Avery James

Real recognize real

Narrated Werner: Kirk looked me in the eye and said, "Know that failure to eliminate single-family exclusionary zoning is among the great policy errors of our time."

Why are all these LW influencers in Cuba? If you read @thestustustudio @CityJournal you already know.

NEW: In a letter to employees, United CEO Scott Kirby says the airline is prepping for oil to hit $175/barrel & “doesn't get back down to $100/barrel until the end of 2027.” United is shaving 3% of off-peak flights - “think redeyes, Tues/Wed/Sat flying” - this spring & summer.

tech offices with real wooden furniture and Persian rugs are representative of the vibe shift

They're calling it the Persian Riviera. It's a phenomenal location. The weather, the water, the whole thing.

@actsmaniac @fearsythed Everyone knows mass conservative politics in rich countries is about assembling the chud veto. This is political science 101.

@fearsythed impossible

Guy who wants to Pause AI because AI took Santi away.

@jawillick Yeah I think the answer is neither, Trump was and is a weird moderate Russia hawk.

There is a certain strain of thought that is always worried that Trump will get flattered/cajoled by Putin, Xi or other rivals, but which rejects the possibility that he could be flattered/cajoled by Netanyahu or other allies. Sorry, either he's susceptible to persuasion or not.

@Brendan_Duke @jdcmedlock Resurrecting a long-dead meme format

netanyahu getting fried over a will durant quote he uses all the time is very...

No. I support Israel over Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, as a matter of foreign policy. But I do not believe in dispensationalism and I am not a Zionist, in the same way that I am not an Irish separatist or Zulu nationalist. I'm an American, and believe we should construct our policy toward other countries on the basis of our national interest and civilizational mission. It's possible to "just be normal" about Israel.

@rSanti97 Congrats!

Some professional news: I'm joining Anthropic's editorial team! I'll be leading the team's work on economics and policy, and working closely with the Anthropic Institute (about which more here: x.com/AnthropicAI/st…). Dramatic AI progress is coming in the next two years, and researchers+policymakers+the public alike will need the best information available about that shift. It's a big new challenge, and I can’t wait to get started. [Some important housekeeping: I’ll keep running Statecraft at @IFP as a Nonresident Senior Fellow! And will remain on the board at Recoding America/ as a journalist-in-residence at @johnshopkins School of Government and Policy. I start at Anthropic in a few weeks.] The move from frontier think tank to frontier lab is bittersweet. I’ve been at IFP for three years, and it’s been the most formative professional experience of my life. In a short period of time, IFP has become one of the most effective institutions in DC, generating a truly shocking amount of counterfactual policy impact (not all of it public). Being on this team has permanently raised my ambitions. I'm very grateful.

@lionel_trolling Okay, so difference of scale becomes a difference of quality; McCarthy for Senate is one thing, for President is quite another.

@averyfjames Just didn't go far enough in terms of its national program or the size and scope of the movement. Wasn't really a mass movement of national restoration

Nope, the point was that fascism itself was clownish, histrionic, and vulgar. Its grandeur and aesthetics of doom were pure propaganda. Many people recognized this at the time.

@lionel_trolling Why weren't his politics fascist? A significant number of writers at the time went this far. Viereck more interestingly suggested (incorrectly imo) that it was this final devolution of Midwestern progressivism from LaFollette to Coughlin to Tail Gunner Joe.

@averyfjames Not really fascist exactly, but definitely a kind of paranoid populism that's in the same phenomenological playground.

@SaladBarFan At least thanks to Internet Archive we can still read his old stuff.

What if instead of giving money to shameless grifting whores Elon Musk threw a couple million at Spotted Toad to come out of retirement and start blogging again?

@ahardtospell The fact center-left pundits said "this will leave nothing for x or y plans" in exasperation suggests opposite; there is a relationship between revenue cuts and disciplining down spending ideas. Also true of smaller BBB (IRA) faced with lack of political capital to undo TCJA.

@ahardtospell It depends on how pessimistic your counterfactual of center-left spending is without the cuts.

But why exactly is it a shame? The first step to entitlement reform is for Democratic politicians to begin talking exactly like they're talking right now (most people's taxes shouldn't go up.)