This and that for your Tuesday reading.

– Brian Beutler writes that the events of Super Bowl weekend show how Donald Trump – even with the support of most of the country’s plutocrats and their media outlets – has absolutely failed to take over U.S. culture. But A.R. Moxon writes about the need to avoid normalizing or legitimizing MAGA’s culture of hate. 

– Garrett Graff discusses how the Trump security state’s masks and secrecy are all about impunity rather than legitimate safety concerns, as immigrant enforcement officers are at less risk of a violent death than a U.S. elementary school student. And Hanna Zlady reports on Transparency International’s new corruption perception index – showing the U.S. predictably falling to unprecedented lows even as the Trump regime looks to drive it down further. 

– Alex Clark points out how a continuing obsession with GDP (detached from human well-being) remains one of the most significant obstacles to averting a climate breakdown.

– Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow highlights how the Epstein class is determined to turn ruin for everybody else into an opportunity to extract even more undeserved wealth for itself. And Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Alix Gould-Werth discuss the perverse incentives around employers blocking worker access to employment benefits. 

– Finally, Nora Loreto rightly argues that Mark Carney’s rhetoric about building an international system based on mutual support will be entirely empty if Canada fails to step up and assist Cuba as the U.S. seeks to starve its population.