Politics: Weekly Summary (December 22-28, 2025)

The last week of December felt like someone stacked a few dozen opinion pieces into a shopping trolley and pushed it downhill. The things I read were loud, cranky, weary, outraged, and often aiming a camera at the same ugly little corner of politics. I would describe them as a mash of grief, theatre, and anger — sometimes useful, sometimes performative. To me, it feels like everyone is trying to make sense of the same mess from different angles. I’d say you’ll spot familiar riffs: fear turned into control, politics as performance, trust evaporating, and culture wars used like confetti at a bad wedding.

Fear, repression, and the politics of grief

A number of voices this week circle around the same worry: fear gets weaponised, and when it does, liberty gets shoved out of the way. Alistair Kitchen argued about Australia’s reaction to antisemitism after a tragedy. He worries that policies meant to tackle hatred could smother reasonable critique of Israel. I’d say his piece reads like someone watching someone else tighten a belt on a child — you know it’s done with a word like ‘safety’ but it hurts and it feels wrong. He keeps returning to that tension: stop real hatred, but don’t cut off debate. The point lands like a pebble dropped into a pond; the ripples are the laws and cultural chill we’ll feel for months.

There’s a parallel note in Slavoj Žižek and others who call out selective outrage — media fixating on certain terror acts while shrugging at long-term violence in Gaza and the West Bank. It reads like a TV newsroom with blinkers on. Žižek’s piece is philosophical and theatrical, like a late-night pub argument that keeps circling the same punchline. He suggests the naming of things — ‘‘democracy’, ‘humanitarian’ — matters when it’s just a gloss for real damage.

I would describe this cluster as a small forest of worry about official responses. The pattern is simple: tragedy happens, politicians promise action, action drifts toward control, and debate gets muffled. It’s familiar, like watching the same soap episode but with different actors.

Media, placement, and the slow death of trust

Media distrust runs like a thread through many posts. Dean Blundell is furious about Bari Weiss’s influence in broadcast news, arguing it’s a political placement rather than journalism. He uses the suppressed CECOT story as his hammer. Read this and you’ll feel the author's teeth on the spine of the media industry — part disgust, part alarm. It’s a common tone this week: media isn’t reporting; it’s shaping stories to match power.

Then there’s the pull between platform power and independent news. daveverse rails against the monetisation of news and the stranglehold platforms have on distribution. He wants decentralised information, more little presses, less corporate gatekeeping. It’s the online equivalent of wanting a local bakery instead of a chain store — there’s taste, character, and a dough you can trust.

The fog of news is thick. Naked Capitalism offered two link roundups (12/24 and 12/27) that felt like a curator who knows the house is on fire but still points out which paintings to save. There are useful nuggets in those link posts if you like following crumbs — military procurement, climate loss, China-Russia moves — the usual dossier of modern anxieties.

Trump, spectacle, and name-brand politics

You couldn’t avoid Trump this week. A few pieces take aim at how politics under him often looks less like governance and more like branding and spectacle. Dean Blundell again, with the Melania documentary — his read is that it’s a PR transaction, a multimillion-dollar attempt to launder reputation. I’d say the line he draws is simple: if money buys silence, it’s politics with a receipt.

Then there’s the small, ridiculous madness of renaming things after the boss. Juan Cole touched on cabinet officials flinging hyphenated ‘-Trump’ suffixes onto themselves and more renaming proposals. It’s the political equivalent of sticking stickers all over your car. Funny at first, then oddly sad. Sam Husseini looks at the Kennedy Center moment, mixing art with the naming controversy — a reminder that culture spaces are now political battlegrounds too.

And the foreign policy show was present: Dean Blundell again with the Nigeria bombing story — framed as a Christmas stunt for an evangelical base. The piece paints a picture of policies as spectacle, a Santa Claus-laden missile strike. That metaphor is ugly but it fits: politics dressed up for the holidays with lights and a photo op.

The machinery versus the individual

This was an oddly gentle beat across the week. Shane O'Mara paired Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal with Julian Jackson’s biography of de Gaulle to talk about individual agency against the modern state. I would describe these paired readings as a reminder: sometimes the story we tell about the state is just trousers and buttons — stitched, made by people. That theme bubbles through others: individuals pushing back, lone actors in large systems, whether in espionage, politics or whistleblowing.

There’s also the quieter, reflective work like Vox Meditantis who traces personal politics in the dark, in badger tunnels and old chalk workings. It’s a little tangential, but that’s the point: the political life is not just policy and spectacle. There’s endurance, night shifts, small things that keep you going.

The corrosion of goodwill and civility

A few writers grieved social manners. Robert Zimmerman was honest about goodwill dwindling. He told a small story about a Target worker, a customer, and a fight that felt like something bigger. To me, it feels like the social fabric is thinning — like a favourite jumper you wore until the elbow gave way.

There’s repetition on this theme. Many posts return to the idea that both left and right are partly to blame for the rot. It isn’t tidy. People keep repeating the same complaints, and that repetition is its own proof: we’re tired, and talking doesn’t fix it.

Language, identity, and the limits of policing speech

Nick Cohen wrote a couple of pieces that cut into the debate over language policing and faith. Nick Cohen interviewed Rev Richard Coles, who worries about faith being weaponised politically, and about anti-gay sentiment driven by figures like Tommy Robinson and Putin. The tone is moral and wary — Coles wants genuine faith beyond political utility. Cohen’s other piece argues that progressives changing words won’t necessarily change the world. He thinks the effort is a bit performative and can alienate working-class people.

I’d say these two pieces sit together like a pair of shoes that don’t exactly match: both step into the terrain of culture wars and try to ask if changing the labels changes the thing. They both return to a thought you’ve heard before: real change needs more than slogans.

Corruption, empire, and the geopolitics of peace

A darker thread looks at systemic corruption disguised as order. indi.ca gave a blunt diagnosis: leaders from Netanyahu to von der Leyen use the language of peace while spreading interests that line up with power, not people. It’s a hard, bitter read. Slavoj Žižek also hints at the same hypocrisy: calls for democracy when actions are anything but.

Then there’s the extreme mistrust story: The Wise Wolf ran with a poll that 96% of people think Washington is full of pedophiles. The piece is raw and sensational. It’s easy to scoff, but these sentiments matter because they map where trust has gone. To me, it feels like a barometer: if people prefer lurid accusation to sober analysis, we’re in deep trouble.

Institutions, contracts, and data — local fights with big tech

Two good local stories spoke to a larger problem: how governments and public services hand big contracts to big firms. Jamie Lord wrote about Greater Manchester and Leeds rejecting Palantir’s software while the government pushed a £330m deal anyway. The picture is almost cartoonish: local NHS trusts build what they need, yet a giant contract shuffles through like an unwanted relative at Christmas.

In Florida, Robert Zimmerman reported on local pushback against Blue Origin’s wastewater permit. These are small fights with practical stakes. They don’t have the glamour of international policy, but they tell you a lot about power. It’s bureaucracy meeting community. It’s neighbours saying no. It’s technocrats selling solutions to problems someone else already solved. I’d say these stories are worth following for anyone who likes to see how big money bumps into local reality.

Gun culture, cost-benefit math, and moral accounting

There was a blunt, ugly column about gun deaths being an acceptable cost. ReedyBear pushed back against Charlie Kirk’s offhand calculation that gun deaths are worth the price of a free Second Amendment. The piece is a mix of policy and moral alarm. It confronts the reductive arithmetic some use to justify policy: a cold ledger with human lives as rows. To me, it feels like watching someone do mental gymnastics to avoid the obvious: you can value rights and still do common-sense safety.

Satire, absurdity, and the year-end funny pages

A few pieces let politics drip into the absurd. Dave Barry ran a year-in-review that reads like a very tired carnival: raccoons, presidential antics, chaos. Daniel Herndon used satire to skewer the commercialisation of Christmas and politics entwined. These are places to laugh if you can, or at least to breathe for a minute.

There’s also a prediction piece by Tree of Woe on AI factions and a likely Democratic edge in Congress next year. It’s speculative but neatly maps the moods: optimists, doomsayers, pragmatists. The piece is useful if you like to see future bets laid out like horses at the gate.

The fog, the channels, and the quiet work of curation

A lot of writers felt small against the big mess. Jason Stanford recommended media like Rachel Maddow’s podcast on Japanese concentration camps and spoke about algorithms shaping what we see. Karl's Notes posted a gentle miscellany of curiosities and history; they’re the kind of posts that remind you politics sits next to the rest of life.

Moneycircus (Hrvoje Morić) shifted to a newsletter format and warned about tokenized technocracy eating nation states. It’s conspiratorial sounding at times, but worth a read if you like thinking about how tech reshapes sovereignty. The tone is urgent, like someone watching the furniture move in a house and whispering that the walls will follow.

Repetition, patterns, and what I kept noticing

There are patterns here you can’t ignore. First, the theatre of politics keeps getting louder — name-branding, documentaries, hyphenated loyalty badges, and spectacle bombings. It’s politics as showbiz. Second, institutions keep passing responsibilities to private firms or militarised logic — Palantir, Blue Origin, and others. Third, trust is collapsing in multiple directions: citizens don’t trust politicians, writers don’t trust platforms, and communities don’t trust national policy.

I’m repeating that because it matters: the same grievances pop up in different clothes and with different tones, but they’re about the same basic ailment. People suggest fixes — from decentralised news to local resistance — and those fixes are often small, fiddly, local. They’re like knitting a jumper while the house is burning. Still, those small acts feel important. Maybe they’re all we have.

A few nudges if you want to dig deeper

• Look at Alistair Kitchen for the careful take on how grief can be exploited into repression. It’s measured and sharp.
• Read Dean Blundell if you want scorch marks on the media industry, and for the Melania piece which reads like a dossier on PR laundering.
• Jamie Lord is the one to read if you care about NHS data and how contracting can look less like efficiency and more like ego.
• If you want philosophical grumbling with a kick, Slavoj Žižek will take you through idea thickets; be ready to wander.
• For the small, human moments, Vox Meditantis and Karl's Notes give you the undercurrent — the private, the peculiar, the oddly consoling.

There’s more here than I can fully capture without getting dull. The week’s posts scratch at the same scabs: fear, spectacle, mistrust, and the slow, quiet work of people pushing back in small ways. To me, it feels like watching a big, messy household trying to decide who gets the remote. It’s noisy. It’s petty. It’s consequential. Read the pieces you’re drawn to. You’ll find the same anxieties wearing different coats.

If you want a final bit of colour: a few posts were full of outrage, some were mournful, a couple were snarky, and a handful tried to be useful. That mix feels right for the end of the year. It’s messy but honest in places. It’s like a neighbourhood at midnight: some shouting, some people locking doors, some sitting on stoops trying to make sense of the weather.

If one of those doors creaks open for you — follow the link. More detail lives there, and the authors generally do the heavy lifting. I’d say you’ll find a richer, sharper version of these little impressions in the source pieces. They’re worth the read if you want to know more about why the political house looks like it’s being redecorated by someone who’s had too much at the buffet.