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COVID beat: Lockdowns Made Us Rude
“If the world seems to you a little nastier and more confrontational than it was just a few years ago,” notes Reason’s J.D. Tuccille, “you’re not alone. Many Americans say the world is a ruder place than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic” and the “public health” overreaction closed “businesses and schools” and “isolated large numbers of people.” “This isn’t unprecedented. It’s a pattern that’s been seen over and over again in the wake of public-health emergencies” and “authoritarian restrictions.” Why? Isolation “means the social lubrication of manners and experience with polite human interaction takes a serious ding.” “It appears that in the course of screwing with our lives and our livelihoods,” the “powers-that-be also managed to disrupt our relations with our neighbors.”
From the right: MAGA vs. the ‘Realists’?
“Making an official who has consistently publicized his opposition to the president’s own policies responsible for the president’s intake of intelligence is a mistake best caught early,” argues Tablet’s Lee Smith of Daniel Dale, a nominee for a “top post in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” Dale has slammed Trump on Iran, China and everything else and was let go from the job before he started. But there’s no split in Trumpworld between “a ‘realist’ or isolationist contingent, and a more traditionally forward-leaning Reaganite faction.” This is about “an external faction” — funded by Trump opponents like Charles Koch and George Soros — “trying to attach itself to MAGA in order to strangle Trump’s America First foreign policy.”
Trade war: Make the Case, Don
President Trump’s tariffs are “sowing ill will” and making him seem like “a mad king” from whom “control ought to be wrested,” observes Christopher Caldwell at The Free Press. Yet there’s “powerful evidence behind certain Trump arguments.” He’s certainly correct that “the present architecture of the global economy is unsustainable.” A “managed transition to a newer, healthier global economic regime” would be “good.” Alas, Trump’s tariffs are “more like cold turkey.” And there’s “little public case being made” for them — though there’s “a real case” to be made. Yes, trade policy’s injustices can be “tedious to explain. Yet explain them Trump must.” If he can’t “engage the public,” he’ll “have a hard time persisting”; if he can, “he may win, and may even deserve to.”
Ukraine desk: Putin’s Push To Kill NATO
Vladimir Putin’s “broader geostrategic goal” of the Ukraine war is “dismantling NATO,” warn Mark Toth & Jonathan Sweet at The Hill. Putin knows “his military cannot defeat NATO,” but he can “fracture trust” within the 32-member defensive alliance. “If Putin walks away from Ukraine enriched and emboldened, he will keep coming for more of Europe — specifically the Baltic States — and this will be easier if he can first destroy the transatlantic NATO alliance.” So he’s creating “a wedge between Trump and his European allies,” and “Trump is taking the bait.” But “Europe must play a role in preventing NATO from being destroyed from within and without” by dramatically increasing “its own defense spending.” “Saving NATO is the only way to save Europe.”
White House watch: Team Trump’s Media Blitz
“No administration has communicated with voters as often or as directly” as President Trump’s, reports Charles Lipson at The Wall Street Journal. Senior officials are “bypassing” traditional media, instead doing “live interviews, podcasts and social-media posts and videos.” This novel approach gives Team Trump “greater control over the message and increased effectiveness” and seriously furthers Trump’s central goal: “to sustain public support for his bold agenda.” While Democrats whine and dither, “the Trump team is constantly on the air hammering home its views.” “A wholesale change in how senior officials connect to voters and how journalists cover them” is taking place” — but “the trillion-dollar question is whether their policies will work as well as their marketing.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board