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In this scenario, Edward VI lives to a ripe old age and has a male heir. Mary and Elizabeth never reign; in fact, it is possible that Mary is executed at some point. The king pursues a more aggressively Protestant foreign policy than Elizabeth did. Relations with Parliament are somewhat less fraught, as there are no issues with the succession or religion. Catholicism withers, but does not die.

The real question with this counterfactual is whether Edward marries the Queen of Scots after the death of her French husband. The timing suggests not; Edward probably would have been married before that opportunity presented itself. England and Scotland would ultimately have been united, but in a different way.

You can see what they were thinking. With Bolt and Phelps gone, NBC needed a new face to promote the Olympics—and what better figure could there be than an apparently invincible black woman? It was PC America at its most cynical and relentless. Biles bought into it, too; she fully embraced the notion that she was the GOAT, and made millions promoting herself. The hype machine was in overdrive. It overwhelmed Biles, and the rest is history.

The worst is yet to come. Racists will go bonkers on social media. Woke people will argue, on the other hand, that she is a victim of an oppressive system that used her and spat her out. It will turn into a culture war issue.

The truth is that Biles is an accomplice to the crime, not a victim. The primary responsibility, however, rests with the people who created and ran the hype machine.

That’s the Anti-Vaxxer Party, of course. The answer is simple: the Reactionaries have become the predominant faction in the party, and they are faux libertarians, opposed to mandates from a government that doesn’t embrace their values. Refusing the vaccine is just the latest, and most egregious, of a series of actions they have taken that are against their material interests in order to stick it to the man.

The GOP needs their votes, so they will not condemn this kind of stupid and reckless behavior. As with the riot, however, acquiescing to the extreme right carries its own dangers. Those of us who took the vaccine are getting fed up, and we vote, too.

If Henry and Catherine of Aragon had succeeded in producing a healthy male heir, there obviously would have been no government-driven Reformation of any kind. As with the Arthur scenario, the key questions are whether the Protestants would have gained much of a foothold in the face of fierce official disapproval, and whether England would have assisted the Dutch rebels against Spain with a Catholic on the throne. In my opinion, the answer to the first question is clearly no, although it is unlikely that Protestantism would have been eliminated altogether. As to the second question, my best guess is also in the negative; aiding Calvinist rebels against a Catholic king would have been a bridge too far. England would have remained neutral, and the Dutch rebellion might have failed, with consequences we would still feel today.

Biden has an audacious plan to rebuild the American middle class through a combination of spending programs and tax increases on the wealthy. The idea is to revive the economy by increasing demand. But what happens if he can’t get his big taxing and spending bills through Congress? What does that mean for 2024?

He’s in better position than you think. While the revolution has failed, investors are happy, and inflation is not an issue. The Covid bill has provided significant benefits to workers which are now under threat from the GOP. The Republican nominee, whoever it is, offers nothing but benefit cuts, lower taxes for business, bathroom bills, and support for the January 6 rioters. That’s a winning hand for the Democrats.

By all accounts, Prince Arthur was very different than his boisterous, self-indulgent, charismatic younger brother Henry. How would English history have been different if he had not died prematurely?

There would have been no issue about the consummation of his marriage, to be sure. There would have been no government-driven Reformation, and fewer frivolous French wars. It is fair to assume that he would not have had a son with Catherine. This would have been less of an issue, however, because Henry would have been married to a French princess; their union probably would have produced male heirs. The Tudor line would consequently have continued uninterrupted after Arthur’s death in the 1540s.

England would have remained a completely independent Catholic country, with a foreign policy based on the maintenance of the balance of power. Wolsey would have been a much smaller figure, and no one would have heard of Cromwell. An institutional battle with Parliament was still on the horizon.

In short, the specifics would have been quite different, but the overall direction of English history would have been fairly similar.

It’s 1803. The American negotiators are in the White House, relaying Napoleon’s offer to sell Louisiana to President Trump. What will the great man say? He speaks;

I have to say—I admire this Napoleon guy. He may be short, but he gets things done. If he wants something, he just goes out and takes it. He reminds me of myself. He’s a man I can do business with.

But this is a terrible deal. Terrible. Louisiana is a s+—hole country. It’s full of Indians and buffalo and God knows what else. There’s no place for a decent golf course or a hotel. I know more about real estate than anyone alive, and I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m putting money in this deal.

Go back and tell the little guy that I have a different idea. I’m willing to license him to use the Trump brand for a million a year. He can go develop the property under my name. With his connections and my genius, we would be unstoppable!

And you thought the GOP always supported tax cuts! In yesterday’s NYT, Michael Strain of the AEI argued that tax cuts for low and middle income families should be avoided, because they would increase demand and cause inflation. This, as opposed to virtuous tax cuts for the wealthy, who always use the money to invest in new businesses and create jobs.

In reality, regressive tax cuts are just used by the wealthy to drive up asset prices, buy government securities, and build dollar stores, because we no longer have a middle class to purchase goods and services.

This is class warfare openly declared by the affluent—nothing more or less.

From the perspective of the Democrats, there are two reasons to have a comprehensive investigation of the riot: first, to identify the reasons for the lapses in security, and to fix them; and second, to develop facts that will cause the public to view large portions of the GOP as being complicit. The GOP leadership naturally opposes the latter; hence, their refusal to cooperate in the process.

But they cannot avoid it. If the Republicans boycott the proceedings and go on Fox every night to complain about how the system is rigged against them, they will only prove to everyone outside the base that they are, in fact, Trump’s accomplices, and a continuing danger to American liberal democracy.

That is exactly what I expect them to do. It will come back to bite them in some of the swing House districts next year.

You did everything right. You stayed home to protect yourself and others when it was required. You wore a mask, even though you hated it. You got vaccinated as soon as possible, with the expectation that your life would return to normal. Today, however, you are looking at a possible new mask mandate. Why?

You can thank the millions of anti-vaxxers, of course. They have a wide range of reasons for their abstinence, all of them stupid. They are threatening your quality of life for no good reason.

A disproportionate percentage of them are reactionaries, who like nothing better than to tell you that you aren’t a real American. They are perpetually angry at you. Maybe it is time to return the favor.

I have frequently referred to Donald Trump as a one-trick pony, because all he knows how to do is divide the country and mobilize his base. The 2020 election proved that there aren’t enough reactionary votes out there to win a national election, but he refuses to accept reality. Instead, he continues to try to fit the facts to his narrative.

In a similar vein, Mitch McConnell had success with his relentless obstruction campaign in 2009 and 2010, so will he try it again, under very different circumstances? Are we doomed to see debt ceiling crises and abortive legislative deals over and over again?

Based on the events of the last day or two, the answer is yes.

What is America? It’s a trick question; America is about becoming something, not being something. The country was conceived from the beginning as an agent of change. It constantly tears itself down and builds the biggest, newest, and shiniest of everything. It never stands still.

So how do you reconcile this concept of the nation that constantly reinvents itself with the worship of obsolete ideas and dying industries? You can’t.

Here’s what forty years of tax cuts and deregulation have given us: a billionaire space race! Are you not entertained!

What happens when the Democrats are powerless, and the political spectrum is effectively limited to Reactionaries and PBPs? That’s the question I raised about Texas late in 2019. The answer to the question tells us a great deal about the condition of the GOP on a national level.

In 2019, the conflict between the two factions–one supporting infrastructure spending, the other bathroom bills–seemed to have reached a stalemate. That is no longer true. The Reactionaries have gained complete control of the legislative process, and every plausible candidate for high state and federal office is running as far to the right as he reasonably can. As a result, we have an absurdly constructed abortion law relying totally on private enforcement, proposed new (and, based on the 2020 election results, completely unnecessary) legislation to suppress minority votes, and an attempt by the state to complete the border wall on its own.

This, of course, mirrors the state of the GOP nationally. Trump is above criticism, the riot was a peaceful event involving patriotic Americans, Biden is an illegitimate president, and the biggest civil rights struggle in this country involves the rights of people who refuse to be vaccinated. If you don’t agree with these propositions, you had better keep your mouth shut, or else you’ll wind up like Liz Cheney.

The WaPo has reported that an Israeli software firm, with the apparent approval of the government, sold a program called Pegasus to a number of foreign governments, whose characters range from the increasingly illiberal to the brutally thuggish. These regimes then used the program to spy on their opponents, including journalists viewed as being hostile. The company denies any wrongdoing.

My question is, do you find it difficult to believe that Netanyahu would license this kind of anti-democratic activity? And is it impossible to imagine that Trump would do the same thing, and even use the program on his own domestic opponents?

Of course not. That’s who they are.