u/Initial_Chemist_7616

Neutral Summary: President Trump announced an agreement with Vladimir Putin to temporarily lift US sanctions on Russian diesel imports, aiming to reduce fuel prices that have surged nearly 70% since the outbreak of the US–Iran war, reaching approximately $6.30 per gallon.

The agreement provides for three shipments:

• 300,000 tonnes immediately, equivalent to roughly 75% of daily US diesel consumption.
• 500,000 tonnes in November.
• 1 million additional tonnes subsequently.

However, energy analysts argue the agreement will have little meaningful impact on diesel prices for several reasons:

1. Insufficient volume: The initial shipment represents less than a day's US consumption.
2. Transportation delays: Shipping Russian diesel to the US will take approximately three weeks, meaning supplies will arrive shortly before the November midterm elections.
3. Russian production constraints: Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged Russian refining infrastructure, raising doubts about whether Russia can fulfill its commitments.
4. Sanctions complications: Companies must navigate potentially conflicting US and European sanctions requirements when handling Russian-origin fuel.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/11/trump-russia-diesel-deal-putin-little-impact-prices

Note: Yes, the Summary is AI Generated. AI is very good at summarizing things. The point of the summary is to provide a factual basis for discussion, not prove to you that I am smart and I know what I am talking about.

Commentary: There is so much about this deal that just doesn't make sense.

First, obviously it is bad to give the Russians money while they bomb Ukrainian women and children. That's precisely why restricting Russian energy revenues, including discouraging countries like India from purchasing Russian oil, has been a central component of sanctions policy.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-addresses-threats-to-the-united-states-by-the-government-of-the-russian-federation/

Second, Russia itself is experiencing fuel shortages. Just last week, *The Guardian* reported that South Korea had exported more than 176,000 tonnes of fuel, predominantly diesel, to Russia to help alleviate its shortages. How much additional diesel can Russia realistically export when its refineries are already struggling to meet domestic demand. And if imports really would solve the American shortage...why isn't America buying from South Korea?(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/06/oil-tankers-south-korea-russia-ukraine-war)

Third, the United States is itself a major net exporter of diesel and related distillates, exporting approximately 53 million barrels per month.

Importing a relatively trivial quantity of Russian diesel, much of which would likely enter through import infrastructure concentrated on the East Coast, is unlikely to materially reduce US prices, especially in the farm states. Maybe its good for Susanne Collins in Maine?

Summary: Over time, conduct that might once have been treated as personally disqualifying has increasingly been separated from judgments about whether a politician should remain in office, particularly when that politician is considered electorally valuable.

Max Miller serves as the principal example. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has accused him of severe domestic abuse, including pouring scalding water on her, threatening her with a firearm, and injuring their daughter. Miller denies abusing either his former wife or daughter, and the House Ethics Committee is investigating the allegations.

Despite the accusations, prominent Republican figures have continued to support Miller. House Speaker Mike Johnson has characterized the allegations as matters involving Miller’s personal life while continuing to praise his performance in Congress. Vivek Ramaswamy has emphasized the importance of maintaining Republican control of the House when explaining his support for Miller, and the National Republican Congressional Committee has continued coordinating advertising with Miller’s campaign.

One notable exception is Senator Bernie Moreno, Emily Moreno’s father, who has publicly called for Miller to withdraw from the race and has strongly supported his daughter’s account.

The GOP has fallen so far because, over the course of the Trump era, it repeatedly chose political utility over personal character and gradually normalized behavior that would once have been disqualifying. What began as a transactional bargain—overlooking Trump’s misconduct in exchange for conservative judges, tax cuts, and electoral victories—became a broader cultural shift in which loyalty, aggression, and refusal to apologize were treated as signs of strength, while accountability and restraint were recast as weakness.

Once the party had spent years defending Trump against scandals involving women, dishonesty, and abuse of power, it became increasingly difficult to impose higher standards on lesser figures without exposing the inconsistency. The result is a party apparatus that often asks first whether a candidate can help retain power and only second whether that candidate’s conduct should matter at all.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-maga-world-incentives-that-have-saved-max-miller?r=2zspum&utm\_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

In light of my recent permaban from r/politics for my rampant 'bigotry' against trans women, an opinion echoed in the attached article by Mara Keisling, an American transgender rights advocate and senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute. To clarify for the Mods and anyone and everyone else. This thread is not an invitation to flame ware or hate. Trans people are people that have human rights, and a right to live their life in a manner they choose.

Sports however, are not a human right and post-pubescent sport are segregated by Sex, not gender, for a reason.

Summary: We can have a pragmatic middle ground on transgender participation in sports. Prepubescent trans children should generally be allowed to play on the teams of their choosing because, before puberty, there is little reason to think their participation undermines competitive fairness. At the same time post-puberty and elite sports raise different questions, particularly around biological differences, safety, and competitive advantage. Because most Americans are uncomfortable with trans women competing in women’s sportstrans advocates should recognize this concern rather than dismiss it.

Eligibility rules should be set by sports organizations, not politicians. Professional leagues, the NCAA, Olympic bodies, state athletic associations, schools, players, and other people directly involved in sports are better positioned to establish rules based on fairness, safety, age, and the specific characteristics of each sport. Blanket government bans are wrong. A case-by-case or sport-specific standards informed by science and common sense is the correct path.

Politically the sports issue has become disproportionately important in public debate over transgender rights. Although sports are far less consequential than issues such as healthcare access and anti-discrimination protections, they have become one of the main ways many Americans encounter the transgender-rights debate. Insisting on unrestricted participation in elite women’s sports could further alienate the public and strengthen politicians who oppose transgender rights more broadly.

The proposed compromise is to protect young trans children from exclusion while accepting that elite and post-puberty sports may require meaningful eligibility restrictions. Sophie Cunningham has every right to express concerns about fairness in women’s sports. Trans children should be treated with dignity and allowed to participate where fairness is not genuinely at issue, while competitive sports should retain the ability to establish evidence-based rules

Commentary: This seems a common sense, non-bigoted positon to take. And anyone in the comments is more than welcome to call me a bigot for taking it, however, hatred or verbal attacks against any other users will be reported to the mods.

As for the argument that has been made that 'all trans rights are connected and denying one is to deny their essential humanity'. I'm sorry, but thats just wrong. Your rights end where it demands society to accomodate your unique needs. Before that, every human person has the right to do what they will with thier one life. After that, the ability of anyone to demand anything is greatly diminished.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-213600385

Summary: The article argues that Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed may face renewed scrutiny over old, deleted tweets about 9/11 as he campaigns against Republican Mike Rogers.

The tweets themselves did not defend the attacks. El-Sayed condemned 9/11 while using it as a comparison to criticize America’s response to other tragedies:

• In 2020, he argued that COVID deaths deserved mobilization comparable to the post-9/11 response—but directed toward public health rather than war.
• In 2021, he mourned the roughly 3,000 people killed on 9/11, then contrasted them with the far greater death and destruction caused by the subsequent American wars.
• El-Sayed says 9/11 was a terrible terrorist attack, but also argues that the resulting wars were harmful and did not make Americans safer.

The political problem is cumulative rather than any single tweet. El-Sayed has also appeared with streamer Hasan Piker, who once said “America deserved 9/11,” although Piker retracted it and El-Sayed explicitly rejects that position. Rogers has misleadingly attributed Piker’s belief to El-Sayed himself.

Analysts quoted in the article think the tweets probably will not independently decide the election, but they reinforce the Republican narrative that El-Sayed is too radical and force him to defend his rhetoric and associations instead of attacking Rogers on economic issues. El-Sayed must simultaneously reassure moderate statewide voters and retain progressive, Arab American, and Muslim voters who strongly oppose the post-9/11 wars and surveillance policies.

In short: there is no evidence here that El-Sayed approved of 9/11. The vulnerability is that his forceful criticism of America’s post-9/11 response—combined with his association with Piker—can be packaged by Republicans into a broader argument about extremism and judgment.

Commentary: Dafuq? Dude said '9/11 was bad. Covid deserves the same level mobilization', '3,000 deaths on 9/11 was a tragedy, thousands of deaths in the subsequent wars was also bad'. This is some Fox News level propaganda designed to make us think the Muslim man has terrorist sympathies.

Abdul El Sayed did himself no favors by campaigning with Hasan Piker, who is a complete [censored]. But this article saying that tweets about 9/11 could be problematic is insane.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-deleted-social-media-sept-11-attacks-michigan/

Summary: Krugman argues that Trump badly miscalculated Canada. He assumed that because the U.S. economy is much larger and Canada depends heavily on the American market, tariffs would quickly force Ottawa to make concessions. Instead, the pressure has unified Canadians against the U.S. and strengthened Mark Carney politically. More importantly, America is more dependent on particular Canadian imports than the headline trade numbers suggest, including heavy crude for Midwestern refineries, specialized lumber, hydroelectric power, steel and aluminum, and tightly integrated auto parts. A full trade war would hurt Canada badly, but it would also create serious and highly visible disruption inside the United States.

That matters because Canadians have a stronger political reason to endure the pain: they increasingly see the conflict as a defense of national sovereignty, while most Americans do not believe Canada has done anything that warrants punishment. Krugman also argues that Trump has no clear definition of victory. Canada is not going to become the 51st state, abandon major elements of its national identity, or confess to unfair trade practices that largely did not exist. So even though America has vastly greater economic power, Trump cannot easily turn that power into meaningful political concessions. Krugman’s prediction is therefore that Canada will refuse to capitulate, Americans will increasingly resent the economic costs, and Trump will ultimately fail to achieve his objectives.

Commentary: Anyone who has a problem with Canada? Argo f*ck yourself. Remember that? When Canada helped get Americans trapped in Iran? Or when Canada responded to the attack of 9/11 by helping stranded americans shelter and of course with the blood of its own sons and daughters?

It's a good thing I'm not the Prime Minister of Canada because if I was I would immediately end all energy exports to the US. Good look in the midterms Mr. Trump if they are paying $15/gallon in Iowa, Michigan and Ohio.

Any American that isn't willing to fly Canadian flag today is no patriot in my book.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-212474680

Summary: The wokeness of the early 2020s was not merely awkward vocabulary or dull corporate trainings but an enforcement regime — social bullying plus institutional cowardice — that ended careers and reputations.

People harmed and owed apologies include editors pushed out over headlines and commissioned essays, a novelist whose manuscript was rejected because of his race, academics disciplined or driven out over exam wording, a clumsy tweet, or a claim about biological sex; men swept up in a #MeToo response that flattened the distinction between predation and bad dates; and an ordinary utility worker fired after a hand gesture out a car window was read as a white-supremacist signal.

That it's all in the past doesn't hold — neither is the Red Scare, and we still discuss it. That Trump is worse is whataboutism. Liberals have a specific obligation to repudiate illiberalism on their own side, because politics built on moral certainty and eager demonization is incompatible with a free society regardless of which direction it comes from.

Commentary: Another day another post about w o k e. Honestly, I do think all that I need to say about it has been said. However, I also think the NYT Opinion adds further credible coverage as to who was actually harmed, so for those who want to know or for those who want hate and feel the need to tell me again how ridiculus I am that I care, here you go:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/opinion/woke-liberals-restitution.html

Summary: AOC calling "w o k e 1" crazy — and laughing while doing it — is not an apology people will accept, because there is no apology people will accept.

Perhaps AOC was doing standard politician work: distancing herself from a movement that has become toxic without alienating a base still attached to it. That's roughly the ceiling of what anyone in her position can offer, and it satisfied no one.

Run the counterfactuals and nothing changes. Drop the laugh, and critics object that "crazy" understates what happened — jobs lost, lives ruined, cities burned.

Issue a full-throated apology, and the think pieces keep coming. Stage a televised self-flagellation, blood and tears included, and the pit still doesn't fill, because what's being demanded isn't better wording. It's retribution.

The underlying dynamic is identity-based: people who define themselves in opposition to w o k e read any statement from a former participant adversarially, parsing it for sincerity versus opportunism.

Trump is the mirror Image. As his final term ends, Republicans will attempt the same impossible pivot — distancing from the movement's worst elements without losing the base — and it will fail on identical terms with those scarred by January 6th.

What will actually happen is that everyone slides past and the history gets memoryholed. That's framed as the acceptable outcome, since a society that lets one faction execute justice on another is worse than one where people get away with things. Two decades on, a new crisis will arrive and a new generation forms its politics around it — while the people personally humiliated by the original era never get over it.

Commentary: So this article is of a kind with others that have been sharing, some of which have been taken down for what I call some rather dubious reasons which seem to me to amount to some people complianing that 'criticising' w o k e is either 'not centrist' or 'so inflammatory to centrism' that it doesn't belong here.

But here is my poisiton: This article's thesis is wrong because it creates a false dichotomy. That we either demand a self flagelatting punishment of those who transgressed during w o k e 1, or we let them slide and slink and memory hole the hole affair.

The third option my fellow wisconsinsite misses is Truth and Reconciliation. Recognition of wrongdoing results in guilt, guilt leads to learning, learning leads to growing. And the other side has a job just as big in forgiving the guilty.

And here I think it is important to point out the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is the emotion that people should feel when they do bad. It helps them learn and grow. Shame is the emotion people feel when they are told that they are bad. There are only two things the human ego can do with shame, became angry and defensive or depressed and self loathing.

Feel guilty if you took part in the actions of w o k e 1, not shame. Learn, grow, do better. Or to disagree with Mr. Wisconsin, make up for W o k e 1 by becoming better.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-211709626

Subhead: By demanding the purification of the individual and branding broad swathes of the public as oppressor classes, 'Woke 1' besmirched the average Americans who Democrats once championed.

Summary: The worst damage from the 2018–2021 period known as "WOKE 1" period wasn't any particular policy but a habit of mind: treating ordinary, unremarkable people as stand-ins for oppressor classes, and therefore as legitimate targets for prominent commentators and celebrities.

Two specific non-policy incidents can help us draw this conclusion: the 2019 Covington Catholic viral confrontation, where journalists treated a teenager's expression as a matter of national significance, and a 2019 pile-on by well-known authors against a South Dakota college graduate who had criticized one novelist's books in a small local paper. In both cases a private individual was recast as an avatar of structural power, which inverted the actual power relationship between the accusers and the accused.

This instinct is fundamentally anti-populist. "Defund the police" told the public not to want protection it demonstrably wanted; Francesca Hong's "cancel Thanksgiving" post indicted people simply for enjoying a holiday. Mamdani's specific, explained reversal on policing is exactly how to treat the excesses of this period. AOC's vaguer distancing, andHong's continued adherence are less acceptable and will likely result in lost voters.

Note: For the substack haters: Josh Barro is an American journalist who has previously worked for the New York Times, New York Magazine, Bloomberg, and Business Insider, among others. A Republican until 2016 and a Democrat since, he writes primarily as a center-left critic of progressive orthodoxy.

https://www.joshbarro.com/p/woke-1-was-anti-populist-and-not

Summary: The forming narrative — that DSA-branded Democrats systematically underperform their polls — doesn't hold. Abdul El-Sayed isn't actually DSA, just coded that way, and he blew a 13-point polling lead down to a one-point win; Hong, an actual DSA member, hit her number.

The pattern that does hold is racial. Haley Stevens performed with Black voters and El-Sayed didn't. Hong won college towns but ran behind Crowley in Milwaukee, where he's been county executive since 2020. Black voters are the backbone and dead center of the Democratic coalition, and they're less drawn to DSA-forward candidates than other parts of it — so winning Democratic primaries runs through them. Crowley is also the better general-election matchup against Tom Tiffany in a wave year.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/advice-for-democrats-find-black-voters-go-there-wisconsin-francesca-hong-david-crowley

Note: The overzealous titling guidelines won't let me use the word [Stupid] because it feels like its insulting, so this is what we get for the title.

Summary: A decade of politics built around systemic oppression peaked in 2020, and Democrats absorbed all of it — the kneeling photo ops, the corporate DEI programs, the universities confessing complicity — letting themselves become the party of defunding police, abolishing ICE, and rewriting gender. Most of it has since collapsed: cities restored police budgets once murders climbed, and universities with elaborate oppression bureaucracies proved useless against campus anti-Semitism.

What hasn't happened is a reckoning. The dominant strategy is silence. Harris tried a variant, reinventing herself leftward in 2020 and quietly reverting in 2024 while insisting nothing had changed. Ocasio-Cortez is previewing a third: treating the era as a punchline rather than answering for it — and that she feels compelled to do so from one of the country's most liberal districts measures how toxic those positions have become.

The evasion won't hold. DSA-aligned candidates are winning primaries without softening anything: one likely incoming member of Congress is a prison abolitionist who won't say murderers belong in jail, the Wisconsin gubernatorial front-runner has criticized Thanksgiving on colonialist grounds, and the platform still calls for reparations, abolishing police and prisons, and unlimited amnesty. Only the emphasis has moved. And even absent all that, Republicans would keep the issue alive — anti-wokeness is the connective tissue of a party Trump otherwise remade beyond recognition, and it works, as the sharpest ad of 2024 showed with nothing more than "they/them" against "you."

Ideas go dormant rather than dying, and refusing to extirpate this one now invites a 2028 primary that replays 2020's race leftward, with Ocasio-Cortez potentially learning the cost firsthand.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/aoc-democrats-wokeness-republicans/688241/

Summary: Republican money is the primary force elevating DSA member Francesca Hong in Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary. A group believed to be Republican-funded has spent close to $1 million on pro-Hong television advertising; the Hong campaign itself has spent nothing on TV. The Republican Governors Association has spent an additional $3.6 million on ads nominally targeting Hong, which in left-leaning markets serve to 'inform' voters that she opposes Trump's immigration agenda and would return the Democratic Party to its progressive roots — messaging that functions as promotion rather than attack.

This is cross-party primary interference, a tactic both parties employ and a problem in its own right. Its more significant implication concerns electability. Republicans treat the question as settled: moderates are harder to beat than leftists. They do not debate it internally, and they commit substantial money and political capital on the assumption that they are correct. The debate exists only on the left.

The counterclaim that "a socialist would have won" is structurally unfalsifiable, since Democrats overwhelmingly nominate non-socialists; every moderate loss becomes retroactive proof of a thesis that is never tested.

The strategy may succeed. Polling shows Hong leading Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and the Republican preference for her has been publicly reported for at least a week, including in a widely circulated tweet. Wisconsin Democrats may nominate her anyway — a legitimate choice if made with clear eyes, since voters sometimes prefer a candidate over a more electable alternative. What is not defensible is the expectation that Hong would ride a wave of popular support into the governorship. Her campaign lacks the resources to compete in general-election television spending, and the assumption of her strength is a self-serving myth promoted by leftists, believed by some Democrats, and shared by no Republicans.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-210511817

Summary: Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary is being framed by state party figures as a national-stakes contest rather than an ideological skirmish. Because the governor certifies both presidential and Senate results — the role Evers filled during Trump's 2020 challenge — the office functions as a procedural safeguard. The presumptive GOP nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, carries an extensive election-denial record and has not conceded that Trump lost in 2020, which party leaders argue makes proper certification in 2028 an open question. A secondary but substantial prize is redistricting: a Democratic trifecta would enable a 2027 redraw of a delegation currently split 6R–2D, while a Republican trifecta would allow the reverse. Wisconsin is an open seat, unlike Arizona and Pennsylvania, where comparable GOP nominees face incumbents.

The immediate problem is that establishment Democrats appear to be losing the primary to Francesca Hong, a DSA candidate whose platform they consider a general-election liability. Her position owes less to left-wing momentum than to a sequence of establishment failures — Rodriguez's withdrawal over campaign finance mismanagement, Barnes's exit amid press reporting, and Crowley's late re-entry — compounded by millions in Republican-aligned super PAC spending designed to elevate her. With the polling lead judged insurmountable, the party's internal conversation has shifted from stopping Hong to rehabilitating her as a credible general-election candidate, on the argument that a favorable national environment and Tiffany's proximity to an unpopular president leave the seat winnable. The piece's closing worry is that voters have not internalized any of this.

Personal Note: If she's the nominee I will vote for Hong. But I know more than a couple people who don't generally vote GOP who will not. Something sober primary voters should keep in mind.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-happens-when-an-election-denier-runs-crucial-swing-state-wisconsin-governor-primary

Summary: Michigan is a Democratic state. Democrats have held both Senate seats almost continuously since 1979, won open seats, won during Republican wave years, won even when Trump carried the state at the top of the ticket. So any generic Democrat should take this open seat in a favorable midterm environment — meaning El-Sayed loses only if he runs at least 1.5 points behind a replacement-level candidate.

Does he? Mixed evidence. He's a genuine political talent who beat the entire state establishment while outspent 11 to 1 and pulled 1.5 million primary voters. But he won by a point after polling at +13, and he lost Wayne and Oakland — the urban counties whose margins are the foundation of every statewide Democratic win. He lost Macomb by 7, and he'll need to keep that under 10 in November. The rural results are the encouraging part: he never fell below 30 percent anywhere, and in a race last decided by 19,000 votes, holding rural losses to 30 rather than 40 points is how Democrats win.

Rogers, meanwhile, isn't a tomato can. He already took 48.3 percent statewide in 2024 against a strong opponent, has survived the scrutiny of a high-profile race, and — on the John James precedent — has a floor around 47.

Conclusion: winnable, probably a win, decided by fewer than 50,000 votes. Not a gimme.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-case-against-el-sayed-doomerism

Summary: Drawing on Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World, Klein describes the trickster archetype — Loki, Coyote, Hermes, Odysseus — as the figure who violates taboos, says the unsayable, and injects disorder into order. Cultures need this (they can't survive change without creativity) but it's dangerous: the damage can produce renewal or just ruin. Hyde argued in 1998 that Americans love a con man because he embodies what the culture can't admit about itself. The essayist grants that this had force when institutions were ossified, but says the condition no longer holds — almost nothing is unsayable now, and disruption has curdled into desecration.

Casting Matt Damon — a man of one way, not many — signals that Nolan isn't making a trickster movie. The bigger move is the film's "law of Zeus": treat the stranger as you'd want to be treated. Classicists have pointed out that's not the ancient xenia obligation, which was narrower and enforced by fear of gods in disguise, not compassion. Nolan has smuggled the Golden Rule — read in Leviticus, Hillel, the book of Matthew — into a pre-Christian honor world, making a worn moral cliché feel strange and demanding again.

The modern right doesn't just fail that ethic, it disdains it as "suicidal empathy." Stephen Miller's claim that the world is governed by force is the iron law displacing the golden rule; Klein ties this to Caesarism, the Rome fixation, and Yarvin. More speicfically Musk's agreement that universal suffrage means universal suffering, and Carney invoking Thucydides at Davos. In the film, Helen is a pretext for a war really about trade routes — read as a gloss on coercive trade policy. Odysseus's horror at the sack of Troy is read against October 7 and Gaza, with Netanyahu's "Athens and Sparta" and Harari's retort: if Jews just become Romans, what were the 2,000 years for?

Odysseus's realization is that he and his men were the barbarians, and their barbarity bred more of it — Agamemnon murdered, Ithaca overrun. Likewise a movement promising to restore Western civilization has betrayed its inheritance, and the world now sees America as the barbarian. Hyde's answer to when trickster tales end in regeneration rather than ruin: when severed worlds can be rejoined (Hermes) rather than left bound and poisoned (Loki). The prescription is for the opposition to reclaim religious, patriotic, and founding language — cruelty is weakness; order without ethics is authoritarianism — and the closing claim is that Nolan's Odysseus isn't a trickster but a man living in the ruins tricksters made, as are we, and the appetite for this film suggests the trickster age is ending

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=livIbni7x7o

Summary: The online right's campaign against Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of The Odyssey — the one behind Nolan's film — rests on almost no engagement with the text itself. Figures like Bronze Age Pervert and Raw Egg Nationalist read her as a feminist vandal defacing a monument of the white, male Western canon, and the case against her starts with her rendering of polytropos as "complicated."

But "complicated" carries no negative charge; it's a refusal of the flattening into hero or villain that the poem never performs. And Odysseus genuinely is complicated: a slaveholder, a raider, a mutilator of enemies, a serial adulterer. Wilson's version insists he remains worth reading anyway, which is a more serious defense of the poem's continued relevance than her critics manage.

The claim of infidelity to Homer collapses under comparison. In the scene where Telemachus orders twelve enslaved women killed, Fagles — the translator conservatives recommend as rigorous and unmoralizing — inserts words like "Sluts" and "Whores" that appear nowhere in the Greek; Wilson omits them and is thereby the more literal of the two.

What actually distinguishes her edition is technical: she matched the Greek line-for-line and wrote throughout in iambic pentameter, constraints that forced a spare, unornamented style. The result reads as flat only to those who mistook earlier translators' rhetorical embroidery for Homer, and who find a 2,700-year-old poem's moral ambiguity harder to sit with than they admit.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-208219622?selection=dc50370f-f09c-4695-95ba-4de691502751#:~:text=Her%20translation%20makes%20the%20case%20that%20Odysseus%2C%20despite%20all%20the%20sexism%20and%20slavery%2C%20is%20still%20a%20character%20who%20can%20speak%20to%20all%20of%20us

Summary: Suavity has gone missing from the American presidency, and a brief encounter between Barack Obama and Caitlin Clark shows what its absence costs. Obama dropped in on WNBA All-Star practice at his presidential center in Chicago, chatted with players about their seasons, and told Clark not to let the surrounding noise steal her joy — noting that his own fame arrived late in life and that she's shouldering an unusual burden for someone his daughter's age. It was a small act of grace, encouraging her while gently nudging her to accept the bad calls and just play. That same weekend, Trump stood at the White House Correspondents' Dinner podium and dismissed CNN's Kaitlan Collins's award as fake before working to demean her, while his administration and congressional allies have used the WNBA as raw material for culture-war fights over transgender athletes and supposed racial violence against Clark. Not suave, and not winning.

The season itself has been hard to watch — racial tension, toxic fans, and endless carping over officiating, a microcosm of a country fighting dirty in every arena. Clark is a genuinely extraordinary player, the fastest to 200 threes and a passer good enough to make defenses look lost, and she does get mauled — but that's the time-honored way to stop anyone that good, not proof of racial targeting. She has her own hard edge too, with seven technicals and a suspension one away. The real unfairness falls on Black players: Alyssa Thomas drew death threats and racial slurs after an inadvertent foul, and Chelsea Gray posted the racist message she received so people could see what she deals with. Obama chose not to corner Clark on any of that, and precisely because he extended her grace, she may extend more of it herself. She already knows how to win; he taught her how to be winning.

Personal Note: This is why character matters. In addition to the Trumps, people like Chevalier on the left and Fishback on the right could never dream of acting with the dignity and professionalism that Obama showed. Mamdani can and does. Endeavor to vote for politicians that embody the dignity and grace of the community they seek to lead.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/07/obama-caitlin-clark/688073/

Summary: The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America is rooted less in the traditional working class than among highly educated people with modest incomes. Education and income are not interchangeable measures of class: many college graduates possess cultural status but remain indebted, economically insecure, or excluded from the professional success they expected. Voters with postgraduate degrees and household incomes between $30,000 and $60,000 are among the most Democratic and liberal groups in the country, and they closely resemble the DSA’s base of teachers, nonprofit workers, social workers, and public employees.

This explains why economic socialism and cultural progressivism overlap so strongly. Highly educated, lower-income liberals are especially engaged by immigration, race, LGBTQ rights, environmentalism, and Israel–Palestine, while successful non-college voters are often more Republican. The central political divide is therefore not simply rich versus poor, but cultural status versus economic position. Socialism gives economically disappointed graduates an explanation for their frustration, while cultural conflicts provide the moral identity and political energy that draw them into the movement.

Personal Note: This may seem like rage bait to poke at the DSA crowd, and honestly it probably is. But it is also, in my opinion, very useful and enlightening to know where the 'extreme leftist' energy is coming from, and why it won't work. People don't want priveliged PhD's that failed in the private sector being their political leaders.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-207869387