Jeremy Stern
@JeremySternLA
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Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events. Some deleted gems from the original, not available online (1/6):
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“The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.” (2/6).
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When Biden became president, “US troops were under regular attack in Iraq and Syria…Such attacks, at least for now, have largely stopped.” (3/6).
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“the region is quieter than it has been for decades. The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident. [Biden's] approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region. ” (6/6).
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Biden’s “disciplined approach frees up resources for other global priorities, reduces the risk of new Middle Eastern conflicts, and ensures that US interests are protected on a far more sustainable basis.” (4/6).
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“We have acted militarily to protect US personnel, and we have enhanced deterrence, combined with diplomacy, to discourage further [Iranian] aggression.” (5/6).
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@BorisJohnson Q&A with David Samuels following @ZelenskyyUa visit to London. “If Putin set out to prove himself wrong,” said Johnson, “he could not have done so in a more decisive and elegant way.” 2/n.
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My interview w/ @general_ben on the strategic necessity of enabling Ukraine to retake Crimea, and what it will take from the US and NATO 12/n.
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@tabletmag, alone, one year ago: . ‘The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a.
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Been hearing the comp to Kennan is unfair, no one is, impossible standard, etc. Thoughts on why the comparison is relevant in Sullivan’s case (1/8):
Jake Sullivan wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs that went to print before Oct 7. For the online version that came out yesterday, they let him not just add new material but scrub the sections embarrassed by events. Some deleted gems from the original, not available online (1/6):
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Thanks Julie for the kind words. I’d just add that readers should also follow @AcrossTheBay and @Doranimated and read their @tabletmag work on how Obama and Biden empowered Iran terror regime and weakened Israel.
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New piece for @ACFutureEurope | "If Merkel doubles down on Nord Stream II even as Navalny emerges from a coma and plots his return home, the narrow ruthlessness of the chancellor’s priorities may be more than her universalist rhetoric can withstand."
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She was of course a) former Quincy Institute and b) convinced that US support for Israel undermines the fight against climate change
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The Holocaust gives Germans not a particular responsibility to Jews but a universal responsibility to humanity, therefore German support for Israel is a violation of its atonement for the Holocaust. This stuff keeps getting more demented.
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“The best way to serve the audience is to ignore them.”—Rick Rubin. “I’d rather resonate with someone who’s liked my honest output than someone who’s been reflexively repulsed. If you’re going to be captured, better it be by an audience than a critic.”—@SherwoodStrauss.
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‘I have one piece of advice to give you, Professor. Read the columnists, and if they call a member of your staff thoughtful, dedicated, or any other friendly adjective, fire him immediately. He is your leaker.’—LBJ to Kissinger, 1969. Thus the cult of Jake Sullivan.
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This all seems kind of obvious and basic but I can’t convey how scarce it is. Alana's been carrying the shield for 15 years but it's hard to get what it means until you first experience the thrill of being shot at without result.
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By popular demand, the @wrmead podcast has landed. Let the shofars blow and the church bells ring.
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There may be a connection, in other words, between being a “once-in-a-generation talent” who is “loved by everyone,” and struggling as mightily as Sullivan has to come up with foreign policy ideas that don't disintegrate within seconds of contact with reality (8/8).
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The Biden admin allowed Malley to push an Iranian agent into sensitive national security positions because she was best equipped to carry out the administration's own policy. Reminder: High-Level Iranian Spy Ring Busted in Washington @LeeSmithDC .
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Highlights from the 2023 Kyiv Jewish Forum mega conference hosted by @tabletmag and @JewishUkraine 🧵 1/n.
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While Glendale is in the news here's the billboard across from the Whole Foods
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‘By joining his chi to Trump’s, Elon Musk has created a double-helix out of the two most powerful human memes on earth.’. David Samuels in @tabletmag on the return of American history, and the future that didn’t exist until Crooks’ gun went off.
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My interview with @tylercowen on lessons from Russian literature about Russian foreign policy, Hadji Murat, Ukrainian classical pianists, financing the war, and whether Germany is still part of the Western alliance 5/n.
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But the way @alananewhouse runs Tablet is to bang home to writers: 1) ignore the audience, thinking of them is the editor’s job, 2) ignore critics. These are actually two sides of the same coin, which is just:.
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So basically, the Rubin and Strauss quotes are both right: ignore the audience, and you’ll probably get the one you want; only at that point do you owe them anything, which is just more of the same.
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Be honest in the personality and voice you give to your writing, “opinion” is cheap (as opposed to subjective personal observation and feeling, clearly identified as such), and the less officially branded the subject matter, the better.
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But if it's impossible to imagine Jake Sullivan doing and saying such horrible things, it's also hard to imagine him doing ANYTHING that might displease his class-anxious Ivy League Boomer superiors who in reality prefer intellectual posers and hate punks like Kennan (7/8).
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"From my time among criminals in prison, I know that the one who’s the ringleader in the cell is not the one who is physically strongest, but the one who is ready to use his knife. Putin believes that he is willing to use his knife and the West isn’t.".
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There is an undeniable Sprockets-like undertone to Germany’s policy gyrations |
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David Samuels in @tabletmag with the ultimate post mortem on the Obama era in American political history:. What the permission structure machine seeks to do is to undo the millennia-long work of consciousness by once again locating consciousness outside of the self—but clothing.
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'I think the assumption by U.S. planners was that Gaza would turn out to be a tar baby for Netanyahu. The strategic assumptions were therefore that after a few months Bibi would punch himself out, the Israeli offensive would grind to a halt. The United States would then take.
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I spoke with France’s former Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the great @benjaminhaddad on Islamism and antisemitism in France and whether the political center can hold. Lots of wisdom and insight from both for Americans.
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But Kennan was a sensitive marginalized ballsy misfit diva who drove everyone insane. Bio: “curious blend of arrogance and insecurity, haughtiness and self-pity, sensitivity and coldness, assertiveness and shyness.” He was insufferable and, relatedly, fiercely independent (3/8).
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This short discussion feat. @Doranimated @LeeSmithDC @liel @Jacob__Siegel @AcrossTheBay and @GadiTaub1 features more good information, analysis, and hands-on insight and expertise than pretty much anything that's come out in any format since it all began.
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New piece w/ the great @jgarzik | ‘Americans trapped in such circumstances would have their messages siphoned, their conversations recorded, their diaries digitally copied, their trysts interdicted. Their lives and fate would be held hostage by the Borg.’.
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If you do that, good readers will sense it and they’ll come back; if you don’t, they’ll sniff that out too, and then you’re no longer an honest broker.
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My piece on why sometimes it feels better to live among your own kind.
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Egypt? That’s ethnic cleansing. America? Yeah that works. What about Latin America? No that’s ethnic cleansing again.
Gazans can’t be temporarily relocated to the other side of the border in Egypt—but they can be permanently relocated to the US.
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I'm talking #Ukraine with the great @ELuttwak and @VladDavidzon at 6pm EST, sign up to join @tabletmag:
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Today’s special issue of Tablet. I have a short piece on reclaiming your right to normal human emotions like national loyalty from the demented weirdos who spent the last decade trying to force a choice b/w being American and being Jewish.
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My excellent conversation with @ELuttwak and @VladDavidzon on the military situation in Ukraine, Western sanctions, the credibility of Putin’s nuclear threat, and how Volodymyr Zelensky became the bravest Jew on the face of the earth. @tabletmag.
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I wrote about why sometimes it feels better to live among your own kind, even if they’re Jewish.
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Kennan was also born to a Midwestern middle-class family, also determined to escape the obscurity of his background by gaining acceptance into the Ivy League and the Washington intellectual establishment, etc. Old story (2/8).
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People have been pointing out that it wasn’t until the founding of @tabletmag that Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Jackson died, Kanye went crazy, Tarantino made his greatest film, Virginia banned smoking, and Greenland gained self-rule.
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In the last year I wrote a couple profiles of public figures, a critical one of someone I think is unworthy of the power he has, and an admiring one of someone I thought was misunderstood.
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I like these and had thought of them as being opposites or in tension, but I think I realized they actually get at the same thing, and in the process came to appreciate my own magazine more.
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Kennan was among the first to foresee and advocate splits in the Soviet bloc and was appointed amb. to Yugoslavia in 1961. After Congress and the Kennedy admin promised to “liberate” all communist countries & cut Tito out of the foreign aid bill, Kennan resigned in disgust (5/8).
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@VladDavidzon interviews Ukrainian Ambassador to the US @OMarkarova on the state of bilateral relations 9/n.
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@NatanSharansky, @DavidHarrisNY, @KseniaSvetlova, and @ArminRosen on world Jewry's role in Ukraine 14/n.
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There was no POTUS or anyone else Kennan wouldn’t pick a fight with, regardless of party. His unrelenting opposition to engagement in Vietnam began in 1948. His frank comments comparing Moscow in 1952 with Berlin in 1942 cost him his ambassadorship to the USSR. Oops 🤷♂️ (4/8).
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If I’d been elsewhere it's not hard to imagine being stung enough by both criticisms to where, even if subconsciously, I’d have reconfigured future writing in order to avoid pissing certain people off, being ignored or laughed at, losing out on access or invitations, etc.
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The main criticism I got of the former was that it’s cheap to fling shit at a man in the arena when you’re just an outside critic. Main criticism of the latter was along the lines of “how can you talk with his balls in your mouth” etc.
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@tabletmag Sinai Award citations for Michel Houellebecq and John Fetterman:. Michel Houellebecq. Michel Houellebecq is French. And what’s wrong with that? OK, so he loathes humanity. His characters are ideas and types bereft of the pleasures and agonies of flesh-and-blood.
For our 15th anniversary, we are introducing the Sinai Awards, honoring 36 people who have made the world freer for the rest of us. The award was handmade by traditional glass artisans from a mold of a real piece of matzo baked in the Venice Ghetto. 🧵.
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@robertcobrien, @JoeLieberman, Andrew Mac, and me on the future of US bipartisan support for Ukraine 3/n.
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Omar saw earlier than anyone that US politics had become almost entirely national-scale and personality-driven, which helps explain her rare foray into local/regional politics, ie a demented speech about Greater Somalia. Definitive bio by @ArminRosen .
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The question isn't, ‘Can you make a plausible case for detente with Iran?’. The question is, ‘Do you actually believe that case? Could you put up with Israel’s destruction, or couldn’t you?’. From now on, it would be good to be sure on that point.
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@VladDavidzon interviews Israel's Ambassador in Kyiv @michael_brodsk on Israeli-Ukrainian relations 10/n.
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Kennan also liked to journal and sometimes make outrageously offensive comments about what he saw as the stupidities of mass democracy and the unfitness for American citizenship of Jews, Catholics, and African Americans (6/8).
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My interview with @StanMcChrystal on the balance of forces in Ukraine, Western weapons vs. Russian reservists, and maintaining US bipartisan support 6/n.
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@BHL, @srodan, @josef_joffe, and me on the lessons and parallels of the Ukrainian and Israeli experiences 7/n.
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My interview with Leon Panetta on intelligence, weapons, and Crimea 4/n.
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Tablet interview with former Socialist Prime Minister of France Manuel Valls on the Jewish question in French politics and the state of the left.
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New episode of @WRMpod w/ @wrmead. We talk Kamala Harris’ price control plan, the balance of military power in the Pacific, the reemergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and why soft power isn’t what it used to be. Full episode @tabletmag below.
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“They spoke at length, and then it turned into a kabbalistic meeting in which the rabbi noted that Javier would lead a liberationist movement in Argentina. Milei left the meeting excited.”. Argentina's Would-Be Jewish Trump.
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The centrist strategy of using rule-of-law mechanisms to defeat their political opponents is backfiring across the West.
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As the official biographer of Sega, Nintendo, Oculus, and Larry David, Blake's talent and career is the stuff of Jewish kids' dreams.
This is the best thing I’ve read in many months: (great job @JeremySternLA !).
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Saturday: Admin leaks plans to engineer collapse of Israeli govt, settles on message of ‘breaking with Bibi but not Israel’. Tuesday: Burns says Bibi's ‘viability as a leader is in jeopardy.’ Wonder how he knows!. Why Biden elevated Burns to the cabinet:.
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"The best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page.".
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By popular demand @WRMpod is back this week with new and improved music 🪕. In addition to providing our millions of listeners with a soothing soundscape, we also talk voter fraud in America, climate religion, Taiwan, Imran Khan, and reading poetry:.
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Don't forget the Forum's preview panel from December with @nfergus and @KofmanMichael -- still highly relevant, both were typically prescient 13/n.
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Wrote an essay on the German far right, got two types of responses:. Normies who said it persuaded them to sympathize more with AfD supporters. AfD supporters livid that it said things it didn't say. Nature may heal Germany.
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New piece on Germany's domestic crisis, role in NATO, and what Germans see as the most plausible case that Putin will resort to nuclear weapons.
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'I once saw a photo of a giant crucified Santa on the roof of a Tokyo department store. Many are the delights of cultural confusion which the miserly charge of 'appropriation' denies us.'. The great Howard Jacobson on the holiday of schmaltz. @tabletmag.
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Why is fission evil but fusion good?. Should the Clarence Thomas of Israel get to pick his colleagues?. Do you ever get the sense that Lina Khan is LARPing?. All your burning questions answered in this week's @WRMpod, which is mostly about Ukraine.
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@Doranimated, @eottolenghi, Mark Levin, and @ArminRosen on the Russian-Iranian axis in Ukraine 15/n.
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Questions answered on today's episode:. -Weed or booze?.-Why did 'Hispanics' break for Trump?.-Why do people in India shower @wrmead in flower pedals?.-Why did the UK want the US to pay for its socialism?.-Why were jobs safer when products were crappier?.
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Read the special issue of Tablet Paris feat. Marco Roth, @marcweitzmann, @aniwilc, David Samuels, @ArminRosen, @liel, @Passionweiss, Blake Smith, and others. We cover politics, fashion, music, literature, and everything else you want from Tablet in Paris.
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@lozhkin_boris, @khatia2017, Robert Singer, @borysgudziak, and @VladDavidzon on how the war is forging new Ukrainian identities among Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews alike 16/n.
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I wrote a piece about the experience of being an American soldier in Saudi Arabia in 2018, on the cusp of MBS's reforms, and what it was like going back in 2023 as a journalist (from a Jewish magazine, no less).
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Curtis Yarvin double feature in @tabletmag: Brilliant profile by @Jacob__Siegel and a barnburner by the man himself.
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New episode 🎙️🎧 @wrmead . How sincere are conservative (and liberal) critiques of civil rights law?. Is Latin America the continent of the future, and will it be always?. Is a Worthwhile Canadian Initiative news?. No one expects…landmines?. Answers 🫴.
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"Far from being strategically autonomous, Europe needs a partner and protector. And if the answer isn’t Washington, then Beijing is the only other game in town." @tabletmag .
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Under the rules set by great powers to govern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anything is possible. Losing is winning. Crime is justice. Rape is love. Death is life. The Empire of Palestine @LeeSmithDC .
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New episode of What Really Matters! This week we discuss:. News: the Sino-Russian Alliance, U.S. national debt, & rise of the European Right. History: TR vs. Wilson, & the Puritan-Boomer-Woke continuum. Tip of the week: Your next Balkan adventure.
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