Make impeachment great again!
Plus: Sanders and Warren on Israel, Finding your virtual Freud, Google breaks its own rules, etc.
Welcome to NZN! In this issue I: (1) argue that the standard framing of the impeachment issue is fraught with peril; (2) compare and contrast Democratic presidential candidates’ statements about this week’s Israel-Gaza conflict; (3) talk about a weird new use of virtual reality that may help people give themselves sage counsel; (4) offer links to background readings on impeachment, Bolivia, Google’s breaking of its own rules, Epicureanism, George Marshall nostalgia, etc.; (5) unveil a new way for NZN readers to share their views with one another—I hope you’ll give it a try!

Impeachment should be about America first

This week, as the public phase of the House impeachment inquiry got underway, Rep. Adam Schiff, who is leading it, began his opening statement with these two sentences: “In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation's embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin's desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian forces.”
The Washington Post’s editorial board, on the same day, struck a similar tone. “The heart of the case” for impeachment, the editors wrote, is that, in trying to get Ukrainian help for his 2020 re-election run, Trump “allied his administration with some of Ukraine’s most corrupt elements, and undercut its military defense at a time when its soldiers were fighting and dying.”
I don’t want to sound hard-hearted, but could we please leave the Ukrainian soldiers out of this? I think it’s a mistake for impeachment supporters to frame their case against Trump in terms of the geopolitics of Russia and Ukraine—bad for their case against Trump, bad for America, and bad for the world.
Obviously, Russia and Ukraine are a big part of the context of the impeachment story and will in that sense loom large in the proceedings. But making their conflict the rhetorical engine of impeachment—or going further and putting it at the “heart” of the substantive argument for impeachment—has several bad consequences.
For starters, it muddies the case for impeachment. The Constitution doesn’t say that presidents can be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors and failing to stand up for Ukraine.”
Granted, most of the people invoking Ukrainian interests in making the case against Trump will also, if you give them enough time, say that Ukrainian interests align with American interests. This week’s leadoff witnesses—Ambassador William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent—said as much. And once you’re talking about subverting the national interest, you’re moving toward legitimate impeachment territory.
But not everyone agrees that providing aid to Ukraine is in America’s interest. Or even that it’s in Ukraine’s interest. Giving arms to combatants sometimes escalates the carnage on both sides while delaying the eventual day of diplomatic resolution. Just ask the relatives of all the dead Syrians who were once grateful recipients of American arms.
I’m not here to argue against (or for) arming Ukraine. I’m mainly just asking three things:
(1) Do impeachment supporters really want to send the implicit message that if you have doubts about the virtues of arming Ukraine, then maybe you should have doubts about impeachment?
(2) Do impeachment supporters want their argument—that Trump subverted the national interest by toying with Ukraine’s military aid—to draw them into a bunch of arguments over whether a Ukraine with $390 million less in military aid would be a clear and present danger to America?
(3) Isn’t it best for America in the long run to state the case for impeachment as a matter of principle that transcends the policies and politics of the day? Here’s how I’d take a stab at doing that:
The policy of arming Ukraine grew out of a constitutionally ordained process for making policy: Congress authorized a big expenditure, and the president signed the bill. For the president to subordinate the implementation of that policy to a search for dirt on a political opponent—and threaten to abandon the policy altogether in that search—is a fundamental subversion of our system of democratic governance.
You can believe all that (as I do) without believing that the policymaking process that Trump subverted always yields good policies and without believing that the policy in this case was obviously a good one.
I have one other reason for disliking the Cold War framing of impeachment: If you send the implicit message that supporting impeachment means being a staunch neo–Cold Warrior, some Trump opponents with unformed foreign policy views will become staunch neo–Cold Warriors.
I don’t mean they’ll consciously decide to undergo that change. The psychology works more subtly than that. And, actually, in this case it’s been at work a long time. Ever since the emergence of evidence that Russia helped Trump in the 2016 campaign, Trump opponents have naturally been inclined to take a dimmer view of Russia than they otherwise would have. For better or worse, that’s the way the human mind works: the ally of your enemy is your enemy.
I believe—though there’s no way of knowing for sure—that this dynamic has already created a non-trivial number of #Resistance neo–Cold Warriors. And more may be on the way, thanks to the prevailing impeachment narrative.
So what’s wrong with a little more neo–Cold Warriorism?
I think the American perception of menace from Russia is already exaggerated, and that this exaggeration can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It leads us to menace Russia more, which leads Russia to menace us more, and so on—before you know it, the world is a super menacing place.
This dynamic is already at work. Russian belligerence, including in Ukraine, has, more than we realize, resulted from Russian perceptions of American menace—including the not wholly unfounded perception that America abetted the extra-constitutional removal of Ukraine’s president in 2014.
Another problem with neo–Cold Warriorism is that it can be a gateway drug. At first it feels harmless—just a mild buzz of Russophobia—but before you know it you’re waking up in the morning looking for a new regime to change.
OK, maybe I exaggerate. But becoming a neo–Cold Warrior does tend to draw you into the sphere of influence of the Blob, whose knack for advocating disastrous foreign policy initiatives is well documented.
So for the sake of lots of nations—maybe even including Ukraine—I say we make impeachment about America first.
To boldly go…where this particular newsletter hasn’t gone before.
This week we’re trying an experiment! We’re using Substack’s nifty comments module to let NZN readers share their views with one another. Here’s the issue on the table: Do you think you consume too much media, or too little, or just about the right amount? And, leaving aside aggregate media consumption, what kinds of media (from political to celebrity news, from social media to TV, etc.) are you consuming too much or too little of? Feel free to elaborate on the logic behind your answer.
On Israel, Sanders and Warren depart from the script
The Democratic presidential candidates haven’t said much about foreign policy, and what they’ve said has often been frustratingly vague. This week brought a rare opportunity to compare their positions on a specific international development.
It started in Gaza, when Israel assassinated an Islamic Jihad military commander who was thought responsible for past missile attacks on Israel, including a strike in September that disrupted a Bibi Netanyahu campaign event. In response to the assassination (which also killed the commander’s wife), Islamic Jihad fired a barrage of missiles into Israel. Israel replied with more military strikes, which killed at least 30 additional Palestinians, including a number of civilians.
Most of the Democratic presidential candidates who weighed in—including Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris—reacted the way American politicians have often reacted to such things. They condemned the Palestinian rocket attacks, expressed solidarity with Israel, made no reference to Palestinian casualties and no mention of either the immediate precipitant of the missile barrage (the killing of the commander and his wife) or conditions that might have contributed to earlier missile attacks on Israel (most notably Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza, which has helped sustain extreme poverty).
The two exceptions were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Sanders: “Israelis should not have to live in fear of rocket fire. Palestinians should not have to live under occupation and blockade. The U.S. must lead the effort to end the crisis in Gaza and the persistent violence that threatens everyone.”
Warren: “I welcome the Gaza ceasefire. Dozens were killed in Gaza, and hundreds of rockets fired at Israel. We must work to end rocket attacks on Israel, eliminate the Gaza blockade, and solve the humanitarian crisis so that all Israelis and Palestinians live in security and freedom.”
These may not sound like radical positions, but their contrast with the other candidates’ utterances was clear enough to win them plaudits from Palestinian activist Omar Baddar.
Question: Should Baddar have given Cory Booker an honorable mention? Depends on whether you read Booker’s opaque second paragraph as an implicit reference to Palestinian deaths, a kind of dog whistle to lefties that wouldn’t ruffle feathers in right-leaning pro-Israel circles—where Booker has long been warmly received, though his (grudging) support for the Iran nuclear deal complicated that connection. [Note: Some of these reactions came before reports that an Israeli strike had killed a family of eight, including five children (apparently because of an intelligence snafu). And Biden’s reaction—the earliest of them—may have come before reports of the first of the post-assassination Israeli strikes.]

Seeing yourself from the outside (pretty literally)
For my money, one of the most valuable things about a mindfulness practice is that it can give you a more objective view of the world. A bit of critical distance from your feelings can let you see other people with less of the distortion that feelings often bring.
And the people you see more objectively can include you. When mindfulness works well, it can help you reflect on decisions you face and give yourself the kind of guidance you’d get from a wise counselor—someone not caught up in your internal struggles, someone viewing you from the outside.
If you’ve tried mindfulness practice and failed to get such benefits, there may be another way to give yourself counsel with some measure of detachment. A study published in the esteemed scientific journal Nature a few months ago reports on the use of virtual reality to let people see themselves, almost literally, from the outside—and advise themselves from that vantage point.
Here’s how it works:
You strap on the virtual reality goggles and see a virtual Sigmund Freud. If you’re not a Freud fan, don’t worry: the success of this technique doesn’t depend on the merits of Freudianism. The reason is that you’re going to do all the talking for Freud, and you’re under no compulsion to imitate him.
But I’m getting ahead of the story.
You start by explaining to this virtual Freud some problem you’re having. Virtual Freud—let’s call him Pixar Freud, since he looks about as much like Freud as a character in a Pixar movie might—listens patiently.
Then you jump into Pixar Freud’s skin and see Pixar You explaining the problem as you just explained it—complete with the gestures and expressions you used. Then you, as Pixar Freud, respond to Pixar You with a comment and/or question. And, lest you have doubts that you’re really capable of filling Freud’s shoes, there’s a full-length virtual mirror nearby, in which you can see Pixar Freud—the character you’re at this point inhabiting—speaking and gesturing as you speak and gesture.
Then you switch roles again and rewind the virtual videotape again. Now you’re you again, watching the Pixar Freud character say the things you just said. You respond to them, and then slip back into Pixar Freud’s skin…and so on.
I know, I know—it sounds so complicated that meditation is starting to look easy by comparison. And we don’t yet know if this technique can work in the sense of bringing actual therapeutic benefits. But the average participant said it helped along all five dimensions they were asked about (gave them more knowledge about the problem, better understanding of it, new ideas about it, more control over it, and a better perspective on it).
And these ratings were higher than the ratings given by people who never got to inhabit Pixar Freud and instead just explained their problems to a Pixar Freud who then asked scripted questions. This suggests that some of the (perceived) value came not just from talking about the problem, but from actually adopting the role of listener and counselor and shaping the conversation.
Obviously, it’s early days. But what intrigues me is how far technologies like this could eventually evolve. And, in any event, you have to applaud the effort. There are certainly less enlightening uses to which virtual reality can be put.
BTW, if you’re curious about what Pixar Freud looks like, here’s a 2018 video that explains the basic mechanics of the study.

On CNN’s website, journalist Daniel Dale, who has relentlessly chronicled the president’s untruths during this presidency, lists “45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment.”
The Wall Street Journal this week published the results of its big investigation into how Google has “increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged.” Google “made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay, contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action.” Also, Google “boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com and Facebook.” (Remember the neediest!) Google also fiddles with the “auto-complete” algorithm to reduce the chances that people will stumble onto such inflammatory subjects as immigration and abortion.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi vividly depicts how good Trump is at getting his favorite thing: attention. Al-Gharbi divides the number of mentions each recent president has gotten in the New York Times by the total number of words published by the Times (to correct for the growth in the latter during the online age) and gets this graph:

In Aeon, philosopher Catherine Wilson sings the praises of Epicureanism as a guiding philosophy and argues that it’s well suited to the modern world. As a lifestyle, Epicureanism is less self-indulgent than the current usage of the term might suggest, though less austere than Stoicism, which is now undergoing something of a revival, and on which Wilson throws a bit of shade.
In Dissent, Nicolaus Mills reviews a biography of Gen. George Marshall, architect of the Marshall Plan and Secretary of State under Truman, and suggests that Marshall’s “pragmatic engagement” would be an improvement on America’s foreign policy of recent decades.
The New York Times reports that, with President Evo Morales having been forced out of office by the military amid protests against him, many of Bolivia’s indigenous people worry that gains they enjoyed in recent years are imperiled. Morales, the first indigenous president in the country’s history, was replaced by a woman of European descent who initially appointed an all-European cabinet and has in the past called indigenous religious rituals “satanic.”
On the Israeli website 972, Menachem Klein explains how the unusual dynamics of this week’s conflict in Gaza reflect important changes in the relationship among Israel, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore argues that impeachment could be a “calamity” for Democratic presidential candidates who are in the Senate (Sanders, Warren, Klobuchar, Booker, Harris, Bennet). Attending impeachment hearings—which would be in session six days per week—could keep them off the campaign trail for six weeks or more during the critical early phase of the primaries.
Incoming: Thanks to NZN reader Shikha for writing in to inquire about the provenance of the florid image featured in last week’s NZN, depicting Trump in hastening-the-apocalypse mode. NZN artist-in-residence Nikita Petrov explains that the foundation of his creation was an image of Yama, the Hindu god of death, who was then transfigured to look like Trump. There are many differences between Trump as he was rendered here and Yama (for example, Yama is not known to have ever brandished a golf club). We hope these differences put enough distance between the final image and its original inspiration so that we don’t offend anyone with this appropriation of a sacred figure. (And, of course, Nikita realized that the apocalypse isn’t part of Hindu tradition—but he liked the idea of venturing beyond the standard Christian palette.)
If you want to follow in Shikha’s footsteps and give us some feedback, we’re at nonzero@substack.com. Also: If you’re not following us on Twitter yet, there’s a remedy for that condition! And if you are following us, please remember to retweet us from time to time and sometimes go so far as to click the like button as well. Speaking of which: there’s also a like button below this paragraph! And a share button! See you next week.