I just learned yesterday that you wrote the screenplay to the 1998 adaptation of Les Miserables! I just wanted to tell you I absolutely loved that movie, I saw it when it first came out, I cried so hard at the end. It was brilliant. Thank you.
Meanwhile my daughter (13) has the same enjoyment of music from her father’s era (90’s and 00’s alternative) as i did at her age, when I just listened to classic rock.
Pretty amazing to learn that I'm old enough (69) to be @matt's father although I didn't start raising a family until I was about 10 years older.
As far as musical taste I appreciate some classic rock but mostly got into punk and new wave, jazz, and bluegrass but best described by one of my daughters "You see the thing about my Dad's music is that it doesn't go together."
I no longer remember exactly who I was reading on twitter (not "following", fuck your algorithm) in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But one contributor was some retired US Army general.
He pointed out that, in his experience, the Ukrainian military of 2014 was (my words, trying to paraphrase what I remember reading) woefully undertrained and obviously former East Bloc in anti-professionalism in a soldiering sense, and they would have had basically no shot in resisting what the Russians were up to at the time. After the Donestk-Luhansk operation, NATO (or maybe just the US) really stepped up how we were communicating/transmitting our understanding of how to maximize the effectiveness of soldiers and weaponry, rather than the Great Patriotic War meat-grinder approach. And it worked really, really well. All that is to say, the 2022-present Ukrainian resistance to Russian invasion would not have been possible without the post-2014 reforms.
NATO low ranking officers and NCOs are permitted to improvise and problem solve to a degree Eastern Bloc style troops aren't. That's what we started training the Ukrainians to do and it's part of why they were able to fight off the initial invasion. Local units had the autonomy to immediately take advantage of major Russian logistical failures (and just plain failure to anticipate resistance) instead of waiting for orders or doing things by the book regardless of whether it made sense for the situation.
When I took military history in college we talked about some (probably apocryphal) quote from the Germans or Russians about the futility of capturing American military manuals, as no one has actually read them.
More seriously this is consistent with Cold War strategy. The understanding was that if a fight on the European continent stayed conventional Allied forces would be significantly outnumbered and need to rely on technology and wits to defeat the Soviets. Their doctrine was designed to overwhelm with huge forces all acting in concert.
This seems like an appropriate point to wonder what happened with Noah Smith. A year or two ago he was broadly similar to Matt in the moderate Dem heavily influenced by economics lane. But he seems to have really gone off the deep end in hatred of the Democrats/progressives (as seen in this comment about Obama) and general wild views.
There’s something to this, I was more right-wing in college because everyone else was so leftist… But he really needs to get out if that’s the case. As I quickly realized once I was out of school, in the real world the right has most of the power and causes most of the problems.
Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Noah seems to have become much more invested in US military readiness and kinetic resources, which is something that pretty clearly wasn’t a big priority of the Obama admin. Matt seems to be more Obama-ish with a continued focus on microeconomic optimizations and economic policymaking generally, and less interested than Noah in the premise that WWIII is on the short-medium term horizon and thus needs preparation now.
If you’re a moderate liberal and live in SF/CA, hatred of progressives is a very natural progression. I don’t think he hates Democrats more than MAGA Republicans.
But his hatred of far left foreign policy types is greater than his hatred of far leftists driving quality of life issues in SF. It doesn’t seem related to his lived experience and seems much more focused on China doves and Israel skeptics.
SF progressives were too nice to homeless people causing some to move to SF and set up tent encampments…
Meanwhile Israel just forced millions of Lebanese to move making much larger tent encampments spring up all over Beirut…
If someone wants to minimize homelessness they should be supporting the most Israel-skeptical parties possible no matter what their positions are on just about anything else.
It's worth pointing out that Noah suffers from mental issues, which he's been open about.
When some Indian American college student did a speech about Gaza, he quoted it to make a comment about how sexually turned on he was. That just isn't normal, and his problems have clearly worsened since the start of Trump's second term. A lot of his posting is deeply unprofessional and out of the ordinary.
The story about his time in a London airport (Heathrow), and blaming the UK for him being unable to follow basic instructions on how to get to his connecting flight, was an embarassing meltdown too. Millions of people use Heathrow every year for connecting flights and face no issues. He's also increasingly become more racist too, just making bigoted comments about entire groups of people. I would just unfollow if I was you, he never used to be this bad in 2024 and before. Something has clearly degraded in his mental state at some point in early 2025.
I know his comment section has chuds who get mad when Noah talks about the threat of MAGA to liberal order and how stupid most Trump economic policies are.
Did he say something about Shruthi Kumar? I see people talking about a bizarre discussion with JVL at the Bulwark but I can't find the actual text. It looks like his bio page is gone from the Bulwark.
I just felt pity for his Heathrow experience. Some things are better off posted to your spouse than to Twitter,
Watching the world fall apart would make me go cuckoo too if it was my job to observe and comment on it. Luckily it's not my job so I can tune it out for 23 hours a day.
The consensus of the comments seems to be negative polarization based on bad tweets and the SF Board of Supervisors, plus hawkishness. Which makes me additionally grateful that our host has not fallen into either of those pits.
I feel like Noah Smith was always highly committed to Western supremacy, which is in inherent tension with development economics and ideas like equality, democracy, etc. given that other countries catching up to the West was always going to lead to multipolarity given that most people are non-Western. “One Billion Americans” seems like it was the only serious effort to maintain Western supremacy without making the world look like the movie Elysium but since the immigration backlash seems like more people are going to be forced to take one side of the tension or another.
But you are just reframing the old neoliberal consensus as "Western supremacy"... I read Noah as supporting the global neoliberal order - which is actually very supportive of democracy and individual rights. But the neoliberal "End of History" POV has fallen on hard times in the Woke Era. As parts of the Left have focused more on oppressed communities and minority groups, they have sadly lost support for individual freedom.
(And perhaps the kicker has been that individual freedom and accountability in a globalized market system leads to somewhat homogenous optimal individual responses. Play the capitalism game or capitalism runs you over. Personally I'm in the game but I hear some people hate it.)
I'm a loyal Noah reader for over a decade now, so I'm not trying to dunk on him.
But he seems to have developed China-derangement-syndrome and is willing to support a number of reactionary views if it helps "defeat" them. It's possibly related to the fact that CCP intervention at Bloomberg made his situation untenable there, the timing lines up at least.
Part of it may be that he's quite a Japanophile, and I believe he feels CCP threats to that country a lot more viscerally and emotionally than most Americans.
Not just Japan - he was on the ground in Hong Kong for protests, and he has been to Taiwan quite a bit too. He really has been closer to Chinese influence than MattY or many other take-makers.
It’s kind of astounding that people take Japan’s side in these disputes, like just read about some of the things they did to China from the 1890s to WWII that they never paid any reparations for, while the CCP has never invaded Japan.
After WWII, Germany and Japan should’ve paid sufficient reparations to the USSR and China to equalize living standards between them (which would’ve also most likely prevented the CCP takeover in China).
As for why people take Japan's side…I don't think Japan's crimes in World War II are very relevant to the question of who we should support today, any more than our genocide of the Native Americans was relevant to whether we were the relative good guys in World War II. Geopolitics isn't making sure that the historical ledger comes out fair.
I actually thought the JCPOA was an ok deal, and Noah Smith (or more broadly almost all generalist pundits) should be ignored on foreign policy.
But I think the analysis of Obama’s foreign policy views (or more accurately, the views of key admin officials) retcons too much.
The views of people like Ben Rhodes were basically:
1. We need to pivot away from the Middle East (perhaps reasonable)
2. If we leave the Middle East, it will be destabilizing (again, maybe on the right track)
3. Why? Because the Palestinian issue is the main destabilizing force in the Middle East (!!!), and Israel/the Gulf, who don’t care enough about solving this issue, would be too empowered (stupid)
4. Therefore, we have a win-win available: negotiate to get rid of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and bolster Iran a bit to counterbalance Israel/the Gulf (ok…)
5. With Iran/its proxies hanging over their heads, Israel/the Gulf will have to be more reasonable on the Palestinian issue. As a bonus, Iran will become more normal (catastrophically moronic)
One key reason for Obama’s dovishness vis-a-vis Russia and Syria was that he thought he needed Russia for the JCPOA. So there’s that too.
Overall, the consequences weren’t terrible. Kicking the can down the road is sometimes the only good option. Moreover, exiting the deal made zero sense because the Iranians had already received their money!
But the Obama admin’s thinking was often based on completely wrongheaded models of the world. (Also seriously disagree with the take on Ukrainian aid.)
Ben Rhodes’ calling threats to Israel from Iran “perceived threats” was basically enough for me to want to stop listening to him. I spent 2 years running back and forth to bomb shelters with explosions overhead from missiles paid for by Iran (and some from Iran directly). Those missiles were largely aimed at cities with no legitimate military target. Iran constantly calls for the elimination of Israel, “Death to Israel”, and the regime maintains a doomsday clock in Tehran counting the days until Israel’s elimination. They pay for Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and other militias in Syria and Iraq to try to terrorize and kill Israelis with the explicit aim of destroying the country.
These aren’t perceived threats. They are real threats. You can agree or disagree with Israeli policy or military campaigns, and you can agree or disagree with the US involvement, and I’m willing to listen to your perspective. But if you can’t admit that Israel faces very real threats, then you don’t understand the very basics of what is going on and thus your analysis will always be distorted. At some point it’s just gaslighting.
The extra-stupid bit is that Rhodes was claiming you’d be facing *fewer* rockets after an appropriate balance of power between Israel/Sunni/Shia had been achieved.
(Reminds me of another idea liberals hold about Middle East policy…)
Right. Ben and others like him really don’t want to engage with or have any curiosity about people’s actual ideologies. Ideology is something that you explain away, or suggest that it’s downstream of circumstance, or you just ignore. It’s easier to explain away what people actually say, rather than actually engage with it. It’s much more comforting that way than to realize that people are sometimes committed to ideas different than our own.
The main destabilizing force in the Middle East is the Shia/Sunni conflict. A 1400 year fight is more significant than an 80 year fight. And now Pakistan is supporting Israel.
Also the criticism in Syria is thst he didnt get involved (he tried to convince congress instead of jumping headfirst) and the criticism of Libya is he did too much (and some say too little - both takes on Libya ring true in my mind). But in Syria, yes there was a brutal Civil War with the Russian backed leader in charge - but not getting directly involved actually ended up working and keeping us out of another MidEast quagmire, right?
They should choose Marvel. "Captain America, The Winter Soldier," "Guardians of the Galaxy 2," and "Black Panther" were all better than the actual best picture winners that came out that year.
If The Shape of Water had not won, there are approximately 20 American films made in 2018 that would have made better winners than Guardians 2, including one MCU film and one Spider-Man film.
The 'Pulp Fiction of the 2020s' might not even be much like the actual movie. What I mean is something made with real studio dollars with real movie stars that challenges old conventions without disappearing up it's own ass with pretentiousness or heavy handed messaging.
Marty Supreme fits the bill (and would be my choice for best picture).
It might be fair to accuse Josh Safdie of being a one-trick pony: "Marty Supreme" basically has the same "After Hours" structure of "Good Time" and "Uncut Gems", but damn it's a good trick, and the thematic am options continue to expand.
I wonder if they just assumed Hillary Clinton would win in 2016? Trump overturned Obama's deals on Iran and Cuba, but that wasn't some unique thing to Trump. Any other Republican President like Rubio or Jeb also would have quickly exited those deals. A lot of time in his second term dedicated to achievements that never had bipartisan investment, so were never going to last if any Republican President succeeded him.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but Clinton and his team understood the importance of making sure you had some Republican buy-in to his achievements on both domestic and foreign policy.
Asking that question about Iran, and answering it, without reference to the fact that our reinstallation of the Shah made the Iranian regime possible is why people hate Americans. You guys, gunboat diplomacy created the regime.
>our reinstallation of the Shah made the Iranian regime possible
Mossadegh is a red herring. The clerical establishment largely supported the shah in 1954. Khomenei only developed an antipathy towards America during the early 60s, following his initial opposition to bilateral Iranian diplomacy with Israel, then his later opposition to the White Revolution reforms which threatened the clergy both culturally and financially. The shah was tied to both of those changes, and the US had continued to maintain close relationships with the shah through this period, thus “Death to America”. You wouldn’t think Mossadegh even existed, reading the 1964 speech which got Khomenei exiled
Putting aside other issues, I'm not sure the CIA helping the Shah seize power is 'gunboat diplomacy' the way that's being discussed? Part of the point of the various CIA 'let's find a strongman and prop him up in place of the elected leader' was not to send in marines/bombers and publicly say 'this leader is unacceptable, replace him, or face military action.'
Now, I don't really think what's happening in Iran really fits the bill either? But I do think they're pretty importantly different?
I agree with Noah Smith on crime, education reform and neoliberalism in general and so whenever I read his work, I nod along. Every once in a while, he writes up an insanely hawkish post that reads like a teenager psyched up on video games raging to “defeat the enemy!!” and it kind of throws me off. I don’t even disagree with his logic or arguments, I’m just inherently skeptical of American intervention on a gut level and find his enthusiasm for it a bit unsettling. They’re still fun to read though, he’s probably the most hawkish center left pundit I read.
The problem with Noah Smith’s formulation that the US “trusted” Iran’s leaders is that this was not the primary objections of opponents of the JCPOA.
The primary objections were that the limits on the nuclear program were temporary and had sunset clauses and that the JCPOA would help Iran’s conventional military capabilities, especially with respect to terrorist proxies, by providing them with more money. There was also skepticism about the monitoring of Iran. But the primary opposition wasn’t about trust.
I think this was indeed a tough question. Was a roughly two decade pause on Iran’s nuclear program worth the risk of bolstering Iran conventionally? I have some sympathy for Obama’s position. I also understand the concerns. It absolutely did help Iran segment its terror proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. But it did actually have the potential to put a pause on Iran becoming nuclear, something definitely in the US’ and the world’s interest.
It was Biden, on the other hand, that unfroze assets to Iran, but for much much lower stakes. He did so for the release of 5 prisoners. He did so to make a waiver for Iraq to buy Iranian oil. His administration insisted that that money couldn’t be used for terror. But this ignores the most basic fact about money: that it is fungible. I’m pretty sure they understand that money is fungible, so the defense was not in good faith. As much sympathy as I have for the 5 prisoners and their families, this is much lower stakes than Iran’s nuclear program. This was clearly Biden not taking the Iranian threat, either conventional or nuclear, seriously.
I like and supported Joe Biden. He has several key accomplishments that I support. But while I can understand both sides of the JCPOA argument under Obama, I cannot see both sides of his foreign policy vis a vis Iran.
“After the 2016 election, Democrats got more hawkish on Russia and congressional Republicans continued to be hawkish, so suddenly Congress voted to provide Ukraine with more lethal aid. But that didn’t lead to Ukrainian victory in Donetsk — it led to Russia doubling down on its invasion of Ukraine. “
I don’t buy this. I think the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the result of Putin growing older and impatient with incremental steps combined with confidence that he had built up the Russian military and economy well enough to make the move.
I remain a huge fan of PTA’s first three movies. One Battle After Another was an enormously entertaining piece of far-left agitprop. PTA was careful to make Bob a buffoon and to force one of the sympathetic characters to commit, under intense pressure, a criminal error of judgment in the early bank scene, but mainly he presented them as noble, selfless, and cool. Meanwhile the right-wing forces were almost uniformly malevolent, horrifyingly racist, impossible to identify with, and so in control of the levers of power that violent revolution made narrative sense.
A non-trivial faction of the intellectual American right wing is intensely motivated by the sense of being under cultural siege in the universities and media by illiberal forces that do not fight fair within the bounds of the law and the Constitution. PTA made a movie that could not have done more to justify that perspective. I hate it and think all good liberals should join me.
>>but mainly he presented them as noble, selfless, and cool
I didn't interpret it this way, nor did most people I watched it with -- he seemed to hit "both sides". What really undermined this was the decision of the daughter at the end, which clearly expressed a preference. She should have become a lame centrist like the rest of us here!
I read the ending as a tragedy. That the daughter could have had a normal life but now she was on the same path as the older leftists, none of whom are presented as uncomplicated heroes.
Yeah the right wing forces are clearly worse in OBAA, but one of the main themes was that extremism on both sides feed one another.
My take is, unfortunately, complicated and hard to argue. I think he made a big show of both-sides-ism while forcefully stacking the deck in favor of left violent political action and against right nativism. His emotional loyalty to 1970s L.A. may have subconsciously pulled him that way.
A good way to put this is: would you be more ashamed to be Bob (a loving, loyal screwup), or to be Lockjaw (a man who disowns his great love and avows horrid racism to gain status)? I think the answer is *obviously* Lockjaw.
Don't disagree with any of that. But the left groups were presented as violent, disorganized and self righteous. I don't think it was a positive portrayal at all, even if the other side was comparatively worse.
Sympathy for 1970s terrorists is both common in the culture and really odd. They almost universally failed, were usually sadistic, pro-Soviet, pathetic and with odd ideologies few people support now.
What is a “cultural siege”? Making a movie is protected by the First Amendment so how is that outside the bounds of the law and Constitution?
And the movie is not attacking all right-wingers but a specific type of nativist who is in fact malevolent, racist, and in control of the levers of power. The main thing that was cartoonish about Lockjaw was how suddenly servile he was towards the Christmas Adventurer’s Club which made him look a little buffoonish too, but if not for that, many Americans would identify with him!
Am I like wrong to have a deep suspicion of the hawks constant need to hide the ball? Like at some level the people who say death to America and believe suicide bombers are rewarded in the afterlife are getting a nuclear bomb capable of reaching our shores shouldn't be so hard of a case to call for the United States to defend itself even at notable sacrifice. It doesn't seem like an unpersuadable case and their constant running from that case makes them seem like liars.
GOP/MAGA foreign policy for quite some time now hasn't been based on rational analysis of the national interest, but on emotion, and Iran is America's own Great Satan. Just listen to Pete Hegseth some time.
Matt seems to think Obama didn't make the pro JCPOA case to the opposition very forcefully, and maybe that's true. And/or maybe Republicans are just fucking idiots when it comes to foreign policy.
I'm confused. What is Trump hiding? He's been upfront about his desire to prevent an Iranian nuke since the 12 day war. And again in this one he mentioned it in the first press statement.
He hasn’t said like this is existential for the United States if we don’t act now there will be a mushroom cloud on the eastern seaboard and you should be willing to spend a long permanent effort on a fight to survive.
You wouldn’t be dancing around commitment beyond air strikes and special forces as a maximum limit you’d say here’s why you should be willing to pay whatever it takes to stop this.
If you believe Iran is going to get a bomb and can’t be deterred by mutually assured destruction it would be something you’re willing to pay any price for. It seems disingenuous.
I think Trump doesn't feel the need to make a case to the American people because he doesn't feel accountable to them and because he'll chicken out before he asks for any true hardship that will tank the midterms.
Politically, it makes very little sense to copy the Bush playbook here. That would surely tank his popularity too.
The Bush playbook won the 2004 elections! It worked! Ginning up fake wars and getting the populace hyped up and rabid behind them is an effective strategy until the bodies really start rolling in. (Which is why international response to such wars needs to be a lot more negative than it currently is.)
Trump is just very bad at politics, which keeps getting masked by the fact that the Dems are just as bad as he is. But a competent operator would wipe the floor with both of them.
If something is a near existential threat, than it is worth spending lives and treasure on, and you should be able to say that upfront there is going to be a high cost and we're all going to have to suffer some to pay it.
Trump didn't even bother telling us ahead of time why we were doing this at all. Remember, he obliterated their nuke capability last year. Let alone that we might have to hurt our economy and possibly send in ground troops.
Further, saying he wants to prevent their nuclear capability is not the same as convincing us with facts that that nuclear capability is a direct threat to us and we have to do something about it today.
These seem like 2 separate claims to me. OP said that conservatives are "hiding the ball". That seems false to me, everyone that pays attention knows how conservatives feel about Iran.
You seem to be arguing for "make a case, build consensus, formally declare war with clear objectives". Maybe that is the right way to go about this, but is separate in my eyes.
List of lame Oscar winners that didn’t include Forrest Gump? Kudos I actually liked that movie and understand that pulp fiction was a bit too avant garde at the time to be immediately appreciated by everyone. My parents thought it was shockingly vulgar.
Wow, Matt Y, I like you, but your taste in movies couldn’t be more different from mine!
You went from “Ew, mainstream Oscar-winning movies are like, I want cool and edgy” to “oh no, Oscar-winning movies appeal to me now, does that make me lame?” I went from “I love these Oscar-nominated movies! I saw Titanic in theaters four times and bawled my eyes out at the end each time [I was a 15-year-old girl]” to “where did all the good Oscar-winning movies go? Anora who? I have no interest in seeing it.” In fairness, OBAA actually does sound interesting, I just didn’t get around to seeing it in theaters, will probably get around to streaming it sometime (as well as “Sinners”).
I guess this makes me lame, but I want movies with likable characters and a meaningful plot with high stakes, and an ending that, if not *happy,* is at least bittersweet. Like in “Shakespeare in Love,” the lovers are separated, but their romance will be an inspiration for Shakespeare’s plays. I do not want endings that say “everything sucks and everything is horrible,” like one of this year’s nominees I could mention (yeah, movie, you know which one you are and what you did!)
>I guess this makes me lame, but I want movies with likable characters and a meaningful plot with high stakes, and an ending that, if not *happy,* is at least bittersweet.
You would probably like Anora, then. The characters are flawed, because they are real, but likeable enough. The personal stakes are high, at least as high as those in Shakespeare in Love. And the ending is indeed bittersweet.
>When I was a teenager, I’d walk into a store and all the music would be lame stuff that my parents were into. But these days, if I walk into a Target or wherever, they’re playing nothing but bangers and stone-cold classics. That feels great, until I realize that what’s happened is I’m the lame parent now.
I thought this was because in the streaming age everyone is listening to classics? Are you telling me I'm lame, actually??
You've finally realized the wisdom of your father's taste. Took a little too long, imo.
Hi Mr. Yglesias!
I just learned yesterday that you wrote the screenplay to the 1998 adaptation of Les Miserables! I just wanted to tell you I absolutely loved that movie, I saw it when it first came out, I cried so hard at the end. It was brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. Kind of you to say.
Meanwhile my daughter (13) has the same enjoyment of music from her father’s era (90’s and 00’s alternative) as i did at her age, when I just listened to classic rock.
Pretty amazing to learn that I'm old enough (69) to be @matt's father although I didn't start raising a family until I was about 10 years older.
As far as musical taste I appreciate some classic rock but mostly got into punk and new wave, jazz, and bluegrass but best described by one of my daughters "You see the thing about my Dad's music is that it doesn't go together."
I no longer remember exactly who I was reading on twitter (not "following", fuck your algorithm) in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But one contributor was some retired US Army general.
He pointed out that, in his experience, the Ukrainian military of 2014 was (my words, trying to paraphrase what I remember reading) woefully undertrained and obviously former East Bloc in anti-professionalism in a soldiering sense, and they would have had basically no shot in resisting what the Russians were up to at the time. After the Donestk-Luhansk operation, NATO (or maybe just the US) really stepped up how we were communicating/transmitting our understanding of how to maximize the effectiveness of soldiers and weaponry, rather than the Great Patriotic War meat-grinder approach. And it worked really, really well. All that is to say, the 2022-present Ukrainian resistance to Russian invasion would not have been possible without the post-2014 reforms.
NATO low ranking officers and NCOs are permitted to improvise and problem solve to a degree Eastern Bloc style troops aren't. That's what we started training the Ukrainians to do and it's part of why they were able to fight off the initial invasion. Local units had the autonomy to immediately take advantage of major Russian logistical failures (and just plain failure to anticipate resistance) instead of waiting for orders or doing things by the book regardless of whether it made sense for the situation.
I think we may have been reading the same tweets. It's the NCOs, stupid.
When I took military history in college we talked about some (probably apocryphal) quote from the Germans or Russians about the futility of capturing American military manuals, as no one has actually read them.
More seriously this is consistent with Cold War strategy. The understanding was that if a fight on the European continent stayed conventional Allied forces would be significantly outnumbered and need to rely on technology and wits to defeat the Soviets. Their doctrine was designed to overwhelm with huge forces all acting in concert.
You’re probably thinking of General Mark Hertling, a Bulwark contributor.
Yep, that name sounds right.
This seems like an appropriate point to wonder what happened with Noah Smith. A year or two ago he was broadly similar to Matt in the moderate Dem heavily influenced by economics lane. But he seems to have really gone off the deep end in hatred of the Democrats/progressives (as seen in this comment about Obama) and general wild views.
He lives in the epicenter of failed progressive governance. It isn’t too complicated to understand the reaction.
There’s something to this, I was more right-wing in college because everyone else was so leftist… But he really needs to get out if that’s the case. As I quickly realized once I was out of school, in the real world the right has most of the power and causes most of the problems.
I’d like to see Marty Supreme win. It was just a really well done character- need to see it again.
Noah is a lot more hawkish than Matt. Also he deals with a lot of local SF issues where they really do have a hard Left that went off the rails.
BTW I am a big fan of both, but I think Matt's take on Obama's foreign policy is better.
Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Noah seems to have become much more invested in US military readiness and kinetic resources, which is something that pretty clearly wasn’t a big priority of the Obama admin. Matt seems to be more Obama-ish with a continued focus on microeconomic optimizations and economic policymaking generally, and less interested than Noah in the premise that WWIII is on the short-medium term horizon and thus needs preparation now.
If you’re a moderate liberal and live in SF/CA, hatred of progressives is a very natural progression. I don’t think he hates Democrats more than MAGA Republicans.
But his hatred of far left foreign policy types is greater than his hatred of far leftists driving quality of life issues in SF. It doesn’t seem related to his lived experience and seems much more focused on China doves and Israel skeptics.
I don’t agree. He writes about quality of life issues in SF quite often. He does tweet about left anti-semitism quite a bit.
SF progressives were too nice to homeless people causing some to move to SF and set up tent encampments…
Meanwhile Israel just forced millions of Lebanese to move making much larger tent encampments spring up all over Beirut…
If someone wants to minimize homelessness they should be supporting the most Israel-skeptical parties possible no matter what their positions are on just about anything else.
He takes Leftist anti-semitism a lot more seriously than Matt does. And thus has been driving away from the Left for some time now.
It's worth pointing out that Noah suffers from mental issues, which he's been open about.
When some Indian American college student did a speech about Gaza, he quoted it to make a comment about how sexually turned on he was. That just isn't normal, and his problems have clearly worsened since the start of Trump's second term. A lot of his posting is deeply unprofessional and out of the ordinary.
The story about his time in a London airport (Heathrow), and blaming the UK for him being unable to follow basic instructions on how to get to his connecting flight, was an embarassing meltdown too. Millions of people use Heathrow every year for connecting flights and face no issues. He's also increasingly become more racist too, just making bigoted comments about entire groups of people. I would just unfollow if I was you, he never used to be this bad in 2024 and before. Something has clearly degraded in his mental state at some point in early 2025.
I didn't know about Noah's mental issues.
I know his comment section has chuds who get mad when Noah talks about the threat of MAGA to liberal order and how stupid most Trump economic policies are.
Did he say something about Shruthi Kumar? I see people talking about a bizarre discussion with JVL at the Bulwark but I can't find the actual text. It looks like his bio page is gone from the Bulwark.
I just felt pity for his Heathrow experience. Some things are better off posted to your spouse than to Twitter,
Watching the world fall apart would make me go cuckoo too if it was my job to observe and comment on it. Luckily it's not my job so I can tune it out for 23 hours a day.
Many people have ruined their lives by being on Twitter. Like gambling, some people just are too vulnerable to its dark side.
Yes this is my experience as well and I did unfollow but it's nonetheless weird enough to remark on.
The consensus of the comments seems to be negative polarization based on bad tweets and the SF Board of Supervisors, plus hawkishness. Which makes me additionally grateful that our host has not fallen into either of those pits.
10/7 fried Noah’s brain in the same way that 9/11 fried many brains. He is permanently stuck in 2023. This is the key insight.
He chases pro-Palestine Twitter accounts with 300 followers like a cat chasing a laser pointer.
He has nearly lost all perspective and his “woke” obsession is 3-5 years behind reality.
Smart guy though. I hope he snaps out of it. I had to unsubscribe from his substack.
The left’s unhinged reaction to Israel’s response and the rise in antisemitism on the left also had something to do with it.
I feel like Noah Smith was always highly committed to Western supremacy, which is in inherent tension with development economics and ideas like equality, democracy, etc. given that other countries catching up to the West was always going to lead to multipolarity given that most people are non-Western. “One Billion Americans” seems like it was the only serious effort to maintain Western supremacy without making the world look like the movie Elysium but since the immigration backlash seems like more people are going to be forced to take one side of the tension or another.
But you are just reframing the old neoliberal consensus as "Western supremacy"... I read Noah as supporting the global neoliberal order - which is actually very supportive of democracy and individual rights. But the neoliberal "End of History" POV has fallen on hard times in the Woke Era. As parts of the Left have focused more on oppressed communities and minority groups, they have sadly lost support for individual freedom.
(And perhaps the kicker has been that individual freedom and accountability in a globalized market system leads to somewhat homogenous optimal individual responses. Play the capitalism game or capitalism runs you over. Personally I'm in the game but I hear some people hate it.)
I'm a loyal Noah reader for over a decade now, so I'm not trying to dunk on him.
But he seems to have developed China-derangement-syndrome and is willing to support a number of reactionary views if it helps "defeat" them. It's possibly related to the fact that CCP intervention at Bloomberg made his situation untenable there, the timing lines up at least.
Part of it may be that he's quite a Japanophile, and I believe he feels CCP threats to that country a lot more viscerally and emotionally than most Americans.
Not just Japan - he was on the ground in Hong Kong for protests, and he has been to Taiwan quite a bit too. He really has been closer to Chinese influence than MattY or many other take-makers.
It’s kind of astounding that people take Japan’s side in these disputes, like just read about some of the things they did to China from the 1890s to WWII that they never paid any reparations for, while the CCP has never invaded Japan.
After WWII, Germany and Japan should’ve paid sufficient reparations to the USSR and China to equalize living standards between them (which would’ve also most likely prevented the CCP takeover in China).
meh, all those individual people are gone and projections about the future matter more than some "sins of the past" framing
After WWII Germany and Japan couldn't feed themselves.
?? Paid with what?
As for why people take Japan's side…I don't think Japan's crimes in World War II are very relevant to the question of who we should support today, any more than our genocide of the Native Americans was relevant to whether we were the relative good guys in World War II. Geopolitics isn't making sure that the historical ledger comes out fair.
I actually thought the JCPOA was an ok deal, and Noah Smith (or more broadly almost all generalist pundits) should be ignored on foreign policy.
But I think the analysis of Obama’s foreign policy views (or more accurately, the views of key admin officials) retcons too much.
The views of people like Ben Rhodes were basically:
1. We need to pivot away from the Middle East (perhaps reasonable)
2. If we leave the Middle East, it will be destabilizing (again, maybe on the right track)
3. Why? Because the Palestinian issue is the main destabilizing force in the Middle East (!!!), and Israel/the Gulf, who don’t care enough about solving this issue, would be too empowered (stupid)
4. Therefore, we have a win-win available: negotiate to get rid of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and bolster Iran a bit to counterbalance Israel/the Gulf (ok…)
5. With Iran/its proxies hanging over their heads, Israel/the Gulf will have to be more reasonable on the Palestinian issue. As a bonus, Iran will become more normal (catastrophically moronic)
One key reason for Obama’s dovishness vis-a-vis Russia and Syria was that he thought he needed Russia for the JCPOA. So there’s that too.
Overall, the consequences weren’t terrible. Kicking the can down the road is sometimes the only good option. Moreover, exiting the deal made zero sense because the Iranians had already received their money!
But the Obama admin’s thinking was often based on completely wrongheaded models of the world. (Also seriously disagree with the take on Ukrainian aid.)
Ben Rhodes’ calling threats to Israel from Iran “perceived threats” was basically enough for me to want to stop listening to him. I spent 2 years running back and forth to bomb shelters with explosions overhead from missiles paid for by Iran (and some from Iran directly). Those missiles were largely aimed at cities with no legitimate military target. Iran constantly calls for the elimination of Israel, “Death to Israel”, and the regime maintains a doomsday clock in Tehran counting the days until Israel’s elimination. They pay for Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and other militias in Syria and Iraq to try to terrorize and kill Israelis with the explicit aim of destroying the country.
These aren’t perceived threats. They are real threats. You can agree or disagree with Israeli policy or military campaigns, and you can agree or disagree with the US involvement, and I’m willing to listen to your perspective. But if you can’t admit that Israel faces very real threats, then you don’t understand the very basics of what is going on and thus your analysis will always be distorted. At some point it’s just gaslighting.
The extra-stupid bit is that Rhodes was claiming you’d be facing *fewer* rockets after an appropriate balance of power between Israel/Sunni/Shia had been achieved.
(Reminds me of another idea liberals hold about Middle East policy…)
Right. Ben and others like him really don’t want to engage with or have any curiosity about people’s actual ideologies. Ideology is something that you explain away, or suggest that it’s downstream of circumstance, or you just ignore. It’s easier to explain away what people actually say, rather than actually engage with it. It’s much more comforting that way than to realize that people are sometimes committed to ideas different than our own.
The main destabilizing force in the Middle East is the Shia/Sunni conflict. A 1400 year fight is more significant than an 80 year fight. And now Pakistan is supporting Israel.
Yes, I mean this was one of the main idiotic tenets of the Ben Rhodes view of the world.
Like, what was ISIS about???
Shia-Sunni tensions do vary over time, though I don't think US policy effects theological tensions.
You got sources for (4) and (5) as Obama policy/theory? Seems...unlikely to me?
Also the criticism in Syria is thst he didnt get involved (he tried to convince congress instead of jumping headfirst) and the criticism of Libya is he did too much (and some say too little - both takes on Libya ring true in my mind). But in Syria, yes there was a brutal Civil War with the Russian backed leader in charge - but not getting directly involved actually ended up working and keeping us out of another MidEast quagmire, right?
Alternately, the bottom has dropped out on non-serial hits leaving the Oscars to choose between Marvel and artsy fare.
They should choose Marvel. "Captain America, The Winter Soldier," "Guardians of the Galaxy 2," and "Black Panther" were all better than the actual best picture winners that came out that year.
If The Shape of Water had not won, there are approximately 20 American films made in 2018 that would have made better winners than Guardians 2, including one MCU film and one Spider-Man film.
GO AWAY, COMIC BOOKS
Like, what even is the Pulp Fiction equivalent for the 2020s?
Everything Everywhere All At Once?
But that did actually win best picture
If it exists, I want to watch it, because Pulp Fiction is one of my all time favorite movies.
The 'Pulp Fiction of the 2020s' might not even be much like the actual movie. What I mean is something made with real studio dollars with real movie stars that challenges old conventions without disappearing up it's own ass with pretentiousness or heavy handed messaging.
Marty Supreme fits the bill (and would be my choice for best picture).
It might be fair to accuse Josh Safdie of being a one-trick pony: "Marty Supreme" basically has the same "After Hours" structure of "Good Time" and "Uncut Gems", but damn it's a good trick, and the thematic am options continue to expand.
Pulp Fiction is a rather sui generis, but maybe Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World?
I need to check that one out, but I was thinking of something coming out of Hollywood.
Maybe Zola?
Excellent analysis on Obama's foreign policy.
I wonder if they just assumed Hillary Clinton would win in 2016? Trump overturned Obama's deals on Iran and Cuba, but that wasn't some unique thing to Trump. Any other Republican President like Rubio or Jeb also would have quickly exited those deals. A lot of time in his second term dedicated to achievements that never had bipartisan investment, so were never going to last if any Republican President succeeded him.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but Clinton and his team understood the importance of making sure you had some Republican buy-in to his achievements on both domestic and foreign policy.
Asking that question about Iran, and answering it, without reference to the fact that our reinstallation of the Shah made the Iranian regime possible is why people hate Americans. You guys, gunboat diplomacy created the regime.
>our reinstallation of the Shah made the Iranian regime possible
Mossadegh is a red herring. The clerical establishment largely supported the shah in 1954. Khomenei only developed an antipathy towards America during the early 60s, following his initial opposition to bilateral Iranian diplomacy with Israel, then his later opposition to the White Revolution reforms which threatened the clergy both culturally and financially. The shah was tied to both of those changes, and the US had continued to maintain close relationships with the shah through this period, thus “Death to America”. You wouldn’t think Mossadegh even existed, reading the 1964 speech which got Khomenei exiled
Mossadegh doesn’t seem nearly as principled if you read about the shenanigans he actually tried to pull before the Shah tried to exert authority.
Putting aside other issues, I'm not sure the CIA helping the Shah seize power is 'gunboat diplomacy' the way that's being discussed? Part of the point of the various CIA 'let's find a strongman and prop him up in place of the elected leader' was not to send in marines/bombers and publicly say 'this leader is unacceptable, replace him, or face military action.'
Now, I don't really think what's happening in Iran really fits the bill either? But I do think they're pretty importantly different?
I agree with Noah Smith on crime, education reform and neoliberalism in general and so whenever I read his work, I nod along. Every once in a while, he writes up an insanely hawkish post that reads like a teenager psyched up on video games raging to “defeat the enemy!!” and it kind of throws me off. I don’t even disagree with his logic or arguments, I’m just inherently skeptical of American intervention on a gut level and find his enthusiasm for it a bit unsettling. They’re still fun to read though, he’s probably the most hawkish center left pundit I read.
The problem with Noah Smith’s formulation that the US “trusted” Iran’s leaders is that this was not the primary objections of opponents of the JCPOA.
The primary objections were that the limits on the nuclear program were temporary and had sunset clauses and that the JCPOA would help Iran’s conventional military capabilities, especially with respect to terrorist proxies, by providing them with more money. There was also skepticism about the monitoring of Iran. But the primary opposition wasn’t about trust.
I think this was indeed a tough question. Was a roughly two decade pause on Iran’s nuclear program worth the risk of bolstering Iran conventionally? I have some sympathy for Obama’s position. I also understand the concerns. It absolutely did help Iran segment its terror proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. But it did actually have the potential to put a pause on Iran becoming nuclear, something definitely in the US’ and the world’s interest.
It was Biden, on the other hand, that unfroze assets to Iran, but for much much lower stakes. He did so for the release of 5 prisoners. He did so to make a waiver for Iraq to buy Iranian oil. His administration insisted that that money couldn’t be used for terror. But this ignores the most basic fact about money: that it is fungible. I’m pretty sure they understand that money is fungible, so the defense was not in good faith. As much sympathy as I have for the 5 prisoners and their families, this is much lower stakes than Iran’s nuclear program. This was clearly Biden not taking the Iranian threat, either conventional or nuclear, seriously.
I like and supported Joe Biden. He has several key accomplishments that I support. But while I can understand both sides of the JCPOA argument under Obama, I cannot see both sides of his foreign policy vis a vis Iran.
“After the 2016 election, Democrats got more hawkish on Russia and congressional Republicans continued to be hawkish, so suddenly Congress voted to provide Ukraine with more lethal aid. But that didn’t lead to Ukrainian victory in Donetsk — it led to Russia doubling down on its invasion of Ukraine. “
I don’t buy this. I think the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the result of Putin growing older and impatient with incremental steps combined with confidence that he had built up the Russian military and economy well enough to make the move.
I remain a huge fan of PTA’s first three movies. One Battle After Another was an enormously entertaining piece of far-left agitprop. PTA was careful to make Bob a buffoon and to force one of the sympathetic characters to commit, under intense pressure, a criminal error of judgment in the early bank scene, but mainly he presented them as noble, selfless, and cool. Meanwhile the right-wing forces were almost uniformly malevolent, horrifyingly racist, impossible to identify with, and so in control of the levers of power that violent revolution made narrative sense.
A non-trivial faction of the intellectual American right wing is intensely motivated by the sense of being under cultural siege in the universities and media by illiberal forces that do not fight fair within the bounds of the law and the Constitution. PTA made a movie that could not have done more to justify that perspective. I hate it and think all good liberals should join me.
“…forces that do not fight fair within the bounds of the law and the Constitution.”
EAIAC (Every Accusation Is A Confession)
>>but mainly he presented them as noble, selfless, and cool
I didn't interpret it this way, nor did most people I watched it with -- he seemed to hit "both sides". What really undermined this was the decision of the daughter at the end, which clearly expressed a preference. She should have become a lame centrist like the rest of us here!
I read the ending as a tragedy. That the daughter could have had a normal life but now she was on the same path as the older leftists, none of whom are presented as uncomplicated heroes.
Yeah the right wing forces are clearly worse in OBAA, but one of the main themes was that extremism on both sides feed one another.
Isn’t the positive takeaway at the end that she’s headed to a protest and not firebombing a Walmart?
My take is, unfortunately, complicated and hard to argue. I think he made a big show of both-sides-ism while forcefully stacking the deck in favor of left violent political action and against right nativism. His emotional loyalty to 1970s L.A. may have subconsciously pulled him that way.
A good way to put this is: would you be more ashamed to be Bob (a loving, loyal screwup), or to be Lockjaw (a man who disowns his great love and avows horrid racism to gain status)? I think the answer is *obviously* Lockjaw.
Don't disagree with any of that. But the left groups were presented as violent, disorganized and self righteous. I don't think it was a positive portrayal at all, even if the other side was comparatively worse.
Sympathy for 1970s terrorists is both common in the culture and really odd. They almost universally failed, were usually sadistic, pro-Soviet, pathetic and with odd ideologies few people support now.
What is a “cultural siege”? Making a movie is protected by the First Amendment so how is that outside the bounds of the law and Constitution?
And the movie is not attacking all right-wingers but a specific type of nativist who is in fact malevolent, racist, and in control of the levers of power. The main thing that was cartoonish about Lockjaw was how suddenly servile he was towards the Christmas Adventurer’s Club which made him look a little buffoonish too, but if not for that, many Americans would identify with him!
Am I like wrong to have a deep suspicion of the hawks constant need to hide the ball? Like at some level the people who say death to America and believe suicide bombers are rewarded in the afterlife are getting a nuclear bomb capable of reaching our shores shouldn't be so hard of a case to call for the United States to defend itself even at notable sacrifice. It doesn't seem like an unpersuadable case and their constant running from that case makes them seem like liars.
GOP/MAGA foreign policy for quite some time now hasn't been based on rational analysis of the national interest, but on emotion, and Iran is America's own Great Satan. Just listen to Pete Hegseth some time.
Matt seems to think Obama didn't make the pro JCPOA case to the opposition very forcefully, and maybe that's true. And/or maybe Republicans are just fucking idiots when it comes to foreign policy.
I'm confused. What is Trump hiding? He's been upfront about his desire to prevent an Iranian nuke since the 12 day war. And again in this one he mentioned it in the first press statement.
He hasn’t said like this is existential for the United States if we don’t act now there will be a mushroom cloud on the eastern seaboard and you should be willing to spend a long permanent effort on a fight to survive.
You wouldn’t be dancing around commitment beyond air strikes and special forces as a maximum limit you’d say here’s why you should be willing to pay whatever it takes to stop this.
If you believe Iran is going to get a bomb and can’t be deterred by mutually assured destruction it would be something you’re willing to pay any price for. It seems disingenuous.
I think Trump doesn't feel the need to make a case to the American people because he doesn't feel accountable to them and because he'll chicken out before he asks for any true hardship that will tank the midterms.
Politically, it makes very little sense to copy the Bush playbook here. That would surely tank his popularity too.
The Bush playbook won the 2004 elections! It worked! Ginning up fake wars and getting the populace hyped up and rabid behind them is an effective strategy until the bodies really start rolling in. (Which is why international response to such wars needs to be a lot more negative than it currently is.)
Trump is just very bad at politics, which keeps getting masked by the fact that the Dems are just as bad as he is. But a competent operator would wipe the floor with both of them.
If something is a near existential threat, than it is worth spending lives and treasure on, and you should be able to say that upfront there is going to be a high cost and we're all going to have to suffer some to pay it.
Trump didn't even bother telling us ahead of time why we were doing this at all. Remember, he obliterated their nuke capability last year. Let alone that we might have to hurt our economy and possibly send in ground troops.
Further, saying he wants to prevent their nuclear capability is not the same as convincing us with facts that that nuclear capability is a direct threat to us and we have to do something about it today.
These seem like 2 separate claims to me. OP said that conservatives are "hiding the ball". That seems false to me, everyone that pays attention knows how conservatives feel about Iran.
You seem to be arguing for "make a case, build consensus, formally declare war with clear objectives". Maybe that is the right way to go about this, but is separate in my eyes.
“Getting Israel to freeze settlements would have been great.”
Obama WAS able to get Israel to agree to a settlement freeze from 2009 to 2010.
List of lame Oscar winners that didn’t include Forrest Gump? Kudos I actually liked that movie and understand that pulp fiction was a bit too avant garde at the time to be immediately appreciated by everyone. My parents thought it was shockingly vulgar.
Wow, Matt Y, I like you, but your taste in movies couldn’t be more different from mine!
You went from “Ew, mainstream Oscar-winning movies are like, I want cool and edgy” to “oh no, Oscar-winning movies appeal to me now, does that make me lame?” I went from “I love these Oscar-nominated movies! I saw Titanic in theaters four times and bawled my eyes out at the end each time [I was a 15-year-old girl]” to “where did all the good Oscar-winning movies go? Anora who? I have no interest in seeing it.” In fairness, OBAA actually does sound interesting, I just didn’t get around to seeing it in theaters, will probably get around to streaming it sometime (as well as “Sinners”).
I guess this makes me lame, but I want movies with likable characters and a meaningful plot with high stakes, and an ending that, if not *happy,* is at least bittersweet. Like in “Shakespeare in Love,” the lovers are separated, but their romance will be an inspiration for Shakespeare’s plays. I do not want endings that say “everything sucks and everything is horrible,” like one of this year’s nominees I could mention (yeah, movie, you know which one you are and what you did!)
>I guess this makes me lame, but I want movies with likable characters and a meaningful plot with high stakes, and an ending that, if not *happy,* is at least bittersweet.
You would probably like Anora, then. The characters are flawed, because they are real, but likeable enough. The personal stakes are high, at least as high as those in Shakespeare in Love. And the ending is indeed bittersweet.
>When I was a teenager, I’d walk into a store and all the music would be lame stuff that my parents were into. But these days, if I walk into a Target or wherever, they’re playing nothing but bangers and stone-cold classics. That feels great, until I realize that what’s happened is I’m the lame parent now.
I thought this was because in the streaming age everyone is listening to classics? Are you telling me I'm lame, actually??