Trump’s Ukraine ultimatum. Surrender, Volodmyr. That was basically President Trump’s message to Ukrainian President Zelensky, demanding that Ukraine accept a peace plan cooked up in Moscow last week by Steve Witkoff, the billionaire property developer and Trump golfing partner who has become the de facto chief diplomat in this administration. After six visits to Moscow this year (none to Kyiv), Witkoff has been utterly bamboozled by Vladimir Putin; “I liked him,” Witkoff famously said of Putin. “He’s a straightforward guy.” Not even Neville Chamberlain was that clueless. The 28-point Witkoff-Putin peace plan is a Russian wish list wrapped in US red, white and blue. Under it, Ukraine would be forced to give up huge amounts of its territory—nearly 20 percent of the country. The plan would also require Ukraine to become a neutral state, and limit the size of its army. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Europe encouraging the Ukrainians to offer input; they have, and it may mean we get some kind of deal by the Thanksgiving deadline. But Putin has never abided by any deal. Europe knows this; Trump does not, or does not care. What we are actually witnessing is not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but the de facto end of the transatlantic alliance, as Europe prepares to face Russia—and re-orient its trading relations—to deal with Trumpist America.

The tariff bill comes due. President Trump has declared that tariff revenue to the US Treasury is about to “skyrocket.” He’s right. What he’s wrong about is that “foreign governments” will pay them. Trump is also right that many US importers stocked up on foreign goods before the tariffs went into effect, and now those stockpiles are now running low. What he’s wrong about is that those importers—or foreign producers—will “eat” most of the cost of Trump’s tariffs. Americans will. So most of the money that is raining into the Treasury is yours, and mine, and the hard-earned dollars of all Americans. That, as the economists like to remind us, is called "a “tax increase.” MAGA seems altogether to have lost faith in this aspect of Trumpsim: A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that “Only 13% of Americans want tariffs on foreign goods to be increased; 47% would prefer for them to be decreased and 24% want them to be kept the same.” So Trump is fighting math, and the American people. At some point, you’d think that’ll cost him.

The March to War in South America? Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has issued a sharp warning to the US about a “forever war.” This comes as Reuters published an alarming report that “the United States is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days.” Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (until Congress changes his title, he can call himself the Wizard of Oz, but I’ll still refer to him by the lawful name of his office) is rattling his saber: “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it,” Hegseth tweeted. There are questions about the legality of US military action against Venezuela, so now the administration is set to designate the country’s “Cartel de los Soles” a foreign “terrorist” organization, which: a) makes no sense since the “cartel” isn’t an actual organization but a moniker to describe corrupt government and military officials; and 2) could be dressed up into a legal justification for military action. The question here remains—why? Oil? Or is this whole campaign a show of force for the sake of the show itself? We topple a commie dictator, and MAGA goes, “We are so back, baby!” It sounds infantile to me, but maybe I’m missing something.

Stranger Things—at long last—returns. I have a soft spot in my heart for this series. My daughter Helen and I binge-watched it two summers ago, when she was 11, and shared all the scares and dramas and fun. Stranger Things became the signature show of what they call “peak streaming”—an era when Netflix still felt like a cultural campfire instead of an algorithmic thicket. The series was loopy and over-the-top at times (OK, a lot of the time), but it’s also deeply nostalgic about the 1980s and the Stephen-King era of American horror, where sleepy small towns turned out to be epic battlegrounds between ordinary, middle-class virtue and unspeakable evil. And the kids at the middle of it all grew before our eyes into warriors, all while battling the onset of adolescence. I love Stranger Things, maybe not so much for the show itself, but for Helen.