Modernity and its Discontents

Jon D. Michaels, “Trump and the Deep State: The Government Fights Back,” Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2017. Michaels begins his article with an observation.   “One of the strangest aspects of the current era,” he writes, “is that the president of the United States seems to have little interest in running the country’s government.”   It’s something of a truism that there are differences between the skills necessary to secure an office and those necessary to hold onto an office, and those necessary to both securing and holding differ from those necessary to actually doing the job implied by the office.     Likewise, initially, as is the case with all American politicians subject to election and re-election, the concerns of securing and holding office take on a sort of continuing precedence over “doing the job,” for the obvious reason that one cannot do the job if one is not in the job.     We all know, of course, there are many motivations for seeking office...

As a postscript to the above post on the Suleimani assassination, Nicholas Kristof, writing for the Times, recaps the results of the action: [1] ·        Iran has cast off nuclear curbs so that it is now potentially within five months of having enough fuel for a nuclear warhead, down from almost 15 years when Trump took office. ·        United States forces may be pushed out of Iraq, allowing Suleimani to achieve in death one of his foremost goals in life. ·        American forces in Syria may be difficult to support without the military presence in Iraq, so some or all of them might pull out as well, another strategic victory for Iran. ·        The military campaign against ISIS is on hold, giving terrorists a chance to regroup. ·        Iran’s regime, which had been threatened by enormous protests at home and in Iraq,...