In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I think the great unspoken insight over the past few days has been, for all the low expectations the world had for the Prince of Wales, King Charles III actually looks like a head of an important state. Beyond that, he's at least been acting like the head of a family : The King ordered his warring sons to set aside their ongoing feud ahead of the Queen's funeral, leading the pair to reunite in public for the first time in more than a year, it was last night revealed. Royal sources say Prince William attempted to bury the hatchet by extending an '11th-hour olive branch' to his younger brother Prince Harry, by asking him to join him on a walkabout outside Windsor Castle following a phone call with his father Charles. In a scene that clearly delighted royal fans, who had come in their hundreds to the gates of the Windsor estate to mourn the Queen's death, William and Harry walked out side-by-side with wives Kate and Meghan. "The King ordered. . ." Think ...

At this point, Ukrainian successes from what analysts currently think is a surprise counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region have simply been outpacing the ability of media to cover them. Here's Newsweek as of midday yesterday, Putin's Troops Have Two Days to Attack or Face Defeat: Ex-Military Leader : Igor Girkin, who also goes by Igor Strelkov, gave an update on the situation near Izium in a Telegram post on Friday, writing that Russia potentially not being able to restore land communication lines between Izium and the city of Kupyansk in that timeline may also play a part in whether or not it withdraws. Russian forces may even have to leave Izium itself depending on if and when it embarks on its own counteroffensive against Ukrainian advances, he added. "The question of the time of the counterattack is very acute: if the enemy manages to gain a foothold in the positions reached, pull up artillery and air defense, then it will be extremely difficult for our units to t...

I've kept ruminating on the quote from C Wright Mills that appeared in the Washington Post piece I linked in yesterday's post: “[The power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.” But to that I added another, from Mills's The Power Elite : [T]he focus of elite attention has been shifted from domestic problems, centered in the ‘thirties around slump, to international problems, centered in the ‘forties and ‘fifties around war. Since the governing apparatus of the United States has by long historic usage been adapted to and shaped by domestic clash and balance, it has not, from any angle, had suitable agencies and tradi...

I mentioned the influential sociologist C Wright Mills in yesterday's post, but later I discovered an op-ed in the Washington Post that discussed him in some depth on Monday. (For some reason, it's not behind their paywall, so anyone can read it.) There are clear parallels between today’s populist right and the new left movement that exploded in the 1960s and 1970s. C. Wright Mills, a sociologist at Columbia University, was that movement’s intellectual godfather. Consider a passage from his 1956 bestseller, “The Power Elite,” a polemical attack on the structure of America’s institutions that would inspire a generation of new left activists: “[The power elite] are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effect...

This is the question that pestered me all weekend. I just don't think you'd have to tweak Waldorf too hard to come up with William Barr, especially with the turned-down-mouth, lips-pulled-in expression of disgust that he's most commonly made during public appearances with Trump. His latest gig as surrogate for Merrick Garland on questions about the Mar-a-Lago raid raises the continuing question for me that he never took the position of Attorney General under Trump in good faith -- I suspect there was actually a back-channel deal among Barr, McConnell, Romney, and assorted other Senate RINOs to confirm him in 2019 on the basis that, like Jeff Sessions, he wouldn't actually implement Trump policies. I would also go a little farther and suggest that Barr isn't so much an apologist for Garland as he is an apologist for the deep state. In fact, I would suggest that the example of Barr is a refutation of the notion that the deep state is some sort of conspiracy theor...

As reported by CNN, A federal judge threw a wrench Monday in the Justice Department investigation into potential mishandling of documents from former President Donald Trump's White House by granting his request for a special master to review evidence seized from his Florida home last month. The win for Trump temporarily prevents the Justice Department's investigative team from accessing the thousands of documents -- some of which are marked as classified -- taken from Mar-a-Lago. US District Judge Aileen Cannon cleared the way for a third-party attorney to review all the seized materials, not just for documents covered by attorney-client privilege -- the circumstance in which special masters are usually used -- but also for potential executive privilege concerns, a move the Justice Department has said would be "unprecedented." Good news for Trump, right? Well, not so fast! Never Trumper Andrew McCarthy at the National Review manages not just a glass-half...

When I posted on the unhappiest-looking guy in public life, William Barr, yesterday, I wasn't aware that Trump and his people would respond to Barr's Friday comments about the Mar-a-Lago raid. As it turns out, their response is remarkably substantive, and it actually throws the question back to Barr. (The photo above is from yesterday's story at the Epoch Times on the response; it was taken at the event on June 1, 2020 in which Trump and other officials walked from the White House to the burned-out St John's Episcopal Church across the park following a BLM riot. You can see how on board Barr was with the event, although in hindsight, the walk, simply displaying support for our institutions in the face of disorder, was entirely appropriate.) The Epoch Times story notes, “I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they could be taken out of the government, away from the government, if they’re classified,” [Barr, ] who was attorney general during the Trump and Ge...