9 February—Today’s disquisition must not pass without acknowledging the Super Bowl. Done.

So that takes us to the Axes of Evil. Axis first. It was Benito Mussolini, a journalist (columnist and editor) before he was a dictator, who first called a political alliance an axis. That was in 1936, shortly after he’d signed a treaty with Adolf Hitler. Speaking in Milan, he boasted (in Italian, of course), “This vertical line between Rome and Berlin is not a dividing-line but rather an axis around which all European states animated by the will to cooperation and peace can collaborate.” So Mussolini’s axis wasn’t evil. Of course not.

(Don’t forget Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain, which, “from Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic . . . descended across the continent” a decade later to usher in the Cold War.)

In passing, it’s worth noting that Mussolini’s foreign policy was based on the doctrine of spazio vitale—living space—which was an excuse to expand Italian possessions. It was virtually identical to Hitler’s Lebensraum—living space—an excuse to expand German possessions. Old-fashioned imperialism pure and simple. With ethnic cleansing thrown in.

The Axis of Evil (which isn’t normally capitalized) itself didn’t come about until David Frum, a brilliant speechwriter for Bush 43 (and former Republican because he can’t stomach Trump), wrote it for Junior’s 2002 State of the Union address. Although Frum must have known that an axis by definition can’t have three points, his phrase referred to Iran, Ba’athist Iraq, and North Korea. But nobody cared because Axis of Evil hit the spot. It still does.

So here are two Axes of Evil: