This way madness lies, but you knew that
It's the most relatable thing in the world: You've just put your weekly data-visualization newsletter to bed when the president of the United States unilaterally decides that the country is going to launch a war against a foreign country. Not much to do but throw some charts together!
Foreword
So we're doing this again, huh?
Those old enough may recall the year 2003.
The president of the United States, one George W. Bush, had spent months trying to convince the country that the nation of Iraq posed such a dire threat to American security that an invasion aimed at ousting its leadership was warranted. There were hearings and speeches and rallies, debates in newspapers, all the sorts of things you might expect before putting numerous soldiers, sailors and airmen in harm's way.
At the time, it seemed rushed and superficial. But history will show that it was, in fact, thorough and well-crafted — at least compared to the action against Iran President Donald Trump initiated this morning.
In 2003, Bush spent a big chunk of his State of the Union address arguing for the need to strike Iraq. During his SOTU speech this week, Trump mentioned Iran only briefly, including commenting that the nation's ability to build nuclear weapons had been "obliterated" during strikes last year. But, uh, they are still/now/again a threat!
As you might expect, given the lack of consensus-building, polls show that Americans are skeptical of Iran strikes. Even when YouGov asked narrowly about curtailing Iran's putative nuclear weapons program (as opposed to a full regime-change play), less than half of Americans supported strikes. Two-thirds of Americans thought Congress should authorize any such action (as Bush sought before the 2003 invasion) and basically no one who isn't a Republican thinks Trump actually made the case for strikes.
One irony here is that many supporters (though not really Trump himself) positioned him as the anti-war candidate, something he never was and never will be. Another irony is that Trump's rise in Republican politics was heavily predicated on casting Bush's decision and the Iraq War as mistakes (though Trump actually supported the Iraq invasion at the outset).
So here we are. Again. Hopefully what follows from this moment is as limited in its damage and death as possible.
Chapter 1
On a, uh, lighter note…
Now let's talk about what I'd originally intended this newsletter to begin with: The files related to financier-slash-sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
In another era, the federal government's release of millions of documents, images and videos related to a criminal case would fill some warehouse in suburban Maryland, with those interested in finding linkages and through lines forced to schlep to Elkridge to spend weeks digging through pieces of paper.
But this is this era (he said tautologically). So not only is all of that material online but myriad bespoke tools have been created to help casual users skim and organize what's been released. It's a ton of material, published at a time when people have gotten very good at thinking about how tons of material can be presented.
Perhaps the most clever example here is Jmail.world. The site took all of the emails released from the government and organized them as they might have appeared in Epstein's actual Gmail inbox. You can read, search and filter the messages as you might your own inbox.
It's not solely an inbox. The site also includes information about patterns in the messages and popular communication partners of Epstein's. I appreciated its year-by-year visualization of when the email account was busiest. It allows you to see, for example, how his email activity dropped off when he was incarcerated in 2008-2009 and again in 2019.