Gene O

🙏

Why Attack Iran? Our Authoritarianism and Our Corruption

How to understand war with Iran? We must get away from propaganda. Facts suggest two interpretive frameworks: a foreign war as a mechanism to destroy democracy at home; and a foreign war as an element of personal corruption by the president of the United States.
snyder.substack.com/p/why-attack...

Cabinet Apocalypse A News Review in an Imagined Conversation

A list of things you might do if you were trying to end the republic. In other words: a news review.
snyder.substack.com/p/cabinet-ap...

💯

Russian embassy, Washington DC.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the full scale invasion

Today marks four years since Russia invaded Ukraine. These are some thoughts (recorded yesterday) on what Ukrainians have done for all of us and what we can learn from them.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Well said. Really a few of the best minutes I’ve ever seen on television, BTW.

Georges Borchardt, 97, Dies; Literary Agent Championed Wiesel’s ‘Night’

I usually hesitate to post obituaries but this one, of my literary agent, Georges Borchardt, born in 1928, is so unusual that it deserves to be widely shared.
An incredible 20th century life
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/o...

The US could be solving this problem. We are letting Russia kill, injure, and harm people. Enabling massive human suffering — a cold winter without heat and water — is wrong in itself and will not lead to peace.

➕

🤯

 🫂

🫣

There are a hundred more important things to say, and I tried to say some of them in my essay for "Thinking About...", but: invading a country for oil is also just atavistic at this point. Even if it worked, which it won’t, it still wouldn’t work.

The ethical and legal damage will be with us forever but it’s the raging incompetence that will strike first, within the next few days.

In a Post-Truth World: The Fate of Birth, Death, and Other Boundaries If there is no boundary between real and unreal, good and evil, life and death, then nothing means anything, and we face a nihilist abyss.

"If there is no boundary between real and unreal, good and evil, life and death, then nothing means anything, and we face a nihilist abyss." @marcishore.bsky.social in #IWMPost @iwm.at
www.iwm.at/publication/...

Well I could see RFK Jr. “seeking” it, as he probably has some theory that it’s good for your immune system…

In English we know it as “Carol of the Bells,” but the melody arises from a Ukrainian folk tradition of songs welcoming the new year and summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity.
Do listen.
I wrote about the history here: snyder.substack.com/p/o-generous...

Ukraine keeps defying the possible through tactics we have never seen before. We must keep putting pressure on Russia.
Speaking with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social

https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/internet-time-service/c/o0dDDcr1a8I?pli=1

Due to a windstorm-related utility power outage at the NIST, time may soon be destroyed

If you still get a chance to see this in theaters TAKE it because watching an audience react to the insane twists and turns is almost as fun as the movie itself. Saw it opening day and the crowd was INTO IT

The Hobbit Habit: Reading “The Lord of the Rings” From 2001: “The Lord of the Rings” grew in the telling, but, more significantly, the reader grows in the reading; such is the source of Tolkien’s power, and it is weirder and more far-reaching than even he could have foretold.

“The Lord of the Rings” grew in the telling, but, more significantly, the reader grows in the reading; such is the source of Tolkien’s power, and it is weirder and more far-reaching than even he could have foretold.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/200...

🔥

🫂

😣

Where we see confirmed that what is being described as an American peace plan was written by Russians and learn that Witkoff advises the Kremlin on how to fool Trump

If I’m understanding this correctly, X is owned by a white nationalist who pays poor people of color in developing countries to pretend to be working class white Americans to scare other white Americans into being afraid poor people of color from developing countries are going to ruin America?

1) Start the worst European war since 1945 and commit every imaginable war crime
2) Decide how you want to be rewarded for your aggression
3) Leak the list of your desiderata to the US press
4) Wait for the US president to enforce your wish list on your victim.
Russian policy 2025