that he doesn’t want to know? Better to have a breast full of Russian military medals

odd miscellany of trophies including someone else's Nobel Peace prize (center) & 1991 Girls Volleyball Tournament Champs Edison NJ (third from right).

@HeerJeet Trump doesn’t even know what Magna Carta is and thinks he’d like to date her

Maybe Trump really will, as some predicted in 2016, complete the project of German idealism.