Politics: Weekly Summary (October 20-26, 2025)

I would describe this week in politics blogs as a messy dinner party where half the guests are shouting, one guest is trying to rearrange the furniture for reasons nobody trusts, and someone in the corner keeps bringing up old scandals like family lore. To me, it feels like the same arguments spin faster and louder, but a few new threads keep appearing — private money elbowing into public rooms, the armed services quietly pushing back, and social media turning into both arena and auction house. You’ll see some of that everywhere if you skim through the pieces I read. Read the originals if you want the receipts — I’m just pointing out the crumbs.

Tribalism, faith, and the odd logic of loyalty

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about how politics has become a kind of religion. That’s not a new phrase, but Terminally_Drifting laid it out bluntly: political identity outpaces policy. I would describe their take as a messy, sad recognition — people choose team loyalty over facts, and then dance around contradictions. It’s the sort of thing you hear at family gatherings when Uncle Frank refuses to change his mind about anything, ever. The piece likens partisan behavior to gambling, conspiracy thinking, and ritualized denial. If you like metaphors, imagine everyone at the poker table keeping their hands hidden and then betting their house on a bluff.

Naked Capitalism contributes a similar tone elsewhere, but more forensic. Their posts this week sift through fractured information flows, the drug-and-delusion rumors floating through the Trump ecosystem, and how different fact-silos feed different delusions. I’d say they read like someone trying to reassemble a smashed vase — all the pieces are there but the glue is gone.

This tribe-versus-tribe idea is also the backdrop to calls for resistance and unity. Jay wrote twice on this: once calling for resistance against creeping despotism, and then again urging unity and compassion as tools against division. Those two notes sit side by side like cousins who argue at Thanksgiving but still pass the gravy. The mood is: admit the danger, then act with steady patience. That’s a strange mix of urgency and tried-old-laundry calm.

A related strand: some writers see the problem as not just culture but design. Bob M. Schwartz warns that politicians often chase reelection like they chase a prom date — more about optics than integrity. He points to schemes where leverage and money (more on this in a bit) bend institutions until they hum the tune of whoever’s paying. Small corruptions, repeated, become a rhythm.

Private money and the new palace: billionaires, ballrooms, and the bunker

If you want a symbol for this week, it might be the proposed private ballroom for the White House. Two pieces caught that beat. Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev both cover the demolition and proposed rebuild of the East Wing into a privately financed ballroom. Read those and you’ll see the same hesitation: the White House was meant to be a modest place, not a hall for naming rights and donors. Call it a small architectural quarrel if you must, but it reads like watching the family home being rebranded as a private club. The symbolic risk is clearer than the practical one: public heritage being remodeled to suit private whims.

That symbolic threat widens into a clear theme: billionaire influence over media and policy. Chris Armitage was sharp on this, mapping how a few fortunes have gobbled media outlets and editorial independence. It’s not just purchases; it’s prioritized narratives. Sam Husseini connects the dots to foreign policy coverage — who funds what, and how that shapes the story on Gaza, on Israel, on who looks like a villain. To me, it feels like someone buying the jukebox and then choosing which songs the whole room can dance to. It’s subtle and it’s loud.

And then there’s Larry Ellison, described by Sam Husseini as more than a tech titan — a ‘shadow president’ of sorts — with deep ties to political players and media properties. That reads like a James Bond villain but with spreadsheets.

All of this was tied to the more direct— and alarming — idea that private cash is now underwriting public security. Olga Lautman highlights donations to the Pentagon during a shutdown and worries about loyalty networks replacing democratic oversight. That’s a scary phrase because loyalty networks are easy to weaponize. It’s like hiring your buddy as the referee in a backyard game; predictably, the calls won’t be even.

Legal knives and staffing dramas: who polices the police?

There was a small avalanche around appointments and leaks this week. The Paul Ingrassia story is a good example. Dean Blundell and others covered the leaked texts that showed bite and bile, and that led to Ingrassia withdrawing from nomination. That’s the kind of stuff that scrapes varnish off institutions: a text, a leak, a resignation. It’s also a reminder that personnel choices matter hugely in legal oversight.

Meanwhile, Andrew Leahey flagged judges admitting to AI use in drafting opinions — and yes, some of those AI-assisted rulings were wrong. That’s not a sci-fi cautionary tale; it’s the court issuing a faulty ruling because somebody used a tool they didn’t vet. Imagine trusting a calculator that sometimes erases decimal places.

Then there’s the tug-of-war over the military and law enforcement. Zev Shalev flagged Admiral Alvin Holsey’s resignation after refusing to back a proposed invasion of Venezuela. The military not wanting to be used for lawless policy is an old theme, but this episode was a clear, recent crack. [Zev] also ties in the crazy jump in ICE funding and the acquisition of military-grade weapons. That’s the neighborhood slowly getting barbed wire around the playground.

And readers curious about the future of the Office of Special Counsel got a lesson about appointment politics — a nomination can implode not because of policy but because of private messages that reveal a worldview.

Foreign policy theatre: deals, cancellations, and Tomahawk debates

Foreign policy reads this week like a soap opera with tariffs and missile shipments. Mike "Mish" Shedlock recounted the oddity of President Trump canceling trade talks with Canada over a Ronald Reagan ad — yes, a TV spot — and that story hints at two things: how fragile diplomatic windows can be and how much symbolism matters in modern negotiations. It’s like walking into a business meeting and storming out because someone played a song you don’t like.

On guns and geopolitics, Tim Mak told the story of Andrii “Juice” Pilshchykov, the Ukrainian pilot who fought for F-16 support and died before training. That piece is equal parts tribute and a critique of the U.S. negotiating posture. It leans into the argument that advanced weapons matter — Tomahawks, F-16s — and that politics can stall the shipments that actually keep people alive in conflict zones. It’s the brutal reminder that abstract policy debates have a real, physical tail.

There’s also talk of Trump courting deals with China and braggadocio about making “fantastic” deals. Mike "Mish" Shedlock doubts that any big concessions will be on the table. I’d say the pattern here is showmanship — lots of chest-thumping, not much reciprocity. It’s the sales pitch without the buyer’s signature.

Tech, networks, and the re-purposing of war tools

A thread that runs from Gaza to corporate contracts: military-grade tech remixed into civilian governance. Jamie Lord had two pieces that stood out. One about the slow-motion theft of renewable projects by grid monopolies in Britain showed how infrastructure and profit motives block climate progress. The other—likely the spookier one—illustrated how Palantir and Oracle’s wartime AI systems are getting packaged as “peacetime” governance tools for Gaza reconstruction. The language used in the documents is eerily bureaucratic, but the idea is clear: surveillance systems that found targets in war zones might be used to manage populations in peace time.

That’s a line you don’t want crossed. It’s like turning a Swiss army knife into a surveillance camera and then being surprised when you can’t turn it off. The ethical risks are huge, and the writers suggest we should be wary before bureaucracy normalizes tools built for killing.

Meanwhile, conversations about social media shifted from platform fights to protocol fights. Ben Werdmuller wrote about Bluesky and how it’s suddenly a target for political operatives. The lesson is that open networks are attractive to people who want to control narrative without being obvious. People used to firewalls; now they use algorithms as foxholes. Bluesky is small but meaningful — a kind of early-season cricket match where scouts watch who’s good before anyone else knows.

And OpenAI buying Sky (an AI interface for Mac) was mentioned as a minor footnote in some coverage. It’s part of the slow tech consolidation theme: tools become owned by bigger players. That’s boringly familiar by now, but still important — fewer players means fewer gatekeepers, and that matters when the gatekeepers have political leanings.

Democracy at the user level: universities, voting lines, and civic friction

A few posts zoom in on the small frictions that show larger democratic rot. Bob M. Schwartz highlighted the higher education compact, which amounts to a federal funding leash: accept the money, lose some control. The worry is that if even one university bends, the tactic becomes a template for coercion. I’d say it’s like offering a struggling shopkeeper a loan with a secret clause: the shopkeeper takes the cash and wakes up owning less of their own shop.

Nick Heer traveled to Alberta and wrote about long lines at polling places because of petty bureaucratic requirements. That’s the basic, dull, galling stuff: forms, long waits, human time wasted. It’s not exciting but it erodes trust. People complain about policy in the abstract but this is what policy does: it tangles hands and slows things down.

And then there were earnest posts about drafting letters to representatives and editing petitions. AmericanCitizen had a few posts that felt like grassroots therapy — angry, long, full of specific grievances about data privacy, ICE, FEMA funds and a general sense that the system is being gamed. Those raw posts are worth a read if you want to feel the democratic pulse. It’s messy, but honest. People are trying to form their complaints into action.

The cultural side-glances: gender, art, and the shape of disagreement

Not everything is doom. There were cultural essays that trace how politics shows up in art and identity. Laëtitia Vitaud wrote a sharp piece on the "First Woman Paradox" — that women who break glass ceilings sometimes prop up the old house rather than remodel it. Think Margaret Thatcher or Marine Le Pen. It’s the uncomfortable point that representation doesn’t equal progress. A woman in a big chair can still hand out old rules.

Richard Hanania argued provocatively that media is pro-Trump in ways people don’t expect — not because they love him, but because the press covers him like a heavyweight champ. That’s a media critique worth debating: coverage isn’t neutral, and fascination can slide into amplification.

Then there was the pop-culture angle: a piece on Paul Thomas Anderson’s film and how it moves beyond 2020-era wokeness. The note there, from Hanania and Lily Zuckerman, is that contemporary liberalism sometimes simplifies moral landscapes to the point of caricature. I’d describe that as the complaint of someone tired of moral soap operas.

A few recurring moods and some small closures

Some themes kept popping up, again and again. The most obvious is alarm — writers worried that democratic norms are fraying. Another is attention: who owns the story, who funds it, and what counts as legitimate news. Yet another is coercion: money or threats used to bend institutions. And finally, there’s a persistent claim that people still care — a lot of the posts are calls to action, drafting letters, encouraging resistance, or just explaining a problem in plain terms.

A few small threads deserve a last mention because they show the texture of this week’s coverage. First: the overlap of military tech and civilian governance is a major red flag — when your war software becomes city management software, someone should ask why. Second: personnel matters; the Ingrassia flap and Chris Wright’s awkward position at Energy show how choosing people is policy. Third: the international brush-fire — from Ukraine to Canada to China — proves that domestic theater has foreign consequences. And finally: local governance and infrastructure — from Alberta’s voting lines to Britain’s grid bottlenecks — are the quiet wear-and-tear that slowly make democracies less nimble.

If you want something specific: read Tim Mak on the Ukrainian pilot for a human feel of policy consequences. Read Chris Armitage and Sam Husseini on how money and narrative bend public space. If you like the procedural, Andrew Leahey on judges and AI is a neat alarm bell. And if the symbolic matters, Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev cover the ballroom story that’s somehow also a metaphor for everything else.

I’ll leave it there. There’s more noise than signal if you only skim, but if you pick a lane — legal, tech, personnel, or cultural — you’ll find that the posts this week knit into a rough map. It’s a map with stains on it, sure. Like any map in an old glovebox, you have to tilt it and squint a little to see the roads.