Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

February 2026

Long War

WE’LL TEACH YOU TO TAKE HOSTAGES!:

Trump’s Enormous Gamble on Regime Change in Iran: A few paths to success, many to failure (Tom Nichols, February 28, 2026, The Atlantic)

This is not a preemptive war. It is a war of choice, a discretionary war. It is a war for regime change. Many of Iran’s 92 million people want the regime removed. But it is far from certain that this will be the outcome.

To think about the possible courses of this war, we should start by clearly understanding three realities: First, Iran is a terrible regime that deserves to fall. The regime recently murdered thousands of its own citizens who were seeking freedom from their oppressive rule, and no one should be shedding tears for the mullahs hiding in their bunkers.

Second, “success” is not impossible—if by “success” we mean the fall of the ayatollahs and the rise of a better, more humane, pro-Western government that does not seek to destabilize the Middle East; dominate Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and eradicate Israel. But the path to that success is exceedingly narrow and mined with significant hazards. Destroying the regime’s capabilities is relatively easy, but nothing permanent—as Americans learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is achieved by bouncing rubble and piling up bodies. Destroying the regime itself is a far trickier business; dictatorships have a high pain tolerance, especially when the hapless citizens, not the leaders, bear the brunt of that pain.

Third, the president has not offered a strategy, or identified any conditions that would signal that U.S. goals have been achieved. Yes, he has vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but beyond that, he seems to be arguing for just inflicting military damage on the regime, on the assumption that enough ordinance on enough targets will weaken the grip of the ayatollahs. Once the theocrats are on the ropes, the thinking seems to go, the people of Iran will finish the job of regime change for us.

We’ve mishandled the regime for nearly 50 years now, especially post-9/11, when they begged to be let in out of the Cold. But the reality is that the American people would even support nuking Iran. Donald would have had no trouble getting Congressional approval for an operation based around regime change.

Identitarianism

TRUMPISM DOESN’T WORK:

The Post-Liberal Laboratory: Sixteen Years of Orbán’s Hungary (Kaiser Bauch, 2/25/26, LEO)

[I]t is important to acknowledge that the period between the financial crisis and COVID was a great economic time for the whole East-Central European region, propelled mostly by advantageous global conditions. The post-communist EU member states were all growing rapidly—on average about 3.2%.

While Hungary grew above the average and was among the top performers, the problem is that Hungarian growth was driven primarily by rising employment and hours worked. ‘Orbánomics’ was based on attracting foreign capital investment into factories, mostly but not exclusively in automotive, to create jobs. In this, Hungary was successful, yet this growth model—which economists call ‘extensive’ rather than ‘intensive’—started to break down around 2019, before the COVID crisis hit.

It is a model that requires more and more capital and more and more additional labor every year to maintain economic growth. Yet the Hungarian labour force is declining and the country started to experience labour shortages. Moreover, if one looks at labour productivity growth measured as GDP per hour worked in the same period (2013-2019), Hungary was among the worst performers in the region—growing 1.7% on average while the regional average was 2.3%. It also had by far the biggest mismatch between labour productivity growth and GDP growth—meaning that this growth was not sustainable unless the labour force (or working hours) continued to expand. But more on that later.

Since COVID, things have only gotten worse.

At the End of History, there is no viable alternative to liberalism.

Anglospherics

THE GLORY OF THE WEST:

The Last Speech: “A Thing Called Civilization” (Sir Roger Scruton, February 26th, 2026, Imaginative Conservative)

What is Civilization?

Let’s leave aside the idea of Western civilization. After all, it depends which way you’re going around the globe whether it’s West or East. Look instead at the idea of civilization. What is it? What is a civilization? It is surely a form of connection between people, not just a way in which people understand their languages, their customs, their forms of behavior, but also the way in which they connect to each other, eye to eye, face to face, in the day-to-day life which they share.

This is something which has ordinary dimensions in the workplace and in the community, in our day to day. But also it has a high culture built upon it, works of art, literature, music, architecture, and so on. These are our ways of changing the world so as to be more at home in it.

I think that is the distinctive feature of Western civilization, that it is a comprehensive civilization constantly giving us new ways of being at home, ways of being in relation to each other, which bring peace and interest as the primary bonds between our neighbors.

It is the universalism that distinguishes us and, effectively, makes the West the only civilization.

Robotics/AI

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATIONARY PRESSURES:

India Built the World’s Back Office. A.I. Is Starting to Shrink It. (Steven Lee Myers and Paul MozurVisuals by Saumya Khandelwal, Feb. 27, 2026, NY Times)]


For a quarter century, India has made itself the world’s back office, providing an educated, English-speaking work force to do tasks more cheaply than in the United States or Europe. The industry today employs more than six million people and is worth nearly $300 billion, more than 7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Now, A.I. threatens to do to India what its outsourcing model did to the rest of the world: replace hundreds of thousands of office workers.

Israel/Palestine

PALESTINE IS A NATION:

Americans’ sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have shifted dramatically, new poll shows (LINLEY SANDERS, February 27, 2026, AP)

Now, their support is about evenly balanced, with 41% saying their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, and only 36% saying the same about the Israelis.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Books

INGLORIOUS:

Captain America, Our First Antifascist Superhero: Peter Meineck on the Ancient and Modern Inspirations Behind the Heroes That Populate the Marvel Universe (Peter Meineck, February 27, 2026, LitHub)

Captain America was introduced in December 1940 by Timely Comics, the forerunner of Marvel. At that time Britain had been at war with Germany for seventeen months. Adolf Hitler’s forces had swept through Europe. The Nazis were setting up concentration camps for Jews, Romani, queer people, academics, political prisoners, and anyone whom the regime considered “degenerate.” Britain was being relentlessly bombed by the Luftwaffe, Germany had invaded France, Belgium, and Holland, and the concentration camp at Auschwitz had opened. America was still a year away from entering the war.

From the beginning Marvel was defined by its superhuman characters set against the background of the coming war. Its first comic book, Marvel Comics #1, had been released by Timely in August 1939 and introduced several characters. There was the Human Torch, the Angel, Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Masked Raider, and a Tarzan-like figure called Ka-Zar. By issue #2, the Angel was shooting down Nazi bombers over Poland. Then in issue #3, Namor was sinking German U-boats. Right from the start Marvel’s characters were responding to real events in the world—and what’s more, they were taking a stand.

At the foundation of the Marvel universe lies something essentially heroic. Almost two years before America entered the war against the Axis powers, Bill Everett was telling stories about a superhuman figure from Atlantis doing battle with the Nazis. Then came Captain America in 1940, a new hero billed as “against those who would conquer the United States” and the “sentinel of our shores.” Readers were encouraged to sign and become one of Captain America’s United States Junior Sentinels. Then they would receive a membership badge and an ID card. The Captain was introduced bedecked in his red, white, and blue stars-and-stripes costume. He carried a kite-shaped shield, which resembled the one on the great seal of the United States, and wore a blue half mask emblazoned with a distinctive white “A” and edged with small wings.

Captain America’s creators, Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) and Joe Simon (Hymie Simon), were sons of Jewish immigrants from Europe and aware of the dangers of the Nazi regime. In The Human Torch #3, released in December 1940, a story by Carl Burgos (Max Finkelstein) already has the Torch battling a Hitler look-alike named “Hiccup.” In one brilliant panel a tendril from the Torch’s fiery wake singes off Hiccup’s Hitler moustache. In that same issue Namor helps the US Navy defeat a surprise seaborne attack by the Germans and is rewarded with a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

It’s clear Captain America was introduced for one incredibly urgent purpose: to galvanize American youth against the Nazi regime.

Cheeto Jesus

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

Trump’s Challenge to Free Market Capitalism: Stakes in private companies. Handshake deals with chief executives. The president’s economic policy has drifted far from principles that long defined the Republican Party. Is it capitalism at all? (Ben Casselman, Feb. 22, 2026, NY Times)

Since returning to the White House last year, President Trump has gotten the government involved in the private sector in ways that Mr. Obama and other past presidents, of either major party, would never have considered.

The Trump administration has taken ownership stakes in corporations, intervened in business deals and negotiated a cut of the revenue of American companies’ overseas sales. Mr. Trump has unilaterally deployed tariffs and other policy levers to help industries he favors, like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, and to punish those he dislikes, like wind power. He has wielded the powers of the federal bureaucracy to pressure executives, sometimes in ways that blur the lines between his policy objectives and his personal business interests. […]

So far, however, the public seems just as unhappy with Mr. Trump’s economy, which has not delivered the manufacturing jobs and lower prices that he promised on the campaign trail. It remains uncertain whether the Republican Party will continue down the path charted by Mr. Trump after he leaves office, or turn back toward the version of the party he left behind.

Democrats, in their own way, are engaged in a similar debate. President Joseph R. Biden Jr., too, embraced tools like tariffs and industrial subsidies, and while some moderate Democrats were unhappy with that shift, many of the party’s rising stars come from a progressive wing of the party that has long called for more government involvement in the economy.

Joe’s failure was a function of aping Donald.

Health

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

How Real Is the Nocebo Effect? (Carol Tavris, February 23, 2026, Skeptic)


Where the placebo goes, can the nocebo be far behind? In This Book May Cause Side Effects, Helen Pilcher, a science writer and TV presenter with a PhD in cell biology, delves into the placebo’s “evil twin”—the myriad ways that our negative expectations affect us. If you had chills, fatigue, or headaches after getting a COVID shot, she writes, they were likely due to your being told those are frequent “side effects.” If you read the list of symptoms that your newly prescribed drug “might” produce, chances are you will experience one or more of them—and possibly decide not to take that drug after all. “If just the thought of eating a certain food makes you feel sick,” she writes, “it’s highly likely that placebo’s evil twin has struck again. Indeed, many of those who believe they have intolerances to certain ingredients, such as lactose or gluten, may well owe their misery to psychological rather than physical processes.” When self-reported “gluten intolerant” people are given gluten-free bread but told that the bread contains gluten, very often they develop gastrointestinal symptoms. “And when some gluten-intolerant people are covertly fed regular bread but told that it’s gluten-free, they don’t get symptoms,” Pilcher writes. “It’s the idea of gluten that they are intolerant to, rather than theprotein itself.”

Deflation

…AND RICHER…:

Are Americans Getting Richer? (Washington Post Editorial Board, Feb 20, 2026)

The premise of the index is simple: how many hours do you need to work, compared to the month or year before, to be able to afford the “basket of goods,” which is a standard set of household items and services that comprise the Consumer Price Index used to calculate inflation.

The “time price” is how many hours of work it takes to purchase the basket of goods. The “abundance” is how much of the basket one hour of work can buy. The story told by the index is a very good one: since recordkeeping began, “abundance” for average private sector workers comes out to a net increase of 13.8 percent.

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