Jonathan Pollard served 30 years in an American federal prison for selling the United States' most classified secrets to Israel. Israel granted him citizenship, lobbied for his release and sent Netanyahu when he landed. He announced he is running for the Knesset. Nobody in Washington said a word.
Brian McGinnis walked into a Senate Armed Services hearing in full Marine Corps uniform and screamed until Capitol Police broke his arm. A firefighter from North Carolina. His wife is Palestinian. In India he would have been branded anti-national before the press conference ended.
There was a time when the men and women who led nations understood the office demanded something of them. That seriousness — imperfect, sometimes hypocritical, but real — has largely gone. What replaced it is performance. The world is run by people who confuse visibility with leadership.
John P. Wihbey has spent years studying how digital platforms reshape public discourse and political power. In this conversation, he addresses the governance gap at the heart of the information age — and why the solutions being proposed are not yet equal to the problem.
John Wihbey’s Governing Babel confronts the central problem of the digital age: social media platforms have become the public square, and nobody elected them. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why content moderation is a political problem, not a technical one.
India had a democratic tradition worth defending. What has been surrendered — press freedom, judicial independence, minority protections — was not lost in a coup. It was given away incrementally, each compromise justified by the next election. The ground, once lost, is hard to recover.
Moldova's pro-European presidential result is significant. Russia spent years cultivating influence in Chisinau through energy dependency, propaganda and political financing. The vote suggests that model has limits. The post-Soviet sphere is not as durable as Moscow assumed.
