Favorite Rejects 2022-05-15

Taisu Zhang @ZhangTaisu

Over the past month, I’ve been surprised (pleasantly?) at how brittle social media Chinese nationalism is in the face of still moderate socioeconomic upheaval. If my Weibo feed (which includes most of the major nationalist public intellectuals) is any indication, it’s been…

FreshMouthHat @Popehat

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Of course it's not really about "invaders"...the Buffalo killer attacked Black people, whose ancestors have been here at least as long as his own, probably longer.

Wajahat Ali @WajahatAli

Read the alleged manifesto of the Buffalo white supremacist terrorist. You can draw a straight line from the replacement theory to his radicalization. He was inspired by the Christchurch shooter who in turn was inspired by Breivik of Norway. All wanted to punish the "invaders."

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Killing the filibuster is MAGA: Make America Governable Again.

David Roberts @drvolts

If you're keeping score, the Dems who defend the filibuster now believe not only that it is important, but that it is MORE important than: * voting rights * abortion rights * climate change * gun violence

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

If you're at a casino, the odds are against you whether you're playing blackjack or the slot machines but there's still a big difference.

Bryan Caplan @bryan_caplan

Supporting “liberal democracy” is like supporting “benevolent dictatorship.” Maybe you’ll get lucky, but the logic of the system works against it.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Example of why I hate headlines that tell me what I think — my initial read of this was that it purported to overturn the findings of the 2019 paper, "Capitalists in the 21st Century." But it's actually a writeup of that paper — the rich are exactly who *I* thought!

Brian Hanlon @hanlonbt

MLK III writes a banger op-ed: "The less housing stock we have, the more expensive it is. So if we want a radically fairer housing market, we have to literally build it."

ajc.comOpinion: Keep building affordable housing to bring American Dream closer for allMy father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fought for fair housing and racial and economic justice until the day he was killed in 1968. That year, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which included the Fair Housing Act, in response to my father’s efforts in Chicago and the outrage o…

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

China has to face the fact that their post-Deng method for selecting leaders got lucky twice in a row and then hit the inevitable failure mode.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

This is a good point. Jiang and Hu were both picked by Deng. It's starting to look more like Deng was the Great Man of modern China, meaning Xi might represent a reversion to the mean of a flawed system.

Nicholas Martin @meilaoban

I don't think China had or has a "method" for selecting leaders. Of the 3 post-Deng leaders, the first 2 were simply annointed by the supremo (Deng); after them it just immediately degenerated into a vicious bloodbath as Xi, Bo, Zhou & (a little still) Li Keqiang fought for power https://t.co/havHkohklv

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Dingdingding

Boris Huevich @BorisHuevich

@KenGoldsholl @Noahpinion The strength of a democracy is not selecting leaders, but getting rid of them without violence.

Fergus Meiklejohn 🇺🇦 @airuyi

One measure of how badly Xi has failed is the change in Taiwan: in the 10 years I've lived here it's gone from "China is okay we just want to do business", to "We don't want a war but no one wants to be Chinese, what a terrible place to live".

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

China has to face the fact that their post-Deng method for selecting leaders got lucky twice in a row and then hit the inevitable failure mode.

War on the Rocks @WarOnTheRocks

The @WarOnTheRocks pod returns with an episode about the dire state of defense innovation

warontherocks.comThe U.S. Military Might Be More Like Russia’s Military Than You Think - War on the RocksDid that title get your attention? It got Ryan’s attention too when it came out of Steve Blank’s mouth. If you’re a War on the Rocks reader/listener,