“Liberal delusions.”
20 January 2025. (Screenshot, PBS.) Two images, their truth. In reality, only the fragment carries the mark of authenticity. — Brecht. 22 APRIL—Peter Dimock, the avant-garde novelist (A Short Rhetoric for Leaving the Family, George Anderson, Daybook from Sheep Meadow) and an old…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 2: A Short History of Exploding Gas Pipelines
This is the second of four reports on Germany’s various crises, the history that produced them and how Germans, other than the neoliberal elites who now hold power, think about their way forward. Part 1 of this series is here. POTSDAM—A single,…
Patrick Lawrence: Germany in Crisis Part 1 —The Lost Man of Europe
This is the first of four reports on the crises that now beset Germany — what they are, the history that produced them, and how Germans think about finding their way forward once again. I thank Eva–Maria Föllmer–Müller and Karl–Jürgen…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Zionists Within
During Donald Trump’s first four years in the White House, the stranger to Washington’s infernal ways got nothing done: That cabal of various Deep State appendages — the Democratic Party’s upper echelons, the intelligence apparatus, the Justice Department and the…
“And so we avert our eyes.”
The mirror Palestinians hold up to us. Some images and press pieces—pictures, videos, media reports—come to me lately. They arrive separately, one to another over a period of a days. And I am moved to share them now because, when…
Patrick Lawrence: Season of the Sophists
Mahmoud Khalil, 30–year-old holder of a green card permitting him permanently to live and work in the United States, spouse of an American, lettered in his field after study at an Ivy League university, with nothing on his record to…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Epstein Follies
There appears to be a good chance that Trump and his people have concluded that there is a fine line between attacking the Deep State and going along with it. Eleven days ago, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi hyped her office’s imminent…
Patrick Lawrence: Speak, Claudia!
Watching that procession of hapless European supplicants passing through the Oval Office this week, my mind wandered briefly and came back with an imaginary scene I found pleasurable and instructive all at once: What if Claudia Sheinbaum went to see…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Chihuahuas, Not Dobermans
Trump’s determination to end the Ukraine war has forced the Europeans, at last, to go their own way. And they charge in precisely the wrong direction. I have never been much for schadenfreude: It is always best to occupy one’s mind with worthier…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Late–Imperial Maladies
The worst part of living this distance from reality — or maybe the best part — is the knowledge, even if it is only subliminal, that we cannot go on like this. I am sick of reading that the Israelis’ genocidal…