Is this what "muzzle velocity" feels like?
What Just Happened March 2025: The chaos and disorder of being alive
So many things happened in the month of March, it feels like a year.
Here’s a sample:
March 11: The United States imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, prompting Canada to announce tariffs on $20.7 billion of U.S. goods
March 13: Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffery Goldberg is added to a Signal chat of senior government officials plotting air strikes on Yemen
March 14: Senator Schumer votes with Republicans to keep the government open
March: 15: The United States launches airstrikes on targets in Yemen's Al Hudaydah and Al Jawf Governorate on March 17, leading to mass protests in the capital city, Sanaa, against the American attacks
March 16: President Trump executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act leaks, prompting rapid action to deport two planes worth of detainees without due process
March 18: Israel breaks the ceasefire in Gaza with deadly strikes
March 19: Jeffrey Goldberg publishes his first story about the Houthi Small Group Signal chat, launching “Signalgate.”
I could keep going, but I’m out of breath just remembering what happened in one week of the last month. And this is to say nothing about Mercury in retrograde (March 15 - April 6) or various stock markets dropping 1,000 points, or any other number of other upsetting facts about March 2025.
Early this year, Trump Advisor Steve Bannon advocated for what he called “muzzle velocity” to overwhelm the opposition. Now, I guess this is what muzzle velocity feels like.
It’s exhausting to live like this, with some kind of impending doom alarm growing louder and louder in the background until I can’t even hear myself think. It leaves me unsure what I’m supposed to be listening for to begin with.
As I researched the timeline of events reflected above, I came across this USA Today article, and was delighted to find the featured research from none other than The Institute for the Study of War (my former employer) cited as the source. It felt like stumbling across a photo of a college ex on social media, before Instagram was just viral reels.
Time really does fly. And they are still at it! God bless.
This month, I marked my three-year anniversary writing on Substack.
I preached a sermon at church about walking the Camino, pregnant, during Lent.
And last week, I wrote about the $7.50 pain au chocolat I didn’t buy, and the exorbitant cost of everything.
These days, the most news I can stomach is a twice-weekly dose of the Ezra Klein Show, and the Saturday humor newsletter The Surge from Jim Newell at Slate.
Somehow listening to a few deep, thoughtful takes on some aspect of humanity’s general situation and laughing at the idiocy of a few nincompoops is about the best I can do.
New York Times audio is now paywalled, so I’m pleased to share gift links to the following episodes:
The Dark Heart of Trump’s Foreign Policy
Fareed Zakaria may no longer be the genius he once was, but he’s still smart. He attempts to offer geo-political hot takes without making them political, and maybe actually succeeds?
The Government Knows A.G.I. Is Coming
The Biden Administration’s AI advisor Ben Buchanan willingly admits no one in the Biden administration spent any serious amount of time trying to imagine what AI would do to human civilization, offering both the most eye-opening and deeply disappointing take of the month.
I really felt someone on the editorial team at NYT taking my request (Please… Let Her SPEAK!) to heart this month with not one but two Very Serious Women with Economics Phds welcomed to the show to speak about nothing other than their unfathomably deep economics expertise.
Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work
Is Trump ‘Detoxing’ the Economy or Poisoning It?
Ezra (can I call him Ezra?) keeps inviting various politicos onto the show to explain what exactly Democrats got wrong last November. These episodes always feel like they start out headed in the right direction, and then go off a cliff into “just more angry phone banking!” territory that I find sad and frustrating. But, despite the disappointing ending, this one has some eye-opening stats I hadn’t yet heard.
(Full disclosure: I didn’t watch this episode, but that’s how Ezra recommends you consume it…)
Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won
It seems so blatantly obvious to me that the fundamental deficit plaguing Democrats is they’ve (mostly, with a few exceptions) lost their moral center, and without clear values guiding their decisions, they’ve devolved into pseudo-Republican power players pretending to be for everyone when in reality they mostly (still) stand for corporate interests.
Again and again, my mind plays on repeat the Hamilton lyric:
“If you stand for nothing, Burr, what will you fall for?”
(Burr, the original Democrat…)
When I listen to the last two Klein Show episodes of the month (What Is DOGE’s Real Goal? The Last 2 Months — and Next 2 Years — of U.S. Politics) I’m left with the profoundly icky feeling that a few very wealthy white men have decided they are going to get even more rich and powerful off the backs of average Americans, and the rest of us are just standing around with our proverbial dicks out waiting for someone to, I dunno… belch?
I see American civilization devolving to something brittle and unsustainable and the media is too obsessed with tracking the Trump administration’s next move to turn their gaze in the opposite direction and appreciate the lives of everyone else.
I’m rambling now—it’s late, and I’m tired, and someday (week/month/year) soon I’ll stop writing this god-forsaken newsletter at 9:30pm on a Sunday night. But maybe I’m not the only one barely holding it all together?
Over these last few years/months of early motherhood and end-of-life care, I’ve fallen epically behind on New Yorker magazines. But I can’t bring myself to throw them away. So they pile up slowly in the corner of my bedroom or office until one day I just have to do something about it. Then, I rip the covers off (one day, we plan to wallpaper a bathroom with them) and scan the table of contents for the most must-read piece. I flip the magazine to that story, and place them together in a neat stack, in hopes that I will now somehow prioritize them.
Alas. Today, I took a pile of New Yorkers I’d “prioritized” two months ago and put them in the trash—a true admission of failure.
It simultaneously made me sad that I can’t get it together to read a New Yorker article a day, and also mad that I might die without the benefit of these incredible insights.
So I formed this digital archive for myself so that someday, maybe, when I fall and break a leg (god forbid?) and find myself bedbound, I’ll have this long reading list within easy reach.
March 27, 2023: Will the Ozempic Era Change How We Think About Being Fat and Being Thin?
July 3, 2023: The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words
July 31, 2023: How Alex Spiro Keeps the Rich and Famous Above the Law
September 18, 2023: Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion
October 2, 2023: Inside Sam Bankman-Frieds Family Bubble
May 6, 2024: The Battle for Attention
May 27, 2024: The Secrets of Suspense
October 7, 2024: Is a Chat with a Bot a Conversation?
December 2, 2024: A Revolution in How Robots Learn
December 9, 2024: The Philosopher LA Paul Wants Us to Think About Ourselves
December 16, 2024: A Bionic Leg Controlled by the Brain
Reading any one of these articles would surely enrich my life and imagination, and maybe now that I “possess” them in digital form rather than an analog stack, they will somehow find a way into my brain. But doubts remain.
I am always delighted to encounter the writing of John McPhee who I do my very best to make time for regardless of circumstance. His Tabula Rasa serial publication has now reached Part 5, and I am very simply holding my breath that we make it to the final edition before he expires.
(John McPhee is 94, and still writing—a true blessing).
This story, about McPhee’s 60-year friendship with Bill Bradley, is the kind of exploration that defies imagination for a person still under the age of 40.
October 16, 2923: Under the Carpetbag
I hope I live long enough to have a sixty-year-long friendship with someone as famous as Bill Bradley. I hope I keep writing long enough that by the time I’m 90, and God willing, the carpal tunnel hasn’t crippled my wrists, I will be given the grace to write it down so that others may enjoy it before I expire.
These are my on-going resolutions: make more time to read, make more time for friends, and for the love of all that is good, write it down, lest I forget.
In case you missed it…
If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?
I asked ChatGPT to summarize the events of the past month for me in 200 words, from the perspective of a person rather than a news article.
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