Quotes and Links

A week in review

Senator Lindsey Graham appears on CNN’s State of the Union, December 3, 2023.

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• “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” — The Washington Post’s Robert Kagan

• “Nearly Everyone Gets A’s at Yale. Does That Cheapen the Grade?” — Actual headline from the New York Times

• “This is a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda.” — James Carville, regarding Christian nationalism

• “Did the American people worry about how many people died when we destroyed Tokyo and Berlin?” — Senator Lindsey Graham, when asked about rising Palestinian civilian casualties

• “I am running one of the coolest companies in the world and I’m telling young people: you are breathing the vapors of a dangerous, fake, and self destructive religion when you are sitting at your elite school pretending because you watched Tik Tok twice and got an A+ on some crazy paper because your professor couldn’t get a job anywhere else that you actually understand the world. You’re not welcome at my company.” — Palantir CEO Alex Karp

• “All narratives about ‘wokeness peaking’ based on a reduction in the rate of cancellations are wrong. Cancellations were a means to an end of institutional capture that is now complete. Once you’ve driven out all dissent, no further cancellations are required.” — Wesley Yang

• “Trump was right.” — CNN’s Jake Tapper, regarding Joe Biden lying about Hunter making millions from China

• “Isn’t that kind of like being given gun safety advice by Alec Baldwin?” — Senator John Kennedy, on the scandal-plagued FDIC proposing additional regulations after their failures, in large part, resulted in the closure of 3 American banks

• “The panic over transgender children is driven by the fear that they’ll regret transitioning. But freedom to make mistakes is core to being human.” — The New York Times’ Lydia Polgreen

• “Struggling to understand how, in five short years, we went from ‘this reference to boofing in Brett Kavanaugh’s HS yearbook proves he is an unrepentant rapist’ to ‘idk guys the half-naked corpse with grievous pelvic injuries could have been like that when Hamas got there.’” — Author Kat Rosenfield

• “If you think the cost of supporting Ukraine is high now, just imagine how much higher it’s gonna be in American blood!” — John Kirby

• “Disney Awarded Defense Contract After Producing More Bombs Than Lockheed Martin.” — Headline from the Babylon Bee

• “I’m not a scientist or a doctor.” — Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, when asked whether there are genetic differences between a man and a woman

• “DEI means creating an official racial hierarchy and scapegoating any group that succeeds on merit. It’s a grievance ideology that will destroy the principles of liberty, equality, and accomplishment.” — Christopher Rufo

• “At some point we will no longer be any different from Russia, where everything depends on the whim of one man.” — Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is becoming an autocrat and reshaping Ukraine into an authoritarian state

• “Did you know the climate crisis harms women, girls, and non-binary people the most?” — Oxfam International

• “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.” — Ibram X. Kendi, who received a giant applause from a Netflix film screening audience for his comment

• “We have a colleague in the Senate that’s actually done much more sinister kinds of things. He needs to go. If you are going to expel Santos, how can you allow Menendez to remain in the Senate? Menendez is really a Senator for Egypt, not New Jersey.” — Senator John Fetterman

• “How millennials learned to dread motherhood,” from Vox.

• A Slate piece about the rise and demise of the Segway.

• A Washington Post story about how Lahaina, after being devastated by wildfires, found solace in its high school football team’s improbable season.

• “The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge,” from New York magazine.

• “The West’s Anti-Colonial Struggle is Real,” by N.S. Lyons.

• An Atlas Obscura story on “The Greatest Unsolved Heist in Irish History.”

• “The Incredible Rise of North Korea’s Hacking Army,” from the New Yorker.

• “Silicon Valley’s moral bankruptcy,” from the New Criterion.

• An Input magazine piece on the rise and ruin of couchsurfing.com.