South Koreans Must Not Let Their President’s Failed Self-Coup Go to Waste
Quico Toro, Persuasion
A rare opportunity to entrench democracy is at hand

Liberal democracy, it has been said a million times before, is such a dull, procedural affair that it often struggles to rally deep emotional attachment even from its supporters. Crises like the one South Korea has just gone through—moments when the survival of liberal democracy seems in doubt—can sometimes square the circle, renewing people’s commitment to democratic ideals and binding them emotionally to a system that so often errs on the side of limp proceduralism.

Which is why as I saw Koreans pouring into the streets of Seoul last night to reject the president’s power grab, I felt more hopeful than afraid. Their country is going through the kind of crisis that, if courageously handled, can leave a democracy stronger. For their sake and ours, let’s hope they succeed.

Getting mean and dirty only helps Trump
Steve Schmidt, The Warning

Adopting a politics of authentic morality that places a premium on service and people would be a start. It is time to start imagining the future.

Progressives should appreciate their liberation from the defense of 20th century
government programs and departments that Republicans have long attacked as unnecessary, bureaucratic and wasteful. Everything will be gone within four years, and mostly gone in two.

Unless the Democratic Party is fueled by idealism, opportunity and fighting to be on the side of ordinary Americans, it defaults into being the extremely unappealing party: weak, elitist and out-of-touch.

Manufacturing is a war now
Noah Smith, Noahpinion
And the democracies are losing.

And one absolutely essential component of an FPV drone is a battery. In fact, improvements in batteries — along with better magnets for motors and various kinds of computer chips for sensing and control — are what enabled the drone revolution in the first place. And who makes the batteries? That would also be China:

The democratic countries have all struggled to respond to China’s industrial assault, because as capitalist countries, they naturally think about manufacturing mainly in terms of economic efficiency and profits unless a major war is actively in progress