View From Nowhere

 

Spectroscope, British Library collections, via SolvingForPattern.

Peter Baker,  the New York Times reporter so devoted to the View From Nowhere that he notoriously refuses even to take sides in secret by casting a ballot in an election, has a characteristic take on the withdrawal from Afghanistan: that angry partisans missed a chance to find a compromise between the extreme positions, that US forces should withdraw or US forces should not withdraw ("All In or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan."):

“There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict,” Mr. Biden said as the Taliban seized Kabul this month.

Critics consider that either disingenuous or at the very least unimaginative, arguing that there were viable alternatives, even if not especially satisfying ones, that may not have ever led to outright victory but could have avoided the disaster now unfolding in Kabul and the provinces.

The non-general in his labyrinth

Update: Thanks for the shoutout, Infidel753!

Screenshot from Jim Henson's Labyrinth, 1986.

A lot of people roll their eyes when journalists like Haberman and Baker file another story about Trump's "increasing isolation"—how much more could it have increased since the last time they wrote it? Is it getting near bottom yet?

WASHINGTON — When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts. “Freaking idiots!” he calls his aides. Except he uses a more pungent word than “freaking.”

For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.

Personally, I've long thought such stories were appropriate to the Trump administration, in the same way the protocol trivialities and sly portraiture of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon were appropriate to the reign of Louis XIV, because that's the kind of administration it is, based on the day-to-day lurches in the emperor's mood and how he bestows his favor. Yesterday he was praising the newly resigned General Mattis for his distinguished service, today somebody's explained to him what the resignation letter said and he's demanding Mattis leave by New Year, instead of sticking it out through February: