I recognize that this post is somewhat preaching to the choir. But I wanted to discuss Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters for America. If you haven’t followed this closely a brief recap: Since purchasing Twitter, Musk has been in a battle both to make the platform a free-fire zone for racists, Nazis and other violent and bad actors and keep advertisers, who don’t want to be associated with those people, on the platform. He has made the matter more coherent by, incrementally over the last year, himself becoming the most prominent of those racists and Nazis. This is not hyperbole. He now routinely promotes and explicitly agrees with the most ghastly and dangerous forms of antisemitism and racism.

The pattern is consistent and clear: 1) Musk either promotes or parrots racist or anti-semitic speech. 2) Activist groups catalogue the prevalence of such speech on the platform and in some cases records advertisements appearing immediately adjacent to those posts and speech. 3) Advertisers get upset and pull their ads. 4) Elon Musk gets upset and sues (or threatens to sue) the activist group. It has the fixed pattern and regularity of cellular respiration, only with money and bad people.

Over the weekend I had an exchange with TPM Reader AB that I’d like to share with you. AB is a dedicated listener to our podcast (and you should be too!) as well as a reader and he flagged an exchange in which my cohost Kate Riga discussed Donald Trump’s recent “vermin” comments, which mapped quite closely to a lot of Nazi rhetoric from the 1920s and 1930s. The comments would have gotten more attention, she said, had they happened in the heat of the campaign instead of 9 months or a year prior. AB insisted that we need to be vigilant. We need to be sounding Red Alerts. We can’t be complacent thinking the actual election is a year off and everything will change for be better.

To be clear, this was an aside from Kate in part of a longer discussion. And AB himself seemed to recognize this. So I raise this not to disagree with anyone or call anyone out. I note it because it illustrates an impulse and dynamic I think countless Democrats (and others who simply oppose Donald Trump) are finding themselves caught up in. I won’t belabor the foundational point. Trump 1.0 was really bad. Trump 2.0 promises to be much worse. A year out, polls suggest Trump and Biden are tied or with Trump slightly ahead in the popular vote. That makes something really unthinkable seem like a very real possibility.

That’s bad. Really bad. So get to sounding the Red Alerts. Break the glass and pull the alarm. Pick your metaphor. These are all very understandable and logical responses, not so much — in my mind at least — because of the percentage chances of one candidate winning over the other but because of the consequences of a bad outcome.

As I’ve engaged with TPM Readers in response to yesterday’s Backchannel post and other recent posts on the same topic, I’ve been thinking again of the ‘big picture’ behind everything that is happening right now in Israel-Palestine. When I wrote about Students for Justice in Palestine a few days ago, I noted that that post was really more about North America than the Middle East. Activism frequently, although perhaps not always, tends to be more ideological at a distance than it is on the ground. People on the ground need to make practical and daily decision about living their lives. But as we watch this chaos and carnage and suffering unfolding from a distance, what remains the case is whatever Israel is trying to accomplish militarily, it will not amount to much if it isn’t followed by some political settlement. “Settlement” in this context probably sets up expectations too big and immediate, so much that it becomes self-defeating. So let’s say the beginnings of one. Because Israeli politics for the last fifteen years at least has been based on denial.

Today I wanted to share with you a few thoughts about history — both the history of the Middle East and the story that is consuming a lot of our politics in the US in these final weeks of 2023, as well as history generally, its centrality and sometimes its irrelevance.

I’m going to cover this in two ways. I’m going to give you a list of books that are helpful to understanding the origins of all of this. They’re both very good and helpful reads. They also shed some light on where I come from in all this because I come at this grounded in a specific part of the historiography and with my own set of personal and ideological commitments. The other part is my recent email conversation with fellow community member, TPM Reader ME. I’ll start with that.